#if i fucking spoke to my parents i'd be messaging to be like ''were y'all in [location] last night??''

[ourceliumnetwork]

i'm gonna need my parents to stop being so fucking generic looking because i cannot be having a moment like this just because some dude in a random internet picture looks JUST like my dad. holyfuck.

[tobiasdrake]

I know what it looks like but it's not what you think. I'm just trying to harass your top scientist into revealing company secrets. It's cool.

This would be the funniest possible time for Huesca to die. We've done Locked Room Quartet. We've done Open Air Locked Room. Are you ready for the Most Locked-est Room Ever Locked!?

The same underlings who tried to solve the last four murders? Sure, those guys are credible.

What is Yomi implying here? That Makoto came down here and knocked out two guards, then left in a car to go pick me up, and then came back down to capitalize on the chaos created by a fake letter he'd sent to Yomi earlier?

Because that... is alarmingly plausible and answers my question as to why that letter would even exist.

Looks like we pushed too hard. Makoto's being placed under arrest.

...so. Like. Am I cool to hang out, Yomi? You're just taking him, right? It's fine for me to still be here?

YUMA NO

YOU FOOL

We almost got away with it. Yomi was so laser-focused that he was legit going to take Makoto and leave us here. Your masterful disguise of freezing up and being so useless that you become mistakable for a floor lamp was working until you spoke up!

Floor lamp. Like I said. Pay us no mind and have a wonderful day. Oh, what is that noise in the distance? Is that the sound of some malcontents? Someone must go step on their necks, and that someone is you, Yomi. You got this, man. I believe in you.

Aww, that hurts my feelings. You were ready to get Halara'd trying to kill us all over me, like, yesterday. :( Am I really that forgettable?

I hope so too. It'd take out this entire building. We've got Yomi and Makoto here at the same time, plus Huesca. That'd solve a lot of problems for Kanai Ward right there.

Alright, we've time-skipped. Now someone is surely dead.

Aren't you a little short for a Stormtroo--Desuhiko. Halara must have delivered my IOU message.

To be fair, I'd be doing shit like this to him if he was the one over a barrel like this. Though I'd be going for more goofy prankster shit. Desuhiko is weirdly obsessed with shilling the Yuma/Kurumi ship at every possible opportunity.

HOLY SHIT, IS THAT YOU, YAKOU!?

Fuck, I thought it'd be Fubuki or Halara. Someone useful. Instead, we get these two clowns. But I suppose it will have to do. Thanks for rescuing me, try not to die on the way out.

DON'T UN-DISGUISE. Y'all have helmets. Just take those off. You don't need to strip down and make yourselves fully vulnerable to being caught, you fucking morons!

He didn't, actually. If he used DIsguise, he would have taken on an appropriate height for a Peacekeeper grunt. This was a disguise, but it wasn't Disguise. Which was honestly for the best.

Given how much Disguise takes out of Desuhiko, a non-Disguise disguise was the right call. With face and body fully covered, there was no need to burn energy on the full shapeshifting shenanigans route.

While true, your behavior in the past has done little to establish a relationship of trust and open communication.

It's like parenting. When you constantly tell Yuma, "DO NOT go snoop around, DO NOT get in trouble with the Peacekeepers, AVOID solving mysteries or doing anything meaningful," and then get mad at him every time he does those things? It's not going to discourage him from doing them. It's going to discourage him from telling you that he's doing them.

If you convey to your child/apprentice that they cannot confide in you about the things they are doing, then they will continue to do those things but they will not confide in you about them. Yuma went behind your back because everything you've said to him up to this point has convinced him that you must be lied to.

My IOU letter!

No, for real, what is that actually? Did Fink the Slaughter Artist tell them I was here?

...that's not a yes.

But it's also not a no. This sent a chill down my spine.

Nuh nuh nuh go back. Don't just yadda-yadda over your arrival here. You have to pass through a biometric scanner to enter the premises. How did you pass through the biometric scanner?

I guess Desuhiko could have Disguised a member of Amaterasu staff to get them through. That shit is practically shapeshifting so it might alter his biometrics. That or they smuggled their way in on, like, a troop transport? Maybe?

That is a fair assessment of what happened, yes. Yuma's floor lamp impersonation needs work.

Yomi had a plausible explanation for that, but obviously Makoto himself couldn't have dropped the letter at the sub. The timing of which still makes me think he did it specifically to get them to come fetch Yuma.

Makoto and Fink aren't proven to be in cahoots but they're likely to be in cahoots. Cahoots are more plausible than not at this point in time.

Hold up, your plan is to kidnap Amaterasu's most highly-protect employee from the middle of their HQ and then walk out?

Yakou, 95% of the time I want you to grow a spine. Then, in the other 5%, you are the boldest motherfucker I've ever met. I love it. I'm here for it. It's too bad Huesca's most certainly dead by now.

HOORAH! LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOO

Into the poison gas chamber and DIIIIIIIIE!

...plan needs work, but we can workshop it. Gonna stay positive!

The hell is that supposed to mean, Desuhiko? I'll have you know that I have only Disguised as a woman one....

...four....

...five times. Out of five.

Okay, yeah. That's fair. Gimme the female suit and the polyurethane molded breast forms you set aside as mine.

You heard it here, folks. Yuma doesn't have a preference between male or female. Canon he/they.

Purple question-mark hair and pronouns.

You don't need your bag. These were disguises instead of Disguise. You should still have two of the disguises on you, Desuhiko. Would it be that hard to locate a third?

...we're going on this detour so you can make Yuma a female Peacekeeper, aren't we?

[limenysnocket]

In The Dirt... Pt. IV

Summary: Why did you leave... where did you go? I miss you. Fuck, I miss you... f u c k.

Warnings: Cursing, alcohol abuse, drug abuse (no real smut in this one sorryyy)

A/N: F U C K I T. I need to finish this series because I don't like having open stories on my pallet that need to be finished. GAWD. Short one for the gals.

○●□○●□○●■○●■○

After many years of destroying the senses, you really stop noticing or awknowledging fear. It just dims out eventually, and no one likes that one Debby downer. So, you just stop. Just like that, with a snap of your fingers. It just... disappears.

You know, I thought I had lost that sense of fear forever. I thought it disappeared, like everyone else's. That all was until I woke up this morning to find the sheets cold except for the spots I had been laying.

Did my fear suddenly return from the dead to replace you? Where did you go?

Why the hell am I worrying?

You probably just went home.

But you're usually here when I wake up? You wait for me, don't you?

Maybe you were just outside of my bedroom door, hanging with the rest of the band.

That seemed more plausible to me.

I get myself together (somewhat fine). It's still not the same without having you politely knock on the door and ask for entry while I'm dressing.

Music is already seeping through the cracks of the walls, since the rest of the band probably had woken up by now (or just didn't sleep the night before). I can feel the bass beneath my feet, sending pleasant shivers down my spine, but the pleasure isn't enough to get you off of my mind.

I feel like I slowly melt into the living room as my door opens, slinking across the floor like some malformed blob until I'm at an angle where I can survey the entire room.

You're not here.

One of the heavy stoners of the group finally notices me after peering through the glossy haze of his high, just for a moment.

"Shit, man, what's got you all squirrelly this morning?" he muses, lifting a plain cigarette up to his mouth and taking a long drag.

I can feel every inch of my body tense up and I shove my hands into my pockets, lips pursed. I sigh and shake my head. "Nothing."

He goes back to whatever he was doing, rambling on to one of the (also stoned) groupies that joined us this morning, while I have another look around. My mates cast me odd looks, but I toss them aside. I must have really been looking awful if those looks started to worsen (which I know they did).

"I heard the hotel door slamming shut last night..." one of them mused, "anyone anger their chick or some shit?" The group that gathered along the kitchenette chuckled softly and shook their heads.

"What 'bout you, Waititi? You piss another one off?" Someone spoke up to me. They knew now. They knew I had done something.

Luckily, I had my back turned to the group in my desperate and frantic search, so they didn't see the pained look creep over my face. "I don't know," I say slowly, not bothering to turn around. They all seem to shrug my answer off. I can't, however.

What did I do last night to really get you gone? Was it something I said? Did I not please you enough? Did you finally decide that the rock 'n' roll life just wasn't your thing, decide not to tell me, and up and leave me dry with no hope left to survive?

I'm being dramatic.

I slip a pair of slippers on and shuffle down to the main floor after awkwardly standing next to a polite family on the elevator. It was obvious they could smell the cigarette smoke on me.

Fuck, it's way too early in the morning to be doing this.

I leap for the front desk before anyone else could take the undivided attention away from me. A young receptionist had just sat herself down with a steaming cup of coffee.

"Did you see a girl come through here last night?" I mumble to her. She looks up at me, nowhere near as excited as you are when I talk to you.

"Sir, I just clocked in. I'm afraid the person you need to be talking to is already on his way out to his car," she says, nose raised up in the air snootily. My looks and manner clearly didn't seem to charm her (or maybe it's the fact that I'm in a fucking stained Purple Rain shirt and sweatpants).

The fact that maybe my last hope may possibly be in the parking lot excites me, so I don't think I could care any less about the way people look at me. My perhaps wobbly legs float me out to the street and I'm searching frantically for any trace of you or this man I'm supposed to find.

There, where the sidewalk ends, there's a man, bellboy cap in hand, waving and shouting for a cab driver's attention.

I slow my speed down to a brisk walk to approach him and not alarm him, but the glimmer of a hovering, yellow taxi catches my eye as it slows down and pulls next to the curb. All of a sudden I'm running. I'm running for you. Fuck, when was the last time that I actually ran?

Sure, it was a bad move grabbing the dude's arm when I reached him. He moved to swat me, yelling in a high voice, "The fuck, dude! This cab is mine!" His hand was about to come down, when I made the first sensible decision in my life and let go of him.

"Wait!" I hollered before we made any more contact. "You worked the front desk last night, right? I'm looking for a girl."

He gives me the most startled look ever, gripping the door of the taxi for fear life. He then recognizes me. "Your Taika Waititi, right? You and your band infested the hotel a couple days ago?"

I nod slowly, gulping and hoping he had some sort of information.

He sighs, looking at the warm seat of the cab, then back at me. He mutters something under his breath. "I did see a girl," he lets out. "But I don't know if she's any person your looking for. There's a lot of women that come and go from y'alls rooms, I tell you." And he shakes his head.

"What did she look like?" I pry at him more, and he cab impatiently honks its horn. He draws another long sigh.

"She..." he trails off, "look, there was one girl that passed by. She was wearing a Hunt For The Wilderpeople shirt, and that's all I can tell you."

"But was she upset?" I shout, just trying to get down to the point.

I receive another glare.

"Look mister," he said, one foot in the cab, "she didn't pay me no mind and I certainly didn't care about her enough to ask her what was wrong. Now, if you'll excuse me." He huffed, and that was the last I saw of him as he disappeared into the cave of the cab.

My heart seemed to quiver as I watched the cab go. I was getting stares from girls and guys alike across the street. A crowd was soon building. I had been standing on the curb for minutes, watching and waiting. As if the cab would suddenly turn around, open its doors and I'd see you inside, but no. Not in the slightest.

I return to the hotel room, tail between my legs, and head down. I should call. I want to know if you're alright. What did I do, my little groupie? What did I...

No.

No, that's not right. I said groupie. But... I also said my... meaning...

I return back to my room and sit on the frigid bed. I think of you with no trace of a smile left on my face. I want you here. I want to see you. I want to fuck this feeling out of me through you. An outlet. Is that all I see you as? But, what do you see me as?

I pick up my phone and search for your number. It's mixed up and I never miss it. I have a little nickname for you too, but I never use I when you're around. My thumb hovers over the call button for a moment. I don't know why I hesitate. After a big, deep breath, I press it. The vibration of it makes my ears ring. My heart is racing. Why do I het so riled up trying to talk to you? It's just you...

And yet you're you!

...

I don't know how to explain it. You're my groupie... my... groupie...

Fuck.

There's no response. There's not even the faintest sound of your voice. All I get is a computer.

I call again and again and again.

The dial tone makes my head spin. I call your home phone, hell, I was even two inches away from calling your parents. But then a text message. A single text message.

'Leave me alone.'

My heart seems to stop. I did something wrong. But I can't figure out what.

Why?

Why are you all of a sudden ignoring me? Why won't you tell me that you're safe? Is it something that I did? What's wrong?

I interpret my thoughts onto my phone in a text message and send it out without a momen'ts hesitation.

'What did I do wrong?'

You read it.

But you never respond...

~~~~~

17 calls and a single text message. You can't even deal with him. It's like he doesn't even remember how much being just his groupie shatters you.

You've asked for something more so many times. So many gut wrenching feelings as he tells you all over again, "I'm not looking for anything serious. You're just a groupie."

You've finally snapped. You're done. You can't keep getting your heart broken again. Not again.