#it’s the corn hole incident all over again

[mycological-mariner]

I finally gotta give in, Poldark is literally just a soap opera. This is giving SUCH “at my aunt’s house while she’s trying to make dinner and look after three kids and left the tv on while going out for a smoke and Guadalupe just came on so you might as well watch” energy

Cornish telenovela

[hqmillioncorn]

Food for Thoughts

“Oh Mister Roriiiiiiiiiii!!!”  Rori braced himself for the inevitable. The inescapable fate of Babycorn Corn running up to him ready to talk both his ears off with some nonsense topic that somehow always, somehow, popped up in her little head.  It always seemed to be during work too. On the bright side she wasn’t asking him what Valentiones day was every time she walked by him. He didn’t even remember when the last time she asked about that was.  Finally, Babycorn arrived. Sitting herself down on some empty crates that might as well have been placed there just for her. “Hiya Mister Rori!” Babycorn greeted him. Cherrypit waved at him from on top of Babycorn’s head. “Hiya.” Rori waved back. “Mister Rori? Do you know where snow comes from?” “The sky?” “Ooooooh!” Yeah that made sense. “How does the sky make it?!”  

ffxiv write day 2: Horizon with @windupnamazu 's Butter and oleo and momoka and @windupiceheart 's rori at the start :)

babycorns always been good at taking care of plants but the truth is they just grow without her trying who can she ask for more plant facts to put in her little head.......

With one last pat-pat of the ground Babycorn smiled with satisfaction at the new little dahlia sprout she had managed to plant in the mansion’s garden without incident. “Wow! That went way better than last time!” Last time referred to the incident just last week when Babycorn managed to set fire to the entire garden by just trying to plant some peonies. 

Thankfully there had been no one around at the time so she was able to use her conveniently fate bending Starsinger powers to make it so like it never happened! Hooray! 

Sure doing that gave her a fever that lasted a whole week but it was worth it to not ruin her friend’s hard work. 

Speaking of…

Babycorn turned her head to look behind herself. A lot more people had begun to hang around the yard since the last seven hours when she first started working in the garden. She was more glad than ever that she didn’t accidentally set the garden on fire again. 

From her vantage point alone she could see Momoka sitting in her usual spot and looking around at everyone else. Just like she was doing! B’ig Nunh was talking about something with Vertical sitting underneath some shade. Whatever it was about–Babycorn couldn’t hear. 

Both Pancake and Linnet were huddled over a huge piece of paper, giggling to themselves. An assortment of art supplies were thrown around them. It looked like Cinnamon was also helping them with whatever they were doing. 

Babycorn also noticed Oleo leaning up against the fence and a pair of mysterious Butter-like ears poking out from behind a hydrangea bush. It was a little hard to see. No matter how much Babycorn leaned in one direction. 

Oh well, she would go and say hi later. 

Babycorn turned her attention to more flowery matters. “Okay little plant! Go ahead and grow up big and strong!!” She stood up and raised both her arms in the air, in her best attempt to motivate her newest tiny little plant. It was her first time growing something outside of a pot so there was a bit of apprehension about the whole thing. “...But I’m sure it’s gonna be fine!” She tried to assure herself. 

“Fine! Fine!” Cherrypit took some time from digging a hole in the yard to assure his sister her worries were nothing to be worried about. “Bebes good at flowers!” 

Cherrypit was telling the truth. Because for some inexplicable and unexplainable reason Babycorn was very talented at raising all sorts of different plants. No matter what sorts of horrors those things were subjected to, they all ended up blooming in the end. 

At least, indoors they did. The day Babycorn finally attempted to grow something outside again for the first time in years it caused an acidic secretion to begin oozing out of the grounds of the Lavender Beds. The fire incident was actually her second attempt.

Needless to say, Babycorn had no idea what she was actually doing.

“Hmm…” Babycorn hummed to herself. “Hey Cherry?” She turned to look at her brother who was now successfully filling his new dug hole with hose water. “Myeah?” Cherrypit tilted his head curiously. He stared right at his sister as he grabbed a stick from the garden and threw it into the muddy water. 

“Do you think I’m growing flowers the right way?” 

“Myabbababa Gabaga!!” Cherrypit helpfully babbled. It probably meant something along the lines of, “If the flowers and vegetables you’re planting are actually growing then you’re probably doing it right!” Then he grabbed a handful of leaves and put them in his mouth. Dropping the few leaves still stuck on his hand into the mud along with the stick.

“Yeah! You’re probably right!” Her brother was so smart. She was so proud of him! But it didn’t take very long for a hint of doubt to crawl its way into Babycorn’s thoughts. “Well…I don’t think that people's plants usually start fires…Right?” Like Vertical’s plants! Babycorn had seen her planting new ones before and they never even so much as sizzled like her plants did!

Now that she really thought about it, there was a weird memory in her head about Vertical and a bunch of other people! Whenever Babycorn would catch someone in the garden they usually had something in their hands. The thing was a really strange shape! 

It sort of reminded Babycorn of a teapot! Something that, by the way, she should not be drinking out of. 

There were a lot of things that Babycorn knew she didn’t know. The names of certain things was one of them. If this was anything like those other billion things then this was probably something that everyone else in the world knew about except for her. 

It didn’t bother her that much. Not unless it caught her on a bad day. 

Babycorn pushed herself off the ground, her knees and hands were almost caked in mud. All thanks to a certain toddler’s playtime.  As Babycorn shook herself clean of any dirt she had on her she could feel that today was anything but a bad day. 

With a twinkle in her eyes she turned around to see if Vertical was still around so she could ask what was in her hands that day.  Sadly both Vertical and B’ig were long gone. They must have left some time between when Babycorn saw them and now.

Trying her best to ignore the rising dread in her chest at not knowing where her friends were, Babycorn looked around for anyone else that could answer her question. 

Unfortunately for her the twinkle in her eyes was giving away her intentions to everyone around her. 

It was a very familiar look to everyone and everything that knew Babycorn by now. It was a look of curiosity. A sign that Babycorn was about to run over to you and seek your guidance about a certain something. Something that sounded very simple, yes. 

Except there was a catch. Where there was one question, a couple of hundred always followed suit. 

Not many had the endurance (mostly the time) to go through a round of Babycorn’s question gauntlet. 

Momoka was the first to notice what was going on. Her eyes grew wide as she grabbed a convenient flower vase placed in the center of the table. She sneakily slid it in front of herself to cover her face in a successful attempt to take advantage of Babycorn’s lack of object permanence. 

Babycorn gasped, “Woah! Where did Momoka go?!” It was like she was here one second and gone the next. How mysterious…

With Momoka out of the question Babycorn thought about asking Pancake and Linnet if they knew what she was thinking about. As she handed Cherrypit another stick for his little project she figured that both girls looked really busy. “I don’t wanna bother them…” Whatever it was they were doing it looked really important. 

(Babycorn had no way of knowing but it was very important. Both girls were planning the eventual Butter and Babycorn wedding of the future.) 

Babycorn’s eyes drifted over to Oleo and what she could see of Butter’s ears. As soon as she looked in their direction she noticed Oleo talking to someone next to him, hitting them with his elbow and pointing right at Babycorn. 

Babycorn grinned, putting her hands together in excitement. “I’ll be right back, Cherry! Don’t go anywhere!” Cherrypit looked up from stirring his creation together. “Okay!” He lifted up the stick from the mud and waved it around happily. 

Just as Babycorn began to step towards Oleo and the pair of ears–the front door to the mansion opened up. Grabbing Babycorn’s full attention. 

“Sirius!!” Babycorn waved her arms up and down at the sight of her second self-proclaimed BFFFL. (best friend for life) Sirius closed the door behind and hurriedly walked his way past Babycorn without a word. He more than recognized that look in her eyes. “Hey! Wait a second I have a question!” Babycorn followed right after him even when he started to pick up the pace. 

“Sorry, busy”

“Did Lunya ask ya to pick something up again?” Babycorn walked around him almost in a circle. It was almost a surprise she wasn’t tripping over her own two feet. 

“It’s something like that.” 

“Did she forget an ingredient in something and she’s asking you to go buy it before it’s too late?” 

Sirius stopped walking to give Babycorn a break in trying to not fall flat on her face. Which ended up happening anyway because of his sudden stop. “Yeah, exactly like that.” Sirius helped Babycorn up from the ground and turned to keep going towards Gridania. He was starting to have his suspicions that the doll in the kitchen was doing more than just sitting there. 

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaait!!!” Babycorn yelled out at the top of her lungs even though Sirius hadn’t gone anywhere. “I had a question about the garden! It’s super duper ultra important!!” 

Sirius stopped once again and noticed Oleo and Butter standing almost right next to where he and Babycorn were. “If it's a question about the garden you could ask someone who works in the garden and isn’t busy.” While Babycorn wondered where she could find such a specific person–Sirius walked closer to the bush and cleared away some of the leaves so Butter could be in Babycorn’s sight. 

“Oh! Butts!” That was who those ears belonged to!!

“Exactly like him.” With the coast clear Sirius made his exit as fast as he could. 

Butter straightened up and smiled at Babycorn. “H-Hi!” His whole escapade of hiding in the hydrangea bushes was mostly Oleo’s idea. Something about how Babycorn tended to hide in the same bushes. 

Then when they bumped into each other in the same place Butter could hit Babycorn with a pick-up line Oleo gave him. “Psst-!” Oleo leaned in closer to Butter, “The line! Don’t forget the line-!” He whispered as loudly as he could. 

“Right!” Butter looked at Babycorn and almost froze up again. Something about the lumps of wet mud in her hair were sending him into a tizzy. “Um. Uh. Do you come here off-often..??” he was finally able to spit out. 

Oleo gave him a thumbs-up. As a certified lady woo-er he was more than sure this would be enough to win Babycorn’s heart.

Babycorn grinned. “Well yeah! Cause I live here! You live here too!” She turned to look at Oleo. “You don’t live here Oleo but I do know where you live so it’s okay!!” 

“Thanks…?” Oleo had no idea what Babycorn meant by that. 

Butter giggled to himself. “You’re sooo right! Ehehehe…” Babycorn started laughing right alongside him. Her laugh was so cute, too cute. Butter made a note to thank Oleo for his idea later, it had worked out after all. 

The gears in Babycorn’s head began to turn again. “Oh right!” She grabbed Butter’s hand with her dirt caked one and began to drag him back to the garden with her. Just as Oleo thought he was in the clear, Babycorn rounded back and grabbed him by his arm. “Nooooo! Babycorn wait-!!” He couldn’t be walking around with mud caked all over his sweet jacket!! 

Once all three of them were back in front of the garden Babycorn sat down in the mud and pointed at her plant. “Um-! Um! What’s that thing called that you hold over the plant? It like…Looks like a big teapot!!” Her arms were flying all over the place trying to make a shape she had no idea looked like. 

Butter of course knew instantly what Babycorn was talking about. “Those are called watering cans!” The one he used was blue, like the color of his jacket. Pancake painted it herself so he would know which one was his. 

“Cooooooool!” The easily impressed Babycorn was amazed to finally have her answer. As the prophecy foretold however, after one question another soon followed suit. “What’s a watering can for?” Sure now she knew what the name of one was, but why were people using it? Was it important?

“They’re for watering plants!” Butter did a little gesture like he was holding some sort of invisible watering can. Dropping some invisible water on Babycorn’s little sprout. 

“Watering?” Babycorn blinked, “What’s that?” 

This time Oleo was the one to answer. “That’s when you drop a bunch of water on a plant.” He paused to think. “You can’t give it too much cause then it uh, drowns. Or something like that.” 

“A plant can drown?!?!”

“Kinda-! Yeah!” Butter didn’t want Babycorn to get scared of watering her plants. “Plants need water though! It’s just not a good thing to give them too much!”

“Yeah! Just like us!” Oleo helpfully added. “We need food and water. Just like plants do!” 

“Woaaah….!!!” Babycorn eyes sparkled with excitement. There were so many things in the world she had no idea about! There was a desire in her to learn as much as she could. She was just so happy that she had so many friends around her that knew so much about all sorts of things. Maybe someday she could even teach them about something that she knew about. 

Babycorn made a note to give Butter and Oleo a thank-you big hug later. 

(a hug that oleo would successfully leave to his bro after excusing himself to go water his plants) 

“Oh! And what do plants eat?! Do they like eating candy like me?! I’ve got lotsa candy!!” 

“Not exactly!” Butter answered. 

All three were so engrossed in their questions and answers that they didn’t even notice Momoka scooting in closer and closer. Just in case, she was still holding the flower vase in front of her face. Her attempt to get any closer was stopped when she felt something touch her leg. 

In a panic she looked down to see a stain of mud on her boots. Not only that, there was a mud caked baby looking right up at her. With a smile on his face he held up a stick with a huge glob of mud hanging off the end. “Wan’ soup?” Cherrypit asked.

[alphapotato]

Untitled Smut project

Chapter 1

Dobby caressed Tony the Tiger’s chest with his wrinkled, grey, calloused fingers. He twirled his ring finger in his chest hair until the shriveled appendage was tangled and adorned in white.

“This is the closest Dobby will get to a wedding ring,” the twink-ish house elf thought.

Dobby closed his eyes and buried his long pointed nose in the crook of Tony the Tiger’s armpit.  He took a deep inhale, and the scent of corn flakes and body odor filled his lungs. It was almost like a part of Tony the Tiger was inside him. Or at least more of Tony the Tiger was inside of him. After all, they had spent last night figuring out how much of Tony the Tiger would fit into Dobby’s little Dobby-hole. As it turned out, a great deal of the feline’s liquid children could be injected into his Dobby-guts.

“If only Dobby could be pregnant, then Tony the Tiger would HAVE to make an honest woman out of Dobby,” the pining elf thought.

Dobby took another inhale of Tony the Tiger’s pits and imagined the future they would have if only Dobby could trap him in a marriage with an unwanted pregnancy: Tony the Tiger would go to work at the Frosted Flake factory, and Dobby would get the children ready for school. Dobby imagined they would have three children; two girls and one boy. The eldest boy would be named Beyonce, and the twin girls would be named Ally and AJ. While the children were at school, Dobby would prepare his beloved’s favorite meal: Frosted Flake meatloaf. After school got out, Dobby would help the children with their homework. And when Tony the Tiger got back home, they would all sit down at the dinner table and pray to Trisha Paytas. They would thank her for their meal, as is house elf tradition. Dobby would put the children to sleep with his beautiful Dobby-voice, which he was convinced sounded just like Lana Del Rey. And everyday, Tony the Tiger would tell Dobby how pretty and skinny and beautiful he looked. And then after singing the children to sleep, Dobby would put Tony the Tiger to sleep with his Dobbussy.

Dobby took a second inhale.

“If only Dobby could be pregnant.”

But alas, Dobby could not get pregnant, no matter how much Tony Frosted his Flake.

Tony the Tiger shifted to the left, then to the right, and slowly his orange eyelids opened.

“Oh, you’re still here?” Tony asked. “Well I think you should probably head on out, I have work at 9.”

“Yes Tony the Tiger sir,” Dobby acquiesced as he climbed out of the comforter and into his urine-soaked brown rags. Tony the Tiger had spent much of the night peeing on Dobby, which made Dobby feel special.

“It’s almost as though Tony the Tiger were marking his territory,” Dobby thought. “Dobby is Tony the Tiger’s and no one elseseses.” 

Dobby grabbed his gucci purse from the bedroom floor and walked out into the living room. In the living room,Tony the Tiger’s three roommates; Shane Dawson, Hannah Montana, and Naruto Uzumaki were eating breakfast. Naruto looked up from his ninja food and smiled warmly at Dobby. 

“Oh! Dobby-san, I didn’t realize you spent the night again. Did you want to join us for breakfast? I made ninja food!” 

Shane Dawson rolled his eyes as he grabbed his bowl of ninja food and left the table. Dobby didn’t blame Shane Dawson for this cold greeting, especially after the incident.

“Don’t mind him, please come sit!” Naruto was still smiling at Dobby.

Dobby smiled back and pulled out a gucci chair. Before he could sit, Hannah Montana slammed her gucci heel on the chair and said,

“Dobby, before you sit on our brand new chairs, I have to ask you to fart out Tony the Tiger’s cummies. Last time you were here you sat on our sofa, and now our sofa is pregnant.”

Dobby looked over at the sofa. Sure enough, there was a baby bump in the middle cushion. Dobby narrowed his eyes enviously at the sofa. 

“If only Dobby could be pregnant,” he thought. “Fucking slutty sofa.”

Dobby hung his head to hide his Dobby-tears. He knew that Hannah Montana wasn’t purposely being rude. Her words still stung, not because he was embarrassed to carry Tony the Tiger’s seed. He was honored to carry the cream of the man-cat he loved. Hannah Montana’s word cut him so deeply because it reminded him of his womb-lessness.

Dobby hobbled to the bathroom carefully, so that he wouldn’t spill any kitty juices on the carpet floor. He closed and locked the bathroom door behind him with his Dobby-hand. Dobby spun around and faced the bathroom mirror. He put his grey hands on the sink counter. It was made from marble, the sexiest of all the rocks. It was so smooth on Dobby’s fingertips. So smooth. And with patterns so curvy. Dobby took his left hand off of the sink counter and onto his loose, blown-out Dobbussy. Dobby slid his Dobby-finger across his Dobby-slit. It was wet with a thick substance. Dobby’s left hand raised to Dobby’s Dobby-nose. He took a sharp inhale, and then a long deep inhale. It smelled like love. The finger dropped to his Dobby-mouth, and his tongue touched the white-brown goo. It tasted like love. Dobby put his slutty, slutty Dobby-hand back to his Dobby-hole. This time, his fingernail pressed on his anus. Then the fingernail entered his ass. Dobby’s butthole was calloused by years of getting totally buttfucked that the nail couldn’t cause lacerations. Dobby wiggled his long two-inch finger nail in his ass. As Dobby’s Dobby-finger enters the hole, his fingernail bumps against his Dobby-prostate. He started scratching it like once of the lotto tickets he so often scratched. Dobby was a gambling addict, so the thought of gambling make his pecker rock hard. He started scratching harder and deeper until he started to pre-cum. His right hand started petting the sexy, slutty marble counter. He gave it a little spank.

“You like that Dobby-spank, slut?” Dobby said to the counter.

Soon a second finger entered his booty-ho. Then three. Then, Dobby’s left hand was inside of him. It was like dipping his hand into a honey pot full of sweet, sticky, thick honey. Dobby slowly took his hand out of him. It was glazed in a genital-smelling off-white goo. Dooby scooped some into his slutty mouth. He flung some into the sink, and then his returned his left hand to his Dobby-cavity. 

“Does the taste of Dobby’s slut cream please you?” Dobby said to the counter.

Dobby turned on the sink full blast.

“Swallow Dobby’s ass cream,” Dobby whispered aggressively to the counter.

Dobby’s 2-inch shriveled penis was fully erect at this point. His fist now entered and exited his Dobby-hole with a steady rhythm. It made a sloshing, farting noise. Dobby’s penis rubbed against the marble. He pressed it so hard against the counter the rubbing made a squeaky sound. He thought of his time at the casino with Shane Dawson. So many lights, the clattering of poker chips, the ticking of the poker wheel, this made him pre-cum more. His pre-cum allowed his dick to enjoy a slip-n-slide of sorts. He thrusted his delicate, skinny hips more violently. He was going to give this counter his seed. He continued this for some time.

Dobby’s ears perked. He heard the locked doorknob’s metallic clanging. Then a knocking at the door.

“Dobby, you’ve been in there two hours now. What are you doing?”

It was Hannah Montanna. Dobby didn’t care. He was a wild and horny soul. A soul that would NOT be refused the right to please his insatiable Dobby-hole.

Then he heard a key enter the doorknob. The door swung open to reveal Hannah Montana with her arms crossed across her chest. She leered at Dobby, clearly unhappy with the house elf’s slutty behavior.

“Dobby, please go home” She said, exasperated. A Disney laugh track played in the background.

[five-rivers]

Danger First

Chapter 2

Heya @pocketramblr. I have no self-control.

.

Izuku expected his anxiety to subside, one way or another, once the exam was over.

As always, the universe set out to prove him wrong.

Home was more or less okay. But, for some reason, minor household repair issues started to bother him so much he spent the rest of weekend working on them

Then there was school, which was even more hellish than usual, despite being exactly the same as it had been since the sludge incident. Izuku was way too aware of how much of a threat everyone there was to him, specifically. Especially the teachers.

His hypervigilante state did keep him from getting poked (smacked) quite so much by the teachers, or cornered by 'fellow' students quite as much as usual, but it also led him to hide in the library storage room. He'd never be able to look at the librarian the same way again. Not knowing she kept multiple copies of books by anti-quirkless hate groups on hand.

And all through the week, he got nothing but silence from All Might.

But the end of the week came, and with it a letter from UA, which told him-

.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, FIRST PLACE?"

.

"I don't know, Nana, Banjo makes a good point."

"Don't take his side just because he was your predecessor. You all know a One for All holder would never resort to such devious- Yoichi, why are you making that face?"

"In an unjust world, bribery can be a tool for justice. I'm sure Eighth didn't have to, though."

"That's it, I'm not talking to any of you anymore."

.

"Anyway," said All Might, wiping blood from his mouth and glancing nervously at the other beachgoers. "Congratulations, young Midoriya."

Izuku felt his lip wobble. "You're not mad that I couldn't use One for All?"

"Not at all! Actually, in some ways this might be better. We'll have some time to experiment privately. And if you're in school when it finally turns on... well, we'll just say you're a late bloomer, alright?"

"Okay," sniffed Izuku, rubbing his eyes. "I just... I couldn't use it. What if-"

"Hey, hey, it's alright, my boy. No need to cry. You passed the entrance exam without using a quirk at all! You should be proud. Even with a quirk, it's an incredible accomplishment. Also, just so you know, I had nothing to do with the selection process. Just in case you were worried about favoritism."

Izuku sniffed and nodded.

.

"What a strangely specific denial."

"Uh, Banjo, usually I'd be reveling in the chaos, but I think Nana is seriously considering ghost murder right now. Maybe you shouldn't insult her kid anymore?"

"You and Hikage would protect me, right?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I'd sell you to Satan for one corn chip."

"So would I; it's been way too long since I've eaten. As long as it is Satan and not All for One, you've got my blessing."

.

"You certainly proved this old man wrong."

"You aren't old," protested Izuku.

"We'll have to agree to disagree on that," said All Might. "Here, sit down with me," he said, settling on the sand.

Izuku hurried to follow suit, and for a while, they both just watched the ocean. It was nice, today.

"I owe you an apology, young Midoriya."

"H-huh?"

"For what I said on that roof," said All Might, "and for what I... implied later."

"You already apologized for the roof, though?" said Izuku, confused. "I mean, that day..."

"That's what I'm talking about," said All Might. "I shouldn't have- The way I apologized, when I offered you One for All... It was like saying that you couldn't do it without a quirk, that you needed a quirk to 'fix' yourself and... well, obviously I was wrong. Quirk or not, you're going to be an amazing hero."

.

"Oh," said Banjo, "I can already tell this is going to be a problem once he finds out about Danger Sense. Gonna blow a hole right through his confidence."

"Maybe he won't find out?" suggested Nana, who'd wrestled her murderous impulses into submission. Temporarily. "Danger Sense is pretty low key."

"I feel like I should be offended..." said Hikage. "But if I got offended, that would be offensive to people who don't have quirks..."

"I don't know," said En. "If someone insulted your legs by saying they were so skinny it was like they weren't even there, would you being offended be offensive to people who don't have legs? Or would the original statement be the offensive one?"

"Somehow, I feel more offended after that."

.

"Oh," said Izuku. He felt himself crying again. "Are you, um. You're not going to- Are you- Do you want it back?" he whispered. "One for All?"

"No, no, of course not. You... There's no one I'd rather have it. I'm just... even if you didn't, you could be a hero. But I'm hoping... I'm hoping you'll keep it."

Izuku swallowed and nodded. All Might awkwardly raised his arm.

"Do you mind if I...?"

"Sure?" said Izuku, not entirely sure what he was asking.

All Might put his arm around Izuku and gave him a sort of sideways hug. Izuku leaned into it. It was the safest he'd felt since the entrance exam.

Because, surprise, surprise, that anxiety hadn't gone away.

"What did you say?"

"Oh! Uh... it isn't important, it's nothing."

"It didn't sound like nothing," said All Might, concerned.

"I, well, I, ever since the entrance exam... maybe even a little bit before? I've been really... jumpy? About everything. I think it's just because I'm a wreck, but..."

"Huh. Well, you know, that could be a facet of One for All."

"R-really?"

"After I got One for All, it seemed like it was easier for me to tell when people were in danger and needed help," said All Might. "S- A friend who knew about One for All used to joke it was my original quirk. But it was subtle and intermittent, not constant."

"Huh," said Izuku. "So... it might have been One for All all along? Trying to get me to help people?" He picked at his lower lip. "Maybe... I noticed a bunch of stuff I usually don't... I'm not sure I would have seen all the people in trouble during the exam."

.

"So much for not noticing-"

"His confidence... let him have it for at least a little while..."

"He seems to be taking it alright," said Yoichi, hopefully.

.

"I'm sure you would have helped them if you did notice, regardless," said All Might, "and that's what was really being measured, so my earlier point still stands."

Izuku nodded. "It would be really strange for a quirk to have two completely different applications like that."

"Yes, but One for All is a rather strange quirk, and I've seen odder split quirks." He fell silent for a moment. "I can't think of a way to test for it, though. Speaking of which, we should find some time to try and work on One for All before the school year starts. How do you feel about coming to UA after school?"

.

"Th-thank you for helping us with this, Recovery Girl!"

"It's no trouble, dear," said Recovery Girl. "I'd be here at this time, anyway. You wouldn't believe the amount of paperwork I have to go through. Just try not to break too many bones."

Izuku nodded vigorously, still somewhat in awe of being in the presence of not one but two incredible pro heroes. And at UA.

It was like living in a dream.

Except for the highly suspicious mostly-hidden wall panels and the very intense feeling of being watched through camera by an incredibly threatening being. It was fine.

"Alright, young Midoriya! Are you ready?"

"Y-yeah!"

"Then come at me, you zygote!"

.

Nana stared at her (former) student in despair. "Toshi... why... out of all the people..."

"So, you admit he can make bad decisions-"

"Bad and immoral are two different things."

"I think calling people zygotes is pretty immoral, actually..."

Silently, Nana agreed.

.

Izuku blinked at All Might- not because of the zygote thing!

... Okay, partially because of the zygote thing.

But mostly because he was still in his skinny, prone-to-coughing-up-blood form.

"Are you sure?" Izuku asked. "What if I..." he trailed off, blushing. What he was about to say sounded so stupid, and more than a little conceited, but...

"Hey, even like this, I'm much tougher than I look, young Midori- Ahem, I mean, zygote!"

"Toshinori, don't you think role-playing as Gran Torino is a little much?" asked Recovery Girl.

"Ah, do you think so?"

Recovery Girl shot All Might a truly terrifying look, but Izuku's mind was on something completely different.

"Is- is Toshinori your name?" he asked, awed.

Blood drained out of All Might's face, making him look more skeletal than usual. Should Izuku not have asked? Was it supposed to be secret? Oh no...

"Please tell me you haven't been training this boy for most of a year without him even knowing your name."

"Oops?" said All Might, faintly.

.

"He did do that, didn't he?" asked Yoichi, his eyebrows almost touching his hairline. "Nana, your boy is a disaster."

"All of us were disasters. We're still disasters."

"I'm not."

"Hikage, you spent most of your adult life living in the woods, completely isolated from humanity."

"I know, it was great."

"Unbelievable."

.

"Back to what we were talking about before," said Mr. Yagi (Mr. Yagi! Izuku knew All Might's name! And had permission to use it!) after Recovery Girl was done scolding him. "Focus on actually hitting me before worrying about accidentally hurting me. Today, I just want to get a baseline. Next time, we can work on basic punches and throws."

"So, do I just-?"

"Yep, just come right at me!"

.

The next hour consisted mainly of Izuku being thrown bodily into various padded surfaces. Despits this, according to Mr. Yagi, he was much better at dodging than expected. As a bonus, although he certainly felt sore and bruised, he didn't break any bones.

He also didn't manage to activate One for All. Not even a little bit.

Nor did he on any of the other days leading up to his first day as a student at UA.

.

Aizawa Shouta, down two nights of sleep and dreading the new batch of bright eyed hero hopefuls he'd be teaching- and crushing the dreams of- next week, glared blearily at a computer screen. Currently, it displayed a student's name, a quirk name, and the single least helpful quirk description he'd ever seen. Which was saying something, because he'd seen Hizashi's original quirk description.

Midoriya Izuku

Quirk: undetermined

Description: None.

I am either too tired or too sober to deal with this, decided Shouta. However, sleep simply wasn't on the table, and getting drunk was illogical. In that case, simply not dealing with it was the only option.

Nevertheless, he picked up his phone and called Nezu.

"Good evening, Aizawa!" said the internally chipper maybe-rodent. "Or should I say good morning?"

"Midoriya Izuku."

"Ah, you're browsing your class list, I see. Any thoughts about their potential?"

"Illogical." It would be, to make a call about a student's potential without meeting them first.

"Quite so!"

"Midoriya. Quirk," grunted Shouta, reminding him why he was calling.

"Ah, yes, he is a strange case. He's listed as quirkless in the registry."

That woke Shouta up, just a little. He'd seen a handful of documents for the quirkless over the years. If Midoriya was quirkless, his file should read N/A, not undetermined.

"What?"

"I have reason to believe that he might have been diagnosed in error," said Nezu. "I am still investigating. In the meantime, I would appreciate it if you kept an eye on him. Assuming, of course, that he isn't expelled!"

Shouta grunted and hung up. He minimized the window on his computer and pawed through his files until he found the entrance exam video for Midoriya.

A kid who passed the UA hero course practical entrance exam either entirely quirkless or with a subtle, stubborn, or invisible quirk on rescue points alone. A kid who seemed to run straight for danger on purpose (mostly on purpose, Shouta amended after seeing him collide with the invisible girl, coincidentally pushing her out of the way of some sort of water pressure quirk. There was just no way he could have known she was there). A kid who had almost certainly faced brutal quirk harassment since the time he was four and most likely possessed the self-confidence and trauma to match.

"Least he's good at dodging..." muttered Shouta. He rubbed at one grainy-feeling eye and pulled his sleeping bag closer around his shoulders. Kid wasn't all that bad at falling, either. Some light martial arts instruction, maybe?

He paused the video and reopened Midoriya's file, flipping to school and admission records and exam results. He usually didn't look closely at this part of the file, it was enough for him that the students passed, but, exceptions...

Speaking of exceptions, Midoriya's file was a mass of contradictions. Unusually high written test score that didn't correspond with middle school grades. Dozens of citations and black marks on his disciplinary record that should have kept him from even being invited to take the exam, but a letter of recommendation from All Might.

He frowned at the last one. There was no way...

He shook his head, and clicked on the link at the bottom of the file. It brought him to a herotube video about a year old. A hostage situation with a vaguely familiar middle schooler and slime-like villain. Also, a bunch of heroes, but none of them seemed to be addressing the suffocating child. Shouta felt his lips curl. Even if this was in the past...

Then Midoriya Izuku ran into the frame and tried to pull the other boy free, just seconds before All Might arrived and punched the villain so hard it started to rain. Then the video ended.

Alright, then.

Shouta's admittedly currently-less-than-razor-sharp mind presented him with two possibilities. One, Midoriya was All Might's secret child and All Might had bribed Nezu into letting him take the exams despite his less-than-stellar records. Two, this child had, with bloody fingernails, managed to claw a single spark of luck out of an otherwise bleak existence by impressing All Might enough that he got Nezu to ignore the otherwise damning records.

If the first, well, he had still passed the practical without use of any obvious quirk. He probably had some potential.

If the second... Shouta had been a hero long enough to recognize the circumstances that drove people to desperate, and sometimes unforgivable, acts. Dangling a single hope in front of someone only to snatch it away at the last minute...

Forget the maybe-quirk. This was the real conundrum of Midoriya Izuku.

The rat knew he wouldn't expel Midoriya with these stakes. It would be the height of irrationality.

(Even if he did turn out to be All Might's kid.)

What a pain.

He flipped through a few more profiles, quickly reviewing 1-B as well, before hitting redial on his phone.

"Calling again so soon?" asked Nezu with a squeaky chuckle.

"I want Monoma." He paused. "In my class," he elaborated.

"Oh? Whatever for?"

"If I'm going to have to figure out Midoriya's mystery quirk, I want to make it as easy for myself as possible."

There was silence on the other end of the like, and Shouta checked to see whether or not he'd hung up accidentally. He hadn't.

"I must say," said Nezu, finally, "I had not considered that solution. Depending on the mechanics of Monoma's quirk... I cannot think of any reason to deny your request."

That was a strange way of phrasing it.

"We'll exchange him with Bakugo, in that case."

"Not that I'm complaining," said Shouta, "but why him? Why not..." He racked his memory. "Mineta. He's got one of those body part quirks Kan likes."

Nezu chuckled again. "Normally, I would pick Mineta, but, by my calculations, a classroom that contained both Monoma and Bakugo would be demolished within thirty minutes of their arrival."

Shouta groaned. Why did they even let people like that in?

No, wait, he had an answer to that, actually.

"Forget a mouse, a dog, or a bear," said Shouta. "You're a sadist."

"Some certainly think so! But one thing's for sure! I'm the principal!"

.

The door to class 1-A sure was big... and intimidating... and radiating a faint sense of malaise. But, then, Izuku's middle school classroom had done far worse, so...

He opened the door. No Kacchan. Thank goodness. He must be in the class B, then, because there was no way he'd let Izuku beat him to school.

The strict boy from the entrance exam was there, though, and, oh, dear, he'd noticed Izuku and was coming right for him.

(Oh, gosh, and the invisible girl was here, too. He felt himself blushing furiously.)

Still better than Kacchan.

"Hello!" he said, rather loudly. "I'm from Somei Private Academy! My name is Iida Tenya!"

"Oh, uh, I- I'm from Aldera Middle School..." said Izuku. Was stating the name of your middle school a normal thing? He hadn't read about this in any manga... "I'm Midoriya Izuku."

"Pleased to meet you!" He moved his arm in a rather robotic fashion, taking a deep breath.

Oh, no, was he about to yell at Izuku again?

.

"Danger Sense isn't even going off right now, Izuku," said Yoichi, despairingly. "Why are you still so nervous?"

"Maybe we never really gave him Danger Sense after all, and it was his natural anxiety the whole time."

"Please stop denigrating my quirk."

.

"Midoriya... you... you perceived the true nature of the practical exam. Meanwhile, I was blind! I misjudged you! I hate to admit it, but you were the superior candidate."

Oh, that was nice, but... "I didn't perceive anything, though. I had no idea rescue points were a thing. I was mostly just trying not to die."

"Ah! That curly hair! It's Midoriya!"

"Oh! Um, Uraraka?" Please, please, let him have remembered her name right.

"Yeah!" said Uraraka, smiling brightly.

Augh! Too cute!

"I'm so glad you're in my class! I was so worried I wouldn't know anyone here."

"Y-yeah. T-this is Iida, by the way," said Izuku, trying to get attention off of himself.

"Nice to meet you, Iida."

"It's nice to meet you as well, Uraraka!"

"Yeah! So, we've got the entrance ceremony and guidance sessions today, right? I wonder who our teacher will be- They're all supposed to be pro heroes, right?"

"Um," started Izuku, "that-"

"If you're here to socialize, then get out."

.

"That's a teacher, huh," said Yoichi.

"Why are you saying that like you've never seen one before?" asked Banjo.

"I've seen teachers before," said Yoichi. "I've seen all of your teachers. The ones you've had while you had One for All."

"Okay, now you're saying that like you've never had teachers."

"Yeah, that is kind of strange, Yoichi," said Nana.

"I had professors," said Yoichi.

"Still weird."

"I went to college. And med school."

"Did you graduate?" asked En, interested.

"No."

"Why not?"

"My brother kidnapped me, kept me in a vault for a while, and then I died."

"I didn't know what I expected," said En, shaking his head.

"Wait, weren't there several years between the vault and the whole dying thing."

"Yeah, but I'm ignoring them."

"Because?" Banjo hooked his thumb over his shoulder at Second and Third.

"Yep," said Yoichi.

.

"Todoroki. You were the highest scorer on the Recommendation Exam. See how far you can throw this ball with your quirk. Stay in the circle. Anything else goes."

A boy with white and red hair stepped forward, scowling faintly. He took the ball and stared at it.

"Time is valuable, Todoroki."

And then there was a glacier.

Izuku felt his jaw drop. How was he supposed to compete with that?

.

"My name is Monoma," said a blonde boy, offering his hand.

Izuku stared at it a moment before remembering handshakes were a thing.

"Midoriya," he said.

Monoma then offered his hand to Uraraka and Iida as well. "I look forward to experiencing UA's superior brand of education with you," he said.

Izuku laughed nervously. "You're confident," he said, glancing at the track where two others students were doing sprints. It would be their turn soon.

"But of course!" Monoma struck a sort of pose, fingers splayed out on his chest. "I welcome this sort of challenge, this opportunity to prove myself! It just goes to show, UA only accepts the best of the best!"

Monoma was called away to the starting line a moment later. "Two good, one dud," he mumbled under his breath.

What did that mean?

Then Monoma was at the starting line, and he was using Iida's quirk. Did he have a copy quirk? That was so cool!

... Is that what he meant by good and dud? Did he... did he see that Izuku didn't have a quirk? Oh, no... What if he told everyone? Even if people were being nice to him now...

"What's wrong?" asked Uraraka.

"U-um," said Izuku. "Nothing?"

.

"Oh, gosh," said Yoichi, crying. "I just want to wrap him up in a warm blanket. You deserve friends."

"Yeah, kid, it'll be okay," said Banjo. "Bakugo's just a freak. And so was your whole school. Place gave me MLA flashbacks."

"Sure glad they aren't around anymore," agreed En.

.

All in all... Izuku didn't do terribly. Especially given that he didn't actually have a quirk, and this was a quirk assessment. At least, he didn't think he did. At least, he hadn't tripped or hurt himself.

It had, in fact, been a rather good day. No Kacchan. No bullies. The teacher had clear standards and requirements, and he stated them up front.

He had been getting... bad vibes... from the short, purple-haired kid, and he'd noticed other people frowning at him, especially the girls. But he hadn't been able to put his finger on why, even though he had been watching him carefully during his turns.

Other than that...

UA really was the best.

"By the way, no one's getting expelled. It was a logical ruse."

Monoma raised his hand.

"What is it?"

"I must object!" said Monoma.

"You... want someone to be expelled?"

"In fact, I insist! To allow this to continue would blemish the reputation of the school."

"Well said, Monoma!" exclaimed Iida. "Living up to the reputation of UA and all the alumni who have come before us is a duty of us students! But what blemish are you talking about? Surely, as Mr. Aizawa said, we all went plus ultra!"

"Maybe so, but my concern has more to do with moral standards!"

"If you kids keep going like this, I'm just going to go to sleep. You're giving me a headache."

Izuku caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and a wave of unease went through him. He turned to see-

"Hey! What are you doing?" he demanded, shocked and more than a little horrified.

Once again, he was mortally embarrassed on behalf of the invisible girl.

"I wasn't doing anything!" said the small purple boy.

"You were looking up her skirt!"

"It isn't like there's anything to see!"

The invisible girl gasped and quickly moved away. "Gross!" she said. "That's terrible!"

"See? See?" said Monoma, wildly. "This is what I'm talking about!"

"Next time," said Aizawa, "get to the point faster. Time is valuable. Mineta."

"What?"

"You're expelled."

"What? You can't do that!"

"Go complain to Nezu."

UA really was the best.

"Midoriya."

Okay, never mind. He was doomed. Completely doomed.

"Monoma. I want to talk to you after class. The rest of you are dismissed."

Midoriya stood nervously as Uraraka and Iida bid him goodbye. Was this it? Was Aizawa going to expel him after all? At least it wasn't in front of absolutely everyone... But what was Monoma doing here?

Speaking of which, Monoma looked nervous, too... Was he okay? Surely, Aizawa wasn't going to expel him, too.

"Is this about me using other people's quirks?" demanded Monoma. "Because you said anything goes! I wasn't cheating. You can't expel me!"

Oh. There was some trauma there. Izuku could tell. Did people make fun of him for his quirk?

"I'm not going to expel you," said Aizawa, looking up at them from where he laid in his sleeping bag in the grass. He almost looked like he was praying for patience. "I need to ask you some questions about your quirk. For future reference and to better serve your needs as a student. I know how tricky meta quirks can be."

"Oh," said Monoma, slightly deflating. Then he sent a curious glance at Midoriya. "Is he-?"

"His matter is slightly more sensitive. If you would like me to send him away while we talk, I can do that."

"No, no, it's fine." Monoma sniffed, his eyes suspiciously wet. "What's the question?"

"You copy quirks through DNA contact. Do you decide when to activate passive quirks you copy, or can you choose?"

"I can choose, as long as it's within my time limit."

"When you first make contact, can you tell what quirk a person has?"

Monoma shook his head. "No, sir, I have to activate it to do that, so I can get duds- oh, that is to say, quirks I can't use because I don't have the proper activation conditions, like Midoriya's. He's got some kind of stockpile. I can get duds without realizing it. But I can tell whether or not someone has a quirk."

"Were you able to test all your classmates' quirks today?"

"Not everyone, yet," said Monoma. "I usually try to avoid more extreme mutation quirks outside of controlled conditions."

Aizawa's head bobbed up and down minutely. "Great. That should be enough for now. You're dismissed."

"Yes, sir! I look forward to seeing your superior lesson plans tomorrow!" He paused. "Midoriya."

"H-have a good day, Monoma."

Monoma had felt One for All! What a relief. Izuku had been half worried he'd lost it somehow.

But why did Aizawa want him?

"Um, sir?" he asked. Sort of asked. 'Sir' alone wasn't a question, even if it was said in an inquisitive tone.

Aizawa's eyes turned red, and his hair started floating. Izuku felt... Huh. Calmer, somehow? He was no longer vaguely aware of how the light post over there could fall on him, or any of the other many minor dangers surround him and oh, gosh, he was no longer aware of the dangers! How was he supposed to stay safe like this, when he felt like he'd been blindfolded?

Aizawa blinked. Everything came back.

"Wow," said Izuku. "That was so cool! Was that your quirk? Is it an emotional quirk? It made me feel calmer at first, but then I was, I don't know, too calm, and it made me anxious, but then-"

"Problem child," said Aizawa, and Izuku froze at the reprimand. "What I just did was erase your quirk."

Erase?

His quirk?

"Oh my gosh! You're Eraserhead! I'm a huge fan!"

Aizawa closed his eyes. Was he counting? No? Did he fall asleep?

"You do know you're listed as quirkless, right?"

"Yes?"

"But you just had a reaction to my quirk that a quirkless person definitely should not have."

"O-oh?"

"Combined with Monoma's ability to sense your quirk, I'd say you are not, in fact, quirkless."

"But I have the toe joint?" Izuku wasn't sure why he'd said that. He shouldn't be arguing against this, because, as Aizawa had said, he did have a quirk. It just wasn't exactly his.

"Yeah, that's an old wives' tale."

"Really?"

"As real as my quirk counselor license. Whoever diagnosed you was a quack."

"O-oh."

"My initial impression from your entrance exam video is that you might have a sensory quirk of some kind. On the other hand, we should take Monoma's assessment into account, and consider stockpiles. Either way, I would like to schedule some time to test things out with you."

"You- You'd do that? For me? I mean, I don't want to be a bother-"

"This is literally my job."

"It... yeah, I guess so." His previous teachers would have considered it a bother. Except Mr. Yagi, but Mr. Yagi wasn't really a teacher. He was more of a... a mentor.

(Or a dad.)

(Oh, no, he did not just think that. Bad. Bad brain. Bad brain that read too much All Might RPF as a pre-teen.)

"Besides, even if your quirk doesn't have many applications in hero work, it will be useful for you to know what it is and how it affects you." Aizawa yawned. "Also, don't tell your class that I'm Eraserhead."

"O-okay," said Izuku. "Of course, sir, but... why?"

"I have two full time jobs. I get my entertainment where I can. You can go now. We'll schedule tomorrow."

Izuku nodded, and Aizawa just... zipped his sleeping bag the rest of the way closed and rolled over.

Was... was he just going to go to sleep here? In the middle of the field.

"Um? Mr. Aizawa?"

A grunt came from the sleeping bag.

"This is... isn't this kind of a dangerous place to sleep?"

"Go home, problem child."

"... okay."

[hinatas-sunshine]

Synopsis: Your boyfriend (Bokuto, Lev, Oikawa) is like a giant toddler when you’re involved

Genre: Fluff

A/N: Hi guys! I don’t think people really read these so I just wanna say Requests are Open, KITHES ❤️

Bokuto:

• You knew your boyfriend was a little childish but right now as he wines at you, you smacked your forehead

“Please let go to the store with you!”

“Bo, you can’t! You should stay here and shower you’re all stinky from practice!”

• He pouted at you calling him stinky

“I’ll shower fast and then can we go?”

• He gave you his puppy dog eyes before you screwed your eyes shut to not look, but when he wrapped his arms around you-

“Fine!”

• He jumped excitedly kissing you before running off making you smile

• You pulled out your list and looked around the house, trying to think of more things you might need but forgot

• Once Bokuto came back down he smiled

“Ready? Let’s go!”

• Dragging you out, you followed laughing at how excited he was. You never usually took him to the store because you would go when he had practice but today you were busier so settled for later in the day

• As you two entered the big store you smiled at how big his eyes went before you grabbed a shopping basket

• Automatically Bokuto followed you wherever you went

• It wasn’t until you got to the fruit isle that you looked around, your boyfriend not behind you anymore

• You smacked your forehead sighing

“I should probably go look for him... he’ll get sad if he’s lost for too long.”

• While you looked for your boyfriend, he was settled on the floor, hugging his legs to his chest at amazement of the little Owl figurine that held a little bowl for keys and such

• He grabbed a box

“Y/n can we get one!”

• You were gone... now he was scared and looking around frantically for you hugging the box with the owl figure inside to his chest

“Y/n?”

• He started walking trying his best to find you but couldn’t, a pout starting to form on his face, his Spikey hair now deflating at the thought that he lost you

• As you looked around you heard the intercom speaker go on

“L/n Y/n, your boyfriend is waiting for you at the front of the store, I repeat, L/n Y/n, your boyfriend is waiting for you at the front of the store.”

• You giggled, of course someone found your boyfriend and asked him what was wrong

• You walked over to him, seeing him hugging a box sadly looking down at his shoes

• Holding your basket in one hand and brushing his hair up, you leaned down you look at him smiling

“Hi baby, you get lost?”

• He automatically lit up and smiled at you

“You found me! Look at this!”

• He showed you the small owl figurine, to which you smiled at him nodding to let him know you’ll get it

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿

Atsumu: So... now Bokuto is scared of going to the store?

• Bokuto nodded at his team mate, while you laughed

Sakusa: That’s to be expected...

Bokuto: Sakusa :(

• You hugged Bokuto making his smiled again while Sakusa laughed silently too about the story

“I swear, one second I was looking at the cool owl and the next y/n was gone!”

“She left you on purpose.”

“Y/n?!”

“Shut up corn head!”

Lev:

“Y/n, I need you to find a way to calm your boyfriend.”

• You looked at Kuroo with a confused face before seeing your boyfriend running around the gym chasing Inuoka

“Give it back!”

“No!”

“But that ball is mine!”

“It doesn’t have your name on it!”

• You sighed before walking into the Gym, This caused Lev to take a U turn and grab onto you

“Well at least I have Y/n! She’s mine!”

• You smiled patting your boyfriends head placing a kiss on his cheek

• He gasped in excitement - although you found this extremely adorable he seemed a little hyper

“What’d you eat today Lev?”

“Candy! I ate a lot of it! I went to the store earlier to buy snacks and I saw a bunch of candy on sale!”

• The whole team groaned, Lev was sugar high

• You sigh at your boyfriend in front of you trembling with excitement

“You know if you eat too much candy you’ll get a cavity.”

• He smiled and shook his head

“I don’t get cavities!”

• Everyone was now looking at him like he grew two head, Yaku marching up to him and grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him

“Are you an idiot?! I hope you get a cavity you dumb beanpole!”

• Lev dizzily hid behind you while you looked back at him

“He’s right my love, and your tooth could get a hole in your tooth.”

• His eyes widened staring at you

“Does that mean if I have holes in my teeth you wouldn’t kiss me anymore?”

“Lev n-“

“Yeah! And she’ll come date me because I don’t have holes in my teeth!”

“Shut up Yamamoto.”

• You shook your head but your boyfriend was already pouting at you, you placed a gentle kiss on his nose

“Y/n from now on I won’t eat candy for you!”

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿

“So now... he doesn’t eat candy?”

• You shook your head looking at the young first years, your own second year boyfriend being kicked around by Kenma now

“He does, he had a secret stash I found a month after the incident but I don’t tell him I know because he’ll probably cry.”

• The first years nodded and tried to understand but they really didn’t

“Yeah I don’t get it either, he made that whole thing up himself but whatever.”

• At the pounding of feet of the gym floor you look over only to be attacked in a hug by your boyfriend

“Y/nnnnn! Stop paying attention to them and pay attention to meeeee!”

“Okay okay.... you big baby.”

Oikawa:

• Right now you were being dragged down the hall to the gym by Iwaizumi

“Where are we going Iwa?!”

“Where are we going?! YOU are going to the gym to fix your boyfriend!”

“Fix my- WHAT DO YOU MEAN?”

• He stopped and raised his eyebrow at you

“You two didn’t break up?”

• Your heart fell at the thought, making you worry

“Didn’t- no we didn’t break up? Is he going to?”

“He was running around the gym screaming he’s not practicing because you don’t love him anymore?”

“Why would he say that?”

• Iwa shrugged as you thought back on your day, you two were fine earlier? He was walking you to class, he kept calling you cute, and you gave him a few kisses but-

“Oh my gosh...”

“What?”

“I know what it was it was-“

✿ *Earlier That Day* ✿

“Y/n-Chan~!”

• You stopped your walk to school to see your boyfriend jogging up to you, wrapping his arm around your shoulder

“Hi my love, how was the rest of your day yesterday?”

“Good! I went to get my haircut, got home and took care of my nephew, I taught him a few new tricks to playing volleyball!”

• You smiled, you loved how he took the time to teach his nephew Volleyball

“Oh! Last time I saw him he was kind of dreading playing because he wanted to play his new game, how’d he go this time?”

• Oikawa pouted at you before replying

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿

• Iwaizumi face palmed

“So he’s upset because-“

“Because I didn’t compliment his haircut and went on to ask about his nephew.”

• Iwa sighed at this and shook his head

“I’m sorry, I thought you broke up because he said ‘she cares about him more than me’ but I guess it wasn’t your fault.”

• As you two entered the gym Kunimi smiled at you and waved shyly while Kindaichi glared at you, you sighed

• I guess that they all are upset with me, you thought as Mattsun and Makki approached you

Makki: Why is flattykawa pouting

Mattsun: Yeah I cant take it anymore if he blows his nose in my shirt one more time I’m curb stomping him 😘

• You laughed lightly before explaining the situation to them making Makki nod and Mattsun grumble in annoyance

• You patted his shoulder and saw a sulking Oikawa in the corner, head in his knees that are hugged to his chest and face looking at the wall

• You walked up to him and hugged him from behind

“I like your haircut my love.”

• Oikawa beamed, knocking you back as he stood up, you looked at him smirking down at you

“I know huh? It’s really nice, of course you’d like my haircut-“

• You kicked his legs making him fall, the boys now cackling at their captain groaning on the floor

“Say I don’t love you again and I’ll get Mattsun to curb stomp you.”

Mattsun: YEAH! WHAT SHE SAID!

• Oikawa laughed lightly before you crawled over placing a kiss on his cheek

“Because I love you, I don’t wanna hear you say I don’t.”

• He sat up carefully grabbing your face, and kissing you

“Ewwww!”

• You giggled looking to see Mattsun and Makki shielding the first years eyes and Iwa groaning at the two of you

“You’re annoying shittykawa.”

“Am not!”

“You really are, I was dragged here for this.”

“Y/n! ☹️”

• You and Iwa got an earful of complaining that day on the walk home from school :p

[jeeperso]

D&D Quotes Without Context

Ravenloft, Hazlan Arc part 2

"I’ll sell this ruby." Marshall decides to keep an eye on Jonni. “What? I was’t gonna use it to hit on revolutionary girl!” Several stone arches leading nowhere, strange cubes, a motar and pestel. "Wizards showing off on who has the most over the top ride. sigh" "Uhm...I'll wait outside. Not going inside a giant head's mouth." "Totally understandable." "Feel free to make yourself at home by the way, we got water, wine, ruminating powder." OOC: Grab some ruminating powder, we can make out like bandits in other domains. It's raining desiccated corpses. Jonni: “Not me.” Marshal grabs something sturdy to use as cover to help people escape the raining men. Jonni uses Marshall as something sturdy. "DIBS I CALL DIBS!" "I'm going to assume this is a Necromancer thing and not comment." "I've been working on a biodome project outside town, I'm trying to restore life to this land, unfortunately I require kind of a lot of corpses to do it." "Before he died, he feared Hazlik grading his project. It is pleasing death is no escape for him." OOC: Ooo, we could join a cult! They usually have food! And weird sex acts! You meet two lovely ladies at the local tavern. “Ladies,” Jonni says. “I made the corpse that made all those other corpses.” "Neat." “What I’m saing is, now that you’re here, my fireball is not the hottest thing in the room.” "So, our place or yours?" Edmund will, though he would contact Jonni and Marshall with his whispering voices to see if they were free. You hear passionate moans for about ten minutes... ”Okay, think I wore them out. Lemme get cleaned up.” Edmund: *covers his face* “You got the cash, we got the crash.” "JUST NORMAL SIZED RATS YOU'LL BE FINE." “So… burn down the building and walk away?” "Jonni. You can't burn down every problem." "That is not a challenge." Jonni: “I’m sure something will survive the fire.” “I say we unlock the basement, deal with that first. Work our way up. Otherwise it’s just gonna annoyingly taunt us every time we kill its minions." "Did I just hear the door ominously slam and lock?" [sarcasm] “Oh, yeah, that’s gonna stop us.” ...the second you touch the door, a bolt of electricity goes through you. "Okay... that's more than Rat nonsense." “Aaaand talking’s out the window,” Jonni says hitting the door with Eldritch Blast. The door is made of heavy steel, your blasts hit it, but only dent it. "They have very sturdy doors in this farm..." As you blast a hole in the wall, you see something tumble out of the wall, it looks like a heavily gnawed skeleton. There is also a small, loaded crossbow. “Nyx, got you a present!l" Gorbash: "If we see that couple again I'm going to beat one of them to death with the other." The light also lets you see the rats for the first time. And their flowing craniums which shows their brains. Gorbash: "I think I remember these things... sort of...They taste decent spit-roasted." You hear a voice in your collective head. YOU NOT LEAVE. MEAT. HUNGRY. WE PLAY. THEN YOU DIE. LIKE OTHERS BEFORE YOU. Jonni: “We play. You burn.” "They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But I...I will be worse. Rip and tear, until it is done." “I’m telling you, we burn down any house we aren’t familiar with. It’s the only way to be sure.” "Next time I say a job with just rats will be simple, please someone remind me about this incident." Jonni uses the Create Campfire cantrip 147 times. They blink, then push back you [sic], seeing the house burning to the ground. "Good news...you don't have to worry about rats, or dust." "Um. you probably wont accept 'they made us do it' as an excuse will you?" Marchal: "Enh." *gesture with side eye at Jonni* “You may live.” "Oh we've been dead inside for years." "The rats would breed an army to wipe out every first level commoner in 10 KM." Edmund:"Gorbash...you're not going to eat that, are you?" Gorbash: "I'm feeling nostalgic recently." Edmund: "It might have a parasite!" Marshal: "Gorbash can eat my cooking. Any parasite that survives his stomach deserves living there." "How bad could a mill slug be?" OOC: Makes you run out of cards. "Doing the right thing is its own reward.........when an actual reward isn't possible..." Jonni: "Nerd." "And..-Jonni got to burn down a house...so its cathartic." Jonni: "Okay, now that is a reward.” "I say we check out the bulletin about losing contact with a nearby farm, maybe it will turn out to be this farm and thus easy. Wait, forgot I said that. By saying that I just jinxed us, that is how it has been going lately." Jonni knocks. “We are powerful wandering troubleshooters here about your posting. If anything here is trying to use you to lure us here, say so now or your house and lives are forfeit.” "She's had a ... rough day." Jonni blows up a near by stump. “How big and what does it do? Fire breath? Lightning Vision? Ice farts?” "How much salt do you have?" "70 feet long from tip to tip. And its obsessed with my windmill." "Sounds like your help will be greatly appred-- 70 feet!?" “Gonna need a lot of salt.” "That is the 2nd biggest slug I've ever heard of." "Fecking thing comes over and tries to mate with it every time I run it." "I can see how an amorous 70 foot slug can put a damper in your work..." "That sounds incredibly troublesome and very disturbing to witness." “Halflings are DTF. Shame she’s married to a dude.” "Like I noped out of there after they served me a wad of butter between two slices of bread." "Ah, the diet moon waffle." "So...buttered toast?" "No like a hamburger with a huge stick of butter in the middle." "And that's a DIET moon waffle?" "The proper moon waffle requires thick salted caramel and what is called liquid smoke." OOC: Alright, everyone who got below a 13, you get a strange and disturbing dream. “No! No I can’t. Not again! No more Big Bang Theory marathons!” "I've heard of nightmares from eating food...but TALKING about food giving nightmares?" "Standard Fundertainment advertising space." "...they want us to know we have made enemies of their entire species now." "They can get in line." OOC: First you get the ruminating powder, then you get the power, then Jonni gets the women. OOC: Its ravenloft, like 90% of the houses are creepy. OOC: Then we just classify it as urban renewal project. OOC: Bad news, Jonni is tired. Good news. Her favorite toy fully recharged. OOC: .... oh god I just got it. Instead of a Toe with corns.. its a corn with toes...

[alarawriting]

52 Project #4: Rand Mart

All I wanted to do was buy a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, and ham. But I’d been to four cash registers already, and no one had been willing to ring me up yet.

The first cashier – a girl with dyed black hair, a tattoo of a dove on her cheek, and nose and tongue piercings – informed me that she’d ring up my bread, but she was morally opposed to the consumption of animal products, so the conscience clause permitted her to refuse to ring up my milk and ham. The dark-skinned woman with a red dot on her forehead, at the next cash register, would ring up my ham and bread, but told me that the American milk industry was unconscionably cruel to cows, who were beloved in the eyes of Brahma. The woman with the light blue scarf around her mouth, nose and hair, at the third register, was willing to ring up the bread and milk, but thought that pigs were unclean and their meat banned by the Prophet. And the fourth cashier, a bearded man with a yarmulke, wouldn’t ring up any of my goods, because it was Saturday.

There was a self-service lane, of course, but it wrapped around the entire cash register area with about forty people queued up in it because no one wanted to go to a cashier-operated register. I’d thought that the fact that so few people were lined up at the registers meant that I’d get through the line quickly. I should have known better.

There were two other cash registers open. On one, a painfully thin woman was haranguing a slightly overweight woman over her choice of sodas. “High fructose corn syrup is pure poison!” she was shouting. “It’s murder! If I let you buy those Sprites I might as well be putting a gun to your head!” At the last cashier-operated register, the clean-cut young man behind the counter was ringing everyone up for all their products… as long as they accepted Christ as their personal lord and savior.

Screw this. I abandoned my groceries in one of the many, many baskets set outside the cash registers for exactly that purpose. The baskets were overflowing. I wondered how the supermarkets made any money anymore.

And then I did what I’d sworn I’d never do again. I got in my car, and I drove to Rand Mart.

***

Rand Mart was infamous for being a terrible employer. It abused its employees, forcing them to work unpaid overtime, failing to give them health care coverage, busted any attempt to unionize, and fired them for absenteeism if they were ever sick at all. I wouldn’t have been caught dead there under any other circumstances. But I wasn’t willing to lie my way into the Christian-only grocery stores, and the service at the secular grocery store was getting steadily worse.

Ever since the Conscience Clause Laws, created originally to allow pharmacists to get out of filling prescriptions for drugs whose purposes their religions disapproved of, were expanded by Supreme Court decision to allow any person to refuse any duty in the course of their work, provided that they had a “heartfelt moral objection” to performing it… more and more people were discovering the joys of sticking it to their employers (and customers) by developing heartfelt moral objections to any number of things. Their employers weren’t allowed to fire them for it, either.

Originally it had been based on religion, until the vegans sued, claiming that just because their belief that meat was murder was not based on the teachings of a god, it was no less heartfelt or moral. The Supremes bought that, deciding that when the Founding Fathers said that Congress should establish no religion, which had been extended to Congress not infringing on any religion, that any heartfelt moral belief counted as a religion for the purposes of not being infringed on, because it wasn’t the business of the law to decide what was and was not a religion.

Corporations weren’t allowed to practice religious discrimination in hiring unless their own heartfelt moral beliefs would be compromised. So the Christian-only stores could get away with hiring only Christians – which had made them very, very popular lately, even though they’d only let Christians shop there, because most Americans are Christian at least in name and most Christians didn’t have a religious objection to selling anyone anything, as long as it couldn’t be used to allow women to enjoy sex without guilt. But a secular store couldn’t demand that its employees actually do their jobs, because no one had a heartfelt moral belief that employees should do work, apparently.

Except for Rand Mart.

Rand Mart had successfully won the right to discriminate against any employee of any religion who wouldn’t do their job on the grounds that their heartfelt moral belief was Objectivism. They believed (heartfeltedly and morally, it seemed) that the government should not interfere in contractual matters between employee and employer, or consumer and vendor, and that therefore they had the right to sign their employees to contracts that stated that they accepted the inability to raise a religious objection to anything as a condition of employment, and make it stick. They used the Hobby Lobby case as precedent along with the Conscience Clause decision to prove that a corporation had the rights to adhere to the heartfelt moral beliefs of its owners even if doing so trampled on the rights of its employees.

As a result, you could get absolutely anything at Rand Mart that they felt they’d make money on selling to you, and no one could raise any sort of objection. Guns? Sure! The Second Amendment and the Conscience Clause meant that they didn’t have to do background checks, because that was government interference with their relationship with their customer, and they believed they shouldn’t have to abide by that rule. Abortifacients? You betcha! They weren’t the only ones – sex shops frequently invoked their heartfelt belief in the right of all humans to sexual pleasure and control over their own bodies to sell things like birth control, Plan B, and actual abortion drugs, without prescriptions, and no one could really stop them because they had the names of everyone who’d ever used a credit card to buy sex merchandise, which included most of the fine, upstanding citizens who tended to protest abortion clinics. But Rand Mart was the one you would go to if you didn’t want to walk through displays of lingerie and dildos to get the pill. Marijuana? Rand Mart didn’t believe in anti-drug laws, and while they were sane enough not to provoke the government on stuff like meth and heroin, they sold weed quite openly, and the Feds were more likely to bust a legal California grower of the medical grade stuff than Rand Mart.

Obviously, given their willingness to sell such culturally controversial stuff, you could get any of the basics at Rand-Mart as well, and none of their employees were allowed to refuse to sell to you. So I drove over there, because I really, really wanted my bread, ham and milk.

As usual, Rand Mart’s parking lot was a zoo. True confession time: this wasn’t the first time I’d been driven to have to go to the place. Every time I went here I swore I’d never do it again, and while my abhorrence of their treatment of employees was one reason, the behavior of the other customers was another. Pedestrians were everywhere, because why should they have to follow rules like the presence of crosswalk markings to make life convenient for drivers? They had the right to walk and they were going to walk, dammit. This, of course, made the drivers of the other cars frustrated, and when you considered how tiny the parking spots were and how quickly they got snapped up, you had frustrated, angry drivers rapidly turning into slavering, starving beasts who’d savage each other for a parking spot. Road rage deaths were not unheard of in Rand Mart parking lots, including incidents where folks used their brand new Rand Mart guns to put a hole in a fellow shopper for fender bender accidents caused by overeagerness to take a parking spot. I parked all the way out at the end of the lot and walked, careful to avoid the cars who were taking out their aggression against the thick clouds of pedestrians in front of the store by nearly running down the ones walking to or from their cars.

The way Rand Mart is laid out, you have to walk through an entire aisle of really cheap impulse buys and sales items before you can even get into the store proper. Then the groceries are all the way on the other side. Shoppers inside Rand Mart are every bit as considerate as the ones outside, which is to say, I had to dodge a lot of folks who were walking straight at me as if I wasn’t even there, or as if they wanted to play Store Aisle Chicken. I was really, really glad I needed so few things and didn’t need to push a cart, because there were so many endcaps and stands of merchandise and random pallets of restock that I couldn’t see how a cart could get through half the aisles.

I plugged my metaphorical ears to the siren song of really cheap electronics, and really cheap DVDs, and really cheap winter jackets, and really cheap kitchen appliances. (I’m a bachelor. I don’t really cook. I do, however, make a lot of use of rice cookers, and toaster ovens, and single-serve coffee machines, and I own lots and lots of other kitchen appliances that promise to pretty much make my food for me, despite which I still never use the damned things.) In what seemed like a long and peril-fraught journey, but was actually probably about three or four minutes, I got to the grocery aisles and started looking for the stuff I’d come for.

And then I ran into Emily. Wearing a Rand Mart uniform, and stocking yogurt cups onto the shelves.

Emily used to be my manager. I work in IT, where the controversies are few; as long as we don’t hire any Amish dudes, we’re not likely to get saddled with deadweight. However, the hours are long, and Emily decided she wanted a new career that would let her spend more time with her young son, so last I’d heard, she’d opened a day care. Considering that this was Saturday, I supposed it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that this was her second job, but Rand Mart was infamous for giving their front line employees really egregiously varying schedules with totally inconsistent amounts and times for hours, so they weren’t generally compatible with having, or being, a second job. “Hey, Emily!” I said. “How’s life been treating you?”

“Oh, hey, Brad. You’re looking pretty stressed. They giving you a hard time at work?”

“Oh, no, no, I’m just stressed because I had to come to this place,” I said. “Six cashiers at the Allfood, and none of them willing to ring up a simple purchase of ham, milk and bread.”

“Don’t I know it,” Emily said. “The other day I was in Curtains and More with my son, just trying to get him some new bedsheets, and they practically threw me out of the store because I wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. I told them I don’t wear it because my circulation’s not great and my fingers swell up, but they didn’t believe me. I had to show them my wedding picture in my wallet before I could buy a damned thing, because they thought I was an unwed mother, and that’s sinful. Do you know every single employee in that place is a pregnant woman?”

“What, do they fire them if they’re not pregnant?”

“The owner’s into some odd Christian sect where you’re supposed to have as many babies for the Lord as possible. So I guess they’re not always pregnant, but they’re always either pregnant, on maternity leave, or they’ve got a little baby. It’s crazy.”

Her story reminded me that I needed to get cups for my coffee machine, and that as far as I knew coffee wasn’t against anyone’s religion. Maybe I’d drop by Curtains and More myself. I was a single guy without any kids, so I figured I wouldn’t run into the problems Emily had. “Are they one of those places where you have to be Christian to get in?”

“Oh, no, no. That’s what tripped me up; I was completely not expecting to run into an issue like that. They looked secular.”

“So why’re you working here at Rand Mart anyway? Still doing the daycare thing?”

She shook her head sadly. “No… I couldn’t keep it going. I hired a couple of extra workers, trying to expand – you know, the state’s very strict about how many children you can have per working adult. Well, it turned out that one of them had a strong Christian belief in ‘spare the rod, spoil the child.’ Apparently it’s a central tenet of her religion that you have to beat kids.”

“Oh my god. Really?”

“Yup. Obviously I couldn’t let her anywhere near the kids – she made it clear that if she saw them engaging in bad behavior, she had to follow her moral beliefs on how to ‘train them up’, rather than my instructions. Well, I could have lost my license for allowing any corporal punishment at all on my premises, so I couldn’t let her anywhere near the kids, but I couldn’t fire her, because Conscience Clause. So I had her running errands, but what I really had needed was someone to watch kids. Without being able to take on the extra kids that her watching them would have allowed me to take, I couldn’t afford her salary.”

I shook my head. “Unreal.”

“I managed to eventually fire her for taking too long to run her errands, but I had to document it for months so she couldn’t claim it was an illegal termination on religious grounds. By then it was too late – I was too far into the red to recover. I had to declare bankruptcy. I couldn’t get hired back into IT management because I guess making a sudden shift into running a day care made me look flaky? Or out of touch, anyway. So, you know, I’m still looking, but I’ve got to pay the bills, so…” She shrugged. “Here I am.”

“That sucks. I’ll check the internal postings, see if there are any openings at the company. I’m sure they’d love to have you back.”

“That’d be great,” she said. “But listen, I gotta finish this and clock my task completion time so they don’t dock me for excessive inefficiency.”

“Oh, yeah, I understand. I gotta find my groceries, myself. See you around!”

“Sure, see you,” she said, and went back to unpacking yogurts, this time pulling them out of the box in stacks of three and shoving them onto the shelf as fast as she could go.

Once I had my groceries and I was checking out, I ran into my old friend Ryan, who was working the cash register. “Ryan! You’re working at Rand Mart too?”

“Sad but true,” he said.

“Thought you were working at that hipster coffee place.”

“Went out of business last month,” Ryan said regretfully. “We hired this one guy who would not stop aggressively proselytizing to the customers, and people just felt really uncomfortable ordering coffee from someone who kept insisting that they embrace the Lord. The owner tried to keep him in the back, but you know, small coffee joint. There’s not much to do that isn’t in the front, customer facing… he’d do unloading and garbage runs but the rest of the time there was nothing for him to do but work out front.”

“Yeah, I just heard about my old manager’s day care folding because she hired the wrong person.”

“It’s bad, all right,” Ryan said. “The small businesses can’t take it, and even the bigger ones are starting to feel it. That’ll be $15.99.”

For a pound of deli ham, a loaf of bread, and a gallon of milk? I goggled at the receipt, glad I hadn’t tried to get the coffee single-serving cups here. Well, Rand Mart never pretended to have the lowest prices on groceries; they’ll just sell you anything you want without a hassle, and that’s enough of a draw that they can charge out the wazoo. That and all the cheap impulse buy stuff creating the illusion that the store’s prices were overall low. “You guys are definitely cleaning up on it though,” I said as I swiped my credit card.

Ryan snorted. “I’m out of here first chance I get. There’s a new burger joint down the road, Charley’s. I put in an application there and we’ll see where it goes.”

“Is that one of those places where you have to wear flair?”

“Naah, flair is corporate now. They do have all the kitschy plastic toys all over the ceiling though.”

“I’ll have to check them out.” Maybe today. A burger sounded good. I was getting kind of hungry.

As I walked out of Rand Mart, I swore to myself that this time, this time, I wasn’t coming back.

***

Charley’s was a low-key kind of place, dark wooden beams and light brown wallpaper showing great sports stars from the entire 20th and 21st centuries, despite which it was actually not a sports bar. It was rare to find a burger joint that was neither excessively corporate, nor did it have 25 television screens showing different subchannels of ESPN. Their menu said they were all about the social experience, implying to me that one lone dude like me was probably not their target customer. On the other hand I’ll do a lot to avoid the black attention sucking hole that is large television screens with no sound. I’m not into sports nearly enough to want to see Ukrainian men’s field hockey or whatever ridiculous crap they show on ESPN17, and especially not enough to want to see it with the sound off and no captions.

I was pleasantly surprised by how fast my server collected my drink order and came back with my Coke. She was a cute brunette with curly hair. “I’d like to get a Works Cheeseburger, hold the spinach,” I said.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t do that.”

I blinked at her. “Are you out? I don’t have to have all the toppings—“

“No, I mean, a cheeseburger isn’t kosher, so I can’t put that order in for you. Sorry.”

Oh, not this again. “Come on. You’re working on Saturday. You can put in a cheeseburger order.”

“No, I really can’t. I have to work on Saturday because I need the hours, but I do keep kosher.”

I sighed. “Can you get me a different server, then? I came here to get a cheeseburger.”

“I could get you a cheese veggieburger… the tofu ones taste really authentic.”

“No. I want a cheeseburger. Made of beef, and cheese. Are there any other servers who’ll take my order?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t refer you to any of my colleagues,” she said. “If it was just a matter of you preferring a different server, that’d be one thing, but I can’t get a different server for you when I know that I’m enabling you to get a cheeseburger.”

“Okay, I’m not going to order a cheeseburger, but I don’t like you and your sanctimonious attitude, so just go get me a different server because I don’t like you.”

“No, sir, I know you’re lying and you really are going to order a cheeseburger if I do that.”

I glared at her. “Look, I know enough about Judaism to know that you don’t need to enforce the kosher laws on non-Jews, so what justification do you have for not letting me order a cheeseburger? Don’t the kosher laws just apply to Jews?”

“Yes, but I can tell you’re actually Jewish.”

I blinked. “No, I’m not.”

“Well, of course you’d say that, sir, since you don’t keep kosher and you don’t keep the Sabbath, but I know a Jewish man when I see one.”

I had a roommate who was Jewish once, and that was the full extent of my connection to Judaism. “Look, I’m not. Really. I’m allowed to eat a cheeseburger.”

“I sincerely believe that you probably are, and you’re lying to me because you want a cheeseburger.”

So I gave her two bucks for the Coke, which was $1.99, and told her to keep the change. If she was hungry enough to take Saturday hours despite being dedicated enough to her faith to enforce kosher on non-Jewish customers, maybe a spate of 1 cent tips would persuade her to let customers order a cheeseburger in a goddamn burger joint. Or maybe they’d cause her to quit. What the heck was someone with a religious objection to cheeseburgers doing working in a burger joint anyway? I bet she wouldn’t have let me get a bacon burger either.

To be honest, I was pretty sure she was enforcing kosher laws on a non-Jew because she could. Used to be that every store treated its employees more or less the same way Rand Mart does. Long hours, low wages, and if you didn’t take the customer’s abuse with a big smile, you could lose your job, no matter how unreasonable the demands. Nowadays, the hours were longer and the wages were lower – businesses couldn’t stay in business with all the deadweight they were forced to carry if they didn’t exploit the hell out of their workers – but employees could get away with nearly anything if they expressed a heartfelt belief. In fact, I’d read an advice article online that suggested that as soon as you got a job in retail, you should come up with some religious reason to deny a customer something, because then if they tried to fire you for anything else, you could sue them on the grounds that it was retaliation against you exercising your First Amendment rights.

Dammit, I was really, really not in the mood for McDonalds’ or something. The last time I’d tried to go through a drive-thru, I’d found out that the fry cook on shift that day disapproved of the high carbon footprint left by cars, and was refusing to allow any of the fries to go out via the drive-thru. Plus, I’d really wanted a good burger. Rand-Mart had one of those snack bars that they have at places like Target, but I was pretty sure their burgers were at best a single step in quality above McDonald’s, if not the same or worse.

I decided to go to Anomie. Their food wasn’t the best, but the good thing was, you put in your order through an electronic kiosk, swiped your card, and people you never saw in the back, who never saw you, would take whatever orders they felt they could morally accept. Then the food would be slid to you through a numbered slot, kind of like the idea behind the old Automat. You never had to see a single person that worked there.

***

After a mediocre cheeseburger I managed to obtain without interacting with a single human being, I felt somewhat up to going and getting my coffee. It’d be cheapest at the grocery store, but I wasn’t going to go back there if I could help it – even though I was pretty sure none of the cashiers I’d run into would actually prevent me from getting coffee, except maybe the Sprite Is Poison lady, I still didn’t feel like paying any of those people’s wages. So I decided to try Curtains and More. If they weren’t the kind of store that would try to check my religion before letting me in, what was the worst that could happen?

Ten minutes later I was standing in front of a security guard who was saying “I’m sorry, sir,” while blocking my entrance to the store. “You can’t go in there.”

I stared at him. “Why not?”

“Well, you’re a man, sir. Men aren’t allowed in Curtains and More.”

“…My friend just was here and she never told me men aren’t allowed. She brought in her son.”

“Boys under the age of 10 are allowed, but men aren’t. Our corporate policy at Curtains and More is that men and women shouldn’t mingle socially, so they shouldn’t shop at the same stores.”

“So is there another curtains store that just sells to men?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir. I don’t make the rule.”

“But you’re a man.”

“Yeah, I have to stand out here all day. I’m not actually allowed in the building.”

“So how do you punch your time card?”

“There’s an app for that. I have to do it with my cell phone.” He sighed. “Kind of dumb, if you ask me, but what’re you going to do?”

“Shop somewhere else, I guess.” I shook my head. “I thought these folks were Christians.”

“They are, but they’re some weird sect that thinks men and women shouldn’t see each other unless they’re family.”

“And that women should be pregnant all the time?”

“Didn’t know that, but I’ve seen employees go in through the side door, and yeah, most of them are pregnant. Is that why?”

“That’s what I heard,” I said glumly. “Why do they let women in and not men, I wonder? Most of these kinds of places discriminate against women, not men.”

“I don’t know, but I don’t have to turn too many guys away. I guess men don’t shop for curtains as much.”

“Guess not.” It was as good an explanation as any. “I’m gonna have to go back to Rand Mart, aren’t I?”

“I hear they’ve got a pretty good selection,” the security guard said.

***

I figured I’d probably end up back at Rand Mart, but I had to at least try to avoid it, so I tried a few other coffee places; most coffee places sell pods for coffee machines, after all.

I tried Starbucks, and walked right back out as I heard the cashier refusing to serve unbelievers. I didn’t even know what they were unbelieving in, and I didn’t care. The Dunkin Donuts was run by someone who professed a sincere and heartfelt belief that children should work in the family business, and I didn’t want to be served by an eight-year-old again. There was a hipster coffee joint, but they wouldn’t let me in because my belt looked like it might be made of real leather, and they believed strongly in veganism. I considered leaving my belt in the car, but then my pants might fall down in the coffee shop, and I wasn’t risking that. Besides, people like that might give me some song and dance about single-serve coffee pods being terrible for the environment, or something.

And that was how I found myself going back to Rand Mart, about an hour after declaring I was never going back again.

I passed a group of employees on smoke break on my way in. They were holding “HOMELESS AND HUNGRY – PLEASE HELP” signs. I gave one of them a five. For all I knew my friends might be there next month.

Then I dodged around an excessively aggressive cart return guy pushing a conga line of wheeled death, and slipped into the store. I was beginning to come to the conclusion that no matter how many times I vowed I’d never come back here, I’d never be able to keep that promise.

[ohanahoku-ao3]

Whumptober Prompt 16

     Through Guilty Eyes. Also on AO3 here. @whumptober2020

    “Please,” Tony whispered, keeping his head down. The hero was hyper-aware of the barrel of a gun pressed to the back of his neck. “Don’t hurt the girl.”

    He had been captured by an elite group of terrorists, and his watch gauntlet had been rendered useless by EMP before they took him out.

    The leader smirked, walking over to Tony. “What’s this? Is the great Tony Stark reduced to begging?” He continued when Tony stayed silent. “It’s of no matter. Whether or not the girl dies is of no consequence to me.” He said, glancing back at the young teenager who’d gotten caught in the crossfire.

    A wicked grin spread across his face. “Here’s an idea. If you can be convincing enough, if you beg enough, I won’t kill the girl. But if you disappoint me, my men will shoot her without hesitation. This is non-negotiable. We start now.”

    Anger bubbled in Tony’s veins, but he didn’t have a choice. No fancy talking was going to get them out of this, and if he refused to play the man’s sick game, he’d kill the girl for sure. So he begged.

    Lowering his head even further, Tony opened his mouth, pleas for mercy spilling from his lips. He could only hope that the team would reach them before the men decided to do something rash.

    But the time ticked by, and no sign of rescue came. Tony’s throat grew sore from talking, but if he stopped for even two seconds to catch his breath, the man tutted, glancing over at the girl, who was staring at Tony with wide, pleading eyes, silently asking him not to stop.

    So he pushed on, begging until the ache grew more painful and spread into his chest. Until the taste of blood crept up on the back of his tongue, and red plashed against the ground when he coughed. He pleaded with the men until his voice gave out, and his eyes widened, looking up in alarm.

    “Is that all you’ve got?” Asked the leader, a shark-like grin on his face. “Sorry, not good enough.”

    Tony shook his head, desperately reaching for the hem of the man’s coat as his mouth moved in soundless pleas.

    “Shoot the hostage.”

    Tony’s scream was never heard as the shot rang out.

                                                      ;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;

    “Is he going to be okay?” Steve asked Bruce as he came out of the infirmary, staring at Tony through the window as the man rested.

    “He really did some damage to his vocal cords,” Bruce said, crossing his arms over a clipboard held to his chest. “It’ll be almost a month before he can talk again. And there may be permanent damage, even then.”

    “He’s not going to like that.” Natasha murmured, watching as Tony glanced over at them, his gaze sliding away to their left where no one stood in the window. “We’ll have to keep an eye on him, make sure he follows doctor’s orders.”

    “It’s gonna be a long month,” Bruce said with a sad chuckle before walking away.

                                                      ;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;

    Inside the sick room, Tony stared at a young girl standing outside the window next to Natasha, blood trickling down her right temple from a clean bullet hole.

    She said nothing. She didn’t move. She just stood there until Tony’s eyes slipped closed.

                                                      ;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;

    “Tony seems… off,” Clint observed, watching the genius sitting in a recliner in the living room from his perch on the kitchen’s island.

    “Off how?” Bucky grunted as he cranked an old-fashioned popcorn maker over the stove. Microwave popcorn just wasn’t as good as the old stuff, he claimed.

    “I don’t know. I mean, I know what Stark went through was awful, but he usually bounces back from things pretty quickly.” Clint mused.

    Bucky emptied the pot of popped corn into a big bowl and poured some melted butter over the top. “Tony’s a civilian, remember.” He told him as he stirred the popcorn around. “He wasn’t trained, and his coping mechanism is making jokes and being loud. You take that ability away from him? You take away his ability to cope.”

     He glanced back at the man in question. “He’s probably going through hell right now in his mind for it.”

                                                      ;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;

    In the living room, Tony sat, pretending to listen to Pepper’s complaints about their company. But his eyes were focused on another girl.

    The girl with dead eyes stared at him from the center of the living room.

    Pepper snapped her fingers in front of Tony’s face, and the man blinked, turning to look at her. “Are you okay, Tony?” She asked, looking concerned.

    The billionaire nodded, though he glanced back at the girl, only to find her missing.

    Pepper shared a worried look with Sam but tried again, this time managing to keep Tony’s attention on her.

                                                      ;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;

    The dead girl was there when Tony was alone, too, sitting cross-legged at the end of his bed. The blood dripped off her face but never landed on the blankets, so Tony closed his eyes, ignoring the cold feeling that wrapped around his body as he slept.

                                                      ;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;

    Two weeks in and Tony was almost used to seeing her.

    “Jarvis, play Metallica.” Rhodey requested as they walked into the lab. Tony had been restricted from using the lab on his own, as the others were worried he’d try talking to Jarvis and hurt his vocal cords before they were healed.

    Jarvis started the music, and Tony watched as his best friend plopped down on the worn couch next to the girl who sat there, her head slightly bowed as she watched him.

                                                      ;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;

    Thirty-three days after the incident, Tony’s vocal cords were deemed fully healed.

    But to the team’s surprise, Tony didn’t speak. The genius merely sat there, taking in the room around him. The girl was nowhere to be found, so he got up and left. His first words belonged to her, and he wasn’t giving them to anyone else.

                                                      ;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;

    “I don’t get it,” Clint said as the rest of the team gathered in the living room. “Why isn’t Tony saying anything?” He asked.

    “I was worried, with how silent he’s been, that it had more to do with a mental or emotional issue than a physical one,” Bruce admitted, the doctor taking his glasses off.

    “So, what do we do now?” Pepper asked, looking around at the Avengers.

    “I don’t know if there is anything we can do right now,” Sam answered. “Tony’s a… complicated person. I think maybe the best thing to do right now, is to just give him time.”

                                                      ;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;

    Tony didn’t see the girl again until that night as he walked into his bedroom. She was standing there at the window, and as she turned to look at him, Tony’s eyes filled with tears.

    She was so young.

    The hero walked over, his lips trembling as he sank down onto his knees in front of her. His tears fell as the moonlight streamed through the window and shined upon the blood trailing down her face.

    He sobbed, bowing his head as he finally let go of his composure, wailing in anguish over the girl whose life he’d been unable to save. When he felt he could hold back his tears long enough, he lifted his head, looking into her sad, lifeless eyes. “I-I’m sorry.” He whispered, body jerking with a hysterical sob. “I’m sorry!”

    He bent over and wept, repeating the phrase until his tears finally ran out, and his chest ached heavily.

    When he eventually looked back up again, the girl was gone. But so was the sharp, piercing guilt that had been plaguing his mind.

    For the first time since that day, he slept soundly.

                                                      ;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;

    The next day, the Avengers filed into the kitchen at Jarvis’ request to find Tony sitting at the island, surrounded by dozens of donut boxes.

    The genius looked up at the others and grinned. “Bavarian cream, anyone?”

[cyberneticlagomorph]

// Take the opportunity to write a short ramble/drabble about something you want to write about. 👈🏼

I have... so many drabbles in my drafts..

I would love to finish one someday

Here's a drabble from early October that I never finished

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

It's warm today, 80 degrees and sunny. The occasional cotton puff cloud scuds across the sun and dims the world for a few moments.

You peer up at it from behind dark shades, the rattle of your truck unsettling your stomach nearly as much as the apprehension slithering it's way up your spine.

Father Ward sits in the passenger seat beside you, clutching a crucifix to his chest, head bowed in prayer.

He insisted on coming with after you asked him to bless your tools for the upcoming ordeal... it's the least you can do to give the man some peace of mind.

The roads this far out of the city are damn near deserted, home to empty eyed cattle grazing in silence, and a vast sea of ripe crops yet to be harvested.

You feel watched.

Not by the cows, not by the crops, or the bifurcated crows that stubbornly sit on the dusty earth before the rusty behemoth of your pickup.

The field feels hungry.

That's what your client said when he called you late last night, and now you understand what he meant.

The wind rustles the rows and you catch a glimpse of something standing between the stalks, but the corn straightens up again and you lose sight of it.

You shudder and Father Ward looks up from his prayers in concern.

"We're here." You say, a little more cheerfully than the situation really calls for, and pull into the makeshift parking lot at the mouth of the farm.

An archway made of hay bales and pumpkins looms high over a dirt path leading farther inwards; it's covered in signs advertising hayrides, apple picking, a petting zoo and fresh cider.

You mutter something about 'kitschy bullshit', and get out of the truck. Father Ward, John... his first name is John, follows you at a distance. He's got a limp, from an earlier incident, years before you met him. He doesn't like to talk about it.

You slow your pace and let the priest catch up, he thanks you with a nod and you continue on your way.

The farm might have been beautiful once, one of those places you see in commercials and hallmark movies, but now it's just deserted and eerie.

A man in stereotypical farmer dress sits on a hay bale in front of an old fashioned red barn, his head in his hands. He's weeping maybe, or praying, you can't tell, but his distress is palpable.

You take a step towards him and get hit with the smell blood, thick and fresh. A smeared trail of it runs from the barn and into a nearby cornfield, the stalks completely undisturbed. You can hear John start up his prayers again, frantic this time. Crucifix gripped white knuckle.

This is gonna be a long ass day... you can feel it deep in whatever bones you have left, the ones that don't ache 24/7, at least.

Best to get this over with before it gets too dark to see what you're doing.

You clear your throat and startle the man who you assume to be your client, "Excuse me, sir? You called about an issue with your corn fields?"

He looks up at you in confusion, "I-- you're not what I expected w--" a pause, "But you can help me, right?"

You nod and offer a smile, "It's what I'm here for, the priest is my buddy John, he'll be helping me out today."

John extends a hand to shake, and your client hesitantly stands to take it.

"Cory, Cory Simmons, uh-- thank you for coming." He looks exhausted, unsteady, like he hasn't slept in days.

You nod again, peeling off your shades and shoving them into a pocket, "Right, you said that there was something in your field? Are you sure it isn't a coyote or some really cruel kids looking for some spooky satanic fun?"

John gives you a Look that you ignore.

Mr. Simmons' eyebrows knit together in confusion. But before you can answer him, something dark and feathery catches your eye.

You watch a flock of mutated and misshapen crows circle overhead,  as silent as the grave, their wings casting squirming shadows upon the ground. John can see them too.

No time for speculation then.

"I'll get the salt, John, you stay here and... keep Mister Simmons calm." You trot back to the parking lot and feel John's eyes burning holes in your back the entire way.

"Please don't leave me alone with him..." you hear the priest hiss helplessly as you quickly hop out of earshot.

You'll apologize to him later, promise.

The cooler full of salt is carefully rubbed on your hands, your shotgun, and whatever else you think you'll need. John's already blessed the vast majority but it's not gonna hurt to be a little redundant.

The rest of the salt forms a protective circle around John and your confused client.

"Whatever you do, do not break this circle, got it?" All trace of politeness and gentleness is gone from your voice, leaving only cold professionalism.

You wrap your hands in green cloth, and pause as the scents of rosemary and sage wash over you. "These herbs ward off demons and evil spirits," you explain to Mr Simmons, "and so does salt."

The farmer stammers, "What the hell do you think is going on here?? Demons? Satanists? Evil spirits?" His voice is shrill, and afraid, eyes bloodshot from stress and fear, "Tell me what's happening to my farm!"

You look up from your spot on the ground, one boot off and the other halfway there. Your jacket is tossed haphazardly into the now empty cooler along with your shades.

"Your field is possessed by a feral harvest god, aka an Agridivus," a pause as you remove the other boot and toss it into the cooler with its mate,"They feed on the flesh of mortal creatures in order to make plants ripen faster and harvests better, they also drive people insane from sheer proximity which is why you haven't slept in at least a week... you've got divinity burn, and if you hadn't called me you'd be dick deep in some Children of the Corn level cultist bullshit within the next few days." you stand and dust yourself off as the farmer tries to take an angry step forward, but John throws his arm up in front of the guy to keep him from breaking the circle.

You nod at the shotgun next to John's feet and heft a near identical one, "That's full of rock salt, use it if anything gets too close."

Simmons snaps the gun up immediately and cocks it, aiming it at your face.

You don't flinch, your eyes locking with his, "You've only got one shot, make it count."

Simmons trembles, but eventually takes his finger off the trigger and lowers his weapon.

John looks like he might puke, or pass out, or both. You watch him wipe sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his robes. He starts to pray and the salt starts to glow.

Your skin sizzles uncomfortably, and you know that that circle will hold so long as Father Ward is in it.

You disappear into the cornfield without a word.

The crows have not stopped circling, their formation now a cyclone of feathers and malice. You can feel their eyes on you.

Beneath your feet, the ground is soft and rich, weeds already springing from the bloody trail of viscera left by the Agridivus' last meal.

You follow it in a more or less straight line, and the world seems to hold its breath.

The farther in you go, the worse things get. Bones sprout from the ground, still clotted with half rotting meat, somehow already choked with plants.

It stinks here, manure, chemical fertilizer, and putrefaction mingling together into a vicious miasma.

Judging by all the bodies, this field has been possessed for much longer than you originally thought... and that explains how raggedy and depressing the rest of the farm is.

You come to a clearing in the center of the field, in it is a rough wooden cross that might have held a scarecrow once, but now there's... nothing. Not even some sun bleached skeleton strung up in a renaissance mockery.

The ground is soft, clean earth, no trace of gore to be found.

The silence is heavier here.

Every breeze a cacophony.

The faint rustling of cornstalks sounds different, sounds wrong... for just a second, and you whirl around just in time to see a dark blur rapidly disappearing further into the fields.

You swear between clenched teeth and bolt after it, ears flat to your head, gun held close to your chest.

The Agridivus is fast, and it knows this field. It knows every leaf, stalk, root, and row like it's a part of itself.

Because the field IS part of itself.

It has home count advantage, but you aren't going to let that stop you.

Round and round and round you go, where you stop, only your prey knows.

There, a glint out of the corner of your eye. You have only half a heartbeat to duck as wickedly sharp claws whizz dangerously close to your face, slicing a thin line across your cheek. The wound immediately starts to itch and burn, blisters forming around the edges.

Iron.

You hiss in pain, teeth bared. Overhead the crows scream in human voices, the tongues of those swallowed by this cursed field. The scent of blood tickles your nose, and even though it's yours, your mouth waters and you know that the beast you're hunting feels the same way.

You snap your teeth at nothing, eyes flicking across the rows, ears swiveling like radar dishes. You're exposed, there's nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, nothing to do but fight.

The cornstalks bend around the beast like waves around a boat, only to stand up straight as if it were never there. You can follow its trail if you try.

[jordswriteswords]

Clextober19: Fall Festivities

Back to school was the favourite time of year for most. Parents were overjoyed that their children would be supervised while they were working; children were overjoyed the see their friends again; teachers were overjoyed to… well, they were overjoyed for the weekends.

Madi, on the other hand, hated back to school. Being a half witch meant she had half the human antibodies, and half the witch antibodies, therefore, she was in for a whole dose of unrelenting colds during the first two months. She would get sick at least twice in that short amount of time, causing her to miss a lot of school and a lot of the time that children spent making and solidifying their friendships.

But, she couldn't go to school. Not when her nose was stuffy and running and she was sniffling and sneezing and turning her mother into an elephant, blowing her Aunt Raven up like fireworks, and sending her mama into the desert and back again in a wiggle of her nose.

But Ms. Indra insisted that she be present for the first field trip of the year. The kids were going to the apple farm, after all, and Lexa had volunteered as the class chaperone.

In hindsight, Madi should have known that her class would have been more interested in Lexa and her superstar status than the actual field trip. Even as the ten year old curled up in her mama’s shoulder, she was still having to deal with boys and girls interrupting to get a picture with her mama or ask for her autograph.

Madi sucked down the hot tea that her mama had packed in her travel mug, a blend of echinacea and magical herbs to fight off both sides of the cold virus. It relieved the aches and pains, and most importantly, stopped the sniffles for the time being.

The class wandered through the apple farm for a majority of the day, getting lost in corn mazes, learning how to bale hay for the animals, petting tiny lambs in the petting zoo, and drinking warm cups of apple cider and eating apple pie.

Madi had made it throughout most of the day without mishap aside from sneezing and blowing her mom across the corn field. Lexa snapped her fingers and fixed the holes that were created before anyone had noticed, though.

The last part of the trip was the horse rides around the farm. Each child in the class took a turn on one of the ten horses for a tour of the entire farm.

Madi brushed her hand along the nose of a chocolate pony. “Hey. Your name is Ryder. It’s cute.”

The horse stomped it's foot in the mud and shook it's head up and down. “I think my handler was a punny guy.”

Madi chuckled. “That’s actually funny.”

The horse took a step back. “No way you can understand me.”

Madi smiled up at the big nose, lifting her hands in deference like her mama had taught her to approach animals. “Duh. You speak English. You just have a weird accent.”

The horse neighed, catching Lexa’s attention. and she took a quick picture of her daughter smiling up at the giant and sent it off to her wife.

Ryder bowed his head and said, “Well I’ll be, aren't you just a smart lil cookie. Hey Cleatus! Lookie o’er here! We got us our own Dr. Doohickey!”

“Dr. Doolittle,” Madi corrected, and Ryder huffed at her.

A black stallion galloped over towards them and sniffed Madi’s neck. “She smells like apples. I love apples!”

She giggled at the contact, and pulled an apple out of her pocket, holding it out for Cleatus.

“You can hear us?” Cleatus asked.

Madi nodded and giggled more when he stepped right into her space, his giant eyeball looking into hers.

A white mare saddled up to Madi shortly after, nudging her bum with her nose.

“Ponyelope,” Ryder scolded. “She’s a good one.”

They were interrupted by the sounds of her classmate yelling. “Look at this weirdo!” Josephine Lightborne pointed at Madi, who was surrounded by horses. “She can’t make real friends so she hangs out with animals!”

Madi’s classmates pointed and laughed, and Lexa had to squeeze her hands together to stop them from snapping and giving all the ten year olds wedgies. But, if Josephine ended up stepping in a suddenly appearing cow-pie, Lexa was none the wiser.

“Don’t mind them, darlin’” Ryder consoled. “Let’s just go on a good ol’ fashioned ride. That’ll cheer ya’up, I promise,” he neighed.

Madi sighed, but smiled when Ryder rubbed his nose against her cheek. Ryder took off at a slow cadence once Madi climbed aboard, describing all the parts of the farm to her. He wandered as far away from the rest of the group as he could without drawing suspicion to point out the magical flowers in the fields and the magical animals that could only be seen by those with abilities.

The path wound around and through the pumpkin fields, and Madi tensed. "I'm allergic to pumpkins!" She hissed to the horse.

Ryder slowed his trot, but the cowboy handler that was leading the group circled around and forced him to carry on.

Her nose tickled, and she looked over to Lexa with fear in her eyes. She clutched at Ryder’s fur, and her heels dug into his sides.

"I'm trying, I'm trying," Ryder said, trying to console his rider. He tried to move faster, but his handler wasn't letting him, tired of his antics.

Madi sneezed and all hell broke loose.

She had turned the pumpkin patch into a giant, living creatures that scared Josephine's horse into bucking with her still on. She fell off the back of the horse and straight into the mud with a scream.

The rest of the horses followed suit, kicking and bucking their riders off so they could free themselves.

"Whoa, whoa!" The handlers tried, but the terrified animals wouldn't heed. The animals kicked and whined, and started to run off.

"What did I do?" Madi questioned, her voice shaky with sadness.

Ryder didn’t buck his rider off; however. He took off with Madi on his back, straight to the rest of the now free horses. All the horses had run about a hundred yards from the scare and we're circling the ground, huffing angrily.

"What was that?"

"I'll kill it!"

"I hate pumpkins!"

"Fight back!"

Madi jumped off the horse and approached the pack with her hands up. "Whoa, whoa," The horses were frazzled and frightened. "I know you're all scared. It's okay, it's my fault."

"Kill the girl!" One horse yelled, neighing and rearing back on its hind legs. Ryder moved in front of her. "Calm down, Otis, she's just a girl!"

"It was an accident!" Madi pleaded. "It was an accident. I can't control my powers."

"She scared us!"

"But we're fine!" Ryder said.

"Let's just all calm down," Madi said. "I'm sorry I scared you. I won't let it happen again."

The horses huffed and sneezed, but Madi wouldn’t move from the middle of the pack.

"Madi, no!" Her teacher called.

"Wait, wait," Lexa said, grabbing the teacher and stopping them from interfering. “They’re calming down.”

“Please, just come back to your owners. I promise, no more magic. No more pumpkins.”

Ponyelope looked around, her ears twitching with nerves.

“Please,” Madi breathed.

Ponyelope took one step, then two, then moved right past Madi and headed towards the handlers. The rest of the horses followed, and Ryder pressed his big head into Madi’s chest. She laughed and hugged his nose.

The class looked on as Madi corralled the horses and got them to follow her back to the handlers.

"How did you do that?" Aden asked when she got back.

Madi just shrugged.

"It's because - it's because she's a weirdo!" Josephine said, covered from head to toe in mud. "She doesn't have any friends so she talks to animals, and even they don't listen to her!"

A few of her classmates laughed at Madi, whose cheeks became warm with embarrassment. She ran back to the bus, and Lexa trailed after her.

"Hey, shut up!" Aden Forrest, they typically shy and well mannered boy, yelled. "She saved your life, Josephine! She saved all of us from getting really hurt!"

***

"Mads?" Lexa asked, slowly sitting next to her daughter on the large seat of the deserted bus.

The only sound was a sniffle, and then Lexa felt the soft flutter of snowflakes cascading onto her head.

"I hate this," Madi whispered. "I hate having magic! I hate being human! I hate that I'm just a weird half-thing!" The sound of her voice grew louder until she shouted at her mama. She turned and punched the seat in front of them as tears poured from her eyes.

"I'm sorry you feel that way Madi," Lexa said, dusting the snow off her shoulder and then wrapping her daughter in a warm hug.

Madi sniffed again as the tears fell and Lexa was pelted with sand and dirt.

Lexa snapped and created an umbrella to hover above her and her daughter to stop the onslaught.

"You have so many special gifts, Madi, but the best one is that you're kind. Don't let someone like Josephine take that away from you. What you did today made me more proud than you learning your first spell. You're a great person, and kids are just dumb. It'll get better, I promise. If you want to be sad right now, or if you can't help it, that's okay. I'm right here. But, never hate who you are. You’re the best parts of me and the best parts of your mom. You’re an incredible kid, Madi."

Madi leaned into her mama and hugged her tightly around her neck. "I love you, mama."

"Love you too, Mads."

Aden was the first student to enter the bus since the incident, and his heavy, awkward footsteps sounded until he was standing directly in front of Madi and Lexa’s seat. "Hey, sorry, Hi, Mrs. Griffin-Woods. I'm sorry to interrupt, but uhh," Aden said, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot. He had a piece of paper in his hand that he folded and unfolded methodically.

Madi hid her face in Lexa's collar, and it took everything inside of the brunette not to snap at the boy. "Yes, Aden?" She asked, already pulling her pen out of her pocket to sign his paper.

"Sorry, um, thank you for offering, but I don’t want your autograph.” He ran his hand through his shaggy blonde hair, “but can you give this to Madi for me? I just want her to know that she's the coolest person ever and say thank you for saving us." His earnest blue eyes pleaded with Lexa and he thrust the paper into her face. She gracefully retrieved it from his fingers and opened it only after he scurried away and off the bus.

Lexa’s heart melted at what she saw.

Aden had written a big 'thank you' on the cover of the card. Inside, all the students in the class signed the left side of the page. On the right side, he had drawn a picture of Madi with a cape and a horse. And on the back, he scrawled, 'Madi, thank you for saving us. You're a superhero. Can I sit with you at lunch tomorrow? - your friend, Aden'

[shadowofadalekmightdeactivate]

Sanders Sides Ghostbusters AU

Why? Why not. I should be writing a 1,500 word short story right now but fuCK IT (A side note: unless stated otherwise, everyone is gay. This is obvious why am I even saying this)

Peter Venkman: Roman - The fuck is a gender, he loves everybody. If they have a pretty face he’s game - This has gotten him into trouble time and time again and made him bounce around from job to job until he FINALLY settled down to be a scientist, and even THAT didn’t last more than 2 years - ADHD riddled fucker - Still as snarky as ever but also still dramatic - First time getting slimed? Almost had a meltdown. HE WAS HAVING A BAD ENOUGH DAY ALREADY DAMMIT - That lasted 2.5 seconds until Patton (Ray) said he thought it was cool - Starved for attention but snarks at everyone regardless - Acts like a Prinxiety fusion at times (”love me but fuck off“ is the mentality that comes to mind)

Egon Spengler: Logan - Picture a Logince fusion that’s mostly controlled/led by Logan - The science behind ghosts has been his hyperfixation for y e a r s - He’s also been wanting to be a scientist for years so being a Ghostbuster is like a dream job to him - Used to be an English college professor until Patton roped him into hunting a ghost with him. He’s still not sure how he even met him (though it’s not impossible that Patton just walked up to him and said “Hi I’m Patton do you want to hunt a ghost with me?”) - “Might have Autism. Might not have a soul. We aren’t sure yet“ -quote from Roman - The brains behind the whole thing. He made the siren, the alarm, the proton packs, everything - Remy (Janine) has feelings for him and he Does Not Appreciate It - Did indeed try to drill a hole in his skull. He wanted to make essentially an early version of Bluetooth. Got as far as putting the drill to his head and finding out the thing’s battery had died. Roman was not amused when he asked him for more - This is going to just turn into Egon headcanons if I don’t stop

Ray Stanz: Patton - Has Autism, is lOUD AS FUCK - Has been kicked out of several libraries for this - Eye contact is a no-no. He won’t freak but he will get very nervous - He introduced Logan to Roman, was dismayed when they didn’t get along at first - Basically a little kid with a laser-shooting gun - Main cause of most of the damage at ghost busts - Roman looks up to him a LOT, even though he’s older (but he’d never say that out loud) - Is allergic to everything with fur - Feels pretty bad whenever they have to bust a ghost with a tragic past - Had been begging Logan to let them have some kind of mascot. Logan finally relented and built a kind of cage in the front office for Slimer - (Remy doesn’t appreciate having that thing watching him every day with it’s beady little eyes) - Loves getting covered with whatever crap ghosts may spew at them-slim, ectoplasm, anything. It doesn’t feel sticky to him, more soft like water-hence why he thought it was “so cool” when Roman got slimed. Besides the physical contact thing - Fiercely protective of Virgil (Winston). Heaven help whatever soul that’s dumb enough to taunt that man in his presence because Patton will grab them-with his hands or his proton gun’s stream-and throw them against the most solid thing he can aim for (which has included teammates. Logan was not impressed)

Winston Zeddemore: Virgil - Wanted to be a necromancer when he was a kid, now just wants a job - Trigger-happy when nervous/frightened, causes the second-most amount of damage during busts - Stupidly tried hiding his anxiety from the others at first, writing off any moments of panic as “just paranoia”, “just got startled”, etc. It takes a particularly nasty ghost putting him out of commission via panic attack that he finally opens up to them - Initially wrote off his anxiety out of worry they’d either A. not hire him/fire him or B. treat him like he was made of glass. B almost happened until Logan took his side when Patton was barring him from coming on a bust - Patton and Logan argued viciously over who was in charge of teaching him how to work the proton packs and guns. Virgil was confused as to why they both can’t do it until Roman told him they’re pretty much arguing over who adopts him - (Patton won that battle on the grounds that Logan gets to teach their next employee. Sadly for Logan no one else has taken up the job) - He fucking HATES getting covered in ghost gunk - Some captured ghosts have learned to fear him, he’s pretty scary when he learns their patterns - (I was going to make him a ghost that gets attached to Patton, but...Nah. Four Sides, four Ghostbusters)

Janine Melnitz: Remy - Only took the job because of Logan, likes to call him “Resident Eye Candy” - Logan can not stand him. At all. Remy’s really up front with how he feels about Logan and he finds it over-bearing - He’d wear a skirt if the boys don’t stop him. Hell he’d wear a crop top if they don’t stop him. (They always do. Buggar.) - If he doesn’t have a coffee at any time in the morning he’s a real bastard to whoever gets within 2 feet of him - Roman thinks this is hilarious and will sometimes withhold his coffee order to hear him cuss out people on the phone. He finds it less hilarious when someone tries to sue them for verbal abuse - Patton thought he was blind at first because he always wears sunglasses (”LOGAN WE CAN’T HIRE A BLIND MAN TO TAKE CALLS”)

Dana Barett: Deceit - Trans ftm - “Deceit” is more of a nickname for him, but he’s so used to it that he’s considering making it his legal name - Told off Logan when they first met because he misgendered him four times (the first time was an accident, the second time was a slip up, the last two started seeming intentional) - Legal name is still Dana, he hasn’t have the money or the time to change it yet-which is infuriating - Has heterochromia (left eye brown, right eye green) and vitiligo - Roman thinks he’s drop dead beautiful, Deceit thinks he’s just annoying. Despite this he happily goes on a few flings with him and enjoys the pampering - They don’t officially “get together”, but Roman stops skipping work to take “clients” out on dates, so the other ‘busters are happy - Roman absolutely will tell anyone who listens to him long enough how gorgeous Dee is. Virgil has told Dee about this. Snake man is equal parts flattered and frustrated - Speaking of snakes, he gets two after the Gozer incident: Zuul (female Ball Python) and Vinz (male Corn Snake) - Why he named them after demon dogs is beyond him but he couldn’t think of better names for them

Louis Tully: Remus - Take everything you remember about Louis and throw it out the window. Now go out that window, pick up the remains and stich them back together into a vaguely Louis-like character with bits of rat and garbage left in. That’s Remus. Still awkward beyond help, still a well-meaning hopelessly-in-love fool, but an absolute chaotic MESS that can’t hold down a job for longer than a month - Roman wants to disown him so very badly but there’s no relative left alive that wants to go near that man with a ten-foot pole and SOMEONE has to take care of him - Deceit thinks he’s charming, if a bit...Weird. - Like Deceit, Remus gets two pets after the Gozer incident: Zelda (female Fancy Rat, name is a play on Zuul) and Vince (male Pitbull Terrier, name is a play on Vinz) - He wanted two Pitbulls at first but then saw Zelda in an ad and suddenly decided he HAD to have a rat - The kind of guy that’s a horrible person but really damn good at his job so his co-workers have to put up with him (until the boss fires him for doing something insane like hanging out a window to freak out the people on the streets below) - He actually did the above incident. Twice. He was fired quickly and all window-washing companies were warned about him - Virgil met him a total of one time and said he wanted whatever Remus was high on - Remus, surprisingly, never takes drugs. He finds them icky-not the GOOD icky, like blood and mucus and all that fun stuff. The BAD icky, like forced mood-changes and forgotten events - You can bet your ass he sleeps around like nobody’s business - (I was going to make him Walter Peck but figured it’d be funnier if he was Louis. Be glad he made it in at all)

[thecomicsnexus]

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES / FLAMING CARROT CROSSOVER NOVEMBER 1993 - FEBRUARY 1994 BY BOB BURDEN, JIM LAWSON, NEIL VOKES, ERIC VINCENT AND MARY WOODRING

SYNOPSIS (FROM TMNT ENTITY)

A super storm has recently ravaged the eastern coast of Central America. The Turtles and Col. Blade are on their way to the decimated town of Santa Baloona to help the locals. To get there, they’re travelling in a blimp they absconded with after a team-up adventure in which they defeated Mr. Cadaverous and his Blue Santas.

After fishing the cow from “Bonanza” out of a tree, they set down on the roof of the US Embassy and the Ambassador takes Col. Blade aside for a debriefing. They meet with Professor Daub, an archaeologist. The Ambassador explains that a unit of the US Military called the I-Team went missing somewhere in the Abecero Peninsula and they need to be found. Col. Blade reconvenes with the Turtles and says that they and Professor Daub are deploying immediately for a special mission.

At Mystery men HQ, following a shrunken head/protein shake/ice cream incident, the team receives a top secret call to arms. Apparently, thousands of years ago, there was a highly advanced, nigh-mythical city called Botaquaxal, hidden in the Abecero Peninsula. It vanished somewhere around 948 AD and all attempted expeditions to locate it ended in tragedy, as the investigators all vanished. Recently, a dentist bought an artifact at a flea market and after x-raying it, found "something". That clue incited the Pentagon to send the I-Team into the Abecero Peninsula. When the super storm hit, it caused an earthquake, revealing a lost city. However, the I-Team’s last transmission wasn’t very hopeful, as the radioman screamed about flaming people burning everyone to death.

Flaming Carrot rallies the Mystery men (Screwball, Bondoman, the Shoveler, Mystic Hand, Mr. Furious, Star Shark, the Zeke’s and the Spleen) and they take off in their aircraft, the Flying Wing (after donning sombreros suitable for a Central American vacation). As the other Mystery men take turns flying the Flying Wing, the Shoveler does some meteorological investigation. He determines that the super storm didn’t follow any natural weather patterns but appears to have originated right from the Abecero Peninsula.

Via blimp, the Turtles, Col. Blade and the Professor find the I-Team’s campsite (but only after Raph wails on a saxophone he found in a locker). They investigate and find no signs of life, save some meals that appear to have been suddenly abandoned. The surrounding jungle appears likewise abandoned, without any traces of animals. What they DO find are the personal effects of the I-Team (rings, watches, fillings) sitting atop small piles of ashes, indicating they were incinerated almost instantly.

Searching, they eventually come across the unearthed city. Oddly, all the ancient buildings appear to be made of a strange plastic substance with magnetic properties. As Mikey skateboards the ruins, he spots a tower jutting out of the sea not far from the coast. Spying through binoculars, Col. Blade notices equipment abandoned outside the entrance to the tower, indicating people had recently been there.

They decide to break for pizza and investigate the tower the next day. Sleeping, Mikey has a strange dream about a prospering city, shadowy halls and a flaming man. He’s awoken by Leo’s screaming. Leo exclaims that while he was taking watch, a tiny man made of green flame attacked him. Leo wasn’t lying, as the flaming man pops out of the bushes and attacks again. Leo attempts to cut it in two, but his swords have no effect. Col. Blade pulls out his gun and aims for what looks like a heart in the center of its chest. Blade shoots the heart and the flaming man vanishes. Professor Daub laments that they didn’t try to communicate with the creature. Suddenly, Raph is startled and points to the sky as lights approach.

As the Flying Wing zooms over the TMNT’s camp, Mr. Furious suddenly loses power on all the instruments. He order all the Mystery men to bail save for himself, Flaming Carrot and Bondoman, who stay behind to manually work the wings. Once they glide far enough away from the camp (and the ancient ruins) the instruments begin working again. Mr. Furious sets the Flying Wing down and, after reconvening with the Spleen and the Zeke’s, they decide to hoof it toward the camp.

Meanwhile, the Turtles and Col. Blade are pretty spooked after the buzzing their camp received from the strange plane. The Turtles split up and journey into the jungle to check things out. Raph winds up getting into a tussle with the Shoveler, who proceeds to trick him into jumping off a cliff. Raph lands right next to Screwball, who panics and flies away on his rocket-boots.

Elsewhere, Donatello has a run-in with the Mystic Hand, who scares him off with his flying, disembodied hands. Star Shark rolls into camp and meets up with Col. Blade. Recognizing the Colonel as an American soldier, the Mystery man explains everything. Raphael, meanwhile, has begun trailing another green flame-man. The flame-man escapes, but leads him to the Flying Wing. Mr. Furious and the Zeke’s are about to open fire when Flaming Carrot stops them. He and Raphael know each other and the two trade information.

Back at camp, all the Mystery men have been rounded up and both groups brought to speed. The Shoveler, taking watch, sees activity off in the distance. Mr. Furious concocts a way to draw all the little green flame-men toward them so they can deal with them all at once. They set the area with traps and drive the Flying Wing and all its weapons near a clearing. They then throw all their green flares into a bonfire, hoping to attract the flame-men. Meanwhile, Flaming Carrot opens a lemonade stand to serve all the thirsty flame-men.

The plan works and the flame-men converge on the bonfire, creating a rainbow in the night with their weird energies. Michelangelo tries to scare them off with a flamethrower, but finds that by feeding flame-men mass quantities of fire, they only get bigger. Luckily, shooting the flame-men in the “heart” still causes them to snuff out and the giant is destroyed.

Col. Blade takes charge and hands out artillery to everyone, including the Turtles. However, it may not be enough as hundreds of flame-men storm the clearing with no signs of slowing down.

In the clearing, the group is struggling to gun down the army of flame-men, but they’re running out of ammo. Suddenly, flame-men reinforcements arrive via river, riding giant leaves. After sinking a few, the Mystery men and the Turtles realize that water can extinguish the flame-men. After cannibalizing the fuel pump from the Flying Wing, they hose down the flame-men and send them into retreat.

In the aftermath, all that’s left of the extinguished flame-men is protoplasmic goop which the Professor describes as being like giant amoebas (and which the Zeke's describes as smelling like Corn Flakes). The Shoveler and Star Shark, who were attacked by the flame-men, say that they weren’t burned but instead drained of energy, like they were being absorbed. Screwball panics when he can’t find his pet shoelace Sherman, but it turns up in a bag of Fritos. In the morning, Mystic Hand, Bondoman and the Spleen decide to stay behind and try to reassemble the Flying Wing while the others return to the I-Team camp and search for more clues. Shortly after they leave, the Spleen sees something lurking in the woods and Mystic Hand goes to investigate.

Fiddling with the I-Team’s radio, the Professor determines that the electromagnetic static that brought down the Flying Wing is spreading out from the ruins and may soon envelope the whole world. They also find Polaroids of the I-Team getting along with the flame-men and keeping them as pets. Flaming Carrot presumes that once the I-Team ran out of things to feed them, the flame-men turned on them. The group decides to head to the ancient ruins, leaving Screwball, Leo and Don behind to guard the camp. Searching the tents, they find one of the flame-men sleeping on a cot.

At the ruins, Mikey recalls the dream he had about the ancient city and follows his memories to a hidden opening in one of the buildings. At last inside the previously impenetrable buildings, Col. Blade orders Star Shark to stay and guard the door while they split into groups: He, the Professor, Raph and Mike will go in one direction while Flaming Carrot, Mr. Furious, the Zeke’s and the Shoveler go in the other. Col. Blade’s group stumbles upon paydirt quickly, finding skeletons of strange creatures, albeit ones with gold fillings that imply a greater intelligence.

At the camp, the flame-man introduces himself as P.F.C. Layton Sykes of Anniston, Alabama. He says that he was once a member of the previous investigation into the ancient ruins. His team encountered the flame-men, who ate anything but plants. When they ran out of food to feed them, the flame-men devoured him and his men. They were absorbed into the flame-men who ate them, merging their consciousnesses. Don asks if he remembers eating himself and, if so, then what do humans taste like? Sykes says “like chicken”.

Back at the ruins, Col. Blade’s team finds a chamber with a hole blasted into it by a flamethrower (indicating the I-Team had been there). Inside are hundreds of glowing eggs, each containing a flame-creature. The Professor joyously announces that they must certainly be looking at beings from another planet.

And at the Flying Wing, Mystic Hand returns with news that he found nothing. Suddenly, a trio of cloaked, spectral figures comes floating their way.

And back again at the ruins, Flaming Carrot’s team finds a huge pod with a glass lid. Inside is what looks like a 9 foot-tall werewolf clad in a jumpsuit and boots. Ignoring their better judgment, they open the pod and release the werewolf. The monster chucks Flaming Carrot, the Zeke’s and the Shoveler out a window and into the sea. Tearing a pipe off the wall, Mr. Furious charges the werewolf.

Mr. Furious dukes it out with the alien werewolf only for the beast to back off once it sees his Free Masonry ring. Being a Mason itself, the werewolf runs away. The Mystery men, the Turtles and Col. Blade eventually catch back up and ask Mr. Furious what the deal with the werewolf is.

Back at the Flying Wing, the Spleen, Bondoman and Mystic Hand are under siege from the spectral figures. The spirits are blasting beams of ice at them, encasing the jet. The Mystery men flee into the jungle with the specters close behind.

At the ruins, the werewolf is desperately trying to communicate with the team via dance, but they can’t interpret him. Don, Leo, Screwball and the flame-creature Sykes show up. After a brief bit of exposition, Sykes has a chat with the werewolf in its native language. The werewolf then devours Sykes and collapses. Star Shark comes down from his lookout post and tells everyone that the Flying Wing is under attack. Leaving the werewolf behind, the Turtles and the Mystery men return to camp.

They reach the Flying Wing, but have no idea what happened. The werewolf then catches up with them and explains everything… in English! He says his name is Chontre Mac and he’s an alien from a planet that exists within the center of the Sun. He says that there are a diverse number of races from that planet and all have the ability to absorb the minds of those they devour (hence how he was able to learn English by eating the flame-creature that ate Sykes). Chontre says that long ago, his people came down to Earth to set up a colony and built this great city. However, civil war erupted and most of his people retreated back to the Sun. Chontre was chosen to sink the city deep into the Earth so that its technology and culture could be preserved, putting himself in cryogenic stasis so he could keep watch.

Chontre is happy to be awake again and, seeing that there are no more warring Sun people on Earth, feels that now is the time to share the technology of the lost city with humanity. Suddenly, Mystic Hand’s disembodied hands float over and motion everyone into the jungle. They find Mystic Hand and Bondoman frozen in cryogenic ice (which Chontre assures them will defrost to no ill effect in a day or two). The Spleen, who fainted, wakes up and describes the ice-blasting specters. Chontre says that the specters are the Eikers, the faction who incited the civil war. When the city was unearthed, it sent a signal into space. Responding to it, the Eikers traveled down from the Sun to regain the lost technology and invade the Earth. The electromagnetic beam that has been shutting off all technology on Earth was a homing beam from their mother ship. Chontre explains that the only way to stop the invasion is to re-sink the city so the Eikers have nothing to home in on.

Screwball then calls down from his lookout post that the Eikers are coming. Chontre says that they’re an early scout patrol. He urges the Mystery men and the Turtles to lead the aliens to the nearby river where the additional humidity will react with their freezing powers and force them to take tangible form. The plan works and with the Eikers finally solid, Col. Blade is able to kill them all with machine-gun fire.

Chontre leads Col. Blade, the Professor and Mr. Furious back into the main hub of the ruined city where they found him in cryo-sleep. Chontre mans the controls to re-sink the city, telling the others to leave so they don’t become trapped, too. The controls malfunction and Chontre laments that the only way to re-sink the city now is for two individuals to man separate emergency controls simultaneously. The Professor volunteers to stay behind, jumping at the chance to go into suspended animation and awaken centuries from now in a brave new world.

Blade and Furious escape the building just as it and the rest of the city sink back into the Earth. Everyone’s electronics begin working again, proving that the Eikers have lost the signal and retreated from their invasion. Col. Blade gives a salute, praising the selfless sacrifice of the Professor.

REVIEW

While I usually enjoy Flaming Carrot, this story seems too focused on the Mystery Men, and while the typical team-up tropes show up, this is a very regular team-up. The Turtles are too normal and I think this drags the story down a bit. I was actually expecting more weirdness.

Not only they are too normal, they are a bit out of character (without their weapons, you cannot guess who they are by reading their dialogues).

The good thing is there is enough weird stuff to satisfy die-hard flaming carrot fans. As I mentioned before, most of my writing stuff is pretty much like Flaming Carrot, so for me, it was a trip down memory lane (but a lane that is not connected to this one).

The art is better than usual for Jim Lawson (apparently color really makes his style stand out more). And at the same time, the Turtles look good with other artists as well. Flaming Carrot looks as good as usual.

In the end, I feel like this story could have gone wilder.

I give the story a score of 5.

[camomills]

Title: Pit-bottom Relationships: Lisbeth/Sinon; Lisbeth/Asuna (kinda) Fandom: Sword Art Online Word Count: 1797 Summary: Lisbeth thinks about what love is. Different times in her life bring her to different definitions. Notes: Made for SAO Pride Week 2019 - Day 5: Past, Present and Future. I’ve had so many conversations as to why I interpret Lisbeth as a victim of compulsive heterosexuality that it was only a matter of time until I wrote something that delved into it at least a tiny bit. Thanks to @thegayfromrulid​ for beta reading.

AO3 Link

-

Lisbeth was 16 years old and at pit-bottom, figuratively and literally.

“You’re alive,” the boy in black says.

That much was true.

That morning, she wondered if that day would’ve been the day she’d rack up enough Col for a second waterwheel. That seemed like a meaningless worry at that moment, as she stared upwards, the foggy canvas of the sky framed by the walls of the hole she and Kirito had fell in.

The cold was oppressive and all-enveloping down there, but it paled in comparison to the still-settling realization as the teleportation crystal ignored her commands:

She was going to die in that pit.

It was so, so unfair. She did everything right. She stuck to the middle floors. She took to the mostly-civilian lifestyle of a blacksmith and enabled those that’d fight for her liberation. She grew her modest alleyway business into a legitimate shop, and she could feel pride whenever she saw her name emblazoned on that copper sign by its entrance.

All of this was made while latching onto the hope that she’d survive this game and go back to the real world.

And now I’m going to die because I insisted in tagging along with this weirdo.

There were so many things she hadn’t done yet. She wanted to hear her name being announced during roll-call at her graduation ceremony. She wanted to see the Tokyo Skytree. She was considering coursing Engineering at college, despite the demanding entry requirements.

She wanted to kiss someone, just once.

Ah, she thought. I didn’t even get to fall in love, did I?

While they prepared their sleeping bags, she mused for a moment over whom she would fall for had she the chance to so, and wasn’t bound to waste away in icy demise. Shinichi from Class 1-B at her school was cute. Sawamura from her class was okay too, she thinks. Even then, she’d been trapped in Aincrad for over a year, so they’re probably a grade above her now. A shame, really. Rumor has it that Sawamura was a good kisser.

Asuna’s smile flashed in her mind as she catalogued boys, and something in her jolts.

Is Asuna a good kisser?

That was an odd thought. Asuna wasn’t a boy.

As panic subsided and she came to terms with her predicament (Kirito’s words, despite his stoic tone, assuaged her fears), her mind stopped wandering too far out. She was stuck down there with this boy she’d met only hours prior, and the world seemed to shrink as the hours went by: there’s nothing beyond this pit, towering walls of frost and cold floor of snow, and him, roguish charm encased in dark leather.

She hungers for warmth, for touch, for romance, for other things she didn’t get to have due to this game. For the opportunities that were stripped away from her. Her sleeping bag, these clothes, can’t keep her warm. She knows they’re nothing but strewn data, calculating code colder than the surrounding ice.

These won’t do.

It has to be someone, her mind finally registers.

He was the only thing there, other than herself, that was in any way warm.  She asked him to hold her hand, and he did. It was a sensation, real and cozy, that she’d seldom experienced in a world of uncaring numbers.

The closest she’d ever had to this feeling, she realized, came from Asuna’s embrace, casual, deliberate, and always so soothing.

As sleep overtook her and her eyes droop closed, she thought of how worried her best friend must have been for her.

*

*

*

At the following sunrise, she wasn’t dead.

In fact, Lisbeth felt very much alive.

She was sent heavenwards while in the arms of this boy, Kirito, his skin brushing against hers, adrenaline and fire rushing in her veins, inferno of emotion hurling through the sky.

She was invincible in that moment, young and unafraid. Everything about it felt so right. That endless thrill, that beautiful sunset born from the parting of clouds: all coalescing into a book-worthy moment.

That must be what love is. That burning in her chest. Lisbeth was sure of it.

With wind howling in her ears, she decided that she was just going to say it.

“Kirito! You know, I…”

“What?!”

“I love you, Kirito!”

He couldn’t hear her ecstasy-fueled confession, and a part of her was happy about that.

It would have been embarrassing. Yes, that must have been the reason she was happy about it.

It’s what makes sense, after all, when she examines herself, heart blazing in the cold and quickly pumping exhales visible in the frost.

*

*

*

Rika was 18 years old and the aroma of freshly brewed black wafted through the air in Dicey Café. Her and Asuna’s laughter blows on the steam rising from their mugs.

“So… you had a thing for me?” Asuna asked. There was no judgment in her tone.

“Yeah,” Rika said. “Took me a while to figure that one out, though. I guess I couldn’t admit to myself that I liked girls too. And then Kirito was right there, the perfect scapegoat for those feelings.”

She tried to take a first sip from her mug, but the heat bit her tongue. Still too hot.

“He had the whole Mysterious Hero thing going on back then, and we had that wild trip. It got pretty easy to convince myself that I was into him. But when you two started dating, it wasn’t you that I was jealous of…”

Rika stared at Asuna expectantly, then smirked.

“I guess I must have been pretty desperate for a love story, if I tricked myself into liking him.”

Without missing the cue, Asuna elbowed Rika.

“He’s still my boyfriend, you know!”

Rika laughs at Asuna’s indignation, and Asuna laughs at Lis laughing at her. The blacksmith’s crude laughter was nothing if not infectious.

Their shared laughter reminds her that Asuna loved her, in the same way she’s always had. And that she still loved Asuna, albeit in a different way than back in Aincrad.

Rika is unsure of what love is, but she thinks that’s a good thing. Maybe the answer isn’t meant to come easy. It’s been two years since the ice dragon incident, and if there’s one thing any SAO Survivor understands is: a couple of years can change everything.

At the very least, it’s enough for a change in perspective. It’s a boost in maturity, as small as it is, that makes her understand that love is not something you seek in desperation, blurting out mindlessly in a moment between life and death. It’s probably something softer, found in the touch of a friend, amidst inside jokes and shared moments of joy like this. And probably not at the bottom of a pit.

Asuna was her best friend, both in Aincrad and in real life. Keiko never missed a day to share recess with her. Klein would take her teasing with little to no complaint. Agil offered her a part-time job at the bar last week, when she turned eighteen.

And, despite everything she says, she has a soft spot for Kirito. He’s a good friend. She’d never say that to his face, though, in fear of his head getting too big for his body.

She doesn’t need to hunger for love, as long as she has these connections.

If the other kind of love knocks at her door, though, then all the better.

The bell by the door chimes, and Asuna and Lis both turn on her stools, sure of who’s there before their vision catches them.

Kirito stands by the entrance and greets the both of them, unaware that he was a topic in their conversation moments ago.

From his side, a bespectacled girl sheepishly waves.

**

Rika is 22 years old, and she’s late to her part-time job.

It’s not her fault, though. There’s a dog in the apartment.

“Puppy!” Rika coos.

The Japanese Akita simply stares at her, a bit too stoically for a dog, dark slits for eyes betraying nothing.

Shino, sporting her police uniform, stops Lis’s hand as she offers him a corn chip.

“He can’t eat that. He might get sick. He’s got work to do.”

Shino’s dream of becoming a police officer came true, and she’s glad she has enough of a handle on her hoplophobia to manage it. She’s surprised that she was approved into the dog handler unit in her first try, though.

“Hecate is a police official, Rika. You should show him some respect.”

Hecate ? Lis considers teasing her on the name, but concludes otherwise. Shino had her reasons.

Perhaps her face gives her thoughts away, however, because Shino justifies herself.

“Yes, Hecate. He’s my partner, after all.” She manages not to look embarrassed.

Rika giggles. She at times pondered over how come she and Shino wound up together, when she herself scorches like a furnace, hot-red emotion barely contained in her body, while Shino, comparatively, runs cold like the steel that forms the barrel of a firearm.

Rika fancied herself gunpowder.

“I don’t know. Maybe he’d look cuter if he was fat,” Rika threatens. “Big, fat boy.”

She flicks a chip from the bag she was eating into the air. Hecate, shooting up as if a bullet from the homonymous sniper rifle, springs towards the airborne target, corn and wheat meeting trained teeth in a satisfying crunch. His canine expression remains dutifully cold, even as he chews on it.

Shino tries to grimace, but it’s hard while trying to kill a laugh at the same time. She changes the topic, a pair of fingers pressed to her temple.

“Shouldn’t you be at work instead of poisoning the new dog? Agil is going to give you an earful again.”

Rika smirks smugly, and there’s a bit of Lisbeth in that smile.

“It’s okay, he loves me!” She positions a proud hand over her chest. “I’m his only company in that dingy bar.”

Despite her cheeky reply, she puts on her boots faster. Even if her parents are helping with her tuition, she still needs to pull her weight. Engineering is a course with hefty tuition fees.

After a roughly affectionate tussle to the dog’s fur and a quick peck to Shino’s cheek, she runs out the door.

Now an adult, Rika can forgive her younger, juvenile self; that old definition of love, troubadour and romantic, feels endearing in its foolishness. She has a hard time appreciating that romanticized romance now, though, as she gets to bask in what she has available to her now: the domesticity in sharing as well as the presence of her friends. Now that her hunger is sated, her vision clears to what matters.

Her connection to them, all of them, must be what love is.

[gukyi]

inside the mind of gukyi

recently, i’ve been getting a lot of asks asking me for writing tips/advice/my process, so i figured i’d save everyone some time and make this post to answer your questions! if you still want to ask me about writing and have any specific inquiries, feel free to send them my way!

i am not a professional writer and these are not professional tips. i’m still a student and have lots to learn; in no way can this be considered complete. this is merely my process, how i write, and what i’ve learned over the past several years as i’ve explored the creative writing field both on and off tumblr. 

this is a really, really long post. as you all probably know, i’m an extremely wordy person, and there is certainly no shortage of words in this. but i figured that if you guys can read a 50k jungkook fake dating fic, you guys can read this.

HOW I GET STARTED

i know that that blank, white word document seems insurmountable and daunting. i’m telling you right now, it’s not. 

where my inspo comes from:

anywhere. i find inspiration in everything, i look at my life and the world around me and think “how can i write a fic about this?”. earnestly yours was inspired by a story told to my friends and i by the drama club director. moonlight melody was inspired by the time i went to florence over the summer and saw a student orchestra from germany perform in palazzo vecchio. the underwear thief was inspired by my dad’s own cat when he was a student. it’s ridiculous to say, but i am constantly thinking of new ideas to write. i have several unwritten ones floating around in my head right now.

when my thoughts are particularly dry or i just need to refresh, i’ll do this ask game where i ask you for a fic title and i will have to come up with a story. more often than not it will produce some fantastic prompts for me to work off of. this is how dirt and glitter galore will come to be. 

how i turn that inspo into a story:

okay, i have an idea in my head. let’s take moonlight melody, for example. i saw the student orchestra perform and then i wanted to write a fic about it. so, without writing anything down, i started to think about what kind of fic it would be. would my characters be orchestra students? would the two leads be friends? enemies? strangers? how would they fall in love? where would they go? what would they do? what obstacles would they face?

i don’t need to answer all of these questions. all i need to do is to pick an alternate universe to place my characters into and pick a trope, and i’m off. for moonlight melody, i actually jumped through two other ideas before settling on what it is now. originally, it was a friends to lovers/acquaintances to lovers fic between two students on a school trip to italy. then, it become an enemies to lovers fic between the two warring top members of the orchestra. finally, it was a fake dating au to get revenge on the oc’s trickster of a best friend. 

HOW I MAKE A PLOT

i have the idea. i have the au. i have the trope. now, i need to figure out how to get from point a to point b. 

planning... sort of:

if you’ve been following me even for 5 minutes you probably know that i plan out probably about 2% of my fics. those fics are ice prince and the truth between us. those are genuinely the only two fics i have planned from start to finish before i even wrote down a single word of the fic. the rest of my fics have been lightly planned at best and were mostly the product of me making stuff up as i go. 

i know that a lot of writers on tumblr like to plan out their fics ahead of time, which is honestly the less-chaotic way to go about it. almost every time i attempt to do this, i bail on the fic, so it’s clearly not my forte. 

instead, i divide my “plan” of action into three parts: the inciting incident, the climax, and the resolution. i decide what is going to propel the plot forward, where the peak of the action and the emotion is going to be, and what the end goal is. this is really all i need to write a fic, because i can fill the blank spaces between each major part of the story with little scenes that will slowly snowball into the climax, and then the conclusion. these blank spaces are typically known as the rising and falling action. 

so you don’t plan anything????

though these rising and falling action scenes are typically made up on the spot, once i have an idea of what’s going to happen in each individual scene, i will make a very brief bullet point that tells me how to go about it. taking moonlight melody again, i knew that the inciting incident would be hoseok stealing oc’s headphones as another prank, the climax would be the day that jungkook confessed, and the resolution would be the flight home. the scenes in the middle were wholly unplanned, though, to ensure that i wouldn’t forget anything, i had bullet points at the bottom of the document that looked like this:

gondola tour in venice (seokjin, hoseok, jungkook, oc)

they all go drinking

jungkook nearly confesses to oc but instead just throws up

brief, but the point is there. this is typically how i go about all of my fics. the main three parts are fleshed out but everything else is spontaneously thought of.

HOW I MAKE A CHARACTER

plots are pointless if your characters are boring.

creating a character bio:

these aren’t so much bios as they are background information. characters need context for existing so that the plot can move forward. i almost never write out little plans for my individual characters since this information i can typically remember, but if you can’t or if you think fleshing out your characters on paper is easier, by all means. my bios (in my head) consist of qualities and characteristics that are either 1) inalienable (meaning that they don’t change throughout the course of the fic) or 2) very present at the beginning of the fic but may change over time. to me, the character bios are how i view the character at the start of the fic, rather than the end. 

this can include stuff like hobbies, occupation, and qualities. for jungkook from moonlight melody, it would look something like this:

photographer

best underclassman violinist

reserved but comes out of his shell around friends

supports taehyung’s antics

had a crush on oc for ages

general fine arts hoe

if you’re a fic writer, feel free to base your characters off of the traits they possess in real life/canon-ly, but also don’t be afraid to give their personalities a makeover. they should fit with your fic. you don’t need to retain their original traits just for your writing. 

developing my characters:

this i almost always keep reserved for main characters only. all of my quirky best friends in my fics are flat (meaning they don’t have any character development) just because they typically function as comic relief and don’t need to have some big character arch to be important. 

character development is how my characters go from enemies to lovers and friends to lovers because obviously, to go from such polar opposites, something has to change. quite frankly i’m not the best at character development but one thing i make sure about is that it’s subtle. it’s really, really unnatural for characters who have been enemies for their entire lives to suddenly just Up And Kiss like it’s nobody’s business. there has to be a slow shift because before they can be lovers, they have to be friends. subtlety is key. i’m still working on my character development skills because i don’t think they’re that hot. 

making my characters realistic:

this is my favorite, favorite part of writing. favorite. i love it because i get to throw in all these dumbass quirks to make the characters fun and relatable and not boring masses of dialogue. this is the part where i get especially creative, because there are just so many things that make people tick. i throw in random traits and characteristics like “raw corn allergy” or “aspires to be instagram famous” or “frequently quotes vines for no apparent reason” because people in real life are like this. they aren’t robots, machines with the same general makeup but slight variations. everyone’s different. 

in a more serious sense, this also applies to traits that are generally less favorable to society, even if they aren’t in the grand scheme of things. jungkook from the underwear thief regularly wishes for a black hole to suck him up and remove him from reality. the oc in start anew fears her own past and clings to it at the same time. broken rings & queens and kings’ oc often lets her pride get the better of her. 

these characteristics make characters human, which in turn makes them relatable, which i think adds to the charm of my writing, because people feel like they’re kin with the characters they’re reading about. 

HOW TO WRITE DIALOGUE

i have a couple answered asks about writing dialogue: this one about using dialogue to start a story and this one about how to make dialogue seem natural and this one about how to use dialogue to propel a story rather than prose. dialogue is another one of my favorite parts about writing, and i would generally consider myself a dialogue writer rather than a description writer. 

i write dialogue by listening to how people speak. this can be in any context, from people in real life to movies and tv shows to youtube videos. every now and then i will just take out my headphones and listen to other people talk, their mannerisms, they way they conduct themselves through their voices. then, i will take that and apply it to my own characters. granted, i embellish my characters’ speaking patterns slightly because obviously i want my characters to be more exciting that the people i know in real life, but the basis is the same. 

colloquialism and vernacular plays a big part in this. people don’t speak like they write research papers. at least, i don’t. even as i write this, this is how i would be speaking if i were telling you all of this information in person rather than typing it out and posting it. i almost always write how i speak. it’s just the kind of language that flows most naturally to me. so, in my fics, i make sure to use slang words and abbreviations and whatnot because that is how i speak regularly and that is how other people around me speak as well. 

when i say embellish, i sort of mean making them sound cooler than the people you know in real life. ain’t nobody who i speak to on a regular basis saying cool analogies and figurative language. that’s the part that i typically embellish. for example, jungkook in the underwear thief tells taehyung, “i’m gonna have to wash these again just because you put your blackhead-filled nose up to it.” now, i have never heard the phrase “blackhead-filled nose” uttered before in my life. but i made jungkook say it as an embellishment on his already realistic speaking patterns. 

one thing that i was asked to include is how to vary action words after dialogue to make the story seem less “he said she said” and more professional. i’m guilty of doing the “he said she said” thing a bunch, which is apparently a big writing no-no, but jk rowling also has a habit of doing it so take from that what you will. generally, i like to stick to a couple of main action verbs that explain emotions like “furrowed brows” (represents confusion) or “sighs” (resignation) or “groans/complains” (annoyance). or, i’ll just go straight into an action verb that doesn’t have anything to do with speaking, like “smirks” or “rolls eyes” or something like that.

HOW I STAY MOTIVATED AND PRODUCTIVE

this is a misleading subtitle because i am, on a regular basis, neither motivated nor productive.

motivation and other elusive social concepts:

the only thing i can vouch for concerning motivation is that if you aren’t enjoying what you write, stop writing it. it’s that simple, really. i have a lot of wips that will die along with the end of the earth without anybody besides myself seeing them because i got to a point in the fic where i just wasn’t enjoying myself anymore. above everything else, when i write i want to be having fun. it’s a goddamn hobby and it shouldn’t be a chore. i find peace of mind when i write, and so i will continue to do it.

reading also helps a lot. i typically try to read, whether it be fic or an actual published novel, every single night. if i am reading something that i am especially enjoying or that i find just... genuinely outstanding, then i’m more inclined to want to work on my own thing because holy shit, that thing i just read was so good i want to do that. 

productivity? never heard of her:

you may or may not be familiar with the fact that the majority of moving on was written between the hours of 12am to 7am the day it was going to be posted, with a 3 hour nap during that time period. don’t do that. 

i try to write for at least an hour or two every night, but the key word here is try. if i’m particularly busy or just not feeling up to it, i won’t. it’s really no big deal. a lot of the times my productivity will go up and down like the wall street stocks with most of it occurring closer to the time i want the fic to be posted. on those days, i set myself mildly strict guidelines for writing time and try to get as much of it done as possible. i know that i can write about 1k an hour, but if i’m really in The Mood then i can write 1k in 30 minutes. 

MY UNCONVENTIONAL (OR CONVENTIONAL) HABITS

i write best when it’s dark outside, and some of my finest work is produced roughly at 2am. i will listen to the same song over and over and over if it’s the only inspo i can find for a fic (i’m looking at you, moonlight melody). my writing spaces have to be neat, whether they be my desk or my bed. i always try to have water with me because stay hydrated, folks! i check my word count like every five minutes even if i haven’t written anything. if i’m not feeling inspired for a fic i will typically turn to tumblr to see if you guys can elicit some sort of inspo for the fic, either by asking you guys to ask me questions about my fic or working on a wips page. my word count estimates are either right on target or gross underestimates. i have a habit of repeating opening clauses for effect, typically three times right after each other.

ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS

hopefully most of the things you guys were looking for were already answered, but i did get some requests for more targeted answers. bear in mind, this is just how i would go about doing these things, so you can do whatever you want with this information!

how to structure sentences and make sure they’re the right length:

try to mix long sentences and short sentences together. a line of dialogue doesn’t need be accompanied by a big paragraph all the time. you can often just make a new paragraph right after the quote; you don’t even need an action verb. balance out your sentences. if you have a long paragraph with long sentences, make the next line a couple of words. 

how to make a sfw fic interesting:

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: a fic does not need smut to be interesting. not everything needs to be sexual in nature. when you think about it, most books aren’t sexual in nature, and there are plenty of interesting ones out there. alongside the plot, what makes a story really interesting are the characters. see the character section above for how i try to keep my characters fun and lovable.

how to write smooth sentences/have flow:

one rule of thumb i always try to follow is to not have each new paragraph start with the same word. there are plenty of ways to start a new paragraph with a word other than “you” or “then” or “so” and it makes your writing interesting and diverse. to have flow, try to find cadence in your writing. a rhythm, perhaps. read your sentences back to yourself. it should flow smoothly on your tongue and the words should come to you naturally without any thinking at all. if you want to change topics, do so slowly. don’t try and pull 180 turns with your writing, it’s abrupt and unnecessary. 

how to be detailed:

figurative language. that’s it. any type of figurative language. rhetorical devices work, too (here’s a great list). figurative language is the spice of writing. try to use metaphors, similes, analogies, and allusions that are relevant to the time period in which your story is set.

alongside this, try and think about everything that your character is doing during that scene or that dialogue, and not just their face. think about how the world is interacting with them. are they nursing a cup of coffee? tapping their feet? is the wind blowing their hair slightly? see your characters as people and not just faces.

how to title:

ugh, titles, my nemesis. i title all of my fics after i write them because when i’m finished with the fic, i’ve got a pretty good grasp as to where the story is headed and can name it accordingly. some tips for titling are to find those cool word blogs/sites and snatch up a word from there that seems to match or think of a common phrase/idiom/whatever that matches your fic and either use it or alter it slightly. quite honestly though, most of my titles come straight out of my ass.

HOW TO NAVIGATE THE BTS WRITING COMMUNITY

bear in mind that this is just how i have personally experienced the community while writing here on tumblr and that this is not representative of everyone’s experiences. also these are mostly just tips so you are under no obligation to take my advice or believe what i say!

if you are an sfw writer/uncomfortable with writing smut, cool. that’s cool. that is so cool because me too. i know that the pattern on tumblr is that nsfw fics get hella press and everyone else is left in the dust, and this may cause you to feel the need to include smut in your fic to gain notes but please, don’t. don’t do it. it’s not worth it because you should always 100% be comfortable with what you are writing. do not let other people determine your writing (unless you are writing something distasteful in which case um, maybe stop that?). 

writing should not be a chore. do not let people on tumblr, whether they are your followers or not, pressure you into thinking/feeling otherwise. you are doing this for free. you are getting nothing in return except for notes on a social media website. you do not owe anybody anything. 

there is no secret sauce for becoming a quote unquote “popular” blog. popularity is overrated anyway and quite frankly any decent human being on this website, even if they have 100k followers, will tell you the same thing. it’s all a hoax. write what you love and love what you write and people will find your blog. readers can tell when your heart isn’t in it. don’t let the numbers get to your head because they’re almost pointless.

be a nice person? people like nice people? it’s pretty self explanatory. here’s the thing. you don’t owe your followers anything but they don’t owe you anything either. don’t treat them as such. they aren’t less than you because you write and they do not. love and respect your followers because they will do the same to you. 

HOW TO WRITE LIKE A WRITER

write. write write write write write. don’t stop. even if it takes you months, years to write. do it. 

i hope this was helpful!! i could probably go on and on for a million years about each of my quirks and habits when it comes to writing, but i wanted to make sure that you guys finished reading this thing before the turn of the next century. i also have a tag on my blog called #writing tips where i answer some questions a little more specifically, though there may be some repeated information just because my process hasn’t changed all that much. as always, message me with feedback for this post or any additional questions you might have concerning my writing process or with some specific requests for writing tips!!!

[roatsww]

In Service Because I Care.

 Rosie (my sister and my best friend) was the only person who ever really knew just how much I care, it was only Rosie who shared my love for the bush listening to the call of the fish eagle, or just sitting at a watering hole and smelling the raw smell of Africa as the game came down to drink, we’d sit until after dark watching the hippo at play, and Rosie knew my love for the beautiful people with the dark skins and the honest hearts, but, it’s all gone now, and Rosie too. I can only sit here with memories of a beautiful period in Africa, the time I had a love affair with Africa and her people.

 Visiting in back rooms, in kaya’s huts and shacks, I once knew a people who were oppressed but they were honest in their hearts. I care so much for the people of Africa, that I gave up my life in fashion to serve and make a difference, I wanted to return the honesty of meat stew on sadza, pot baked bread over an open fire, and corn beer (Mageu), of swimming in the river naked with the village children, of shooting pigeons with a catapult, and catching rabbits in snares, the people who filled my childhood.

 When the offer came up to reach out and touch the lives of people who were dying of AIDS in the slums of Hillbrow, I didn’t hesitate, I packed up everything, and went to give just a little of my heart to those who had been abandoned, who had nobody, it was a time of my life that was filled with sorrow, as I watched a people that I loved dying because there was no hope, there was only the hand of Mikey, and then AIDSLINK closed down due to lack of funds, and I went to work with the people of the informal settlements, walking for miles every day, either to help erect a new shack, or to tear down a dilapidated one, or just to sit in the dust and talk of the world, and of life.

 When I was asked to go into the heart of a cholera epidemic, again I didn’t hesitate, I packed up everything, and I went to the hills of Zululand, where I was needed, because I care. Immersing myself in cholera infected water several times on a daily basis, just so that I could save a life by the simple act of providing clean and cholera free drinking water, which I would pump  out of the rivers and dams into tanks, and treat it for the ecoli bacteria. I covered an area of 300 kilometres every day, leaving before dawn and returning only late at night to the temporary base, but I was happy because I was making a difference that mattered, for six months, 18 hours a day, seven days a week I gave my everything to make a difference in the lives of others, simply because I care about people that I don’t even know..

 During the whole of the cholera epidemic two people had a huge impact on my life, one was Nana Bonga from the Dept. of Health who worked as tirelessly as I did to save lives, and the other was Mama Luthuli from Dakeni village on the Tugela, who adopted me as the child of her heart. well into her eighties she had lost all her children to either AIDS or Cholera, and was singlehandedly raising her grand children, but also had taken over the management of safe water for her village.

 I remember the people, the incidents, because they were from a time when my South Africa was a great nation, when honesty was a given, and integrity mattered, and today I can only remember with a great sadness, the time when I cared so much that I would have laid down my life for the people of this country which I love. And today I sit in sadness, because the love of people with honest hearts is gone, all that is left is distrust, fear, hatred for in this new South Africa I have become the unclean because I have a white skin,. I have become a target for liars, thieves and cheats, what is in my heart no longer matters, for I am white, and even worse I am queer too and to crown it all I am unclean because I am living with AIDS, a long-term survivor of the epidemic that shook the world to its very foundations in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

 The days where I would have sat in the shade of the old tree with the village elders is past, it will never be again, because the age of respect it too has passed.

 All I have are memories from a time when all that mattered was that I have an honest heart with a capacity for loving that surpasses all others, and now my health is gone, and I no-longer have the strength to serve my fellow man. (Photo above, me on the banks of the Tugela river during the height of the cholera epidemic, showing former parliamentary shadow-minister of health Mike Ellis, how to set up the pump)

[bibliosauruswrecks]

The Crescent Hotel

This is for @barpurplewrites​, who requested info on the infamous Crescent Hotel & Spa, reputed to be the most haunted hotel in America, and this quickly went from a short run-down of the most common hauntings to an entire travelogue, because I can’t leave well enough alone when it comes to history, especially when said history is right in my own backyard.

The Crescent circa 1890

Click to continue reading, but beware!  This post is image- and text-heavy because I like pictures, and I tend to ramble.  And if you don’t want to read about horrific fake medicine practices from the 1930s, I’d advise skipping this altogether.

First things first, let’s start with a bit of context, shall we?  Situated in the northwest corner of Arkansas about two hours from nowhere, Eureka Springs is a quirky little town built into the steep sides of a valley and up the surrounding hillsides.  None of the streets of the well-preserved commercial district intersect at straight lines, there isn’t a single traffic light on the five-mile loop, and making a turn on the steep, narrow roads generally involves a quick prayer to the deity of your choice.

No, seriously.

If this sounds like poor municipal planning, you’d be right.  That’s because Eureka Springs sprang up (*ahem*) virtually overnight when word spread about the healing powers of the naturally-occurring cold springs in the area, and the place has been a popular tourist destination since the town was incorporated in 1880.

Enter the Crescent Hotel. It’s not the only haunted establishment in Eureka, but its sordid history makes it the most famous.

The Crescent today

Perched on top of the highest mountain and overlooking the valley, the Crescent Hotel opened its doors on May 20th 1886 as a luxury resort for the rich and famous.  The first death on the premises actually occurred in 1885 while the hotel was still under construction.  One of the stonemasons lost his footing, fell from the top of the building, and landed on a wooden beam that’s now part of the floor of Room 218. Visitors who stay in 218, usually women, sometimes hear the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, among other ghostly happenings.

By 1908, the hotel had closed and been re-opened as the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women, which continued in operation until 1924.  The second incident occurred during this era when one of the students tumbled over the balcony to her death and landed in the gardens.  Guests have seen a ball of mist floating down, often with the figure of a young woman inside, and a man is sometimes spotted turning away on the balcony.  After closing in 1924, it opened again in 1930, this time as a junior college, and closed four years later.

[image redacted because even in monochrome, Mr. Baker’s lurid purple suit makes my eyes water]

In 1937, the Crescent was purchased by Norman Baker, a charlatan with an interest in quack medicine who had already been run out of the state of Iowa for practicing medicine without a license.  He converted the hotel into a hospital, claiming he had a cure for cancer without need for “knife, radium, x-ray, or serum,” and people came from all over the country, expecting miracles that didn’t happen.  His so-called “cure” was a concoction of watermelon seeds, brown corn silk, alcohol, and carbolic acid. 

When his patients’ pain became too much to bear, Baker would have them moved to the third floor where they would spend their final days in the so-called “Pain Ward.”  Guests on this floor have reported the sound of squeaking wheels, and an apparition of a Depression-era nurse wheeling a sheet-covered gurney down the hall.  Theodora, the head nurse, is sometimes seen in front of her former room as she searches through her purse for her keys, and has been known to pack guests’ luggage and leave it by the door for them before their stay is over.

Theodora would kindly like to remind you to leave everything as you found it...

Despite not curing a single patient, people still flocked to Baker’s “Castle in the Air,” lured in by fake testimonials and promises of pain-free recovery.  It was through these fabrications that the federal government was able to convict Baker of mail fraud in 1940.  Ironically, or perhaps a case of poetic justice, he died of cancer in 1958.

The hotel continued to change hands, and slowly fell into disrepair before it was purchased by Marty and Elise Roegnik in 1997.  Over the next six years, the Crescent was renovated and restored to its former glory, and continues to operate as a luxury resort hotel and spa to this day. If relaxation isn’t your thing, though, you can sign up for a ghost tour, where guides tell stories of the Crescent’s past while leading you through various haunted locations throughout the hotel, including the morgue.

The what?

Oh, yeah, that’s right; the hotel has a morgue.

Well, Baker had to do something with his former patients while he bled their grieving family members dry for more money.  Why not cut out some tumors to store in jars of formaldehyde as “proof” that his “cure” worked?  In case you haven’t figured it out by now, this man was despicable.  The jars were buried in a pit behind the hotel in the 1960s, and have only recently been rediscovered.  An archeological team from the University of Arkansas began excavation last week… After the state crime lab and HAZMAT crew confirmed it was safe for them to do so, of course.

Lovely...

So, that’s the truncated version of the Crescent Hotel & Spa, the most haunted hotel in America. These aren’t all the stories; just the most common ones.  Since my photos seemed to have vanished into the digital black hole I call my pictures folder, I had to make do with the Crescent’s websites and the Eureka Springs media center’s photo gallery.  Links are listed below.

This has nothing to do with the Crescent.  I just wanted to end on a more pleasant note than bottles of preserved body parts, so have a picture of the inside of the Fleece ‘n Flax yarn shop down on Spring Street.  Can you see me hiding amidst the clutter?

Black and white photo

Downtown Eureka Springs

The Crescent today

Basketball team

Theodora’s room

Morgue

Bottles