#i'll find a better tag for the whole squad lol

[reds-skull]

CW FLASHING IN THE VIDEO (3rd from the bottom)

This is it. 3 months in the works, the comic (and video) are finally done.

A little over a year ago, I uploaded the first work in Revenant AU, Ghost's origin comic. I never thought I'd write a whole series for this, but I'm so glad I did. I got a whole new hobby out of it, haha.

I already began working on part 2, but this for me marks the start of it. I'm really excited to get back into this world!

Under the cut there are some comments on the comic I thought some people might be interested in (don't wanna make this post longer than it already is lol). I will upload the frames from the video separately, with comments on it there.

Bottom line is, thank you for letting me just go wild with this :)

Okay, I'm mostly gonna talk about the part where Fate shows Makarov the 141+Farah. Makarov doesn't see the Fate of people as literal images, he often has to interpret odd symbolism in the flashes he gets from the Weave of Fate.

I decided to go for a style I saw in a collection of calling cards in MW3, mainly from this one:

You can really see it in the faces and pitch-black cel shading.

I'll be going in order of appearance, starting with Farah.

Obviously, each of the "flashes" shows the Reaping of each person, Farah being crushed under rubble. Behind her is a helo of green gas, which symbolizes the Russian experimental gas. The motifs around her are more interesting imo - they're taken from the Urzik flag (and yeah apparently it's "Urzik" and not "Urzikstani"... according to the wiki at least). Wings, plants (feels to me like a pomegranate and some sort of crop, but I couldn't find what it is specifically), and a moon, upside down.

I'm skipping ahead a bit, but I've had the idea to make a drawing of Gaz in the Hanged Man pose since I started the AU basically. I tried sketching it once, and it went bad so I gave up lol. But I decided to come back to that here, and add some sort of tarot connection to all of them. I know practically nothing about tarot, googled the meanings of each, they fit well enough, I called it a day lol.

So Farah is the Moon, upside down.

Price is next, showing him taking control of the brain of someone. I didn't use the flag of the UK for the 141 (it'd be kinda boring...), instead I took the Taskforce 141 logo, and broke it down to different elements.

I took the laurels for Price, both framing his illustration and sitting above his head like a crown. I decided he will be the Emperor.

Next up is Gaz, the Hanged Man of course. Gaz gets both the wings and the stars (I changed mine to 4-pointed because... I like them better). Pretty clear why, both symbols relate to the sky. The illustrations kinda follow a rough day cycle, if that makes sense. Farah being night, with the moon. Price with his golden and purple color palette, twilight. Gaz being sunrise, and Ghost and Soap, day. This is why Gaz has a sun behind him.

Ghost was fun because he's the only inhuman one out of the group. I'll let you think what that implies, that even in Fate's Weave, Ghost is an outlier... Ghost gets the skull, and the card "Death". That one was easy, but what I did add is blood flowing down the skulls, like tear tracks...

Soap, the problem child, gave me the most issues as always. For once, it wasn't his fucking face, it was the flames behind him, and overall contrast and readability issues. Soap's illustration is probably packed with the most "hidden" details, though they're obvious if you've read the fic and Konchar's side story. The headless man behind Soap is Konchar himself, holding 4 chains with dog tags on them. The 4 soldiers from Soap's squad, who he killed before Soap was Reaped. Soap's pose is from the moment he came to his senses, after getting shot in the head and destroying a large part of Verdansk. He has 4 swords, pointing at him and downwards, so his card is 4 of Swords, upside down.

Between Soap and Ghost is a circle and a triangle. I'll explain that in the post concerning the video, since that's where I got that from.

If you read all of this, thank you so much! There will be another post for you to read in a moment lol

[unohanadaydreams]

five comfort characters, five tags

I was tagged by @srtruth here and @bleachbleachbleach here. (Linked so you can go read their answers!!!)

Thank you both! I'm historically bad at remembering to do these, so I appreciate you even tagging me lol.

To me, a comfort character is one I can fall back on when I want to write or read or see something familiar and do so consistently with that character. What Would Blorbo Do? I know exactly what they'd do and so it's easy to include them in things I write. In general, Blorbo Soup for the Soul, I guess lmao.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi. My favorite blorbo. His terrarium is costly, expansive, and in view at all times. He's so theatrical & contradictory, yet at his core there's this simplicity of what he wants to be and how he views himself. And I just don't get tired of it! Definitely a beetle undergoing reconstructive surgery to better fit it's aesthetics of evolution and choosing the life of a caterpillar instead. Dug his way out of the dirt and said 'that's not who I am, actually, I'll never be that again.'

Kenpachi Zaraki. Probably the oldest blorbo of this list, tbh. A verified onion. Huge angst potential, let alone the angst fulfilled in canon. He's like if Icarus made it and laughed the whole way there, even as the Sun started to do irreparable damage to his foresight and burned everyone who made it with him to ash. He's like if the Minotaur knew the way out the whole time but continued to wander because he was so, so scared to find out the sun and stars and the sea breeze wouldn't be everything he dreamed they'd be and if they were, that they'd disappear just as he was starting to realize how wonderful it all felt.

Retsu Unohana. Second oldest blorbo after Zaraki. I just really love that you can FEEL how much she wants to live as simply as Zaraki, but she genuinely can't. She's dedicated herself towards too much. She can't ever go back. She slammed that fridge door on herself with zero hesitation. Queen of being a two-faced bitch telling herself she's one missed meditation away from going back to hunting down worthwhile fights in the middle of nowhere, but really she's just going to make the 4th division a nightmare hospital visit for anyone who pisses her off too much that day.

Giselle Gewelle. One of the newest blorbos! I love that she's a simple character with such complicated baggage. What does she want? To live! How does she want to live? With her bffs! How is she going to do that? By turning everyone into hyper-dependent undead puppets who are forced into a symbiotic relationship with her the moment they cease to live, forced to feel the same pain of stagnation as her, forced to realize that their life was a gift and her being content to let them live was a gift, that she can bleed so easily and that she didn't for so long was a Gift. You know! Just girly things. <3

A tie between Akon & Nanao Ise. Newer blorbos, for sure. Fellow workaholics who can stay sane under insane conditions & highly unreasonable employers. The hyper competent duo whose squads are being held up by their ability to maintain a straight face toward their captains when most would quit in less than a week. Definitely average less than 10 days of PTO used a year. Not just blorbos, but comrades.

Tagging with peace and love and no pressure: @wing-ed-thing @stupid-sloot-headcanons @tuliharja @a-libra-writes @j-u-u-z-o

[onlybloodandwhiskey]

Bug-Out: Jake and Jet (The Coven)

Two years later, they come back with some vampires and something that they're not even sure is technically whump at this point! Anyway, I have feelings for my own silly little ocs!

TW: Being Hunted, Flashbacks, overuse of superpowers, nosebleeds, siezures. Referances to past lab whump and medications.

Word Count: 3038

--

Jake was formally declaring that he hated their bug-out plan.

In a more rational mind, he could acknowledge that it made sense. There were 10 of them, and the words 'group of 10' and 'travelling unseen' didn't even belong in the same sentence, let alone in their plans to not get dragged back to the hell they'd sacrificed so much to run from.

It made sense to split up, to set a location as far in advance as they could when they settled in a new area, plot out the different routes and learn them until they could recall them even in the pitch dark when terror was starting to crawl around the sides of their minds. To split into small groups, to each grab their bags and maybe find the time to grab a hand in a hurried goodbye before they had to run.

He wondered sometimes, what it would be like if someone didn't show up at their next rendezvous, for the last time they ever saw each other to have been in a crush of panic, a stolen second of skin on skin before they scattered into the winds. He got the impression it would tear him apart.

So yes, Jake knew the plan made sense.

That didn't mean he had to like it.

Right now, huddled in a crate with Jet, pressed to each other as much as they were pressed to the rough wooden sides of the crate, the two backpacks that contained the entirety of both of their worldly possession shoved into one corner, and hunters thudding around in the werehouse they'd been cornered in, Jake was pretty sure he fucking hated it.

Jet was his bug-out partner. They set the pairs based on how they got along, complimentary power sets, and Jake was honestly willing to say that they accounted vibes into it - hence why Cole and Liling weren’t allowed anywhere near each other for the bug-out. Jet was a few months older than him, when they’d bothered to compare actual ages instead of how long they'd been in hell for, and their power sets worked pretty well.

Jake was all-loud; soundwaves bending to his - usually explosive - will, as well as the base set of mildly enhanced speed and strength that they all seemed to have picked up. Jake was actually one of the fastest, his speed factor ramped up just a little more.

For all they were all the same, the differences between them all were interesting.

Jet was almost his polar opposite. They settled at average on the speed score, but they were stronger than most people gave them credit for, especially given their slight stature. Nico, the only one he would bet for sure was stronger, was at least 7 inches taller and almost twice as broad. But their true power, the one that made them Jet, was the cool invisibility that rippled from their hands, that felt like dipping into a pond on a summer's day.

Currently, that invisibility was covering them, with one of their hands pressed to the crate to make it vanish, and the other holding Jake like a vice, the quicksilver invisibility coating him like a second skin. He was thankful for it as the torch beams of the hunters crept closer and closer with each thudding footstep.

He knew they were out of sight, but as the footsteps grew closer, the two men close enough now for Jake to count their heartbeats, rabbit-quick in the otherwise quiet night, the wood of the crate started to melt into silvered bars, shimming silver in the moonlight.

The funny thing about anxiety is how easy it can be to recognise it when you look back, but Jake's mind was curled around with fear the moment he looked at the crate and saw metal.

The moment he saw the bars made to keep them in, to burn them if they got close enough to even think about touching them, let alone ripping them from the windows to vanish into the nights.

The moment he looked at the torchlight on liquid-silver invisibility, and saw a place that had once been home. It would be so easy to go back. All he would have to do is let go of Jet and step into the torchlight, and then he would be back in a place where he didn't have to run - all he had to do was be good, and take his pills every morning. To let the doctors do their work and not complain, to let himself be strapped down and restrained so they could poke and prod at him. To show his power whenever they asked.

To know respect as he owed to those who had made him greater than he could have been alone.

…To watch as his family were put through the same, to watch as they curled smaller away from the hurt, retreated into the place in their minds where they were good and obedient so that it only hurt sometimes.

No.

Never again.

The hand clamped around Jake's was shaking when he managed to claw his way out of the mind-numbing fear, the desperate urge for this constant cat and mouse game - where they were always the mouse - to end. The heartbeats of the hunters were practically next to them. Pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with him, Jet was trembling like a leaf.

Their nose was bleeding, when he looked.

A slow trickle of deep red that had already run down their face and started to drip off of their chin, their chest a sticky mess of their own blood. He was pretty sure he could only hear them breathing because of whatever enhancements had happened to their senses, but it was enough that he knew they were forcing each and every breath, probably through their teeth.

They were at their limit. Probably had hit it a few moments ago, while Jake was spiralling. They'd been holding their power for too long, had hit the wall that they all had somewhere in them. Jake knew how it felt to run into a place where keeping your power up burned like fire; Jet must have been in agony. Their invisibility wasn’t even faltering, even as they shook. It was frankly a little impressive, if Jake put aside his worry for them for a moment, how strong their control was through the pain.

Jake was already holding their hand, and so he rubbed soothing circles against their knuckle with his thumb. He wished he could tell them to stop, to breathe, but if they did they were both screwed. As much as he hated it, Jet couldn’t stop, and they knew it too.

The hunter’s heartbeats were still close enough that Jake could hear the blood pounding through their veins, smell the fear creeping off of them.

Ha. Scared of them, of what they had been told they were capable of, of what they might do to them, as though they weren’t currently hunting them down like animals, like foxes sent scattering from the dogs and horses. Like rodents hiding in burrows before the dogs were sent down where men couldn’t reach.

Jake ought to give them something to really be afraid of.

He wouldn’t though, because Jet was scared and in pain next to him, and when you chopped off one head, three more grew in its place. Killing these hunters would just bring more down on their heads. He had more sense than that, even when filled with righteous rage, to bring that down on them when Jet was already overtaxed with keeping them both safe, and they had miles to go once the hunters left and they could get out of this godforsaken box.

If it were just him, he’d rip through them and be done with it.

…Maybe that was another reason Calle had insisted on the buddy system for when they ran. He knew that when cornered and alone, having someone there with them would calm the urge to take a more permanent solution to the problem.

Next to him, Jet’s breath came out louder than he was sure they had meant it to, a half-choked off whimper of pain that they had clearly tried to keep down in their chest. Jake felt like his heart was going to break, shattered into a million pieces, but he knew there was nothing he could do to help, not right now.

Outside the crate, the hunters stilled, as though they had heard. The torchlight swung back in their direction.

Jake’s heart leaped up somewhere into his throat, and seemed to be there to stay, thudding like the wings of a caged butterfly. Jet was biting down hard on their lip, but he knew that wouldn’t be enough. They all knew that once the first sound slipped out, the rest were near impossible to smother down into silence.

Slowly, carefully, so that the wood around them wouldn’t creak and give them away for real, he pulled Jet into his lap with his free hand, situating them in his legs, their back to his chest. He was careful not to jerk them, to break their touch with both the crate and with him that would cause the invisibility to fail and really fuck them over, with Jet out of commision and him half-scared out of his wits.

He wrapped his free hand around Jet’s jaw, covering their mouth and holding their head back, leaning them into him. God, they were shaking so hard, constant tremors wracking their slight frame. He forgot how small they really were sometimes - their strength and their nature enough that their stature was almost ignored - but now, tucked into his chest, head under his chin as he held them, he was more aware than ever of how small they were next to him.

Their nose was still bleeding. Sticky blood in a steady pour found his hand instead of its original path, and so instead it tracked its way down his hand first, cloying and wet as it slowly dripped down his wrists. It was moving faster than he might have liked, having evolved from a trickle into a near-cascade.

They’d need to feed once they were safe. He wasn’t sure if that would be all that possible.

They felt warm under his hands. That probably should have been the first sign that something was wrong. All of them ran cold, a side effect of what had been done to them, and Jet especially. Their invisibility was cool and cold, and they followed suit.

Now their gun-metal grey hair was stuck to their face, long strands plastered to their skin with sweat, and Jake didn’t know what to do.

He couldn’t say how long the pair of them sat there for, Jet tucked into him, until the footsteps and heartbeats retreated, and the rumble of a car engine drew off into the distance. In the end, he supposed it didn’t really matter. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. It had felt like years.

They’d gotten through it. Now they just had to get to the next place that they’d be calling home.

First, they had to get out of the crate.

“Jet.” He whispered as soon as he dared. He was sure they were gone, but better safe than captured. “Jet, you can drop the invisibility. We’re okay.” He let go of their mouth, shook the blood off of his hand.

Jet stayed silent. They didn’t drop their invisibility. Their hand around his was like a vice.

“Jet.” Jake said, louder this time. He put his free hand onto their shoulder, shook them slightly. Maybe they were somewhere in their head that wasn’t quite here, somewhere where they could hold their power without falling apart. Maybe that was why they weren’t dropping it, because they couldn’t tell they were safe-ish.

In return, Jet’s head lolled back onto his chest, and he could see their eyes rolled way into the back of their skull. For a moment, he thought they were unconscious, that had been too much for them to handle, before he felt them twitching against him, muscles spasming with no rhyme or reason.

“Jet.” He said, voice clear as he moved, wrapping an arm around them and dragging them out of the crate into the cool night air, laying them on their back. As their hand disconnected with the wood it shimmered back into being, but both them and him stayed under the wraps of their power. “Jet, you’re seizing. You need to drop the invisibility, now.” He wasn’t really sure if they could hear him, let alone actually make the conscious choice to drop their power, but it was worth a shot. He had to say something, couldn’t just sit there whether they could hear him or not.

In the back of his head, he was counting, trying to keep a timer. He knew that was what you were supposed to do when someone normal had a seizure, but he had no idea if that applied to something like them. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about it anyway.

A hospital couldn’t treat them, and going to one was a surefire way to drag the hunters back down onto them. All Jake could do was sit there and count, and hope Jet came back to him soon.

Eventually, the twitching stopped, after what Jake would probably consider several of the most terrifying moments of his life, but Jet didn’t really seem to come back to themself. Their eyes were still back in their head, half-open and showing just the whites.

Their power was still up.

“Jet.” He said, trying to see if they understood enough in that moment that they could do it of their own violation. “Jet, can you hear me?” He asked, and got a broken-sounding whimper in return, voice cracked and raw sounding. “We’re safe. You’ve gotta drop your power.” He said.

Jet flexed one of their hands slightly, the one still clamped onto him, and he felt the quicksilver coating on his skin vanish in an instant, night air hitting his skin.

“Now you’ve just gotta drop it on yourself.” He said, reaching down to cup one of their cheeks, where the moonlight shimmered against their skin, fever-warm despite the cool brush of their power. “Jet, love, please" He half-begged them, his own voice cracking as he looked down at them.

They froze for a moment, and for a horrifying moment Jake thought they were going to slip back into another seizure. Then, inch by inch, their power slipped back into their hands and flickered out altogether, and Jake felt all the tension slip out of him on one simple breath, right before the tears followed suit, unable to hold them back now that he knew they were going to be okay.

Thank whatever god might have been looking down on them. Jake couldn’t lose his sibling, love, family, coven - whatever it was that they all were to each other after so many years - like this.

“Jake?” A voice asked, and a warm hand pressed against his face, a thumb swiping cold tears off of his cheek. “Why’re you crying?” Jet’s voice was muffled, half-slurred from clear exhaustion and over-exertion. Groggy, like they’d woken up from a nap that had stretched for far too long.

“Because of you, idiot.” He answered, his voice more wet sounding than he might have liked it to be. “You scared me.” He said, forgetting - for a moment - of the danger they were in just by being out, and flopping to lie next to them, taking their hand in his. “You scared me.” He repeated, no better words to describe the bone deep terror he’d felt.

“ ‘M sorry.” They said, although Jake would be damned if they actually remembered half of what they were trying to apologise for, with the state they were in. “My head hurts.” They told him, voice plaintive like a child, as though the pain had shocked them back to how they had all been before they were made monsters.

“I know.” He told them, both unsurprised at that face and fully convinced that Jet had just made the understatement of the century. With that bad an overuse of their power, the stress of the hunt, and the need to feed that the bloodloss had doubtlessly brought on, there was no way it was just a headache. “We need to get out of here. Think you can walk?” He asked, giving them the option, but knowing that they wouldn’t be able to, not with the exhaustion that was surely like lead in their bones.

Jake remembered a time when their powers were pushed like this on a regular basis. He remembered how it felt. Jet were going to sleep like a log the moment they got to the next safe-house

Jet made a token effort of trying to sit up, only to collapse back onto the ground like a sack of bricks, undignified and inelegant in every way. They whined in the back of their throat, frustration clear in their grey eyes.

“I got you.” Jake said, reaching back into the crate for their bags, slinging one over each shoulder. “Don’t worry, J. I’ve got you.” He added, scooping them up bridal style, tucking them into his arms. They squirmed a little in his arms, adjusting their position before letting their head slump down on his shoulders. It was a little much, with both bags and Jet in his arms, but what was the point of supernaturally enhanced strength if not to use it?

Once he was sure Jet wasn’t going anywhere, he grinned, as though it were any other day. As though he hadn’t been crying, as though Jet were fine, as though they weren’t being hunted.

“Close your eyes.” He muttered to Jet, before he rolled his shoulders once and ran, shaggy hair whipping in the breeze as the streetlamps of a darkened world blurred into one long line of light.

He’d get them home safe. He always would. That was why the bug-out plan worked, in the end; because they would never leave each other behind.