#inane (cage)

[mayudog]

🎉🎍あけましておめでとうございま〜〜〜〜〜す🎍🎉

今年もよろしくお願いします‼️‼️‼️

✨️🌅✨️

[newty]

i am chewing so hard on ppls dion/clive fics lately. u mean i get to read abt clive having a miserable traumatic time in the empire PLUS dion is a conflicted imperial asshole abt it. thank u for my life. u guys Understood the assignment

[apuff]

oh dear i think the song in my #1 fav spot might have to be pushed down bc i just learned that there's a song that's four minutes and thirty-three seconds of no performance that encourages the listener to pay attention to the sounds around them and consider what they think to be music and silence and i'm in love

[3d-wifey]

This is such a niche ask, but I saw that you do Mortal Kombat. Can I ask for some flirty intro dialogue? You know like the conversation the characters have b4 the fight? But like with a Goddess!reader who's basically Hecate? like a Nyx/Hecate fusion if that makes sense. Oh and can you do what some of her taunts would be? I feel like those and her fatalities would be illusion and tarot based :)))

Flirty Intro Dialogue

Pairings: Johnny Cage x Reader; Noob Saibot x Reader; Erron Black x Reader; Dark Raiden x Reader; Cassie Cage x Reader; Shang Tsung x Reader

A/N: (Back to using gifs for headcanons). This is just for the MK 11 timeline. Once MK 1 comes out, I'll do new ones. Had to do a little research fan fiction-wise for this one, but I got a good amount out (plus some taunts the reader would say during the fight). I put a lot of thought into the reader's backstory in the MK universe, even though it'll never be used lol. Please, feel free to request more of these characters or some intros for different characters. Maybe even request a one-shot? Who knows ;)

Behind the Scenes: You know how when Erron Black shows up in the intro, he's looking at a Wanted poster of his opponent? I feel like Goddess!reader has something like that where she's looking at a tarot card that's different for each character before it disappears into mist. Another opening is the reader strutting in shapeshifted into her opponent, before turning back. Her friendship fatality has her stirring a comically large witch's caldron and Noob Saibot pops out in a cloud of mist.

You: Jonathan Carlton

Johnny Cage: Sexy witch goddess.

You: I…Hmm.

-

You: I can feel the magic coursing through your veins. You are one of my Night children, Jonathan.

Johnny Cage: You don’t mean that literally, right? Because it would suck to have the hots for my mom.

You: (sighs)  And what a waste.

-

Johnny Cage: Somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming.

You: Do you dream of me often, Mortal?

Johnny Cage: Ohho, absolutely.

-

Johnny Cage: Somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming.

You: (sighs) How many times must you make that joke?

Johnny Cage: You know you love it!

-

Johnny Cage: So…what are my chances of getting you into my next movie?

You: I’ve told you. I have no desire to appear on your “big screen”.

Johnny Cage: I was thinking we’d make a different kind of movie.

-

Johnny Cage: Goddess of dreams, huh? Can I call you Sandman?

You: You may call me whatever you please, dear mortal.

Johnny Cage: Oh, you do not wanna give me that kind of power.

-

Johnny Cage: Heard you and Shinnok had a thing.

You: A…thing?

Johnny Cage: You two boned! Get it? Cuz he’s a skeleton.

-

Johnny Cage: Tarot, huh? Card tricks are cool and all, but do you got any other witchy gimmicks?

You: I'm particularly fond of palm reading.

Johnny Cage: ...So what I'm hearing is, you're good with your hands?

-

Johnny Cage: You, Fujin, and Raiden go way back, huh?

You: Since the dawn of time.

Johnny Cage: (grimace) Yeesh, they've been friend zoned that long?

-

Johnny Cage: Not so fast, Hermonie.

You: Must you always spout such inane drivel?

Johnny Cage: Someone's been using their word-a-day calendar!

-

Johnny Cage: I've never met a non-evil Eldar God.

You: Evil is quite subjective.

Johnny Cage: I'll remember that next time I'm kicking one's ass.

Noob Saibot: My Goddess.

You: Bi-Han.

Noob Saibot: The shadows cling to your presence. 

-

Noob Saibot: Many have wanted me to yield to their command.

You: Oh?

Noob Saibot: Only you have succeeded, My Goddess.

-

You: You are not touched by the Night, dear Bi-Han. You are shrouded in it.

Noob Saibot: What better way to show that I belong to you?

You: It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it?

-

Noob Saibot: The shadows whisper your name.

You: (smiles) What do they say about me?

Noob Saibot: That your beauty is combated by no other. They speak only the truth for their Goddess.

-

You: You have been a steadfast worshiper, Bi-Han. How shall I reward your loyalty?

Noob Saibot: I only ask for one thing: to be your consort.

You: Hmm. That could be arranged.

-

Noob Saibot: I do not want you to be upset with me, but I will not take back what I said.

You: Your brother cares for you, Bi-Han.

Noob Saibot: Yet, here we are.

-

You: Why must we fight?

Noob Saibot: I wish to prove to you my might, My Goddess.

You: Oh, dear wraith. For you, my love is freely given. You have already earned it.

-

Noob Saibot: You're different than the other Eldar Gods. You...care.

You: Do you think me weak?

Noob Saibot: Never.

-

You: Care to spar?

Noob Saibot: I'd be honored.

You: Then don't take it personally when I beat you.

-

Noob Saibot: The shadows crave your touch.

You: Only the shadows?

Noob Saibot: I'll always long for you, My Goddess.

-

You: Do you fear me, dear Bi-Han?

Noob Saibot: I respect you.

You: (sigh) That wasn't a no.

Erron Black: You've got quite the pretty penny on your head.

You: Are you here to kill me then, Erron Black?

Erron Black: With a face like that, I wouldn’t dream of it.

-

Erron Black: You got any love spells up your sleeve, witchy? I swear ’m good for it.

You: Love is not something to take lightly. Who do you have in mind?

Erron Black: (smirks)  Look in a mirror, darlin’. 

-

Erron Black: You the Goddess of lust, by any chance?

You: That is not a purpose I was created to serve.

Erron Black: Pity. You’d certainly suit it.

-

Erron Black: You had something to ask me, beautiful?

You: Yes. What is “reverse cowgirl”?

Erron Black: (smirks) How ‘bout I show you the ins and outs after this?

-

Erron Black: ’M not usually one for marriage, darlin’.

You: Neither am I.

Erron Black: I don’t have to be the only one, as long as I’m your favorite.

-

Erron Black: You ever find out why Shinnok offed you?

You: I believe he wanted to turn me into his revenant bride. He became rather desperate after I declined his proposal.

Erron Black: (chuckle) Well, I guess I can’t blame the guy.

-

Erron Black: Why don’t you take a peek into ol’ Erron’s dreams? Swear you won’t be disappointed.

You: I’ve seen your dreams. I must say, you give me very generous proportions.

Erron Black: Then you must know I’m a very generous lover.

-

Erron Black: I've struck gold

You: How so?

Erron Black: Well, you're here, ain'tcha?

-

Erron Black: You cast a spell on me, Goddess?

You: I have not, Erron Black.

Erron Black: Do you want to?

-

Erron Black: How 'bout you and I see where the night takes us?

You: Do you think you can keep up?

Erron Black: Trust me. I may be fast on the quick draw, but I don't shoot quick.

-

Erron Black: You've got the magic touch.

You: A good deal of my powers flow through my hands.

Erron Black: I want 'em on me.

You: I’ve heard of how you…disposed of Shinnok.

Dark Raiden: After what he did to you, after how I mourned, I would behead him a hundred times over.

You: It isn’t judgment you sense in my voice. I would have killed him myself if you hadn’t beat me to it.

-

You: Do you still desire me, even as you are now?

Dark Raiden: If you need to ask, then I have failed to show you my devotion.

You: Hmph.

-

Dark Raiden: Will you abandon me too, my love?

You: It is not in my nature.

Dark Raiden: They do not deserve your blessings.

-

Dark Raiden: How have you…How are you here?

You: I sensed my presence was needed and returned to my corporal form just in time to be put in Kronika's void.

Dark Raiden: You could not sense how much I needed you, how much I mourned?

-

You: We are in such uncertain times, my vision is clouded.

Dark Raiden: I’m sorry for the part I play in your duress, my love.

You: You are only doing your duty. It’s how you’re going about it that leaves me weary.

-

Dark Raiden: How can you find such beauty in their shortcomings?

You: The Night welcomes all into her shadowed embrace.

Dark Raiden: You are wasted on them!

-

Dark Raiden: I was so lost without your guidance.

You: When I died?

Dark Raiden: When you were taken from me!

-

Dark Radien: How did Shinnok do it?

You: He lied to me and attacked me when I let my guard down.

Dark Raiden: (growls) If I could, I would bring him back to enact justice upon him once more.

-

You: I have but one wish.

Dark Raiden: Anything.

You: I wish for you to come back to me.

-

You: Is it true? What you've done?

Dark Radien: It was the only way.

You: You have lost yourself.

-

You: We've never fought before, have we?

Dark Radien: We never needed to for me to know you're the stronger between us.

You: Flattery will not save you.

Cassie Cage: You know, I think I’m finally understanding why Raiden lost his marbles.

You: How so?

Cassie Cage: I think I’d lose my shit too if someone like you was taken from me.

-

Cassie Cage: Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

You: I’m…afraid I do not understand.

Cassie Cage: Oh, you have got to let me take you on a movie date.

-

Cassie Cage: Who’s your favorite: Fujin or Raiden? Come on. You can tell me.

You: I’m a Goddess. Why would I limit myself to one lover?

Cassie Cage: You dirty girl.

-

Cassie Cage: What are you the Goddess of again?

You: (hesitates) …It would be easier to list what I am not the Goddess of.

Cassie Cage: (whistles) And I thought my parents expected a lot of me.

-

Cassie Cage: Come on, just one kiss!

You: I am older than you could possibly imagine.

Cassie Cage: An older woman. What’s not to love?

-

Cassie Cage: I heard you died. So, how are you standing here in all your godly beauty?

You: I have much power over death and the comings and goings of the Underworld. My soul simply dispersed there.

Cassie Cage: Yep. That’ll do it.

-

Cassie Cage: So…You didn’t happen to see that one dream, did you?

You: I’ve seen all your dreams, Cassandra. And I’m flattered.

Cassie Cage: (clears throat) …Right.

-

Cassie Cage: It’s a full moon

You: She calls to me and all who feel her light.

Cassie Cage:…You’re not gonna turn into a werewolf, are you?

-

Cassie Cage: You gonna turn me into a frog, Goddess?

You: It’s a possibility.

Cassie Cage: (shrugs) As long as you change me back with a kiss.

-

Cassie Cage: Heard you hung out with Jacqui.

You: Yes, though she didn’t mention you at all.

Cassie Cage: She is the worst wing woman.

-

You: You’ve come to my crossroads. Do you need my guidance?

Cassie Cage: Just wondering if you could teach me a trick or two.

You: So it’s my protection you seek.

Shang Tsung: Your beauty entices me

You: My power entices you.

Shang Tsung: Two things can be true at once.

-

Shang Tsung: Soon, you shall be my bride.

You: You cannot tie down a Goddess; you cannot tie down the Night.

Shang Tsung: I can try.

-

Shang Tsung: Do my powers impress you, Goddess of magic?

You: They certainly intrigue me, Sorcerer.

Shang Tsung: Allow me to give you a closer look.

-

Shang Tsung: Every time I invoke my magic, I do so in your name.

You: Your loyalty changes with the moon’s phases.

Shang Tsung: I devote myself to you, my Goddess.

-

Shang Tsung: I want something more valuable than your soul.

You: Such as?

Shang Tsung: Your love.

-

Shang Tsung: You forgave Shinnok, but not I?

You: I did not forgive him. He killed me when I refused to be his bride.

Shang Tsung: I will succeed where he has failed.

-

Shang Tsung: I kneel at your altar, my Goddess.

You: You needn’t prostrate yourself before me.

Shang Tsung: It is never a hardship to be on my knees for you.

-

You: Do you fear me?

Shang Tsung: I’d be a fool not to.

You: Then why challenge me?

-

Shang Tsung: You have the godly brothers on quite a tight leash.

You: I demand no loyalty from them.

Shang Tsung: It’s doubtful that they stray far from you.

-

You: Kronika spared me in hopes of using my powers. When I refused, she cast me into the void.

Shang Tsung: We have been similarly wronged by her.

You: That is why we must aid Luai Kang in defeating her.

-

Shang Tsung: You are the last Eldar God.

You: Yes. And I shall help Luai Kang in his creation of the new timeline.

Shang Tsung: Then this will be goodbye for now.

Taunts

You: The Wheel of Fortune comes for us all. You: Your future is uncertain. You: You cannot hide from the Night’s embrace. You: Knell in repentance. You: Your path ends here. You: You are lost. You: It is simply an illusion. You: You challenge an Eldar God? You: Will you make an offering? You: You are forgiven. You: I will lead your spirit through the gates of the Netherrealm. You: You shall not pass. You: Are you seeing double? You: Allow me to guide you.

[melobin]

melo thinking .. anton thoughts .. size and strength kink !!

antons just so big .. everywhere. he’s so tall and broad, built so nicely.. his arms, his thighs. his cock.

the thing about anton is even if he doesn’t seem it, he has that cocky edge to him. hes hot, his face is pretty.. his body is inane and he knows it. which is why he always uses it against you. he’s just so much bigger than you, stronger than you .. he thrives on it. the way he can tower over you .. how he can open things for you .. how he can press you against the wall and make you feel so small as he cages you in with his arms and looks down at you. he thinks you’re just so cute ! ruinable.. if anything.

and he does that a lot !! ruins you, that is. he cant help himself. one thing anton has found himself enjoying more lately is mirror sex, in riskier places. public bathrooms to changing rooms in clothing … takes you shopping under the guise that he wants to buy you a pretty outfit to wear for your date night, picks out a skirt for you .. a mini skirt.. it’s barely even a skirt, more like a belt with how short it is but he loves it. more specifically he claims he’d love it on you, so he asks you to try it on for him.. following you into the changing room and locking the door behind himself. sits on the bench facing the mirror as he watches you take off your jeans .. cant stop himself form leaning forward a little and slapping your ass when you’re bent over, would have the smuggest smile on his face as he watches you through the mirror. almost like he had ulterior motives bringing you in there .. he did !

he’d watch you carefully as you slide the skirt up your legs, laughing when you turn around and try to pull it down a little when you realise just how short it is.. he loves it though !! his hands would grab your waist.. pulling you down to sit on his lap facing the mirror.. fingers would trail along the skin of your thighs, whispering in your ear about how good you look in the skirt,, lips on your neck while the tells you how fuckable you are right now … that’s when he trails his fingers a little higher to press against your panties. “you’ll let me fuck you here, won’t you, pretty?” and you say yes !! of course you do … you let him take off your panties to slip them in his pocket.. patiently waiting as he releases his cock from his jeans and helps you sink down on it, his eyes not leaving the mirror for a moment as he takes in the way your cunt swallows his thick cock. holds his hands on your hips, grips them so tightly as he looks at the two of you .. you look so small compared to him .. he’s so big and broad and you seem so small and fragile compared to him, like one sharp thrust would break you apart. but it doesn’t .. he makes sure to test it out with his hand over your mouth and your hands pressed against the mirror as he takes you from behind .. just because you’re in public doesn’t mean he’ll go easy on you …

[ghost-bxrd]

Ghost, you are a fountain of incredible aus. I am impressed (and a little jealous). Do you have anything more on eldritch Jason or the Calvin Rose road trip au?

Awe thank you! I’m happy you’re enjoying all the crack content on here hehehe 💚💚

and boi do I have more ✨

Edlritch Jason 👁️

Jason has trouble keeping his true form in check when he’s excited! The happier/upset he gets, the more his outline and shape start to ooze

He has several maws with teeth that range from blunt to sharp needle points. In one of those maws hides a black hole

Jason is scared of space, funnily enough. Too empty and vast for him as he gets lonely pretty easily. He likes the crowded spaces teeming with life.

Jason loves learning new human things

Jason has no reaction to fear or joker toxin. Or any kind of substance that would impair a regular human’s health. Bruce finds out about that after he nearly loses his mind with worry following a widespread toxin attack in which Jason “forgets” his rebreather.

Pictures of Jason always end up looking a little displaced. There’s always some kind of glitch/blur/shadow in it that no amount of tech improvement can get rid of

Even though he’s eldritch at core, Jason’s human body can still be hurt, and he experiences pain just like any other human would

Calvin Rose road trip 🌹

Calvin finds Jason soaking wet and still in his funeral clothes and injuries sitting by the curb and is disturbed enough by the kid’s appearance to usher him back to his hideout.

For the longest time Calvin thinks Jason is called Bruce because that’s the only thing he will say

Taking Jason with him is a spur of the moment decision. Jason reminds him too much of himself, beaten and broken and locked away in a dog cage to die, and he looks so… lost. Calvin can’t bear to drive away from that without knowing what happens to the kid

As much as Calvin grumbles about it sometimes he’s exceptionally good and patient with Jason. He talks a lot and points out inane things even though he rarely (if ever) gets a reaction. (Calvin was lonely, not that he’s gonna admit that)

For some time Calvin thinks Jason used to be trained as a Talon when a few people try to mug them and Jason goes all Robin-training on them. He’s sure their little experiments went to far and the Court meant to dispose of him now that he’s “broken”

The first words Jason speaks that isn’t any iteration of Bruce’s name is “burger” (because he wants a burger). Calvin buys him ten because that’s literally the first time Jay has ever expressed an opinion on food.

Jason’s second word is “Dick”, and Calvin nearly chokes to death on his beer.

From there on it’s a steady improvement of Jay’s mental state, but that also means he starts getting night terrors as he remembers his death and the Joker. Once Calvin pieces together the broad picture he’s down to devising plans to dispose of the clown. He’s not making compromises where people who hurt children are concerned. Especially not if they’re family

Jason never tells Calvin about Batman or being Robin, he’s… kind of happy to be away from all of it. Especially after seeing Brucie Wayne and his new protege and Dick Grayson, a happy and smiling family, on the news together. And sightings of Robin making the front page of most magazines

Calvin knows Jason is hiding something from him, but hey, so is Calvin. All he knows is that his kid brother road trip buddy really doesn’t seem to like Gotham’s vigilantes. Something he can totally respect. And thankfully, Calvin is skilled enough to keep him safe even if the glorified furry and his acolytes were to come after Jay for whatever reason.

Jason’s favorite song to listen to while driving is “I know the end” by Phoebe Bridgers. Calvin starts out hating the song but is to endeared by how happy Jason gets (even in his early catatonic state) that he doesn’t say anything. It ends up being both their favorite song

[spacexseven]

tunaaaaa I've been reading ur Childe Thing sooo much that I've been thinking of I Love Amy aus nonstop. its a problem. in honor of bsd s4 im gonna rapid fire a couple out for the Bsd Boys!

lets talk dazai. I feel like this could go a lot of ways with him. like, if its ada dazai, you probably don't really get the sense that something is kinda off with him until you're a bit too deep to back out. he seemed so sweet when you first met- fuckin weird, but sweet! no harm in trying to help him win over a crush, right? for pm dazai, you obviously know hes fucked in the head the second you meet him, so you agree to help him out of a fear of what he might do to you if you dont rather than a sense of altruism. either way, its kinda hard to notice him getting a little overly-attached to you just cuz of how naturally obnoxious and clingy he is. even if he starts to escalate you might not get it cuz hes pretty fast and loose about LITERALLY kidnapping you and tying you up in his apartment/mafia holding cell right off the bat (gets very pouty about you "ignoring" him). doesnt help that hes so out of touch with his own emotions he probably doesn't even know he has a thing for you for a whiiile. trust me tho, being nice to him and taking care of him when hes sick or injured WILL wear him down. you'll only kind of get it when you try to give him some new pointers on his crush and he seems to just get? annoyed? mutters something about you talking about someone else while you're SUPPOSED to pay attention to HIM. or when he keeps being weirdly affectionate with you in full view of X when hed usually forget you exist as soon as he sees them. or you woke up chained to a chair (again) but this time hes perched in your lap and scolding you about avoiding your "boyfriend" before shoving his lips against yours. couldve been any of these occasions really.

cant BELIEVE I didn't think of gogol the first time I talked about this this is almost EXACTLY what yes doing to sigma rn. when this fuckin 6'2 clown terrorist traps you against a wall and starts questioning about why you were talking to "his darling", you are 10000% sure you're gonna die. almost gives you whiplash how fast his tone changes once you convince him you have NO interest. all smiles all of the sudden, picks u up under the armpits like a cat to right ur posture and pats you on the head, declaring that you will be his magicians assistant for a while! you do not have a say in this, if you'd like to keep your skin. while you feel bad about aiding and abetting this stalking case, you get the sense that hes. not ever gonna actually make a move. kinda just Wants To Stalk. goes on about how he cant let himself be tied down like that (whatever that means). he does talk about just murdering his darling a lot but you've managed to convince him that thats unnecessary baggage connecting them to him so hopefully that keeps him sated until his goldfish-esque attention span finally moves him onto a new target. and it does! the problem is that its you. I think that once he realizes he likes you, he's just gonna vanish. poof gone. hes had a lot of fleeting obsessions with ill-fated darlings before, but youre something new. hes never actually gotten to know someone before! ugh. hes caged by his feelings for you, but the despair hed feel from killing you would be a cage all its own! frustrating!!!!! maybe if he just leaves and never thinks about you ever again this'll just go away like all of his other crushes. doesnt work. expect him back in a month, snuggling into your neck and babbling inane about having missed you. he tied you up again so youre just gonna have to let him do that. its fine youre used to this with him.

really wanted to do this with chuuya and fyodor too but im scared of them being OOC help me.

- 🩹

omg so this turned out to be Very Long :O quick context for any1 who is unfamiliar w i love amy—it's a webtoon (highly recommend btw) where the yandere character starts to fall for her 'target/rival' instead of her initial love interest. for more info + the childe version, check out this post.

cw: yandere characters (dazai, fyodor, nikolai), stalking, kidnapping, imprisonment, obsessive behavior, threats of violence to reader. (this whole post came off a little silly instead of serious But mind the cws anyway!)

this is best read with a male reader (to keep it consistent w i love amy) but there's no pronouns used or descriptions for reader, so do as you like. also, reader makes morally questionable decisions :>

(pm) dazai is to be avoided at all costs. that was the rule you put down for yourself after witnessing one of his very public threats to some poor pedestrian who had bumped into him. the dramatic coat, the blank expression, the natural ease with which he handled the weapon in his hand—everything about him was just...alarming.

however, despite all your efforts, he's obstructed your path home with a deadly glare and a hand in his pocket.

according to dazai, he did not appreciate your recent conversation with X, (as he claimed, they were too popular to spare most people more than a few friendly greetings—so why were you having a full-fledged conversation with them?) who were you, even, to get in his way? you sputter out some excuse, some explanation as to why he misunderstood the situation and it was all just work-related, and fortunately, he seems convinced, at least enough to relax his hold on you and shift the blaring malice in his stance to something less frightening.

obviously, you couldn't refuse when he offers you what he calls a mutually beneficial proposition. you help him get closer to X, and he won't kill you! win-win, don't you think?

the thing about dazai, you soon learn, is that despite the murderous energy he gives off, he's painfully annoying, more so than frightening. it almost feels like you're dealing with an obnoxious child, with how he's constantly whining and tugging at your sleeve and complaining about how useless you're being.

and it also makes you wonder if he's ever really had a friend, because he's got some strange expectations for you. he's all too possessive, too paranoid, and expects you to be perfectly fine with it. you consider telling him that he's not supposed to hold you hostage every time he thinks you're spending "too much time with someone else", but after the 4th attempt, you've understood that there was no getting to him. at least he stopped with the threats to your other friends (well, he promised you that he'd stop), and that seemed like the only thing he was willing to compromise on. he doesn't ease up on the breaking-into-your-room-to-visit-you stunt, either, especially when you're "ignoring him". despite all that, maybe out of some form of pity, you still help him out. you drop off food when he's sick and try to explain that imprisonment is not the key to a healthy relationship. you hang out with him even if you're terrified of all the mafioso you come across when you visit the hq with him, and after all of it, you're mostly convinced that he wasn't going to kill you anytime soon. in fact, the two of you seemed to be building an unusual friendship.

but when he comes to visit you one day when you're sick and actually knocks on the door and texts you beforehand, you tell him that this would be the best way to approach X if he ever hears that they're sick. though you're expecting some excitement, or some self-satisfaction for improving a little, instead of looking excited, dazai looks frustrated. for the first time, he looks genuinely...upset. and when he asks you why you can't appreciate that he was looking out for you and not X, you're left at a loss for words. you're not sure if this was a sign that he was starting to learn not to cross your boundaries or a warning that he was beginning to like you a little too much

and things only get stranger. he becomes more observant, asks you more questions about yourself rather than X, and even starts holding your hand in full view of X. when you mention that X was really looking forward to a new movie coming out and that he should try to ask them out, he gets upset by your suggestion, grumbling about you paying more attention to X and only caring about them instead of asking him if he wants to see the movie with them. so, unsure of how to respond, you echo his question. he beams at you and happily declares that he only wants to watch the movie with you.

somewhere along the line, it happened that dazai himself started to realize just how much he liked you, and he spirals out of control. the already overwhelming physical contact turns more intimate, with dazai holding your hand at every possible moment, pressing himself as close to you as humanely possible without squeezing the air out of you, and sitting on your lap whenever the opportunity presents itself. he stops responding to anything that isn't an endearing pet name and introduces himself as your boyfriend. X seems to be eradicated from his mind, as well as anyone that wasn't you, though it feels as though you're the only one that has a problem with this change. dazai takes to it naturally, seamlessly inserting himself into your life.

"what's wrong?" dazai's sprawled across your lap with the biggest grin on his face, the remote in your hand long ripped away by him, "come give your boyfriend a kiss~"

you've...heard of fyodor. it was more overhearing whispers shared between people, but the mention of his name seemed to intrigue everyone who heard it. you've heard that he was a mysterious man who walked into the city one day and never left, and you've heard that he was the owner of an expensive casino. you've even heard that he had a tendency to stand on top of rooftops at night, but you've heard tons of variations and rumors. one statement, however, rang true in everyone's ears.

fyodor dostoevsky was taken with X.

that was putting it lightly—obsession was exactly what it was. though X was clearly unaware of what was being said, because, as they assured you one day while you walked out with them, fyodor was just a friend! and he was a very interesting guy, with some strong beliefs. he wasn't some criminal mastermind! all he did was keep to himself. and that, as they confidently declared, wasn't a crime.

but you had reason to not believe X, after all, it wasn't them at the receiving end of a laser focused gaze and a creepy smile. (it scared you so much that you ran home and ordered a burglar-proof lock for your door the same night) and it also wasn't them who sat down across from you while you were having your breakfast in the café nearby. anyone would have been better than who it was.

"hello," fyodor waves a fork at you, his fingers positioned gracefully on the silver cutlery (and of course, you think bitterly, he was evil and beautiful. just your luck), "i hope you can spare me a few minutes."

he wasn't asking, but you melted at his soft tone. for all people loved to talk about him, why hadn't they mentioned how hard it was to take your eyes off him? awkwardly, you take another bite of your food, nodding at him.

he asks you about X, though it's more of an interrogation disguised as casual conversation. he easily waves around his fork, smiles at you with an unnerving expression, and stares at you a little too long. by the end of it, your food is finished and his fork is placed neatly back onto the table and you've sustained no injuries. better yet, he finally seems to have (reluctantly) removed your name from his hit list.

what you weren't expecting was for him to start seeking you out. you get strange looks when fyodor waits outside your workplace with an umbrella—your umbrella—leaving you with no choice but to walk with him unless you wanted to get home soaked. he lists off X's habit and asks you to add on to his list, ignoring your reply of "that's just creepy". he tells you that he wants to respect X's privacy by not using cameras to spy on them so will you answer him or should he use the cameras? and what else could you do then?

at the very least, he didn't seem serious about attempting to kidnap or imprison X. he seemed fascinated by them, if anything. like he was...studying them. being with him wasn't as bad as you'd though, no matter how much you hated to admit it, despite the foundation of this friendship was built on how amusing he found X. if he was in a particularly good mood, he'd even offer to help you out with your struggles in the pursuit of love. his ideas, however, were all sure to land you behind bars with a retraining order to boot. when you voiced your opinion to him, he only smiled and told you that he knew a thing or two about breaking out of a prison cell, much like he was recalling upon a fond memory.

the only good thing about this strange arrangement was that fyodor was really nice to look at. there was something mesmerizing about his every action, even the slight quirk of his lips or the way his hair fell on his forehead. the ease with which he slipped on his hat (which, by the way, what was with all his not-weather-appropriate clothing? was he not sweating?), and the commanding air around him. so while he spoke seriously about X and his distaste for most of the human population, you tuned him out and focused on admiring his pretty eyes and how his lips wrapped around his fork and—ugh, you were starting to sound as creepy as him. but honestly, you had a feeling he already knew that you found him attractive. fyodor was far too good at reading people, far too perceptive to let something as obvious as your attraction to him slip.

your mistake was foolishly believing that you'd be safe as long as you didn't act on those feelings.

it felt strange, however, when he started reaching your usual table first, having already asked for your go-to meal and watching with thinly veiled delight as you stared down at the hot plate. and it's your coworkers now that get stared at, your friends who get the silent threat of a fork pressed against smooth skin, and you that everyone whispers that fyodor dostoevsky is taken with.

the meaning behind his increasingly strange behaviour doesn't really hit you, not until you've bumped into X again, who you haven't seen around in a while.

"i see that you and fyodor are becoming good friends now," they grin, "i'm almost jealous of how quickly you warmed up to him."

long fingers reach to caress your cheek before a perfectly poised hand places itself on your shoulder. fyodor's unmistakable voice replies in your stead.

"we're friends? is that what you've heard?" fyodor dips his head down to lock eyes with yours, "why don't you correct them about that, darling?"

you should have trusted sigma when he told you that nikolai gogol was bad news. as he clarified, so bad that, coincidentally, the ministry of justice hq was moved away at least by two states when nikolai came to visit.

but how were you to know that he was in love with one of your acquaintances? and how were you to know that his idea of love was this frightening? just when you were making your way back after a lukewarm conversation about work with X, you were slammed up against the wall by a person with a top hat and a coat and an honestly terrifying expression. then nikolai, as he later introduced himself, started grilling you with questions, ruthlessly asking about why you were with X and why did they smile at you and where does your family live, after which he happily told you about his many previous experiences with torture and how he would love to show you.

you're not sure what convinced him to let you go, whether it was your trembling legs or your teary promises that you had no interest in X in that way, but here you were now—alive, terrified, and offered the position of 'magician's assistant' (though the magician himself refused to tell you why the position was open for so long) and all it took to land the increasingly strange job was to talk to X and listen to nikolai threaten to torture you in graphic detail.

(among all the crazy people you had seen around here—that so-called 'world's best detective' who snatched your bag of candy right from your hands, that other person who started doing push-ups in the middle of the road, and someone giggling holding a bag of lemons by the port—you thought that nikolai definitely fit right in. not that you were going to tell him that)

while the position wasn't exactly what you wanted, nor were you too keen on spending more time around nikolai, something about the glint in his uncovered eye and the hand gripping your shoulder told you that you really wouldn't want to reject his offer. contrary to what you may have assumed, assisting nikolai only meant becoming a partner to his criminal activity, which revolved around stalking X, talking to them to find out all the information nikolai can't get by stalking them, and stalking them even more to find out any more details that neither of you could get. (you've considered helping out as much as you can, leaving hints in the form of obscure drawings of nikolai and danger symbols, but later, when you catch sight of X waving to him, you realize the message did not come across the way you intended it to)

fortunately for them, (and for you. at least now, you won't be behind bars for assisting in abduction) nikolai seems to have no interest whatsoever in pursuing them any further. sure, he keeps books filled with information about X, and buys their favorite drink alongside his order, but he doesn't seem to want to do anything more.

while you could care less about why he does whatever he's doing, already chalking it all up to the fact that he was off his rockers, nikolai decides to enlighten you all the same. when he excitedly rambles on and on about freedom and feelings and why X must now die, you pretend to listen, never actually telling him that nothing he said made any sense to you. still, after insisting that he won't be very free behind bars either and that if he really didn't want to be tied down by his feelings, he should actually distance himself from them instead, it appeared that you finally got him to understand, and he hesitantly agreed to listen.

for the most part, everything is great after that. your life returns to normal, with no top hat wearing, cane wielding magician in the vicinity, and no more having to invade someone's privacy. and it was great! really! even if it was a little bit boring without nikolai's spontaneous plans (maybe that time in the amusement park was pretty fun, even if the only reason you had to go was because X was going there with someone else, much to nikolai's horror). there was something both unsettling and addictive about the crazy adventures nikolai swept you on, though it was for the best that he disappeared.

but then nikolai came back…acting a little odd.

his clinginess and a sudden desire for physical affection set off alarms in your head, though he acted like this was perfectly normal. at first, you told yourself that this must be some new jealousy plot—maybe he got this idea from a tv show he watched over his 'break', but he hadn't asked you if you wanted to be part of this ploy (not that he ever did, really).

and your suspicions only grew when he refused to let up on the act, holding onto you as if his life depended on it. his trips with you became increasingly frightening, and his grip on you increasingly tighter. he takes his new position by your side, not at all focused on X anymore, and instead observes you with the same look that was fixated on X not too long ago.

it only hits you that you've become his new target when you find yourself tied up to a chair, with him seated right in front of you with his face up to yours. the exact scenario you convinced him not to put X through.

"your advice sucks, by the way," he pouts, "i tried staying away but i couldn't stop thinking of you! don't be too upset, alright? we can have even more fun now that we're together!"

[cambion-companion]

(I'm sorry for bothering, I read you were open to prompts... and I'm dying, since I found out about this, for Raph finding out a very, very stupid Tav who screwed up against Harleep. Like. A Tav who is so random she-or he- found her way into the HoH completely randomly, or thought it would be a good idea to surprise him there. Really anything, as you wish, if you can, if it inspire you, if it amusé you ^^ have a great day !)

Not a bother at all, my dear! I am indeed open for Raphael prompts, always ;)

Hickory dickory dock. The mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck one, The mouse ran down, Hickory dickory dock.

"Oh shit. Oh shit." A chill ran up Tav's spine as they sensed a sharp atmospheric shift inside the House of Hope. The air thickened and grew laden with the scent of sulfur and musk. Raphael stepped through a whirling portal of flame, his human face set grimly in an expression of anger.

"I am disappointed to see you here, pet."

"Raphael, it's not-"

"An errant mouse wreaking inane havoc in my house."

"Raphael I promise I didn't-"

"Silence." His voice was a dangerous purr, holding the promise of tortures unimagined. "You're being here is in direct defiance of clause three section b of our contract."

Tav had never felt his presence carry such fury before. They stammered for a moment, desperate to avoid conflict with the cambion. "Raphael..." Tav tried once more, tongue heavy around their words. "It was an accident! The diabolist in Baldur's Gate sent me here."

Raphael, still frowning sharply, allowed Tav to speak. Incendiary sparks of ash still floated around his form, but he seemed to calm somewhat as they tried explaining their mistake.

"The diabolist and I got into an altercation. She serves Mammon...pretty sure I remember that right." Tav continued. "I didn't know she was going to banish me here."

Raphael tilted his head, listening to the desperate squeaks of his favorite mortal. When Tav began rambling about the state they had found his house in when they'd arrived, he held up a quelling hand. "Enough. I believe your being here was not by your own volition however..." His voice lowered again. "...you brought with you the wretched chaos of your own world into my home."

Tav hesitated, tucking hair behind their ear nervously. "Not to be...blunt, Raph. But your house was kind of, um, disorderly when I got here." They pointed down the hallway in the direction of the dining room. "Your dinner table? An utter mess."

Raphael made a long low noise in the back of his throat, Tav ceased speaking at once under his piercing gaze. After a long moment he spoke again.

"You have not done lasting damage, nor pilfered any of my treasures. I know everything that happens in my house, little mouse. Every movement, every whisper does not go unmarked." His cunning eyes now swept the foyer carefully, lingering on each soul column. "After all, when the cat is away the mice will play." In one stride he took Tav's chin between his finger and thumb and tilted their head side to side. "Someone gifted you quite the disguise, sweetling." He pulled, causing Tav to stumble a couple small steps toward him till their chests brushed. "Did it give you a morsel of hope perhaps?"

Tav winced guiltily, gasping slightly as Raphael's fingers tightened in response, his aura darkening again.

"I have been so generous with you, Tav. Over and again forgiving your wayward insolence." Raphael's nose almost brushed against Tav's as he lent down. "Am I to believe you agreed to help my little Hope escape her shackles?"

Tav bent away slightly, the color draining from their face. "Only so I could obtain the disguise, Raphael. I never intended to help her."

"You lied?" Raphael sounded almost amused now. "And Hope believed you? What a desperate little Nightingale. Her cage is well-appointed. You were wise not to meddle." Raphael almost sighed as he released Tav with a slight push. "I do love the delicious sound of a soul being stripped bare and broken. However, such will not yet be your fate if you agree to assist me."

"In more than retrieving the Crown for you?" Tav asked, a knot forming in their stomach.

"Oh yes." Raphael placed a careful hand on his hip as he gesticulated with the other. "Restoring precious order. First accompany me to the soul cages, to converse with our Hope. Second, I will escort you to your Material Plane and you will deal with the diabolist of Mammon so that none will trespass in such a way again."

Tav frowned slightly, but nodded, they had little choice. "Thought you'd be more happy to see me." They frowned slightly.

"Don't pout, pet, it's unbecoming." Raphael seemed much more his charming self now, amused at Tav's muttered reproach. "After your journey is complete and the Crown is mine, you will be welcome in my house at any time." His smile twisted and his eyebrows arched. "You have my word."

[vampiric-prose]

I’ve forgotten how to live.

In the midst of the tears and shallow, empty breaths I have become I have forgotten what it is to live.

I have forgotten how to greet the day with an empty head and a subdued heart,

With a low, deep flow of blood that neither boils nor freezes,

With eyes that will not tremble and weep at the mere promise of tomorrow

Or the day after.

Oh,

I have forgotten how to live,

But I was never taught how to die.

I was not raised with an innate,

Inane,

Fear of a god who created me, loved me, knew me and slipped into my sinner’s soul.

I was not taught who to greet at gates beyond this world,

Beyond my own mind and the human gates of my rib cage.

I was not promised a life after mine,

A world after mine,

Salvation after mine.

Yes,

I have forgotten how to live,

But to never know how to die,

To only have her decide and strangle me on terms not mine,

And to bring me to a home I won’t recognize,

Is a far more painful fate.

My life holds no faith,

But at least this misery and this burned film, a mocking documentary,

Is mine,

Of my own destructive volition.

I have ruined any memory of how to live,

But I was never, never taught how to die.

[mayudog]

3/25〜4/1のOFF派生ワンドロ【Cage】まとめ\( ¨̮ ( ¨̮ ( ¨̮ )/

[cirilee]

Oranges put Isidor on the spot.

The way they defied Hive regulations.

An obscene fruit, so unashamed about its non-synthetic heritage, so unabashed in its presentation, so decadent, as its blinding hues brightened up the dull gray of McHale’s cell.

Teeyama Averon McHale’s decorative bowls were filled to the brim with them, overflowing. Currently, her right hand is lurking in between, her dark skin contrasting against the bright colors. She lifts up one tiny tangerine and it stops right in front of a face, that is nothing but Hive regulation standard, in the midst of all this opulence, as she sits in a chair, that isn’t just a chair.

It's beautiful, ornately detailed and stitched by hand. It is also, obscene.

McHale is bred for leadership. All soft and sweet, despite her age, and in the middle, piercing eyes that look beyond the surface.

Aryu Isidor Tichy feels naked.

He inches backwards.

His voice is low, “I’m honored you sent for me to entertain you again”

McHale smiles that charming taskmaster smile, that is supposed to put lower units at ease. Isidor is soothed by it, he really is. But something hasn’t been quite right with his thinking for a while. He can’t let himself be lulled into feeling safe, when he wasn’t.

McHale’s eyes seem too large, too shiny. Her oranges too insulting.

“I’m here to help you”, she says and she sounds so friendly and cute, “You’ve applied for reeducation?”

“Yes”

“Why?”

What an inane question.

The minute Isidor thinks that his eyes widen, his stance loosens, and he starts to sweat. He’s not supposed to doubt a taskmaster. Not even in his thoughts. Not even a little bit. No-

“Are you okay, Isidear?”

The pet name feels doubly humiliating, doubly insulting. Precisely because Isidor feels like he’s the one keeping with the rules, while McHale, his Teeyama, was decidedly not, was hoarding oranges as if one could just do that, as if it held no significance.

“I think I might have caught a dissident thoughtvirus”, Isidor says quietly. His thick shoulders square up, cage in his plump cheeks. “I think I might become a liability to the Hive”

McHale doesn’t stop smiling.

Which confuses Isidor. “That’s not good, Teeyama McHale …” he clarifies.

“It's not good at all, no”

She starts peeling the tangerine. Her fingers are now sticky and wet.

Disgusting.

Isidor flinches at his own thought. He quickly opens his mouth again, “Why haven’t you fulfilled my request?”

“For reeducation?”

Isidor nods.

Instead of explaining herself, McHale bites into the tangerine, completely forgoes the bite-sized pieces it's already made of, completely ignores how a tangerine is supposed to be eaten.

Drops of fruit juice spill onto the table underneath her.

The sound makes Isidor’s skin crawl and sweat even more. “I’m not used to tasks of this nature”

She says, “But you’ve excelled so far”

He cries, “Its highly unconventional”

She shrugs. “Its pretty simple”

It was. Objectively. Isidor’s tasks used to be comprised of low level engineering in the field of household robotics. Sometimes a whole automaton. A bit of programming on the side. And that’s it. Endless days of fixing cat food dispensers, and chatting up sexbots, and all in all feeling useful, feeling fulfilled, feeling … not stressed.

But then McHale took over his sector, and McHale, well.

Now he’s getting very specific, but simple tasks. Not all the time. But some of the time. Like now.

She gives one orange a little push. Makes it roll towards Isidor. Her hair sways up and down the tiniest amount, her non-regulation stiff curls like a halo around her head, as she continues to smile. She says, “I want you to eat this … ”

Isidor curls into himself, his wrinkles morphing his face into a near parody of disgust. It looked like he was playing it up. He wasn’t.

McHale continues, “ … and enjoy it”

By now, Isidor is whimpering. A man his age, early forties, big like a boulder, thinning curly hair, and even thinner beard hanging off of him, whimpering. It made an amusing image, and that fact was reflected in the way McHale started snickering.

“I will do what you ask of me Teeyama, but I cannot control my emotions. I have to protest against this heinous act being forced upon me!”

“Are you, a loyal and goodhearted unit of this Hive … defying a taskmaster?”, McHale whispers.

“NO!”, Isidor cries out, because of course, that would be even worse. “No, I- I’m sorry-” As he grumbles out more apologies he grabs the orange.

It tasted good.

It tasted great.

And then the joy makes way for dread.

“I’m not cleared for a toilet, McHale!” He hadn’t even addressed her by title, he was so shocked, “I can’t eat non-regulation food, I’ll- I- My body is designed to eat manna! You know how there’s talks of removing the workers’ digestive system, since- And- Well-”

“You can use my toilet, Isidor”

He doesn’t calm down. In fact, he gets even redder.

Bites into the orange again. Munches quietly. Fights down the little sounds of joy at the bursts of grotesque sweet and sour on his tongue.

–

So. The next steps were obvious.

Denunciating McHale. Make a report with her taskmaster. It was easy. It would be done in mere minutes. Isidor could be rid of this nuisance, could be rid of her in seconds.

But that orange had tasted nice.

And those occasional “Just enjoy yourself” tasks. What bad could they in effect do? Other than make him feel guilty. He wasn’t feeling guilty all the time of course. And during those “fun” tasks he usually ended up feeling rather good. Nice. Well.

But oh. Oh. The Hive couldn’t be sustained like this. What if McHale wasn’t just doing this to him, but to their entire sector!

For the first time Isidor wished he could have comm clearance, could actually speak with his fellow units. Until now it had never turned up as something desirable to him.

“Why me?”, Isidor asks, sitting in her massage chair and not having enough mindspace to actually care about what he’s asking.

“Because I like you”, McHale says.

“I’m Isidor Tichy, Aryu of C-2-4 and most days I clean gunk out of motherboards. I’m not special enough to be considered for procreation, not pretty enough to be a toy someone would keep, not smart enough to climb ranks-”

McHale had been smiling, but now her eyes wander. Her nose wrinkles. “You’re the perfect drone, yes. But with you its self inflicted. With you, there’s effort”

“Yes. I strive to be the best worker I can be-”

“Yes. You strive. You struggle”

“Why thank you”

Defiant sarcasm. Taskmasters were legally obligated to put a drone into the freezing pod for that.

McHale just continues talking, “With you, there’s effort to be the perfect drone. No one else has to try, Isidor. All the other units don’t even think about it. They just are. The perfect drone, I mean”

Isidor’s eyes are half lidded. He’s melting into the chair. He’s never gotten a massage in his life. This. This could be worth it.

“I want to fit in”, he says. Truthfully.

“But you don’t”, McHale concludes. “Just like me”

–

That conversation is what sets him off. Back in his cell (which was perfectly cut to his body, barely room enough to take one step; really, only enough space to fall on top of the regeneration mat), back in his cell, Isidor replays the last conversation.

Then all of their conversations.

And comes to a decision.

He never sees McHale again. She vanishes, along with her spacious cell, her massage chair, her toilet, her oranges.

Isidor regrets it immensely. Isidor also justifies it with every thought.

And in the end he realizes he’s alone.

Maybe more alone than before, where he hadn’t even known of a possibility to not be.

[synthshenanigans]

I'm curious as to peoples idea for what he'd do for the next power hour so

[These all being popular ideas or ppl he's mentioned]

This was all just a ploy to get you to read my info dump theory on the concept of a Chonny Jash Power Hour loser HAHAHA

Im joking tho. Not about my CJPH theory, that is very much real but I'm not forcing you to read it lol

However if you're curious, my inane rambles are further down :}

[Long Rant Post Below]

Okay so I'm gonna start with the basic idea I got it from; that being Nerd. Nerd already foreshadowed the THDPH & the WWPH [Even down to the last song for each of them] Not only that, but he references the stuff hes done in the past as well with a break/pause inbetween.

[This is what I mean]

The first three being all stuff he already did. BDG with Pocket, Tally Hall with Vol.1 & then Cage by Tim Minchin being the start the power hours.

The next two being the power hours he would do after this song [Memento Mori & Charlie's Inferno-Will Wood & That Handsome Devil]. But those are the only songs he would reference in Nerd, leaving no more clues as to what the last one would be. The only thing left in it is the video game references & Stairway to Heaven in the ending. [Which oddly enough also fit the pattern in a way. StH being about dying and the afterlife like Memento Mori & Chonny's Inferno and the video game references being all covers he made on his old channel]

While the VG refs could be a hint at a Videogame or Toby Fox Power Hour, I think at most, if its a clue at all, hinting at the next thing he does is recovering old songs.

----

Next, a couple of his songs reference his past stuff. Fine, I'm Fine has a good amount of lines that vaguely refer back to songs from the before [heres a post that goes more into it that's pretty cool!!]. And more importantly Dear Machine references Pocket, Dream (Outro from Calamity) & wings of wax. Pocket being later used in Nerd & the mention of Icarus coming back in Art. Not only that, but the voice in the very end Thermodynamic Lawyer is the exact same [if not very close to] voice filter/effect he uses in Dear Machine. Even down to the British accent he does in it. [Tho it is fairly normal for a music artist to reference their older songs in their music so it could be nothing]

Speaking of Dear Machine tho, quick thing to add about it is that it shows he not against covering his own songs. While yea technically its just a different version of Ode of the Cog, DM,HtC in a way counts as a cover of OotC. Same goes for bargaining/compromise & The Ballad of Dr. Jekyll.

----

Another idea with a CJPH is that in the CJFS discord theres a "Question of the Day" Channel. Where, as the name says, a Mod or Helper will ask a CJ related question & everyone can give their idea/imput on it. For Day 100, as a special fun lil thing, they asked Chonny if he wanted to give a question for that day. His question being:

And yes he does say that he doesnt plan on doing anything like that in future [if he even were to do it]. I fully believe he wasn't lying there & honestly I never saw him redoing any song ever until I had the idea of a CJPH [aside from stuff like Spring and a Storm & Storm and a Spring obviously]. But this is the best idea I could ever see him doing that. Also that question was from early August so a fair amount of time has passed. Whether thats enough time to equal "at least in the near future at all" I have no clue, but it is a thought.

----

One of my last points [that I remember atm lol] is on how he would end the power hours. Cos like, while yea he does whatever he wants & doesn't rlly follow what anyone says or asks [which I 100% agree with & is completely valid btw], I'd imagine he'd still want to end the PHs with a bang. Which is why I originally didnt think the recent one would be Will Wood.

He's stated a couple of time that hes one of his favorite artist & he definitely knows that a huge chunk of his fan base listen to WW as well. So why not end with that? Why not end with one of the most requested artist people wanted him to cover? Why wouldn't he end with a power hour of the artist that was his #1 on his Spotify Wrapped? What else could he do after that? Well maybe he'd go with his #2 artist? WHICH IS JUST HIMSELF BBYYYY

Plus, the name Power Hour already comes from this:

So it's very likely he's had himself play multiple times in a row & had a "Chonny Jash Power Hour".

Of course theories are just theories so there's always the chance I'm wrong & just insane. And again he does whatever he wants whenever he wants so who knows what it'll be. I just think id be an interesting idea for him to do.

As for how a Chonny Jash Power Hour would look? Maybe each song being a cover of a song from a past album or single? I'd imagine one from the before. & Covered in Discontent [maybe Gothic Whore?]. Like remake Pocket since its been referenced so much, tho that's still just a BDG cover so who knows. the before. would be interesting just to see how his perspective has changed since he originally wrote those songs. Gothic Whore he already has 2 songs that have a story version & a him version so I can see him doing another.

I HIGHLY doubt he'd do anything related to Vol.1 as its his completely separate thing & he doesn't rlly wanna touch any song that's TH/HMS related until whenever he feels like starting Vol.2 [which is valid lol]. If anything I could maybe see like TWWAY, Special or maybe Greener? Or go a different route with the og I'm Gonna Win or like a more outta the box one with like Just a Friend [only cos be did a 20 second "cover" of it in Mucka Blucka]. Again, I do not see him touching anything Vol.1 related but still something to entertain ig? [4th TME cover; The Chonny Electric when/j]

Tho maybe he'd just remake songs that he he fully made [like the before. or Gothic Whore], since those are more of actual Chonny Jash songs rather than the others just being covers. Would be very cool to maybe see a remake of some of his Majora's Mask song tho [no this isn't me coping over HEAL not being on spotify shush]. Or maybe he'd do songs from his old stuff like Don't Take it Personally? [also not me coping over wanting that song on Spotify too]

Idk these are just my thoughts on the idea of a CJPH [or even a Can of Soup Power Hour/j]. Either way I am gonna say idc what he'd do, BDG or Streetlight Manifesto are my other guesses, but anything he makes is always rll good & fun so I'll be interested to see whatever it is.

But ya know considering I typed all this out in the span of an hour & a half I kinda hope im not wrong PFFT

[theseshipsshallsail]

High above the sodium street lights of One Hundred and Fourteenth Street, the heavy storm clouds cast a sombre shadow as Elio haunts the cracked, living room window in Oliver’s studio apartment; occasionally sipping a dark-roast espresso from the unwieldy Dial-A-Brew on the formica kitchen counter.

He’s seldom been a fan of absence makes the heart grow fonder - especially when forced to subsist on a paltry diet of fleeting visits, priority mail letters, and expensive late night phone calls - and as Elio examines the warped casement frame he’s quick to recall the evenings Oliver held the receiver over this very spot, affording both him and his parents a unique flavour of the city he calls home. 

Beyond that, however, there’s a building sense of anticipation as he studies the sky to the east. He certainly hadn’t expected to be out and aboutthis early. Not today: his first proper morning in the States. It’s the weekend, for starters, and after a fifteen hour flight from Malpensa - let alone the tedious baggage delays at JFK - he assumed he’d nap ‘til noon. His muzzy brain, albeit, clearly had other ideas, and Elio’d blinked into reluctant alertness at five a.m; lulled by the muted, Hispanic rhythms drifting from the private courtyard below.

Truth be told, he can’t quite believe he’s really here, but the crushed-velvet twilight is somewhat hypnotic in his chimeric state, and Elio sags ever so slightly when a familiar pair of arms slink slow and securely around him: banishing the pre-dawn chill.

“Hey,” he hears, Oliver’s voice gravelly with sleep. “Everything okay?” 

“Non preoccuparti…” Elio squeezes the barely-hidden tension from his bicep. “Everything’s perfect.”

“And yet you’re awake?”

“And yet I’m awake,” he repeats, carefully balancing his half-full coffee mug on the shelf of a modular bookcase. “Blame it on the time difference, mon cher.”

Oliver hums: low and contemplative. “Long haul schleps are brutal.”

“They are indeed,” Elio agrees, thankful for his current circumstances regardless. “Still. You needn’t get up just because I am.” 

His boyfriend grunts. “I’m not up.” 

“You’re not?” Elio murmurs, savouring the warmth of his larger body. 

“Nope,” Oliver says, his reflection grinning inanely. “Far from it,” he adds, failing to stifle a laugh. “I’m only here to tempt an impoverished college student back to my bed.”

Elio snickers. “Is that so?” he replies, pressing a kiss to his bristly jowl. “And does this impoverished college student have a say in the matter?”

“Assolutamente.” His accent is damn near perfect. “Though I doubt he’ll take much persuading.”

“Ah… la naïveté of youth,” Elio laments as he checks the two-tone Chronograph at Oliver’s wrist, then places his lips right there; right atop the steady thrum of his timpani pulse. “Easily corrupted by the desires of a dissol-”

“Oi!” Oliver sputters: eyes narrowed in faux reproach. “I’ll show you a dissolute!” he growls, and the next few minutes devolve into breathless giggles and retaliatory jabs as he scrabbles his expert fingertips over Elio’s heaving rib cage. “I don’t recall you minding my desires when I brought you off in the airport bathroom…”

“I’m jet-lagged, not dead,” Elio gasps when they’re finished jostling; heels digging deep into the tufted rug when Oliver attempts to make good on his promise. “Aspettare! Aspettare! I want to watch.”

“Watch what?” Oliver asks, face buried in the crook of his neck. 

“The sun, bien sûr! I want to see it rise.” Elio nods at the window; to where a vivid palette of fuschia fire is already splitting the pale blue horizon. “We haven’t done that in forever.”

Oliver sighs: fettered with regret. “We haven’t, have we?”

“Not since we borrowed my parents’ rowboat at Easter.” 

And scandalised a couple local fishermen in the process.

“Every forever derives from a now,” Oliver tells him - dropping another kiss to the hinge of his jaw - and Elio burrows close as they settle in for the duration; safe in the knowledge they’ll be echoing this moment for untold years to come.

[foundtherightwords]

The Hollow Heart - Chapter 15

Pairing: Hellcheer, Gothic AU

Summary: To escape her mother's control and the stifling society of Gilded Age New York, heiress Christabel Cunningham impulsively marries Henry Creel, a charming and seductive stranger, and accompanies him to his remote mansion on the West Coast. There, as Henry grows cold and cruel, Christabel must uncover her husband's sinister secret before it's too late. But can she trust Kas, her husband's enigmatic assistant, who seems to be her only ally in this strange place, or is Kas's loyalty to his master stronger than his attraction to Christabel?

Chapter warnings: violence, blood

Chapter word count: 5k

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14

Chapter 15 - A World of Death

As soon as Christabel set foot inside the attic, her senses were overpowered by its dusty, musty smell, along with a more subtle whiff of decay. Clasping a handkerchief to her nose, she set about lowering the lamp that hung from the ceiling by a chain, lighting it, and drawing it up again. Its glow could not penetrate the furthest corners of the attic, but it was enough for her to see where she was going. For closer inspections, she lit a candle she'd brought from her room.

The icebox. Kas had told her to look inside the icebox. She assumed it was the large cabinet in a corner of the room. Holding the candle high over her head, she made her way there, passing the cages of the snakes and spiders with their rustling, crawling, creeping inhabitants. She expected the cabinet to be locked, but to her surprise, the doors fell open easily. She supposed Henry thought the locked attic door was secure enough. Heart in throat, she brought the candle closer with a trembling hand, afraid of what she may find there. 

The icebox was full of glass bottles of various sizes, most of them containing some dark red liquid. Wine? No. It was too dark, and—she picked one of the bottles up and sloshed the liquid around—too viscous to be wine. She carefully uncorked the bottle, brought it to her nose, and recoiled as she sniffed in a coppery stench. Blood. The icebox was full of blood.

What was Henry doing with all this blood? Was it animal or human? The bottles were mostly unlabeled, except for one, which bore a tag that said "Unicorn", written in Henry's slanting hand.

Not all of the bottles contained blood. At the back was a single bottle, as big as the jar Christabel had seen at the shop window in Chinatown. Inside it was what she thought was a big twig at first, but as she shone her candle on it, she realized it was—what was it? It looked like some sort of tail, but it was unlike the tail of any animal she'd ever seen. About the size and length of her forearm, it was covered in grayish ridged scales and ended in a wicked-looking hook, like a scorpion sting. This was labeled "Wyvern". Unicorn and wyvern. Heraldic, imaginary creatures. Some sort of code, perhaps?

There was something familiar about the scales covering that tail, and as Christabel leaned down to take a closer look, she remembered—it was the same as the one she'd found in Luna's stall the day the horse died. Her prophetic dream came back to her. Luna had looked like a unicorn in it. At the time, she'd dismissed it as a fancy, the product of her imagination stirred by Henry's inane comment. But had it really been inane? He had seemed quite excited when she mentioned the bump on Luna's forehead...

No. There was no such thing as a unicorn. But Christabel was now sure that poor Luna's death had not been an accident, and that proved something even more horrific—that Henry believed Luna was a unicorn. That he was out of his mind.

The icebox had brought less clarity than she'd hoped. Shutting its doors in frustration, she turned toward the desk at the center of the room. But here she was even more out of her depth. The desk's pigeonholes and the drawers of the cabinet next to it were crammed full of paper, each sheet filled with so much writing that it all blended together into a spidery mass in front of her eyes, and she could make neither heads nor tails of it. She didn't even know where to begin looking.

In a drawer, she found printed pages, old, yellowed, and brittle, apparently torn out of books. They were written in what looked like Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Persian; some were brilliantly illuminated and illustrated; there were even a few thin pages of Chinese, fragile as tissue paper. She couldn't read them, but they disturbed her. In her mind, a person that had no regard for books, a person that could rip pages from venerable tomes in this way, was certain to have no regard for anything else.

She pulled out drawer after drawer, frustrated, anxious. And then she drew her hand back in fear—a spider was crawling out of the bottom drawer. When she raised the candle to look again, however, it melted into the grain of the wood. Nothing but a trick of the light. She lowered the candle, and the spider appeared once more, this time scampering into the drawer. It repeated this movement a few times, crawling in and out of the drawer just out of the corner of her eyes, only to vanish when she looked properly.

A prickling sensation started on the back of her neck. Christabel knew the ghosts were in the attic with her even before she turned around.

But it was impossible. It had been so long since she'd seen them. And she wasn't asleep. And even during the worst of her hallucinations, they had always stayed outside, under the cypress grove. How could they be inside now?

She turned back to look at them. They were hovering in a corner like a patch of irregularly shaped fog; only the darkness of the attic gave them some definition. But she was no longer afraid. She knew now that they hadn't been trying to take her away or turn her into one of them. They were trying to help. "Please," she whispered. "Please, tell me what happened to you. Show me."

The girl, Maxine, raised a silent finger and pointed at the cabinet. Then Christabel understood. The spider had been a sign.

She pulled open the drawer. Behind her, the figures wavered and disappeared, their work done.

There was only a notebook inside, but it wasn't so much a notebook as a thick stack of paper bound together between two leather covers, allowing for new pages to be added when necessary. She sat down on the floor with her back against the cabinet and opened the bulging cover. It appeared to be a diary or journal of some kind.

Jan. 12, 1866, N. Carolina, said the first entry.

Immortality is not the mere prolonging of one's life, it said, in Henry's familiar slanting hand. To achieve true immortality, one must preserve one's essence, in other words, protect one's soul. The only way to do this is to extract the soul and store it in a magical container, a phylactery, thus transforming the body into an indestructible vessel. This requires a complex ritual and a carefully prepared potion (or elixir). Accounts of such feats can be found in the writing of Censorinus, Hermes Trismegistus, Simon Magnus, and the Chinese physician Sun Simiao, especially his "Essential Formulas of Alchemical Classics". It is my determination to devote the rest of my life (ha!) to study these works and discover their secrets, to devise a ritual of my own!

Immortality? Alchemical elixirs and rituals? This was worse than she thought. Henry was surely out of his mind if he believed in such nonsense. She looked again at the date. 1866, forty years ago. And it was his handwriting... But the date didn't mean anything. He could have easily backdated it. The more troubling question was, why bothered? Or perhaps this was his father's work. It wasn't out of the question that father and son had similar handwriting, and it was certainly more plausible than all other explanations.

She flipped through the rest of the notebook. It was more of the same, rambling thoughts on his travels and discoveries and experiments, spanning over the course of three decades. Months or even years would go by without an entry, and then a burst of activities for a few days or weeks, followed by another period of dormancy. As Christabel read more and more, the notion that Henry was simply following in his father's footsteps became less and less likely. There was no mention of a wife and child anywhere. And all the locations of the entries were places he'd told her about. Eastern and Southern Europe, Turkey, Egypt, even India. Jumbled words and phrases jumped out at her, venom, poison, arsenic, belladonna, ritual of defilement, ceremony of endless night, sacrificial heart, and most of all, blood, blood, blood.

Then the word Kas caught her eyes, and she paused and forced herself to focus. The entry was dated from 1870, the location being the Rila Mountains in the Balkans.

Managed to trap myself a bloodsucking creature in the forest. It (for I cannot bring myself to refer to such a creature as "he") has the appearance of a grown man, but it is impossible to tell how old it is. It has all the attributes of a vampire—feeds on blood, burned by sunlight and silver—though garlic and the crucifix have no effect on it whatsoever. It is near feral, nothing like the elegant and seductive vampires of the stories at all. It still retains some ability of human speech though. Conversed with it with the help of a Bulgarian interpreter. It claims its name is Kas, it's been living in the region for over 50 years, and there are many more like it, some much older, though this may simply be a boast to frighten me.

At the bottom of the page is a crude sketch of a creature with a bald head, and bulging, vacant eyes. His mouth hung open, showing two sharp fangs and a thick, blood-red tongue like a slab of raw liver. He looked nothing like her Kas. He barely even looked human. But then again, he could not possibly be her Kas, could he, if Henry met him in 1870?

This was confirmed by another entry, a few days later:

I've been forced to kill Kas. The stupid creature seemed unable to understand that I am its savior and tried to attack me in my sleep, so I put a silver bullet in its heart. It's good to know that some legends are proved to be true. But all that effort, wasted! I've managed to draw a good amount of its blood before its death, only it won't keep for long. I am never going to resort to vampirism to attain immortality—what kind of a life would that be, living like an animal, hunting for blood, never going out in daylight? But this blood is essential to the elixir of transformation. I must find another steady supply.

Christabel scanned the subsequent pages for more mentions of Kas. It seemed that in the next year or so after killing the original Kas, Henry had tried to use the creature's blood to infect several people, but the blood drove them all mad, and one by one, they either died or got killed. Then she came upon an entry written in 1880 in Indianapolis.

Had a breakthrough discovery!!! it said. There is evidence to support the theory that if a pregnant woman is bitten by a vampire, her child will be born a half-vampire, or a dhampyr. This dhampyr will have the powers of a vampire without any of the weaknesses. And a child would certainly be easier to control than a grown-up. With that in mind, I've sought out and found a pregnant female, simple enough in this den of vice. Sedated and injected her with blood from the latest "Kas". She gave birth to a male child. I took it and disposed of her.

There was that casual cruelty again. Disposed of her. As though she was a piece of trash, not a human being. Christabel looked at the date and location again. 1880, Indianapolis. It fitted what Kas told her about his origins. Could this child be Kas? Then that meant that whoever took Kas had lied. His mother hadn't died giving birth to him. She'd been killed.

Over the next few months, there were sporadic references to the child in the diary, not by name, only as "the dhampyr". The dhampyr is growing well. The dhampyr has begun feeding on his own. The dhampyr is aging at a normal rate.

Then, eighteen months later: To my annoyance, the dhampyr still has all the weaknesses of a vampire, but at least he is docile. I left him without blood for three days to test his predatory instincts. He is angry, and once I fed him again, he fell on the blood ferociously, but he has no instinct to hunt or attack on his own. It makes him more biddable.

I've decided to call him Kas. After all, he was born of Kas's blood. It's quicker than "the dhampyr", and it saves me from having to think of a name.

Christabel let the diary fall into her lap. So this was Kas, her Kas. But what did it all mean? Could it be possible that he had been infected with the blood of a vampire at birth and become some monstrous half-creature? But there was no such thing as vampires... was there?

She couldn't read anymore. The attic had not brought the answers she'd expected. All she saw was evidence of Henry's madness. She didn't need more reasons to convince her to leave Creel House. It was something she should have done months ago.

Before putting the diary back, she flipped to its last pages to see if there was anything she'd missed, some mentions of herself, perhaps. She found a page written with what looked like a cooking recipe, though it was like no recipe she had ever seen:

2 drops of distilled Arsenic

1 drop of distilled Belladonna

1 pint of Blood from a unicorn yearling, killed by wyvern venom

1 pint of Blood from a humanoid killed by a giant spider

1 pint of Blood from a vampire or vampire spawn

1 pint of Venom from a giant spider

1 pint of Venom from a wyvern

1 intact heart of the sacrificial human, killed by a mixture of arsenic and belladonna

      Prepare during a lunar eclipse and consume within an hour

Behind this were four pages only partially filled, rather different from the dense writing in the rest of the diary, but what was written on them chilled her to the bones.

The first page read:

SUBJECT no.1

Sex: Male

Age: 21

Acquired: June 4th, 1885

Phylactery: Pocket watch

Pocket watch? This must be referring to Patrick McKinney, surely.

Started Arsenic and Belladonna: June 10th

Ritual: Aug 8th, penumbral lunar eclipse

It concluded: Subject died during construction of phylactery. Heart not viable.

The second page was more of the same.

SUBJECT no.2

Sex: Male

Age: 25

Acquired: Sept 25th, 1887

Phylactery: Pair of spectacles

Started Arsenic and Belladonna: Sept 30th

Ritual: January 31st, partial lunar eclipse

This must be Frederick Benson then.

Again, Subject died during construction of phylactery. Heart not viable. But beneath that was another line, underlined in thick strokes: Phylactery must be my choice, not the subject's!!!

The third page:

Subject #3

Sex: Female

Age: 18

Maxine.

Acquired: Mar 10th, 1891

Phylactery: Antique ruby ring

Christabel remembered the cracked ring she'd seen on Maxine's finger in her dreams.

Started Arsenic and Belladonna: Mar 26th

Ritual: July 18th, partial lunar eclipse

This page ended a little differently, but no less grim: Subject survived construction of phylactery. Phylactery destroyed during ritual. Subject died. Heart not viable. This was followed by another note: Heart must be willingly given for phylactery to work.

There was only one page left, and Christabel was frightened to read it. She had a pretty good idea of what it was going to say. In the end, she looked anyway, unable to resist the horror, like a person being drawn toward an abyss even as she was repulsed by its dark depths.

It was written on a newer piece of paper, the ink not yet having time to fade to brown.

SUBJECT #4

Sex: Female

Age: 23

Acquired: Nov 2nd, 1905

Their wedding day. For him, it hadn't been a wedding at all, just an act of acquirement.

Phylactery: Pendant, stained glass taken from childhood home

Heart pledging ritual successful

When had he performed this ritual? How did she know nothing, remember nothing about it?

Started Arsenic and Belladonna: Nov 15th

And the final line: Ritual: Apr 17th -18th, total lunar eclipse

She looked over the other pages. 1 intact heart of the sacrificial human, killed by a mixture of arsenic and belladonna. They had all been fed arsenic and belladonna. She remembered her stomach cramps, the bottle of belladonna tincture that Henry claimed would help, the subsequent nightmares and hallucinations. He'd been poisoning her. Like the previous victims. None of them had lived for longer than four months since he "acquired" them. Heart not viable. Heart not viable. Heart pledging ritual successful.

She read the last line of the last page again. April 18th. Two days from now. What was Henry going to do to her in two days?

The clanging of the bell made Christabel jump out of her skin. Joyce. She must have received Kas's message.

Where to go now? The train station, or the dock? Christabel thought briefly and decided she would feel safer with the ocean between her and Henry. The dock, then.

She staggered to her feet. On second thoughts, she picked up the diary and took it with her. At the very least, it proved that Henry was not of sound mind. After blowing out the lamp and locking the attic door behind her, she went into her room to put on her coat and hat, and pick up her valise. Her eyes fell on her phonograph by the bedside table with the boxes of wax recordings underneath it, and a stab of pain went through her heart.

She realized she could not, would not leave Kas. If she escaped, she may be able to buy all the phonographs and recordings she wanted, but they wouldn't be the same.

She would have to find him and convince him to go with her. She could tell him the truth about his mother, then perhaps he would no longer feel bound to Henry. She still had time. If Henry's notes were to be trusted, she was not in immediate danger. Not yet. Chinatown was a confusing place, but she had a pretty good idea of where they had gone.

So she ran down the stairs, into the kitchen, where she found the sharpest steak knife in the drawer and put it in her reticule. Then she slammed the door shut and went down the drive without looking back. She never wanted to see Creel House again, as long as she lived.

The tides were in, but Christabel didn't hesitate. Glad to have something to do to take her mind off her impending doom, she launched the boat into the sea and rowed toward the shore, where Joyce and her wagon were waiting.

Seeing Christabel approach, the older woman jumped down and helped her off the boat.

"Kas sent me a message saying you need a ride to the train station and he can't take you," Joyce said as Christabel settled into the wagon seat next to her. "Is there some sort of emergency?"

"Yes," answered Christabel, for that was the easiest option. How could she explain that her husband had lost his mind and been poisoning her, and was planning some sort of sacrificial ritual that would certainly end in her death, all in his quest for immortality? People would think that she had lost her mind instead. "But I'm not going to the train station. Could you take me to Chinatown first, please?"

Joyce looked doubtful. "But Kas said—"

Christabel felt like screaming. "I know what he said!" she snapped. "Just—please, Joyce. Take me to Chinatown."

Joyce shrugged. Without another question, she shook the reins and clicked her tongue to set the horse walking.

***

Christabel found the shop on Dupont Street without much trouble. The black and white circle on its sign looked down at her like the baneful eye of a Cyclops or some ominous moon of another world. The door was locked, and there was no light on at any window that she could see. But Henry's car was parked outside, so she knew she'd come to the right place. After trying the door to no avail, Christabel returned to the wagon, chewing on her bottom lip.

"Well?" Joyce asked anxiously. "What do you want to do now?"

What she wanted was to find Kas and persuade him to leave with her, except she couldn't talk to him here or even wait for him to come out—he would be with Henry. She knew she should just go to the dock and ask Joyce to give Kas a message so he could find her later. But she couldn't stand the waiting. What if Henry intercepted the message? What if Kas didn't want to leave his master?

Then Christabel remembered the back alley—not the one where she'd been attacked, but the one where the mustached shop owner had thrown her out. Perhaps the door to the back of the shop would be unlocked. She told Joyce to take the wagon there and park at the mouth of the alley.

"I know I'm asking for a huge favor," she said, "but could you wait here for me, please? And—and if I don't come back in half an hour, call the police."

"Is it that dangerous?" Joyce asked, her eyes wide open with alarm in the yellow light of the streetlamps.

"... I don't know."

"I don't think you should go on your own, Mrs. Creel."

"I'm sorry, I already involved you too much as it is," Christabel said apologetically. Taking her valise and her reticule, she jumped off the wagon and ran down the length of the alley.

The back door was locked. There was a lattice window looking into the alley, but the lattice was covered with some opaque material that only let through the faintest hint of light and showed strange shapes moving behind it, like some sinister shadow play. Murmurs were coming from inside, and Christabel could make out Henry's voice, low and commanding.

She touched the window experimentally. Paper. The window was covered with soft, porous paper, and she discovered that by licking her finger, she could poke a hole through it without making a sound. This she did, and, with her heart hammering so hard it threatened to burst out of her chest, she put her eye to the opening.

She was looking into the workroom at the back of the shop, now cleaned of all the herbs and medicine, and all of the workers. There were only three men in the room, all bending over a table—Henry, Kas, and another with his back to her. By his long, salt-and-pepper braid, she assumed him to be the shop owner. She couldn't see what was on the table, because the shop owner's back was in the way.

"Now," Henry said, lifting a crate onto the table with great care, "stand back, both of you. This spider is no ordinary black widow. You have no idea the trouble I've gone through to acquire it." Acquire, like he'd acquired Patrick, Frederick, Maxine, and herself. "If it attacked either of you, I would not be held responsible."

Kas and the shop owner stepped away, finally giving Christabel a clear view of the table. Her heart stopped.

On the table was the old dwarf she'd seen sitting by the front door. He was tied to the table by stout ropes, though it may not be necessary—his limbs were inert, his eyes were closed, and his head lolled to one side. She couldn't tell if he was dead or merely unconscious.

Something was pushing at the top of the crate, eager to get out. Christabel glimpsed a spindly leg of mottled gray and heard a clicking sound. Then Henry opened the lid, and her body went cold.

Crawling out of the box was the biggest spider she'd ever seen. About the size of a dinner plate, its legs as big as her own fingers, with lichen marbling its white body, it could easily be mistaken for a rock. Milky, blind-looking eyes covered its head, and two blade-sized fangs extended from its mouth, dripping with sticky saliva. It turned this way and that, raising its head slightly like it was sniffing the air, and soon locked its attention on the dwarf.

It crawled on the victim, fangs clicking. However, it did not attack, perhaps because the dwarf was just lying there, doing nothing, and the spider kept wandering up and down his body until it got bored and turned toward Henry expectantly.

"Oh no, you don't," Henry growled. He prodded at the spider with a wire connected to a plug in the wall. There was a crackle of electricity, and the spider raised its front legs in a threatening gesture. Henry prodded at it again. The enraged spider turned toward the dwarf and sank its fangs into his neck.

The dwarf might have been unconscious before, but he was certainly conscious enough to feel the venom coursing through him. Though his eyes didn't open, his body twisted and convulsed violently as though controlled by several puppet masters at once, almost lifting away from the table at one point. If it hadn't been for the ropes tying him in place, he would have fallen to the floor.

Christabel gripped the window frame, horrified but could not tear her eyes away from the death throes of the dwarf—and he was dying, she was certain of it. Henry watched the grisly scene with a triumphant glint in his cold, cold eyes, while the shop owner stood by impassively, and Kas turned toward the wall, unable to look.

Finally, the dwarf's body stopped twitching and lay slumped on the tabletop. Henry threw a burlap sack over the spider and bundled it back into the crate. He then signaled to the shop owner, who took the dwarf's pulse and nodded. Apparently satisfied, Henry handed him a wad of money, and the man ducked through the cloth curtain and disappeared.

"Right, Kas, bleed him," said Henry, handing Kas a straight razor and a bucket.

Kas held back, hesitant. "Sir...?" 

"For God's sake, man! Stop being squeamish and get a move on! One should think that you would be used to blood by now." Henry picked up a glass tube and held it under the spider's fangs. "Remember to get at least a pint."

While Henry prodded the spider again with the live wire so it would pump its venom into the tube, Kas reluctantly picked up the razor and bucket and approached the dead body. What was he going to do? Surely, he was not—not—

Kas slid the razor over the dwarf's throat in a quick, smooth movement. Blood spurted from the slash, staining Kas's face, the wall, and drops of blood even splattered across the paper window, making Christabel recoil.

Kas put the bucket under the body and watched the blood drip into it, his eyes dark and melancholy. With a sigh, he swiped a hand across his blood-splattered face, then brought his fingers to his mouth and sucked them cleaned, like a child licking its fingers after eating sweets.

At the sight of that casual, gruesome gesture, Christabel fell away from the window with a strangled cry.

Henry's head whipped toward the widow. He barked out a command, which Christabel couldn't hear over the thrumming of pulse in her ears, like she was surrounded by a whole swarm of bees. She only saw the shop owner charge out of the back door, and before she knew it, he'd had her in an iron grip. Henry and Kas followed closely behind. Kas's eyes widened in shock as they landed on Christabel.

She struggled madly, but for all his reediness, the shop owner was too strong for her. She recovered her wits enough to scream, "Help!!! Somebody, help me!!!"

Joyce came running from the mouth of the alley, but Henry stepped up to meet her before she could reach Christabel. "If you don't want anything to befall your sons, Mrs. Byers, I would suggest that you turn around and go home now," he said mildly. "It would be a shame for young Jonathan and little Will to be met with an accident."

Joyce went pale. She threw Christabel a sorrowful glance before stepping back, back, back, until she disappeared down the alley.

Henry turned back to Christabel. "What an annoying little pest you are," he sneered. He then nodded at Kas, before striding back into the shop.

Kas approached Christabel, agony etched across his features. He looked at the man holding her, and back at the shop.

"Here!" Henry tossed something at him. Kas snatched it out of the air without even looking.

"Kas, please..." Christabel whispered.

Kas shook his head. Her world shattered. Not Kas... please, not Kas... not him too... But had she not just seen him licking blood off his fingers? Why should he be any different?

"I'm sorry," he said. It was the last thing she heard before a handkerchief was clamped over her face, and a pungent, nauseatingly sweet smell invaded her nose. It was either breathing it in or suffocating. She took a few gulping breaths, and everything was plunged into darkness.

Chapter 16

A/N: I spent a lot of time making up the diary pages for this chapter with the intention of putting them into the fic as part of the writing itself, but then I realized the handwriting font I used is not exactly legible, plus having so many images in the fic can mess it up for folks who use screen readers, so I only included a few as illustrations and kept the writing intact. Hopefully that works for you guys!

The "recipe" for the potion and the ritual/construction of the phylactery were based on the DnD guide to lichdom (after all, Vecna is a lich in DnD lore), with some tweaks of my own.

[blackjackkent]

OK, so one of the things I've been looking forward to most in Rivington is unleashing Rakha on the asshole kennelmaster. Because if there's one thing Rakha actually has a real good relationship with, it's doggos.

She does stop in the post office briefly, which she mostly finds baffling, as the postmaster spends the whole time rambling at her about how something is killing all his carrier pigeons. This is, for Rakha, an exhausting combination of inane and interesting to the dark urge in her head, so she leaves again as quickly as possible.

But on the way out, she hears the sound of barking and does a hard pivot out into the yard.

The game has the kennelmaster speak first when you talk to her, which leaves me free to indulge my headcanon that Rakha approached her to ask, completely guilelessly, if she could pet all the dogs.

Unfortunately, the kennelmaster is an asshole.

"Woof!"

Rakha squints at her, taken fully off-guard by this greeting. "What?"(*)

"Ah. You speak. Which means you're not a dog. So what the hell are you doing in my kennels?"

Rakha dislikes her at once; immediately the beast sets up a low-level growl at the back of her mind, speculating on the possibility of chopping the woman up and feeding her to the dogs, bit by bit.

"I'd like to buy a dog," she says abruptly. She didn't have this plan when she came in, but it's as good a reason as any for being here, and if Scratch and Buddy make her feel better in camp, it stands to reason that another dog would also help. And it distracts her, briefly, from the immediate thoughts of murder.

The kennelmaster scowls. "They're not for sale," she snaps. "These are courier dogs - trained to follow orders, read maps, and protect their deliveries with their lives. They're worth more than their weight in gold."

Something clicks into place in Rakha's head. The place they found Scratch, holding guard over the body of a fallen courier with letters in his pack. The keen intelligence with which the dog navigates the roads they travel. Scratch came from this place, from one of these cages.

"I think I found one of your dogs," she says. "Scratch."

One of the woman's eyebrows quirks up almost imperceptibly, and a keen, narrow look flashes across her face. Then it's replaced, abruptly, by a wide, ingratiating smile. "Found him, did you?" she asks. "I can't say I'm surprised. Gomwick never kept him on a tight leash." She laughs airily. "Bring him here and I'll give him a once-over for you. Check him for worms and so on."

Her assistant, a beleaguered-looking gnomish boy, perks up eagerly at this discussion. "Oh, yes please! I'd love to see him!"

"He's a good dog," the kennelmaster agrees. "We'd both love to see him again."

Rakha squints cautiously at the woman for a moment. This is a massive shift in her demeanor from a moment ago, and the dislike it prompted still sits like a sour taste in Rakha's mouth. But... what they're offering is something good for Scratch, and Scratch has earned that, being one of the things against which Rakha steadies herself in camp...

She nods slowly.

Whistle for Scratch.

Scratch trots in eagerly at the summons - but as Rakha watches, his entire attitude shifts in the space of a moment.

His ears go back, his tail goes down, and he makes a soft whimpering noise unlike anything she's ever heard from him. And it doesn't take much thinking to guess what this means.

The boy, of course, isn't at fault. His excitement at seeing Scratch alive and well seems quite genuine. But the kennelmaster is another story.

"Shut up, Dringo," she snaps at the boy as he moves to greet the dog. "And get back to work!"

She turns, lifting a hand threateningly, and smirks with satisfaction to see Scratch at once cower back behind Rakha's leg. "And you've been slacking as well, Scratch, m'boy," she snarls. Her eyes flick up to meet Rakha's. "This dog is property of Sword Coast Couriers," she says icily. "I'll take him off your hands now.

Ice floods Rakha's veins. Betrayal. This is a trick. The woman lied to get Scratch into the yard, played on what little good faith Rakha has, and now means to take Scratch from her.

And the woman is cruel. She threatened to strike him. He is afraid of her. That means she has struck the blow in the past.

Kill. Kill. Kill her. Punish her. Rip out her throat.

"You shouldn't raise your hand to him like that," she says, each word carefully enunciated with the effort it takes to hold herself still.

"I can do whatever I please," the kennelmaster sneers. "He's my dog. Now get out - this is a private yard."

Rage floods Rakha's whole body, creeping up the ruined muscles of her face, amplified by anger from Wyll and (surprisingly) Lae'zel and Minthara racing along the tadpole connection.

Killkillkillkillkillkillkillkill...

She takes a step forward, then another, until she is almost nose-to-nose with the human woman, towering over her from a foot and a half of extra height. Every muscle in her body is strained with the effort not to destroy the woman out of hand in broad daylight.

[INTIMIDATION] "I'll break every bone in your body," she whispers hoarsely, the shadowy darkness around her eyes giving her the air of a creature out of the Hells themselves, "before I'll let you hurt that dog."

(A/N: This is exactly the same tack Hector took and I don't apologize for scaring the shit out of this woman in multiple playthroughs. XD The really funny thing is that Rakha's CHA score is way better than Hector's, not to mention her JOAT expertise in intimidation and the +1 she gets from Ethel's ocular surgery. This is some avenging angel shit and I would not want to be facing it down personally.)

The woman flinches back, and for a moment the fear on her face is unmistakable - and then a mask of disdain snaps down over it. "You-- you'll do no such thing!"

Before Rakha can respond, the boy chimes in at her side. "It's not just Scratch!" he cries out eagerly, with a mix of fear and hope. "She's always hurting the dogs!"

The woman spins, one fist lifting. "SHut your mouth, Dringo!" she growls. "Last warning--"

Rakha moves like lightning. Before the kennelmaster can land the blow on her assistant, Rakha has her by the collar and hurls her back against the cage behind her. She grunts as all the air is knocked from her body, and then the fear is back in her eyes as Rakha's fingertips close around her throat.

Yes. Kill her. Squeeze the life from her and watch the dogs lap her blood as it pours out between your fingers--

"Rakha." Wyll's voice cuts through the roaring of the beast, soft from behind her. "Careful. Stay with me..."

Rakha draws a ragged breath, a muted groan of pain as she struggles against the instinct to destroy. Surely... surely this is a killing with purpose? The woman is cruel. The dogs will be safe. The boy will be safe. Surely... surely...

"Let her go," Wyll murmurs. "She doesn't have to die. Not for her - for you."(**)

Rakha squeezes her eyes shut, holding herself back with a massive effort of will as the kennelmaster squirms and whimpers in her grasp.

Then she opens her eyes and her face goes hard. [INTIMIDATION] "I'll give you to the count of ten," she hisses, "to leave these kennels. One. Two--"

The kennelmaster squirms free of her grip and backpedals hastily, almost slipping in the mud of the yard in her eagerness to get away. "Fine," she snarls. "You think you can do a better job without me? Be my guest! They're a useless bunch of mongrels. You're welcome to them!"

And then she's gone, running like hells out of the yard and into the crowded village beyond.

Dimly Rakha is aware of the gnomish boy cheering, of the cages being opened and the dogs let out into the yard. Of Jaheira taking the boy aside to talk to him, to see if she can help him with the dogs. But all Rakha can do, for a moment, is sit against the wall of the posthouse and tremble violently, pressing the heels of her hands to her forehead.

"Well done, Rakha," Wyll says in a low voice to her, standing nearby and watching her.

She knows he's right - that it was her first attempt to hold back the bloodlust since she learned the truth of who and what she is. But it doesn't feel good. She just feels exhausted.

Wyll sits down next to her, takes one of her hands and just holds it gently. Scratch sits on her other side and nuzzles her jaw. One of the other dogs comes over and licks at her free hand. But even with all this, it's some time before she feels she can breathe easily enough to move.

----

(*) In-game line: "I beg your pardon?" This is more Rakha-ish though. XD

(**) All artistic license unfortunately. In-game all you can do is look menacingly at her from a distance of several feet.

[password-door-lock]

Unknown is full of rage. Of course, that isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Most of the time, anger is the only concrete emotion that he can name and separate from the constant pressure in his chest, the blend of feelings which converge inside his rib cage whether he wants them there or not. Rage, however, he is perfectly content with feeling. Rage, however, he will cling to, ride as far as it will take him as he chases down revenge. Rage, however, bleeds at the edges, frays like old fabric, the ends of the jeans he wore as a teenager. Rage, however, covers all of his bases in every situation but this one. Until now, it’s been good enough. 

He refuses to register the something else that makes his heartbeat speed up as he watches you through the webcam. This is Unknown’s favorite sight, a close second in his fantasies to the mental image he has conjured up of the moment when he finally gets his revenge. Your hair is wet, messy, uncombed; you’re wearing a baggy old T-shirt, something from some event you went to years ago, in a color that does not flatter you, along with loose athletic shorts that leave absolutely everything to the imagination. Your posture is bad and your face is blotchy, scrubbed raw with one of the many products you use on your skin but not cared for in the slightest after that. He watches your reactions to the seemingly meaningless images on your screen, snippets of short videos or memes which require social context that he does not possess.

Unknown is the only one who gets to see you like this, the only person in the world who is party to such intimate and private moments. Sure, the RFA members get to see your selfies, highly choreographed, and in some cases even edited to make them more artful, more appealing. Your coworkers and classmates, from whom you have been absent for several days now, see you in uniform or in your best outfits, carefully curated to fit whatever image you need to portray. Unknown, however, is entitled to look at you when you think that no one’s watching, the only time that you are truly, openly yourself. He enjoys the rawness of it, the roughness, the glimpse into your innocent little heart as you giggle about inane nonsense alone in a stranger’s bedroom. 

Most of all, however, he enjoys the power. The control, the fact that he can see you whenever he wants, that he’s the only one who can watch you this way. That redhead monitors the living room camera, probably thinking about how badly he wants to use and manipulate you as he watches you go about your day. And you’re well aware of that, of course; Unknown has seen you fixing your hair in the bedroom mirror, laboring for minutes on end choosing your daily outfits, presumably to ensure that they are to Luciel’s liking. You poor, stupid thing— can’t you see that you’re being taken advantage of? Can’t you see that you’re going to get in trouble, going to get hurt, going to get strung along and toyed with until that liar inevitably tires of you? But maybe you’re scared of that already. Maybe you have the wherewithal to sense that you are in danger all the time here, that Luciel is not to be trusted, that he could get rid of you with a few keystrokes, if that were really what he wanted. Either way, even Luciel has no way of looking into your bedroom, no way of seeing you in this vulnerable state. Unknown made sure when he hacked your webcam that it would be off-limits to anybody else. That’s something reserved for him, as proof that he is the only person who will ever truly possess such a useful tool.

That’s what you are to Unknown, among other things, of course: a tool, primarily. Your job is to be obedient, to follow the instructions that you’re given and see to it that the RFA hosts another party. You’re a pawn, a set of eyes that Unknown can use to gain access to the inner workings of the RFA. In how they talk to you, he learns even more about their thoughts and motivations, how best to lure them to Magenta and welcome them to the paradise. Of course, they’re all horrible people, and they’re all too willing to take advantage of your sudden arrival and your giving nature. Things might not end very well for you if you’re foolish enough to pursue a romantic relationship with any of them. 

At least Unknown wants to offer you some compensation, to bring you to paradise as a reward for doing your work. Granted, your job is easy enough that a computer could complete it, but, then again, computers are neither cute nor entertaining. Unknown chose you for a reason, after all: just as he predicted, you caught the RFA members off guard. All of them were too busy drooling over you to think very hard about the implications of having their app hacked by a malicious outsider. But Unknown would be lying if he said that your looks weren’t his type, too. Well, he reminds himself as he watches you, the world has no shortage of idiots, no shortage of people who take direction well and lack the instincts for basic self preservation, but ultimately, when he picked you, Unknown was choosing somebody he’d want by his side following the completion of his task. 

He likes to look at you, for what it’s worth— and he finds himself chuckling under his breath at the messages you send to those liars in the chat. You’re a fool, of course, and it’s hard to feel bad about luring you into that apartment when you crossed a city to get there and typed the code in almost entirely of your own volition. It goes without saying that Unknown has no intention of changing any of his plans on your account— no, you’re going to do your job, and then he’s going to save you, and then you’re going to thank him for delivering you from that hellhole of an on organization, and then, finally, finally, he’s going to get his revenge. His rage still guides him, still drags him around on a leash much tighter than the one that his Savior holds, still pushes his fingers to pound against the keys even when his body is screaming at him to throw in the towel and eat something or sleep— that much is never going to change. But these days, as he studies you, Unknown also feels… something else, a sentiment with no name, one that floats inside his stomach and flutters in his chest, one that makes him seriously consider abandoning his work for an hour or so to liberate you from that place prematurely.

Well, whatever, he thinks, minimizing the window that’s been showing him the CCTV feed from the Savior’s old apartment. After he brings you to Magenta, he’ll be able to watch you all he wants— for now, however, Unknown has a job to do, and he can’t put his plans on hold for anything or anyone.