#it will definitely lessen the complaints about Ruby
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Interesting how Ruby’s character is so controversial rn, while one of the biggest complaints for Tokyo blade when it was coming out was the lack of Ruby hmmmm….
#not saying it’s on purpose but it is interesting timing#it will definitely lessen the complaints about Ruby#is this part of Aka’s plan? Or is he just shitty at writting lmao#very excited to see how the second season will turn out tho#Aquas hair is finally fixed!#oshi no ko#onk#ruby hoshino#onk anime#oshi no ko anime#eiko won’t stfu
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Catch Me If You Can (17/?)
298 days. That’s how long Killian Jones was away from a baseball field. It’s less than a year, only part of a season for him, but it might as well have lasted a decade as he alternated between physical therapy and spending an excessive amount of time sitting on his couch.
But then he came back and won the World Series.
It’s something no one saw coming, and it’s certainly not something anyone who knows about his arm would predict. Now it’s a new season with new possibilities, and anything could happen. On-field reporter Emma Swan will be there to cover it all even if she is not his biggest fan right now.
Asking her out live on-air will do that.
Rating: Mature
A/n: Everyone enjoying all of these post-season games? Even if your team has already lost like mine 🙈 Anyways, we’re back in London for one more chapter here and @resident-of-storybrooke is still the mvp for reading all of these words.
Found on AO3: Beginning | Current
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Tag list: @xellewoods @galaxyzxstark @eala-captian @mariakov81 @ultraluckycatnd @royalswan @shey-starsfury @sals86 @iam2307 @ashley-knightingale @karenfrommisthaven @scientificapricot @captswanis4vr @ultimiflos @jamif @idristardis @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @tiganasummertree @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @mayquita @captainsjedi @teamhook @notoriouscs @kmomof4 @ekr032-blog-blog @cs-forlife @andiirivera @jonirobinson64 @qualitycoffeethings
-/-
Emma can feel Killian’s nose nudging between her shoulder blades, his scruff scratching at her skin, and as good as it feels, she can’t help but curl further into her pillow and bring her knees up to her stomach, hoping that he’ll leave her alone so that she can sleep longer. So much longer. Jet-lag is a bitch, and she just wants to sleep forever. They don’t even get a day off when they get home, and just thinking about it has her dying.
Why in the world did she get sent over here when she’s only writing an article and doing social media stuff? Jeff should have come with her, Ruby too, but right now, she can’t really complain.
This bed is really soft.
London is wonderful.
Killian smells really good right now. He shouldn’t smell this good this early in the morning, and he probably got up to brush his teeth and put cologne on or something stupidly wonderful like that.
But she’s tired, and all she really wants is to sleep some more and for the pleasant ache between her thighs to lessen a bit so she won’t be thinking about it all day long. It’s a wonderful memory to have to think about as her day goes on, but still, a girl has got to be able to walk without her mind going to weird places.
The new phase of a relationship is so damn fun.
Sighing, she hugs her pillow more closely and keeps her eyes shut only for Killian to place the softest kiss in existence on the back of her neck that has the shiver multiplying its intensity by ten with each new vertebra that it reaches.
“Did you know that you are a kicker in your sleep?��� he murmurs, his voice hoarse and gravely like it always is in the mornings. She really likes that. Like, really. “And that you are also a heat seeker, and I am in no way safe from your assault.”
“That sounds like a hard life,” Emma mumbles, still not bothering to open her eyes.
“The hardest. Do you know that we’ve only ever spent the night together in hotels? You’ve never even seen my bedroom. We somehow have never made it past the living room.”
“You’ve never seen mine.”
“True,” he sighs as his hand inches over her waist so that his nails can run over her stomach, making the muscles flutter. Or maybe those are the damn metaphorical butterflies. It doesn’t matter. “We should remedy that when we get home.” Home.
He means New York. He doesn’t mean his apartment or her apartment. He simply means the city they both happen to live in, but knowing that doesn’t change the way her heart is hammering in her chest, that residual feeling of being terrified that this is all going to blow up in her face still lingering. It’s not there as much as it used to be, some of the fear tampering down the more comfortable she becomes with Killian, but as old ones fade away, new ones emerge like one of those creepy aliens in movies.
Killian isn’t like Walsh or Neal or any of the people who have hurt her. Anyone with half-functioning eyes could see that, and it’s reaffirmed in how he supports her every day. He sends her articles she’s written in the past with little notes attached to them on what he thinks. Sometimes he shares links to YouTube videos of her interviews, asking her how she noticed the strategy they employed to win that day or simply complimenting her on thinking on her feet when she gets put in a tough situation. The only people who could possibly support her more are Ruth and David, but Killian is very much inching up to the top of the Emma Swan fan club.
He’d probably make t-shirts. Several. And wear them under all of his clothes, the dork.
Dark and broody but also dorky. That’s how she’d describe him if she had to in three words or less.
So she’s not worried that he’s going to demean her or belittle her or make her feel unworthy like she has felt in the past, but there are so many other ways for him to hurt her. Their relationship getting out, for one, could destroy her professional credibility, at least for a little while. That’s something she thinks about every time she sneaks out of her hotel room and into his. It’s ridiculous hard to find a time when someone isn’t in the hallway. But what if he’s secretly shitty in some kind of other way? What if he doesn’t continue to be so open and honest with her? What if he realizes that her hang-ups are too complicated? What if he realizes that he doesn’t want to be patient with her when she does have her freak outs? He’s so damn patient with her, always waiting for her to make the move before he does, and there’s no guarantee he won’t get tired of that.
Why is this the morning that she thinks about this?
Probably because the reality of them telling their friends and family is hitting her. It was her idea, the guilt of lying to everyone overwhelming her, but now the actuality is overwhelming her even more.
Last night, she told Killian that she would go to Addy’s birthday party under this insane plan that he has of them fake running into each other in the hallway, and the reality of meeting his family is kind of freaking her out. She’s never met a boyfriend’s family before, which was always such a blessing, and now she’s invading Killian’s niece’s birthday party.
Where his brother, who he absolutely admires in every way, will be, along with his wife and their kids and all of these other people who are important to Killian.
Emma wants to run. She knows that she does. Feelings overwhelm her, the feelings she has for Killian most of all, but she thinks she’d rather be overwhelmed by the happiness that he helps her feel rather than the anxiety.
The new phase of a relationship is fun but also terrifying.
“Are you inviting me over for a sleepover?” she finally asks, hoping that Killian can’t tell that she’s freaking out a little bit.
Killian hums into her neck, and she finally opens her eyes, the brightness of the sun shining through the curtains blurring everything for a moment. “I am. I can get you all kinds of snacks. We’ll wear our best pajamas, watch movies, play truth or dare, maybe have a pillow fight or two.”
“Do you get all of your sleepover knowledge from 2000s rom coms?”
“Possibly.”
Emma chuckles before turning on the mattress, shifting into Killian’s space like he shifted into hers, and when she’s turned in his arms, she blinks at him, taking in the unshaven scruff and unruly hair that most definitely hasn’t been tamed. She likes that too. His hair is always doing different things, and she can’t decide what she likes best.
“You very obviously did,” Emma sighs, running her hands over the muscled curves of his biceps, “but that’s okay. That’s where all of my knowledge came from too. The closest I’ve ever gotten to one that’s not, like, a sexual thing is when Ruby and I room together on road games.”
“I don’t think that counts because then Robin, Will, and I have had a ton of sleepovers, and none of them involve any of the fun things I was talking about before.” He reaches up to cover her hand with his before leaning in and lazily moving his lips against hers. There are a lot of things she’s learning at twenty-seven, and one of them is most definitely how much she likes lazy morning make out sessions. They’re definitely one of the seven wonders of the world. “And who said there was going to be nothing sexual about our sleepover? I was definitely planning at least a little something.”
Her nose scrunches up, and Killian moves to gently bite it, making her laugh. “We can have something sexual happen, but only if it’s during truth or dare. No funny business otherwise, mister.”
His lips part like he’s going to say something, and she runs her hand up and down his arm as she waits. But then he blinks one long, slow blink and shuts his mouth, whatever words he was going to say curling back on his tongue.
“What?” she questions, moving her leg against his.
“Nothing,” Killian smiles, pressing forward to run his lips over hers again, making her toes curl from the way that he knows just what to do in a kiss to make her happy. “I was simply thinking of this sleepover we’re going to have, and how I need to buy some better pajamas for it. I can’t have you seeing me in anything less than decent.”
“You’re not wearing any clothes right now.”
“And I’ve yet to hear a complaint from you about that, so I think this may be decent attire.”
“Well then,” she sighs, slowly running her foot up his calf again and watching his eyes darken, “I think it’ll be perfectly fine attire then too.”
-/-
This is stupid.
This is so, so stupid. She can’t believe she’s doing this. It’s ridiculous. The most ridiculous thing in the entire world. Okay, maybe not in the entire world, but she’s feeling extra dramatic right now.
The most dramatic, and that’s not an exaggeration.
Killian told her to meet him in the hallway where all of the suites in the stadium are located, and she’s been standing her for fifteen minutes pretending to look at her phone instead of actually looking at her phone and answering emails or something. Or checking stats for the game. She should be doing that, but they’re still in the top of the first inning, and she’s pretty sure this is going to be the game that never ends.
Ever.
And she’ll be stuck in this hallway in London for the rest of her life and die in the yellow maxi dress that she spent thirty minutes picking out because she had no idea what to wear to her secret boyfriend’s niece’s tea party birthday. She’d also debated on going out and getting a gift despite their conversation last night, but then she’d reminded herself that she’s not technically planning on coming to this thing. It’s some kind of fake spur of the moment thing, and bringing a gift would ruin that.
She needs to calm down.
This is fine.
A set of doors to her left open, and she sees Killian walk through. She’s so used to seeing him dressed in his uniform or sweatpants and some kind of team-branded t-shirt when they’re in a baseball stadium that it throws her off when she sees him in tight-fighting blue jeans with a light blue button down tucked in, the sleeves rolled up and several buttons at the top undone so that she can see little tufts of black hair and the silver chain that he wears to keep his mom’s ring next to his heart.
Athletes have all kinds of traditions and superstitions for every part of their life, but her favorite is that Killian keeps that ring on him at all times.
“Hello, kind acquaintance,” he teases when he sees her, eyes darting around the hallway while he steps closer, “funny running into you here looking absolutely gorgeous in that dress. I’d say it’s perfect for a tea party.”
“You are ridiculous.” “You have got to stop saying that about me like it’s new information.” Killian steps up to her then, looking around once more before quickly dipping his head to kiss her while grabbing her ass like they didn’t just see each other two hours ago when she finally left his room. “You do look just beautiful, though. Sometimes I don’t know how I got so lucky.”
Heat immediately rises to her cheeks, but she tries to shake it and the butterflies in her stomach off. “I ask myself the same thing about you all the time.”
Killian rolls his eyes at her before holding his arm out. “You ready to go?”
Her eyes glance down at his elbow before looking back up at him. “Why are you holding your arm like that?”
“Because it’s proper to escort a lady to an event by giving her your arm when you walk, and I like to do proper by such a lady.”
“Killian,” she protests even as her heart absolutely hammers in his chest, “we can’t do that. There are people.”
“There’s no one. Indulge me for sixty seconds, okay?”
Maybe it’s that she’s feeling overwhelmed and like taking a risk or maybe it’s the way that he smiles, but something about him has her taking his arm and placing her hand in the crook of his elbow as they walk down the hallway until they’re at the double doors of the suite.
“It’s going to be fine, Swan,” Killian promises, squeezing her hand before letting go and pushing the door open so that the sounds of children excitedly talking fill their ears and her eyes take in all of the people in the room.
It’s not many, less than are usually in a big suite, but she can see at least fifteen kids, most of them children of players, and maybe ten other adults. That doesn’t seem like the right ratio, but these kids are old enough to be semi self-sufficient about most things. Everything is fine. She’s just nervous, which only gets worse when Killian’s niece spots them.
“Uncle Killian,” Addison screeches, stopping where she is and running toward the two of them in her blue dress. Killian immediately crouches down to her level, opening his arms to her and taking her into the tightest embrace before lifting her off of the ground while Addison nuzzles into his shoulder.
It may very well be the cutest and most heart-warming thing she has ever seen in her entire life.
“Happy birthday, my little love,” he sighs, swaying her as they stand. “How are you six years old? I’m pretty sure you’re still supposed to be a baby.”
“I’m too big to be a baby. Don’t be silly.”
“Don’t be silly?” he guffaws, pulling back and adjusting his grip on Addison. “Darling, I am always silly, but so are you. You’re basically the silliest goose.”
Addison scrunches up her nose, and Emma can see Killian in her there. It might be the dimples or the blue of her eyes, but Emma can see something even though both of Killian’s nieces look exactly like their mom. She is not weird at all for noticing these things. “We have talked about this. I am not a silly goose. I am a girl.”
“Geese can be girls.”
“Did you bring me a present?”
“A present?” Killian gasps, tickling Addison’s sides so that she giggles. “Am I supposed to bring you a present? No one told me.”
“But it’s my birthday,” she pouts.
“Did you bring me a present on my birthday? I don’t remember.”
“Yes,” Addison groans, holding her head back. “I drew you a picture of us.”
“Oh, that’s right, that’s right,” Killian sighs, glancing to the side and winking at Emma, which definitely doesn’t do something weird to her heart. “You did. I have it framed on my bookshelf because I love it so much. I do have a present for you, but your mom and dad told me that I had to leave it at home so you can’t open it until you get back to America.”
“What is it?” she gasps, not at all deterred by the fact that she can’t open her present yet.
“Addy,” a male voice sighs, and Emma turns her head to the side to see Killian’s brother standing near them, and that definitely does something to her heart, “remember what we talked about? You have to be patient.”
“But I’m excited!” Killian puts her on the ground so that she’s no longer at eye-level with all of them, but her confidence might as well make her six feet tall. “Where’s Lucy? I don’t see her.”
“She’s sitting with Mommy. Why don’t you go find them while I talk to Killian and Ms. Emma here?”
That’s when Addison’s attention turns to her, and suddenly she feels like more eyes are on her than when she’s on television.
Is she terrified of a six-year-old? No, that would be ridiculous.
(Also, Killian’s brother knows her name, and while that’s not weird, she feels like it is. Then again, she knows his entire family.)
“Who are you?” she questions, her hands on her hips and eyes focused.
Emma plasters a smile on her face, one that was already there even if she didn’t realize it, before squatting down so that she’s eye-to-eye with Addison.
“Hi, Addison. My name is Emma. I work with your uncle.”
“Are you a baseball player?”
“No,” Emma laughs, and she looks up at Killian when she hears him chuckle. He simply shrugs his shoulders and waggles his brows across his forehead. “I wish I was, but I work on TV. You know those people who ask Killian all kinds of questions?”
“That’s you?”
“That’s me.”
Addison smiles, the teeth she has missing obvious, before she steps a little closer to Emma and touches her dress, running her fingers over the material. “I like your dress. It kind of looks like a princess dress. Are you going to stay for my party?”
“Only if you want me to.”
“I do. Do you want to come and look at my cake with me? It’s shaped like a unicorn.”
“Sure, sweetie,” she answers, smiling at Addison and taking her hand as she’s dragged off to the other side of the room, leaving Killian and Liam behind.
For the next hour, her best friend in the world is Addy Jones, who very much takes Emma under her wings as she shows her around the suite and introduces her to all of her friends. The only real experience Emma has with kids is Leo, and the four-year difference between six and ten is kind of insane, but it’s not hard to adjust and talk about all of the right things. It gets a little more difficult when she meets Lucy, if only because Lucy is one reserved little girl, but Emma notices that she very easily follows in Addy’s footsteps and has her own little personality, even if it’s quieter.
Lucy Jones also very much loves her uncle, and it makes Emma’s heart do that funny stuttering thing every time she looks up and sees Lucy sitting with Killian as he animatedly talks to her and makes her laugh with this little high-pitched squeal. She’s always known how much Killian loves his nieces from how he talks about them and how he has pictures of them in his apartment and on his social media, but seeing it in person is this whole new thing. He’s in his element, even more than he is when he’s on a baseball field like the one just outside, and this smile that’s been with her most of today continues to increase, the corners of her lips constantly ticking up whenever she thinks about him.
Which is a lot.
Probably more than a normal amount, and she just loves him so damn much that…
Holy shit.
She loves him.
She loves him.
Why is she realizing that right now as she sits at a table with people she doesn’t really even know while she watches him very obviously stick his pinky out while drinking tea teaching Lucy to do the same?
How in the world did this happen?
And is she terrified or so incredibly excited that it feels a lot like the fear that’s been weaving in and out of her days lately?
Does he love her too? Can he? She thinks that he can, that he does, but how is she ever supposed to know for sure? It’s been a good while since she actually felt this way, and she’s not sure that she trusts her heart to realize the difference.
“It’s Emma, right?”
Emma looks up from her seat to see Elsa Jones standing above her, blonde hair pulled back into a complicated braid and soft smile painted across her lips.
“Yeah, yes, that’s me,” Emma stutters, holding out her hand to shake Elsa’s. “Elsa?”
“The one and only. Well, kind of,” she laughs before pulling out the empty chair next to Emma and sitting down. “It’s so nice to meet you. I feel like I know you from your job.”
“Funny, I feel like I know you.”
Okay, so that’s probably pretty creepy. Was that creepy?
Before Emma can think about it too much, Elsa laughs, something that sounds genuine, and Emma has to remind herself that this is just another person who she knows is kind. There’s nothing to be afraid of. She talks to people for a living.
“I would bet. Killian talks far too much, so you get a lot of information out of him when you’re likely just looking to talk about the game. I really liked the special you did at the beginning of the season. It felt very much like him as a person, which I’m always so happy to see.”
“He’s a great subject. It’s not easy getting a lot of these guys to be charming and funny about things other than baseball, so I love when I find one that knows how to open up. And he’s so good with your daughters. I hope I’m not intruding on your day, but Killian – ”
“Found you wandering the halls and dragged you along?” Emma arches her brow, but Elsa simply waves her away, shaking her head from side to side as she glances out the windows to the game that Emma is only half paying attention to even though it’s her job. “Liam told me. You’re not intruding at all. Addy has gone on and on about her pretty new friend Emma, and any friend of my girl is a friend of mine. Plus, we Joneses owe you about a million apologizes for my dumbass brother-in-law asking you out.”
She has to cover her mouth with her hand as she laughs, a snort escaping her before she can stop it. “Did you guys give him hell for that? I feel like he does deserve it.”
“Oh, most definitely. Killian is not a super spontaneous guy, especially when it comes to women, not anymore at least, so I’m not entirely convinced someone didn’t spike his water bottle. I actually choked on my own water bottle when I saw it happening, so I gave him hell for that too.”
“Good, but I’ve forgiven him as long as he never does something like that again. Our working relationship is much better now because he can basically never say no when I want an interview.”
“True,” she says, her smile somehow brighter. “You’ve got to use those kinds of things in your favor. I do it with Liam all the time. It works like a charm.”
“What does?” Liam asks as he steps up to them.
“Hi, sweetie,” Elsa greets him, tilting her head back so that Liam can kiss her. “Have you met Emma?”
“I did when she came in, but I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to her before Addy dragged her away. So, it’s nice to meet you, Emma.”
“It’s nice to meet you as well. I was telling Elsa that it’s good to put real faces to names I’ve heard so much about.”
“You’ve heard a lot about us?”
“Oh, y-yeah,” she mumbles, internally cursing herself again. “Work and all. I know far too much about the lives of all of the players, which is both a good and bad thing.”
“I would bet. Do you know about – ”
“Yesterday?” she asks. Liam nods his head, his smile tightened. “Yeah, I know. It was shitty, but it happens. And I’m glad Will and Killian and some of the other guys stood up for me like that, even if Killian was an idiot for messing up his hand. But I feel like I’m part of the team sometimes, and it’s nice to know they have my back.”
“Emma,” Addy squeals as she runs toward the three of them, completely ignoring her parents, “Killian said to come and get you to ask if you wanted to join our tea party. He says that you don’t know how to drink tea, and I have to help you.”
Her eyes immediately glance over to Killian, and when he moves his brow across his forehead, laughter bubbles inside of her stomach and her mouth falls into a soft smile. The ridiculous fool.
“You know what, Addy,” she sighs, “I don’t think I know how to drink tea. You and Lucy will have to teach me, okay?”
“I know. Come on.” Addison tugs at her arm until she rises from her chair, excusing herself to Liam and Elsa before she’s dragged across the room and over to the table where all of Addison’s friends and Killian are eat snacks and drinking tea, which looks a lot more like orange juice, and Emma is told to sit down in the chair next to Killian who is holding Lucy’s goldfish snacks while she inspects all of them. “Uncle Killian, I brought Emma over. Emma, do you want orange tea or apple tea?”
“Um, orange tea.”
Addy nods her head before she’s running off to the other side of the table and leaving Emma with Killian and Lucy.
“So, you need to teach me how to drink tea then?”
He shrugs his shoulders as he attempts to flip the hair that’s fallen over his forehead back. “My brother and sister-in-law had cornered you, and I thought you might need a little saving. I knew that you were a little nervous about meeting them.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“You talk in your sleep.”
“I do not, you as – jerk,’” she corrects, stopping herself when Lucy looks up at her. “Hi, sweetheart. I like your dress.”
“Thank you,” she says quietly, sweetly. “It’s yellow. Yours is yellow.”
“I know. We’re basically twins. Are you going to eat your goldfish?”
Lucy softly smiles, little blonde curls falling in her face, before picking up a handful of her snacks from Killian and offering them over to Emma in a sweet gesture that definitely rivals everything romantic that her uncle has ever done.
“Thank you, Lucy.” Emma pops one into her mouth only to look up at Killian and see that his eyes are crinkled, those little lines showing up, and her stomach pleasantly twists at the sight of it. She realized that she loved him less than twenty minutes ago, and there are still a lot of crazy feelings processing in her brain right now. A lot. “Do you want some, twenty-nine?”
Killian blinks, almost like he doesn’t recognize her nickname for him, before reaching over and taking some of the fish that she’s offering him. It’s cheesy and very romance novel-ish, but she swears that she feels sparks when his fingers brush over the palm of her hands.
“Thank you, love.”
“I have your orange team, Emma,” Addy shouts as she comes back to them, balancing a far too full plastic cup of orange juice that spills a little on the carpet until Emma takes it from Addy’s hand.
“Well, thank you, Addy. But it’s your birthday. Shouldn’t I be helping you do something instead of you handing me my tea?”
Addy hums at this, her forefinger tapping against her chin while her foot taps on the ground. “You can help me open my presents later, okay?”
“That sounds like a deal.”
-/-
“Working hard or hardly working?”
Emma pulls the headphones from her ears so that she can hear Killian better, even though she could most definitely hear the cheesy phrase that just came out of his mouth. His family is flying back on the team plane, as are all of the other players’ families, and since she is Addison Jones’s new favorite person as of seven hours ago, she was asked to sit with all of the Jones clan, which has really just been her sitting in a seat by the window with Addy and Lucy switching seats until the both of them were corralled by their parents to go to sleep. And now she’s got Killian sitting next to her, which is what she was hoping for but isn’t the most subtle thing in the world.
They are not subtle people even when they probably think they are.
She’d never make it in federal law enforcement or something like that.
“My deadline is in an hour, and I had to pay twenty-seven dollars for WiFi so that I could send it in.”
“So, working hard?”
“Yep.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
“No, no,” she protests, reaching down to take another sip of her coffee. Her jet-lag is going to be even worse of a bitch tomorrow. “You can stay. I just have to check my stat facts, and then I’ll be finished. It’s kind of hard to work when everyone else is asleep and it’s so dark in here, so, you know, I’m drinking all of the caffeine to stay awake. I think I have a food baby made of unicorn cake.”
“Aye, me too,” he laughs as he pats his stomach. “That was too much sugar.”
“No such thing.”
“Oh, but there is, darling.” His hand brushes over her forearm, and she can see the slight scabs and marks from him punching Arthur yesterday. Nothing new has been said, no suspensions mentioned, and she hopes that it stays that way. She also hopes that nothing like that ever happens again.
“How does your hand feel?”
“A little sore, but I’m right as rain. It’s a good thing I have several days off, yeah?”
Emma groans, shutting her eyes just at the thought of getting up to work tomorrow like most people on this plane except for Killian and Robin. “Don’t remind me. I’m going to look like a zombie tomorrow, and feel even worse than that. If I ever go overseas again, it’s going to be for long enough to adjust to the time.”
“You and me both,” he yawns, and she’s totally endeared by the way his face contorts there only for him to smile at her with a tired, boyish grin that she’s endeared by even more. “Finish up your article, my love, and then I say that you at least try to go to sleep.”
“Always looking out for me.”
“You know it.”
Her hand reaches over his scarred one so that she can squeeze it, which is all she can really do right now. But honestly, being right here next to him simply sitting together after all of the craziness of these few days – baseball, meeting her boyfriend’s family, asshole players getting punched, quick tours of London that went by in a blur, and realizing that she loves Killian – is more than enough when it’s already absolutely everything.
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RUBY QUEST
ACTION ADVENTURE/HORROR/QUEST/FURRY/SFW/FINISHED
It’s possible I’ve been limiting my reviews to the easy marks. The more classic ‘Webcomic’ webcomics delivered in the basic style. So, today we’re going to look at something a little different, something that only fits into the loose definition of a webcomic because this is my stupid review thing and I do what I like. That said, it’s a good one… If you can stomach it.
Ruby Quest by Weaver may need some explanation. Considered one of the first and best of /tg/’s Quest Threads, Weaver took reader input on the forum as one of the main sources of plot and character progression for the ‘comic’, with readers acting much like the players of video games, putting input into the machine and watching what happens. Well, you know. Within reason. Poor Weaver was subjected to a lot of grief at the hands of certain members of the board, either due to their choices in input, or complaints about the ‘rails’ the story seemed to be running on at certain points.
Because obviously, control of a story can only ever be a yes/no sort of thing, right?
That story, regardless of where each component was sourced, follows Ruby, a young rabbit borrowed in part from the game Animal Crossing. This is about as far from fanfiction as you can get, as for the most part, all Weaver took was the artistic style, as translated into a simplified line-art style. Poor Ruby wakes up locked in a box within the bowels of an eldritch facility called the Metal Glen, some kind of asylum, or hospital, or test lab. With the help of the readers, and fellow inmate Tom the cat, Ruby must make her escape as things get… Dark.
I’ll be avoiding spoilers more than usual. Some of the reveals are fantastic, and while I usually don’t have much time for obsessive spoiler defence it’s probably worth it here.
It’s not always a pretty comic. Weaver’s style is simplistic, as it must be for quickly drawn responses to the input of readers. But it’s expressive and charming in its simplicity, and the animal features of the petting zoo people are a great way to figure out which character is which based on ears or facial shapes alone. Later though, as things get… Intense the art develops, growing more complex and striking. Colour is used masterfully, as are digitally edited images included in some pages of the Quest. The writing, such as it is, varies in quality. Much of it isn’t too polished, as it was written in the spur of the moment, often in a variety of styles, but it gets the point across. The RPG-like nature of the plot does mean whole pages are spent doing little of note, but as the story progresses and Weaver gets better at wrangling his readers, thing smooth out and tighten. Some of the language and audience commands can get kind of salty, but as the actual art remains pretty safe, I’m keeping that SFW tag up there. Some random 4chan poster shouting about ‘Schlicking’ is manageable, one hopes.
Ruby Quest is weird. Cute animal people are put through the wringer physically and mentally. There’s body horror here, and gore, and eldritch horror. That it happens to cute rabbits and cats hardly lessens that blow, but if you have the stomach for some low-fidelity blood and bits, I would give it a look. If nothing else, that gore and horror is there for a reason beyond simple shock value. It feels like it means something.
Maybe Ruby Quest won’t be your cup of tea. It’s not a regular comic, not even close, and the theme and look of it will turn a lot of people off. But if you’re going to try out a Quest, I would suggest starting here. Weaver’s later work, Dive Quest, may be a little easier on the guts, but it ended with a whimper, where Ruby Quest ended with one hell of a bang.
“And what became of cat and hare?
Did they break free to purer air?”
Well. You’ll just have to take a look, won’t you?
-James
#webcomic#quest#ruby quest#weaver#petting zoo people#action adventure#horror#furry#sfw#finished#dive quest#fake poetry weaver made that i like ok?
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