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obsidianfr3sk · 4 years ago

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five valentine’s day that went wrong and one that (almost) didn’t

@queercreators event 02: romance �� [ five valentine’s day that went wrong and one the (almost) didn’t ] [ “Five Things” Fic ] “

dedicated to my dear Reneweys [ @nodrianbcyes @honey-hippie-harper @healing-winston-pratt @alecjamesartino @bluenoctuary-art @everyone-has-a-nightmare ] ♡

Summary: They always managed to ruin their Valentine's Days one way or another, but it didn't matter. Because there was no way they could ruin what the two of them had.Boy, he would like to see someone try.

AO3

Well, hello there!!! It’s been a while since the last time I posted something x’d I know I always say the same thing but it’s true skjdfhkjdfs I started this fic during the first week of febreary when I had this shot of adrenaline and started to do a lot of creative stuff, and originally I wanted to post this during Valentine’s Day, but... the shot of adrenaline passed x’d and let me to deal with this alone.

As you can see for the description, this a “Five Thing” fic. At first I wanted to post each chapter seperately, but idk, it seem a little bit... weird x’d so, here in Tumblr, the six chapters are all in one post. If you don’t like the format, but want to read the fic, you can find it on AO3! Don’t forget to leave kudos and a comment if you liked it:’)

Now... I’m not used to write happy sttuf in general x’d AND I’M LESS USED TO WRITE HAPPY STUFF ABOUT HUGH AND SIMON BECAUSE SKJDFHKJDSF the angst, dudes:))) but I think I did. Like... I actually wrote a fluffy fic:’) I’m so proud of myself dkjfhkfdshjk

Tag list: @the-lady-with-the-pen @chiyuki-hiro @all-weather-is-bad @styeenza

First try

Year 2

It was the second Valentine's Day after the beginning of the Age of Anarchy, and the capacity that the human being had to adapt themselves to the most terrible of conditions never ceased to amaze him. The economy had collapsed, the government had fallen, his school was practically one of the last ones still in open, and there was a “fucking junkie” ruling the city...

But the world celebrated Valentine's Day anyway.

Or at least in his class did.

The teacher had brought a bunch of cardboard boxes, that looked like she had fought with some tramps to get them (which she probably did, they were too many boxes for one person to generate) (unless she was a crazy person who collected boxes). She gave one to each one of her students, took out the last bottles of paint, pieces of colored cardboard, and rusty scissors, and then told them that today they were going to learn how to make a mailbox.

At first, Hugh had no idea what turning a box into a mailbox had to do with the curriculum the school was supposed to follow. It's not like people sent a lot of letters anyway. But when the girls got excited, he remembered that February 14 was something like an important date. And then, he remembered an activity that they did during his first year, when everyone decorated a box for their classmates to put letters and sweets in it.

First year… And now he was in his third year.

Time flies by.

After telling them which parts to cut into (Hugh had to share his scissors with other three classmates because there weren't enough for everyone), she invited them to pick the decorations they wanted to put on their mailboxes. The girls pounced on the pink, red, and even white paint, while most of the boys laughed, saying it was a stupid activity and they didn't want to do it. Hugh felt the urge to agree, but he didn't

He had already tried to make them like him. It hadn't worked for him.

So he grabbed a bottle of navy blue paint, some cartoon bear stickers, some notebook paper, and a bitten pencil. That would be enough to make his mailbox and his cards.

After a while, he started to have a good time. Crafts had never been his strong suit, but he was proud of how it ended up looking. One couldn’t tell his mailbox used to be a cereal box because the paint he used was so dark, that it only needed two coats of it and it dried much faster than Abernathy’s, who had practically finished the pink paint trying to hide the face of that missing child in the milk carton box the teacher gave to her. Hugh realized that she was holding her tears back, and as the good classmate that he was, he told her not to worry, that the missing child could be decoration if she painted him a mustache or something, and it would look very funny. Abernathy, far from finding it funny, acted super offended, assuring she had never met a child as rude and insensitive as Hugh Everhart, and she ran out of the classroom, hiding her face in her hands and screaming like a baby.

Unfortunately, the rest of his class agreed with her, and when it came time to deliver the cards, Hugh did not receive a single one. Although he doubted it had anything to do with that missing boy thing.

They wouldn't have given him anything anyway.

He wasn't sure if they knew he was a prodigy. Maybe they had noticed that it wasn't normal that Hugh had practically broken a chair in two when he placed his backpack on it to get something out, or that he had left the PE teacher unconscious when he accidentally threw a ball at his face while they were playing soccer. The teachers, if they noticed, didn't say anything. After all, that school was supposed to be only for normal kids.

Not prodigies.

But children could be very insightful. Most likely, they did notice and therefore did not want to be associate with him.

Or maybe—

Maybe they just didn't want to hang out with Hugh, because of… that.

Because he was Hugh.

He decided to wait for everyone else to leave before starting to cry (or before breaking another chair, whichever came first). Or at least that was what he was about to do when he heard that someone had come up with the same idea as him and started crying first.

Simon Westwood had never been too talkative. Even before his older sister and mother died, he liked to sit at the last table, not speaking to anyone, and some older kids were constantly picking on him, without any teacher trying to do anything to stop them.

Not that Hugh was paying much attention to him or something.

The teacher practically ran to see what was going on with Simon Westwood, asking him what happened and why hadn’t he finished decorating his mailbox. Simon Westwood tried to explain it to her, but he was mumbling his words so neither the teacher nor Hugh could understand what he was saying.

Hugh didn’t get mad with him though. His mom had died. His sister died too, a couple of weeks later. He wouldn’t be in the mood for doing cheesy crafts if the same had happened to him. But the teacher wasn’t as benevolent as him, and started to say things like she was trying really hard to bring joy to her students, and that she was sure that if he tried a little bit harder, he would be able to enjoy Valentine’s Day, like the rest of them.

“Let’s see what nice things your classmates have said about you,” she exclaimed. But that only made Simon Westwood start crying again.

No one had given him a card.

Like… no one.

And Hugh was listening to all of this conversation, just sitting there, trying to stay as stiff as he could so they wouldn’t notice he was there (as if he weren’t literally right in front of them). Seeing Simon cried like that made him think that maybe he was just acting though when the other kids laugh at him because of his looks, his ratty old clothes (older and rattier than theirs), or just—

His mind exploded.

He suddenly understood why the other kids didn't like Simon Westwood. It was before he was him.

Just like how they didn’t like Hugh Everhart because he was Hugh Everhart.

When the teacher went out of the classroom with Simon, saying something about calling his dad (although he knew they wouldn’t be able to do that, since no one had a functioning phone those days), he took one of the cards he did for his classmates, cards that he never gave to them, and put one inside Simon Westwood’s mailbox/cereal box. He had left his backpack and his things there. When he came back to take them home, he would see the card too.

A voice in his head told him to get out of there before he came back, but another one told him to stay. Maybe Simon Westwood and he could be friends. Maybe he would understand what it felt like to be hated just for the way you were born. Maybe he was a prodigy too.

Or maybe he wasn’t.

He couldn’t take that chance.

So Hugh went home, but promised Simon Westwood (and himself) he would keep an eye on him.

After all, friends were there to have each other’s back.

Because they were friends, even if Simon didn't know it yet.

Second try

Year 9

They were friends.

He had never seen Hugh before meeting him on that alley where Simon got his powers. Like— he had seen him because he was in the same class as him, but he hadn't really seen him. During his childhood years, Simon was more focused on other things. Like being a little depressed and anxious ball with skinny legs and skinny arms, for example.

It wasn’t like he wasn’t depressed or anxious now. Nor it was he had gotten super muscular all of the sudden, like Hugh (he had always been bigger than the other kids, but he practically turned twelve and already looked like a teenager, except for the voice and the face).

But at that moment, he wasn’t depressed or anxious. He felt weirdly at peace.

He and Hugh were walking down the street, thinking about which store were they going to rob that day to get dinner for them and their families, when Simon noticed a couple holding hands in front of an abandoned café. She had dark hair and he had blue eyes, which looked at his girlfriend as if she was the Virgin Mary or something. Then, she kissed him and gave him a small blue flower and a heart-shaped card. The guy looked so moved by the gesture that he kissed her on the lips again, with so much more passion than before.

Simon looked away before they realized he was looking at them, not only because he didn’t want to come off as creepy, but also because he knew how awkward he would feel if they started to make out or something.

“Love is in the air,” Hugh sang.

Simon chuckled. “You noticed them too?”

“I noticed them when she gave him the flower,” he told him. “I had never seen a girl giving flowers to a guy before.”

“Times have changed, I guess. That’s why they don’t feel uncomfortable giving such public displays of affection. Kids in our day weren’t like that.”

“I know, right?” said Hugh continuing with the joke. “They are so perverted. There are children present, for God’s sake.”

Simon chuckled again and Hugh stopped to tie his shoe. While he was there, Simon noticed he was throwing glances at them.

“You know, giving them the death stare isn’t gonna prevent them from being in love,” Simon told him.

“I can try,” Hugh joked. Then, he shook his head. “It’s not that. I just—”

He waited for him a couple of seconds before asking, “Just what?”

He finally answered, “Someday we’ll have something like that.”

Simon frowned. “Huh?”

“You know,” Hugh mumbled. “We’ll have girlfriends and— and all of that.”

“Oh!” Simon exclaimed. “Yeah, someday, yeah.”

But before Simon could keep talking about it (or just develop some opinion on the topic) Hugh shrugged and urged him to keep walking. “I guess. I didn’t even remember today was Valentine’s Day though. They were my reminder—” he turned around and waved at them “—Thank you, exhibitionists, you reminded me what day is it!”

Now, Hugh probably didn’t mean for them to hear him say that. Simon knew him well enough to know Hugh thought he wasn’t being loud, but the thing was… Hugh was always loud. He could be “whispering” and the whole neighborhood would hear him ask Simon if he knew how bars with strippers worked because he did know, and wanted to brag about it. Then, Simon would feel embarrassed, because, in fact, he didn’t know how bars with strippers work.

Simon immediately turned around and realized the girl was looking at them with an expression he couldn’t read. He turned invisible and pushed Hugh inside of an alley, hoping those trashcans hid them well enough in case the guy turned out to be a freaking animal and wanted to kick their flat asses for calling them exhibitionists.

Simon felt the anxiety kicking in, when Hugh started laughing so loud, that said anxiety turn into the need of punching him really hard on the arm.

So he did it. Multiple times.

“Dude, dude, shut the fuck up, dude,” Simon said keeping his voice low (because he could keep his voice down, unlike others), “that guy’s gonna kick our asses, for real. Dudeeee—”

But his voice kinda cracked when he said that “Dudeee—” and that made Hugh laugh even more, so Simon kept punching him, using a vocabulary that would make the most dangerous of gangster blush. And he probably would have kept hitting him, if the anxiety of being discovered hadn't been overshadowed by how weird it made him feel to see his best friend laugh.

When Hugh laughed, his cheeks would turn red and his eyes would water. They could be in the most embarrassing situation ever, one where no one was laughing, and if he found it funny, he was going to do it, because he wasn't going to be able to help it. And it wasn't like Simon would stop him, either. Not at all. He liked it when he laughed.

Even though he ended up making him laugh too. Like at that moment.

Most of the garbage ended up in the drains, the sidewalk, or anywhere else except where it belonged, the trash can. Generally, Hugh always refused when someone hinted at sitting on the floor, precisely for that reason. However, on that occasion, the two were sitting in that stinking alley, throwing pebbles at each other, playing with some bottle caps they found on the ground, and arguing about who would win a bare-handed fight, Wonder Man or Phantom Feline.

They decided it was time to go home when a cat-sized rat appeared out of nowhere, and the two of them came out screaming like idiots, even faster than they would have run if that guy with the girlfriend would have chased them. They ran until they reached Simon's house, all sweaty and tired, their hands on their bent knees and breathing heavily.

Then Hugh laughed again. And his cheeks were flushed again, and his eyes were watery again, and he made Simon laugh again until Mr. Westwood came home from work and told him to go inside, that it was too late to be outside.

Once he was locked in his room, with his younger sister playing in the living room and his father in the kitchen, the image of that guy kissing his girlfriend did not make him feel anything. So, he tried to imagine kissing a lot of girls that he considered a thousand times more attractive, but just when it seemed that the idea was beginning to be something desirable, Hugh came back, with his laugh, his screams, and his eyes, like one of those freaking trains that he dreamed of having the opportunity to stop one day and that never missed a single chance to tell Simon all about it.

The truth was that Simon did believe that Hugh might be able to stop a train with his bare hands, but he doubted he would be able to stop the train of thought that Simon hopped on whenever he thought of him. And he was so ashamed to know that not even the strongest prodigy on the planet was capable of doing that, that he decided to take those memories from the collar of the old blue hoodie that each one of them wore and bury them alive in the backyard of his memory.

Forever and ever.

Thrid try

Year 12

Two months ago, after their first date, Simon told Hugh he would never plan another important date, forever and ever. But now, Simon had let him plan their first Valentine's Day together without putting any objections, proving that he trusted him. And he was happy for him; Simon had always had problems when it came to trusting other people. It was nice to see the other grow to become a better person.

And it was even nicer when you were no longer only friends, but a couple.

So yeah, he wanted to make Valentine's Day special. It was kind of a big deal.

Georgia and Tamaya brainstormed with him places he could take Simon to. They all agreed that it had to be a place safe enough and that it wouldn't put them in a situation where they had to reveal their powers, and by consequence, their secret identities. But then, everything started going downhill, especially because Georgia had some very odd ideas (like something about flowers, a choreographed dance, and poetry) and Tamaya was as romantic as a rock (“Just don't end up nearly killing yourself in front of him, that should be enough.”)

It was February 13th, and Hugh was on his cot, a bit angry at Georgia and Tamaya, not only because they couldn't help him on such an important mission as they promised, but also because they blamed him for their failure, telling him that he "had no imagination" and that he "thought with his dick", just because he thought all their ideas were horrible.

Maybe he should have phrased that better...

Simon and Evander slept on the bunk bed Simon used to share with his younger sister. Simon was taking a shower, so he was all alone with Evander and Kasumi, who sometimes went there to visit her best friend, even if Tamaya told her not to do it because it smelled horrible in there and she would bring the odor to the girl’s bedroom (Hugh thought the room didn't smell bad at all, and if it did, it was because Evander acted like he was living in the street yesterday and had no sense of personal hygiene). But Kasumi didn’t seem to mind, and she spent most of her afternoons cuddling with Evander on the top bunk, while she read an old book and Evander read one of Simon’s comics (because Hugh would join the Anarchists before letting Evander touch his comics).

They started whispering at each other about who knows what, and even though he kind of wanted to know what they were talking about, he was just too tired, so he decided to put a pillow on his face and try to fall asleep. But then, he heard, quite clearly, that they said his name.

And he couldn’t let slip that.

He pulled the pillow off his face, and said, “What are you saying about me?”

They both peered over the edge of the bunk. “We were talking about how you're not good at romance,” Evander replied.

The audacity of that b— boy.

“You are eleven years old," he told him. “What are you going to know about romance?”

“No more than you,” Kasumi acknowledged, very solemnly.

Hugh made his “See?” face and he looked away.

Then, Evander asked, “Why don’t you take him to Cosmopolis Park?”

Oh, stars. He couldn’t be serious.

Cosmopolis Park.

A freaking theme park.

Evander was eleven, all right. His idea of a date was probably something out of a princess movie he and Kasumi watched from time to time (sometimes Tamaya joined them too and she always acted like she was just watching it to make fun of it, even though everyone in the house knew she had a weird soft spot for cheesy princess movies). But Hugh was technically an adult now. He should know better, and knowing better was not taking your boyfriend to a theme park for Valentine’s Day. That wasn’t very romantic.

“What a stupid idea.”

Kasumi got red all of the sudden. For the look at Evander’s face, Hugh knew he had fucked up even before she said, “It was my idea…”

“Oh— no, Zoomie, I… what I meant was that—”

“Don’t fix it, bro,” Evander interrupted him. “You’re gonna make me want to punch you more.”

He wasn’t afraid of Evander punching him because he couldn’t compare a kid’s strength to his, but he obeyed him and mumbled a small, “Sorry.”

The “sorry” was for Kasumi though, not for Evander. If Kasumi hadn’t been there, he probably would have told Evander something like “Oh, yeah? You’re gonna punch me, little punk? Come on, punch me, don’t be a pussy” (and then Georgia would have stormed into the room, telling him not to use the word “pussy”, and they would have pointed at each other saying “He started it!”)

After giving him a goodnight kiss, Kasumi got off Evander’s bed, with the book under her arm. Before leaving the room, she knelt beside Hugh to kiss him goodnight, as to show his comment didn’t cause her to feel any kind of resentment towards him.

Because of course it didn’t. Kasumi was like that.

“I was just saying— Valentine’s Day is also a day to be with friends,” she whispered. “And you and Simon are not only boyfriends but also... you know, friends. I bet that wherever you take him, it'd be magical for both of you. Because you find magic in each other's company, even before you knew you were in love. So... why not?”

She turned off the lights on her way out.

He never thought Kasumi’s tendency to romanticize everything was odd or weird. It was something that he expected from a teenage girl, especially one who has such a vivid imagination. But he also never expected that imagination would help him in some way. And he never expected for her to say the exact words he wanted to hear, even before he knew he wanted to hear them.

She was so wise.

Cosmopolis Park didn’t sound like a bad idea anymore when Simon entered just after Kasumi, wearing his pajamas, and asked him with a teasing voice, “So… where are you gonna take me tomorrow?”

Hugh didn’t know if Evander was already asleep, so he just smiled at him and told him it was a surprise. Simon rolled his eyes and gave him a soft kiss on the nose before getting into his own bed.

It was his way of telling him he trusted him. And relationships were supposed to be built upon trust. He didn't need anyone to tell him that.

As far as he knew, Simon hadn't been to Cosmopolis Park in years, probably before the Age of Anarchy began. It was no secret that the park was currently full of gangs and drug addicts but it was still a relatively peaceful place. At least peaceful enough that the park was full of families, groups of friends, and tons of couples.

Although there weren’t any couples...

Well, there weren’t any couples like them.

He wondered if Simon noticed that small detail too, but when he turned to ask him that, he knew it would be better if he just kept his comments to himself. Because he wasn't an expert reading other people's emotions, but Simon...

Simon looked so happy at the moment.

The two walked side by side, their shoulders brushing against each other's, but their hands tucked deep into their pockets. Hugh was trying to keep his eyes fixed forward to avoid bumping into anyone, but the small chuckles Simon let out every time he saw something that surprised him, made said task impossible. Suddenly, he no longer wanted to avoid the embarrassment that would cause him to bother someone by bumping into them; he wanted to look at him.

He wanted to look at him trying to hide his laughter by covering his mouth with his hand, as if he wanted to suppress some kind of dark feeling, without realizing that his joy was so full of light that it was practically impossible. He wanted to continue to see how his dark eyes, with very long lashes and deep bags under the eyes, perfectly captured the lights of the Ferris wheel and the food trucks. He wanted to see the tiny smile he had the entire time they were at the park because even if Simon didn't smile like that very often, when he did, Hugh felt as if he was witnessing the most wonderful of miracles.

Hugh took his hands out of his pocket, and when he turned his attention back to Simon, he was looking at him too. They stopped in their tracks, not caring that people passed around them, sometimes unintentionally pushing them a bit or stepping on their shoelaces.

Hugh took a step forward and Simon did too.

Then Simon pulled a hand out of his grey jacket's pocket, making him wonder if he was dreaming or if it was really going to happen.

Hugh held his breath and felt the blood rush to his face, along with the overwhelming feeling that everyone around him was staring at them, with the newly acquired gift of recognizing those two faces that always hid behind pair of colorful masks and now were gazing at each other with true devotion. He desperately wanted to know what was going through their heads, he wanted to know if they still considered them worthy of their admiration and respect, and he wanted to know if he had been right when he assured Simon that, someday, the two of them would hold each other in public without thinking it twice.

But then, just as Simon's fingers brushed his cheek, his attention was completely diverted to someone behind Hugh.

“Are you talking to me?” he asked awkwardly.

Hugh turned to see who his boyfriend was talking to. He was a slightly older man, juggling three balls and standing on the table of his own stand. He was smiling at Simon and he had a mustache that quite frankly made him look like a ridiculous comic villain.

“Yes, you!” and he threw a ball at Simon.

Simon covered his face with his hands, but Hugh caught the ball before it hit him.

Who did this guys think he was?

The guy, far from mocking Simon's reaction, seemed intrigued. “Do you want to win a prize, big guy?” he asked Hugh.

Hugh was ready to say no to him in the kindest way he could, when the guy pulled out a laundry basket, like the one Georgia put on his head every Sunday, saying "Laundry time!" in a voice so high that made birds explode.

“You just have to throw that ball you have in your hand—” he raised the basket “—here. And you can win a prize.”

He finally gave him a chance to reply. “No, thank you, we’re fine.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets again and told Simon to keep going. But the guy did not give up.

“I see,” he crooned from afar. “Your dad didn't play ball with you and that's why you don't think you're capable of throwing it correctly. It’s fine.”

Simon put his hand to his mouth as if thinking "Oh, stars, he did not."

And Hugh looked at him as if thinking "Oh, but he did."

If that guy knew who he was talking to, he would probably think it twice before making comments to strangers mocking their lack of a father figure.

So he turned abruptly and threw the ball into the basket.

If Hugh had been a little calmer, he probably would have been able to remember that, before leaving the house, Tamaya had told him that theme parks were full of games that had the sole purpose of scamming people and that one of them was that game in particular. The balls bounced so much that even if they made contact with the bottom of the basket they would jump back to whoever threw it, making them technically lose.

He would also have listened to himself, to Hugh, who told him that it would be best to turn around and get on with their lives, and not to Captain Chromium, who was determined to win that freaking game because he won every single game the world put in his way.

After three balls, the guy turned to Simon, extended his hand at him, and told him, “It's fifteen dollars.”

That was enough to make him lose his mind. Hugh told him that it was not worth arguing with him, but Captain Chromium did not tolerate that people tried to take advantage of him, and he spent about ten minutes screaming with the mustachioed man, until Simon panicked (or lost his mind), grabbed one of the balls and threw it right in the man’s eye.

Then, he did take Hugh by the hand.

But just to be sure they both got out of there before someone tried to stop them.

They ended the evening at a hamburger stand several blocks away from Cosmopolis Park (because obviously, they weren't going to stay there after the show they had put on). They did not have enough money to buy two sodas, but they bought a strawberry juice carton to share and sat on the sidewalk to eat their hamburgers of doubtful provenance, ranting against the man, against the park, and, especially, against those damn balls.

“I can't believe there are people like him breathing the same oxygen I breathe,” Simon commented, before taking a bite out of his burger ravenously. “He had no right to make that joke.”

But Hugh was so distracted by how attractive Simon looked when he bit his hamburger like that all he could say was:

“If my dad knew I couldn't win that stupid game, he would abandon me again.”

Simon frowned a little bit, repeating the sentence in his head until he finally understood the joke, and laughed so hard he began to choke with his food. Hugh started to panic and told Simon he would give him five back blows like he read he should do when someone started to choke. That was enough for Simon to spit his food on a napkin. Both were so grossed out by it, that they started laughing again. Simon hid his face on Hugh's shoulder, practically using his fit of laughter as an excuse to snuggle against him, and Hugh used his own angriness as an excuse to stay right there, telling the entire world to go to hell, and willing to keep doing it forever, just as long as the conversation didn't end and they had to go home.

Georgia and Tamaya would kill them. It was already late at night.

Fourth try

Year 17

It was already late night when they arrived at the motel.

Simon had stayed invisible the entire time they were at the reception like he always did when they had one of those more… private nights out. Hugh was the one who was in charge of booking the room because Simon got too anxious anyway at the mere idea of having to interact with one of the receptionists.

It was one thing for his entire family (or the Council, as they had been calling themselves lately, as a joke) to know that tonight he was going to have sex. Strangers knowing it was a completely different thing.

He still wasn't quite sure which one was more embarrassing, but yeah. It was different.

He only became visible again when Hugh closed the door behind him.

Simon looked at the huge sports bag that Hugh carried with him. “What you got there?”

“Nothing important,” he assured with a shrug. He was smiling like he was a kid getting a bunch of presents at Christmas, and Simon was extremely happy too, so, without asking any more questions, he kissed him on the lips and went to the bathroom to give both of them time to get ready.

Not that they hadn't done that before. They didn't like having such intimate moments in the house. And even if they had wanted to, it was practically impossible to have even a minute of privacy there. The last time he had slept in a room by himself had probably been… never. And the number of occasions someone had opened the bathroom door while he was there were more than he could count. The door lock had been broken for a few weeks but nobody knew how to solve the problem because they had no idea how doors worked. Georgia had tried to implement a serious policy of knocking before entering any room with the door closed, but the only one who paid attention to her was Adrian because the rest of them were simply too used to walk around the house as if they were in their own houses. (That they were their house, but it was more Simon's house than theirs.)

In fact, it was the first time in forever that he was in a bathroom and he didn't have to put his hand on the door, to stop whoever tried to open the door before they ended up seeing him in the most vulnerable of positions, so Simon took off his T-shirt, his jeans, and sat on the toilet, wearing his underwear and his jacket, trying to enjoy his first moment of privacy in a long time.

At least until his legs started to feel cold and Hugh told him that he could go out now.

When he came out of the room, Hugh, who was lying on the bed, widened his eyes. Simon was already ready to hear a flattering comment, but instead, he frowned and asked, “Are you going to leave your socks on?”

Simon looked at his feet automatically. He had indeed left his socks on.

He didn't see anything wrong with it.

“The carpet is filthy,” he replied. “I don't want to get fungus or something like that.”

Hugh found no fault with his logic. “Okay, but take them off when you get on the bed,” he asked.

Then Simon realized that Hugh, not only never stopped doing that ridiculous pose that pretended to be sexy throughout the entire conversation, but he also had thrown out the (probably dirty) bedsheets from the motel bed and put instead one of the blankets they took out of the closet to cover themselves during winter.

So that's what he carried in his sports backpack.

Hugh seemed to realize that Simon was looking at the blanket and not at him, because he immediately said, “Oh, I hate motel bedsheets.”

Simon couldn't help but laugh. “You hate them?”

Hugh finally stopped doing that ridiculous pose and sat down. “You just never know who sleep in them before us, Simon,” he replied, “and you never know when was the last time they washed them. Maybe they— ” he pointed to the pile of blankets thrown away “—are covered on the… bodily fluids of twenty other people, and you want me to lie on them? Is that how you want us to make love? Like animals?”

Simon kept laughing, but Hugh wasn’t laughing. “Simon, stop it!” he exclaimed. “A new class of bacteria could be there, ‘cause— oh, I am convinced that those things have a new kind of bacteria no one has discovered yet, and— ”

And he went silent when Simon put his hands on his shoulders, still with a smile on his lips.

“What?”

“Hugh, have I ever told you I think you're really sexy when you out crazy me?” Simon asked, running his fingers through his hair.

Hugh stood still, looking directly into his eyes. “No, I think you haven’t.”

Simon shrugged. “Well— I think you're really, really, sexy when you out crazy me.”

“Well, I think… I think—“

Hugh could no longer continue his sentence. Even though Simon wasn't doing anything to stop him from speaking.

He was literally just standing in front of him, one knee leaning on the mattress and one hand on Hugh's head.

“You think?” he asked him. “That’s new.”

“Simon, wait, I'm trying to seduce you,” Hugh said.

Simon took a step back, pointing to the bathroom door. “I think I’d wait over there.”

“No, wait—” he gently grabbed his wrist before he could move further away “—I’m starting to… Let me think of something.”

Simon chuckled. He put his knee on the mattress again and Hugh grabbed him around his waist, pulling him close to him and resting his head on his chest, while Simon rested his chin on his head. He had just taken a bath when they came out of the house, so Hugh’s hair smelled of him and lemon zest because they have been using dish soap as shampoo the last week.

That was the kind of privacy that they sometimes lacked at home. He was no longer talking about sex. Simon craved to have him like this, so close to him. Both in their underwear, both in a practically unknown place, and both completely vulnerable, but together. Feeling at home, even if technically they weren't.

Because Hugh was his home.

He was sure he saw him that way too.

Simon was so focused on trying to capture that moment in his memory so that he could repeat it over and over again for the rest of his life, that he was totally thrown when Hugh blurted out:

“I think you have a nice dick, dude.”

Simon broke the hug ... “What?”

Hugh’s cheeks turned even redder. “Tell me I didn't say that.”

He put a hand up to try to hide his laughter. “No, I think you did.”

He still couldn’t believe that was Hugh’s best try to seduce him. And apparently, Hugh couldn't believe it either.

“Then— forget about it,” he stammered. “Let's all of us forget about it.”

Simon realized that he tried to grab him by the waist again, but he moved away just in time, pretending to be extremely offended. “So I don't have a nice dick.”

“Let's just stop saying the word dick, please.”

“You started it.”

“I PANICKED, ALL RIGHT?”

“PANICKING IS MY JOB!”

“I’M TAKING YOUR JOB THEN. AND I’M GONNA STEAL YOUR BOYFRIEND TOO IF YOU KEEP LAUGHING!”

Simon didn't try to pretend that he wasn't laughing, because he was more than aware that it was already too obvious at this point.

So he decided it was better to play along.

“No, don't take my boyfriend!” he exclaimed dramatically, putting his hands on his shoulders. “Take me instead.”

Hugh took him by the waist and pulled him close. Simon didn't try to walk away this time. “Deal.”

But when Simon was about to start kissing him, he diverted his attention from Hugh for a split second, making him realize the curtains were wide open. “Oh, shoot, wait— the curtains.”

Luckily he hadn’t taken off his socks yet.

With quick steps, he headed to the window. He put a hand on each curtain and was about to close it completely when the lights of a car approaching from the end of the street caught his attention. It was a yellow sports car that looked more like a ripe banana than a vehicle.

Shit.

It stopped a few feet past the motel they were at. Out of it came a short man, with scars on his face and thin hair, and a tall blonde woman in a yellow dress, very inappropriate for the occasion. Not because it was provocative thought. It’s just that no one would wear such an expensive-looking dress in such a dangerous neighborhood unless they wanted to be robbed.

Or that they had enough status not to be.

Simon turned to see Hugh. “Hey—” Hugh looked up slightly. “—Come here.”

Hugh obeyed, a little bit confused, after putting his socks on (obviously). Simon had closed the curtains just enough for them not to be noticed but also not so much that they couldn’t see what was happening on the street.

Hugh gasped. “Are those—“

Simon swallowed hard. “Cyanide and Queen Bee in person.”

“What are they doing here?”

Simon had as much an idea of what Queen Bee and Cyanide were doing there as Hugh had, but he responded with the first thing that came to his mind anyway.

“Probably celebrating Valentine's Day,” he replied. “What a shitty place to take your girlfriend during Valentine’s Day though.”

At least take her to a motel. Like I did with Hugh.

“Do you think Queen Bee and Cyanide are together?” Hugh asked Simon.

Simon shrugged. “I don't know, but I know Queen Bee has a thing for Ace Anarchy.”

He had the slight hope that Hugh would take the bait and give him a chance to discuss his theories about Queen Bee's fixation with Ace Anarchy (which he always talked about with Tamaya), but Hugh, despite being very nosy, just kept quiet, watching Queen Bee and Cyanide argue outside the car.

How could that woman walk in such big heels?

“Or maybe Cyanide is the one who has a thing for Ace Anarchy,” Hugh blurted out suddenly.

Simon turned to see him. “Wait, really?”

“Don't be so heteronormative, Simon,” he scolded him. “Plus, I've never been in the cathedral, but I bet that when you enter there, it reeks homosexuality.”

“Dude—”

“I just know.”

And they kept watching.

There was something very personal about seeing two people arguing from a distance, like old ladies peering out of their home windows whenever the neighbors had a particularly loud fight. Simon almost considered it romantic.

Then, Queen Bee tried to turn around to turn her back on Cyanide, but something went wrong with her heel and she went face first towards the sidewalk, letting out a scream that could make someone think she was being murdered, and causing Cyanide (and the two of them) to laugh out loud.

How could that woman walk with those heels? Well, apparently, she couldn't.

The tension he felt when Cyanide interrupted his laughter and turned around as if he knew someone was watching them, made him remember that they were not gossiping old ladies peeking out of the window of their house and that those two were not some neighbors having a little fight. No, they were Dread Warden and Captain Chromium, stuffed into a hotel room like they were fugitives from the law or something, and those two little people in the middle of the street were two of the most feared and powerful villains in the world.

There was nothing romantic about that.

So Simon immediately closed the curtains.

But now neither of them was in the mood to have sex anymore, really.

“We should do something.”

“I'm on it.”

Hugh was already crouched slightly by the bedside, pulling his unmistakable superhero suits out of his sports bag.

Simon was so puzzled that he couldn't even stop to enjoy the… image that Hugh was inadvertently giving him by bending down like that.

“Wait, did you actually bring our supersuits to our date?” he asked him.

“Yeah,” he replied without looking up.

Who knows what kind of demon got into Simon at the time, but a not very family-friendly thought crossed his mind, and that thought was the one that made him ask, “Why?”

Hugh, completely unaware of what he was thinking, handed Simon his clothes and dropped the two pairs of boots on the floor as he sat in the bed.

Only the stars knew how he had managed to fit a blanket, their shoes, and their suits in that sports backpack.

“Because I thought something like this was gonna happen,” he explained while putting on his leggings. “You know, crime doesn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day the same way we do.”

Oh.

The little not very family-friendly thought hadn't been right then.

Simon felt a bit sick admitting that he wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed.

“Oh. I thought...”

Hugh looked at him, intrigued, and a second later, he understood what Simon was thinking. “Oh, stars, no. I was not thinking about that.”

“All right then.”

Now it was Hugh's turn to watch him change. Simon knew that was what he was doing.

Because he knew his look better than he knew anyone else's.

When he was fully dressed, Simon reached out to reach for his shoes, and Hugh put his own hand over his', to get his attention.

He already had the mask on, but he could see that he had turned red. If Simon had been white too, he probably would be redder than him.

He swallowed. “Unless— unless you're into it?”

Simon swallowed too. But he didn’t plan to answer him right now.

It had been hard enough to put on their suits. They didn’t need to start taking them off.

So he pulled his hand away and started putting on his shoes.

“Hugh, the villains—” he reminded him.

“Right, right.” Hugh brushed off his knees. “The villains. That’s important.”

After making sure the door had the lock on (and that said lock worked), they turned off the lights, Simon turned invisible, and Hugh climbed onto the roof, pushing himself off the window frame as fast as possible so that Queen Bee and Cyanide, who were turning their backs on them, standing in front of the door of an apparently abandoned building as if waiting for someone, did not see him. Afterward, Simon followed him, assuring him that he could climb on his own.

The two remained hiding behind the building's water tank. Well, Hugh was behind the building's water tank, and Simon was in plain sight, invisible, with his hood on and his cape fluttering behind him, making him feel…

He wanted to say that it made him feel heroic, but the truth was that Simon also felt very sexy when he got into this mysterious and threatening mode.

Simon turned his hand visible and pointed at them as if to say "Are we going or what?"

Hugh turned to see them with a frown, analyzing the situation. But when Simon was about to ask him what they were waiting for, Hugh turned to see him, with the same smile he had on his face when he was about to let the world know the coolest plan of all the plans, completely ignorant that in reality, it was the dumbest thing he had ever came up with.

“Wait, I have an idea.”

And in that situation, Simon had to take the role of being the one to tell him that his idea was bullshit and that it wasn't going to work, but he used to listen to his idea before expressing his comments about it. Not only because he didn't like talking without knowing all the facts first, but because may he could go to Tamaya the next day and tell her what had happened in the last episode of Hugh Had an Idea And It Went Wrong.

(They also enjoy episodes of Evander Acted Like An Animal Again and Queen, Realize That Junkie Doesn’t Care About You, Please.)

“Do you remember that song Evander used to sing to us?” he asked him.

Oh, Simon remembered it and cringed every time he thought about it.

But the cringe wasn't enough to stop him from singing the song.

“The Warden and the Captain are sitting in a tree—”

Hugh cringed too. “That one, yes. Stars, I hate it so much—” and he pointed to Queen Bee and Cyanide “—Let's make them hate it too. ”

Simon seriously tried to take his role as the voice of reason in that situation. He let his imagination (or rather, his anxiety) run wild, making him imagine the thousand and one scenarios in which that specific fight could turn out worse than they usually did if Hugh made that comment. Queen Bee would probably call Hugh a "lesbian" (“You have a lesbian haircut, honeybun, accept it”), Cyanide would go crazy trying to find Dread Warden to melt his skin slowly and painfully, everyone would wish death upon everyone, and the only reason the fight would end would be because either Cyanide would finally manage to injure Simon or because Queen Bee’s stilettos would break.

He didn't see how teasing them with an attack worthy of elementary school kids would make the situation worst.

Besides… it was going to be hilarious to see that.

He didn't see why he couldn't co-star in Hugh Had Idea and It Went Wrong.

“I'm in,” he replied, trying not to raise his voice too much. “I'm super in.”

Hugh rose his hand and Simon high-fived him quietly. But Hugh seized the opportunity to take his hand, running his finger across his knuckles. “Okay, but you sing the spelling part, because—”

“You don't know how to spell,” Simon interrupted.

Hugh let go of his hand. “Well, when you said it in that tone, it sounds a little mean.”

Simon rolled his eyes and took his hand again. Then the logical part of his brain (yes, the same one that always insisted on being the voice of reason in situations like that) began to yell at him that he should convince Hugh to let Cyanide and Queen Bee did whatever they wanted, while the two of them did whatever they wanted.

But that the logical part of him had no voice in that situation because the logical part of his brain was not the part that loved Hugh. After all, there was nothing logical in loving the way he made a kind of mini-horn with both hands, took a deep breath, and yelled with all his might:

“CYANIDE AND THE QUEEN BEE SITTING IN A TREE—”

Fifth try

Year 20

K-i-s-s-i-n-g.

That was what he wanted to be doing. He wanted to be kissing Simon. He wanted to be with him, walking in the park and watching life go by in front of them. The birds singing from the trees, the children chasing each other, and the wind ruffling their hair. The day was going to be so perfect that he was going to be able to ignore homeless people getting high on corners or young people dealing drugs (that should be) illegal, focusing all his attention on Simon and how happy he felt that this time, everything he was going well.

He didn't want to be crammed into the living room with the rest of his family, listening to the thunder and the rain crashing down on the ceiling.

But apparently, that's what he was doing.

Tamaya was sitting on the floor, covering herself with her wings. Simon had sat on the other end of the three-seater couch, looking out the living room window with a thoughtful expression, worthy of a character in a Shakespearean play or something. Evander was leaning over him and had Kasumi on his lap. She was watching him play (or rather trying to play) a Tetris game that he had on his phone, putting her icy feet on Hugh's arm, probably without realizing it, and Hugh was on the other end of the couch, first starting at Simon, thinking of how handsome he looked when he was thinking, and then at Georgie. She had been smart enough to sit on the reclining sofa, which gave her the space she needed to cuddle with an inconsolable six-year-old Adrian.

“The storm will end soon,” she was telling him. “The storm will end soon.”

But that was not enough to comfort Adrian. His mother had already been telling him for about an hour that “the storm will end soon”, but the storm just ... did not end. And each time they heard a new thunder, Adrian let out a howl and clung to his mother with more force, asking her to please not go away.

Everyone knew that when Adrian asked Georgie not to go away, he was actually asking everyone not to go away. If any of them left the room, he would probably lose his mind.

He felt the urge to tell him that she wasn't going anywhere. That wasn’t very Georgie. Georgie didn't leave people who needed her like that, scared, crying, and begging her to stay. So since Georgie didn't do it, neither did the others.

It is not like they could have gone anywhere though.

Georgie realized that Simon hadn't stopped staring out the window.

“I'm sorry you couldn't do anything special this Valentine’s Day,” she whispered. Simon blinked as if he were waking up from a dream. “What did you have planned for this evening?”

Simon turned to see him, disappointed. Hugh decided to answer for him.

“We were going to have a picnic at the park,” he replied.

Georgie blurted out something that sounded like “Awww”, and Evander scoffed.

“That’s gay.” Hugh put his arm behind Kasumi and smacked Evander on the back of his head. “BRO, YOU LITERALLY MADE LOSE ME.”

Tamaya laughed and Kasumi shook her head. “I want to play too—” she tried to take the cellphone and Evander pressed it closer to his chest “—Vandy.”

Georgie intervened (without letting go of Adrian). “Vandy, give Kasumi the phone. It’s her turn. And then it's mine.”

But Evander didn’t want to.

“But it only has ten percent of battery left,” he exclaimed.

“Perfect, it's more than enough for Tamaya, Kasumi, Simon, Hugh, and I to get a turn too.”

“Hugh punched me! He does not deserves a turn.”

“I didn't punch him,” Hugh said. “I just hit him very slightly.”

“My brain almost felt out of my head.”

“Do you still have a brain?” Tamaya asked. Hugh high-fived her. “I've been thinking about that joke for weeks, dude.”

“Evander Wade, share the phone,” Georgia said. “I'm no longer asking.”

“No! It's my phone.”

Desperate, Tamaya reached out to take Evander's cell phone, and he stood up so fast that Kasumi ended up falling on Tamaya.

“MOTHERFU—”

A thunder. Again.

Adrian started crying. Again.

And they all went silent. Again.

Hugh took advantage of the fact that Evander got out of the coach to move closer to Simon. Evander didn't say anything to him because he was too busy handing the cell phone to Tamaya, who then gave it to Kasumi. Kasumi refused to sit down with Evander again and stayed on the floor with Tamaya (although resting her head on his knees, as if they were a pillow).

Simon rested his head on Hugh's shoulder.

“Next year will be better,” he whispered in his ear. Simon didn't answer him; he only put his hand on the window, leaving the trace of his fingers on it. “Are you all right?”

Simon put his hand on Hugh’s waist and pulled him closer to him, closing his eyes for a while. “I'm tired…”

“Rest then.”

After all…

Hugh was tried too.

There had never been a day when they didn't have to face a new threat. It seemed that the Anarchists, instead of getting weaker, were getting stronger. Even with the many new allies the Renegades had, no one seemed to have a second of the day to rest. Adrian got more and more nervous when they went out as days passed by, and it was becoming more difficult to calm down him during his tantrums. Even he, who was a child, could feel the tension in the city.

But precisely because of that, because he was a child, he could not understand the enormous responsibility that the Renegades had on his shoulders and that they could not stay with him, no matter how much they wanted to.

Maybe that was why no one had tried to leave the room. It was their way of telling Adrian that they were still there for him.

He was about to fall asleep when Simon pulled him away. His first instinct was to pull him closer, but as soon as he realized that Simon was just standing up, he let go of him.

Suddenly, he looked happier. Much happier than anyone else in that room.

Everyone noticed that change.

“Are you still too tired to celebrate Valentine’s Day?”

Even Hugh didn't understand what he meant.

Evander turned to see Georgie. “Georgie, you told them no hanky-panky in the house.”

“Vandy—” Kasumi intervened.

“Zoomie.”

“Don't say hanky-panky.”

“Yeah, you sound like a grandma,” Tamaya told him slightly punching him on the leg.

Hugh shushed them. “Shhh, guys, let Si talk.”

“No, go on, guys—” Simon told them “—Let us show you.”

And he held out his hand.

Obviously, Hugh accepted it.

He had no idea what Simon was planning to do, but he wasn't too tired not to celebrate Valentine's.

He was never too tired of him.

Adrian immediately reacted to this. “Hey, no, don't go...” he cried, stretching his little arms towards them.

Luckily, Simon looked like he already had that covered.

“We're not going anywhere, Adrian,” Simon assured him. “You are coming with us.”

Adrian and Georgie's eyes widened at the same time.

“Me?” Adrian asked pointing to himself.

“You,” Simon replied, confidently. “But it's a very special mission,” he added in a lower voice, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You can't tell anyone.”

Adrian rubbed his eyes and Georgie looked up at the ceiling as if she were making sure a new leak hadn't magically appeared. Tamaya, on the contrary, didn't understand, and she stared at the scene, very intrigued by Simon's plan too. Luckily, Georgie noticed it, and with a frantic movement of her hand, told her to stop staring. Hugh made the same move, but this time, directed at Kasumi and Evander.

When Adrian opened his eyes again, everyone but the two of them was pretending they weren't listening to the conversation.

“What mission is it?” Adrian asked in a thin voice.

“Look, we can't go out to celebrate Valentine's Day,” Simon explained, “but what we can do is bring Valentine's Day here with us.”

Adrian looked puzzled.

“Hey, but you're going to need a superhero name to be able to participate in the mission,” Hugh commented, trying to get Adrian more interested. “Do you have any ideas?”

Simon scratched his beard, thinking. “Hmm, very good question, my dear Captain,” he commented. “Maybe—”

“Oh, I know what superhero name I'll have,” Adrian exclaimed, grabbing Simon by the cheeks. “Hey, your beard feels funny.”

Simon grabbed him by the cheeks too. “What’s your superhero name, then?”

Adrian whispered it in his ear and Simon's face lit up. “It's a perfect name, Adrian.”

Adrian shushed him. “Shh, don't say my real name! I have to use my superhero name, remember? It's a mission.”

Evander scoffed again and Kasumi shushed him immediately.

“And can he tell me your superhero name?” Hugh asked Adrian.

Adrian stopped to think about it. “Yes, why not?” he finally replied.

Then, Simon stood slightly on tiptoe to reach him and whispered in his ear the most perfect superhero name he had ever heard.

Sketch.

Hugh took Adrian by surprise when he graved him and carried him in his arms, making him gasp in shock and excitement. Even Georgie started to laugh out loud at her son's reaction.

“Ready for the mission, Sketch?” he asked him making his voice lower than it actually was.

Adrian gave a military salute. “I was born ready, Captain!” he exclaimed, moving his feet in the air.

Georgie stood up too. “Where you taking my son, guys?” she asked dramatically.

Hugh placed Adrian on his shoulders.

“Don’t worry, mom,” Adrian told her, “I’ll be fine. I need to accomplish this mission.”

Georgie pretended to start sobbing. “No, but you don't have to, son of mine, you're too young!”

“Listen to your mother, kid,” Tamaya intervened. “Stay with us, stay safe with your family—“ and she passed her wings over Kasumi's shoulders.

“Tamaya has two wings,” Kasumi pointed out. “And they're warm.”

“Really?” Evander asked.

But Tamaya’s face changed immediately. “It's not for you, it's for Adrian.”

“GO WITH THEM, LITTLE SKETCH, GO!” Evander yelled standing up on the sofa. “GO SAVE VALENTINE’S DAY!”

That was enough for Adrian. He kissed his mother on the cheek and told her that he would be back soon. Then the three of them began their journey to the kitchen while the others stayed in the living room.

Simon pulled out a bag of bread from the refrigerator and asked Hugh to pass him the peanut and hazelnut butter jars from the cupboard. Adrian took it upon himself to count the remaining loaves of bread and separate them into pairs, spreading them on the table. Simon encouraged him to count how many pairs there were and Hugh had no problem helping him when he got stuck at number five. Then Simon toasted them on the stove, and he allowed Adrian to pile them up like a tower on a red ceramic plate.

When it was time to make the sandwiches, Simon and Hugh sat at different ends of the table, each holding a butter knife. Simon would spread peanut butter on one of the loaves, Hugh would spread hazelnut on the other, and Adrian would gather them together and wrap them the best he could in a napkin, before putting them in a makeshift basket that Kasumi had made long ago.

“Mommy, no!” yelled Adrian when Georgie dared to enter the kitchen. “It's a secret mission!”

“Don’t worry, don’t mind me,” she told them pretending not to notice what they were doing. “I'm just gonna prepare myself some strawberry milk.”

As soon as Adrian looked away, Georgie winked at Hugh. And Hugh winked back.

“I think we're done with this mission now,” he replied using that ridiculously deep voice again. “You have to break the news to the rest of the team, Sketch.”

Adrian jumped out of his chair and practically ran into the living room, holding the basket with sandwiches in his hand.

The three of them had been so into their mission, they didn't realize that the others had put several blankets on the floor and Tamaya was cursing under her breath for being unable to use a lighter to turn on the candles. Kasumi approached Adrian, with a VHS in each of her hands, asking him which movie he would like to see, and Evander came over too, but to try and tell Adrian to pick the action movie, not the romance movie the girls wanted to see.

Simon seemed like he wanted to join the conversation too, but Hugh thought he had done enough. And he meant it in a good way. So he took him by the hand and they lied down on the couch, not caring that perhaps one of the others wanted to sit on it.

Adrian had already chosen the movie (he chose the period drama over the action movie, thankfully) when Georgie walked into the living room with a stack of plastic cups under her arm and a jug half full of strawberry milk, carrying it as it were a trophy. During her birthday, everyone in the house had raised money to buy her a huge pot of strawberry milk powder, which they made her promise that she would not share.

Some promises could not be kept.

The adults got two sandwiches each, but Adrian had practically all of the strawberry milk. Throughout the movie, Kasumi was sighing and muttering how much she wanted to wear a dress like the one the main character wore in the movie during that elegant dinner. From to time, Tamaya frowned and muttered something about how problematic she found a line or scene. Georgie braided their hair and when she finished, she would undo the braid and start over, laughing out loud at Evander's comments about how horrible the romantic interest looked and that he did not understand how that was the ideal of beauty that women had. Adrian fell asleep in Simon's arms about halfway through, and about that exact time, Hugh began to notice that Simon was starting to have a hard time trying to stay awake.

He looked adorable when he was thinking, but he liked it even more how he looked when he was falling asleep.

He kissed the back of his head. “Are you tired?”

He nodded slightly. “Yes… but never of you.”

Hugh kissed him again. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“What thing?”

Georgie turned around for a second and realized that Adrian had fallen asleep. She stopped braiding Evander’s short hair (for some reason, Evander had let her braid his hair) and sat on the recliner chair, hugging Adrian like a stuffed animal.

She winked at him once more. And Hugh winked back, one more time.

“Nothing— ” he laid himself more comfortably on the couch and allowed Simon to get on top of him, resting his head on his chest. “—Sleep for a while.”

Simon made no further objection. “You too.”

Hugh did not fall asleep. In fact, he stayed awake for the three hours the movie lasted, even though by the time the credits started, Tamaya was snoring and Kasumi and Evander were under her wings, rolled up, and cuddled up to her. Georgie ended up falling asleep on the couch, covered in the same blanket Simon used to cover himself a few hours ago.

When the clock told him it was 7 PM, Hugh knew it was time for them to go patrol. However, the rain had gotten even worse, and Simon...

Simon looked so peaceful.

He hadn't realized how deep the bags under his eyes had gotten, nor that his face hadn't looked as relaxed as it looked right now for weeks, because he frowned most of the time. He hadn't held him that close either or had the opportunity to give him as many kisses as he had been doing in that time. Not because he didn't want to, it was just ... well, they had been busy trying not to die.

How tiring it was to try not to die.

He knew Simon was tired because, again, he was tired too, and he bet that the rest of their family felt the same as them. But Simon was the only one who had overcome his tiredness and his moodiness to just... make them forget their sorrows for a moment.

He was like that.

Hugh gave him one more kiss on the cheek.

Thank you.

If Simon had been awake, he would have asked him "Thanks for what?"

And Hugh would have answered him, "For just being you."

Someday they would get their happy ending. But for the moment, all he wanted was to be crammed into the living room with the rest of his family, listening to the thunder and the rain crashing down on the ceiling.

He doubted that happiness would ever end.

Sixth (but not last) try

Two years after the Day of Triumph.

Just over a year ago, Simon had been on the roof of the same building he was currently in. Of course, it looked very different from how it looked now. It didn’t have any windows, no furniture, and, obviously, no electricity. It was the vile shell of what had once been one of the most beautiful skyscrapers in the city. Simon was thinking about that when he realized that he did not have a single memory of having seen that place when it was in its maximum splendor and that the only proof he had of it was the stories of those adults who arrived before him.

That sooner or later, he would become one of those adults. Those who told stories of the past to the generations that came after them.

He thought of Adrian. He thought that there would come a time when he would be curious to know certain things that happened and would ask questions that Simon would not be too sure how to answer. Not precisely because he didn't want to or because he thought he wasn't ready to hear the truth; he just didn’t know those truths at all.

Why did people change for the worst? How did the world use to be when prodigies weren’t divided by heroes or villains?

What happened to Lady Indomitable?

How did the world use to be before she was gone?

Then Simon, with tears in his eyes, looked up at the crescent moon and the six stars lined up in such a way that they seemed to form a smile. He hadn’t seen anyone in his family smile for… a very long time.

Because when Georgia Rawles left, she took with her their capacity to smile.

Yet, at that moment, Simon could feel her. He could feel her when he was crying, asking her to please fly again and to help him get down from that skyscraper. He felt her hugging him, keeping him from falling to his knees and cutting his skin with the shattered glass that was on the floor. She promised him that she would never give up on him and assured him that every time he saw the sky, he would find those six stars forming that smile, which from that moment on, would be hers.

Simon didn't want her to make promises, but… it was Georgie. His Georgie. The Georgie who made pinky promises even though she was about to turn thirty because you were never too old for pinky promises. The Georgie who always protected him and never gave up on him, even though there were times when Simon thought she should.

So since she was his Georgie, Simon accepted the promise. As she turned around and rose again to the sky, he wondered what would happen when the city was so full of light, that the stars (Georgie’s smile) faded away and everyone, including them, forgot about them (about her).

But, after all this time, Simon was looking at the stars, on the roof of that same skyscraper that had now been turned into a fancy restaurant, holding Hugh's hand across the table, and noticing that Georgie was still smiling at him from above.

As it always should be.

“Did you ever expect things to turn out like this when you were little?”

He turned to see Hugh again. “What things?”

But Hugh kept staring at the stars. Simon didn't care. He liked to think that the sparkle in his blue eyes was due to them. “Us.”

Simon shook his head, “No,” he answered when he remembered Hugh couldn’t look at him. “Did you?”

Finally, Hugh saw him again. “I think that when I was little, I didn’t know one could be as happy as I am with you right now.”

Simon rolled his eyes.

“I'm serious,” Hugh insisted, taking him just a little tighter by the hand. “I'm so glad we finally made it out.”

Simon leaned forward slightly. “We really did, huh?”

Then, Hugh gently pulled him closer to him, making their foreheads bump and closing his eyes. “And I'm so glad that now, nothing bad is gonna happen to you, to us, and to what we have.”

Simon closed his eyes too. He would have liked to promise Hugh that it would be like that. That this new chapter of their lives, the chapter of getting married, having kids, and rebuilding a city together, was would turn out as well as the last one, when they fought crime, defeated the bad guys, and held hands only when they were not wearing the armors that protected them from the outside world.

But he could not promise that. And anyways, Hugh was not very fond of promises. He said they were very easy to break.

So he grabbed his chin and gave him a quick kiss on the lips before saying, “It's getting late. We should ask for the check.”

Hugh nodded and called a waiter. He noticed that Simon was reaching into his pocket and quickly told him not to do it, that he got it. Simon knew there was nothing he could do to make him change his mind, so he instead just asked if he could get a slice of chocolate cake to go. Adrian would love to have chocolate cake for breakfast.

The waiter returned a few moments later with the bill (and Adrian’s chocolate cake). Simon almost winced when he saw the amount of money they had spent on a meal that hadn’t been that good in the first place (although he did not know if it was because of the lack of ingredients or because gourmet food kind of sucked). However, Hugh didn't seem at all concerned and reached into his pockets to get his wallet.

Suddenly, he leaned his elbows on the table. “Simon.”

Simon leaned his elbows on the table too. “Yes?”

“Have I mentioned you look very handsome tonight?”

He tried to remember. “No,” he replied. “But thank you for noticing. I even took a shower.”

“Wow,” Hugh exclaimed with too much enthusiasm. “Feeling fancy today.”

“I do feel fancy today,” Simon replied, adjusting the jacket he had put on over his pink button-up shirt at the last moment because Hugh had told him that the restaurant had a pretty rigid dress code.

Simon almost didn’t put on the jacket out of pure spite. In fact, he spent all the way ranting about how it was stupid to have such a specific dress code in a place like Gatlon City, and that he bet that the owners of that restaurant, who now were acting like total snobs, had spent most of their lives wearing only a t-shirt and old jeans, like the rest of them.

Hugh, who had been wearing the jacket from the beginning (a blue one), was quiet, listening carefully to what Simon was saying until he blurted out:

“We can do something else if you want to.”

He didn't say it in an “I’m hurt by your comment” tone. Instead, he said it the same way he would tell him that they could watch another movie or that they could get take out instead of cooking dinner. He said it as if the reservation he made was not at stake, or as if he hadn’t been sending him hints of wanting to go to that specific restaurant since New Year.

Simon knew that if he had said yes, Hugh would have taken him wherever he wanted. However, Simon also knew that it didn't matter where they went. They had spent Valentine's in an alley, at a fair, fighting villains, and in a house too small for seven people. And in all those places, he had a great time.

Surely that place was… snobbish, but he could have a great time there too.

After all, they were together.

He was sure Hugh knew that too.

Hugh nodded, agreeing with him. He hardly ever agreed with someone other than himself anymore.

“Is this your strange way of making me say you look good too?” he asked him then.

And Hugh’s smile grew bigger. “Simon Westwood, you are the love of my life,” he replied taking his hand, “and this is my strange way of telling you I forgot my wallet at home.”

Simon laughed so loudly that the other customers turned to see him. But he couldn't care less. He kind of wanted them to saw them. He wanted them to notice how much he was laughing and he wanted them to see him kiss Hugh as he reached for his pockets…

Oh, no.

“Hugh.”

He tensed. “Yes, dear husband of mine who’s going to pay for this dinner?”

“You look good too.”

That was enough for Hugh to realize that Simon had also left his wallet at the house.

The two remained serious for a long time. But then, Simon could see how Hugh's brain clicked in a very strange way, which made him see this whole situation as the funniest thing that had ever happen to him.

He kissed him once more.

They always managed to ruin their Valentine's Days one way or another, but it didn't matter. Because there was no way they could ruin what the two of them had.

Boy, he would like to see someone try.

#queercreators #queercreators02 #renegades #archenemies #supernova #renegades trilogy #hugh everhart #simon westwood #humon #obsi's writs

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proxylynn · 4 years ago

Text

Underfell: File Name not Edgy Enough #26

Chapter 26: Misery

WARNING: I WANT NO RESPONSIBILITY OVER SPOILING THINGS FOR OTHERS. THAT BEING SAID, THIS IS HOW FILE NAME NOT FOUND WOULD FUNCTION IN THE AU OF UNDERFELL. BEFORE YOU READ THIS, UNLIKE THE NICE TIME OF UNDERTALE, THIS WORLD IS KILL OR BE KILLED. THIS STORY WILL BE GRAPHIC, GORY, USE SWEARS LIKE NOBODY'S BUSINESS, AND DEAL WITH SENSITIVE SUBJECT MATTERS. FOR EXAMPLE, THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE READ THE FILE NAME RELOCATED SPOOF WILL KNOW HOW I PICTURE THIS VERSION OF LYNSIE COMING TO THE UNDERGROUND. IT IS NOT AN ACCIDENT. IT IS NOT BECAUSE OF SOMETHING DUMB. IT IS BECAUSE SHE CHOOSES TO END HER LIFE. SO TAKE THIS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT. I MADE IT BECAUSE I NEEDED TO LET SOME OF THIS EDGINESS OUT OF MYSELF. WHICH I GUESS MAKES UNDERFELL LYNSIE EVEN MORE TRUE TO WHO I REALLY AM. ANYWAY, ENJOY. ^_^

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[HOTLAND: LEVEL 2 MOMENTS BEFORE GOING LIVE]

Mettaton zooms through the air, the speed makes it hard to try to look for anything I can lock-on as a potential landmark. The worst part, I can't tell if Flowey is able to follow or can reach this far safely. Who am I kidding? Flowey has the best odds of making it around here without a scratch. Unlike my dumbass.

"THIS WILL DO."

He lands faster than expected. The shock shacks my insides uncomfortably. I gag trying to keep my stomach from flying out.

"SORRY, DARLING. I'LL ATTEMPT TO BE GENTLER IN THE FUTURE."

He puts me down, my legs buckle like a baby calf's but I manage to stand.

"N-No worries. Just...Just give me a moment."

He chuckles and gets ready to blast off again.

"SO CUTE. NOW LISTEN UP...HOTLAND IS LEVELED OUT IN THREE PARTS. WE WERE ON LEVEL ONE. THIS IS LEVEL TWO. FROM THIS ROOM, MAKE A RIGHT AND CONTINUE ONWARD. YOU'LL NEED TO REACH THE ELEVATOR TO PROCEED. THINK YOU CAN DO THAT?"

I wave at him.

"Go right. Got it. *heavy sigh* Um...Are there more vents?"

He doesn't say anything.

"Metta?"

"TOODLES!"

He blasts off and I roar our swears. Oh well. No point fussing on that. If I'm lucky Flowey will have heard my shouting and come to help me. But this room...The path leading out is glass. The land isn't connected. Flowey would have to dive deeper to find a joining point, most likely it would be too deep and the heat harmful. I need to leave and not look down. I take a step but fumble, grabbing a random signpost to stop the fall.

"Damn it...Is this what jet-lag is?"

The sign's writing makes me curious.

[Art Club: Meet here! Next meeting: October 10th, 8PM]

Huh? Wait...What is the date and time? Argh! I have no sense for time anymore. Toriel has an out-of-date calendar that she refuses to change which doesn't help and the cellphone had the closest thing to a clock yet there's no telling if it was on time.

"Ahhhh!!! I'm late!!! I'm late!!! I'm so sorry!!!"

From seemingly out of nowhere, a doughy butterscotch colored monster in a black fedora and vest comes rushing towards this spot with papers fluttering away from him. He's in such a damn hurry that he trips and ends up crashing, skidding to a stop inches from my feet.

"*grumble* Son of a..."

He picks himself up and quickly grabs what papers he can. He looks odd. I'm getting weird neck-bread vibes off him. It's probably the fedora. Maybe if he took it off and let his brown hair free...What the fuck, am I thinking like a girl? Ewww! Stupid girl thoughts! That's my once per month. No more.

"So stupid! Why am I so clumsy? I hate being such a klutz!"

Poor guy.

"Need some help?"

He flinches. Did...Did he just realize I was here?

"W-Who are you? This is my spot! Get out!"

"Whoa! Chill. No need to be so harsh, kangaroo-boy."

His eyes widen.

"Kangaroo..."

Ah...shit. I know that look by now. My blue soul comes out.

"I'M A BUTTERDRAGON!!"

[WRONG ENEMY !? begins to play in the background.]

...Fuck my life. Wait...What the fuck is a butterdragon?

[You're blocked in angrily!]

"I come here to find something to draw. And what do I find? Some ignorant bitch that wouldn't know a masterpiece if it smacked her in the face!"

Is he referring to himself?

"It's time someone taught you a lesson! Consider it a gift. Let me look in my vest!"

He spins around and swings at me with his tail. It's coated in light blue magic. Fine. I don't move. It turns orange. I jump over it. It turns blue for two more swipes before turns around.

[HP ██████████████████████████████████████████ 40/40]

"Oh! Whoops! That had to hurt! So sorry, I must have..."

He freezes seeing nothing happened to me.

"You...You're fine?"

I shrug. No point opening my mouth. He talks enough for the both of us.

[The enemy looks nervous.]

"Ummm, I...I couldn't find anything I want to give away. *softer* Not that I wanted to give you anything. *normal* Wait, wait! *laugh* I've got my notebook! I can draw you a picture in it! I'm quite the artist, you know. I'll draw you a GREAT picture!!!"

"It's not your turn."

He flinches.

"Oh...Right."

I look at my options.

[FIGHT]

[ACT]

[̴͝SP͜͞E͡L̵͜L͟͠͏]͘͢

[ITEM]

[MERCY]

What even is that button? Eh...I don't need it. Not with this guy.

[ACT selected.]

[New options available.]

[CHECK]

[SOMETHING]

What's with all the weird shit? Just be simple damn it.

[CHECK selected.]

[SO SORRY (REAL NAME, SAMAEL "SAM" D. BUTTERDRAGON) – HP: 1100 ATK: 9 DEF: -6 – This creature is definitely in the wrong time and space!]

Time and space...How the hell does he have negative defense?! That's a thing?!

"My turn!"

My thoughts are broken. He turns around to draw in his notebook, attacking once more with his tail. Blue swish. Orange swish. Blue swish. Blue swish. Orange swish. Orange swish.

[HP ██████████████████████████████████████████ 40/40]

Again he doesn't understand how I got away with no damage. Dude, I can't help that you're attack is obviously telegraphed.

[The enemy looks anxious.]

"S...sorry...The drawing didn't come out very well. Wait! I know the problem! I just have to find a better piece of paper for it!"

"I'm not sure that's how drawing works. But you do you."

[MERCY selected.]

[SPARE selected.]

"I don't want your pity."

Was worth a shot considering the way this fight's going.

"I'll settle on a draw-ing if that's better."

I emphasize the pun with a teasing wink. He gets a little frazzled.

"Uh...Don't do that again. Like...ever."

Screw it. I want to have some fun.

"Why? Are you gonna pun-ish me?"

His right eye twitches.

"Stop it."

"I have an ink-ling this is getting to you. But trust me...You paint seen nothing yet."

Getting frustrated he yanks at his hair before turning around and chucking crumpled balls of paper at me from over his shoulders. Finally, something I need to dodge that will take effort. Each toss has three balls and he does this ten times. The dude's wasting perfectly fine paper. Shameful.

[HP ██████████████████████████████████████████ 40/40]

I'm starting to think he's getting bothered by his inability to hurt me.

[The enemy looks perturbed.]

Called it.

"N-None of my papers are good enough to use..."

[SPARE selected.]

"It's not the tools. They don't create. They are but aids. It's the artist. Their skill and heart. That is key. Anyone can draw. It's as easy as breathing. But if you stress out and push too hard, if you forget to enjoy yourself...Then even what you'd call your masterpiece will never be good enough."

He looks at me funny.

"My advice, Mr. Butterdragon...Don't try to make something as others expect it to be made. Create something as you want it to be. Only then will you be happy with it. I would know. I'm a dabbler at doodling and there's something so...interesting...in being able to take a pencil and transfer an image that you only saw in your head to paper. Though I can never seem to get hands just right."

I look at my hands.

"Weird flesh sticks. Why are you so hard to draw?!"

He thinks for a moment. But then...

"THAT'S IT!!! I know what I can do!! I'll use my magic pencil! It has to be under some of these papers somewhere!!!!"

I take it he's still bent on attacking to prove he can draw. He goes back to tossing paper and by this point, I found a spot to just stand in where nothing falls near, so I wait till he's done.

"Here! I got it! My magic pencil is amazing! Everything I draw with it looks..."

[HP ██████████████████████████████████████████ 40/40]

This fight is so boring. I mean, I'm grateful to not have my ass kicked or beaten within moments of death's door, but...Is he really trying? Froggits try harder than this.

"Why aren't you hurt?!"

I cover my mouth in a yawn.

"Dude, can you let me spare you already? I need to get to level three before Mettaton has a fit."

[SPARE selected.]

He didn't like hearing this.

[The enemy taps his fingers together like jackhammers.]

"I'll show you. I'LL SHOW YOU ALL!! I AM A REAL ARTIST!!"

With pencil in hand, he scribbles into the air and much to my understanding of reality he adds two horned demons doodles to fight on his side.

[DOODLEBOG – HP: 100 ATK: 8 DEF: 999 – Art lets your wildest fantasies come to life!]

"Like I was saying...Anything I draw with this pencil becomes COMPLETELY REAL! But in your case, a little too real!"

I can't help the odd smirk that crawls across my lips.

"Finally..."

I stretch and pop some joints.

"I was starting to fall asleep. Show me what you've been holding back. Let the creativity flow!"

Both Doodlebogs launch eight doodle orbs in circle formations at me. The good news, there's room to move and enough spacing to do some fun maneuvering. The bad news...It's still freaking easy! They shoot this move twice before their turn ends. And still...

[HP ██████████████████████████████████████████ 40/40]

I'm disappointed. And so is he.

"What...How...?!"

[The enemy is confused.]

I shake my head. Seems that's all he's got. Though, to his credit, those drawings need to go. But how do I do that? Hmmm...Maybe...

[ACT selected.]

[New options available.]

[CHECK]

[DRAW]

[SOMETHING]

What's this? Oh...Oh hell yeah.

[DRAW selected.]

"W-Wait...You can't..."

I grab my soul, not sure what else I'm to use, and trace out a large cat that glows like my soul.

"Sketch-kitty, pounce the Doodlebog on the left!"

The cat does as commanded, pouncing at the Doodlebog and they tussle off the side to the heat death below. He panics.

"How dare you use art against me! Don't just stand there, kill her!"

The remaining Doodlebog fires the same attack as before but done three times in rapid secession. I harder move yes, but one that still leaves spots open wiggle on through.

[HP ███████████████████████████████████��██████ 40/40]

[The enemy is desperate.]

"H-Hey now...There's no need to do anything crazy. I-I shouldn't have attacked you. That was dumb. W-We good?"

Huh...I don't know if he's being truthful. I try to use MERCY but the button doesn't push in. Something is locking it. I wonder if it's because of the doodle? Is it affecting the battle conditions? To be safe, I'll return things to how they were.

[DRAW selected.]

"You're cheating! You have to be! No one can be this good!"

I roll my eyes while tracing out a massive snake.

"Sketch-snake, put the squeeze to the Doodlebog."

It strikes with the speed of a viper and coils the doodle like a constrictor. The doodle fights back, clawing at the sketch. The sketch knows what its mission is. It throws itself and the doodle over the edge, so now it's only the two of us. He is at a loss what to do.

[The enemy uses a hypnotizing 3D-tush-wiggle attack. Smells... furry.]

I think he's freaked out and out of options. His strongest move, an insane trump card, and I not only countered it but bested it.

[The enemy is apologizing to its visions of the Reaper.]

...What?

"I've messed up. I've really messed up. Oh no. I'm so dead! No...No. I won't let you kill me."

"Dude, I'm clearly not trying to kill you."

"I won't let art die!"

"And you're not listening."

"I'll use this regular pencil! I'll use 100% of best! There is no way you'd kill the maker of such a fine piece!"

He turns around and scribbles furiously. His tail swipes quickly and paper balls fly like crazy. This creates difficulty because trying to dodge the balls is made harder when trying to either stand still for light-blue attacks or move for the orange ones. Orange tail, orange tail, blue tail, blue tail, orange tail, and blue tail. This is how he should've been going at me from the start. It's a good attack.

[HP ███████████████████████████ 27/40]

"Are you ready!? I just finished! Here's your picture!"

He's so proud of it that he doesn't even notice that he finally did damage to me. The picture is a heart.

"What do you think!? It's a representation of your deepest essence... It's great, right!?"

I don't say a word. What did he mean by that? How is a heart my deepest essence? Is it a picture of my soul and souls are the essence of life? How the fuck did he being about so much thought with a heart?! My silence has him become uncomfortable.

"... (They think my art is terrible.) Well! I'll leave you with that thought! Goodbye! See you later! Sayonara! Nice knowing ya! Hasta la vista. ... I should leave."

He attempts to leave but he freezes when I quickly grab his tail.

"Um..."

"That image...You poured your heart into and it shows. It made me think. Art does that. It makes you think and feel. You did that to me. ...10 out of 10."

His eyes widen.

"R-Really?"

I nod and let his tail go...only to get a sappy hug from the butterball.

"Thank you!"

I made his day. He was trying to kill me and is now hugging me over a compliment. I think this is over.

[MERCY selected.]

[SPARE selected.]

[YOU WON!]

[You earned 0 XP and 318 gold.]

Holy shit! I'm rich!

The battle music fades out as he lets me go. My soul returns to me.

"Did you...Did you really like it?"

I nod.

"You gave it your all. That makes it special. Keep that spirit and don't be afraid to try other styles. You'll be amazed at what you can do if you try."

"Like your animals?"

"Animals have always been easy for me. It's people that are my weak-link. Um...Can I see that pencil for a sec?"

He hands me his notebook and normal pencil, to which I make two different drawings. One, a traditional European dragon spouting flame. This is my specialty, I can make these almost with my eyes closed. But the second one is my try at an anime version of myself. I use the eraser a lot on the face, hands, and chest. It never looks right to me once I'm okay with another part of the body. Yet I know I can't spend ages on this so I hand it over when I believe it looks okay.

"See what I mean now?"

"What are you talking about? These are great."

"Exactly..."

He's confused.

"Even when it's good, I still think I suck. But it's that negativity that spurs me to try harder. One day, I shall get those parts down and be happy with it without erasing whole bits out of frustration or doubt in ability. So...yeah...Keep those. Let them help you. Inspire you to be better in spite of others and yourself. Refuse to give up. And never surrender."

He gives me a funny look and I rub the back of my head with a nervous laugh.

"Heh...I have no idea where I was going with that. I tend to ramble when trying to be positive."

A small smile comes to him as he takes a few steps past me.

"I think I get what you're saying. If it's all the same to you...I think I want to be alone with my thoughts for a bit. Might see what ideas come."

I smirk.

"Take care, buddy. May the Muses inspire you to greatness."

I leave the butterdragon to his thoughts and not look down at the glass path that must be crossed. Yet it's doing so that alarms my brain. The land is not solid rock. The land is being supported by thick metal pipes and trussed beams that don't look like they're meant to be used here. I'm conflicted, I feel safe and unease at the same time. It also doesn't help I don't have Flowey with me. I need him. I don't like proceeding without my bro. So...

"Flowey! Bro, I'm up over here! Hurry up!"

Not expecting a response, least of all right away, I aim to head out slowly in hopes that he'll catch up to me before I really need him. But the path actually branches like a 4-way intersection and I get confused. Left is probably back to level one but what's the forward path? I shrug and check it out. Not like I have a killer robot to appease because I'm on TV. Thankfully, it's an empty spot of land. Scratch that. An empty spot of land with some trash on it.

[There's an apron lying on the ground.]

Really? That scrap's an apron?

I inspect the ragged thing and find it's in better shape than it looks.

[Will you take it or leave it?]

This option leads me to believe it's a human item. Probably pairs with this frying pan. Yes, I want it.

[You got the Splattered Apron.]

...Do I wanna equip it? Ugh...I tie the apron around my waist but backwards so it covers my ass.

[You equipped the Splattered Apron.]

[You gain 11 Defense.]

[Are the splotches from food, an enemy, or the former wearer? You don't want to know. Heals 1 HP every other turn.]

Wait...Did it say...?!

[HP: 40 ATK: 45 DEF: 38]

Holy shit! Score!

"So...Does that only work in fights?"

[HP ████████████████████████████ 28/40]

Huh. Guess not. Yet it said every other turn so who knows what that counts as.

I leave to continue all while paying half-attention to my HP. 1 point healing is better than nothing, though it's gonna be a while before I'm healed completely.

It's warm on this level. Still hot but not as bad as level one. Digital cords pulsate with energy from deep down to high above me. And in the distance...a massive mechanical structure. It sits in the lava like a slumbering leviathan. Imposing, mysterious, and giving off the vibes of "STAY THE FUCK AWAY". I better not have to go there.

After a short stroll, I come upon an obstacle or, as monsters put it, a puzzle. There are two conveyor belts, one going forward and the other back towards me. The forward one has three of those thick metal pipes near it and each pipe has a switch. At the end, there's what looks to be a Tesla Coil set up to prevent safe passing. Putting the bits together is easy. I step on the belt and keep walking, flipping the switches as I go. The third flip turns the current off and I can progress.

I regret this.

Literally forty feet away I'm met by those fucking vents. However...beside the vents is a large conveyor belt made of three merged ones. That's moving at the same speed as the one I was just on. Idea time. I dash jump across the belts. Leaping just in case someone somewhere decides to mess with the speed. Lucky me, no dick moves were made and I avoided doing my scarier backup plan of climbing on the support trusses. At least the path is clear now, which is good.

The heat begins to climb as I approach pumping stacks of hot gas. It makes the air thick and hard to breathe. The sooner I get past these things the better. Part of me questions why I don't hoof it on a crawl and then I have to remind that part that the land is inclining upward so it's bloody pointless. My throat is drying out, my lungs burn, and my eyes sting even with the tears trying to soothe the pain. Even the sounds of gears grinding in the background is starting to irritate my senses. But all this just makes me strive forward more to get back to some form of normalcy. Augh...What's my HP at now?

[HP ████████████████████████████████ 32/40]

Not bad. Not bad at all.

"Keep moving, slowpoke."

My blurry eyes spy a white speck among all the orange-brown.

"Bro?"

Something wraps around my wrist and pulls me slowly, leading me like a child helps an elder cross the road. Soon the air is clear and wiping my eyes lets me see Flowey. A very welcoming sight indeed.

"Bro!"

"Good to see you too."

"How did you get up here? The land is broken."

"Not all of it. I pretty much climbed up one high point, crossed over to another, and repeat till I got here. Did you forget how nimble I can be?"

I smack my forehead making him snicker.

"Sometimes it scares me to think how you've managed to not die."

He gets a chuckle out of me.

"Same."

We move on...only to be blocked by two heavily armored guards. One is a rabbit or hare and the other is more of a dragon than butterball was. Adorning fierce, brutal, and intimidating black armor bearing the blood-red Deltarune insignia. On their helms, shoulders, and wrists are jagged threatening spikes. But the real danger that has my attention are the very large swords.

"Are you shitting me?"

"They...aren't supposed to be here."

I look at Flowey funny and he flinches.

"I mean...They don't usually..."

"*mumble* Timeline bullshit. *normal* Fuck it...Yo! Can you two move? We need to reach level three...please?"

I'm sure that saved it from all my attitude.

"Human..."

Nothing good has ever happened to me when someone says "human".

"You're late."

Oh. Well, that's different.

"For...?"

They point their swords at me.

"Your funeral."

"Really? Was that the best you could come up with?"

The rabbit shrugs.

"I thought it was pretty tough."

The dragon punches his arm.

"I told you it was weak."

"It's not like we had a lot of time to come up with something better."

"Right. All the direction Mettaton gave us was 'stall her' while he does stupid crap."

"Let's just get this over with before the Captain finds out."

They rush towards me...then stop. But not a normal stop. They're frozen in place. I look at Flowey, he's stuck in mid-sink into the ground. The hell is going on? It's as if...as if time stopped?

"Sans? Sans, is this you? Where are you?"

White noise, like static on a TV. It pierces my ears as if it were stabbing my very brain. Covering my ears does nothing to stop it. I drop to my knees.

"Sa҉ns͏..̕."

A voice barely solidifies in the sounds assaulting my hearing.

"H͞è's n̢ot he̡r͠e,͟ l͡i̡ttl͡e ͜on̴ę.̨ He ͞can'͏t ̸in̵tęr͜f̛ere҉ w̧i̧th o͝úr̨ f́u͟ņ."

I muster the strength to turn my head and am confronted by a grayed-out monster with a blacked-out face holding a smaller face in its hand. The face looks at me with a small creepy smile. My eyes widen. The face spoke. And it speaks in rhyme. What the fuck?!

"What the hell are you?"

"M̛e? I̕'҉m͠ ͡a ̨f̡o͢l͜l͘ow̵er ̡of̶ ͘the g͠rea͝t Royal͏ ͟Sc͞ien͘t͝i͝st͟,̢ D͜ơc̢tor̕ ̵W̛.D. ̵Gast̀e͞r̀.͘ On̵e day͞,̨ h́e ͝va͝n͞i͡sh̀e͜d͘ w̷itḩou̕t̡ a҉ t́r̶ąc̛e.͝ T̛hey͞ ͠s̡a̢y҉ ̷he ҉s̡hat̕te̶r̷ed ͝ac̛ross̡ ti҉m͠e̴ an͘d̢ ҉s̨pac͘e. Ha H̷a͞.͝..̡ho͠w ̧c̸án I͞ s͠ay̢ s̸o͏ wit͟ho̴u͘t ͘f̶e͟a̸r͘?͝ ̸I'm h̸o͜l͘ding͞ a ̴p̵ie͘ce҉ ͜of̡ h͡im ̶r̶iģht͢ ͢her͞e."

This...This shit right here triggers something primal in me...I get genuinely freaked out. Fleeing like a puppy that just met the big noisy vacuum for the first time. And yeah, this was an overreaction. I've dealt with some insane shit at this point, you'd think I'd be hardened like a soulless speck of dirt. But no. That made me too unsettled and any tough wall I had crumbled. I zoom past the few other frozen in time monsters along the way till I reach the elevator. I spam hit the button, praying it will ignore the fact time is dead and let me in something that I can pretend is safer than out here.

*BING*

A sound other than static? There is a god!

The doors shift open and a grayed-out bird monster with terrible posture along with a grayed-out small humanoid monster stop me in my tracks.

There is no god!

"D��r.̡ G̴as͝t̶e͠ŕ..͝.͡H̛i͞s brìllia͢n͝cé w͡a҉s̸ ͞irr̷e̶p͞l͞ac͢eabl̨e̶.̷"

"҉W͢hat͏ a̡n ̢áct to ̴foll̕o҉w͟! T́h͘e̷y ̨s͠ay̨ ͏h̶ę c͢r̨eat̛e̴ḑ t͜h͜e͜ ͞C̕O͜R̷E̶."

"Hoẁe͘v͢e̕r, h͜i͏s ͞life҉..͝.̸was ͠c͡u͡t s͘hort."

They say ominously together.

"O͡ne̕ ͟d́a͢y̕,͝ h̵i͟ś ҉ex̵pęri͜m̨e̵ntś w̧ent̡ ̸wr̢on͜g̢, ͡an̡ḑ..̀."

"He̴ fe̸l̢l̡ ̕i͞n̴t͜o ̀hi̵s͡ cr̷eat̀i͢ón̢."

"Węll,̴ ͝w̡e҉ needn̨'͡t͠ gos̕s̕i҉p.̧ A̷f͢t͠e͟r al̵l͏,̷ ҉i̸t'ş ̧rude to ̀tal͡k̨ ab͏o̢u͠t̛ s҉o̵me̢o͘n҉è w̛h͢o̕'s l̷i̕s͢te̡n͢ing.̸"

They grab me and pull me in before my body chooses to run.

"*snarls* Let go you creeps!"

"D̵o̵n't ̕st͠r̴ưg̷gle̵,̧ l͡i͞t̕t̛l҉e o͟n͡e.́"

"̸Yo̷u ͝d͞o͠n͏'t̴ w͡an̸t ̴harm to co͢me̛ to̷ ̡t̀h̢e̵ flo͜wer͞.̡"

Oh fuck...I left Flowey with the creepy face-hand thing. I cease my fighting.

"G҉o͡od͞ ̷ģir̡l."

The doors shut with a quickness.

[SNOWDIN: Skeleton House in present time]

They watch as the human and flower are confronted by the two Royal Guards. And of course, they do as they've been trained. Attack the human. But something weird happens. The guards begin to attack and the screen of the TV glitches into static before the picture returns. Only now the guards have stopped their action and the flower, which was retreating from danger, pops back out in confusion along with everyone else. The human is gone. It happened within the blink of an eye. One second she was there and the next she's not. And now the screen cuts to a "We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties" image. What is going on?

[HOTLAND: LAB]

Undyne and Alphys are equally as perplexed as everyone else that's tuned in.

"Alphys, where did the human go?"

Undyne irritatedly asks through her teeth. On her end, Alphys is switching through camera feeds like crazy.

"I'm looking! I'm looking!"

The screen swaps from camera to camera and multiple different angles. But there's nothing. Sure, there are monsters. Some just going about their lives. Some slacking around. Even an embarrassing shot of a Pyrope shoving a sandwich into the top of a Vulkin. But no sign of the human on level two.

"Where are you, damn it?!"

"Stop!"

Undyne's shout makes Alphys jump.

"Go back five clicks."

And so she does. The feed is an odd far shot from the gas stacks. It can just barely view the guards let alone the flower who suddenly ducks away. The guards seem even more confused.

"What are we looking for?"

Undyne points at the screen and Alphys sighs.

"If I can't see it on my end, you pointing from a distance does nothing for me!"

Undyne growls.

"Look up, genius!"

Alphys leers at the fish-woman before leering at the view she has on her monitor. Due to the far away placement of the camera, it can see up to the platform of level three. And there, dangling over the side, is a pale white arm that stands out over the red platform and gold LED lights scheme.

"The hell...?"

She switches to the level three cameras.

"Ha! I knew I saw something."

With the better view, they now see the human face-down just a few feet from the elevator.

"How the hell did she get up there?"

Alphys gets out her phone and sends a quick text. When there's no reply she presses a button and a moment later is sent a reply. A few messages are sent as Mettaton zooms on screen.

"What? Why's the tin can there now?"

Undyne is out of the loop as usual.

"Who else do you know can zip over there as fast?"

Mettaton pulls the human to the center of the path, away from a stupid falling to death, and checks over her seemingly lifeless body. Her eyes are open and empty as if someone replaced her peepers with billiards cue balls that glow. Marks on her arms look like bruising but weren't there before nor gained in her earlier fight. Then...Alphys gets a text.

"Hmmm..."

"What's up?"

"Vital signs are still going but her breathing has stopped."

She texts back to Mettaton.

"So...She's dead?"

"No. Not yet at least. According to Mettaton, her HP is full and not depleting. However, if she doesn't start breathing, her HP should drain and she will die."

"Then wha...?"

"Look at the TV, dear."

Undyne looks back at the screen to see Mettaton performing chest compressions in patterns.

"With her heart still pumping it means all other functions are still working. It's likely something happened in whatever event that caused her to get up there to give her trauma. The trauma probably made her brain fail to send the right signals to her lungs and thus, she's in respiratory arrest. So I've instructed Mettaton to force her body to restart her breathing manually with basic CPR."

They watch the robot press into her chest for a good couple of minutes before the human suddenly bolts up violently. Mettaton restrains the hysterical woman as the life returns to her eyes, sight restored settles her down some but she appears terribly shaken.

"Ask him if he can get her to tell him what happened."

"Already sent and awaiting reply."

Mettaton appears to speak with her but she either says very little or nothing at all. She merely holds her self in an attempt to cease her trembling and looks out at what bit of the CORE is still visible from that point.

"Huh...He says she isn't telling. At most, she said it's nothing and it just happens sometimes."

"Super vague and avoiding the subject? That kind of shit ain't normal."

Alphys agrees but it's not like they have the human in custody to interrogate for answers. She sends the text.

"The hell?"

Mettaton offers some concern and encouragement before blasting off, leaving the human alone.

"Why's he leaving her?!"

"He did what was needed. Now the show can continue as planned."

Undyne glares.

"That's twice now. You could've let her die."

"I still need more data. Something odd happened and I need to figure it out."

Undyne huffs softly.

"Fine. You know...You can only string someone along for so long before that string breaks, Alphys."

The lizard-woman chuckles.

"Worried about the human? That's cute."

"I wasn't talking about the human."

Undyne guzzles her remaining ramen and Alphys isn't sure how to respond.

"For your sake, the human better be worth all this effort."

She lifts her bowl.

"More."

[HOTLAND: LEVEL 3 BEFORE GOING LIVE]

Static. Everything is static. Static is all I see and hear. I can't feel anything. Am I dead? Is this what death is? If it is...It's incredibly boring. At least Hell would have a wicked soundtrack to drone out to while being tortured. Suddenly, I feel something. And it hurts. Like something is bouncing on my chest and pauses a bit before doing it again for longer.

Please...Leave me alone...Let me be...I don't want to go back...Don't make me go back...Please...

"*gasps and coughs*"

My lungs burn in this reawakening but my sight is still static. Purgatory. Pain before Heaven. The sins must be suffered away. This must be what's happening. Hands. I feel hands and panic, stress levels at critical. I take a swing at where I think they are.

"D̕͡oņ͟'̕͝t ̨̀͝to͝͏uch̷́͝ ͘me͘͜!̴̵͝"

There's hesitation before more force is used and I'm pinned to what I assume is a floor. I thrash harshly.

"L̸̀e͢a̡͜v̴͟͢e ͘m̵e͞ ͝al҉̀o̷̴n̴̨e̶̢!̡͞ ̡͡Ḑ͞o͝n̶͝'̨̕t ̢͏̡I ͜s̸̛u͜͜f̵͝f̷͠͝er̛ ̧e͏͜n̢o̵u҉͢͢g̶͡͡ḩ?!͏"

"CALM...I...LYNSIE."

A voice? A normal voice?

"DON'T...ME...RELAX."

The struggling I was doing ends. And as I settle down the static that had blinded me subsides. My location is unknown. But I know the one holding me down.

"M-Metta?"

Seeing I'm normal, Mettaton helps me get back on my feet yet I'm unsettled by...things.

"ARE YOU ALRIGHT, DARLING? WHAT HAPPENED?"

Flashes of memory flicker in my head. Those...things...Followers of Gaster...The things they did...

I hold myself and fight the tears trying to come to my eyes. I don't say a thing.

"LYNSIE...HOW DID YOU GET UP HERE? WHY DID I FIND YOU NOT BREATHING?"

I rub my eyes.

"I need my phone. *shaky inhale* I gotta talk to my mom."

"YOU KNOW I DON'T HAVE IT. AND IF I DID, I'M STILL UNSURE YOU WOULDN'T CALL OUT TO YOUR FRIENDS."

He's not wrong. I wasn't going to call Toriel. I was going to give Sans nightmares with the shit done to me.

"NOW COME ON. YOU CAN TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG."

"...N-Nothing's wrong. This...This just happens sometimes."

He's not buying it. I'm doing a piss poor attempt to play off that I'm fine.

"DARLING, YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY NOT FINE AND ABOUT TO CRY. JUST TALK TO ME. WHAT HAPPENED? YOU VANISHED FROM SIGHT AND ENDED UP HERE AT THE START OF LEVEL THREE COMPLETELY UNCONSCIOUS."

I don't say a word.

"DID SOMEONE USE MAGIC ON YOU? IS YOUR SOUL OKAY?"

I flinch at the mentioning of my soul and refuse any further interaction.

"LYNSIE...?"

I refuse to look at him. He sighs.

"IF IT MEANS ANYTHING, DUE TO TIME CRUNCHING, THE THIRD ACT WAS CANCELED. BETWEEN YOUR STALLING FROM HEIGHTS, ALL THESE RANDOM FIGHT ENCOUNTERS, AND EVENTS OF THE FIRST AND SECOND ACT...CHANGES IN THE PROGRAM HAVE BEEN MADE. HEH...ORIGINALLY, THE THIRD ACT WAS GOING TO HAVE YOU DEFUSE A SERIES OF BOMBS PLACED AROUND THE AREA WITHIN A TIME LIMIT. YET EVEN I THOUGHT THAT WAS UNFAIR. THAT AND THE SCRIPT FOR IT WAS JUST AWFUL. NO WAY AM I DISGRACING MYSELF WITH SUCH A POORLY DIRECTED SHOW."

I guess that is some good news. It's probably why he had those guards posted there to stall me.

"BUT...I DO HAVE SOME BAD NEWS."

This gets me to look at him.

"FROM HERE, IN THE NEXT ROOM YOU WILL FIND A SEEMINGLY CHARMING SPIDER NAMED MUFFET. SHE'S A CUNT."

Well, that escalated quickly.

"SHE'S THE LEADER OF THE SPIDERS IN THE UNDERGROUND AND RUNS A SUPPOSED BAKERY. IT'S A FRONT. SHE'S AN EXTORSHINISH. SHE'LL SAY AND DO ANYTHING IF IT MEANS SHE'LL GET GOLD. CLAIMS THE MONEY IS NEEDED TO SAVE THE SPIDERS IN THE RUINS OR SOMETHING STUPID LIKE THAT."

"It sounds like you don't like her very much."

"NO, NOT REALLY. I COULD CARE LESS WHAT SHE DOES. THE THING THAT PISSES ME OFF IS THAT SHE PREYS ON MY WORKERS, KILLS THE ONES THAT CAN'T PAY HER OUTRAGEOUS FEES, AND, WORST OF ALL, SHE REFUSED TO DEAL WITH ME!"

I tilt my head.

"I HAVE TRIED TIME AND TIME AGAIN TO GET HER TO SELL FOOD UNDER MY BRAND. BUT SHE SAYS MY NAME WOULD ACTUALLY MAKE HER LOSE GOLD. SERIOUSLY? THE AUDACITY OF THAT BITCH. I PRACTICALLY OWN HOTLAND AND SHE HAS THE NERVE TO UTTER SUCH SHIT!"

His screen flashes for a moment before he calms down.

"YET DESPITE THAT...KNOWING YOU AND HOW YOU HANDLE DIFFICULT MONSTERS, I'M CONFIDENT YOU CAN GET BY HER WITH LITTLE ISSUE."

"...You have that much faith in me?"

He spins on his wheel.

"WOULD YOU TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED IF I SAY I DO?"

My dower expression answers him for me.

"WELL, IT WAS WORTH A TRY."

His wheel retracts to fly.

"WE WILL MEET AGAIN FOR THE FOURTH ACT...PROVIDED YOU SURVIVE THE SPIDERS. YOU'RE NOT AFRAID OF SPIDERS, ARE YOU?"

"I was when I was a kid. I got over it."

"GOOD. YOU SHOULD BE FINE THEN."

He comes over and, to my surprise, gives me a small embrace.

"I BELIEVE IN YOU, LYNSIE."

My throat tightens, I couldn't speak even if I wanted to. He takes off and I wait for when he's out of sight to breakdown.

[SNOWDIN: Skeleton House in present time]

The "We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties" screen cuts away. The human has been located. She appears to be on a different level and is a wreck. Down on her hands and knees, sobbing intangible pleas. Something has happened and it wasn't good.

Toriel gasps softly.

"tori? what's wrong?"

She covers her mouth and points. Sans sees it now. Papyrus even spies it before Grillby. The hands. The harsh imprints darkening the snow colored skin.

"Those marks...They would sometimes appear in her sleep. Why are they there now?"

Grillby shoots a look at Sans and he decides to get his buddy off his back.

"she had those marks while with us too. but if you look closely, these marks are different. there's no hole in the palm. plus...there are two sets."

"HMMM...AN AMBUSH PERHAPS? BUT WHAT KIND OF MAGIC CAN ALLOW FOR SUCH A SNEAK ATTACK AND THEN VANISH ELSEWHERE?"

Grillby continues to leer at Sans.

"what?"

"Sounds like teleporting to me. Anyone you know can do that?"

Sans glares.

"no. only i can teleport."

"Are you sure?"

"yeah. i'm sure. knock it off."

Papyrus cocks his brow. This might require his attention if things escalate.

"I'll knock it off when you come clean."

"i ain't hiding shit."

"Bullshit. You've been holding back so much that even your brother doesn't know just how much you do. If you don't know, then you don't know, but if one thing we've figured about you tonight...It's that you hide what you know all the damn time. So you've got to give us something better if you want us to believe you."

Sans balls his fist.

"us? or you? don't start connecting dots to points that don't exist because you want answers that no one can give to make yourself feel better."

"Then tell me who it was that hurt her before. Maybe they know who did it this time."

That line. That line got heads to turn.

"Sans? You know who has been harming my child?"

It's times like these Sans wished he was able to RESET.

"no, i don't."

"That's not what you told me."

"i only said what i did to get you off my back. ya were all upset about the marks and..."

"Of course I was upset about the marks! What guy wouldn't?!"

Papyrus snarkily lifts a finger, admitting his lack of concern but not wanting to get involved in this.

"maybe instead of pointing fingers, you should question why she didn't tell ya about'em herself. because if she doesn't even tell her mom about shit like this, what makes ya think she tells me?"

Grillby had to pause at that.

"Is it that one of them hurt you?"

"What?"

"You're ignoring them, but that doesn't make them invisible to anyone else. Did they do this? Papyrus I can believe, but I have doubts on Sans. But if they did this to you..."

"They didn't. This is a whole different issue."

"Don't defend your abuser."

"I'm not defending shit. It's my problem, I can deal with it. Don't make this a big deal."

"It is a big deal!"

"*wince* You're hurting me."

"..."

"Like I said...That's a different issue that I will deal with. Not you. Are we clear?"

"Y-Yes."

Maybe Sans had a point. Knowing how others would react keeps one from talking about such things, especially when it's not a reaction that is easily dealt with. Toriel and Grillby have proven to overreact when it comes to the human. She probably thought it best to keep such pain to herself to avoid added damage. But still...Something didn't sit right with Grillby. Sans knew something. What it was he knew not.

"IF YOU'RE DONE WITH YOUR POINTLESS BICKERING, THE HUMAN IS ON THE MOVE NOW."

Attention once more fell back to the television.

[HOTLAND: LEVEL 3]

My body aches. The crying did little to ease me. Sure I vented, that's always good. But I don't feel any better for doing so. My arms stings. My soul throbs in agony. My every nerve demands relief that will never seem to come. I look at the bruises. I can still feel their hold. I don't know how long it happened for or how long after till I was found, yet I can still feel their filthy hands. It's too much. Make it stop!

I take my gloves off and dig my nails across the full stretch of my arms. I don't care about bleeding. I just want to stop feeling their hands. The strange energy begins to crackle around me as it did once before.

[HP ████████████████████ 20/40]

It...It finally went away. That's good. Now if only the memory could be removed. Can't claw my brain unfortunately. Oh well. Perhaps I'll find something to bash my head against. Won't that be fun?

I take my leave. Flesh under my now gloved nails and blood trickling down my arms, making a trail behind me.

A few short steps have me in a more inhabited spot. The monsters here give me strange looks. Maybe it's because of the self-mutilation. Or maybe it was spine chilling wailing. Or both. Or random other shit. Either way, I keep to myself and press onward.

"Oh, yoohoo, human~..."

Ah, fuck my life with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole!

"You look like you can use some healing items. Come, I don't bite...well...maybe ONE little nibble~."

...Why do I attract the kinky weirdos?!

This is the spider-lady Mettaton was talking about. She has periwinkle or lavender skin, five eyes, six arms, and two legs. She wears red rompers with yellow buttons in the front, a red ribbon across her chest, as well as large wild twin pigtails in her black hair tied by red bows. She is also holding two teacups with her top pair of hands and two teapots with her middle pair, her bottom pair of hands hide under her little table.

"Welcome to our parlor, dearie~. Interested in some spider pastries? All proceeds go to real spiders~. Check out the webs to make a purchase~."

I'm so not in the mood for this.

"Ms. Spider..."

"No need for formalities, dearie~. Call me Muffet."

"Muffet...I'm gonna be nice yet blunt. So I apologize in advance if I tick you off at any point because that's not my intent. *shaky inhale* I have been battered, beaten, abducted, blasted, and brought near death more than usual today. And normally, I'd roll with it and let you do this 'thing' it is you're gonna do...But not now."

She opens her mouth to speak and I slam my hands on the tabletop.

"I have just spent an ungodly amount of time trapped in that elevator over there having my soul violated by people that don't even exist anymore on this plane of reality. I have clawed my skin off to stop feeling their hands on me. So, please...Not now."

I can feel that energy get stronger. The odd display bugs her yet she continues.

"My, how dreadful. That's a terrible tale you tell, human. And such a silly one to explain your disappearing act."

My eye twitches. Does she...Does she think I made that up?

"That Mettaton is certainly putting more effort into his effects for this show. It's about time too. That metal moron can't act to save his batteries."

I want to hit her.

"Anyway...Can I interest you in some of my 100% all-natural treats? Food made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders!"

...Wait a second?

"Of spiders? So...You're killing your own kind...for pastries?"

She simply smiles innocently.

"...Are they at least dead or dying ones?"

Her giggle is not reassuring.

"Go on, dearie~. Have a nice donut and wash it down with some cider. You'll heal faster than ever before. And all for the low low price of 9999G...each."

My nerves are shot. Were they always called donuts and not doughnuts? What the fuck?!

"Lady, that is the biggest crock of shit I have ever had the misfortune to step in."

All of her eyes glare at me.

"Beg your pardon?"

"This same 'bake sale' is being done by the spiders in the Ruins. Do you wanna know what the prices are there? Donuts are 7G and Ciders are 18G. Where the hell do you get off charging that much for food that works on cannibalism?"

I point at her in judgment.

"You're sick, lady! This is fucked up."

She hisses at me.

"Seems humans are awfully stingy with money. Don't know a good deal when it's in their face."

I look at her cockeyed.

"Stingy with money? Bitch, did you not hear the words coming out of my mouth?!"

She laughs in my face.

"Ahuhuhuhu...You think your taste is too refined for our pastries, don't you, deary?"

"...Sure. Whatever. You're not listening anyway."

"Ahuhuhu...I disagree with that notion. I think your taste...Is exactly what this next batch needs!"

She stares at me creepily and licks her lips.

"Oh hell nah!"

I flip the table on her and run. She's not happy.

"Get back here!"

"Fuck you!"

I look back to see if she's following and crash into a guy.

"Hey, watch where you're going."

"Sorry. I was just..."

My blood runs cold seeing the monster I've bumped. This guy...This guy is a dead ringer for the creepy gray dude with the face in his hand. The only difference being he's in color.

"*scoff* Weirdo."

He walks to where Muffet is but I can't move. My heart begins pounding. Flashes of memory play before my eyes. I can't breathe fast enough. Gaster, for all the shit he does, isn't as bad as the Followers.

MAKE IT STOP! M̴A͝KÉ IT͜ S͢T͡O͜P!!͘ MA̡̛͜K̶͢E͝ ̢I̡͝T̡҉̧ ́͠S̷͡T͝OP̵!!̛͏! M̢̡A̸̧̛͞͝K̢̨҉É̶̡̢͏ ͜͝͡I̸̧̨̕T̴ ̶̕͞S͜͢T̵͡Ǫ͝҉҉҉P̨̛͞!̶!̕͘͟!̷̨͟͝͡!̕͟

[WARNING]

[SOUL destabilization detected]

[HEARTBREAK immanent]

W͏ai̕t̸.̀.̢.̸Wha̧t doe̴s̛ t̨ha͝t ̨meàn̶?͡

[HEARTBREAK is the condition in which the SOUL will damage itself due to instability or loss of HOPE]

[There are three levels of the HEARTBREAK condition]

[Level ONE: the SOUL forms a crack, it starts small which can be healed easily]

[Level TWO: the crack on the SOUL spreads, damage taken is increased and needs intensive care to be repaired]

[Level THREE: the SOUL shatters and death accrues]

...Serious?

[Current status: PENDING HEARTBREAK]

[PENDING HEARTBREAK: the SOUL weakens and its color dulls]

[Most MONSTERS in the UNDERGROUND have this state due to a loss of HOPE which is the main trait in MONSTER SOULS]

So...I can die from my soul hurting itself because of my inability to cope with the shit that happened?

[Correct]

...Fuck. Well...I should make a last will. Because I'm gonna die.

*STATIC* DARLING? ARE YOU OKAY? YOU NEED TO KEEP MOVING.

Mettaton's voice in my ear causes the shackles of trauma to release me...for now.

I slap myself. Gotta focus. Do this and get to go home. Concentrate. Don't fuck up! The energy around me slowly dissipates.

"Human!"

Looking back I see Muffet coming at me.

"Someone's stealing from the register!"

Her concern for money outweighs her need to kill me and I use this to escape. Much to my annoyance, this part of the path ends with more of those damn vents and they of course split off into three ways, one being a big as hell closed door.

"...I fucking hate Hotland."

I sigh. Taking in the vent platforms and noting that the gap between them is the smallest size ever. No need to run, jump, or use them. I merely walk onto the next platform and can do so for all of them. I choose to take the right side first. Why not? Not like it makes a difference. It leads me to a conveyor belt that has three blue lasers. I ride it to the end without harm. I guess Metta's budget for puzzles is running low if this is what I have to deal with. This leads me to a familiar room with, what a surprise, the same shooting puzzle from the last time I had to unlock a big fucking door.

"Now this is just lazy."

I look for the instructions.

(Shoot the opposing ship!)

(You have just one shot.)

Well...Maybe that's something.

This puzzle has the blocks in a four by five state. Eleven blocks are solid and four can be moved around. The four moving blocks move all at once like they're connected. The open spaces are pretty fair if I have to give it some credit. I move to the right, up, right, down twice, right twice, down, left, down, and finally end it by firing through the clear path.

(CONGRATULATIONS!)

"Don't tell me it's the same on the other side."

I head out and take the other conveyor belt back to the vents, passing a random cactus in the process. I swear if this shit keeps up I'm going to lose my mind. No! No...I need to calm down and relax. I don't need the stress. My soul is in rough shape as is. Now it's at risk of damage without my conscious input. I wish I had my music. That would really help. Maybe a little Green Day or Linkin Park. Oh! My Chemical Romance!

*BONK*

It would seem I didn't pay attention and walked into the puzzle room, kicking the machine by accident.

(Shoot the opposing ship!)

(You have just one shot.)

"God dingle damn it bull honkery."

I hate copy & paste design. The board is larger, five by five. Ten solid blocks and six movable ones, everything else is empty space. Right, up, right, down twice, right, right/up, up/right, up twice, right, up, and fire.

(CONGRATULATIONS!)

"...I'm so sick of this crap it ain't even funny."

I shove my hands in my pockets and leave...only to see two diamond-headed monsters just hanging out, one light-purple and the other a super light-green. Did I really walk by them?

"I've been thinking about getting a sick skateboard."

"Really? That's cool I guess. ...So...What's your fave Mettaton Moment(TM)?"

"My fave Mettaton Moment(TM)? Right when everything looks the baddest, he poses dramatically. Like when he's on a cooking show and the eggs don't turn out right. But! Then he says...Even if you suck at cooking, you can always buy an MTT-brand Glamburger! Then he eats one! Everyone loves it!"

"...How does he eat it without a mouth?"

"Uhhh...well...Watch the show!"

"Well, my fave Mettaton Moment(TM) is when he beats up the heel-turning villains! Even if it's during what's supposed to be a quiz show. Oh! And I like when he tries on all kinds of different fashionable outfits! Even if it's during what's supposed to be a newscast."

I wonder if I can get a chuckle out of these two.

"Sounds like you two really know your stuff about Mettaton."

They turn to look at me, they look like teenagers based on their clothes.

"Totally."

"No one's a bigger fan than us."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! He's currently broadcasting live. And with a Human! We can finally get to the surface!"

"On the surface, we'll be able to watch all kinds of TV...But, I bet none of those shows are as good as Mettaton's!"

"You don't say. Then...Could you describe this human? I don't want to miss seeing it."

The green one goes for his phone.

"Let me see if it's back on and we'll show you. Some crazy stuff happened and the feed cut off a bit ago."

I smile and wait for it. I can't read their faces, but it's very clear when the green one goes to his buddy and shows him the screen. Looks are shot at me. I merely give a friendly wave.

"Dude..."

"We're on TV!"

At least someone's happy about it.

"Wait...Then that means..."

"You're the human?"

I shrug.

"What...What happened to you?"

"You're like all messed up and junk."

I shrug again.

"You know...Messed up crud. Being human ain't all that and or fun. But don't worry about it. Just enjoy the show. Metta's doing his best to make it epic as hell."

I walk past them.

"Oh! Before I go...Don't copy any of the stuff aired at home. You'd probably get in trouble if you blast people for getting trivia wrong or use chainsaws while cooking."

I give a thumbs-up as I go. Vaguely hoping to look badass. With the door open it shouldn't be long till all this nonsense is over and I can go home. I wonder though...Can Flowey get up here? The floor is artificial, so I don't know if he can traverse it. I hope he's okay. Poor fella's probably losing his mind wondering where I went. Then again, he's a clever cookie and knows his way around the Underground better than anyone.

[The smell of cobwebs fills the air...]

Huh?

*sniff*

"What smells like freshly baked tarantulas?"

...Oh shit.

The room past the door is littered with webbing and spiders are dangling from the ceiling.

"...Fuck my life."

Smelling a trap I attempt to get through this room as fast as I can. But the webbing on the floor accumulates on my shoes and eventually, I'm unable to take a step. Struggling only made things worse.

"Ahuhuhuhu..."

Damn it! Damn it all to hell!!

"Did you hear what they just said? They said a human in tacky clothes will come through."

"Well, fuck you too."

"I heard that they hate spiders."

"What?!"

"I heard that they love to stomp on them."

"That is a bald-faced lie!"

"I heard that they like to tear their legs off."

"Slander! The levels of bullshit in here are off the charts!"

"I heard..."

Muffet comes down like a Charlotte's Web reject onto a large web. Smaller spiders dangle beside her and block the path ahead as well as behind me.

"...that they're incredibly stingy with their money. Ahuhuhuhu."

My fucks are all gone.

"You're mom was a hoe and ate your dad."

Her face blanks before burning with rage.

"You're fucking dead meat!"

[SPIDER DANCE begins to play in the background.]

My dull yellow soul comes out.

[Muffet traps you!]

"Oh, like this is fair. I can't move and you bring out a freaking gang. I mean, what are the damn rule anymore?!"

"Oh don't look so blue, my deary~."

She spins silk to entangle my soul then bites the end of a strand, her magic venom flows down the strand and coats the heart. Forcibly changing the trait and color.

"...I think purple is a better look on you! Ahuhuhu~."

This feels so wrong.

"Why is everyone messing with my soul today?!"

Her spider underlings draw webbing in strings in horizontal lines. These lines are also infused with the purple magic and attract my soul.

[You're trapped in a strange purple web!]

"Here's the deal, dearie~...A spider will appear to the right between each turn, holding a sign that presents the density and type of attack that will come after your turn. Now while you can't move, your pretty little soul can, and you'll have to move it along or switch between the three strings to avoid attacks. There will only be three strings. No more, no less. How's that for fair~?"

I mull it over.

"...Not bad actually. Who goes first?"

"You. I want to see what you can do."

She's a smart one, I'll give her that. Let's see my options.

[FIGHT]

[ACT]

[̴͝SP͜͞E͡L̵͜L͟͠͏]͘͢

[ITEM]

[MERCY]

That button is giving me weird vibes the more I see it.

[ACT selected.]

[New options available.]

[CHECK]

[STRUGGLE]

[PAY 10G]

Pay? Fuck that! I earned this gold. Mine!

[CHECK selected.]

[MUFFET – HP: 1250 ATK: 38.8 DEF: 18.8 – If she invites you to her parlor, excuse yourself.]

And she's better in the stat department than the butterdragon.

A spider drops down and holds a sign...It's a picture of a spider. The hell does that mean?

"Why so pale? You should be proud~."

"With the amount of blood I've lost today it would make me look like a corpse. But be proud of what?"

"Why...Proud that you're going to make a delicious cake~! Ahuhuhu~!"

Spiders begin crawling across the threads. It's like a weird form of Frogger minus hopping to safety. It's a simple move and I come out of it fine.

[HP ██████████████████████████████████████████ 40/40]

Sweet, my HP is full. I love this nasty apron!

[All the spiders clap along to the music.]

It is a catchy tune, no lie. But I need to get out of this. It's not like all of me is unable to move.

[ACT selected.]

[STRUGGLE selected.]

[You struggle to escape the web. Muffet covers her mouth and giggles at you.]

...Bitch.

A spider drops down and holds a sign...It's a picture of a spider. Okay, I know what that means now.

"Look at you. Trying to break free. It's so cute~."

"Would it help if I asked nicely? Please let me go?"

"Let you go? Don't be silly~. Your SOUL is going to make every spider very happy~~!"

Spiders cross the lines and it oddly seems like there was less this time. Making it easier.

[HP ██████████████████████████████████████████ 40/40]

[Muffet does a synchronized dance with the other spiders.]

"You know...Someone warned us about you...Offered us a LOT of money for your SOUL."

This gets my attention.

"What?"

"Oh yes~. They had such a sweet smile~ and...Ahuhuhu~. It's strange, but I swore I saw them in the shadows...Changing shape...?"

The hell? Wait...She can't mean one of the Followers...Can she? Stop it! Don't think about them! Don't!

"Oh well. It's not like it matters anyway. Your move, dearie~."

[STRUGGLE selected.]

[You struggle to escape the web. Muffet laughs and claps her hands.]

"Still trying, huh? Still thing. Don't you know spider silk is five times stronger than steel?"

I can not get a break today.

A spider drops down and holds a sign...It's a picture of two spiders. What?

Double the spiders come on the strings at the same time. It's somehow a new move yet works too similar to the normal attack to be tricky. I dodge it fairly well.

[HP ██████████████████████████████████████████ 40/40]

[Muffet pours herself a cup of spiders.]

...I didn't need to see that. No one needs to see a large spider drink smaller spiders like they were tea.

"*sip* With the money from you SOUL, the spider clans can finally be reunited~."

I tilt my head.

"What do you mean?"

"You haven't heard? Spiders have been trapped in the RUINS for generations!"

Obvious thing is obvious.

"Can't they, you know, squeeze out through the door?"

"*scoff* Even if they go under the door, Snowdin's fatal cold is impassable alone."

It is pretty cold there. Then they'd have to travel through two zones to get here. Damn, that sucks.

"But with the money from your SOUL, we'll be able to rent them a heated limo~. And with all of the leftovers...? We could have a nice vacation~! Or even build a spider baseball field~!"

What little sympathy I was gaining dies at that.

"Now you're just spending to show off."

"But enough of that...It's time for dinner, isn't it? Ahuhuhu~."

*Growls*

I look around and see nothing. I don't like this.

[STRUGGLE selected.]

[You struggle to escape the web. Nothing happened.]

"Don't struggle too much. You'll make yourself all sweaty. No one wants a sweaty donut."

A spider drops down and holds a sign...It's a picture of a spider and a donut?

The spiders come crawling faster than before even if their numbers aren't as much, then they are followed by random donuts being thrown by the spiders blocking the pathways. This almost had me. Came close, but no cigar.

[HP ██████████████████████████████████████████ 40/40]

I'm proud of my dodging skills. I've come a long way.

[Muffet tidies up the web around you.]

If you don't like crumbs, don't throw food. It's very simple.

*Growls*

There's that sound again. I really don't like it. Muffet does though.

"You look concerned."

"Are you saying you don't hear the growling?"

She giggles.

"Oh, how rude of me! I almost forgot to introduce you to my pet~."

I'm puzzled. What kind of pet does a spider have?

"Oh, my pet~...Looks like it's time for dessert~."

I can hear rapid heavy skittering. Not good! Not good!

[STRUGGLE selected.]

[You struggle to escape the web. Muffet is so amused by your antics that she gives you a discount!]

"Tell you what...If you survive my pet, I just might consider sparing you."

"R-Really? That might actually be the f...Holy fucking shit!!"

*Roar*

An abomination appears. A hideous cupcake spider thing emerges from the webs.

"What the fuck is that thing?!"

"This is my pet. Have fun, you two~."

A spider drops down and holds a sign...It's a picture of a cupcake. I don't like this at all!

So many spiders speed by in an unchanging pattern of fear and with good reason. The freaky food beast climbs down and begins eating the strings, pulling my soul towards its hungry maw. This causes spiders that were already on their way to fall prey to this creature as I desperately do my best to not get hit or be dragged to what I assume is instant death. But I'm too panicked to be perfect in my dodging.

[HP ████ 4/40]

Six...I took six hits. I'm gonna die.

[Your soul can't take much more of this.]

No? Really?! Like I couldn't fucking tell!

"You're still alive? Ahuhuhu~...That's impressive~."

She calls her pet to her side.

"Got way too worked up...*gag* I think...*gag* I think I'm gonna puke. *hic*"

"...Please don't. Do you know how hard vomit is to clean out of webbing?"

I take a moment to settle down.

"*sigh* Don't lie...Spiders eat their webbing when it gets messed up."

She cringes.

"Yeah...I don't know everything about spiders. But I do know random gross stuff like that."

I shake off the impending dizziness.

"So...Are you going to spare me?"

She thinks for a moment.

"I will..."

Maybe there is a god?

"For the small fee of 500G~."

Nope. God's dead.

"Are you kidding me?! I'm fucking broke! "

I ain't telling her I have money.

"Then I guess we're going to be spending more quality time together, dearie~ I do hope you're feeling comfortable trapped in that web. Ahuhuhuhu~! Because I don't mind keeping you here for as long as it takes~!"

Damn it. I don't have time for this crap. Wait a second...Time? Heh...This gives me an idea.

"Say, Muffet...Who's watching your bake sale stand while you're here?"

She folds her upper arms.

"A loyal family member. Why do you ask?"

I chuckle softly.

"Oh, no reason. Just checking."

Her eyes cock.

"Checking?"

"Well, we've been here a long time. At least, you have because you got here before me. And we're far from your stand too. It would be a real shame if someone took your 'donations' while this fight was happening."

She sneers.

"Dearie, you're not going to fool me again with that trick. No one would dare steal from me."

I smirk.

"That's the thing...It's not YOU they'd stealing from now is it? It's some other weaker spider."

Her expression gains some worry.

"Even if that spider is loyal, can you honestly say it can defend the money if, let's say, a group stormed the table?"

Concern crosses her face and her pet nudges her as it picks up the vibes.

"Then...Then I'll kill you quickly and return before some fool even tries!"

I shake my head at her.

"Yeah, that would be a thing you could do. But...You can't."

"Wha...What do you mean I can't? You have four HP left! One more hit and your SOUL is mine!"

I put my hands in my pockets and rock on my heels.

"True. So very true. Yet...It's not your turn."

Her eyes widen, finally picking up on my little plan.

"Here's the thing...I've been in enough fights to understand how they work. It all functions on a turn-based system. It's a very fair means of doing combat. No one can attack at random, only when it's their turn. Heh...But the kicker is, and I think you know where I'm going with this...There's no time limit on turns. So if I want to...as long as I don't do anything...my turn will never end. And we'll be stuck here, locked like this...forever!"

Now it's her turn to feel panic.

"You're bluffing."

I grin.

"How much are you willing to bet on that? Because I wager your clan won't take losing all their hard-earned gold due to your negligence very well. They may think a new leader is needed if that happens."

I yawn and stretch to get cozy, showing I'm more than willing to stay put. She twitches with nervousness.

"So tell us, Muffet...What's it gonna be?"

Based on my understanding of Muffet, she's a greedy, stingy, intimidating, malicious, and somehow hypocritical monster, although having a courteous and sweet way of speaking. She won't stay. The odds don't favor her.

Her pet looks at her, the spiders turn to her, the pressure is almost visible as it smothers her. She balls her six fists and stomps her foot in a fit.

"Fine! I'll SPARE you!"

"For free?"

She grinds her teeth.

"Yes, for free! Just quit stalling and confirm it!"

[Muffet is sparing you and refuses your money.]

I can be super evil when I have the chance.

[MERCY selected.]

[SPARE selected.]

[YOU WON!]

[You earned 0 XP and 0 gold.]

The webbing around my soul dissolves. As does the stuff around my feet. My soul turns a dull orange and returns to my body.

"There, you're free. Now get lost!"

"I'm glad we could have such a fun time together, dear."

She snarls and hops onto her pet.

"Next time, you won't get away so easily."

"And maybe next time you'll be paying me for my amazing entertainment skills."

I think channeled Mettaton for a moment. She bites back some harsh unladylike remarks and rides off. I look at the spiders that block my way out.

"Move...please."

They're hesitant but do so.

"Thank you."

I take a few steps but stop near them, pulling out a small handful of gold.

"I don't know if what she said was true, but...here."

I put the gold on the ground and take my leave, pulling a bottle of cider from my inventory to heal.

"Consider it an addition to the amount I've already paid in the Ruins."

The spiders are confused but I hear them take the gold. I can be evil, yes. But it's not true to my nature. I drink the whole bottle as I enter a new, hopefully lacking in spiders, area.

[HP ████████████████████████████ 28/40]

Not bad. I'll fully heal up soon. This new area appears to have the same material as the Ruins. I'm getting homesick. I miss Toriel. I miss Flowey. I miss my bed. I want to go home.

My melancholy blinds me to my current surroundings. I only come out of it once a spotlight hits me.

"The hell...?"

Things look funny. No doubt it's a setup by Mettaton. But I'm unsure what this act is. I mean, it looks like a receptionist's waiting room. A desk and some random chairs.

"GOOD EVENING, LADIES AND GENTS...!"

Mettaton zips in wearing a red suit and shoves me in a chair as he takes center stage.

"FIRST AND FOREMOST, WE HERE AT MTTTV WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE FOR THE LACK OF ME OVER THE COURSE OF THE PROGRAM. DUE TO THE LACK PREP WORK WITH MY COSTAR HERE, WE SADLY HAD TO FORGO A THRILLING ACT BACK IN LEVEL TWO INVOLVING HUNDREDS OF EXPLOSIVES!!"

I so freaking called it. I should let him have his moment...Nah!

"I thought you said that act was shit anyway?"

He extends an arm to cover my mouth.

"FORGIVE HER. SHE'S LOST A LOT OF BLOOD AND NOT ALL THERE MENTALLY."

I leer at him flatly.

"BUT...DARLING HERE IS GOING TO MAKE AMENDS WITH US ALL RIGHT NOW. IT'S TIME TO ANSWER SOME BURNING QUESTIONS."

I'm so confused as he lets go and leaps onto the desk, posing dramatically.

"IT'S TIME FOR..."

A large neon sign shaped like him drops from the ceiling.

"BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL WITH A KILLER ROBOT! THE LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW HOSTED BY YOURS TRULY."

Huh. Not a bad title.

"I thought you were working on a courtroom trial program?"

He scoots to now sit behind the desk.

"UNFORTUNATELY, WHILE I DO HAVE THE FUNDS, I DON'T HAVE AVAILABLE WORKERS TO MAKE SUCH A SET. SO...WE'RE DOING THIS INSTEAD."

"Heh...Must be hard to meet your expectations."

"DARLING, YOU HAVE NO IDEA."

A tense dramatic score plays.

"SO, DARLING...ARE YOU READY TO TELL ME EVERYTHING?"

Ah. I see now. Fine, Metta, have it your way. Just be careful what you wish for. You may not like it. Now don't get me wrong. I know my limits. I'm not about to tell him EVERYTHING. I'm not that stupid. But if he wants truth, he's going to get a version that's missing some characters and other junk.

"As you wish. You wanna know the truth? You want to scar the entire Underground? Sure. Why not. What else do I have to lose at this point since you exposed me? So congratulations! I hope you like the prize you've been longing to get. Because I sure as hell don't."

Let the show commence.

#undertale #underfell #Lynsie #Anomaly #sans #papyrus #gaster #grillby #grandpa semi #mettaton #napstablook #toriel #Asriel #flowey #asgore #chara #frisk #undyne #alphys

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inventors-fair · 4 years ago

Text

Recycling day: Commentary on “Unique Artifacts”

This contest went exactly how I was hoping it would go. A variety of artifacts, a whole slew of unique mechanical ideas, experimentation — what more could I ask for? I’m glad that people liked this one. I’ve been stewing with it for a little bit. I think there were a few wording issues that I’ll get around to, but I’m also a stickler for perfection. Y’all should know how pedantic I am at this point. I’m practically a vedalken.

Anyway. Commentary time!

@ajani — Devra Chai

I really like your callback to Indian inspiration and the nature of Kaladesh. Mechanically, this card’s got some chops. I also like the abstract use of energy here as it relates to food. There are a few easily fixable issues. Firstly, there should be a comma after “sacrificed.” Secondly, as this is a Food, the second ability should be “2, T, Sacrifice Devra Chai: You gain 3 life.” The “You” is super important. Lastly, and most pedantically, as great as the flavor text is, “it’s” should be “its” because English is certainly a language. Small issues aside, good idea overall.

@deafeningsandwichpeach — Ancient Stone of Greed

The power level here is really hard to judge. The draw on the first ability seems really strong. Did you base this on Coveted Jewel? Overall, I feel that this card is a fine idea but a little busted with any artifact untapping. Filigree Sages makes this an infinite draw combo, but it’s not broken wide open. Let’s fix the wording. The second ability should be “Spend this mana only to cast a Hydra or Dragon spell.” This should be four lines, with “Skip your draw step” and the death trigger being on separate lines. I’m 80% sure that “Skip your draw step” also should be the first line on the card, and with that, you can probably take off the flavor text.

@demimonde-semigoddess — Gilded Yarn

This is an interesting one. Personally, adding an activated ability onto the equipment itself that’s not an equip cost seems a little hard to grok for the average player. Flavorfully, I understand the first ability, but not the attack clause at all. I’m not connecting it to anything specific in mythological tropes. It’s not a bad card mechanically, but I’m a little lost. Did you shift+enter for the equip cost? It looks really close to the other line.

@dimestoretajic — The Steel Leaf

The one and only! I like the callback. From a cursory look, I don’t think there is an actual “steel leaf” on Dominaria, but the sentiment is appreciated. I’m a little iffy on the fact that it doesn’t exactly do anything if you don’t have the trigger, and it doesn’t really help itself to the trigger, but it’s okay to have cards that you need to build around. The last ability is a little awkward because the way it’s worded now you can return green creatures your opponents control to their owner’s hand and it gets around hexproof, which I’m sure wasn’t intentional. “you control” could fix that easily.

@fractured-infinity — Cold-Iron Skillet

This is a fascinating little equipment. I love the creativity here. Honestly, not a whole lot to say about this one. It’s niche, but flavorful enough. Maybe the second ability should somehow be tied into being equipped to a creature? After all, the skillet’s not gonna do anything by itself, right? Major notes: both “foods” and “faeries” should be capitalized.

@gollumni — Pontiff’s Coinbox

Now this is unique. I can perfectly imagine the art here, which is majorly cool. I’m not sure why you tied the untapping to each opponent’s upkeep rather than their untap step, which is the way things usually go. And based on the amount of massive counters you can gain fairly early on, “twice the number” might be a little too powerful. The last ability should have “YOU gain 3 life” as well. I’d add a “(1)” to it as well, personally. I’m a little iffy on this kind of white acceleration, but there’s only one way to find out, right?

@greensunzenith — Dust Bunny

It’s a super cute idea, for sure. I kinda like the idea that your opponent keeps having to sweep it away, and that it’ll keep coming back. The difficulty in removing it is a bit of a pain, but that’s the nature of the beast, I suppose. I wouldn’t call the design anything mind-blowing, and frankly, as a one-drop it’s a pain in the butt probably more than it should be, but it’s not bad. Might have to cost 2 or 3 mana, and I would add a little flavor if you can come up with something.

@grornt — Smothering Rug

Well, I didn’t expect a rug for this contest, so kudos there. It changes up combat in a really powerful way, and I’m worried about its power level in a limited format. It’s an anti-trampler, anti-first striker, and man, that makes combat complicated. This is a card that would have to see a significant amount of testing, considering that every deck can play it. Doesn’t blow me away, but it’s good enough. Again, might want to consider flavor text with the amount of rules text that you have here.

@hypexion — Spy Satellite

It’s unfortunate that we had two spy-oriented cards submitted here. Surveillance is a great concept, and I’m glad you used the name in a flavorful way. I don’t know how powerful the surveil is here considering that it’s harder to remove than other creatures which have repeatable surveil. It’s a good card, certainly. I don’t know if the second ability needs UU instead of 1U, but I guess I can see the reasoning. Flavor text is pretty good. Overall, it’s a fine enough card. Save it for a custom cube.

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes — Press of Magic Knowledge

Ah, batching. I think that you were ambitious in the way that you designed this card, and I’m not sure the payoff is entirely worth it. Seven different creature types is a lot to ask for, and it implies that all these different types would be in a single set. I think that’s entirely too much to ask for. The card itself isn’t...bad? It’s incredibly powerful. The wording might be a little convoluted. Why does it give the ability to the spells, instead of having it just be a trigger? “Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, you may tap an untapped Spellcaster you control. When you do, copy that spell. You may choose new targets for the copy.” A little easier to grok. Name and flavor text could use a little work, too. Doesn’t excite me.

@illharg-the-rave-boar — Hunted Windmill

I’m still thinking about this card. The fact that is has menace and that it gives your opponent a single creature is kind of an “eff you” but in limited, it’s certainly a pain in the butt. The two toughness really makes it feel fragile, but maybe the eight power makes up for it? I think this card could be fine. I think it could even be good. It’s still asking a LOT of questions that only playtesting and the right environment could ask for.

Also tfw “Dawn Kijote.” Take your kudos and go.

@kavinika — Ace of Spades

This card is... Restrictive. Basically, it says that “for the rest of the game, I decide all coin flips,” and that’s not interactive. It’s not exactly fun. If it was a sacrifice effect with a secret kind of ETB, then I guess it would be okay, but unlike Krark’s Thumb, it’s getting rid of a key part of randomness with no time limit, and that’s not great. I liked the philosophy of your submission, but I don’t feel that this card is adherent to MTG principles.

@koth-of-the-hammerpants — Amphora of Ephara

Kudos for making me look up the word “amphora.” Yet another card I can easily visualize! So, in terms of power level. Man. This card is a pain in the butt. In the right deck, it can grind out aggro decks with even the smallest creatures, and I assume there would be enough artifact/enchantment removal to make it not busted, but holy cow this could be a potential pain. And you know what? That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I would call this card annoying, certainly, but not in a “win the game” way. Two things: One, there should be a comma after the blue mana symbol in the activated ability. Two... “a city?” Too vague. Gotta spice it up with worldbuilding and/or specificity, man.

@machine-elf-paladin — Headmaster’s Lectern

Another great choice for a unique artifact here. Love it. It’s a simple design, but it’s perfectly functional, and sometimes that’s all we can ask for. It’s a great uncommon. Doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s a card that works, and that’s just plain fine. Flavor text 7/10. It’s a little hard to grok exactly what that immortalization looks like and where we are in the timeline. You set up a grand artifact, and then add a funny bit, and the two don’t exactly mesh perfectly. Both parts are fine. Again, good enough to worldbuild.

@mistershinyobject — Peace Table

Let’s get the good out of the way: I like how the middle ability gives a “swords to plowshares” kind of feel. That aspect works. That first ability, though, is missing a major wording. As it reads now, you can tap it and tap any number of creatures with different names — that you don’t control. And you can target those same creatures after. So, basically, for four mana your opponent never gets to attack again. I know that wasn’t your intention at all, but that’s the way the submission reads. Minor note: the flavor text should feel funny, but the art and concept is pretty serious, and it’s a little bit of a tonal clash.

@misterstingyjack — Unwanted Gift

Surprise! It’s horrible. Not the card, though, because I love this card. I can see it going into a set with Morph, and that works perfectly well. It might have to be mythic, because holy shit a reverse Immortal Sun is still awful to deal with. And I take a LOT of issue with that last ability. Just have it punish for every card draw! It’s totally functional without that weird restriction.

@nine-effing-hells — Beldam’s Mortar

This is my favorite artifact in terms of uniqueness. You added mythological aspects that are little-known but easy to grok, it feels magical, it seems cool, and it’s so unusual that you can’t help but to just plain love it. Now, the card. Using Bladed Bracers as a template, there should be one line for the equip buff, and another that says “As long as equipped creature is a Druid, Hag, Shaman or Warlock, it can’t be blocked.” I might take out either Druid or Shaman from that list, personally? Three might be the limit for batching. The flavor text could also talk a little bit more about the importance of the mortal itself as a means of transportation.

@nvijork — Scrying Dish

I have a soft spot for tutors. They are my absolute favorite cards. I love combo, control, unique synergy, all that crazy stuff. Additionally, I love randomness. So, there are two changes I would make to this card, one mechanical and two syntactically. The syntax one is that “3″ should be “three.” That’s just how Magic works. There should also be a comma after “(4).” Mechanically, I would also add that after you shuffle and put the cards on top, you draw a card. It’s the payoff to the scry, it bumps the power level up, and it justifies the cost. Overall, I really liked this card.

@real-aspen-hours — Nutrient slurry

I guess this card would be an uncommon? You gotta add rarity to text submissions. I think that for next week I’ll add an example post. Anyway, besides the name capitalization, I think that this card actually works really well. It feels green, it’s powerful enough, it’s synergistic with the game, and could see some pretty cool +1/+1 counter interaction. Not bad at all. The flavor text might need to be in quotes, because, well, it’s first-person. The card is pretty great, but the submission needs polish.

@reaperfromtheabyss — Resincase Relic

I really would have added imprint here. Although, would that imply that the card never comes back? It’s honestly not the worst price to pay. This is a perfectly functional mana rock, a theoretically budget version of Chrome Mox, and I’m okay with that. It should be “one mana” instead of “a mana,” looking at the Thriving lands and Chrome Mox itself. And two lines of flavor text wouldn’t have gone amiss here.

@scavenger98 — Storm Jar

I really want to like this card. For the first ability, I would absolutely make it a may ability — “you may have target creature gain or lose flying until end of turn.” Gotta simplify it. The second ability needs the “s” in “sacrifice” to be capitalized. This is a fun card mechanically, and very potentially powerful in limited! What’s with the flavor text, though? I don’t get it.

@shandylamb — Cursed Compass

So, major mechanical issue: You, as the player, don’t explore — the equipped creature explores. It would read: Equipped creature has “T, Pay 1 life: Scry 1, then this creature explores.” Easy enough fix, but needs to happen. Additionally, good lord, this should be at least an uncommon. Potential scrying and exploring each turn? Very powerful, moreso than I think you’re giving credit for. A great idea for sure, but NOT common, no sir. I like it, don’t get me wrong. Also, I assume this is from one of the Pirates movies. In the future, please clarify the specific piece of media.

@starch255 — Orb of Petrification

This is a card that I really spent a lot of time thinking about. I still don’t know what to feel about it. It’s evident that you spend a lot of time thinking about this card and putting it together, and I want to give you credit for that first and foremost. The second ability is really weird to me, because it prevents the orb itself from activating its abilities, and it shuts down all artifacts on board? I’m not positive how that works flavorfully. It’s not bad. It’s probably super powerful in commander, not gonna lie. Control magic out the wazoo. I’m still on the fence about this one. Fine in standard, fine in limited, probably part of a frustrating combo in eternal formats. Still gotta congratulate you for the design process.

@teaxch — Semaphore Flag

Another really cool choice for a unique artifact. Functionally fun as a build-around. The card needs some kind of basic flavor text, because man it’s looking blank as heck right now. But older cards do that sometimes. Maybe I’m just a stickler for these sorts of things. Overall: probably fine. Probably not gonna see play except for in that deck made by That Guy that copies a buttload of artifacts.

Thank you all for your submissions! New contest tomorrow. Get the creative juices flowing.

#mtg #magic the gathering #custom magic card #contest #entries #commentary #unique artifact #inventor's fair

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julienschuester · 4 years ago

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THE THEME IS RICH BITCH Y2K (FT. JULIEN & IVY)

WHO: @ivystjamess & @julienschuester (mentions of @darcyclarington) WHERE: crawford county academy WHEN: friday, october 2nd WHAT: Julien and Ivy go to the Crawford Canaries invitational to scope out their show choir competition.

JULIEN: For once, Julien was not pressed about the competition in the show choir circuit. With Link and Trace gone from the Warblers, he knew the private school boys didn’t stand a chance. As for the Canaries and Vocal Adrenaline? He wasn’t pressed about them either…not with their current leadership. As far as he was concerned, the New Directions were a shoo-in for first place at sectionals. Maybe he was overconfident because he was still riding out the high of beating the Trouble Tones, but alas. Despite his certainty in the talent of their team, he and Ivy still decided it would be smart to go to the Crawford County and Carmel High Invitational performances…just in case. It was never a bad idea to scope out the competition. When they arrived at Crawford, they did their best to keep a low profile and shuffle into whatever seats they could find in the back of the auditorium. “I always forget but this school is like…way nicer than ours,” Julien whispered to Ivy once they were situated, slumping into his seat as he carefully looked around for any familiar faces. “Is it bad that I’m not worried?” he added quietly into Ivy’s ear, sitting up and casually putting an arm around the back of her seat, “like…I just have a good feeling about this year. There’s no way we’re not going to go all the way to Nationals.” When he finished rambling for the sake of rambling, he pressed a kiss to his girlfriend’s cheek right as the red curtains on stage were drawn and the Canaries took the stage in perfect formation. Julien almost cartoonishly gulped when the girls started singing an acapella version of ‘Fancy’ by Doja Cat in perfect harmony. Crap. They were good.

IVY: Unlike Julien, Ivy always anticipated competition to be tough. It was a strategy to push herself to be better and ensure a win by potentially over working. Though to the untrained eye she may look arrogant, there was always a little bit more to it than that. Sure, she fronted with an ego the size of Texas, and while there was some truth behind that, but above all else Ivy St.James was a serious competitor. She knew she could handle anything thrown her way, but that came from years of harsh training with a team of her parents, vocal instructors, and dance teachers. The same couldn't be said for her fellow glee clubbers. She didn't play around when it came to competing. If she couldn't close out her high school career with two national titles, what was the point in even staying in New Directions? As much as she cared for Julien, he was a Schuester through and through. For him it was about the journey and the teamwork and making everyone feel good. While her Mom had a little bit of that in her, Ivy was purely her Father's Daughter when it came to a competitive standpoint. It was nice to spend some time one on one with Julien as a couple even if they approached their captaincy differently. Holding hands and stealing pecks as a public item was foreign, but entirely welcome. It made her feel warm and good and almost entirely distracted from the task at hand. Almost. Tucked away in the back, Ivy laughed softly at Julien's comment, "Well duh it's nicer than our school. It's a private school for rich girls. My parents almost sent Eli and I here. Or Carmel. Thank god even back in middle school I was like the ultimate charmer." the playful rambling was cut short as Ivy cast a serious look in Julien's direction while he spoke about nationals, "Listen, Jules, I'm like really loving this optimism. Just don't let it let us get sloppy." she advised, though instantly softened as his lips pressed against her cheek. Soon enough, the Canaries set had begun. It passed in a flash of perfect harmonies, innovative choreography, and an overall clean performance. It was stunning. Despite being entirely rattled, Ivy tried not to make that apparent during the performance when her and Julien exchanged looks. He'd get discouraged way easier than she would. There was no way the New Directions were at that level technically yet. So while Ivy would proceed with a little more force than before, she wasn't going to freak and psych out her co-captain. As the lights came up, Ivy shifted, trying to seem casual as she looked at her boyfriend "So, like, what did you think?"

JULIEN: Julien stared at Ivy dotingly as she spoke, scrunching up his nose at the thought of Ivy being a Canary or god forbid a member of Vocal Adrenaline. “That would’ve been so weird,” he responded with a chuckle, making a mental note to thank her parents one day for not sending her to either of those schools. Before he could say more, the mood between them shifted as Ivy’s tone became more serious. He nodded along with what she was saying. “I know,” he said matter-of-factly, “have I ever let us get sloppy?” The answer was...probably? Even though Julien had been doing musical theater his entire life didn’t mean the rest of the New Directions had and sometimes it showed. More often than not though, Julien wanted to have fun. Of course the end result mattered, he wanted to win like...really badly. But he wasn’t a performance robot. He just loved to perform. And at their best, the New Directions felt like a family. That was the part of it that he liked even more than winning. Julien smiled at Ivy after he kissed her cheek, holding her gaze for a moment as that welcome warmth spread through his chest. This was nice. He was so distracted by just looking at her that he almost forgot what they were at Crawford for—and then the music started. Julien watched the performance from start to finish with his jaws dropped. Darcy and her teammates sounded perfect, they hit every beat with the choreo, and the entire performance was creative and overall fun. When the performance was over and the lights came up, Julien sunk into his seat and pressed his fingers into his cheeks as he shook his head. “What’d I think?” he retorted, letting out a deep sigh as he finally looked up at Ivy, “they had money guns. We had...bedazzled cowboy hats?” He sat up straight and leaned closer to her, returning to the hushed tone he’d been using earlier, “they were like...way better than I thought they were going to be. That setlist had Darcy written all over it. We...” he shrugged defeatedly, “we have to step up our game big time huh...”

IVY: Ivy continued rubbing her lips against one another in less of a nervous motion, but more of a 'i'm biting my tongue.' ordeal. Julien was endlessly sweet, which was one of the many things she absolutely adored about him, but kindness only went so far when it came to the very serious matter that was show choir. Usually Ivy's first instinct was to be brutally honest-borderline mean for the sake of bettering the team or at least clarifying where she stood. That wasn't the case with Julien though. Rather than give him a list of times his cheery disposition had lent to some New Directions sloppiness, she let the question pass as she brushed the back of her hand again against his cheek. She knew well enough they'd probably never see eye to eye about certain things when it came to running the New Directions, but seeing as he was her boyfriend she wasn't exactly looking to get into an argument with him about it. If Julien was the one to be all gushy with the team, and Ivy was the one to whip them into shape, then that would be the new routine. As much as she wanted to forget why they had come to Crawford and just enjoy being alone with Julien, the performance beginning on stage made that kind of difficult. Ivy may outwardly deny the talent of her rivals like Darcy and Rory alike, but she wouldn't be willfully ignorant about what she saw in front of her. The props weren't a problem she could tackle as long as Mckinley had a budget the size of her pinky nail, but if they didn't want to get blown away and swept out of the competition completely, Ivy had already settled with the fact she'd have to buckle down. Her current task at hand was to keep Julien from panicking completely. Even if she was slightly panicked, she couldn't let him see that, "Look, Julien it'll like, be fine." she told him, though didn't seem entirely convinced of her own words. "If we can't get props we'll just like, have a more clear direction, train harder, it'll all work itself out." Ivy attempted to assure him further by holding out her pinky to indicate how serious her promise was, "At least, like, as long as I'm your Co-Captain."

JULIEN: Julien never clung to any opinion steadfastly and it was easy to sway him in a different direction when it came to most things. He was also bad at saying no, and when he did say no (rarely), all it took to get him to say yes was asking him twice. So despite his initial fear after seeing the Crawford Canaries give a near-perfect performance, hearing Ivy’s words of assurance soothed him drastically…even if they weren’t actually all that comforting. “You’re right,” he said with a nod, glancing up at the stage in time to watch the Canaries disappear behind the curtains, “we’ll be fine.” He took a deep breath and sighed, clapping his hands down on to his knees as a way to punctuate the statement. “We’ll be fine,” he said again, doing his best to convince himself, “we just…gotta try harder, like you said. We probably like…need a plan or something. You’re way better at coming up with that stuff than me but…I’ll back you up.” Ivy was more cutthroat than him and he knew that. Even though he didn’t always think that was what the New Directions needed, he knew it was effective. That was why they made a good team, in his eyes. They balanced each other out. “Come on,” Julien said after a moment, standing up and taking Ivy’s hands to pull her up as well, “let’s get out of here. I’m all show choired out for the day.” He quickly kissed her before leading them out of the Crawford auditorium, leaving his glee club woes behind him and looking forward to spending the day with Ivy not as co-captains, but as a couple.

AND SCENE.

#discord para #para #p: ivy #ivy #the theme is rich bitch y2k

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echoeternally · 4 years ago

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If Poliwrath and Politoed Survive Together...

Balancing the votes between Poliwrath and Politoed in the Hero’s Second Wind poll will bring them into the next story together. Those potential scenes are found on this page!

Brief descriptions and scene titles will be included below!

Fair warning: There is some content dealing with death below as well.

Second warning: This post is long to depict several developing scenes!

... ... ... ... ...

Cave of Wonders

Working together to paddle for safety, Poliwrath and Politoed are able to reach a cave that heals their wounds and restores their lives. They’re mystified by the cave’s powers, and wonder what it means.

...

Poliwrath paddled through the water, gripping his body with one arm while pulling through with the other. His feet tightened around Politoed’s hand, as his brother kicked them along.

Struggling with his sight, Politoed glanced back the way they had swam, but noticed that the tunnel had changed. He patted at his body with his free hand, and lifted it to his eyes. Nothing was on his hand.

Paddling up and guiding them to the surface, Poliwrath pulled himself up, and scooped Politoed from below, pulling him up. Politoed rubbed where Poliwrath had been hit, blinking at his body.

“That’s only going to make it hurt,” cautioned Poliwrath. “Think we both know what blood looks like.” Poliwrath chuckled as Politoed silently stared at his hand. He then turned it over to Poliwrath, revealing no blood from him either. “…Wait, what the hell?”

“You’re not bleeding anymore,” pointed out Politoed, as he glanced below the water’s surface. “I can’t even see where you were cut.”

“Well, it might be harder on me, but with you…” Poliwrath stared down at Politoed. “Wait, hold on.” He sunk back into the water and studied his twin’s body, but found no wounds on him either. Poliwrath scratched above his head as he swam back up. “Ok, that’s…weird. We…we did get stabbed, right?”

“We should be dead.” Politoed swayed a bit in the water. “When he threw those weapons at us, when we saved Greninja—”

“Maybe he missed the mark?”

“Look, I don’t know about you, but he got me for sure. Pretty sure that felt like dying to me.” Politoed paddled to the edge of the lake, as Poliwrath followed him. “Plus, even if he didn’t kill us, we were both bleeding out. Hell, we had to work together just to swim to this place, because that pain was so much for me.”

“Think either of us could’ve made it, honestly,” contested Poliwrath. “But it was a lot easier working together.”

“Usually is.” Politoed hopped ashore and smiled down to his brother, who winked to him. “But this still seems so strange. …Do you think…would it be weird to wonder if this place has magic in it?”

“Here?” Poliwrath spun around and looked around the cavern. “How could it? I don’t see anything…wait, is that grass over there?”

“Seems like it.” Politoed pointed at a few spots around the cave. “There’s some snow there, that has sand, and the rock formation there is like a miniature—”

“Mountain?” Poliwrath turned back as his twin nodded. “…Where the hell are we?”

... ... ...

Netting Newcomers

As they become more familiar with their friends of the Grass Fields Kingdom, Poliwrath and Politoed plot to advance on two attractive allies.

...

Spiraling around, Lilligant gathered petals with her spins, and they fluttered across the air as she danced around.

“Check out how pretty she is,” murmured Politoed.

“Yeah, she’s cute and gorgeous,” complimented Poliwrath. “Think she likes tough guys?”

“I dunno.” Politoed shrugged. “Maybe we can make her laugh instead.”

“Teaming up to get her interested…that’s crazy enough to work.”

As she twirled aside, Lilligant slipped from her vortex of petals and leaves. Diving from beyond it and sweeping through the air, Sceptile slashed at their practice dummy, slicing it with his blade and her plants.

“Oh no, he’s hot too,” whispered Poliwrath. “What do we do?! Who do we go for?!”

“Both, duh.” Politoed grinned. “One of us gets the pretty dancer, the other gets the sexy ninja.” He poked at Poliwrath. “Pretty sure we can work out who we’ll like more, right?”

“Hmm.” Poliwrath pondered it over and nodded. “Ok! But let’s do it nice for them.”

“Right, right, no fighting, and no advancing too much like we did with Chesnaught and Greninja,” agreed Politoed. “…Well, mostly Greninja, but whatever. Come on!”

... ... ...

Showdown Spectacular

Arriving at the arenas of the mountains, Poliwrath eagerly challenges a strong competitor of the monarchy, and drags Politoed into the battle with him.

...

“This place has such a cool arena!” Poliwrath pumped a fist and flexed his arm. “All right! Let’s get in on this one, Poli-Poli!”

“Wait, what? No!” Politoed flailed his arms. “Look, I’m not a bad fighter, but I don’t need to prove it to the likes of these—”

“Hey! Hey you! Big angry cat guy! Over here!”

“And you’re literally ignoring me again, how swell.”

“Hm?” Incineroar blinked and pointed to himself. “Cat guy talking, who’s asking?”

“Me! You’re tough, but I’m a pretty good fighter myself!” Poliwrath wrapped his arm tightly around Politoed and dragged him close. “In fact, both of us are!”

“Whoa, no, no, no,” piped up Politoed. “Do not drag me into this.”

“Come on and battle us!”

“Whirly Froggies want to fight, huh?” Incineroar sighed but forced himself back up into a confident grin. “Ok, might as well! Which one of you wants to go first?”

“Nah, try both of us together!” Poliwrath lifted his thumb up. “You want to really see how strong you are? Two-for-one, let’s go!”

“Poliwrath, that’s hardly fair for him,” insisted Politoed. “He’d be at a disadvantage by Type alone, and he’ll clearly get clobbered facing off against knights that know how to work together.”

“Sounds like you two need to be taken down a few pegs,” taunted Incineroar. He cracked his knuckles. “Don’t worry, I’ll be glad to pull that one off.” He pointed to the ground. “Come step into the ring.”

“That’s hardly fair at all,” interrupted Lucario, as he ambled over to Incineroar’s side. “If you’re going to try getting yourself killed over this place that you loathe so much, you might as well have a fighting chance.” He turned to the twins. “Your battle will be with both of us.”

... ... ...

Building Brotherhood

Reaching the midpoint cave of their journey in the mountains, Poliwrath and Politoed work together to quell the arguing mantis brothers.

...

“Get along?” Scizor scoffed. “With that arrogant little twit?”

“He’s actually taller than us,” pointed out Politoed. “Especially me.”

“Height isn’t the issue,” restarted Poliwrath. “It’s your relationship, or lack thereof.”

“No offense to you two, but our relationships are vastly different,” chimed in Scyther. “You’re twins. You have a deeper connection with one another with just that alone. But then you two get along really well, you have cute banter with one another, and you can actually battle side-by-side.” He gazed down and studied his scythes. “Scizor and I can’t even get past our differences based on the surface.”

“Oh, don’t turn this into another debate over scythes and claws!”

“Shocking, that’s exactly where the extent of it lies for you, huh?”

“Both of you, cool it!” Poliwrath folded his arms. “You two keep at this and you’re just going to keep fighting! Has that helped anyone from Grass Fields thus far?” He waited as neither mantis replied to him. “Then that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

“Easy, Wrathy.” Politoed chuckled as Poliwrath lowered his eyes, but then straightened up and returned his attention to the others. “Poliwrath and I actually struggled to get along after we both evolved, because we thought that our differences were too great to contend with.” He pointed to his brother. “He always wanted to be the stronger one, and I always had creative techniques that I wanted to better explore.” Politoed placed his hands on his hips. “Sound familiar?”

“It’s not even just about the differences between you guys, but your whole structure as siblings,” carried on Poliwrath. “Politoed and I were always competitive with each other, but even we could put that aside when it mattered. The two of you literally want the other to fail more than you care about succeeding.” He folded his arms. “You should understand one another’s strengths and perspectives, and then learn to cooperate with them.”

“Exactly.” Politoed nodded, but then frowned as Scizor threw everyone dark glares, while Scyther placed his attention elsewhere. “Look, maybe you guys don’t want to get along either. And that’s ok.” He sank down. “But, have you ever even tried to get along?”

“Can’t recall a time like that at all,” confessed Scyther. “And you, Sciz?”

“Don’t call me that,” snapped Scizor. He checked over the others and then deflated. “...But, no.”

“So, give us a chance to help you work on it,” insisted Poliwrath. “It’s better than nothing.”

“If anything, we’ll help you guys hate each other at least a little less,” promised Politoed.

... ... ...

Clawing to the Apex

Towards the end of the journey up the Mountains Monarchy, Politoed and Poliwrath find themselves battling the enemy assassin, Zangoose.

...

“You…you’re both alive?!” Zangoose gawked in horror as the twins readied their weapons. “That’s not possible! At least one of you should be dead, and most definitely both of you! How?!”

“Turns out your aim was off after all,” taunted Politoed.

Zangoose growled and pulled out a shuriken. “Doesn’t matter. I know exactly how to correct this mistake.”

“The only mistake was letting you live,” snapped Poliwrath. “Greninja should’ve gotten you like he did your partner.”

“SHUT UP!”

With a roar, Zangoose threw the first shuriken, and lobbed a full barrage at the brothers as fast as he could manage. Dropping back, Poliwrath and Politoed dipped behind a boulder, and looked at one another as the blades clanged against the stone.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have pissed him off so much,” murmured Politoed.

“Nah, he’s distracted like that,” contested Poliwrath. “Let’s use that to help.”

“Right.” Politoed spun his nunchaku and slowly made his way to the edge of their cover. The shuriken had stopped for a moment. “I’ll knock them away when he starts again, and while he focuses on me, you rush him. Just…be careful.”

“Will do.” Poliwrath winked at his brother. “But you’d better do the same, ok?”

“Promise,” pledged Politoed. “Ready in three…two…one…”

... ... ... ... ...

(Remember, these are scenes in development. However, this is what you can look forward to, should the vote tallies of Politoed and Poliwrath be close enough together! See if you can get their combined return for the stories!)

(Head back to the poll here!)

(Still not sure or want to read more? Check back here!)

#a hero's second wind

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amandaoftherosemire · 6 years ago

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Bulletproof -- Part Seven

Fandom: Marvel/College AU

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X Reader, Platonic!Steve Rogers x Reader

Characters: Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers, Gamora

Author: @amandaoftherosemire

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 6,357

Format: Series (Complete)

Warnings: Language, angst, sexual themes.

Summary: Gamora gives her opinion on your current plans. You and Bucky get together, just the two of you.

Banner by @hellzzzbelle

Part Six here

Part Seven

Based on the expression on Gamora's face when you entered, the kitchen floor had given you away. You were pretty sure you could have gotten around the rest as needing to wind down from a good night but scrubbing the kitchen floor by hand had been too much. Apparently Gamora thought so, too, as evidenced by her archly raised eyebrow as she lifted her gaze from the book in her lap.

"So," she said calmly, but with a dangerous kind of stillness, "what are you up to now?"

You opened your mouth without a clue as to what was going to come out when your phone vibrated in your hand. Steve:

Don't think for a single second that you're getting out of telling me what you're doing to Bucky. He looked fucking drunk when he walked in.

Your face spread in a pleased and wicked smile despite Gamora’s watchful gaze, but you knew you were going to give in there, at least a little. She was too observant, and you'd been too upset. You shot a quick text back, Sorry, Dad. I have to answer to Mom right now, before putting your phone in your pocket and shooting Gamora a winning smile.

"Funny you should ask," you replied as you walked forward to flop onto the love seat across from Gamora to tell her most of your thought process over the course of last night, this morning, and today.

You were only more certain you wanted to seduce Bucky after the day you'd spent together. You knew it could only be a one-time thing, because even going that far was going to break your heart. But since you also could not spend the rest of your life wondering about all the sparks you and Bucky constantly struck off one another, you were trying to minimize the damage as much as possible.

When you were done, Gamora sat staring at you in utter disbelief. It was an odd thing to see. Gamora had confided a lot about her life before you met her, telling you once that you'd been her first real friend. You knew her childhood had been not only deeply unhappy but also deeply weird. It was rare to surprise her.

"That is, hands down, the worst idea I have ever heard in my entire life."

Your voice was dry as the Sahara. "Come on, G, don’t sugarcoat it. Give it to me straight." You were a little insulted. Considering the things she'd told you about her father, you couldn't help it. The man had some seriously weird ideas and stupendously flawed math.

Gamora scowled and fixed you with her patented don't-fucking-start-with-me look. "You’re going to seduce Bucky." It wasn't a question so much as it was a wondering kind of disbelief. Now you were downright irritated. She only used that tone with Peter Quill and that dude was sometimes unbelievably stupid.

You pushed to your feet to pace, her attitude making you wonder if there was any way to get out of this situation even half alive; you didn't believe for a moment you were getting out of this unscathed. "To get him out of my system, yes." Gamora's expression shifted again, this time to one of exasperated disbelief. Infuriated by her attitude, you sneered. "Look, everybody wins here. He gets to have sex with me, which I know he’s wanted to for years, no strings attached. I get him out of my system, we stay friends, and I get to move on with my life."

Gamora tilted her head to the side, her voice softening. "And what about the fact that you’re in love with him?"

You stopped in your tracks, the quiet question cutting to the heart of everything wrong and yet inescapable about the situation. You carefully cleared your throat to make sure that the despair wasn't blatant in your voice. "What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him."

Gamora had grown up in a house where excellence was expected, and failure was swiftly and brutally punished. She was painfully attuned to the moods and emotions of others. She'd had to be; it was a matter of survival. You didn't fool her for a second. Her voice softened further. "It will hurt you. Why won’t you tell him? He’s as much in love with you."

You stared at Gamora for a moment, unable to answer, your throat locked closed in pain. Gamora was the best of friends. Loyal and quietly kind, she also had an amazing ability to cut to the core of the matter, to find what was important and sweep away the rest. You generally adored that about her.

Right now, however, you couldn't help but resent her a little for forcing you to face the ramifications of what you were doing. You dropped down onto the couch next to her, your eyes dry, but devastated. You'd promised yourself you'd never cry over Bucky Barnes ever again. You didn't intend to break that promise, regardless of how much it hurt. "He doesn’t believe he can be faithful," you replied finally, "and I can’t commit to a man who cheats. It’s as simple as that."

Gamora's surprisingly tender heart ached for you. She could hear the pain in your voice and would do almost anything to help, but she knew she could not save you from yourself. "I swear, it's like banging my head against a brick wall with you. How is anyone this stubborn?"

Your lips twitched, but you kept your expression and tone serious as you answered. "I grew up with Steve Rogers."

Gamora's lips twitched in return and she bobbed her head in a nod of acknowledgement for your point. The moment of levity passed quickly, and worry took over once more. "Please," she implored, setting her book aside and turning toward you on the couch, "since you listened to me about giving him another chance, listen to me again and talk to Bucky. Tell him how you feel."

Your head turned toward her with a grimace masquerading as a smile. "I don’t think I can, but I’ll think about it."

Gamora huffed out a breath and opened her arms. "Come here." Gamora's compassion always hit you harder than anything else, if only because it was so rare for her to let down her guard and show it. With a wry smile that was, if nothing else, a real smile, you scooted in and let her enfold you. Though you felt the sting of tears at the back of your eyes, none even dared approach your eyelids, let alone had the temerity to fall.

Though she was grateful you'd accepted her comfort, the rigidity of your body had Gamora staring with worried eyes over your bowed head.

The following Friday morning, you sat at Steve’s kitchen counter while he made you breakfast, something that had become a routine since you started sitting for his art project. Swinging your legs around the stool you sat on, you bounced in your seat, delighted by Steve's news.

He'd spent most of this morning's sitting telling you all about his last week texting with Peggy, beaming and pink as his pencil flew easily. He was working on your form that morning, so you were allowed to beam back at him. You did so with gusto, delighted that they’d hit it off so well.

Steve was only a passable cook, but he was getting better. He’d almost succeeded at making you an omelet this morning, and when the school year had started he could barely boil pasta. You'd been happy to serve as both his guinea pig and cheerleader as he learned how the kitchen worked, unsurprised when he quickly got the hang of the basics. Steve's old-fashioned manners fooled some people into thinking he was simple, but his demeanor hid an agile and capable brain.

Steve was blushing rosy red as he set cheesy scrambled eggs and toast in front of you. “We’re meeting for drinks tonight,” he said quietly, his face crimson as he turned back to the coffee maker to grab the pot.

You paused in the act of raising a forkful of eggs to your mouth, having dug in immediately, starved and certain Steve had succeeded at making the eggs delicious, regardless of their form. "Really?" Your shoulders dropped and your expression shifted to full 'awwww' mode. Your free hand came up to your mouth so that you could bite your fist and quietly scream.

Steve turned around with a confused, yet amused, expression. He opened his mouth as though he was going to speak, then closed it, breathing out through his nose with an exasperated affection. He took a sip of his coffee while you shoveled in eggs. You'd been right; they were delicious.

"Did you just squee?" he asked finally, the laugh in his voice contagious and making you snicker around a mouthful.

"Yes!" you cried before you'd finished chewing and swallowing, dying with impatience at the delay. Quickly downing what you had in your mouth, you continued. “You guys are adorable.”

Steve groaned in laughing disgust at the sight of you talking with your mouth full. He shook his head at your cheerfully taunting smile as he retorted. “How would you know? You took off after five minutes.”

Demurely, as though you had never been crass in your life, let alone in the last sixty seconds, you patted your lips with your napkin. “I have an active and creative imagination. I can extrapolate with enough data.” At Steve’s snort, you fixed him with a haughty stare and went back to your breakfast, this time delicately to match your demeanor. “And it was more like ten minutes. Where are you guys meeting?”

Steve sipped at coffee and wondered how you could sound like you were interrogating him even as you grinned like a madwoman. "Howlie’s," he answered.

"That’s an okay start," you considered, "but if things are going well after you’ve had a couple drinks, you should ask her to dinner and take her somewhere nicer."

Even as his lips twitched, Steve's eyebrows were lifting at your bossy tone. "What's wrong with Howlie's?"

"Nothing," you shrugged as you bit into your toast, continuing around the bite, "as long as you get there early so she doesn't have to wait for you. It works for casual but it’s kind of a meat market on Fridays."

Steve was about to retort when your last statement struck him. "You may be right. It is one of Bucky's favorite places."

"Exactly my point."

Steve laughed before catching sight of the time. "Shit, I better hit the shower or I'm gonna be late to class." He drank the rest of his coffee down and set the cup in the sink.

"Stop by tonight before you head out. I need to approve your outfit."

Steve stopped on his way out of the kitchen to shoot you an annoyed sneer. "You know, I have been on dates before. I am capable of dressing myself."

You didn't respond, merely fixed him with a blank expression and a slow blink.

Steve snorted and rolled his eyes. "Fine, I'll see you later."

A half an hour later, Steve had already bolted, hair still wet and grin flashing. You were finishing your coffee and doing some of your reading on your phone before you headed back to your place when the sound of the apartment door opening startled you. When Bucky walked into the kitchen, following the smell of fresh coffee, you had hidden your pounding heart behind a calm façade, sipping and scrolling.

The sight of you sitting at his counter both thrilled and annoyed Bucky. Thrilled because the sight of you always thrilled him, but annoyed because you were once again wearing that damn robe. He hated that robe, fascinated with what you may or may not have on underneath it and obsessed with why you so often wore it when you and Steve were alone together. "So," he said as he walked to the cupboard over the coffeepot and pulled a cup down, "do you wear clothes when you come over anymore?" He turned to wiggle his eyebrows at you, but irritation rang in his voice. "Not that I’m complaining."

You frowned at him, confused by his changed attitude since you'd last seen him, a long warm smile in the hallway the night before. "Do you ever go to class?" you asked mildly, avoiding the question. You still weren't sure you wanted Bucky to know about the project until it was over.

Bucky scowled into his coffee. He couldn't help but wonder if you were here because he wasn't supposed to be. "It was cancelled; prof's out sick. I hope Steve was a gentleman and made that for you." He nodded toward the demolished eggs and toast on the plate in front of you.

"Well, he owed me." You were considering telling him the truth. You figured no one else would enjoy the story of your and Steve's initial discomfort with your nudity more than Bucky. And you hated keeping secrets, especially now that you and Bucky were reconciling.

Then his lips twisted in what looked like jealousy and you recoiled from the vulnerability. "I bet," he sneered and the mocking eyebrow he lifted in your direction had you baffled. "More coffee?"

Your lip curled in disgust even as you held out your half empty cup. "Don't be gross." You didn't know if Bucky was joking but the implication that Steve had made you breakfast because you fucked him was ruining that breakfast as it sat in your stomach.

Bucky frowned in confusion at you even as he refilled your coffee from the pot. Once more he was lost and unsure how to find his way. Then your face softened with affection and he remembered that he didn't care about anything but having you back, no matter what.

You set down your cup and got to your feet. Without hesitation, you crossed to him and slid your arms around his waist to rest your head on his shoulder. "You're looking sad again, Bucky-bug."

Bucky could not stop himself from wrapping his arms tight around you. He loved the feel of your body against his; he could not deny himself anything you offered freely. His body curved around you, his head bent over yours as he took comfort in the warmth of you. Clearing his throat, he answered flippantly. "I just need a cold beer and a willing woman, sugar." You smiled to yourself and turned your face into his chest, rubbing your nose in the skin at the base of his throat. "Maybe I'll hit Howlie's tonight." Bucky was now having trouble keeping his thoughts straight, the soft feel of your nose and lips against his skin scrambling his brains. With an effort, he dragged back the memory of his damned best friend. "You and Steve have plans?"

"No," you murmured against his skin, your breath raising goosebumps, "Steve's busy tonight. I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet."

Bucky's arms tightened around you reflexively at the thought that he could have you all to himself. "You wanna come with me, be my wingwoman?" The words were out of his mouth before he could think better of them.

You tilted your head back and smiled sweetly into Bucky's stunned face. "Maybe I will. Shoot me a text before you head out?"

He knew he was playing with fire. He knew he should care. "You got it."

That evening, Bucky mounted the stairs to his apartment with his heart galloping in either anticipation or apprehension. Maybe both. Even as his heart raced, so too did his mind, confusion warring with a newfound freedom. He had you to himself tonight. He wasn't going to waste it.

Steve, apparently, had a date.

Bucky couldn’t figure out how he felt about it. His face and neck felt hot and chills were running up and down his spine. Was this relief? Was this rage?

He'd run into Steve on the street, the other man obviously carefully dressed in tan slacks and a bright blue shirt that you'd given him for Christmas because you said the color would bring out his eyes. You'd been right, but those eyes had also been bright with an excitement Bucky had never seen before. Whoever this girl was, she'd clearly knocked Steve for a loop.

But when he rounded the corner and spotted you sitting on the floor with your back against his door, he knew for certain how he felt. Righteous.

Look at you, he thought, in one of those sundresses you wore that made Bucky grateful for spring every damn year. Your hair was off your neck and your shoulders were bare and all Bucky could think about was pressing his lips to the tempting curve of your collarbone. He knew it was weird, but he'd always thought you had the prettiest shoulders.

How the fuck could Steve look elsewhere when you were right here? You lifted your head from where it rested against the door to lift the bottle that dangled from your fingers to your lips. Your eyes opened and warmed when you spotted him standing at the top of the stairs. Your face shone in a sparkling smile and Bucky decided to hell with Steve. He’d had his chance.

He couldn’t believe his best friend was wearing the shirt YOU gave him to a date with another woman. Bucky was done, wasn’t going to stand aside any longer. If you wanted him, he was yours.

Bucky didn’t know it, but the half-smile lifting that perfectly sculpted cheek was making your underwear damp. So perfectly wicked and astonishing in its ability to communicate, it told you that Bucky was in a reckless mood tonight. You could almost see the heated fantasies in his eyes.

Perfect. You were in an edgy, reckless mood yourself.

"What are you doing out here, babygirl?" The timbre of Bucky's voice took on a whole new tone on the familiar pet name. Hungry and rich with promise, it matched the heat of his eyes as they devoured your neckline, snagging again on the opal you'd put on that night with a wicked smile of your own.

"I'm an idiot." You didn't get to your feet as Bucky approached, but held your hand out for his. He took his cue and helped you to your feet. "I locked myself out of my apartment when I walked down to the store for pre-game beer." You weren't technically lying. You had locked your keys in the apartment. You knew because you'd had your eye on them hanging next to the door when you’d locked and closed it. "I'll give you one if I can come hang out in your place while you get ready."

When Bucky had pulled you to your feet, you'd come face to face and surprisingly close to him. He didn't immediately back off, and the warmth of his body had your skin heating in response. "Of course, you can," he replied as he stepped aside to put his key into the lock at your back. You eased out of the way to follow him in.

Once inside, you set the two six-packs of bottles and your purse on the coffee table and flopped onto the couch with a sigh. "Shit," you laughed. "I didn’t realize how tired I am until I sat down somewhere comfortable."

Bucky had dumped his bag in the corner of the room, determined to ignore everything but you from here until sunup. He snagged a beer and dropped to the couch next to you as he twisted off the top. Laying his head along the back and slumped down, he reminded you so much of when you were younger, when you'd first started to fall in love with him and thought there was a chance. Your heart twisted a little and you wondered if you should listen to Gamora and just talk to Bucky about everything.

Bucky saw the sadness around your eyes and wondered if you knew what kind of plans Steve had tonight. He hated the idea that you might be hurting. Bucky was determined ; if Steve and his mystery lady were going to be at Howlie's, you and Bucky wouldn't be. "Do you want to stay in tonight?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth his stomach tightened in anticipation and forced him to acknowledge that he had an ulterior motive for staying behind closed doors alone with you. So the fuck what? "Watch Disney movies, like old times?"

Your eyes softened and Bucky knew he'd made the right call, regardless of his selfish reasons for doing so. You'd always been the sort that needed quiet time with those you cared about, needed to connect more than a casual breakfast allowed with those that were most important to you. Offering that quiet time was the best thing he could have done to make you happy. "I thought you were after a cold beer and a willing woman," you teased softly.

Bucky grinned. "We have the cold beer." Contrary to what you expected, instead of taking the obvious set up and flirting back, his smile turned sweet. "And why would I settle for someone else when I’ve got my girl?"

You couldn't speak for a moment, because it sounded like Bucky was speaking the absolute truth, that he'd rather be with you than anywhere else. For the first time, against your better judgement, you started to have a little hope. "Lilo and Stitch?"

Bucky rolled his eyes, but affectionately, like he couldn't believe how dumb you were to even ask. "Like we’d start with anything else." You had called Bucky your Stitch for about three months after seeing the movie for the first time and hearing the line, "This is your Badness Level. It's unusually high for someone your size." Bucky leaned away to rummage in the end table next to him. Pulling out a stack of delivery menus, he fanned them out and offered them to you like he expected you to pick a card. "When are you going to be able to get back in?"

You laughed and grabbed for the one with the logo for your favorite pizza place. "Whenever Gamora comes home." You shrugged and gave him a questioning look. You knew he'd never throw you out, which is why you were engaged in the little 'locked-out' deception in the first place, but you figured you'd cover your bases. "Since I thought we were going out, I told her to take her time."

Bucky was relieved. He had you all to himself for hours. He was hoping for a chance to talk to you about everything that had happened. "You're more than welcome to stay as long as you like, doll."

At the pet name you most often heard out of Bucky for women he was hitting on, you lifted an amused brow. "Doll?" You weren't entirely certain what it meant, as you'd always assumed he called women 'doll' when he couldn't remember their name but still wanted in their pants. Your lips twitched and you said exactly what you were thinking. "Are you trying to fuck?"

Bucky's eyes widened. He'd internally cringed the moment the word had left his mouth. He'd never called you 'doll'. But now that he was allowing his thoughts to follow that path, his muscle memory had kicked in and he'd talked to you the way he'd hit on anyone else. Trust you to call him out on it. After a beat of shock, he tossed his head back and roared with laughter.

"For that," you said, as you pulled your phone out of your pocket, "I'm getting olives on the pizza."

Bucky's laughter half-morphed into gagging sounds as you pushed him off the couch with your bare foot.

Two demolished pizzas, most of a bag of mini donuts, Lilo and Stitch, and half of Tangled later, you were laying on the couch with your calves across Bucky's lap. His flesh arm was laying across the back of the couch, but his metal hand was resting on your leg, his thumb tracing dizzying circles into your skin. You could hardly believe how enticing that little motion was, but you were enjoying the slow burn so much you opted not to acknowledge it, wondering. How long could you stand it? How long without a response before he stopped? Did he even notice he was doing it?

You were keeping it light, chatting, joking, riffing on the movie, and it was everything you'd ever wanted. You'd never admit it out loud, but that's all you'd ever really dreamed of, to spend your life with your best friend. Not just the big moments, but the little ones, too. You wanted him for the everyday, the quiet times, the easy evenings at home with an old movie. You shivered and your throat tightened. Your heart aching, but for the first time truly hoping, you opened your mouth to speak.

Bucky noticed the shiver and asked, turning to you with a concerned look. "You want me to close the window?"

Your heart kicked oddly, a mixture of melting and racing and you pushed up into a sitting position but didn't move your legs from his lap. You smiled a little, your eyes soft. "Nah, I like the air."

The expression on your face had Bucky's heart skipping a beat. More than just heat, he realized there was warmth here. Maybe he could be better for you than Steve. Evidently Steve thought someone else could be better for him than you. He was welcome to her. Bucky would do whatever was needed to be the best goddamn consolation prize of all fucking time for you.

"Come here." His voice was gruff and raspy with what sounded like desire, but you thought you heard an undercurrent of bitterness to it. The sound destroyed what little courage you had and closed your voice in your throat.

Bucky pulled you close, wrapping his flesh arm around your bare shoulders and turning to tuck you against his chest. Feeling vulnerable, trying to figure out whether or not you wanted to risk talking to Bucky before you'd had a chance to give him a test drive, you snuggled in and let him warm you. "God, I missed you, babygirl." Bucky's voice was a low rumble, rich with an emotion you weren't sure you could name but sounded painfully familiar.

You didn't realize your voice matched his, as well as the one that whispered in your heart, when you answered. "I missed you, too, Bucky." His breath shuddered out. The sound of your voice had his heart leaping, but he wasn't sure why. He took his courage in both hands and asked the question he needed the answer to more than any other.

"Why did we stop being friends?"

Bucky cursed himself when your body went rigid and you slowly but inexorably pulled out of his arms to lean casually against the arm of the couch. He wanted to hold on, to comfort you until you were soft and relaxed against him once more. Only the look on your face stopped him.

Cold and tight, you answered with a disdainfully lifted brow and a slight sneer. "We're really gonna do this?" Bucky hated the look on your face, reminded of all the times you'd given him that look over the last couple years. Instead of letting you turn him away with the hard-eyed bitch he'd come to realize hid his girl away from him, he took the fidgety hand picking at the hem of your skirt, recognizing the woman he loved there.

You didn't want to think about it, didn't want to let it matter anymore. You tried to hold against the puppy-dog eyes he was giving you and asked a little more harshly than you meant, "Really?" He flinched, so slightly you wouldn't have noticed had you not been searching his face so intently, and you felt like a monster.

You gave in without any further fight, unable to deny him when he looked at you like that. You'd become able to withstand the patented Bucky Barnes puppy look, but you weren't totally immune. "Alright," you said, and Bucky frowned at the defeated warning in your voice. He understood when your lip curled in an expression so shockingly bitter he began to truly comprehend the depths of your anger with him. "Because I spent a week in the hospital, and you didn't even send me a fucking card."

Bucky's jaw dropped. Whatever he had expected, this had not been it. "Steve said you didn't want to see me." He answered without thinking, telling you the absolute truth. He had also been so ashamed of his behavior at the party you'd both been to the night before, where you’d walked in on him and someone else, he had taken the reprieve without complaint. The look of utter disgust in Steve's eyes when he'd coldly informed Bucky that he would not be allowed in to see you under any circumstances did the rest.

"I did not." Your voice was haughty, but he took comfort in the fact that you had not removed your hand from his. He toyed with your fingers, pleased to find them still relaxed as you went on. "I was already a little pissed at you when I woke up and everyone but you was there. Then they finally find you passed out in some bimbo's bed? Call me a drama queen, but I was feeling kind of bitchy."

Bucky opened his mouth to defend himself, but when he considered how he'd have felt had the situation been reversed, he'd have been heartbroken. He understood for the first time that you'd been pissed because he betrayed your friendship, not because he'd slept with someone else. He couldn't defend it. He closed his mouth and dropped his head, ashamed that he'd let you down, angry that he'd been such a coward.

You were a little taken aback to see the immediate understanding swiftly followed by remorse that flickered across Bucky's face. Pain flashed in his eyes as his gaze dropped to your hand where his thumbs were tracing gentle circles over the back. Your heart softened, as did your voice, though the hurt was clear for the first time even as you shrugged. "It's not like I said you were dead to me. I didn't see you for fucking weeks." Finally, you'd voiced the question you'd needed answered for years. Why had it been so fucking easy to push him away?

"Steve wouldn't let me!" It was true. He'd tried and failed at least a dozen times to sneak around your guard to check on you himself. He'd been nearly frantic, needing desperately to see you safe and sound with his own eyes but those who loved you had circled the wagons and didn't give a shit at that time about what he needed. He had been informed that you were okay and recovering and that would have to be enough, already.

Which is why the politely doubtful tone to your voice, rich with mockery and oozing with skepticism, "And you tried extra super hard, I'm sure," fired his temper.

He squeezed your hand, and the seriousness of his demeanor had the mocking sneer you wore fading slowly from your face. "You didn't see him. Even if," Bucky spoke sternly, "and trust me, that's a big if, even if I had gotten through Steve, Gamora and Natasha were right behind him." He scoffed a little. "God himself couldn't have made it through all three of them."

You nodded an acknowledgement of his point. All three had been very protective of you for several months after your little Jameson's adventure. Not only because of what had happened with Bucky, but because of the guy who'd helped you get so inebriated. They'd basically wrapped you in bubble wrap until… "And I tried. I didn't stop trying until I saw you myself."

Until you'd run into Bucky for the first time since you'd walked in on him fucking Gina in the laundry room during the house party where you'd had all the Jameson's. He had been walking up the stairs with some new bimbo under his arm as you'd been walking down. It had been long enough that the memory of his face in that moment was almost comical. You hoped someday it would be.

"And after that?" You turned your head and looked at Bucky for the first time. You saw the memory of that meeting in his eyes, along with pain, shame, remorse. In yours he found coldness harsh enough that his heart went faint at the sight, afraid he'd lost you by not being able to let go of the past, but he saw the hurt beneath the ice. It gave him the courage to answer with the truth.

"Cowardice. Guilt." Bucky lifted your hand to his mouth and pressed a soft kiss to the back. "You of all people deserved better from me."

You couldn't speak for a moment, utterly stunned by Bucky's answer. You'd never expected him to so thoroughly validate your hurt and anger. You had no idea how to respond. "I see."

Bucky's eyes lifted to yours and you found in his face so much more than you'd ever thought you'd get out of a conversation like this. Someday, after all of this was behind you and you weren't nursing the inevitable broken heart, you'd tell him that this was the moment you promised yourself you'd never let Bucky out of your life again no matter what it cost you. Then he was speaking again, and your heart was stumbling and hoping again. "It may be too late now, but if I had it to do over again, I’d change almost everything. I’m so sorry, babygirl."

You couldn’t speak, unable to decide exactly what to do or say now that you’d had this conversation. You were paralyzed, unable to let go of either hope or fear, when you saw it.

Bucky was retreating from you. He'd done that a thousand times in the last couple years, but you'd never really recognized it for what it was. He was offering a little of himself and when you didn't respond, he withdrew. His hand relaxed and you understood he was about to drop your hand and pull away. Reflexively, your hand tightened around his. "There’s no such thing as too late for us," you said, and the complete conviction in your tone, the fierceness of your expression had Bucky's smile flashing.

You grinned back and for a moment there was nothing between you, no yesterdays, no tomorrows. Only you and he existed in this endless moment, this singular eternity. You wanted now, and only now, wanted to climb into the moment with Bucky and try to never leave it. You wanted to pretend that you could.

"Tell me something, Bucky-bug," you said, your voice a sultry whisper as you turned toward him, lifting your hand to his shoulder to push him back into the couch. Confused, he didn't resist, but his eyes widened as you threw a leg over his lap and settled kneeling against him. "Is that why you never tried to fuck me? You felt guilty?"

You slid your hands into his hair and Bucky wasn't thinking straight anymore. He put his hands on your thighs, and no matter what his intentions were, as soon as he did his fingers were digging in. "No, I…"

You brought your mouth to within a breath of his. "Or did you not want me?" The pout on your lips and in your voice had Bucky's cock twitching against where you were pressed against him. He was hard as a rock and there was no denying he wanted you now, regardless of whether he had before.

Bucky's hands tightened and he shifted, rubbing against you, making your eyelids flutter. He'd never been so turned on in his life and he hadn't even kissed you yet. "I've always wanted you. I could be dead a year and still want you. The only thing I wouldn’t change was the night I finally got a taste of you. But you deserve more than-" He was babbling and cut off abruptly with a groan when you rocked your hips against him in a slow twist.

"Don't you think I deserve what I want?" You asked the question against his ear, thoroughly enjoying having Bucky at your mercy. You'd never known he'd be this easy, or that it'd be this much fun. He seemed to want you more than anyone ever had in your entire life, to hear him say it, to tell you he'd always wanted you, was intoxicating.

Bucky shuddered at the sensation of your breath on his neck, already drowning in you and cheerfully going under for the third time. His hands had made their way up to your hips and he was turned his face, nuzzling his nose and lips against yours in a way so sweetly seductive, your heart sighed a little even as you trembled with desire. "What do you want, babygirl?" he asked in a voice throbbing with longing, singing with promise.

You pulled back to smile playfully at Bucky, only to feel your heart stumbling again at the look of starstruck wonder on his face. He looked like all his dreams were coming true. You wanted to believe he didn't look at other women like that, but that was why you couldn't. You tucked your heart away, determined to enjoy the next couple of hours to the hilt. You'd already prepared to pay for it.

Your lips curved in the sexiest smile Bucky had ever seen. It was the kind of smile that could lure a sailor to his death, he thought. That smile made the next words out of your mouth the most exciting he'd ever heard. "What do ya got?"

Part Eight here

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venus-says · 5 years ago

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Kamen Rider Gaim Episodes 01-20

Also known as Kame Rider Fruits Salad edition.

It's time for more past rider action as I start my fifth season in this series. I honestly don't know how I'm still doing this, but I'm glad that despite my schedule problems I'm sticking with this journey because this season is a good one.

I was very excited to see this, not just because my experience with Wizard was very positive, but also because I've seen images and gifs being retweeted in my timeline and everything seemed so ridiculous I couldn't wait to experience all of that by myself, and I gotta say, they delivered! (different from that other season I saw people being so passionate about but that I disliked with passion)

And this is something funny because I have quite a lot of things about Gaim that bug me and that should make me dislike it, but even still I can't help but like this season a lot. Gaim has a certain magnetic charm to it that I don't know how to explain, putting in terms of the show I'm like the Inves and Gaim is the evil fruit of the forest taking control of my brain. This show is so entertaining that if I was able to sit down for 72 hours without being interrupted and not needing to do my physical necessities I'd definitely spend those hours watching Gaim, I'm not joking, I had to force myself to stop watching it a couple of times because if it was up to me I would sit down in front of my laptop and leave after the show ended.

And I feel like a huge part of what makes me so interested on Gaim is this mystery feel it has to it, I wanna know where all of this is gonna go so it makes me more interested on watching more and more to see the secrets being revealed and all of that. Add a whole lot of great cliffhangers and the fact this series doesn't seem to follow the "2 episodes, 1 story" format and you make for a show that has a very good pace and that makes it feel like no episode here is filler or unnecessary.

But this is a double-edged sword because while the mystery vibe is great I feel like the show held a whole lot of information at the beginning which made it hard for me to understand this world, and understand these characters. Why is dance so important here? Why do these dance teams exist and why are they fighting each other? When did those lock seeds start appearing? And why are they in the kids' hands? What's Kouta's relation to this dance crew? Why is there a ranking for dancing crews? Why is all of that so important for these characters I'm gonna follow? I watched 20 episodes, still, I feel like I don't know any of the characters very well because neither of them had a very good base for me to have a feel of who these characters are. Which makes it harder for me to connect because I don't feel what the characters are feeling, my experience with Gaim is a very "external" one, I'm watching it and I'm enjoying it a lot but I'm not emotionally invested, I think that's the best way to put it.

Speaking of characters, another thing that I feel like it makes it harder to know all characters is the fact that THERE ARE A LOT OF THEM. No joke, I don't know any of their names and the only Rider name I have memorized is Gaim because of obvious reasons, the way I have to connect the characters to their faces is by their main fruit, which solves things for the characters that are Riders but the side characters that don't they literally have no name for me, any given name you see in this post is because I opened the wikia and went to look for the names. This is a very crowded season.

Kouta as a protagonist gives me a lot of mixed feelings. I overall like him, but that are times where the show makes me want to hate him, but I guess that's just how teenagers so the show has perfectly hit the nail on him. I like how he starts as a good kid trying to get a job to help support his family, but then he becomes a rider and that gets up to his head and he becomes an overconfident prick just to have his ass kicked down and throw him on a downward spiral where he "refuses the call" to then have a moment where he slowly rises again, and even in this escalation he gets doubtful in quite a lot of times showing that he's a very interesting character. I only wish we knew more basic stuff about him, or at least have glimpses of his past, to know where did he came from and be able to have an estimative of where he's going to.

Sadly the other characters aren't anywhere near being this interesting. Kaito is just the hot-blooded rival, they decided to give him a backstory about he being anger at Yggdrasil for taking over the city but I think it only made him look more like just a teen with anger management issues rather than a compelling character. Mitchy had potential with the whole thing of being a kid from a rich family that has no freedom in regards to his future, but he more or less always followed the things I expected him to do as a character in his position so it was just a little boring. Near the end of this batch, Zack became a rider too but he's such a background character I have nothing to say about him. Junouchi and Hase lacked in personality because they were sold as a duo and they barely did anything on their own, Hase at least got more interesting things going for him since he eventually ate a fruit and died as an Inves what made him interesting where Junouchi just ended up being the keychain of another rider... and oh boy, Oren... it's kinda hard to talk about him. I'm not sure if "gay coded" is the correct term for him, probably not, but the thing is he's very problematic. First, because the show kinda sits in with Kouta's point of view and since the first meeting Kouta already showed signs that he didn't like him and that it was weird for him to see a flamboyant man with feminine trajects and he was always negative towards him. Then the show makes him be a Team Rocket villain where his character gets downed to a single goal and objective and every time he gets up on the screen is for him to be made fun of and it just makes me wanna hit my head on the wall. I know I shouldn't be surprised since last season they had the manager of Hungry Donuts that was also an LGBTQ+ character being used for comedic purposes, but at least in there, there was no portrayal of any character of the cast being uncomfortable or hostile against her so she was never seen with bad eyes or had any negative association to her (they also had a trans actor play her role which is an added bonus even though she wasn't out yet during the time of filming).

The show also has a "second set" of riders that are the adults on Yggdrasil's side. I feel like I don't have a lot to say about them because they were in the backseat a lot during the season and only started to have a more active role on screen now so I still don't have an opinion on them. Takatora seems bland, Sid was the one of this team that had more screen time but I also don't have an opinion on him, he's just like a drug dealer there's nothing special about him other than he uses one of my favorite fruits in his rider form. Ryoma and Yoko are probably the more interesting characters from this team and I'm really excited to see more of them.

There are more characters of this cast but I don't like any of them all that much so I won't spend more time talking about them, I'll talk briefly about the Riders' designs because this post is already long enough.

To begin with, I think it's a genius idea of mixing fruits with samurais for the main motifs of the riders, it's such a ridiculous, wild, and creative idea I wish I could be friends with whoever imagined this concept. I pretty much like all of the suits, I think the only form I don't like it's the Jimba Lemon one because it's not very aesthetically pleasing, it doesn't match very well with Gaim's basic design so it doesn't look as good to me, but I also don't like the giant watermelon suit, probably because the CGI looks weird, but I still don't like it. I love how the belts are very simple, it's a good contrast with the overly designed suits, I wish they had kept that simplicity for the genesis drivers as well. If I had to choose my favorite designs they are Gaim's strawberry, Baron's mango, Zangetsu's melon, Duke's lemon, and Marika's peach forms.

Before I wrap up this post I have two final complaints about this whole thing. The first one is the fact I don't know what's the message the show is trying to convey. Right at the beginning, I thought it was about growing up, but that was never touched again so I'm not sure if it's that, you know? The show feels a little lost in this aspect. It is a nice story, don't get me wrong, but all stories so far had a theme and I couldn't really find the theme on this one yet. I hope that after the reveal that the forest is like a parasite they'll bring up discussions that'll highlight what this is story is about.

My other problem is how against adults the show is. Maybe if I had watched this in my teenage years I'd be more in synchrony with the point of view of adults are liars and they're a problem, but now as an adult, I know that things aren't so simple. While I agree that using kids to gather data for their experiments wasn't the right course of action, I don't like how the protagonists are always so keen on being against adults and everything. Maybe they're like this because of how Japanese society is and to them becoming adults is like losing the sense of their own identities so to them adults are really like villains, but I still think that they hit too much on this key and it's kinda hard to watch without rolling my eyes at certain points.

With that being said, I still enjoyed the hell out of this show and I'm very excited to continue. So, what are your thoughts about Gaim, let me know down in the comments. I'll catch up with you folks later.

#Kamen Rider Gaim #kamen rider

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handeleugene · 5 years ago

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It was a real privilege to not only attend but have the incredibly high honor to speak at Blend Fest this past year. Such a humbling experience and one of the highlights of my career. Since giving my speech so many people have reached out to me asking for advice & tips on public speaking. I’m no expert by any means but I wanted to peel back the layers & share an in-depth overview of the process that went into putting my speech together.

When the Blend team reached out in February asking me to speak, I of course, said YES! And then promptly proceeded to get to work. I wanted to get started right away because I felt a strong obligation to rise to the occasion & deliver a great product that was worthy of the amazing conference that is Blend. It was incredibly exciting yet incredibly nerve-racking putting this speech together. Symptoms of impostor syndrome were present throughout this whole process but the one thing I took comfort in, was knowing that this wasn’t my first Rodeo. I’d been teaching since 2014 & I’d done 4 talks in the last two years, all leading up to this grand moment. Even though I had 8 months to prepare for this speech I wanted to get started right away because I knew a deadline 8 months away would be easy to procrastinate on. I also knew from the beginning that I wanted to memorize my speech so the earlier I could get it done the more time I could have to practice, revise, & refine my speech. The very first thing I did in preparation for my talk was to start being more observant of the world around me. It just so happened that I was attending Motion Plus Design LA only a week after learning I would be speaking at Blend. So I used this conference to do field research & take notes. I took notes on what captured the audience, what didn’t, what was well received & what wasn’t. The big take away I got from all the talks was that vulnerability really resonated with the audience & made the speaker relatable. Any personal experiences you can draw from to help emphasize the point your making really landed well with the audience. And not taking yourself so seriously was something I noticed worked well on stage as well. Once I got started drafting up ideas & concepts for my speech I decided NOT to start completely from scratch. Instead, build upon past topics I’d given that I knew resonated with audience members & leaving behind the topics that didn’t. That meant taking some of the most successful parts from my F5 Speech as well as my talks at Otis College & Hyper Island. Now a strong part of me wanted to just stop there, take the “Don’t Mess with Success” approach knowing that I already had a solid foundation. But one thing I’ve learned is that past success doesn’t guarantee future results. There’s always room for improvement, I really wanted to push myself on this one, do in-depth research, educate myself more on certain topics & come up with new material that I haven’t presented before. Like I mentioned earlier, I wanted to deliver a unique product that was worthy of Blend. Recycling old material with little revision would save me A LOT of time, effort, & stress but would be the lazy route. One thing about me is that I stubbornly like to do things the hard way. I recently read in Ryan Holiday’s book The Daily Stoic, that you can often find comedians doing small sets at local bars in LA & NY. Well established comedians are constantly testing out new material on local audiences to see what jokes land & what jokes bomb. By the time you see a famous comedian on stage doing their big tour & Netflix special, they are already well prepared because they’ve done a countless number of small gigs refining their material along the way. I share this story because I wanted to use this same approach in preparation for my Blend Fest Talk. I intentionally signed up to be a guest speaker at a Local LA meet up called “Creative Neighbors” in July. I wanted to force myself to have the first draft of my Blend Fest Speech ready to present at Creative Neighbors & use this small intimate environment as my testing ground for some of the material I was writing.

Speaking of comedy, we all know the quickest way to win over a crowd during a speech is to get a few laughs in. I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t want my speech to be as funny as possible. From my own personal experience, I’ve found that the most memorable talks were the ones that made me laugh the most. Knowing myself, I knew that making my speech funny would require ALOT of work. I must have listened to 2 or 3 standup comedy specials a week in the span of 9 months. Studying not only the material but the delivery & the stage presence of comedians. Some people came up to me after my speech & said that I looked like Hassan Minhaj with my hand gestures which is funny because I definitely tried to mimic his enthusiasm on stage. The more I studied comedy the more surprised I was to learn how formulaic jokes can be. Lots of jokes follow a format that is recycled but just repurposed to align with each individual’s experience. The Call Back Technique probably being the most popular example of this. I tried to use some of these formulas I was learning to write my own jokes based off of my own personal experiences. I even learned that the truth alone isn’t always funny, sharing an exaggerated version of the truth for the sake of storytelling is commonplace in comedy & was definitely a technique I used in my speech. Once I had the blueprint laid out for my speech it was time to rehearse. One thing I failed to do in my talks prior was leave adequate time to practice my speech & it definitely showed. This time around I wanted to have more confidence & stage presence & not rely heavily on my speaker notes like before. I knew taking this approach would require more work of course but again, I wanted to deliver a product worthy of Blend and the many heroes of mines which would be in attendance. So memorizing as much of my speech as possible felt like the right thing to do.

One thing I learned in this cyclical process of rehearsal, revise, refine, was the way that you write & the way that you talk are two completely different things. If you’re writing the script for your speech you have to write it in a way that you would talk, sounds obvious in theory but proves harder in practice. A lot of the refining of my speech was centered around making the scripted part of my talk as conversational as possible. This conversational aspect I kept tweaking all the way up until the night before my speech. It's a weird phenomenon but you don’t really know what your speech sounds like until you rehearse it out loud. The last thing I wanted to do was to sound like I was reading to the audience or giving a lecture. I had to get out from behind the podium and actually speak to the audience as much as I could.

I learned some amazing tips from David JP Phillip’s Ted Talk about Public Speaking. David educated me on the power & influence you have just with your voice & body language. For instance, changing the pace of what you are saying can increase focus, lowering the volume of your voice creates anticipation & strategically placed pauses generate undivided attention. In public speaking, it is said that body language accounts for approximately 55 percent of communication, voice tone 35 percent, and words 10 percent. This was incredibly enlightening for me and a strategy I incorporated throughout my speech. During the times of my talk that I was reading from my script, I would put certain words or phrases in ALL CAPS to indicate raising the volume of my voice to emphasize a certain point & prevent a monotone sounding dialogue. And I would put multiple periods between words........to indicate longer pauses. I've never memorized a speech before so I looked to the internet for some creative tips to help me besides the typical brute force method. I've come across multiple articles that reiterate a common theme when it comes to memory, our brains are really good at visualization. We remember pictures of things that are meaningful way better than we remember abstract concepts. If we attach a meaningful image (or drawing) to a concept we're more likely to recall that memory later on. I used this method to help me memorize my talk by drawing symbolic images on index cards to help me remember the first 9 minutes of my speech. The goal going in was to have my whole speech memorized but I only got to 11 out of the 20 minutes down (first 9 & last 2). Even still memorizing half of my speech was a major accomplishing I'm definitely proud of, especially considering the fact that I'd never done that before. I was able to get that much memorized because I dedicated the last 3 weeks leading up to my talk to practicing around the clock.

I was very surprised at how well the talk was received at Blend. I knew I had some solid material but I would have never guessed how much of an impact my talk would have on so many people at the event. It's incredibly humbling because hearing all the positive feedback made all the hard work that went into this speech so worth it. Some people went as far as comparing my speech to a Ted Talk or a sermon on Sunday, which is some of the highest compliments I could ever receive. Leading up to it, I was incredibly afraid because throughout this entire process I was completely out of my comfort zone. I knew I was taking a big risk by stepping away from the podium & in doing so removing my safety net, but it was so rewarding being able to deliver a speech that I knew I was capable of. I’m definitely not a natural when it comes to public speaking. I’m an introvert by nature so I had to really tap into an alter ego to deliver this prepared speech. If I looked comfortable on stage its largely due to the fact that I put a substantial amount of time, effort, research, & practice into my talk.

You can catch some highlights from my talk here on my Instagram stories. If you weren't able to attend Blend but you're still interested in seeing a recording of my talk then email me, I'll set up a private screening for you.

#Blend Fest

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agirlunderarock · 5 years ago

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Writing through the Decade: 15 years old (2012)

So this is actually a short story I wrote in a creative writing class I took in high school. I’ve got a couple of things that are going to come out of this period, only because I did A LOT of short and fast writing for this class. Some of it was good, some bad. I’m going to try to post a good mix of it all, but this one right here, is probably the most important story I wrote at the time. Its a personal story, one I don’t talk about often, but I think its really important to understand me as a person rather opposed to a writer.

Never give up

I stare out the windshield into the muggy early summer morning. My brother sleeps peacefully in the back with our stuff packed for the week. My stomach is full of butterflies and my head swims in all the terrifying possibilities that awaited us.

My mind drifted off to a time before. My seventh grade year, in athletics, finding out about the disability, and the fact that my brother had it so much worse.

I snapped back to the present when the car stopped. I was determined not to show how afraid I was, so I stepped out and grabbed both mine and my little brothers bags. I made him carry his sleeping bag and we went to go load up our bags onto one of three trucks loaded with sleeping bags. He looked up at me with sad sleepy eyes, I patted his shoulder reassuringly. I was his big sister, and I couldn’t show how afraid I was or how badly I wanted to go back to sleep. Then I heard it. The yelling for us to fall in formation. My brother looked at me on last time, we didn’t even get to say good-bye to our parents. We were in formation when there was another round of yelling. Boot-camp had begun.

The next few hours were filled with yelling, screaming, and countless push-ups. I had lost track of my brother, he was with us of course, but somewhere behind me, out of sight. As I was on my face doing push-ups my mind wondered off again.

I was talking to my middle school athletics couch, “Athletics is too dangerous for you, Sierra. I’m worried about you not being able to keep up with the other girls.” She said with false concern.

“I understand that, but athletics is actually helping me. This charcomarietooth, affects my muscles and nerves. It takes twice as long for me to build muscle and it deteriorates just as quickly and it takes longer for me to feel pain. It affects how I run and when I feel pain, but all it means is that I have to try harder than the other girls. With athletics it doesn’t effect me as much as it could. You can see the difference from the beginning of the year! I’m getting better!” I pleaded, not wanting to leave the program.

”On your feet!” the teen drill instructor yelled and I was brought back to the present. Yup all of our instructors were kids like us so it was sort of weird being yelled at by an 11 and 12 year old, while the 14 and17 year olds seemed pretty normal. The next few hours were spent marching doing numerous push-ups marching and still more yelling. When the time finally came for us to put our things in our barracks, I felt grateful. Unfortunately it was short lived because when I go my stuff I saw my brother red and puffy eyed, and tears streaming down his cheeks. I wanted to comfort him so I grabbed his bag and took it to the door of his barrack.

“Its okay the days almost over and today was the worst of it.” I said encouragingly as he walked inside out of sight. I breathed a short sigh of relief, because twenty minutes goes by very fast when you’re worrying about your only sibling.

Well I was partially right about the worst being over. That was how most of the week was, yelling push-ups, drill, yelling, sweat, and oh did I mention yelling? They went to so far as to wake us up with a blow horn at one point. Of course there were some fun things in between the seriousness of the drill instructors. We did the main obstacle course and another series of obstacles called the Leadership reaction course, where we were split into teams and while we did each task actual marine drill instructors watched us.

I don’t know how many times I felt like I wanted to quit. My arms burned from all the push ups, my legs were incredibly sore from running every morning at five in the morning. The physical pain was nothing, compared to what I felt emotionally. Seeing my brother stricken with the sorrow of missing home, the pain clear on his face as rocks dug into our hands when we did push ups, it was tearing me up inside. I had to stay strong for him; I couldn’t afford to let him see how much it hurt to see him like that. I was doing well for the most part, but a person can hold back so much.

Then came Thursday, the week was almost over, the day when I finally snapped. The day was almost over, the sky burning orange, and the South Texas heat had finally become bearable. Most of us were scrambling around getting our stuff ready for bed, but my friend Andrea, her friend Ryan, and I were out side helping the other kids. Then my brother came up to me sobbing, red cheeks and tears rapidly running down his face.

“What happened? What’s the matter?” I said hiding my breaking heart.

“I want to go home! I just want to go home! I need to go home! I need to go!” he sobbed. Keeping my emotions bottled was starting to take its toll, and my voice cracked when I when I spoke again.

“Calm down Austin. Its Thursday. We’re almost done, the weeks almost over. Don’t give up on me now…” I trailed off. I couldn’t keep it inside anymore and once the first tear squeezed its way out of my eyes there was no stopping the rest. Now we were starting to get peoples attention and my friends came over to see what was going on.

“Its okay Fuentes we’ll take care of him.” Andrea said and motioned to our senior drill instructor who now wanted to talk to me.

I reluctantly, yet gratefully left the scene. I hated my self for letting my brother see me like that. I was supposed to the strong one, my brother looked up to me and I let him down. By the time I reached the drill instructor the tears stung my cheeks with humiliation and defeat. I looked up to meet his eyes expecting to see someone indifferent, someone who didn’t really care. Instead I saw just another teenager, someone a little older than me, but still trying to hide the pain I felt. He looked at me with understanding eyes and said “You okay Fuentes?”

“Yeah I’m fine.” I said trying to sound in control. I looked over at my brother who was still crying, but not as bad as before. Seeing this sent me into another round of tears.

“Look I know how you feel. I have a little brother too. I live like ten minutes away and its killing me.” He said drawing my attention. “I know how it is.”

I didn’t know what to think. My big “scary” drill instructor actually knew how I felt. I was shocked, but relieved at the same time. Finally someone who understood and I didn’t really say a word. “He misses home. I mean I do too, but this is the longest he’s been away. He didn’t even want to come. He only came because I did….and gosh I hate my self right now…” I rambled just glad to get it out of my system.

“Hey its okay. I’ve been keeping an eye on him, the staff told me and the other D.I.s about you guys and well you know. Its okay to be home sick and stuff, trust me we all are.”

I finally stopped crying and I said still a little bit shaky, “Thank you. I’ve been so worried and I don’t know what to do, and its been driving me crazy. Thank you.” When I turned to see my brother, he had already gone inside his barrack and it was just the D.I. and I. I turned back to my instructor who gave me a reassuring grin. “I should probably get my stuff ready thanks again.” I said and went inside my barrack.

I felt so much better after that. I knew I wasn’t alone and in the morning the instructor from the day before came to check on me to see if I was doing okay. It meant a lot to me that the other kids here were looking out for and my brother and I, it was as if a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. Again throughout the rest of the week there were times I felt like giving up and the first thing that came to mind was my coach.

We were in the gym I and I was faced with the choice to fail and stay in athletics or switch the class and keep my good GPA. She dropped the grading scale for the timed mile in front of me. When I looked to see where my time fell it turned out that I was making 60s every single time. I made my decision. I needed to get out.

“Coach I won’t be in your class anymore, I already went to talk to the counselor.” I said in defeat.

“Okay sweetie. It’s better for you this way. You could do something else, something better for you.” She said full of fake sympathy.

“She was right.” I thought Friday morning while running the timed mile. “You did do better. This is nothing compared to athletics, and look you made it the entire week there’s only two more days. This is nothing now you’re going to finish this. Don’t give up.” I told myself.

I did finish it. I made it through the week. At our boot camp graduation three of us got promoted on the spot. I was one of them. My coach bringing me down was my motivation to keep moving to rise above what she thought of me. My friends encouraged me and we all encouraged my brother. I wanted to show him what he was capable of and what he could do if he stopped worrying. I was proud of him he graduated and we both made new friends.

Today we still see our friends from boot camp. We have all grown very close. My senior drill instructor turned out to be one of my best friends there. Andrea still helps me when I need her. Ryan stopped coming and we all miss him. My brother has been promoted and I am so proud of him. I have been promoted twice since then and keep a look out for all the kids there. All of us are like a family now. Yes sometimes we fight but hey, that’s what families do. We have all shared some crazy experiences and because of that we share a bond that can never be broken.

#Sierra speaks #Sierra writes #well 15 year old Sierra wrote #Writing through the decade #My writing #baby me as a writer

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sammyspreadyourwings · 5 years ago

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Someone wants me to ramble???? It’s not necessarily in the You Drive Me verse, but I did answer a comment question about it, which I’ll repost here because I have Thoughts (and it’s formatted weird because I was directly answering questions)

So In General:

I imagine that Brian gets a hint about his tendencies when he overhears his friends talking about their sexual encounters in ways that just make him go ???? because of course the guys are far more assertive in bed and they talk about it in that 60s-70s sexism way but when he gets his first girlfriend and later his first sexual encounter, he realizes he’s more than willing to let the girl take charge which is a nice surprise for the girl and earns him a good-natured ribbing from the guys.

He’s too nervous to explore it more and he just lets people think that he’s a considerate lover.

Things change him when Freddie drags him (along with Roger and John) to a club for the first time. The club itself is lax on displays of sexual activity, and Brian is seemingly drawn to the couples that are actively displaying their roles. More specifically the part of the pair that seems to be following and doing whatever the other says. His eyes must linger too long on a collar because Freddie is leaning over him and making a teasing-but-probing question.

He says something he doesn’t remember but satisfies Freddie. Brian doesn’t get it, but like all things, Brian doesn’t understand he delves into research. The closest he can get to finding anything out, without actually delving into the scene himself is the older books which are more in line with calling it a disorder (when he’s sure it isn’t but there’s no proof) again 60s-70s conservatism and weird psychology so he keeps it quiet until he finds a partner that’s more than willing to help him figure it out.

In Poly!Queen:

I say John is Brian’s dom, because John is typically the one that takes that role in the bedroom when they’re all in a scene, but he’s more than willing to follow orders from Freddie or Roger.

You Drive Me verse!

Experince Level Brian has a little more experience with the scene than John, who took longer to get into because of his confidence issues (also there's a minor age gap between them so). John figured out his tendencies... or rather specific kinks by watching porn and then naturally he did research. Brian's always known since the first time he had sex, because he wanted the girl he was with to tell him exactly what she wanted him to do (over the general partner comfort level). He didn't know about it until the girl made a comment about it and he did the research again. (They're both nerds)

Does the Band Know

They don't know, well, they don't really know. Rog and Bri had a couple hookups during Smile and well Roger kind of figured it out even though they didn't have that type of relationship.

Why Was John at the Pub/When did his opinions change

Tbh they invited John along for two reasons 1)seeing if they get along so they can steal him for the band 2)they're tired of the sexual tension between them.

Well, John eventually stopped "hating" Brian for two minutes, enough to offer to buy him a drink. That's when he overheard the first conversation and Brian saying something along the lines of "I want you to fuck me." Which is enough to pique John's interest of course. (I should note that this is about week 5 of them being roommates) and he goes back to the dorm and thinks it through. So he kind of falls in lust with Brian, because he's pretty, and then naturally he starts noticing the other things like Brian's genius or kindness or creativity. So he starts crushing.

How does he find out

The rest of the clues come gradually, a few (I mean this truthfully) coincidental pub visits and nearly walking into the room with Brian having sex with someone fit the rest of the pieces together. He starts crushing harder. The real clincher is when he ends up at the same BDSM club as Brian.

Turn Ons/Off

I actually have the top 6 kinks of both (which apply here) somewhere on my blog. In this verse specifically, Brian has a thing for asphyxiation, cockwarming, and blindfolds. John loves dirty talk/humiliation, blindfolds, and bondage Brian really doesn't do well with being completely immobile.

History

A lot of Brian's past doms/partners have been a little put off because he's a sub's sub. He's rarely mouthy and very pliant and some people just aren't into it. John, however, and obviously is. So it's less of John knowing Bri's specific kinks but more of him knowing what to look for.

Their first few weeks as a couple are a little rough, it's more physical than anything, but eventually, they work through it, and in short Roger wishes they'd go back to the time where they wanted to kill each other because the lovey-dovey crap is sickening.

John does join the band, which again they have to work through because John can't let his usual way of handling Brian's argumentive/stubborn nature interfere with the band, which at first it did. Not on purpose, but he was using his tone that he uses when they're in the bedroom.

#breaky #poly!queen #reload #sub!brian #spare a coin for the sub!Brian free askbox #long post #Listen #I will ramble for hours #but there's a lot of similarities between the two verses #well the one verse and the general concept verse I write in all the time #because I am unoriginal #well not unoriginal but consistent

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thegeneralsnotebook · 5 years ago

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November Feature: Set 11 Design Review + CiM Q & A

I have this memory of at some point writing somewhere, whether it was here on The General’s Notebook or in a TIA post, that once Leaders & Legends came out, I was going to be diving into its structure in the hope of figuring out how it was designed when compared with prior sets. I can’t find that quote now, but just in case I did say it, this is that article. As the first set designed entirely by Commentary is Magic instead of Enterplay, it bears asking if the new developers are going to be using a different philosophy with regard to their design.

Now, in addition to merely looking at the cards and running the numbers, this month I also had the privilege of literally asking the new developers about their design philosophy with regard to LL. I’ll include the full Q & A at the conclusion of the article, but first, let’s look at what my investigation uncovered.

Requirements

I’ve had a lot of exposure to Set 11 over the course of the past few weeks, not only in diving into the set to try building new Core decks, but also in creating the slides and figuring out ratings for the Meticulous Talks review stream. And over the course of that work, a couple of things leaped out to me right away. Number one, the requirement numbers in this set seemed high. I noticed a lot of 4’s, and enough 4/4’s to be relevant as well. In the past, cards with a 4/4 req were exceedingly rare, with only four of them before LL. Set 11 brings three more of them, in addition to what feels like a lot of 4’s and 3’s. But appearances and impressions can sometimes be deceiving. How does the set actually stack up against the others?

Requirement curves for every set in the modern era (post-EO). Note that multicolour cards are included in the count for their respective numbers, so 1/1 cards are in the 1-req count, 2/2’s in the 2-req count and so on. 4/4 cards are counted separately, though.

Stacked up against the others sets of the modern era, LL isn’t quite an outlier. In fact, in its construction it bears a strong resemblance to Defenders of Equestria. Yet even with that similarity, there are some noteworthy points about the new set that make it stand out. As can be seen, LL has the most 4 requirement cards of any set in the modern era (save EO, but as a huge set generally, the comparison there is a little harder to make). As discussed already, it also has the most 4/4’s. And, indeed, it has the most 3 requirement cards as well. It is in fact the only set in the modern era which has more cards at 3-req and above than it has at 2-req and below.

It seems like most of this shift to higher req’s has come at the expense of cards in the 2-req spot, and if we think about some of the changes that have come in Core after the rotation, a clear effect emerges. With the rotation of Singing Barrel and Trading Traditions, suddenly getting to 3-req in a third or fourth colour has gotten a lot harder. The primary replacements (Fire of Friendship, Infilitrating the Hive, Rainbow Generator) all work in two Power increments. Thus we should expect that getting to 3 Power in an off colour will be a lot harder in new Core, which we might expect will make running multicolour decks harder.

As CiM explained to me in our interview, this was very much intentional:

CC: My analysis indicates that LL in general has cards with higher reqs than most sets since DE. Was there a conscious decision to design more impactful cards that needed higher reqs?

CIM: We felt that the ease of which a deck has historically been able to get into 3+ colors and get the capstone cards from those colors is a serious problem. With Trading Traditions and Singing Barrel no longer in core, our intent is that players should need to commit more resources to get the capstone cards from any color, and an increase in play requirements would be one result of this.

Instinctively, this feels correct to me. An eyeball look at what you got at the 2-req level in past sets reveals a lot of great cards there, and in the past decks absolutely have exploited this. While in LL obviously we don’t know what the great cards are yet, a look through the list leads to the idea that most of the really good stuff only unlocks at 3-req and above. Going by the CiM Individual Card Value Ratings (as announced on their stream, and they would hopefully be the authoritative source) the 2-req cards in LL have an average individual value of about 2.67, while the 3-req cards are about 2.96. Keeping in mind their rating system, this means that the average 2-req card in LL is in between minimal and moderate game impact, while the average 3-req card is squarely in moderate territory. (Note that for that calculation I ignored the three-colour cards. I don’t think they really count as having just 2-req, after all.)

It should go without saying, by the way, that shooting for higher reqs on the more impactful cards in the set isn’t necessarily a good or a bad design decision; it’s simply evidence of the philosophy that CiM is implementing, and we’ll have to see what effect it has on the metagame that develops. On the one hand it’s somewhat obvious that the higher requirement cards should be the ones with the more impactful effects. But in LL it seems this will be even more true than it was before.

Game Text & Abilities

The second thing that leaped out to me upon first inspection of the set was there seemed to be a lot of text to read. Game text, that is. It just didn’t seem like there were that many “simple” cards in the set, and it actually kind of gave me the impression of a Magic set, just a little. One of the things that I’ve always found interesting about Magic sets is that so few of the cards are simple. Almost all of them have some extra ability or piece of text attached to them, and most of these abilities are unique pieces of text which are only found on that one card.. Whereas in MLP there are usually a few cards with no text at all, and a few more with only a single keyword. So again, let’s have a look. In this chart, we’ll use War of the Spark as our comparison Magic set.

For the purposes of this analysis, a “simple” card is one with either no game text, or else just a single keyword ability. We can see that Leaders & Legends is absolutely the set with the most complex ability design out of any modern era MLP set, even being the only one to edge out WotS. That means more unique pieces of text, and more cards that do interesting things and can be built into new sorts of decks. Again, this was quite intentional:

CC: Was there a conscious decision to make the set more complex in terms of the number of distinct abilities on cards?

CiM: [...] Cards we design will tend to have richer possibilities for interaction with other cards. To put it in Magic terms, there’s going to be a bit more of a Johnny flavor: cards that reward people sitting down and thinking about the myriad of different things they can do, how they can interact with other cards, and those One Weird Tricks that they are capable of in niche situations.

And again, this makes intuitive sense to me. What’s most impressive is that CiM has managed to keep up the amount of abilities on their cards without actually increasing the number of abilities in the set. That is to say, there are more cards with text on them, but if you count the number of paragraph breaks in the OCR, we actually end up with a smaller number as compared to other modern sets:

Not smaller by that much, of course, but still notable. So again, what this means that while LL has about the same number of distinct abilities spread among its cards, it gets far more of its abilities from unique bits of text, rather than from new keywords or from reusing old keywords. It even has less usage of what I call “natural” triggers, which are things like enters-play triggers on Friends. They’re natural because they’re guaranteed to fire as long as you play the Friend, as opposed to triggers that require something else to happen. So there may in fact be more reading to do with this set than with any other, but I have to applaud the designers for their creativity, and in not falling back on old keywords to fill out the structure of the set. (Not, of course, that using old keywords is bad. It’s absolutely worth it to explore the spaces that they create. But there’s also a commendable ambition in forging something so novel in their first crack at designing a whole set.)

The Rotation

As we go, I’d like to show two more pretty pictures. With some help from Hithroc, I ran some more queries about the structure of Core, both as it was before the rotation, and as it is now. Specifically, especially given the requirement structure of LL, I wanted to know how the general requirement and cost curves of the format had changed with the rotation. Given that LL is quite heavy on the requirements, I had thought that Core as a whole might now be heavier with the EO Block gone. Turns out, not so much:

Actually, the proportion of 3-requirement cards has grown smaller in New Core, as the sets remaining in general have significantly more 2’s than 3’s. But the proportionate amount of entry has shrunk, which is something that again may give pause to those wanting to run 3 or more colours. The more interesting comparison I think is the one for cost:

Here, there was proportionate growth in every category except 1-cost cards, and the drop for 1-cost cards was quite significant, down 7.4% from where it was in Old Core. So the cards in the format are in general more expensive than they were before. My instinct is to guess that this might slow down the game a bit, but of course it’s not so simple as that. It does mean that AT is likely to be more precious moving forward though, which may provide a boost to those colours capable of making more of it. It certainly means that in New Core AT efficiency is a very important concept. But every colour has its own way of making that concept work. And, this is after all just the first set that we’ve seen from CiM. Set 12 may or may not follow the same philosophy. That will all depend on how this one works out.

Q & A

As promised, I’ll close out this article with the full Q & A that I had with CiM. It wasn’t super long, only eight questions and not all particularly-related to their design philosophy. But there were still some interesting tidbits here. As for me, I’ll be back in the New Year. Happy Holidays!

CC: How satisfied are you with the final product of Leaders & Legends?

CiM: Ultimately, this will depend a lot on how satisfied players are with the set.

It’s hard to speak objectively about this. Building a set is a lot of work - design from the ground up, test it in concert with a bunch of people, pick all the flavor (names, finding art, writing flavor text), arranging all of the art and text, proofing all that art, whargarbling over how to make the rules support all the new cards, and producing all of the documents.

There are cards that we aren’t happy with, ideas that didn’t pan out, lost flavor opportunities, but all in all, it worked out fairly well. Only time and the meta will tell if it truly is good.

CC: To what extent was designing the set simply a matter of making the cards that you guys, as players, would have wanted to play with yourselves? (To each designer) What kind of cards do you like? CiM: To say that we would completely remove ourselves from the equation when designing cards wouldn’t be accurate; after all, we are still players just like everyone else, and we’ll have our own personal tastes and preferences.

That being said, there was rarely a point where a card was designed for L&L with the thought process being “Bigcheese will love this card” or “Oh man, Grand Pause is totally going to break this thing.” In fact, those sorts of thoughts are red flags for deeper consideration of the design, and it was more common for a card to be designed with other players in the community in mind, knowing what sorts of decks players have tried to make work in the past and we felt would be fun to provide additional support for.

CC: (To each designer) What kind of cards do you like?

GP: I enjoy cards that increase my options or allow for new or interesting lines of play. Cards that are efficient and powerful are obviously great inclusions in many decks, but often times aren’t the most exciting; they just might do something that others cards do cheaper or faster. When a card or cards help to create a more unique play experience or open up deck strategies that might not have existed or been properly supported before, that’s where I start getting excited.

Bigcheese: I enjoy cards that have interesting and useful interactions. Cards that can have a high impact, and are usable in lots of different situations or types of decks.

Ara: I want to say stuff that can be played in the moment and doesn’t require a lot of thought to execute with, but then I go and play Pink/Purple which is 100% about setup and shenanigans. So maybe I’ll answer cards that are good answers to a need - going fast, removal, etc, and are generally high impact.

Ivory: I like cards that are immediately useful and don’t require multiple turns to return value. A card that I know will make an impact on its own while also helping me get closer to winning are what, in my opinion, have the highest value.

CC: In the past, it's been understood that Block boundaries are placed on points of design change in the game. To what extent is the design of LL a departure from the DE block?

CiM: We’re designing it instead of Enter-Play! Merely because a new set of designers are behind the wheel for Leaders and Legends, there are going to be design philosophy differences despite our efforts to maintain the spirit of the game.

The next two questions, we feel, are investigating the differences in spirit in more detail so it makes sense to answer them first.

CC: My analysis indicates that LL in general has cards with higher reqs than most sets since DE. Was there a conscious decision to design more impactful cards that needed higher reqs? Or was this perhaps a rethink of how cards had been placed on the req curve before?

CiM: We felt that the ease of which a deck has historically been able to get into 3+ colors and get the capstone cards from those colors is a serious problem.

With Trading Traditions and Singing Barrel no longer in core, our intent is that players should need to commit more resources to get the capstone cards from any color, and an increase in play requirements would be one result of this.

CC: I've also noticed that compared to the sets that came before, LL has fewer "simple" card designs (cards with either no game text or just one keyword), and does it with unique bits of text rather than new keywords. Was there a conscious decision to make the set more complex in terms of the number of distinct abilities on cards?

CiM: There’s only so much room in the card pool for 2/0/2 vanilla Friends, and the expectation of players at this point is that cards do more interesting things than just be vanilla entry. Granted making entry more interesting than vanilla does cause some power creep; this isn’t great but some power creep is a necessity to keep the game interesting.

Cards we design will tend to have richer possibilities for interaction with other cards. To put it in Magic terms, there’s going to be a bit more of a Johnny flavor: cards that reward people sitting down and thinking about the myriad of different things they can do, how they can interact with other cards, and those One Weird Tricks that they are capable of in niche situations.

This is a consequence of us innovating and exploring new bits of design space, looking for new things that we think players might be fun, of finding ways to spice things up, of trying not to print more 4/0/4 vanilla Orange Friends. The points-matter theme of the entry cycle is an example of this: entry cards being useful late game is (hopefully) new and interesting. CC: We all hear the legends of cards that had an initial design which was incredibly overpowered. Is the reverse ever true? Which happens more often in testing?

CiM: We will do a stream at some point about stuff that died in L&L playtesting, and there are more than a few things that were over the top and got whacked with the nerf bat. Broken cards tend to leave a larger impression in a tester’s thoughts of playtesting than offhand comments about “this is kinda crummy, can we buff it?”, and even with the buffs, the crummy cards may not be good enough to really show up in the competitive scene and leave an impression.

But yes, just like there’s stuff that’s absolutely busted and gets nerfed, there are cards that start underwhelming and end up getting buffed later. As mentioned previously, we’re going to be biased towards thinking about the overpowered cards, but underpowered cards that get buffed are far more common.

When coming up with the card initially, we have a pretty good idea of what constitutes an acceptable maximum power level for a card, and a lot of the time the initial design for a card will intentionally fall short of that. That said, sometimes there are things that were considered underpowered during playtesting that turned out to be ringers once they got out into the wild. Salina Blue is one of the examples that comes to mind.

One of the reasons for this is cards may not be good outside of the context of a larger meta - there’s usually not enough time for one to really develop during playtesting. There’s no such thing as too much testing, but an eternal testing cycle gets in the way of releasing cards. CC: (To each designer) Which cards in LL are you most fond of?

GP: I previously mentioned that Pegasus Royal Guard is one of my favorite cards from the set; it’s a great aggressive card that becomes more difficult to deal with the longer your opponent leaves any copy of it alone, and can allow for some truly silly burst turns. Cozy Glow, Heel Turn is a card that has a lot of potential to shift momentum in the mid- to late-game, turning your earlier removal into even more added value. Crown of the Sibling Supreme is probably my favorite card flavor-wise; it was 100% a top-down design, and I think it really shines in that sense.

Bigcheese: Zecora, Curative Cach has unique and interesting wording, and was a fun card to get the wording right on. I additionally really like Pinkie Sense because of the way it's abilities work together and with other cards like Same Day Delivery.

Ara: My favorites are going to be heavily influenced by flavor and art since that was my major contribution to the set. Of them, Silverstream, Abstract Artist is probably one of my most favorite. It has Silverstream on it and is just a great early game card against confront to flip manes. It extols Silverstream’s, uh, virtue?, of just wanting to see what you’re doing and getting in the way for the next four hours.

Ivory: That’s a tough one! Grogar, Legion of Doom and Pinkie Sense are the two cards I see myself playing with a lot. Both are scary, high impact cards and there are a lot of fun shenanigans you can do with both.

#mlpccg #leadersandlegends #gamedesign #commentaryismagic

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