#i’m not impressed by the map itself so far at all | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ofbatsandballads · 2 months ago

Text

kindness you can’t afford

jason todd x fem!reader

word count: 2.1k

warnings: injured character, multiple descriptions of blood + wounds

a/n: so this is the very first jason fic I’ve written since I was twelve, so forgive me while I find my jay’s voice now that I’m not a preteen. anyways I humbly offer thee my wares.

divider credit: cafekitsune

Gotham’s a shithole. You hadn’t known that when you first moved here. To be honest, you’d kind of thrown a dart at a map and gone where it landed. Alright, maybe it wasn’t literally a dart throw, more so finding the cheapest metropolitan city because New York was tempting but it would bankrupt you. Mostly you just wanted a place to not exist. And so Gotham’s relatively low rent rates and towering skylines were the pick with little to no research.

Gotham’s a shithole. You know that beyond a shadow of a doubt now. It’s surprising, honestly, how little of Gotham’s chaos makes it outside the city limits. One would think a psychotic killer clown that’s prone to gassing a whole city district or a half-plant poison lady or a guy going around dressed like a bat would make national news. And yet, no. You’d known superheroes existed, of course. Superman was the shining jewel in the crown of the country that is Metropolis. Everyone knows about the extraordinary Wonder Woman. It’s not like hyper skilled people working for the greater good aren’t a thing. But Gotham plays her cards close to her chest.

You've lived here almost two years now and you’ve managed to make it through relatively unscathed. An impressive feat especially since you live in the Bowery. The Bowery itself isn’t so bad, but its neighboring district Park Row, more often known as Crime Alley, is about the worst Gotham has to offer. You’ve heard your fair share of gunshots and sirens, and you’ll never forget the time that Scarecrow released fear toxin in the district and you had to shove every towel and blanket you owned against the cracks by the doors and windows to keep it out. However, you’ve avoided being mugged or assaulted or anything like that so far. And you’ve never encountered the vigilantes that run the night here.

But there’s always time for new and exciting experiences.

The loud thunk that sounds outside your living room window makes you jump and starts your heart pounding. You know you should just ignore it. Crawl off the couch and to the bedroom, lock the door. The lights in the apartment are already off, only the television light illuminating the room, so it would be easy to creep unseen. But you can’t. Something pulls you to the window. Maybe it’s the cat killing curiosity, or maybe it’s your own little voice of self destruction, or maybe it’s something else entirely. All you know is that you have to go look.

So you do. And there, out cold on the fire escape, is a man. A very large man. A very large man in a red helmet. A very large man in a red helmet with dual pistols holstered to his thighs. Red Hood. Red Hood is passed out face up on your fire escape. Huh.

You’d heard of him. It was hard not to. The Bat had the most notoriety by far, but it was Red Hood that truly scared the criminals of Gotham. Batman might break your bones, cripple you even, but you’d leave with your life. No such guarantee existed if you crossed Red Hood. Hurt a few innocent people and you might end up with a bullet or three in your skull. Then there was that thing about heads in a duffel bag and Red Hood running crime for a solid year in Gotham, but he’s better now, apparently. None of this is deterring you from unlocking the window, pushing it up, and stepping out into the cold winter air. Not when you see the blood seeping through his body armor start to drip off the fire escape grate.

He needs help and he can’t stay unconscious in the middle of the city. If whoever injured him didn’t find him, the cops would. He’s just as wanted as the actual rogues of Gotham. You think it’s bullshit, which is why you’re trying to find a way to get him inside the safety of your apartment. He’s huge up close. This is going to be very, very difficult. Your mind flashes suddenly to one of your favorite childhood movies and how the princess pulled the dashing rogue around with her hair. You glance down at the street before heading to your bedroom.

You come back out with sheets bundled up in your arms. You’re not even sure if this harebrained idea will work, but you weave the sheets through the gaps in the grates and around Red Hood’s waist nonetheless. You secure a knot and go back into your apartment with the length of the sheets. Your legs are stronger than your arms, so you brace them against the wall and pull. You can feel his body slowly dragging towards you and you pause to check your progress. He’s slumped against the window now. Good. You loop your arms under his, place your feet back against the wall, and pull hard. Your hard work is rewarded with his body breaching the threshold of your window and landing directly on top of you. The air is knocked clean out of your lungs. He is heavy.

It’s a struggle but you manage to roll out from under him and immediately see the massive red stain contrasting against the white of your fluffy pajama pants. A small puddle of blood is emerging on your floor under his left thigh, and droplets of blood have splattered next to his torso. He’s not in great shape. It suddenly hits you what you’ve done. You dragged an injured vigilante, known for shooting first and asking questions later, into your apartment with no plan on what to do after the fact.

What the fuck did I do?

That’s all you can think as you look down at him. Then something snaps into place inside your rattled mind and you run to your bathroom to grab your first aid kit. You’d bought it and learned the basics after Wayne Enterprises ran televised infomercials about the importance of first aid a couple months back. You’re carefully balancing all the supplies in your arms as you head back out to the living room.

The empty living room. No vigilante in sight. Then your world spins. Everything clatters to the floor as you’re yanked backwards by your waist, pinned to something solid and unable to move.

“Who are you?” A growl sounds behind you, modulated to sound semi-mechanical.

Ah. There he is. You think you should be panicking, absolutely losing your shit even. But your brain is moving in slow motion.

“Someone trying to help you,” you breathe out.

“Doesn’t answer the question.”

The grip around your waist tightens. You want to laugh. As if you could’ve made a run for it in the first place. You tell him your name, and explain that you live alone. There’s no one else here but the two of you and you really do want to help.

“You were passed out on my fire escape. I couldn’t just leave you out there,” you explain cautiously.

The two of you stay like that for a minute longer. Then, a mechanical sigh sounds from behind you and the vice grip on your waist goes slack. You turn to him and see that he’s already halfway to your window.

“Hey! Wait! I can help!” you shout, scrambling after him.

“Don’t need it,” he snaps.

“You were bleeding out on my floor!” you exclaim.

You don’t know why you feel so strongly about this. Maybe because he seemed so…mortal. It’s easy to forget that these guys running around at night are people. They’re strong, tough, and capable, but they’re still human. The fact that he stumbles and has to catch himself on the window frame proves your point.

“Please. I promise I won’t take long. Please just let me help,” you beg.

He turns around and even through that unreadable helmet you can tell he’s sizing you up. You’re sure you must be a sight in your fuzzy white cat pajama pants, old Snoopy t-shirt, and fluffy white socks. Honestly, it’s a bit of a ridiculous tableau. Massive armed man in tactical gear opposite a woman in fluffy pajamas, both bloodstained. But either you seem harmless enough or he’s in exceptionally bad shape, because he just slumps against your wall and gives a barely noticeable nod of his head.

You go into autopilot the second you get his consent. A dining room chair is dragged to the center of your living room and Red Hood drops himself into it, the old wood creaking under the force. You go to assess the damage on his torso first. Light slashes litter his waist, none of them are deep enough for stitches. You grab the rubbing alcohol and cotton balls from the floor where you kneel before warning him that it might sting.

“I got slashed. Think that might’ve hurt a bit more,” he deadpans.

“Yeah, that’s fair.”

The torso slashes are light work. It takes all of five minutes to disinfect them and seal them shut with bandages. It’s his thigh that you’re a little more concerned about. There’s enough blood that it’s soaked his tactical pants around where you’re guessing the wound is. You can vaguely make out what appears to be cut fabric, so you’re assuming he was stabbed.

“How deep did the knife go?” you ask.

“Hm. ‘Bout two inches?” he offers.

“Why’d you take it out?” you ask incredulously. Anyone with half a brain knew not to take a knife out of a stab wound.

“No idea. Should’ve just gone runnin’ around the city with a knife wedged in my leg.”

The mask’s modulator does nothing to hide the teasing edge to his voice. Of everything you’d heard about Red Hood, you’d never heard he was such a smartass.

“You know how to do stitches?” he asks.

Great. So he saw the deer-in-headlights look you had while thinking about how to fix his stab wound.

“If you count mending clothing then, uh, sure,” you reply.

The white slits of the helmet stare hard at you before a warped chuckle comes from under it.

“Well, close enough.”

Oh, so he liked to gamble with his health then. Okay. Sure. Great. You could totally do this. Untrained, unlicensed, unsupervised you. You have to stop your hands from shaking as you thread the curved needle. You have to stop yourself from vomiting with anxiety as you push the needle through his skin. He hisses and you immediately feel bad. He’d handled the alcohol without flinching, but the stitches were a different story. You whisper sorry’s with every puncture of his skin you make. Soon enough, his leg is closed up and the whole thing is said and done.

“Okay, should be good to go,” you start, “Well, not good per se, but functional to go.”

A hum and a quick nod of his head are the only response you get before he’s back on his feet. He’s about to climb out your window for the second time tonight when you call out to him again. He turns around and you’d swear he almost seems exasperated.

“Take these with you. You’ll probably need them,” you say as you toss him a water bottle and a small carton of orange juice.

He snatches them easily from the air. But then he just stands there and stares at the drinks in his hands. You think you may have somehow offended him and go to apologize when he speaks.

“Thanks,” he says, mechanical voice catching on the word.

And then he’s gone. Out your window and off into the night. Once you shut and lock the window you feel exhaustion hit you like a freight train. All the adrenaline drains from you and it takes whatever energy you have left to collapse on to your bed and drift off to sleep.

You’ll never know it, but the Red Hood spends the last fifteen minutes of his patrol sipping his orange juice and dutifully watching your apartment window.

You’ll never know it, but Jason Todd lingers across the street to make sure you get home from the grocery store safely, and he scoffs as he sees you feed and pet a stray dog. It’s silly, he thinks.

Don’t you know that now you’ve shown it some kindness, it’ll just keep coming back?

#jason todd #jason todd x reader #jason todd x you #red hood x reader #red hood x you #remy writes 🖋️

510 notes · View notes

wildshona · 1 month ago

Text

Meeting MAGA

OK, so on Wednesday Chris, Richard and I met two MAGA consultants. They told us that they were dvising the transition team on Europe and we were their first stop – well, Richard and Chris were. Then they were going to Paris, Berlin and, of all places, Budapest.

Anyway we met them at Richard’s cos he has an impressive flat with loads of bookshelves and books in a number of languages about history, politics, foreign affairs and so on. He had prepared a buffet and a presentation which included a map of Europe with, very naughtily I thought, no country names but just the boundaries.

One of the Americans was quite a courtly gentleman with white hair, impeccably dressed, and an absolute caricature of a southern gentleman. His colleague was 25, brash and loud but pretty good looking if I’m honest.

I hadn’t really expected to be there but I, like the map, were a bit of a test.

“And who might this young lady be.” Asks the older guy taking my hand.

This is Shona, Richard replied, she is my aide and an expert on European affairs and especially the current situation on Ukraine. Overstating it I thought and I swear the young MAGA snorted. Now if those reading this post have not read back on my blog far enough you will think, “I thought she was just a time wasting sex maniac without a brain, you know a bimbo.” However, although my education was interrupted when I ran away from home my GCSEs were brilliant, I have been studying under Richard in international politics and history as well as well, sex, and I am in the process of applying to universities. And I am an occasional aide to Richard and I attend all the sessions at events that Chris organises that don’t contain classified information. So there!

Anyway we tuck into the food and the Americans tell us that the President (Trump) had given some clear indications that the UK has to decide whether it was going to be on the side of the EU or the US. Also that he believes that Putin would be amenable to peace and had no further territorial ambitions and would be willing to do a deal with Trump.

I know that foreign affairs are not covered on American TV much so just in case my Followers have missed this Trump has basically threatened the UK that there would be dire consequences for the UK if we got closer to the EU rather than doing a trade deal with the US favourable to the US. The Prime Minister has forcefully responded that allies don’t threaten allies and we would do what we wanted, thank you very much.

Anyway Richard and Chris covered that and the brash young guy, RJ, said that the UK would clearly have to do what the President wanted because the US is a great power. Things were going a bit downhill until Mr Courtly Gentleman basically told RJ to calm down. AS they seem to like initials I think I will call him CG for the purpose of this post.

Anyway in the conversation about Europe RJ, and this is where it started to take a slide, told us that Trump is great friends with Orban and Orban was obviously popular because he had been elected President of Europe. A frosty silence created mainly by the fact that we couldn’t believe what we had heard. Viktor Orban is one of the most reviled politicians in Europe, is widely considered to be a fascist, and is President of the Council of the European Union for six months because it was his turn and much of what he has been trying to do – like changing EU foreign policy – have been boycotted by other leaders. Come January the Presidency will move on to Poland which most certainly will not be cosying up to Putin.

Anyway Richard politely pointed all that out and RJ simply didn’t believe it. AS Orban is called a President he must have been elected, right?

Finally we got on to Ukraine which RJ insisted on calling the Ukraine which is itself a pro-Russian position. Anyway I gave a briefing on the current military position front by front – I do keep up, you know, casualty figures, the fate of the North Koreans and I talked a bit about the troubles Putin was now having in Armenia, Georgia and Kazakhstan.

Richard invited me to comment on the line from RJ and CG that Putin had no further territorial ambitions. I said that if Ukraine fell or became a satellite the next targets would be Moldova and Georgia.

RJ couldn’t help himself and said that the Baltics weren’t important and that Putin was hardly likely to invade the US. We had another one of those silent moments. I calmly pointed out that that Moldova is not a Baltic country and anyway if Putin did invade the Baltics we would all be at war wouldn’t we – unless of course the US failed to honour its NATO obligations in which case Europe would be on its own (again). CG quietly pointed out to RJ that Georgis was a country that bordered Russia. I had not been talking about the US state.

After that we had some brandies and talked about things that didn’t matter largely to lay cover over the fact that RJ knew fuck all about anything to do with Europe. I honestly couldn’t tell you what CG thought or knew.

Anyway all pretty depressing.

Chris, Richard and I had a few more drinks to get over it after they left. I expect they have both been briefing their European networks.

So that was that. If I’ve upset any of my US followers I’m sorry. I promise I’ll get back to being the bimbo you want me to be in future posts. If any of you actually agree with RJ please feel free to unfollow me. I try not to have Trump, Putin or Orban lovers on my list.

Next post back to normal.

19 notes · View notes

omorimodreverie · 1 year ago

Text

August Development Update

Overview

August started out similarly to the last couple months, with progress being on the slow side and contributions being made in base asset development. However, progress began ramping up towards the end of the month, and we’re now at a place where we’re making some decent progress towards a test build. We’re only just beginning, of course; and it’ll still take a lot of time before anything is ready for the playtesters. But still, progress is progress.

This month is an important milestone in that we finally started to implement the assets we have into the RPGMV engine. At this point in time, we now have the beginnings of a playable city in the works, and we hope to refine it into a state where we can give you some sneak peeks sometime soon. All I can say for now is that I’m personally very excited with how the city looks, even now at this primitive stage: I can’t wait for you all to see it.

Progress

As mentioned previously, the most noteworthy progress made in August was that our base assets are being implemented into RPGmaker. However, this in no way means that other areas of development weren’t touched upon: in fact, quite the opposite. Everything we’ve worked on during the past month includes, but is not limited to:

With a few exceptions, maps for the city that will be shown in chapter 3 has been implemented into RPGmaker

Basic map events have been put in place that allow map movement, door accessibility, functioning stairs and elevators, etc

A number of cutscenes, as well as NPCs, have been mostly implemented into the game and fleshed out

A number of additional pixel artwork for NPCs and map objects were completed and added into spritesheets

Organization for various songs and the music department in general has seen significant progress

Progress was made on the writing for cutscenes and various flavor text/NPC dialogue

The game files in general were reorganized, as well as optimized

What’s In Plan For The City

Going into development for chapter 3, a very important and rather difficult challenge was posed to us in the form of the chapter’s playable area, the real world city. Of the two areas we worked on so far, Fallen World was based off of a preexisting area in the base game, and therefore much easier to develop; and the Neural Network, while original, was still a part of dreamworld, allowing us to conceptualize much of it based on our major interpretations of headspace.

The city is different in that this is a place entirely separate from Sunny’s imagination or even Faraway Town. This means that we have virtually nothing from the base game to draw inspiration from, and have to build it from the ground up almost completely by ourselves. This is partially the reason why chapter 3 is taking so long to complete: from a development perspective, we’re having to blaze our own trails. For a team of voluntary, part-time, amateurs, this has proven to be somewhat of a hurdle.

Our main goal with the city was to make an area that felt ‘dynamic’: basically, for it to feel like a real city. Faraway Town in base OMORI is a tiny suburban community: to that end, the buildings are sparse and short, with identical houses lining the streets. Combined with a general lack of large-scale activity and mostly static NPCs, it gives off an atmosphere of relative sleepiness, an aura of quiet. We wanted our city to provide a sharp contrast to Faraway in this aspect: we wanted it to be rambunctious, packed, and bustling.

Creating a ‘Dynamic’ City

So what makes a city ‘dynamic’? During the course of the last few months, we’ve been able to come up with a map of the city that’s filled with tall buildings tightly nestled together, in the backdrop of a tightly urbanized network of uniformly gray streets and sidewalks. All this combines to create an impression of crowdedness: however, it still falls short of being ‘dynamic’. That’s because the map itself is one half of a whole, the other half being the map’s inhabitants, NPCs.

Even with the most packed and busy city of all time, it doesn’t exhibit any life until actual people are living in it. And this is our real challenge surrounding the creation of this city: to populate the map we have with NPCs that can successfully convey the impression of bustling, busy and lively city people. There’s a few methods we can use to achieve this, such as:

Power in numbers: simply have many, many NPCs in the city

Passage of time: as the time of day changes, have NPCs move from place to place, with different NPCs being present at different times and etc

Literal movement: have NPCs literally move around, such as walking through the streets, wander through a shop, etc

While all three methods are important, and they’ll all be used for the creation of chapter 3, the third and last method of allowing NPCs to literally move around is arguably the most important. This is because NPCs moving around with the player are the most visually distinct: a room where everyone but the player stands around doing nothing is static as soon as the player stops moving, but a room where an NPC goes around doing something always has something going on, looking much more lively.

Take a look at this shot of the cafe, for instance. The player is mostly standing still, but two NPCs (the brunette waitress and the blonde waiter) are constantly in action: cleaning tables, washing dishes, entering and exiting doors, etc. This, combined with the map of the cafe itself and the patron NPCs sitting on the chairs, is what creates a ‘dynamic’ atmosphere.

While we’re just getting started with the NPCs, we want to eventually finish the entire map out that radiates the feeling of being ‘dynamic’, as described above. We’ll be putting up periodic updates on how we’re doing on that front with the dev updates in the future, so please stay tuned.

End of Summer Break?

It’s September now, and everyone’s summer breaks have mostly come to a close. For our team, this year’s summer break period was characterized by a time of generally slow progress. Now that it’s over, things have indeed started to speed up: while early August still had little activity, things gradually picked up as the month progressed. The last week of the month marked the zenith of this growth, with considerable progress being made in all sectors.

Still, it would be rather naive to think that this fast progress will continue on for the rest of the semester. Midterms are still very much a thing, and right now is just a short period between summer break and exam period. Still, we want to use the opportunity we have right now as efficiently as possible.

September looks to be a promising month in terms of progress. We won’t take that for granted, though. We’ll see you next month, with hopefully lots of news. Thanks for reading this far, and thanks as always for your interest in Reverie!

#omori #omori mod #mod #omorimodreverie #reverie #omori reverie #devlog

54 notes · View notes

madjackbrock · 1 year ago

Note

Jack and Garg x Mortao and Hitomi. No humiliation or dominance, just obsessive, destructive lust from both parties.

Japan had withstood many, many giant monster attacks in the past, and always come back stronger than ever. This one might be the last, however…

Garg scratched his massive, hairy gut lazily as he stomped over and through the skyscrapers around Kyoto, finishing off those his footfalls missed with the sensual swaying of his impossibly wide ass. It had been minutes since he’d devoured a fleeing crowd, so he was already feeling hungry again. But snacking could wait; he had another MASSIVE hunger he needed to feed.

Fortunately, while it was a bit hard to use Google Maps when one was the size of a municipality, once you actually got it running, the aerial view of your destination was surprisingly helpful for a terrifying giant. It didn’t take long to spot the correct apartment building…which he took to mean that none of these other buildings, or their inhabitants, were still necessary.

Good. He could still snack on the way.

She didn’t know it yet, but Hitomi Tanaka was the object of his search; as she didn’t know this, she was morally correct in panicking along with the rest of the city. That fat giant was heading right towards her apartment, and she could swear he was looking into her window! She had enough pervs to deal with at normal scale; she didn’t need one that could rip apart the city to find her!

Granted, when the giant reaches below his oozing gut and started to pump his shaft, itself almost as wide as her building…she did have to give a nod of approval.

Impressed as she was, she still screamed when he easily ripped the top several floors off of her building, leering in at her as she cowered in her bedroom. His free hand reached in for her, some sort of bottle pinched between its fingertips. She screamed again, but the bottle forced its way between her lips and…

Oh. Oh, fuck. This…felt…

Good!

She moaned and writhed as her body grew and fattened, finally becoming a match for her world-famous tits before expanding far, far beyond. The remains of her building collapsed under her gigantic ass as she continued to grow, finally becoming a match for the masculine mountain in front of her.

“I’m…I’m fat! I’m…so…huge!”

Garg licked his lips in appreciation. “And we’re only gonna get bigger and fatter,” he purred. “You like it?”

She gave another long, lewd glance at his erect shaft, before nodding. “I like it a lot, my big sexy man…”

At her new scale, it was actually possible to ignore the second obese giant running (for a certain value of “running”) up to them until he was already upon them, panting and trying to remain calm. “Garg! Garg, we-“

Garg rolled his eyes at Jack. “Calm down! It worked, and she’s into it!”

Jack nodded quickly, temporarily distracted by ALL of Hitomi, before an ominous rumble broke his trance.

“Yeah, well, I found Mortao, and did the same thing! Except she’s REALLY into it…and it REALLY worked!”

Before Garg could ask what that meant, the three gargantuan gluttons were cast into shadow.

An unfathomably huge Mortao Maotor, having shed her lithe frame for an even fatter physique than the three smaller giants at her feet, loomed over them. Her famously photogenic feet, formerly large and slender, were still large…but now practically flattened with fat, merging into unstoppable cankles as she placed her hands on her obscenely wide hips and laughed at their cowering.

“Oh, good! More toys! Pucker up! You’re all gonna kiss and lick the biggest set of booty soles in the world!”

#giant male #male giant #asian giantess #fat giantess #huge woman #gargus

18 notes · View notes

oddygaul · 3 months ago

Text

Astro Bot

now that’s fuckin video games.

I was kinda skeptical when I saw how effusive the praise was for this; look, I liked Astro’s Playroom too, but the comparisons to Mario Odyssey seemed like a bit much. Nah though, Team Asobi fuckin cooked on this one, and the steps forward they took from Playroom really impressed me.

youtube

Dante from the Devil May Cry™ series shaking his ass

My biggest issue with Astro’s Playroom, charming experience though it was, is that Astro’s moveset just doesn’t have the sauce. I’m a big gamefeel guy across all genres – if a character isn’t fun to move around as, what are we even doing? – but platformers in particular live or die by how good it feels to run around as your little guy. Now, well-done animations with plenty of snap and bounce go a long way, but I think what really makes movement feel great is a sense of momentum, and abilities that can be used expressively to keep that momentum going.

By genre definition, your time in a platformer is mostly spent yeeting yourself around a map at high speeds. For this to feel frenetic and engaging, rather than touchy and uncontrollable, it helps if your character picks up speed and gains momentum in an understandable, consistent manner. On top of that, the player must be given tools to make them feel like they’re in control of maintaining that speed. By including moves that can be chained together and deployed as needed, the player is given opportunities for skill expression: they’re not going fast because that’s just how the game is, they’re going fast because they’ve used the right tool for the situation, and have displayed mastery over the mechanics of the game.

Now, for me personally, the more options the better – half of Mario’s jumps in Odyssey are functionally similar, but the sheer number of tricks up your sleeve allows for a lot of expression. I stan for this even when it’s fully unnecessary: the defining factor that led to my purchase of NieR: Automata was seeing that 2B has a dash, an air dash, a double jump, a glide, AND a long jump, lmao. Still, you can get away without including such a complicated moveset, as long as the character has a satisfying way to build momentum and navigate their surroundings.

And Astro, unfortunately, simply doesn’t have many movement options. He can run, and although he picks up a little speed while doing so, it’s barely noticeable. His jump doesn’t affect your speed. His hover move, despite being an exceedingly clever evolution of the classic double jump / glide, also doesn’t change your momentum. And that’s… all you have available, at least as far as movement is concerned. When there’s obstacles and challenges, the little guy is pretty fun to play as, but whenever I got to a big, open area in Astro’s Playroom, where I just needed to get from point A to point B, it felt like something was missing.

Astro Bot, though, has largely solved that problem, and the way it’s done so was pretty surprising.

So, first off, they added power-ups in this one, and most of them are movement-based. Even having one extra move in a level goes a long way towards allowing player expression, whether it’s rocketing yourself forward with a dog-jetpack or shrinking and un-shrinking yourself repeatedly like a manic Ant-Man. These help!

The cool thing, though, is that their main approach to improving gamefeel is to make the world itself inherently satisfying to move through. It’s commonly held that no one has used the Dualsense better than Team Asobi – Astro’s Playroom has been the high mark since launch, with different tactile feedback for things as minor as running across different surfaces like sand, metal or glass – and Astro Bot elevates that usage from a neat trick to a mission statement. The satisfying thunk-thunk-thunk as your metal-encased form rolls down a spiked ramp, the rush as you send a pile of gems or rocks flying through the air, even the satisfying plink as you collect a coin… these moments all feel good in a bespoke way.

youtube

And the way these experiences are deployed is what really impressed me. Rather than adding moves to speed up your traversal through a level and calling it a day, they simply pack the level with things to play with, so that there’s always something entertaining to do on the way from A to B. Instead of chaining Mario-style long jumps together to zoom through a big space, I’m instead interacting with an animal to see what cute animation they added, or spinning through a big pile of leaves and watching them flutter to the ground, or knocking a bunch of acorns off a tree. It’s a sense of wonder that brings me back to first playing the Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando demo in a Target, and how amazed I was that you could break the streetlights – fuck the mission, I went around smashing up the level for ten minutes, in awe of the physics. This design philosophy, it seems, is about adding innate satisfaction to the experience: fun isn’t just about achieving the goals of the level, it’s about play, and remembering that games can be toys.

youtube

I think it’s very funny that Astro punches his enemies, but has a big kick animation solely reserved for punting friendly bots

~ misc. gameplay & design thoughts ~

-I love that ice in Astro Bot makes your movement faster and more fun, instead of slippery and annoying -The peak of the game for me was the timestop ability, particularly in the casino level. Seriously, that enemy that throws a bunch of cards at you, requiring you to freeze time and platform across his cards to get close enough to hit him? Chef’s fucking kiss -They continue to find novel uses for the stopwatch, too. The other level with this power-up contains a pitch-dark room, lit only by occasional flashes of lightning… which you can extend and use by stopping the clock at the right time. Clever as hell. -The level fly-ins* remind me of some old Ratchet & Clank design wisdom: Insomniac always tried to start a level with a vista, so the player would have a sense of place from the moment they landed on a new planet. Astro Bot’s maps are quite different than Ratchet’s – its levels don’t curve around the same way, and so are spread thinner – but the level intros accomplish the same goal.

*the casino and Balloon Breeze, in particular

Astro Bot’s music bangs, too, with a nice blend of tight instrumentals and endearingly cheesy vocal tracks. My favs were the spooky cave theme and the casino level (link here). The music is utilized dynamically, too, with plenty of contextual remixes and track changes based on the progression of a given level.

Okay, so about ‘Muteki Funk’, though:

youtube

Bah gawd, that’s Machinehead Tetsujin’s music!

youtube

…seriously though, like, note-for-note. I reached out to Kenny Young, the composer, but he didn’t compose that particular track, and James Shimoji didn’t respond. I have to assume that horn line is a loop / sample from some soundpack they both used, but still, it FULLY distracted me when it first played. I mean, the power-up you get in that level coats your body in chrome, so… maybe Kemmei Adachi is a REDLINE fan…?

—

The role of branding in the game continues to be a mixed bag. I think Astro Bot’s pivot to game characters makes the references feel more loving, compared to the weaponized corporate nostalgia of Playroom; rescuing robot PaRappa and seeing him lay down a beat at the Crash Site feels much more like of a celebration of gaming than beating a level and receiving the Sony™ PlayStation® 2 Network Adapter. The handful of levels that directly ape Sony franchises succeed due to a similar level of care – the visual set dressing is certainly fun, but it’s the gameplay references that really sell the bit, such as shooting off robots’ canister weakpoints in the Horizon level, or the God of War level’s AAA Loadscreen-hiding Shimmy Crack.

Still, there’s a part of me that wishes Astro Bot spent more time building up its own aesthetic. Sure, technically all the enemies and NPCs are robots with a fairly consistent design language, but the level design is all over the place, and the game world doesn’t feel that cohesive outside of the PlayStation bits. Look, it’s not like I need deep lore for why Astro and the PS5 are cruising through the galaxy, but if you’re going to make the Big Bad some dumb ass alien that looks like he stepped right out of a fake mobile game ad, I’m gonna need at least a sliver of context to buy in to the IP in its own right.

Everything in Astro Bot is a machine, so how do you know this tree is dead? It’s unplugged, of course

;-;

—

Playing through Astro Bot also made me ruminate a bit on the evolving design standards of collectibles in platform games. Now, of course, collectibles in games have intrinsic value: your lizard brain loves to grab shiny coins and hear a ding. But they need to have extrinsic value to motivate the player as well, and methods for this have changed over time.

Back in the NES / SNES days, coins and rings and the like helped get you extra lives – and since the levels were tough as nails, you wanted to grab everything you could just to increase your chances of survival.

In the early 3D era (around N64 to PS2), the collectibles became a requirement for progression: you might beat the level, sure, but if you didn’t grab enough orbs along the way, you’re not gonna be able to unlock the next area. Typically, these systems involved multiple interlocking tiers of collectibles – most often one big, rarer class of item that grants access to new levels or hub worlds, and a more common, easy-to-find currency with multiple applications, such as unlocking new moves, paying off an NPC, or buying rarer items from a shop – but some games would have dozens of different doodads for you to grab. Some particularly overloaded titles ended up feeling like you were filling out a checklist, leading to the pejorative term ‘collectathon’.

Despite that negative connotation, this style was still enjoyable when done well – each unlockable macguffin represented a discrete task or challenge you needed to accomplish, and devs expanded on the intrinsic rewards by adding flashy, unique character animations for such items.

Modern platformers tend to take a more laid-back approach. There’s still usually a degree of progression gating – Astro needs a certain number of bots to unlock the next satellite, Mario needs enough moons to upgrade his ship – but the requirements are so lenient as to be fairly meaningless*. And the coins, instead of being mandatory, are only there to unlock goofy little extras, like outfits or decorations for your base. Astro Bot really brings the intrinsic rewards to their pinnacle, too, since its collectibles aren’t a uniform item, but a cool, varied cosmetic in and of themselves.

*Maybe I feel this way because I’m older, and it’s still a legitimate obstacle for a younger player. I just don’t feel like there’s any skill check as brutal as, say, having to do fucked-up minigames in Spyro 2 to get enough orbs for the next hub world

I dunno, I think it’s kind of interesting to be able to see the epochs laid out this way. Video games are getting old! We have third-wave platformers now!

youtube

#will's media thoughts / virtual brain repository #long post #games #astro bot

4 notes · View notes

agirlandherquill · 6 months ago

Text

the calendar project - day 1

day 1 has arrived, this is the start of something new and i'm very excited to share it with you all,

daily page count: 4 (i got invested, some may say carried away, but it was too good to stop till i wrote that final line)

time spent: 58 mins

so without further ado, here it is! the very first pages of the calendar project, and for simplicity's sake i'll stick them under the cut,

To some, Cindere was nothing more than a far-away place, a speck upon a map, permanently out of reach from the rest of the world. To her, Cindere was a living, breathing thing. To her, it was home. To her, it was death and everything else in-between. Shrouded by an eternal winter, the Kingdom resided in the midst of a mountainous valley, shielded by stone walls and mountains with snow-tipped peaks that stabbed at the heavens - Cindere was the jewel countries could only dream of, and nothing could compare. Splendour seeped out of every nook and cranny, it was unavoidable, it was everywhere.

The trouble with splendour is that a gilded cloak only hides so much, raises too many questions, and frustratingly, some more than others sought to make her thoughts a misery at every possible inconvenience.

Is Cindere an empire built upon feigned competence and bittersweet smiles, or is a prison of our own creation?

Time and time again the answer eluded her. If I could get away from all the fake smiles I just might find it, but until such a miracle comes my way I’m stuck here, the same as all of them. Appearance, worth, standing all aside, when it came down to it everyone was all equal in circumstance. Equal in that every single citizen was trapped.

Trapped of their own volition. Trapped because of each other. But above all, trapped because of power.

Power. The word set off an itch in her mind she could never hope to scratch. It was a whisper, a curse, a futile thing. Those who had it did whatever it took to keep it. Those without were just as callous, just as capable of anything, and almost, if not more dangerous. Of that fact she lacked in proof, but she more than made up for it with observation. Of those, she had plenty.

Her observations were silent, powerful secrets tucked away in the crevices of her mind, a library of her own making, one never to be shared.

Some words are safer to never utter aloud, that’s what this world has taught me, and I follow along. I play my hand, I abide by the unspoken rules of society and I survive.

That in itself was an impressive feat. Social suicide was only a false step away, death was a hairsbreadth from sight outside of the castle walls, allegiances were wielded like blades, some painfully sharp. And for her, perhaps the one person in the Kingdom without, it meant survival, and life itself, was tricky. But she had learned, she had adapted, and still, she survived.

“People, people, gather round! It is a joy to see you all this glorious night!” The loudest voice she had ever known drew her from her daydreaming. She angled herself away from her carefully chosen spot, a window that isolated her from the rest of the crowd, and cast her sights upon a stage that had been erected at the far end of the room. Upon it, a man waved a tankard, somehow managing not to spill its contents everywhere. One of the strange talents of being King I suppose, just like his speeches. One of which was about to commence.

There were very few things in the world that she disliked, but a speech was one of them. So, while the most important person in Cindere began to talk, she allowed her attention to drift once again.

Her eyes roved over the crowd of courtiers. Lady Greer, I don’t recall a bird’s nest in one’s hair being in fashion, nor having real birds either. Lord Danvers - Will he stop staring at me? To fight a scowl she turned her face away, careful as ever, not to be noticeable. She had turned the act of observation into an art form.

Observation made her an artist, an excellent one.

She carried on her sweep of the room, only to lock eyes with someone other than Lord Danvers. She had been caught staring. And worse, her stare was returned. She was thankful for the lack of masks that night, it meant she recognised everyone in attendance, all save for him, her onlooker. Did he catch me, or was he staring first?

The man was a stranger.

We hardly ever get newcomers at the castle, or any court event, so the presence of this man is intriguing, no… It’s odd.

Odd, because like her, he did not appear to fit in.

Ironic, because from the state of his clothes he was one of them, but he wore the wrong thing.

Peculiar, because he could fit in, even dressed like that, but he appeared to choose not to.

All because of one thing that set him apart from the crowd, one thing that all the other guests had abandoned at the castle doors.

A coat.

The long garment reached past his knees, woven of a sturdy, expensive navy fabric - the craftsmanship drew her in, but it was another detail that held her focus. Something jutted from just above his hip, disturbing the form of his coat. No, surely not. The longer she paid attention to it the more obvious it came to be. He’s carrying a sword.

The stranger knew that she knew, but made no move to conceal it. She directed her observation upward, paying attention to his face - unlike the rest of the room he wore no smile, nor a powdered mask, his complexion was his own, where others had been powdered like the snow his skin held a glow to it that the light of the chandelier made golden. His hair was similar to that of straw, and equally unruly, strands fell from a central parting in unequal lengths, the longest only just brushed the edges of his jawline. During her observation his eyes hadn’t flinched, not once. They continued watching her. Even from a distance of what she judged to be around twenty paces she could make out the colour of his eyes, they were as green as the blades of grass that bloomed in spring and defied the lingering clutches of winter.

And the harsh green was fixed solely upon her.

The intensity of his gaze tempted her to shy away, but she stood her ground, she held his stare for longer. At least someone here might be worth talking to.

She had hardly made a motion to step away from the window when the stranger was already moving, as ignorant to the King’s words as she was, and even more ignorant of the quiet disapproving sighs that followed him as he moved through the crowd.

She decided to be wary of the people closest to her and finally drew her eyes away, once more looking out of the window and into the night sky that glimmered with stars. Scarcely a heartbeat later, the stranger had reached her, she knew it only from the breeze his movement carried. There was a long, quiet moment before he decided to speak.

“And who might you be?” Every word was pronounced with purpose, this was not a man who toyed with words, he was straight to the point, abrupt, and it made him all the more interesting.

“Someone not in the habit of giving her name to strangers.”

“Very wise.” She did not see it but she could hear something resembling a smile in his voice. “Dare I ask why you haven’t signalled a guard?” Her eyes lowered, turning her head just enough to catch a glimpse of his hilt peeking out from beneath his coat. It was a wise question, she could have done so easily, there were thirty men stationed along the outer walls, the closest only ten paces away. She could have alerted them, but she hadn’t.

“Why should I? You’re hardly going to point it at me.” She met his eyes, they glinted with amusement. “Aren’t I?”

She swallowed back a scoff. “You’re not here for me, that much is clear, so why come over here?”

“You don’t know who I am?” His brows raised. She shrugged almost imperceptibly. “I don’t need to, it’s none of my business.”

“And yet you’ve been staring at me.” His bluntness was refreshing, if only a little irritating. It was her turn to raise a brow. “For all I know you were the one watching me to begin with.”

“Before I say something that may prompt you to summon a guard, what’s so interesting about this window?”

“Wise move.” She murmured, reaching to tap the window-frame. She nearly smiled, it stunned her. It had been a very long time since she had had a reason to smile while surrounded by the court. “The window?” In the reflection of the glass she saw him nod. His gaze was keen, he was interested in what she had to say.

“It’s what’s beyond it. The vastness. More than the sky. A single breath is nothing in comparison, up there, in the dark, there’s nothing. Nothing significant. Nothing that matters. It is everything and nothing all at once. It has no worries, no burdens, no hopes or dreams - nothing at all like humanity.”

She expected ridicule when she looked at his reflection in the window, but what she found instead was a sad smile.

“For someone so reserved, you give away powerful words as though they’re nothing.”

“How so?”

“I’ve never heard someone make the night sky sound lonely.” He reached out and pressed his palm to the window. “Can’t you see them, those lights in the dark? So far away and yet still so close? They’re all over. Those lights are purpose, direction, company, whatever you need them to be.” He seemed drawn in by the night too, pausing only to look at her, “The night isn’t lonely, not at all. You need only to look at a star to see it.”

#writeblr #the-calendar-project

5 notes · View notes

summerwritesfics · 7 months ago

Text

🕸️Hold Me Like You Held Onto Life, Chapter 2 - Wandering Through Broken Shadows

Pairing: Hanzo Hasashi/Kuai Liang Length: 9403 Words Rating: Explicit 🔞 Warnings: Vampire/Werewolf AU, Gang AU, Vampire!Kuai Liang, Werewolf!Hanzo Hasashi, Vampire!Quan Chi, Mention of Murder, Mention of Corpses, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of a corpse being kept in a freezer, Quan Chi is a creepy bastard

Hold Me Like You Held Onto Life Masterlist

Notes: Last thing I’m posting this weekend and then hopefully next weekend I’ll get out some more of my backlog. Honestly I’ve actually had this half edited for like a month or two, so all I needed to do was to do the final read through and post. I’m still having some problems from yesterday so I do apologise if there are some errors again. (if you read the authors notes yesterday on Nightingale; the swelling on my face went down, only for the other side of my face to swell up today. So… That’s fuckin’ fantastic innit? Good news is my toothache is gone so I have that at least I guess lol.) In this chapters, Hanzo’s trying to make an alliance with Kano & Kuai Liang’s out and about visiting old friends :) Chapter title is from “Blood On My Hands” by Xandria

The month had gone by so quickly that Hanzo had barely a moment to compute it.

The full moon came in a matter of weeks, he needed to get his plans in order by then. The worrying thing was that The Lin Kuei had been eerily quiet. It had been easy to expand their territory, and for some reason, The Lin Kuei had barely reacted. It was alarming to say the least. Like they were planning something, willingly sacrificing turf for some reason.

Hanzo needed to figure out what the fuck was going on.

“Katashi?” He questioned, looking over to the man who straightened upon being addressed. “What activity have you noticed so far?”

“Not a lot,” Katashi shrugged, glancing across the map on Hanzo’s table. “There have been Lin Kuei patrols but they’ve been few and far between.” He pointed towards the building they knew The Lin Kuei used as a headquarters. “From what we can tell, they’ve put most of their efforts into protecting their base.”

“But why?” Hanzo pondered aloud, leaning over the table and staring at the representation of the building in question. “What are they doing?”

“I assume this is not normal for a leadership switch?” Katashi questioned. This was his first time experiencing a change like this, so Hanzo supposed it was natural he wouldn’t know the details.

“No. Definitely not.” Usually a switch in leadership came with a push for new territory, as a warning to other gangs that the new boss was serious. But Bi-Han hadn’t done that. The one person Hanzo would have definitely thought would be eager to show off his superiority. “Has there been no whispers? No rumours of what is going on?”

“A couple of men relayed overhearing some patrol claiming Bi-Han was too distracted lately, but they apparently did not elaborate on just what was distracting him.” Katashi rubbed the back of his head. “They seemed pretty annoyed by it, so I don’t think the clan are that impressed by him right now.”

Hanzo huffed, eyes still sweeping the map. What on earth could be so important to him that he’s willing to forfeit some of his turf for it? It just did not make sense. Especially on something that could risk the loyalty of his men. Maybe he was trying to make a deal with someone? But who? And how could he have kept it so quiet?

Then… If it wasn’t someone from the outside, maybe it was an internal issue instead?

There was no way in hell Sektor would be happy that his place as Grandmaster, once a sure bet, was ripped from him upon his father’s death. Maybe Bi-Han was facing a mutiny and infighting. If he was, that would actually work out well for Hanzo. The Lin Kuei destroying itself from the inside? He couldn’t ask for anything better.

He still suspected it was not that easy, however.

“Gather our spies, have them keep a close eye on the Lin Kuei’s headquarters,” he ordered, pointing at the map to emphasise the point. “I want them to watch out for anything that could potentially explain the strange happenings right now. No matter how small, if something seems unusual, I want to know about it.”

“Right.” Katashi placed his fist on his heart before bowing. “I will instruct them to report everything they see.”

Hanzo watched Katashi turn and leave the room. Now alone, Hanzo could sit and consider this more. It was driving him up the wall. Bi-Han’s actions didn’t make sense unless he was planning something big. At times like this, Hanzo wished to the God’s that Harumi was still with him. She would no doubt take one look at the situation and get the answer straight away.

She always was able to read people and situations with ease.

A knock on the door disrupted his longing, and he looked up in time for Junpei to walk into the room.

“Please tell me you have good news.” Hanzo pushed himself away from the table, feeling a little more relaxed when he saw Junpei smile. So, it likely was good news then.

“Kano has agreed to a meeting,” Junpei announced, handing Hanzo an envelope. Hanzo eagerly took it to read. “He actually seems most interested in it, despite how long it’s taken for him to reply.”

Hanzo glanced over the letter. It wasn’t too detailed, just a simple request for Hanzo to stop by the club at his earliest convenience. Hanzo couldn’t help but smile though. This was good news. Regardless of whatever was going on with The Lin Kuei, whatever Bi-Han was currently busy doing, Hanzo had the chance to create an alliance in the fight to come.

“This is excellent news, Junpei.” He folded up the letter, placing it in his pocket. He figured he may as well head over there right away. After all, the letter asked him to come as soon as possible, and Hanzo didn’t really see what more he could accomplish sitting obsessing over the map in his office. “I might head over there now. The sooner we can get things in place, the better.”

“Indeed.” Junpei bowed to him, watching as Hanzo walked over to grab his jacket. “Do you require an escort?”

“No, I think I’ll be fine,” he assured, slipping his jacket on. He reached into his pocket, making sure his phone and his bike keys were in there. “I will send you a text message once I’m there, and another once I’m done.” He approached Junpei and put a hand on his shoulder. “If I do not report back to you in… Hm. Let’s say 5 hours, assume control of the Shirai Ryu and seek me out.”

“Will do, boss.”

Hanzo nodded, patting Junpei’s shoulder a couple of times, before he turned away to head towards the door. Maybe he was being a bit optimistic going in without protection, but there was method in his madness. He’d found in the past that going alone added a strange air of trust into the situation. Hanzo showing he trusted the other group to make the right choice, that he did not see them as a threat. Strangely, it tended to work. It only failed once, with the Red Dragon, but he’d been a little too optimistic on that one given the group's history.

But that shared tension with the Red Dragon could be what Hanzo would need to bridge the gap with Kano.

He had a feeling things were going to finally go his way.

He supposed the good thing about being constantly cold was that being out in bad weather didn’t really affect him anymore.

Kuai sighed, noting that the action no longer came with a misty cloud. His breath was as cold as the rest of him. Vampirism was a lot to get used to. There were so many rules he had to be mindful of now, things his body used to be able to do but now couldn’t. And then the reverse, strange new powers he would have never had when he was still human.

He had slowly come to terms with his new condition over the month. He’d been through just about every emotion he could. Sadness, anger, gratefulness, resentful, scared, happy. It had been an endless cycle for a while. Some days he’d be so happy, he got a second chance of life and he was going to make the most of it. Other days he just felt so angry, unable to comprehend why his brother would curse him to such a miserable existence.

Time healed all wounds he supposed, and while he definitely still needed time to really settle, he had at least gotten over most of the bitterness and grief.

The fear still lingered however.

Granted, most of that looming feeling was squarely the result of Quan Chi. Kuai’s sire had not backed down from trying to get him alone. So far, he’d managed to avoid it, but he was running out of excuses, and it was only a matter of time until Quan Chi got what he wanted.

He needed to get some insight on the man and what his plans could be, and he could only hope some old friends he knew would be able to help him with that.

He reached the old apartment building, hand going to ring that familiar number before he paused. It had been 5 years since he was last here, it hadn’t even occurred to him that the people who lived here might have moved on. He swallowed, before hitting the button. Even if it was someone else, it wouldn’t hurt to check.

Seconds later, a very familiar voice came through the speaker and stated “look if this is a sales pitch, I ain’t interested.”

“Johnny, it’s me.” The statement was met with silence, and then a rustling and what sounded like a door opening. “Hello?” Kuai asked, receiving no reply.

He was about to ring again when the apartment’s door forcefully swung open. Johnny appeared from behind it, staring at Kuai with wide eyes and mouth agape. Kuai let out a short relieved breath.

“Hi,” Kuai softly greeted, trying to resist the urge to laugh too much at Johnny’s expression. After all, it must have been a shock to have a deceased friend show up on your doorstep after 5 years.

“Holy shit. It really is you,” Johnny whispered in disbelief. He blinked and looked Kuai up and down. “Jesus, you look like complete shit.”

“Really? I’ve been dead for 5 years and that’s the first thing you want to say to me?” The absolute gall of this man.

The pair stared at each other for a very long moment, before both dissolving into a fit of giggles. Johnny practically pounced at him, dragging Kuai Liang into the strongest hug he’d ever experienced in his life. Not even Bi-Han or Tomas hugged him this tightly after he’d been brought back.

“Fuck man, this is…” Johnny finally pulled back, but his hands remained on Kuai’s shoulders. “How the hell is this possible?”

“It’s… a very long story, my friend.” Well, sort of he supposed. From his point of view it was actually a short one, he died and was brought back to life. It was what everyone else was doing that took up the time.

“Well, good job I just got extra coffee then isn’t it?” Johnny pat Kuai on the back, before standing aside to let him in.

Kuai followed him up the stairs and then into Johnny’s apartment. It looked almost exactly how he remembered it, although there seemed to be some things missing from last time. Specifically, all of Johnny’s partner’s things seemed to be gone. That didn’t exactly give him confidence they were still together.

“So, uh, what exactly are you now?” Johnny asked as he went over to his kitchen area. He pulled his coffee machine out, and went to open a cupboard. “I mean, if that isn’t a rude question?”

“I’m a vampire,” Kuai admitted, walking forward and watching Johnny grunt in frustration when he couldn’t find his coffee.

“That explains why you’re here so late,” Johnny joked, before he made a triumphant sound and pulled the coffee from his cupboard. Now he could begin making the coffee, he did turn his attention more to Kuai Liang. “So. I assume your big brother has something to do with this?”

“He made a deal with a vampire, uh, my sire I guess.” God calling Quan Chi that felt so wrong. Like poison in his mouth. “It was about a month ago. Sorry it’s taken so long for me to come see you.”

“Damn, no don’t be sorry. I’m glad you’re here now, we never really got to say a proper goodbye to you ‘cause of what happened.” Johnny didn’t elaborate initially, concentrating on getting the coffee started. Once the machine was on, he fully turned to Kuai Liang and leant against the counter, in that moment realising that Kuai didn’t know what he was referring to. “Not long after you died, your body was stolen from the morgue. It was everywhere on the news man. Police couldn’t figure out what happened to you. It was bad. We decided to have a wake rather than a funeral until your body was recovered.”

“Well…” Kuai bit his lip, recalling what he’d been told of the last 5 years from Cyrax. “That at least explains how I ended up in Bi-Han’s freezer.”

Johnny looked at him, mouth once more agape. “Wait… Are you seriously telling me your bodies been in your brother’s freezer for 5 fuckin’ years?”

“Fucked up, isn’t it?” He said with a small smile, and Johnny laughed in response.

“That is an understatement.” The coffee machine finished and Johnny scrambled for a couple of cups. He poured the coffee before passing one to Kuai. “But, for as much as I question why the fuck your brother would do that, I am happy to see you again man.”

“Thank you. I’m glad to see you too.” Kuai took a sip of his drink. The drink took him back to long nights of the duo playing video games, deciding responsibility was for losers and fuck their respective jobs, staying up all night to try and complete the game. Memories of him stumbling back to Bi-Han’s apartment and passing out on the couch, waking up hours later to find a very disappointed big brother staring over him. Although the disappointment stemmed more from the fact he was out late doing something relatively lame and uncool, rather than being a normal young adult, going out and getting drunk off his ass.

Good times.

“How have you been, anyway?” Kuai finally decided to ask. “I feel bad this conversation has mostly been about me.”

“Well, I mean I ain’t the one who’s been resurrected from the dead.” Johnny gave him the look. It was a look he used to give Kuai whenever he started to put someone else above him when he was the one who needed support. Sweet as it was, Kuai still felt that in this situation, it should be a two way street.

“Maybe, but I mean, it’s been 5 years, and it’d be nice to know how you’re doing.”

Johnny gave a heavy sigh, “well, y’know how it is. Stuff’s been up and down. I’ve been focusing on my work a lot.” He glanced around the apartment. “You… Might have noticed Sonya’s stuff is gone.”

“I did.” Kuai shifted uncomfortably, and looked around the place as well. It was also a little more messy than it would have been normally. Not awful, by any means, but there was no way in hell she’d have let him leave his coat on the floor or keep the collection of beer cans on the coffee table.

“We split up about 3 years ago.” When Kuai turned back to Johnny he was rubbing the back of his head. “It just wasn’t working I suppose. I was too immature, and she was more concerned for her career. We were arguing a lot. I guess things ended as amicably as they could given those circumstances.”

“I’m sorry Johnny.” He’d been there when the pair got together, and had managed to watch them fall in love. It sucked that things had to end that way.

“Nah, like I said. I guess we were both at fault. All I can do is do better for the next woman.”

“That’s… a very mature way of looking at it.” Kuai couldn’t help the cheeky smirk on his face as he said “are you sure you’re the real Johnny?”

Johnny scoffed loudly, “no, I’ve just done a lot of growing up in the last 5 years, thank you very much.”

It seemed Kuai Liang had missed a lot. He really wanted to sit and learn every little detail of the last 5 years, but he also remembered he had come here for a reason. One that unfortunately had involved Sonya.

“I’ll be honest. I was hoping Sonya might be here too.” He swallowed, hoping what he was about to say wouldn’t make it seem like he’d come just to use his friends. “I had a favour to ask of her.”

“What kinda favour?” Johnny raised an eyebrow.

“She worked with the supernatural division of special forces, right?”

“As far as I know, she still does. Why?”

“I might be being paranoid but…” Kuai brushed his hair back, worrying his lip between his teeth. “I have this bad feeling about my so-called sire, and I was hoping maybe she might be able to dig for information about him.”

“You said this guy made some sorta deal with Bi-Han?” Johnny asked, his face screwing up in contemplation. Like he wanted to understand.

“Yes. In exchange for bringing me to life, he basically has The Lin Kuei at his beck and call.”

Johnny grimaced, “yikes. That sounds like a fucking disaster waiting to happen.”

“Exactly.” Kuai reached up to rub his bicep. “And I don’t know, he seems to be desperate to get me alone with him.”

“Creepy,” Johnny muttered and Kuai chuckled under his breath.

“You have no idea.” And Johnny really didn’t. Kuai really didn’t know how to explain the way Quan Chi looked at him and the dread whenever he was in the room. “I don’t suppose you still have Sonya’s contact details.”

“No, sorry man.” Johnny tilted his head back and forth a little like he was thinking of something. “I do have a friend who might know where she is, he works with her.” Kuai straightened up in hope, but Johnny looked a little unsure about something. “Only problem is I think he’s currently undercover.”

Kuai hissed. That greatly complicated things, but he really needed to find Sonya.

“If he’s my best chance at tracking Sonya down, I am willing to see if I can find him.”

“Well his name’s Kenshi Takahashi,” Johnny informed him, fingers tapping his mug. “As far as I know, he’s currently infiltrating the Black Dragon.”

Kuai frowned. The Black Dragon were a neutral party in the city's gang wars. Or at least, they used to be. Bi-Han hadn’t mentioned any new alliances since his death. It wasn’t ideal for him to trespass on their turf, but it also wouldn’t be seen as some declaration of war. Out of anywhere this Kenshi guy could be undercover in, Black Dragon territory was probably the best for him.

“Thanks Johnny,” Kuai softly replied with a smile.

“No worries man, you should know by now I’ve always got your back.” Johnny reached forward to pat Kuai’s shoulder. He was thankful that after all this time, Johnny was still the same guy he had always been.

“So,” Kuai said in a long, drawn out way. Now that was out of the way, he could completely focus on reconnecting with his friend. “What films have you worked on lately?”

“Jeeze, you sure you wanna start me going on that?” Johnny chuckled. “I figured you’d want to get going to find Kenshi.”

“Ah, it’s only 9, the night’s still young.” He sighed. “Not like I have to worry about staying up all night anymore.”

“Suppose that’s true.” Johnny wrapped his arm around Kuai’s shoulders. “Alright then, let me tell you all about the mess that was the production of Ninja Mime 3.”

“Gonna be honest, when I said get here ASAP, I didn’t expect you to be here quite this quickly,” Kano greeted as he let Hanzo through into his office. “Not that it’s a bad thing, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Hanzo returned with a nod. He could still hear the thumping music from the club, even up here in Kano’s office. It was a little distracting, Hanzo had no idea how Kano put up with it.

“Care for a drink?” Kano asked, walking over to a small station with various bottles of spirits. Hanzo could see one with a familiar golden coloured liquid and he could think of nothing else he wanted.

“Whiskey, please.” He watched as Kano grabbed the bottle and began to pour it into a glass. “I am pleased that you are open to an alliance.”

“To be honest with you, mate, the fuckin’ Red Dragon have been givin’ me way too many problems lately.” He finished pouring the drink, pouring a second glass, presumably for himself. “If gettin’ a hand dealin’ with them means I give you a hand with The Lin Kuei, then so be it.” He walked over with both drinks in hand, passing the whiskey to Hanzo. “The Lin Kuei have never really been a bother before, but new leadership is always a rough time.”

“Indeed,” Hanzo agreed, taking a sip of his drink. It was smooth stuff, strong too, surprisingly high quality. He’d probably have to see where Kano got it from later. “And with who took over, it’s wise to be extra cautious.”

Kano scoffed, “yeah, Sektor’s kind of a moron, so he’s bound to do something that’ll fuck both himself and the rest of us over.”

Hanzo paused for a moment, staring at Kano for a long hard minute. Kano seemed to be under the impression that Sektor was in control. That wouldn’t normally be too strange, it had been assumed by everyone that Sektor would take over from his father. But it had been a month since Bi-Han had claimed the roll instead.

A month of such secrecy and silence, one of the city's biggest crime bosses didn’t know what was going on.

Hanzo wondered how many other people knew what was actually happening.

“I take it you haven’t heard then?” Hanzo questioned, wondering if Kano maybe just misspoke. Kano responded by narrowing his eyes and tilting his head.

“Heard what?” Well, that answered that. He definitely didn’t seem to know.

That just complicated everything even more. Why were they keeping the real change secret? Why wouldn’t Bi-Han want everyone to know he was in control? What the fuck was he doing?

“Sektor hasn’t succeeded his father, after all.” Hanzo watched as Kano’s eyes widened in shock.

“You’re fuckin’ kidding me?” Kano stared at him as if he was waiting for a punchline to a particularly terrible joke. “Who the fuck has then?”

“Song Bi-Han.” Hanzo watched as Kano’s face completely dropped at that news.

“Oh, fuck,” he whispered in a horrified tone.

“Oh fuck indeed,” Hanzo agreed, taking another sip of his drink. Clearly he was not the only one who realised that this posed a serious threat.

“They’ve fuckin’ kept that quiet,” Kano exclaimed, walking over to his desk and letting himself fall into his seat. Hanzo decided to take his lead, taking the seat on the opposite side. Kano placed a hand on his chin. “I mean I thought they’d been fuckin’ quiet since Oniro’s death came out.”

“The silence is beginning to worry me,” Hanzo admitted, tapping his fingers in a rhythm on Kano’s desk. “The fact that it is apparently not common knowledge that Bi-Han is now in charge is doubly so.”

“Something’s goin’ on, you’re right there,” Kano agreed, reaching over for his computer and beginning to type something. “I ain’t had much interaction with Bi-Han, but I know enough about him to say silent and waitin’ ain’t his style.”

Kano huffed as he focused on his computer. Hanzo assumed this was relevant and he was looking for something. While he waited, Hanzo took the chance to finish off his drink and contemplate his situation. The alliance was looking likely, which was good, not to mention someone else could see how glaringly obvious it was that there was more going on with the Lin Kuei.

“Aha!” Kano suddenly exclaimed, grabbing his computer’s monitor and twisting it for Hanzo to see.

It was a photograph, seemingly taken from a distance and at night. Even so, he could tell one figure in the photo was Bi-Han. He wore that signature blue suit he always seemed to wear, not to mention the small silver emblem on his collar. More interestingly, there were two other figures with him. One was smaller and sitting next to Bi-Han, face obscured by a hoodie with Bi-Han’s arm around his shoulder, and the second stood behind them both.

Hanzo recognised that second figure.

“Is that Quan Chi?” Hanzo questioned, staring at the pale man in question.

“Looks like it,” Kano clicked his tongue as he talked. “Some of my boys took this a couple of nights ago. I didn’t think too much of it initially, but…”

“But if Bi-Han is in control of The Lin Kuei and hanging around Quan Chi…” Hanzo stared at the photo. Bi-Han and the hooded figure were acting like the vampire wasn’t even there. Quan Chi was almost ominously looming over them.

“Yeah. Kinda puts the photo in a different context, don’t it?” Kano huffed, leaning to one side and propping himself up with his fist. “Him takin’ over the Lin Kuei, him being quiet, him hangin’ out with Quan Chi. Makes you think those things might be connected, yeah?”

“There is no way they aren’t.” Hanzo had a personal history with Quan Chi. Back when Harumi died, he had offered to revive her as a vampire. The deal he had offered was vague, and it had set off Hanzo’s bullshit detectors. He’d turned it down, and ever since, Hanzo couldn’t escape the feeling that Harumi’s death and Quan Chi were linked somehow.

If Quan Chi offered a similar deal to Bi-Han, then Bi-Han was a bigger fool than Hanzo had taken him for.

“Any idea who the person in the hoodie is?” Hanzo questioned, he’d mostly entirely glossed over them. The fact Bi-Han had an arm around them indicated whoever it was, they were close. At least close enough for Bi-Han to be comfortable with physical contact.

“My boys didn’t really get a good shot of them.” Damn. The identity of the other person would have to remain a mystery for now then. “But, I do recall hearin’ rumours that Bi-Han had a family member die at some point.”

“Die?” Hanzo thought back to the supposed grudge Bi-Han held against the Shirai Ryu. A family member got hurt. If this was the same family member, then that was a vastly different story to what he had been told. If that was the case, and some of his men had killed someone close to Bi-Han, then it made his anger and hatred a lot more understandable.

But, more relevant to the conversation at present, a dead family member could be exactly why Quan Chi was in the picture.

“After my wife’s death, Quan Chi approached me with a deal to bring her back to life,” Hanzo informed aloud, looking at the photo, desperate for some more clues. The only thing he could find was that Quan Chi did appear to be mostly looking towards the hooded figure. “It is entirely possible that he extended a similar deal to Bi-Han.”

“If that’s the case, we might have a big problem on our hands.” And that was the understatement of the century.

“Our alliance may be far more necessary than initially thought,” Hanzo summarised, hoping maybe all these revelations would completely secure it. Given the look Kano shot him, it seemed to be a done deal at this point.

“Consider us allies then, Mr. Hasashi.” Kano stuck his hand out to shake on it, and Hanzo accepted easily. “Course, we’ll have to work on the details.”

“As a start, I can share with you all the intel I have on both the Lin Kuei and Red Dragon,” Hanzo offered, taking his hand back and reaching into his phone to text Junpei to prepare so he could email the documents. “I have some recent activities, especially from the Red Dragon that you might be interested in.”

“Brilliant.” Kano slammed back the last of his drink with a jovial cheer. “I can send you over this photo, and some of the others we’ve caught from Lin Kuei territory. I dunno, maybe you and your guys can find something we missed.”

“I would appreciate that.”

Even with so much uncertainty ahead, Hanzo already felt things were looking up for him.

All they needed to do was figure out what Bi-Han was up to before it was too late.

Even before his death, Kuai Liang had never really enjoyed clubbing. Too loud. Too many flashing lights. Drinks too pricey. If it was possible, he hated it even more now.

He glanced across the dance floor, watching the sea of bodies jump up and down, grinding against each other in their intoxicated states. The bass was vibrating in his chest, alcohol burning his nostrils and throat despite not having drank anything himself. The fact The Black Dragon managed to operate out of this place rather astonished Kuai. How they hell they could so much as think with the constant thumping of the music, he would never know.

Still, he was here for a reason, although as he pondered it, he didn’t have a clue where to start. How the hell am I supposed to find Kenshi?

“That would depend on who is asking for him,” a voice that wasn’t his rang through his head. He flinched and turned in a complete circle, thinking someone had just come up behind him. There was no one there, and a chuckle echoed. “Sorry. But if you can tell me why you are seeking him, I may be able to help you.”

“A friend of mine told me he could help me find someone I’m looking for.” Kuai wasn’t unfamiliar with telepathy, but he’d never experienced it first hand before. It was stranger than he would have anticipated.

“And who exactly would you be looking for?” The voice sounded suspicious, and Kuai couldn’t blame them. Still if Kenshi was undercover, it wouldn’t be wise to just outright say who. But what could he say?

“Could you just tell him Cage sent me?” Kuai questioned, vague enough that hopefully Kenshi would know who sent him, but this person wouldn’t.

“I see.” The voice sounded annoyed, but Kuai wasn’t sure if it was because of how evasive Kuai was or something else. “Do you see the door to the back of the dancefloor?” Kuai looked in that direction, and could just about see a man leaning against the frame. “Come over.”

“Okay.” Kuai felt a little hesitant, but decided he really had no other choice. He tried to stay to the edges of the floor to make it easier to get through the crowd. He managed to just about avoid a man elbowing him in the face. It thankfully didn’t take too much to get towards the back. The man was standing with his arms crossed, wearing sunglasses and a sharp black and red suit.

“Okamoto Seiichi,” the man greeted while holding his hand out. In Kuai’s head, instead spoke “Takahashi Kenshi.”

So, the telepath actually was Kenshi all along. He supposed at least that made talking about something so secretive a little easier.

“Bai Xue,” Kuai returned, deciding there was enough reason for him to use a fake name too. The Black Dragon may not recognise him, but they could potentially put together his and Bi-Han’s joint surname. “Song Kuai Liang.”

“It is nice to meet you. Please, walk with me.” Kenshi turned to enter the door, and Kuai followed suit. “I hope you will understand why whatever Johnny sent you here for will have to be talked about internally.”

“I understand.” He glanced around the corridor they were in. It looked like some sort of warehouse rather than anything else. He wasn’t sure why that surprised him, the club was only a part of The Black Dragon’s operations. Everyone knew they specialised in the sale and distribution of black market magical items.

“So what brings you here?” Kenshi questioned aloud, and Kuai knew at that moment he had to come up with a cover and explain what he really needed at the same time.

“Um. I heard there was an auction coming up soon, and I was hoping to sell a few items.” Kuai hoped to fucking god the Black Dragon still did underground auctions, otherwise he’d just given the worst excuse he could. “I am trying to locate Sonya Blade.”

“I see, well our next auction is for items with magical properties, so what did you have in mind?” It was kind of chilling how his external voice sounded so calm and collected, while internally he practically growled at Kuai, saying “and why exactly should I give that information to a stranger?”

“I have a range of artefacts, things like pendants and even some bones belonging to mythical animals.” Actually those were both true. He didn’t really use the pendants, even before his death, but he was very fond of his skeleton collection, especially his various breeds of dragons. “I was friends with her and Johnny before I… Before I died. I was hoping she could help me find information on my sire.”

Kenshi stopped in his tracks, his mouth opening slightly. His head was turned slightly, like he was both looking at and away from Kuai at the same time.

“It’s you. The one who died? The one whose body was stolen?” Kenshi asked, and Kuai felt a lump forming in his throat.

“Yes. I guess they’ve talked about me?” He wasn’t sure why the idea that people talked about him after his death felt so uncomfortable. Of course they did, that should have been obvious. However the actual confirmation that it definitely happened still filled him with a cold sense of dread.

Something about knowing people grieved for him just broke his heart.

“I’m sorry, they never told me your name.” Kenshi straightened himself out, brushing down his suit like he was uncomfortable and looking for something to do with his hands. “They were heartbroken by what happened to you, and then for someone to steal all anyone had left of you…”

Kuai cleared his throat. He didn’t really want to go into the whole being kept in a freezer situation with a stranger.

“Is there a problem with the items I mentioned?” Them just standing in complete silence would look extremely suspicious if anyone happened to walk by, so he had to get the cover going again. “I was turned about a month ago. I don’t trust my new sire, however. I was hoping Sonya might be able to look into him and see what she can find.”

“Oh. No. Sorry, I was just thinking if we had any items like that yet. What kind of bones?” Kenshi reached a hand to the back of his head. “I see. What is this sire’s name? I might know something that can help you.”

“Different dragon breeds. Well, at least smaller breeds, mostly ones commonly found in China, but I have one or two western.” He had to hold himself back, this was just a cover story after all. Even if whenever the subject of dragons came up he wanted to just spill all his knowledge onto anyone who would listen. “His name’s Quan Chi.”

Kenshi’s mouth briefly curled into a grimace, before he took a deep breath to regain his composure.

“Hm, we haven’t got many dragon bones, especially not Chinese breeds. You might have a small fortune on your hands if you find the right buyer.” He nodded his head slightly. “I have heard of him, you are right to be wary. Nothing I have been told makes it sound like he has nothing but the worst of intentions.”

“What sort of money are we talking about?” Hearing someone else say they believed Quan Chi was malicious was a relief if Kuai was honest. His brother had remained oddly clinical and detached about the entire thing, so it was difficult to tell how he really felt. The fact he didn’t seem to trust Quan Chi alone with Kuai was somewhat telling however. “Which is exactly why I need Sonya to do some digging. Quan Chi made some deal with my brother regarding bringing me back to life, and I’m concerned about it.”

“It depends how complete the skeletons are, you can always bring them and I’ll have our expert Tremor appraise them for you, but off hand you’re probably looking at a couple hundred thousand each for loose bones, and a million for a full skeleton.” That news was surprising to Kuai, even if this wasn’t the reason he was actually here. Who knew that those bones he used to collect as a child could be worth that much. “Right. She has access to the computer systems right now, so she’ll be able to look for more info. She’s living on the south side of the city now, the big apartment building on 9th street in apartment 15.”

Before Kuai could reply, either out loud or in his mind, the sound of a door interrupted him. Kuai glanced over to where it had come from, seeing two men leaving a room and walking towards them. Kuai swallowed when he realised that the man in front was Kano, leader of the Black Dragon. They’d never met, so Kano wouldn’t know who he was, but Kuai had seen photos of him in Bi-Han’s files.

As the two men approached, Kano raised an eyebrow and questioned “Oi Seiichi, who the hell is this?”

“Ah, this is Bai Xue,” Kenshi replied, gesturing vaguely towards Kuai. Man, Kuai was glad he’d given that fake name now. “He was inquiring about selling some artefacts at our next auction.”

“Right,” Kano muttered, but he seemed completely unimpressed by that. “That’s nice and all, ‘sept he ain’t meant to be back here.”

“I’m sorry Sir, I was not aware of that,” Kuai tried to defuse. He didn’t like eyes being on him, and if Kano realised he looked a little too much like Bi-Han it might cause problems. “I can leave.”

“I’ll take him out,” Kenshi offered, taking hold of Kuai’s arm to try and drag him away.

Until the second man stepped forward and stopped them by loudly saying “hold on.”

Kenshi and Kuai paused, and now that Kuai could see this other man more clearly, he looked familiar. Given the way he was staring at Kuai, it seemed he was having a similar reaction. Which in this situation, was definitely not a good thing.

“Have we met before?” He questioned, baring his teeth slightly. “I swear I recognise you from somewhere.”

Kuai and the man stared at each other long and hard, both desperately trying to wrack their brains. Kuai’s eyes flicked over him, hoping to find some sort of clue. There wasn’t much to him, just long hair tied into a bun, a beard and a very neat and expensive looking suit. Except… There was something embroidered onto a chest pocket on his jacket. A small yellow Scorpion.

A symbol of the Shirai Ryu.

Kuai’s eyes flicked back up to the man's face, and suddenly he remembered exactly why he knew who this man was.

Hanzo Hasashi. Leader of the Shirai Ryu.

The man who ordered Kuai Liang’s death.

The fact Kuai realised who Hanzo was must have shown on his face, as it caused Hanzo to take a step forward in interest. Kuai, on the other hand, had no desire for the man who orchestrated his demise to realise who he was. He yanked his arm away from Kenshi, who let go in shock, before turning to sprint. He’d gotten what he needed, he’d have liked to have been able to thank Kenshi for that, but right now he had to go before Hanzo remembered him.

“Hey, wait,” he heard Hanzo call out behind him.

“Oi, don’t let him escape,” Kano shouted out, and Kuai hadn’t even noticed the Black Dragon just milling around doing work.

A few leapt at him, trying to grab him, but he was thankfully fast enough to avoid them. One however, took a chance to fully tackle him, wrapping his arms around Kuai’s chest and attempting to haul him off the floor. Kuai struggled, kicking his legs at the man's shins, causing him to grunt but seemed to do nothing else. He was going to have to play dirty. He swung his leg back as hard as he could, right between the other man's legs.

He knew he hit the mark from the loud scream, and the feeling of finally being released.

He turned to keep running, finding another grunt in front of him. Fed up with their continuous attempts to stop him, he flailed his fist forward, narrowly missing the grunt. The grunt lent forward to try and take hold of Kuai, but this time Kuai launched his other fist forward, hitting the man square in the face.

And in turn, sending him flying off into the wall with a sickening crack.

Kuai stared dumbfounded. The wall around where the man had hit had broken, parts of it falling to the floor in pieces. He vaguely remembered Quan Chi saying there would be changes to his body, but he never mentioned anything like this. His eyes flicked over to where Kano, Hanzo, Kenshi, and the remaining grunts were. Everyone was staring at the man against the wall, who thankfully was groaning and attempting to stand so hopefully Kuai hadn’t hurt him too badly.

He blinked and shook his head. The discovery of his new unexplainable strength would have to wait. He began running off where he could see an emergency exit. To his surprise, he couldn’t hear anyone following him.

As he slammed into the emergency door to open it, he heard Kenshi’s voice ring out in his mind saying “good luck.”

“Thank you, Kenshi.” Hopefully, when this was all over, and Kenshi was done with whatever his undercover mission was, Kuai could thank him properly.

For now however, he concentrated on running as fast as he could, trying to figure out the quickest way back to Lin Kuei territory so he could map out his next moves in relative safety.

Bi-Han glared at the map in front of him, the yellow patch far too large for his liking. The Shirai Ryu had gained far too much ground during the last month. They’d taken advantage of Bi-Han trying to fit into his new role as Grandmaster, as well as his attention being partly on Kuai Liang’s revival.

But, Kuai was starting to recover from his ordeal, to the point he seemed ready to be wandering the streets at night again. Bi-Han would have felt safer with him going out alone in daylight, but given his affliction that wasn’t really a choice anymore. He just had to trust his brother’s word when he said he would just be going to Cage’s apartment for the night.

Bi-Han had never really liked Cage, but he supposed he had at least been a good friend to Kuai, and he probably deserved to know that Kuai Liang was alive again.

All that was neither here nor there however.

He needed to get back on track in terms of leading the Lin Kuei, and part of that was showing the Shirai Ryu where they truly belonged.

“There were rumours that the Shirai Ryu may be trying to form an alliance with the Black Dragon,” Cyrax informed him, glancing over the map towards where the Black Dragon’s territory was marked in a dark grey. “The Black Dragon aren’t exactly a threat on their own but…”

“Combined with the Shirai Ryu they could be a problem,” Bi-Han summarised and hissed. Kano was a fucking moron, but he was nothing if not persistent. He also had plenty of enemies that Bi-Han could potentially exploit. “What about the Red Dragon? How likely do you think they would be to align themselves with us?”

“The Lin Kuei do not need allies,” Sektor snapped, slamming his hand down against the map. “My father-“

“Left the Lin Kuei to me,” Bi-Han growled lowly, narrowing his eyes at Sektor and just daring him to do something about it. “Are you questioning my authority, Sektor?” Bi-Han took a threatening step forward, and Sektor’s face dropped in regret. “Well, are you?”

“N-No Grandmaster,” Sektor stuttered, stumbling over his own words. He was so pathetically predictable. He liked running his mouth, but the truth was he was just a coward hiding behind his words. “If you believe an alliance would benefit, then we shall do that.”

Fucking snake. Bi-Han was absolutely going to have to watch out for Sektor. He was already going to start making plans for his successor so this bastard could never have a claim to the leadership of The Lin Kuei.

“Um, Bi-Han?” Cyrax cleared his throat, gaining Bi-Han’s attention. When he turned to look at him, Cyrax was looking at his phone with a frown on his face. “I’ve just had word from some of our men that they saw Kuai Liang entering Black Dragon territory.”

Bi-Han tried so hard to not react to that. He failed when he took a deep breath, and clenched his fist. Dammit I knew it was too early to let him go alone. He should have at least insisted on Tomas going with him.

“Both of you, go to the Red Dragon, see what you can do to set up an alliance,” he ordered. Just because he was worried about Kuai Liang and needed to make sure he was safe, it didn’t mean he could just dismiss his responsibility.

“On it,” Cyrax agreed, gesturing with his head to the door, likely for Sektor’s sake. A silent “let’s get out of here before Bi-Han loses it”. Cyrax always was the smarter of the two.

Both men made quick work of leaving the room, as Bi-Han reached into his pocket for his own phone. He wasn’t going to yell at Kuai Liang, that wouldn’t help at all, but he was going to make sure he was safe and had left Black Dragon territory. Usually it wouldn’t be that much of an issue, given the group in question tended to be neutral, but with the looming threat of an alliance with the Shirai Ryu, Bi-Han couldn’t risk it.

The phone rang out a couple of times, until to his relief it was answered and Kuai’s voice came through to say “Hello Bi-Han.”

“Where are you right now?” He flinched and cursed at the harshness of his own voice. What happened to not getting angry at him? All he’d done was say hello.

“I’m guessing someone saw me cross territory lines?” Kuai questioned, and Bi-Han gave a somewhat disappointed sigh. It was disappointing that Kuai had crossed those lines, but Bi-Han supposed he should see victory in Kuai actually admitting to it. “I’m sorry Gēgē, it’s just changed so much since I was last out, I’m having trouble remembering where the lines are now.”

“That may be, but that doesn’t answer my question.” He could understand Kuai’s confusion, things had changed since he was last alive, but it still shouldn’t have been that difficult. Sure, they’d lost some territory over the last month, but that was more bordering the Shirai Ryu, not the Black Dragon. That boundary had mostly stayed in place.

“I’m by Madame Bo’s…” There was a slight pause before Kuai asked, “that is still in Lin Kuei territory right?”

Bi-Han sighed in relief, sitting down and relaxing in his seat. “Yes, that is in our territory.” Bi-Han ran his hand over his face a few times. Thankfully his brother was back on safe turf. It didn’t explain why he was still wandering around when he was supposed to be with Cage. It wasn’t even like he’d need to be heading in that direction to get there. “Are you coming back now?”

“Actually I’m going to visit another friend,” Kuai told him, and all of the relaxation left Bi-Han as he huffed loudly at the news. “Sorry, it’s just… Johnny broke up with his girlfriend, Sonya, a while ago and I want to go see how she is as well. That’s why I got lost in territory lines, but I think I know a safe way to go now.”

What could Bi-Han do? He could demand Kuai Liang return home right now, and then make sure he never leaves again. Or he could let his brother actually have his freedom.

“Okay, fine, just be careful.” He couldn’t believe he was agreeing to let Kuai stay out later. “Just remember you need to be back before daybreak.”

“I know, I know. I will be,” Kuai sighed, sounding exactly like he used to when he was a teenager. “I’ll let you know when I’m on my way home, okay?”

“Thank you,” Bi-Han sighed, he was absolutely going to hold Kuai to that. “See you soon.”

“Bye Bi-Han.”

The phone line went dead, and Bi-Han placed his phone on the desk in front of him. Maybe he should give out an order for his men to keep an eye out. Was that too much though? He didn’t want to have to literally stalk his brother for the rest of his life.

A knock on his door gained his attention, and before he could even tell whoever it was to come in, the door was opening. Before even seeing anyone enter, Bi-Han knew it was Quan Chi. He was the only person stupid enough to not await Bi-Han’s permission to enter the room.

Indeed, seconds later, Quan Chi was stepping inside, completely oblivious to Bi-Han’s displeasure. Although, it wouldn’t be surprising if Quan Chi did know and was just doing to piss Bi-Han off.

“Good evening Bi-Han,” Quan Chi greeted, annoyingly smoothly and like Bi-Han wasn’t glaring daggers at him. Quan Chi’s eyes swept the room, his brows drawing together slightly when he noticed Bi-Han was alone. “No little brother today?”

“No. He’s gone out to see some friends.” Really Quan Chi’s obsession with Kuai Liang was becoming concerning. Granted, the whole sire thing meant there was definitely a connection that probably needed maintaining, but it was still strange. He could read his little brother like an open book, and it was so clear he was nervous of his sire. Kuai was one of those annoying people who loved and trusted everyone he met, so for him to immediately take a dislike to Quan Chi?

It spelt trouble, no matter what way Bi-Han looked at it.

“I assume his little feeder has gone with him,” Quan Chi spoke with a bitter edge to his voice. Bi-Han was sure it was because Tomas' existence meant he couldn’t go hunting with Kuai Liang.

“No, Tomas is busy tonight.” The creepy feeling only got stronger with Quan Chi’s reaction to that. His head snapped over to Bi-Han a little too eagerly.

“Then, who is with him?” Quan Chi tilted his head, and Bi-Han knew what he was waiting to hear.

“No one. He’s alone.” And indeed, that was exactly what he wanted the answer to be. His eyes widened and a dark smirk came across his face.

“Alone? Really?” Quan Chi wandered up to the desk, leaning across it. He was looking at Bi-Han like he was trying to figure out if he was bluffing. “Are you certain that is wise?”

“He’ll be fine. He wandered into the Black Dragon’s territory, but got out of there pretty fast.” Bi-Han studied Quan Chi’s reaction, the vampire's eyes narrowing at the news.

“I would have thought you’d be a little more concerned about that,” Quan Chi replied matter of factly.

“I’ve got to let him live his own life.” It was hard. Whenever he looked at Kuai Liang he either saw the small child Bi-Han basically helped raise or the corpse resting in his freezer. Both of those reminders of why Bi-Han had to protect him. But Kuai would never be happy being coddled, Bi-Han had to learn to let go. “Kuai Liang is an adult, he can make his own decisions.”

“Well, forgive me if I’m wrong,” Quan Chi started, leaning further against the desk and lifting one hand to pick at his nails, “But wasn’t making his own decisions what got him killed in the first place.”

Bi-Han almost hit his phone as he slammed his fist down on the desk. The loud bang did nothing to move or intimidate Quan Chi. In fact, as he smiled down at Bi-Han he looked far too proud of what he’d just said. He knew it was a knife still buried deep in Bi-Han’s chest, and he definitely knew that what he just said was twisting that knife deeper. Bi-Han had just given him the exact reaction he’d wanted too. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck .

If he’d realised that the deal he made would subject him to this smug prick trying to wind him up at every opportunity, he’d have found another way to revive Kuai Liang.

But then… How long might that have taken?

“Well, he’s a vampire now isn’t he?” Bi-Han chose to reply, trying so hard to keep the anger and bitterness out of his tone. Quan Chi’s leering and never ending grin indicated he was likely failing. “You promised me the only things he’d have to worry about were feeding and sunlight. No one can really kill him again.”

“Well, yes.” Quan Chi pushed himself away from the desk. “But there are fates worse than death, you know.”

“Did you actually need something?” Bi-Han snapped, trying not to think too hard on what fate could be worse than death. All he could see was poor Kuai’s face twisted in pain as some monster hurt him.

“No, I was hoping to speak with Kuai Liang actually.” Of course. “I’ll leave you be then.”

“Fine. Go.” Bi-Han had to resist the urge to flip Quan Chi the bird as he left the room.

As soon as he was alone, he threw his head into his hands and let out a loud groan. His fingers twisted in his hair and he tried to resist the urge to pull too hard on it. He had a feeling Quan Chi was going to be stalking the streets searching for Kuai Liang now, and Bi-Han did not want him to succeed in that task. The least he could do to try and avoid it, was to warn him. He grabbed his phone, and pulled up his and Kuai Liang’s text conversation.

[Bi-Han said: Just to warn you; Quan Chi knows you’re out alone. I suspect he's going to look for you.] [Kuai Liang said: Damn. Thanks for the warning, I’ll keep an eye out. Love you xx]

Bi-Han snorted at the last bit. Kuai always ended his texts to Bi-Han with that. He couldn’t help but scroll up and read their previous conversations. Most of the recent ones had been when Bi-Han was out on business and Kuai was wondering when he’d be back because he was bored. Every time, it ended with that love you and a couple of kisses. He couldn’t help but smile fondly at the messages. His little brother really was just so sweet, wasn’t he?

Then, he paused at a message. One without the little ritual.

[Kuai Liang said: help]

Bi-Han’s eyes flicked to the date it had been sent. It was dated to 5 years ago. The night Kuai Liang died.

He’d almost forgotten about that message, and all he could do was stare at it as his mouth went dry. He had made sure to save and preserve all of Kuai’s texts to him before his death, even this one. His heart raced, just as it had the day he received it. Even now, it made him want to abandon everything and find Kuai Liang. It made him want to try to save him, even if it had been futile back then.

Kuai had too many injuries, too severe for Bi-Han to have been able to help him.

You didn’t try hard enough.

He turned his phone’s screen off, placing the phone face down on his desk. He stared at the map in front of him, desperate to distract himself from the sinking feeling in his stomach. As he began to make plans, internally he battled the voice telling him he was failing his brother all over again.

#mortal kombat #subscorp #kuai liang #sub zero #scorpion #hanzo hasashi #🕸️hold me like you held onto life

2 notes · View notes

owlixx · 1 year ago

Text

CoD Notes: Advanced Warfare Beat

This is, what, the 4th game I’ve beaten since the last time I took notes?

I again went into this game wanting to like it. I was rooting for this to be an underdog hidden gem, and honestly I think that’s what happened. It helped that Ghosts was kind of a letdown and this game picked up the pieces.

Hit markers are back! A solid start. RPG profession is back! Another solid return from features BO2 had that Ghosts was missing.

Obviously the big thing here is the exo suits. I kind of like them but there’s some issue. My biggest one is that making us switch between two different kinds of rigs and even then having different abilities for each mission meant that I never knew what my abilities were which meant I just never used them. There was a singular missions towards the end where I finally started using my sonic blast and stim. I was constantly trying to double jump in levels where I didn’t have it. I do generally appreciate the extra mobility though.

I also really like the switchable grenades. It would be overpowered in multiplayer but this isn’t multiplayer so kudos for this feature. I also really like the invisible HUD in campaign where all the ammo/grenades are just visible on your gun itself.

Also the writing in this game is so much better than Ghosts! It’s pretty cringy to see Kevin Spacey so much but he does turn in a pretty great performance, as one would expect. I’ll admit that the “are we the bad guys?” mid-game twist is a little too obvious and happens a little too clumsily but it’s still more entertaining than anything Ghosts was doing. Gideon in particular started to really grow on me by the end.

Oh, also I like that getting stronger is tied to kills, headshot kills, grenade kills, and intel collected. I found the most intel in this game by far and felt actually rewarded for it. I also maxed out headshots like halfway through the game.

The best part of this game is the giant mech suit parts at the end, plus the section where you can’t use your robot arm so you have to just pick up a new gun every time instead of reloading. That section was genuinely such s great idea and is so fun to play through.

It’s not perfect, but AW feels genuinely so much more ambitious than Ghosts. I didn’t connect with his game as a kid but now I’ve really started to develop a fondness for Sledgehammer after being something of a MWIII defender. You can even see kind of connection between “smart grenades” and breacher drones, plus the AMR9 is in both.

Now, I did only play one multiplayer match, and I kind of hated it. I’m sure I’d get used to the movement over time, but I felt like I was just hitting buttons and dying over and over. I have zero desire to revisit this game’s multiplayer.

Also did one exo survival match, it’s fine. I like that it tries to evolve the MW3 survival formula, but both feel so basic compared to anything zombies. At least it means there’s something to do on the multiplayer maps eve when the servers go offline.

I also tried exo zombies since you are forced to get the “gold edition” with 1 DLC if you buy digitally. Here, it actually makes sense since you get a whole new game mode. I had never realized just how similar this mode was to treyarch’s zombie maps, but with everything shifted off a couple degrees. I ended up dying because I got infected and racing to the cure chamber got me killed, but overall this mode impressed me. This is the last one without any meta progression though so I won’t be likely to revisit.

Rankings wise, it’s not better than any of the “golden age” games (MW trilogy, BO 1/2) but it beats even BO3 in terms of raw campaign.

#cod #call of duty #advanced warfare #call of duty advanced warfare #cod Aw

2 notes · View notes

sullustangin · 2 years ago

Text

Fluffy February Day 6: Stretch

Rating: PG

Fandom: SWTOR

Time: 3676 BBY/23 BTC

Pairing: Jace Malcom/Satele Shan, unrequited

Words: 1289

“So… the Force doesn’t make all that acrobatic stuff possible by itself?” Jace asked. “Like, if I was a Jedi, I’d have to be able to do a backflip anyway?”

Satele shook her head as she continued to limber up for her morning routine. “Not quite. Yes, you do have to stay fit and maintain some physical prowess, but the Force helps you defy gravity for a little longer, have just a bit more endurance in a sprint, a little more strength in your swing. Think of it as an extra set of hands or guidance.”

Jace sat on a bench just a few feet away from Satele’s gymnastic mat. “But it’s 100% the Force when Jedi lift stuff, right? It’s not like ‘bro, you gotta lift this much on the bench or you’ll drop that rock on your foot,’ right?”

Satele’s laugh jingled in his ear, like the tiny bell on top of an old-fashioned swinging door. “Yes, that is more rooted in the person’s discipline and concentration in the Force. Word to the wise, all the same : don’t put bets against Jedi in benchpressing competitions.”

“Like I’m betting against the Jedi for anything.” Jace sipped his caf as he watched Satele finish up her stretches. “You really put yourself through the paces. I hurried over here because I thought you’d run through warm-ups and be swinging your dualsaber in minutes, and if I sat around eating my waffles, you’d be done.”

Satele tossed her braid over her shoulder as she stood up. “Believe it or not, Jace, Jedi are mortals. We get charley horses too!”

Just as Jace sputtered into his coffee – because hearing prim Satele say ‘charley horse’ was somehow hysterically funny to him – Satele launched into her routine, activating her dual saber as she vaulted into the air.

Stars, she could fly.

At the time he’d met her over Korriban, he hadn’t had a lot of time to watch her – he knew what she and her master had been doing was beyond his imagining. Watching her practice her katas was far lower stakes but no less amazing, here on Coruscant.

Over the last five years, since… everything… started, Jace and Satele had been pretty faithful pen pals (in a way; neither of them used pen, praise be the Holonet). Sometimes it took awhile: she had to go through her trials with a new master, he ended up on a cereal box because it was good for recruitment and he was apparently cute enough, then she and Dar’Nala (her new master) had been sent around the galaxy on diplomatic service. Jace understood the logic: Satele had gotten to know the battle side of the Jedi Order a lot sooner than she did the peacekeeper end.

Then Jace got promoted and was sent off to officer school – who’d’ve thunk it, a kid form Bacaria like him? That was almost as impressive as the cereal box, according to Kal.

Kal would be a higher rank and would probably have his own cereal box if he wasn’t so dead-set on being a maverick and a joker. He just had to defy authority in some way, even if it was just wearing non-regulation socks. And not taking every double-dog dare his stupid company threw out there.

So, five years into this war with the Sith, and here were Satele Shan and Jace Malcom, hanging out. Like normal people. Well, if normal people could swing a dualsaber and do backflips at the same time, Jace supposed, as he watched her. As if they weren’t the two kids who brought news of Korriban to the galaxy. It was a weird way to start a friendship.

Jace was coming to a pretty rapid conclusion though. He didn’t want it just to be a friendship.

Satele was the most amazing woman he’d ever met, and he’d covered a lot of planets since he first met her.

Scratch that from the pitch; that sounded way raunchier than he thought it would. And yeah, he’d gone out with other women but not that many. He didn’t know every—

Ok, this whole ‘I think we should be more than friends’ skit he’d mapped out needed about fifteen more drafts before he tried it live with her. He didn’t want it to sound like he was infatuated (he totally was), and he didn’t want it to sound like he didn’t have enough experience to make the comparison (he did), but he also didn’t want it to sound like ‘out of the hundreds of women’ (which was NOT the case; Kal would rat him out to his mother for not respecting women or himself, and then there’d be holy wrath over the holocomm).

His chain of thought broke off as Satele nailed her landing at the edge of the mat, then detached her dualsaber into two parts, so now she wielded one shorter lightsaber in each hand. He watched as she went through the movements, fighting an invisible foe –

And great galaxies, she was fierce. There was some sort of channeled rage in her, something that might have darkened another’s soul… but instead, she pushed it out and away from her heart, throwing it into her efforts against foes, for the Jedi, for the Republic, for the Light --!

…Most of all, nobody Jace had tried to date had understood what his service meant to him. They thought it was a ‘do your time, and then do what you really want to do.’ Get that veteran’s discount. Get a leg up in hiring.

This was what Jace wanted to do. He wanted to be career military. It made him happier than grunting it out on Bacaria, where physical labor with zero intellectual engagement was still a top feature of any career there. He didn’t want to get into a rat race or be once of those inspirational talk jackasses. Credits wouldn’t make him happy. This would.

And Satele – as devoted to the Jedi Order as she was – would get that. And…

He really had to draft this next part out, maybe thirty times, and wait another five years, but… he was pretty sure he could marry her if she promised to pick the Order and the Republic over him no matter what, if it came down to it. It would sting but… valid?

But then there was the whole “I have aspirations for having my own Huttball team, composed entirely of our children (adopted and biological)” thing he had going on. He and Kal were brothers and it was fine, but…

Ok, scratch that entire paragraph until Satele married him. They could talk about it then, because, well, if she didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t have kids… he still wanted to be with her.

Because she understood duty and a calling. This wasn’t killing time. This was life, period. And she understood what it was like to change the galaxy by the news they brought. What it was like to go from 18-year-old dumbass (well, maybe Satele was never a dumbass like he was, but whatever the Satele equivalent was) to galactic celebrity to the leader of tomorrow to... whatever was next for them. If they lived that long.

It might not last. It might not work as well as he imagined it. But Jace wanted to give it a shot, to say ‘we tried.’

For now, all he said was “Water?” and offered her a bottle when she walked over to the bench, looking radiant (or sweaty. But to Jace, radiant).

@fluffyfebruary

#swtor #fluffy february #swtor fan fiction #jace malcom #satele shan #jace malcom/satele shan

17 notes · View notes

ashacadence · 1 year ago

Text

Baldur’s Gate 3

This is just my impression so far and why I’ve been not so active. Yes I like the game and having fun with it. Or at least to a degree. I can see the replay ability with it but I’ll get to that in a second.

The game in on itself is addicting. I get the itch and I just fall into that hypnotic grind of wanting to explore, look through stuff and bring the maps to life the more pockets and paths I find. It’s nice and there’s neat fights or really cool places to see. All very beautiful scenery. The environment stuff and the interactions of discovering hidden treasures or characters noticing something as filler info. Super cool. I’ll find myself just trying to look for hidden paths to navigate or spot something that catches my eye to go and look.

The fucking camera is annoying. Also the movement/pathing tracking or whatever can sometimes be it’s own worst enemy. I dunno if it’s better to play on the controller or not but I doubt it with how complex and easier it is to simply stick with mouse and keyboard. I just wish the camera pan and zoom was better instead of fighting it.

The characters in on themselves are entertaining and each are unique in their own special ways. Now, I’ve only been limited to the main three with mine but I’ll get to that in a sec. Lae’zel I’m still ehhhhhh on. I get why she’s prickly but oh boy she tests my patience some times. Also she hit on me at some point that had me sputtering and cackling.

I didn’t choose option 3. I chose 2. The screenshot had my mouse at that third one.

But y’all should have heard me laughing. Even if she was turned down she took it well but still with that confidence of “pssh you’re missing out.”

Girl…I’m trying to bang the vampire man okay. Maybe Halsin. Dunno yet. Haven’t gotten that far.

Shadowheart and I are good friends. She’s a little cinnamon roll but oh so blinded by her religion. Shadow babe hun you are so much more if you let yourself be more.

Astarion, I love his sass. We will either be best buds or friends with benefits or more. Don’t care. Happy to chat with him and have him around. His sass is great.

I would love to talk about more but here’s the thing. This is all the active people I have besides wyll who just doesn’t have enough for me to engage all that much with and I blame the writing for the game. He’s a very nice guy who’s in a bad situation but just doesn’t have that oomf for me personally just yet. Halsin I’m just now starting on his quest so I can get him in my party.

I missed my chance to get gale and karlach. This is where the start of my frustrations go where the game is unforgivable in making it obvious or segues on hey you should find this person like gale for one. Didn’t realize he was a random thing that’s seemingly dangerous and my instinct was oh let’s avoid this. Like come on. Karlach apparently was timed and I couldn’t get her after wyll gets his first punishment. Very unfair I thought. I been hearing karlach is an amazing character but nope. Won’t get that chance unless I restart back to wherever and/or replay the game entirely. BS

I’m trying to be vague as possible from spoiling and not giving too much big story info away so forgive me on the wyll part but that made me irritated. Because I wanted the whole deck of characters and be in on the know.

Also I think it’s BS of the game to only be four members when traveling. Should be 5-6 at least. Dunno if it’s just game coding and all that where that can be potentially be harder to process the different character AI and whatnot but man.

Extra members would be super helpful especially in big fights that are literally meant to beat the shit out of you. Some fights I had to redo two-four times. Some I had to weasel around and not just go in. Don’t care as this may be a subjective debate on how you play the game or how the game is but honestly it’s a bit counter intuitive. One of the big boss fights I won’t say I spent nearly three hours on. I was thinking omg am I even going to be able to continue because the game is that big of a jerk to players. I’m playing on balanced. Medium essentially or normal. Not that it matters but I also heard story teller or previous difficulty is not that much different either. There have been moments of progress I would make only to get knocked back an hour’s worth some times that makes me head desk. I try to save as often as I can.

But ya some of the fighting I just dread knowing it’s somehow going to be ass in some way because there’s hardly much of a means to prepare for everything unless you do. Then of course you retry with a different set up and the game may still be a absolute dick. It’s a matter of luck in a fight.

Like common sense at least to me hits with up close combat. Lot of the times my characters will miss on some swings that’s completely dumb in my book. You have this giant monster three feet in front of you and you miss a arc swing?? How?? I get that’s just how the spirit of dnd is but this is where computer vs tabletop comes into play on this scenario. It’s just how it’s coded and gotta live with it. Save a lot. Retry.

But ya some of the scenarios in or out of combat and just even the dice rolls will sometimes be absolute garbage on occasion. That’s just how it is on that too.

It’s a love hate with this game and there’s just some cases and things above like I wish the game was a bit more straightforward on like gathering more members and where and how to find them and time frames. Hell even one part in act one to do a certain something was on a time frame that I didn’t know about. So I’m just always anxious that everything is pretty much timed.

I do enjoy the game but I just have criticisms on it. I’m not hating on the game don’t raise pitchforks at me. It’s very entertaining and taking up my time because I’m fixated on it.

#ashascadence #bg3 #baldur's gate iii #baldur's gate 3 #gaming #just let me meet Karlach #game please I beg of you

3 notes · View notes

unmeiokaemasu · 2 years ago

Text

finally making progress on a maddening run of 3h 8)

verdant wind, because the final battle on that route is the one that I find the easiest by far, and the thought of even trying maddening was very intimidating to me. If I beat this route I’ll probably do a maddening azure moon with some even stricter rules.

I did start a maddening run before, and found if you start a new game+ file and utilize like all your carried over renown and stuff, it still completely trivializes the game even on maddening. ...I forgot why I still did the new game+, so uh. hm. anyway so rules:

I can’t spend renown (no weapons from the abyss statue, can’t buy friendship or weapon levels for units, whatever else it’s used for)

can’t use the free shit I found under my bed. I don’t usually do that anyway so

no amiibo gazebo bonus items because I want to be limited by the gold I can obtain normally, so I have to think about how to allocate my funds, and the gazebo sometimes gives you like basic weapons and things you can sell...although I didn’t think about that until I’d already picked up two items. I don’t remember what I got, I think it was like. two ingredients. so yeah I started this run one fish and one tomato richer.

Absolutely allowed to use divine pulse; I’m definitely treating this as a learning experience and it’s way easier to learn what you did wrong if you can immediately go back and try it a different way that works.

I’m allowed to recruit all free units, so I’ve got the ashen wolves and anna (and sylvain, is it universally known that he joins for free if you picked another house but your byleth is female?); this unlocks other paralogs, but I’m still going to have to deal with hunting by daybreak, so using units outside my house is a handicap I have to think carefully about. Ashen wolves give you access to the abyss passes tho so that’s a pretty big bonus* (moved a tangent about how good Constance is to the end)

I’m playing online, so I am allowing myself to pick up the extra exp and items. It’s another case of if I’d thought about it sooner I probably would’ve said no but. I’m already here.

since it’s new game+ bcs idk the saint statues are all fixied, so yeah I guess I’m getting whatever boon I get from that

it took me a long time to get past the mock battle at the beginning; I don’t know exactly how many attempts bcs the first time I tried I was like “well I guess I’m not as much of a better player as I thought” and didn’t come back to it for a while. but I finally beat it a couple nights ago! it wasn’t like I wasn’t trying to strategize the first attempt, but I came away with the impression that it was intentionally more like a puzzle you had to solve with a pretty narrow solution than like the sprawling battles later. (Those still have an order to them, y’know, get to this advantageous spot, take out the miniboss, deal with the reinforcements, proceed to boss with caution, that kind of thing). I tried hiding the woods, but that by itself wasn’t enough. I’m really used to relying on my magic users, so not having any that were powerful yet really forced me to think differently.

In the end I had to send Claude (whose map position was fixed) into the woods to take a hit from Ashe, and then gang up on Ashe with Claude and Hilda without agroing Hubert and Ferdinand in that direction. Then I could get Byleth posted up in the lower forest, take out Ferdinand in one turn with Byleth and the magic girls (I swapped Lorenz for Lysithea lol, she’s really weak at the beginning but I wanted to get her exp as soon as possible), and then take out Hubert next turn with Byleth. I had tried to have Marianne tank a hit from Hubert because she has good res, but in maddening there really are some enemies you can’t just tank hits from.

The other major departure is that I normally go straight up to whoever’s got the right base and get the “wow they’re fighting both houses?” remark from whoever’s on the left, and just never deal with the two people hiding behind the barrier because they come out of it to fight, but this I had to absolutely avoid agroing both houses so go up left and carefully lure out Dorothea and Edelgard by letting Byleth take a hit from Dorothea while everyone else hid in the leftmost forest. It’s really fun seeing the thought that went into designing these maps once you can’t just knock down enemy units like bowling pins! This game really does a good job of teaching you how to think about this kind of strategy if you were like me and just not good at that to start with.

Anyway no map after that was nearly that hard, including the practice battle after that were you still don’t have divine pulse (you have to manage your whole squad at that point so I can see why they pulled back the level of the enemy units; also I just realized that teaches you that generic enemies are weaker than named ones, huh). Even with divine pulse I failed the next map once because of trying to juggle exp gains, but it was fun to start the map from scratch now knowing everything I had to do better.

* (the Constance tangent that I moved:) honestly I’ve used Constance a lot bcs I always like to get the relic for Yuri so I always train Constance up to not die during that...and she’s probably my sickest unit every time? She learns a barrier ability that gives her exp when she uses it, so between that and teaching her healing she can get a lot of non-kill exp and tends to level up really fast, and then you put her in the air and she gets all those crazy benefits...

So if I beat this route, like I said I’ll probably do a maddening azure moon, and NOT play on new game+ and NOT connect to the internet. A “no divine pulse” run is kind of the dream, but again, not worried about that right now. I think as long as I beat the side story I’ll still be allowed to recruit the ashen wolves, which I probably will do. but beating this file is still probably a long way off so 8)

So yeah...I think I went through a bit of a “3h fatigue” phase when I started playing the older games and was like “dang these are all really good,” but 3h isn’t just popular because it’s new or even just because the writing’s good, it’s a really great game. Blazing Blade and Path of Radiance are still my favorites, but 3h is a much closer contender than I thought, they’re basically all on the same level.

#catfishchat #fe talk #catfish plays fe

0 notes

thetoxicgamer · 2 years ago

Text

Snappi takes down all Danish IGLs to win his first big CS:GO event at the age of 32

ENCE made good on their repeated grand final appearances in Dallas by easily defeating another foreign team MOUZ 2-0. This was their first important tournament victory since 2008, according to their in-game commander Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer. The Danish IGL, born in 1990, joined ENCE in January 2021 and led the team to an impressive revival as the organization shifted away from an all-Finnish lineup to an international roster. After a poor finish at the BLAST Paris Major, where the team finished 12-14th, getting eliminated from the Legends Stage with a 1-3 scoreline, this was an incredibly impressive bounceback from the #11-rated team in the world, according to HLTV. Back during the Paris Major, Snappi attracted some attention after commenting on Danish in-game leaders, rating himself on top ahead of fellow veterans like karrigan and cadiaN and gla1ve: “I think I’m the best Danish IGL, I do honestly believe so. I think all five of us should probably believe that we are the best because we’re competitors and we’re facing each other. I’m doing it with a budget that is far less than all of them, I’m bringing tier 2 players into tier 1, and I do believe that I’m good. I have belief in myself and in the current team, I don’t care if it’s a mad thing to say but I do believe I’m currently the best.” “I would say the difference between him and me is that he has always had the best players in the world and he has done amazingly. I have so much respect for Karrigan’s achievements especially over the last year. For everyone and for me Karrigan has been the best IGL in the world over the past year and a half, but I also have to believe I am good enough to beat them.�� Well, Snappi proved his critics wrong in style in Dallas, defeating karrigan twice and gla1ve once along the way to victory, including a match for the ages against FaZe in the semis where the decider map went over 60 rounds. The grand final itself was a much more straightforward affair for ENCE, as MOUZ, who defeated Astralis and Heroic along the way to book their spot, couldn’t cope with the fragging output of SunPayus and Nertz, succumbing to a straight two-map defeat as the score read 16-9 on Mirage and 16-10 on Nuke. Still, this also marks a significant turnaround for the runners-up, who also have been unable to put up consistent performances in the circuit, showing the breadth and depth of talent in the professional Counter-Strike scene. Read the full article

0 notes

metalandmagi · 3 years ago

Text

Fall 2021 Anime Worth Watching!

It’s officially pumpkin season, which means it’s time once again to appreciate some of the options we have for new anime coming out. So here’s some first impressions of the things that have caught my eye recently. As usual, I’m putting (*) next to anything available on Crunchyroll.

I also have master lists for every season of 2021 so far, as well as 2020 and 2019 (because I don’t have a life).

New Shows!

Blue Period: The anime that perfectly encapsulates the experience of every teenager who considers the possibility of doing art for a living. The basic description would be that our standard bored high schooler, Yatora Yaguchi, discovers an unexpected spark of interest in art, and of course, ends up joining his school art club as is the typical anime fashion. But the tone doesn’t really fit with the slice of life high school club anime at all. It focuses a lot more on the reality of the art world and the amount of time, effort, study, and MONEY it takes to go to a fine arts university with no guarantee of being successful after you finish school (and also having to tell your Asian parents you want to go to an art school). The animation style itself isn’t my favorite, but it tries its best to communicate the feelings that certain colors, places, or times of day give to artists that inspire them to create.

If nothing else, just watch the first episode for the art teacher grandma, the best girl of the year who delivers the most hilarious jokes and genuine life/art advice I’ve seen all year.

Heike Monogatari (The Heike Story): A historical drama set during the Genpei war that follows a young musician named Biwa who has visions of the future. After the death of their father, Biwa befriends the heir to the powerful Taira clan, who also happens to have supernatural sight. Eventually, Biwa comes to live with the auspicious family and begins to predict their downfall. There’s a lot more going on here, but the less you know going in, the better. It’s the Science Saru version of Dororo with fewer demons and an equal amount of political and family drama. It’s not going to be for everyone, but if you like weird period pieces, this is the anime for you.

Komi Can’t Communicate (Komi-san wa, Comyushou desu): A comedy in which a cool, beautiful high school queen named Komi is revered by everyone around her. But even though she seems aloof and mysterious on the outside, the truth is, she actually has terrible social anxiety that keeps her from holding conversations with her classmates. The show might have a common schtick, but it’s also got its fair share of heart with one of the sweetest first episodes of the year. Plus, it has some pretty good visual gags that remind me of Kaguya-sama and Sakamoto Desu Ga? But honestly, I think the real reason Komi can’t communicate is because her mouth is so tiny.

King Ranking (Ousama Ranking): A fantasy series that focuses on the friendship between Prince Boji, a young, deaf boy who dreams of becoming his country’s greatest king, and Kage, a literal shadow that looks like a misshapen doughnut who comes from a clan of assassins. I didn’t expect this to be one of the most emotional anime of the season, and yet here I am, two episodes in and ready to cry over a little boy and his sentient figure eight. If you like characters who are clever and kind, but not very strong, you will be ready to adopt Boji in a heartbeat. Not to mention, the ranking system for the throne is very intriguing, and I want to see more of Kage’s shadow clan.

*Sakugan: A sci-fi/action piece that takes place far in the future, where humans live in underground colonies connected by a labyrinth filled with monsters. Our main characters are a father daughter pair, where nine year old genius Memempuu dreams of becoming a “marker,” one of the brave fighters who map the labyrinth and fight the kaiju. But no good dad would let his child do something so dangerous by herself, so instead of shooting down her dream, he goes along with her. It’s Deca-Dence meets Gurren Lagann. Even if we’ve seen this type of world building before, I love the pair’s dynamic, and there’s a lot of potential with this one.

Selection Project: An idol anime that follows nine girls across Japan as they compete in the seventh annual Selection Project reality competition show hoping to become the next American Idol Selection Project winner. Our main character Suzune Miyama has dreamed of debuting as an idol ever since she was a chronically ill child, so by all anime logic, she should be a shoe-in to make it through the challenge, right? I’ll admit, idol shows can be really hit and miss for me, especially when they involve so many characters, but this one hits in a bit more dramatic way, and the reality show set up is unique and fun. The anime goes out of its way to make it seem like Selection Project could be an actual thing that airs in Japan, so I’m here for it.

The Vampire Dies In No Time (Kyuuketsuki Sugu Shinu): A wacky comedy about an incredibly weak, video game loving vampire and a renowned vampire hunter who reluctantly team up to fight crime/solve mysteries. As fun as it is, I hope they branch out from the gimmick eventually, because 12 episodes of the same thing is going to get old fast. If you like zany, out of the box slapstick like Heaven’s Design Team or Osomatsu-san, this is definitely worth checking out. Not to mention the OP slaps hard.

*The Faraway Paladin (Saihate no Paladin): In our obligatory isekai of the season, we follow our main character Will as he grows up in a fantasy world being raised by his three parents...who all happen to be undead. Eventually, Will yearns to explore the mysteries of this world and his guardians while aiming to become a true paladin. All in all, this has been pretty light on the isekai elements so far and acts more like a straight up fantasy. And I have to appreciate that even though Will has been reincarnated as a child in a fantasy world with his adult memories, unlike the Mushoku Tensei protagonist, he isn’t a total creep to everyone. In fact, the first episode is incredibly sweet, and by the time it’s over, you feel like you understand the gist of this world and our three undead parents pretty well. I’m sure it will ramp up, but for now it’s a chill, solid fantasy world with an MC who might be a little bland for now but ultimately has room to grow.

Taishou Maiden Fairytale (Taishou Otome Otogibanashi): A romantic comedy period piece in which Tamahiko Shima, the youngest son of a powerful family, is forced into exile after an accident that kills his mother and cripples his right arm. While he’s brooding away in the mountains, he is surprised one night with the sudden appearance of Yuzuki Tachibana, a girl claiming to be his future bride. Together, the two live in isolation and must come to understand each other. There are a lot of ways a story like this could go wrong (especially since Yuzuki isn’t even 15 yet), but this was freaking adorable. The two are awkward and silly around each other, and it’s nice to have a couple where the guy is allowed to feel bad about the whole situation and also acknowledge how hard his fiancé works to make their future a good one. And even though Yuzuki is very sweet and conditioned to be a “perfect bride” she doesn’t fall for Tamahiko’s dramatic loner tendencies. The two work great together, and I’m excited to see where this goes.

And speaking of romantic comedies….

My Senpai Is Annoying (Senpai ga Uzai Kouhai no Hanashi): A workplace romantic comedy, in which short, feisty Igarashi Futuba is annoyed by her giant, enthusiastic senpai Takeda Harumi (who is actually a pretty decent guy). I love a good height difference, especially if it involves one character having to knock some sense into people about not being patronizing to those who are vertically challenged. It definitely runs in the same vein as Wotakoi and Aggretsuko. If you love slow burn romances with contrasting heights and personalities, you’ll probably like this too.

*Takt op. Destiny: This is an original action/adventure anime made by both MAPPA and Madhouse, so does it really matter what it's about? In the year 2047, monsters that hate music have taken over the world (or at least America), leaving a lackadaisical conductor, a mysterious girl, and their harried driver/handler on a road trip to New York, hoping to defeat the monsters and bring music back to the world along the way. And when I say conductor, I mean it in the sense that the mysterious girl is actually a magical girl who uses the conductor to unlock her power in order to beat up the monsters. Because of course she does. The animation is dynamic and perfectly oriented for an action show, but what stands out even more are the everyday scenes that show off the character relationships. I could watch these three bicker all day. We’ve all lived this road trip at some point.

*Platinum End: Honestly, the plot of this anime never really mattered to me. It’s based on a manga by Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ohba, so watching it was inevitable. But yes, it is basically Death Note with an emo protagonist, a waifu version of Ryuk, and an even more over the top sense of drama with questionable morality. The whole thing revolves around our main character Mirai, who is given questionable powers by an “angel” who rescued him as he was attempting suicide. Supposedly, the manga was amazing up until the ending (but hey, people said that about Death Note too, and I liked that ending). I’m intrigued, but I wish it could have been made by Madhouse because the animation is just...okay.

Visual Prison: Okay, this isn’t a serious recommendation, but I want to shout out Visual Prison for having a hilariously genius concept (having vampires masquerade as visual k bands) but actually being a ridiculously mediocre nightmare. It is pure fujo bait that feels like a fever dream from my teenage years, like Utapri’s goth, stupidly serious little brother. It crammed four performances (plus the opening credits song) into the first episode, three of which are within the first ten minutes, and I can’t tell you a single thing about any of the characters except that they’re all pretty singing vampires. It is impossible to feel bad while watching...whatever the hell this thing is, especially if alcohol is involved. Please experience this insanity with me.

Continuing Series!

*The Aquatope On White Sand (Shiroi Suna no Aquatope): If you missed it last season, this original anime from PA Works focuses on the friendship of two girls who are struggling to keep a small, run down aquarium in Okinawa afloat. The first half of the show was an amazing ride, and I was more baffled than excited when I learned that it was continuing for another cour. The first half had a perfect ending point, but the story does proceed in a logical way, so I hope it doesn’t drop the ball. The characters, visuals, and music are all top tier, so if you missed it during the summer, now is the time to grab your tissues and catch up. The first twelve episodes alone would make it one of the best shows of the year!

*86 (second cour): The sci-fi drama that ripped our hearts out and stomped on them earlier this year is back, and I am so ready! As one of the stand out shows of the spring, 86 is the story of the war driven Republic of San Magnolia, who is constantly fighting their neighboring country using “unpiloted” robots. But of course, these robots aren’t unpiloted at all, and we follow the rag-tag group of teenagers and their handler Lena as they fight for their lives and discover what it means to treat other people as fellow humans (yes the whole thing is definitely an allegory for racism and military control). It feels like something that would have come out in the YA dystopian craze (in a good, nostalgic sort of way). With some of the best music (composed by Hiroyuki Sawano), drama, and character development all year, I can’t recommend this enough if you’re in the mood to suffer.

*Let’s Make A Mug Too (season 2): An adorable slice of life about a girl who joins her school pottery club and ends up making a connection with her late mother through her love of pottery. It’s so sweet and chill with a really heartfelt message about finding inspiration and what it means to create something. Also the main character’s dad is a major dilf, so what more could you want?

But there is more.

The anime itself is only fourteen minutes per episode, but if you’re watching it on Crunchyroll, they include a special along with each episode of the four main voice actresses going to the town the anime was based on/takes place in, and doing all sorts of things for another 8-10 minutes (including showcasing some of the real life artwork that actual high school students have made that are in the anime). So not only do you get cute girls doing cute things in anime, you get cute 3-D girls doing cute things in real life. It’s 100% a tourism promotion, but I don’t care because the VAs are all so lovely and funny. So if you missed it earlier this year, please give it a chance if slice of life is your thing.

Honorable Mention

*Fena: Pirate Princess: A super fun adventure anime that mixes Western traditional pirate based fantasy with Japanese culture. The story revolves around Fena, a girl with a mysterious past who finds herself on a journey to uncover the secrets of her family’s history (yes, it’s basically pirate Anastasia). Since it started airing so late last season, I didn’t give it a chance until about half way through the show, and I’m glad I did, because I’m having a ton of fun with this. Fena and the crew are delightful and hilarious with just the right amount of drama. It will be almost done by the time this list comes out, but I couldn’t leave it out. The world building is great, and the villains look like One Piece characters, so what’s not to like?

Mieruko-chan would be a solid horror with its genuinely creepy designs for yokai, if it wasn’t constantly muddling its tone with incredibly distracting, unnecessary fanservice that ultimately ruins the vibe. And I’m sure The Night Beyond The Tricornered Window will satisfy anyone who wants the explicitly bl version of The Morose Mononokean that cuts out all the good parts of the manga. Also Demon Slayer is airing Mugen Train on Crunchyroll, so there’s that too.

Well, I hope this gives people some things to watch. It’s probably going to be the last time I make one of these, unless I change my mind come winter.

638 notes · View notes

ganymedesclock · 3 years ago

Text

Goron and Zora cultural values, pt.2 (the zora)

Okay things got long talking about the gorons so the zora are their own post.

So the Zora have a couple of claims to fame within TLoZ. They’re essentially freshwater shark people, which I’m going to be honest, is one of the more inspired Fantasy Race Concepts running around in traditional major franchises. They’re rather noted stonemasons considering the elaborate structure of the Domain itself in Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, Breath of the Wild, and also Twilight Princess’s lakebed temple. We seldom get to see them in action (disappointingly) but their primary weapons seem to be spears, which make sense similarly to the development of the bo staff and sickle in martial arts- if you’re a culture that survives mostly on seafood and you contrive a way better to catch fish than your own vast shark teeth, you’re probably going to develop fishing spears, and at the point the majority of people have a spear in their house and have been using it since they were very small, militarizing it is effortless.

They’re consistently Hyrule’s closest neighbors and often framed as one of their major allies in part due to managing aquifers with their stone architecture, and on two different occasions the princess has been engaged to Link only for it to end in her tragic death- even more brutally in Breath of the Wild when Mipha’s life expectancy was much longer than Link’s.

(obligatory doofenshmirtz “-which is weird that it’s happened twice”)

I was requested to do a take on the zora and other TLoZ races quite some time ago but I ended up deleting the ask unfulfilled because I was struggling to assemble a take from all this. I mean, what’s the picture here? People who are amphibious but much more maneuverable in water would develop technology for moving the water where they want it, and then this would enter a symbiotic relationship with that this mastery of water flow would make it very easy to cut and transport even very large pieces of stone, despite not being a “burly” race like the gorons. If anything, while the gorons are clearly far from primitive in their steel-forging and fine carving work, the zora seem to be the much more committed architects- which, again makes sense. The gorons can pride or challenge themselves on simple subtleties and natural work- they’ve got thousands of years and tremendous strength advantages to make something smooth and ornamented, so it’s more of a flex to flaunt natural stone in advantageous states.

Meanwhile, the Zora are basically shit out of luck if they can’t bend the environment to their advantage. They seem to have very few settlements- usually a single Domain- but said Domain is elaborately, vastly, and beautifully engineered. In Twilight Princess, Zoran waterways link the vast majority of the game map, which means that freezing the Domain and blocking those areas with boulders may have been an attempt by Zant to prevent the zora from coming to Hyrule’s aid during his initial invasion.

This speaks of a relative amount of entrenchment- great stone cities and vast waterways that can easily transport an impressive standing army. The zora are relatively important- in Ocarina of Time, more directly than with the gorons, Link has to signal that he comes with the blessing of Hyrule’s royal family to be permitted to enter the city at all.

Relatively...

...but not absolutely.

In Twilight Princess we are given a pretty shocking and egregious breakdown of trust between Hyrule and its closest neighbor. The Castle Town doctor- seemingly the only doctor of note within Hyrule’s capital city- dismisses and refuses to treat an extremely ill zora child. He suggests he doesn’t even know how to, and the people urgent for this child’s welfare thus have to make a- specifically unaccompanied by the royal guard- desperate cross-country trip to try and get to a doctor in Kakariko.

This would already be a major diplomatic incident potentially able to lead to open war between them without Link’s knowledge that this child is in fact Ralis, the crown prince of the entire Domain. And while the Zora are in a bad place at the time he’s missing, they get back on their feet quickly and send out search parties looking for him. Hyrule is pretty lucky Link’s altruistic Ordonian ass was there to bail them out of that.

In Breath of the Wild, there’s more obvious animosity between the zora and- in this case, Link himself, about the fate of a royal heir. Once again, Hyrule did a pretty big wrong- asking the Zora to stand with them, and asking for their crown princess specifically to pilot divine beast Vah Ruta. At the time, this is all dandy; Mipha’s pending betrothal to Link seems like it’s going fine, it’s a great honor, Hyrule is at peace and of course the zora with their military strength and vital position in the irrigation of Hyrule’s green fields are happy to defend their mutual agreement.

But Mipha is killed, and Hyrule collapses absolutely. There’s not really anybody left to blame at the top besides her former beau, who has even forgotten her in the interim, while being spared the ravages of aging himself. (It’s not a fair judgment of everything happening to Link, but this could easily be how the zora see it)

There are two things Sheik talks about when teaching Link the Serenade of Water in Ocarina of Time: love, and the passage of time. Both of these things seem very relevant to the Zora.

Breath of the Wild establishes the zora as long-lived, and while I don’t think it’s logical (or, really, narratively comfortable) to frame it as them staying children for an impossibly long period of time- development tends only as delayed as it needs to be, and most species tend in a hurry to get to their adult form for the sake of survival and reproduction- that longevity checks out. It gives them a strong connection to time, which is already sort of there; in the Oracles games, Nayru is connected with time, and Nayru’s archetypal element throughout the games is water, which is vital to the zora.

I talked a lot about Darmani on the goron post but the biggest thing that helped me consolidate a take for the zora is Mikau. Because for the zora, Mipha is a healer, but that didn’t really stand out to me. It’s sort of an easy narrative contrivance to mark her affection for Link as taking care of him.

Mikau... is a soon-to-be-father who dies trying to save his partner’s eggs from pirates. His signature tactic, that Link takes on... is generating an electrical barrier. Defensive magic- which ties in interestingly with Mipha’s healing magic. The zora’s close, but not secure position to Hyrule comes off interesting when these guys seem to have a lot of resources for comfortable entrenchment, but are not entrenched- they’re always just a little disposable, a little vulnerable, and this seems to drive a focus on defensive powers.

(the Zora’s vast weakness to shock-based weapons in Breath of the Wild also makes sense that Mikau’s electrical barrier power is actually a terrifyingly overpowered capability for a zora to have!)

#Legend of Zelda #Zora #readmore

149 notes · View notes

dreamerstreamer · 4 years ago

Text

Human GPS

Pairing: c!Technoblade x f!reader

Summary: [Dream SMP!AU] Technoblade really needs some books of mending, and you just happen to be the daughter of the village cleric.

Word Count: 3.8k

A/N: this a repost of the first ever story i posted when i first made my blog. this story takes place back when technoblade was still allied with pogtopia. i hope you like it as much as i did! <3

Technoblade blinked, his eyes squinting up at the clear, cerulean sky. It was about midday now, and the beating sun sat in the center of the sky, almost taunting him from where it hung.

If the sun is directly above me, he thought, then west must be… He frowned. Somewhere. Maybe.

He groaned and swung his legs off of Carl, the horse letting out a soft whinny as he hopped onto the ground. He had been travelling for what must have been close to an hour now, and he still hadn’t found a village. It was almost like the universe was trying to waste his time. All he wanted was to get his hands on some books of mending so he didn’t have to worry about any of his armour breaking, yet the world was sending him on a wild goose chase, anyways.

“Seriously,” he muttered, irritation gnawing away at his already dwindling patience, “how hard can it be to find just one cleric? It’s not like I’m asking to find a woodland mansion, or something.”

Letting out yet another long groan, Technoblade flipped open the pack he attached to Carl’s saddle. He pulled out a baked potato and bit in, allowing himself a few seconds of relief as he ate.

For a brief moment, he considered digging through his bag to look for a compass or—better yet—a map. But then he remembered that just prior to leaving, he had reminded himself that he was a human GPS and that “Technoblade never fails.”

He sighed. No compass, it is.

He took another bite of the potato in his hands, looking around at the terrain around him. There was a lush birch forest to his left and a barren desert on the opposite side. Just a little to his right was a river and—

Wait a second.

Technoblade froze, his jaw freezing halfway through chewing another bite of potato.

He recognized that river.

A wide grin split across his lips.

He totally knew where to find a village.

Doing his best not to choke, Technoblade stuffed the rest of the baked potato in his mouth and buckled his pack shut. With a grunt, he pulled himself back onto Carl, picking up the reins. “Like I said, Carl, who even needs a compass? I’ve got the map memorized, and my inner compass is perfectly calibrated.”

Carl looked back at him and let out an almost sarcastic sounding neigh that seemed to say, “Sure.”

Technoblade’s face rolled his eyes. He snapped the reins once, and Carl charged forward.

The human GPS never failed.

You let out an ecstatic cry as you pushed the last book in your hands onto the creaky bookshelf, stepping back to look at your work in pride. You’d been organizing the library for a little over half the day now, and you were almost finished. Each shelf was now in alphabetical order.

Dusting off your skirt, you took one last glance at the shelves before settling down at the table in the corner of the room, looking over the to-do list you had set out for yourself the night before. “Let’s see,” you hummed to yourself, “I already dusted all the tabletops, mopped the floor, and delivered that order to Mr. Hart. Now I can check ‘organize bookshelves’ off the list, too.”

You set the quill down on the table. “Meanwhile, dad’s out trading with Mrs. Lee and said he would be back soon.” You stared down at the page for a moment longer before sighing. A frown etched itself onto your features. You leaned your elbows on the oak tabletop as your gaze trailed out the church window and up at the cloudless sky.

You had lived in the village your whole life with your father, the village cleric. Everything was peaceful and you loved the familiar environment you resided in, but things had also become so… boring in the village. So bland, so dull. You can’t even remember the last time you did something fun. Sure, you were productive and made sure to help your father around his workspace the best you could, but you wanted more than this.

Please, you thought to yourself, squeezing your eyes shut in a silent prayer. Please, please, please let something new and exciting happen. At least just once in my life.

All of a sudden, you heard a distant rumbling.

You sat up straight, blinking awake from your reverie. What’s that sound?

The rumbling grew louder, and you could now recognize it as the galloping of a horse. Your thoughts were only confirmed by the loud whinny you heard right after the rumbles stopped.

You pushed your chair back, standing up from the table and walking over to the front window, crouching down to peek outside. You squinted, your eyes scanning around outside before they landed on an unfamiliar shape.

Your heart suddenly barrelled over in your chest.

Sitting atop a horse wearing diamond armour in the center of the village square was a stranger.

His back was facing you, but from what you could see of him, the first thing you noticed was the crimson robe hanging off his shoulders, cascading down his back like a scarlet waterfall. An axe was strapped to his back, tinted with a murky, violet hue. His hair was a vibrant shade of cherry blossom pink like nothing you had ever laid eyes on before, and on his head sat a golden crown encrusted with glittering gems. You wondered what his face looked like, curiosity bubbling in your chest.

Just then, he slid off his horse, landing on the ground with a small thump. He stood tall and proud, turning his head this way and that as he looked around at the houses around him, an air of regality surrounding him.

Then, he turned.

Your eyes only met for a fraction of a second before you immediately ducked down, hiding your figure from view in the window. The moment you were out of sight, you stilled, doing your best not to give yourself away.

He was handsome.

His face was calm and demure, reflecting his royal air almost perfectly, and his eyes, like his robe, were a piercing crimson red. They almost seemed to stare into your soul, laying every part of yourself bare for him to see.

He looked like a king in every sense of the word, and you just had to meet him.

Your heart was thrumming wildly in your chest as you struggled to regain your breath. You peeked over the windowsill carefully, glancing past the glass outside once more. The stranger had tied his horse to a post in the square and was walking around, glancing at the villagers here and there. Most of them seemed to be slightly wary of him—after all, it wasn’t everyday a king showed up at your doorstep. He seemed to be looking for something with the way he kept looking around him, his eyes sweeping over every inch of the village. Perhaps you could help him.

Slowly, you slid away from the windowsill and carefully clicked open the front door, stepping outside. The sun shone brilliantly on your face as you made your way toward the stranger. Once again, his back was turned to you, and you stopped a few feet behind him. Taking a deep breath, you mustered up what courage you had before speaking.

“Hello.”

The man turned at the sudden sound of your voice, his scarlet eyes piercing into yours. “Oh, hello.” His voice was deep, laced with a low rasp that sent a shiver down your spine.

Your offered him a warm smile. “Welcome to our humble village. I’m [Y/N].” You extended your hand, and he took it in a friendly handshake, smiling back.

“The name’s Technoblade.”

Your eyebrows quirked. “Technoblade,” you repeated. “That’s a unique name.”

“Thanks,” he said, jokingly adding, “I got it for my birthday.”

You giggled at that. He may look regal and intimidating, but right off the bat, it seemed that his personality was far from it. “You know what they say, a bad joke is always the best way to leave a good first impression.”

He frowned, feigning sadness. “Oh, c’mon, it wasn’t that bad.”

Your lips twitched. “Well, I laughed at it, so I’ll give you that.” His face lit up once more, and you felt your stomach churn with warmth. “Well, what brings you here?”

He gestured to the pack he had clipped to his belt. “Just looking to do a few trades, really.”

You looked at him in confusion. “A king? Trading with commoners like us?”

He blinked for a moment. “Ah, about that, I’m not really a king, per se.” He plucked his crown from off his head, tossing it casually in his hands. “The crown and robes are more for… aesthetic purposes, to say the least. I don’t really rule over my own country or anything.

Your tilted your head at him. “Where do you come from, then? I can only imagine you travelled for a while to get here.”

He shrugged. “It was kind of far, but it wasn’t a big deal, really. I never got lost.”

You raised your eyebrows at him. “Never?” you said.

“Never,” he confirmed. His grinned smugly, your heart reeling at the sight. “I’m a human GPS, if you will.”

You stifled a laugh but couldn’t hide your smile. What a dork. “Totally.”

His grin only widened. “Anyways, I’m from this place called Pogtopia.” You must have made a face at his words, because he laughed at you and god, even his laugh was pretty. “Yeah, it’s kind of a funny name, isn’t it? Well, I didn’t come up with it. My friends Tommy and Wilbur did.”

“They must be…” You looked for a good word. “…interesting people.”

He laughed. “It’s okay—you’re allowed to say they have bad taste in names.”

You giggled, your cheeks flushing in slight embarrassment. “Okay, yeah, their taste is pretty poor.” You glanced at him. “Are they the kings of your country then, since they named it?”

“Kind of. I guess you could call them kings, but they’re more like self-instated presidents, even though that kind of defeats the whole purpose of having a president.” You nodded, following along in agreement. “They’re trying to win back some land they were exiled from a while back called L’Manberg, although it was recently renamed Manberg, but there’s also Dream and his SMP, and—” He sighed, running a hand through his rosy locks. “It’s complicated. Basically, we’re sort of in the middle of this war, and I just kind of got roped into it.”

Your eyes widened in alarm. “A war?! Surely we wouldn’t get involved, right?” Your village, like many others, was a pacifist group of people, having no source of defense or battle skills to protect yourselves with. If this supposed war came all the way to your little village, all of you would surely perish.

Technoblade raised his arms in front of him, quickly shaking his head. “Oh, definitely not. You’ve got nothing to worry about, I swear.”

You pressed a hand to your chest as you let out a breath of relief. “Oh, thank goodness.” Technoblade smiled at you from the corner of your eye, amusement lacing his lips. You suddenly straightened, another thought popping into your head. “What about you, then? Aren’t you worried?”

He laughed again, though it sounded more like a cackle. “Me? Worried? Nahhh.” He swung his axe off his back, being careful to point it away from you. “I may not look like it, but I’m actually one of the most feared warriors in the land. Tommy and Wilbur basically begged me to join their side so I can help them win.” He gestured to himself. “You don’t have to believe me, but I think it’s pretty clear to see I’m pretty much a god at PVP.”

You hummed, shaking your head. “No, I believe you. You do look like you could seriously teach someone a thing or two with that axe, but I really don’t think I need to feed your ego anymore.” You smiled bemusedly. “It already seems to be quite large on its own.”

His grin dropped. “Wait, please, feed my ego, I thrive off complime—”

A giggle escaped your mouth as you waved your hand at him. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding!” Your expression grew a bit more serious. “But honestly, you’re not scared? Even a little?”

Technoblade shook his head. “Nope. A war is just a lot of fights lined up one after the other, and I’m great at winning fights. Heck, I could probably wipe out the other side in a heartbeat with what I’ve got in my arsenal. Tommy and Wilbur might just send me out by myself to do just that.”

“They would?” you said in disbelief. “Aren’t they worried for you, either?”

He snorted. “They were the ones who wanted me here to help them win, so they definitely aren’t worried.”

Your eyebrows furrowed. Well, that was no good—no good at all. Wasn’t a single person concerned for this man’s safety, not even just one? No matter how powerful he may be, this was a war you two were talking about, and wars don’t always go according to plan.

Suddenly, it hit you.

“I see,” you murmured. You raised your chin, resolve filling your veins. “Then I’ll worry for you.”

Technoblade stared at you for a long moment, stunned into silence. Panicking, you began to ramble. “You and your friends may have overwhelming confidence in you and your abilities,” you said, “but it’s still important that you recognize that sometimes things don’t go according to plan. That’s why you should worry, and if you won’t, then I’ll do it in your stead.”

When he still didn’t say anything after yet another moment, you felt embarrassment rise up in you. “I’m sorry, we just met and that was totally uncalled for of m—”

“No, no, really,” he abruptly said, shaking his head. “It’s all good. Seriously.” There was a slight pause. Then, he softly added, “Thank you. I appreciate your concern.”

His lips curled to form a smile, but this one was different from the ones he gave you before. Those ones were proud and teasing, full of mirth and some level of arrogance. But this one was softer, kinder. More genuine and real.

You liked this one more.

Still feeling slightly embarrassed from having just rambled about caring about a near stranger to his face, you quickly shifted gears. “W-Well, I should probably ask what exactly you wanted to trade for,” you said as your cheeks flushed pink. You lowered your gaze to the ground, trying to avert your eyes from his. “I can probably help you find whatever it is you need.”

Technoblade hummed. “I have a bunch of stuff with me that I can use to trade, but I’m looking for a cleric to get some mending books from.”

Your head shot up in recognition. “A cleric, you say?” Your lips curled into a small grin when he nodded. “I know just where to find him. Wait here for a minute, okay?”

As soon as he nodded his head once more, you had already taken off, bounding down the grassy path with your skirt trailing behind you. Technoblade’s gaze followed you as you rushed down the path, a pleasant warmth bubbling in the pit of stomach and he watched you run off.

Usually whenever he came to a village, the people he met were wary of him and hardly ever spoke more than the bare minimum to him. Most of them were intimidated by his appearance, others thrown off by his cockiness. And yet here you were, treating him like a friend when so many before you had done the exact opposite. You were kind, compassionate, and you saw more than just his arrogant exterior. You genuinely cared for the person he was underneath the crown and the robes. Not to mention, you were quite the sight for sore eyes.

Warmth blossomed in his chest and something fluttered in his stomach.

He was glad he came to this village.

To say your father was more than pleased to trade some books of mending for the stacks upon stacks of emeralds Technoblade had was an understatement.

“I thought you said you weren’t a king,” you said to him, your eyes nearly bulging out of your head when you saw him open his pack.

“I’m not,” Technoblade said, twirling an emerald between his fingers. “I just happen to be very wealthy.”

You shook your head at him, a smile gracing your lips. “You’re a maniac.”

He shot you a smug look. “Oh, don’t I know it.”

After he had traded for some mending books with your father, he had asked you if your village had a fletcher.

“Oh, I made a delivery to Mr. Hart earlier today,” you said. “Here, follow me.”

The trek to the other side of the village was short enough, and you were content to wait on the sides while Technoblade made some negotiations. Just then, Mrs. Lee spotted you and strode up to you.

“Good afternoon, [Y/N],” she greeted, her lips tilting into a familiar gentle smile.

“Hello, Mrs. Lee!” you chirped happily, turning to face her. “Thank you for the pumpkins, earlier today! I’ll be sure to give you some of the pumpkin pie I bake tomorrow.”

“Why, there’s no need for you to do that, dear.” She leaned close to your ear to whisper, “You know you’re my favourite of the youngins here.”

You blushed. “You know that’s not true.”

She held a finger to her lips. “It’s our little secret, alright?” She looked over your shoulder at Technoblade, who was still debating with Mr. Hart. “Looks like you’ve become acquainted with our visitor, haven’t you, dear?”

Your blush deepened. “Y-Yes! I have. His name is Technoblade and he comes from a country called Pogtopia. He traded for some books with my father just now.”

Mrs. Lee wrinkled her nose. “Weird name, the both of them, but never mind that.” She smirked at you, glancing just behind you. “He’s quite the looker, isn’t he?”

Your face exploded like a bright red tomato. “I-I, um, he’s. Um.” You took a deep breath and fanned your face, lowering your voice. “He’s handsome.”

Her smirk only grew larger. “I hope the two of you become even more acquainted then,” she said cryptically, patting your shoulder. “I’ll be on my way now, but do let me know how it goes, okay?”

You nodded dutifully, too embarrassed to say anything else. Mrs. Lee turned away and continued her way down the grassy path, smiling to herself.

If only you had seen the way he had looked at you.

Hours had passed since Technoblade had first arrived in the village, and the sun was just beginning to set. The two of you had visited just about every working person in the village, chatting away as Technoblade traded for whatever he needed from each person you two saw.

The two of you learned a lot about each other in the time you spent together. You learned that Technoblade wasn’t a huge fan of government and much preferred anarchy. He learned that you longed for something much more than your normal life in the village, but you had yet to discover what it was you wanted to do. You learned that he owned a dog named Floof. He learned the location of your favourite spot in the village. By the end of the day, it felt like you two had known each other for ages.

You secretly hoped that he would stay, but you knew that he couldn’t. The village wasn’t his home, after all.

You stood nearby as Technoblade strapped his pack back onto Carl’s saddle, chewing the inside of your lip. He climbed onto Carl, securing his axe on his back and picking up the reins in his hands. “Well, [Y/N],” he said, a hint of disappointment tinging his voice, “it looks like this is goodbye.”

“I guess so,” you murmured sadly, casting your gaze down at your feet. You had only known him for so long, but an overwhelming sense of loss filled you knowing that Technoblade was leaving and may very well never return. He was funny with his dry, dorky sense of humour and charming with his sharp grins and deep voice.

You weren’t sure you were quite ready to let go just yet.

“Um,” you spoke up, your voice cracking a little, “will you…” You peeked up at him, nervously biting the inside of your cheek as you fiddled with your fingers. “Will you ever come back?”

Something in Technoblade’s chest seized at the shy look on your face, your cheeks rosy and your gaze darting back and forth between his eyes and the ground. While he had originally only come in search of this village to trade with a cleric, he supposed he might always need more mending books in the future. Not to mention, he would also get to see you.

He smiled, letting out a soft laugh. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll be back, so wait up for me, yeah?”

Your eyes lit up and an elated grin spread across your face. “I-I will!”

He chuckled at your giddiness, his own heart beating wildly against his rib cage. “Good.”

Sharing one last look with you, he snapped his reins and held on tight as Carl dashed forward, his gaze trailing behind him as he watched you wave your arms frantically at him. He couldn’t help but crack a smile at your enthusiasm, raising his arm to wave back at you himself. He kept waving until he could no longer see you, and only then did he face forward to find his way home.

The journey back was significantly shorter than the trip to the village, and before he knew it, he was tying Carl to his usual fence post. He was a human GPS, after all. How else would he have found the village—and you—with so much ease?

He tilted his head up, looking up at the rising moon in the east. Now he knew that the village (and you, his heart helpfully supplied once more) lay to the west, just beyond the birch forest, desert, and river. Above him, he could make out the shapes of a handful of constellations, the stars twinkling and winking down at him from space. He wondered if you were looking up at the same starry sky as him. He wondered if your stomach was full of butterflies, too.

“So,” he mused to himself aloud, his heart thump-thump-thumping in his chest, “[Y/N], huh?”

He was definitely going back.

1K notes · View notes