#it’s the same folks every time we come in because they’re the soldiers tasked with running a dennys from the hours of 10-4

[scatteredcloud]

Whatever happened to Saturday night?

[duhragonball]

Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch.109-113

Hard to believe we’re at the end of this crazy ride.  

Last time, Joseph had defeated Kars, only for Stroheim to order his men to finish Kars off with UV rays.  Stroheim just wanted Kars to hurry up and die faster, and maybe he also wanted credit for the kill, but instead he played right into Kars hands.    After Joseph kicked his ass, Kars put on a Stone Mask he had stowed away somewhere, and he installed the Red Stone of Aja into the Mask.  

I should probably go over that a bit, since it hasn’t been mentioned for a while.   Kars has been perfecting the Stone Mask technology for thousands of years.   It turns humans into vampires, but for his species it unlocks even greater powers.   But Kars hit a wall in his research.   He wanted to design a mask that would make him the ultimate life form, but he lacked the means to power such a mask.   He discovered an answer in the Aja Stone, a mineral that focuses light, but he needed a bigger, more flawless sample of it, and that’s the Stone he’s using right now, the one he captured from Lisa Lisa.  

So instead of killing Kars, Stroheim accidentally made his lifelong ambition come true.   One nice touch I just noticed is that the Mask itself falls apart as soon as it’s finished its task.    I suppose, in theory, someone else could have tried it on and get the same power boost as Kars?  Would it even work on a normal human?  Well, we’ll never find out.   

There’s a couple of ways to interpret this.   One is that Kars’ “Super” Mask was highly experimental, and it must have been untested, since he’d never had Lisa’s stone until now.   So it’s possible that the thing burned itself out after a single use.   The other interpretation is that Kars designed this Mask to self-destruct after the first use, because it was never intended for anyone else but himself.    The whole point of this was to become the Ultimate Life Form, the very pinnacle of all living creatures on Earth.   I think it was implied that Wammu and Esidisi were expecting to share in this power when the time came, but why would Kars have ever allowed for this?   What’s the point of being the greatest and best in the world if you have to share that top spot with two other guys? 

Stroheim realllly wants to believe this is all a big fluke, and that he didn’t just make the bad guy stronger.   The Ripple wound on Kars’ arm is still there, so Stroheim figures he’ll die anyway.    Except Kars doesn’t seem too bothered by his injury.   And then...

Yeah, so Kars not only repairs his injured arm, he reshapes his hand into a squirrel.   Joseph speaks for us all: What the fuck?

For a hot minute, everyone thinks the squirrel he made is kind of cute, until Kars sends it to find another squirrel and kill it.  Then the Kars-squirrel tears a hole through Stroheim and carves a trench in a Nazi soldier from chest to eyeball.   Then it rejoins Kars’ wrist, and turns into a flower, and then a butterfly.   Some Part 5 and 6 pre-references for ya.  

Then the sun comes up.    Wait, the Joseph/Wammu fight happened around midnight, right?    How many hours have these folks been out here?    And it’s February, too, so this had to have been a long night.  Anyway, the sun comes up, so we’re saved, right?   Wrong.  Sunlight doesn’t hurt Kars anymore, thanks to the power he got from his special mask.   So now what are they supposed to do? 

Well, Joseph’s going to use his last resort: running away.    Also, he grabs the Aja Stone, for no apparent reason.    Kars grows a pair of wings to chase him.    He no longer cares about the Hamon users, because they’re no longer a threat to him.   But he wants to kill Joseph personally, both to celebrate his new powers and to avenge the deaths of Wammu and Kars.  

Smokey joins Joseph, which doesn’t make much sense to Joseph, but Smokey wants to tell Joseph about Lisa Lisa being his mother.   Except Joseph’s a little too distracted by the eldritch horror that’s trying to murder him. Read the room, Smokey.

Here’s a helpful diagram of Kars to explain what his deal is now.   Basically, he’s immortal and can regenerate and reshape his whole body, but he had that before, just by being a Pillar Man.   The big upgrade is that he’s no longer weak to sunlight (and by extension, the Ripple), and he can now replicate the traits of any life form on Earth.    He’s faster than cheetahs and has better hearing than bats and so on.   He can go for a full year without eating, and he no longer needs to sleep.    Sex is meaningless to him, because procreation is only important for lower life forms to maintain their species.   Kars has no need for children or bretheren.    “There is but only one summit.”  

Maybe Wammu and Esidisi had understood that truth all along, and they never seriously expected Kars to share this power with them.   They practically worshipped Kars as it was, so maybe they were only doing this for the greater glory of their leader.   

So what does Kars plan to do with all of this power he now has?   The Aja Stone was his only goal before, and that’s done.    He has no enemies to fear, and as Speedwagon observes, there’s no way left to kill him.    This page states that his only purpose now is to create a world to match his own desire, but what is that?   What’s Kars’ vision for the Earth now that he’s reached this point?   

We never really find out, and I suppose that’s why it’s convenient that he decided to start out by killing Joseph.    For all we know, he would have just chilled out and left humanity alone after that, but this way there’s still an immediate threat to deal with.  

Miraculously, Joseph manages to stay ahead of Kars long enough to find the airplane that brought Stroheim here.   You’d think Kars could have caught up to him with all these fancy new powers, but Kars was never in much of a hurry.    He took his time to search for the Aja Stone, and he made it a point to trap Jojo and Lisa rather than risk fighting them fairly.  So even now, when he has such an overwhelming advantage, he seems to be playing things the same way.   He has no weaknesses, so he may as well take his time and stalk Joseph, if only to watch him squirm.

Joseph tries using the plane’s weapons to even the odds, but Kars grows armadillo hide on his wings to protect himself, and he fires the armor at Joseph like shrapnel.   So machinery doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.   

So Joseph just flies south, using the plane’s engines to give himself a comfortable lead.   He’ll run out of fuel in a couple of hours, but Speedwagon calls him on the radio and tells him that they’ll figure out a plan.   Except that Joseph already has his own plan.  There’s a volcanic island off the coast of Italy.  I assume this is Stromboli Island, since Italy has only three active volcanoes, and Mt. Stromboli is the only one on an island.   Anyway, Joseph plans to lure Kars into the volcano, and destroy him with molten lava.    I mean, Kars is still flammable, right?

Speedwagon hates this idea, because he doesn’t see any way for Joseph to pull this off without getting killed in the process, and that sounds way too much like what happened to Joseph’s father and grandfather.  Oh, and his great-grandfather.   I didn’t notice George I up there until just now.   Speedwagon tries to tell Joseph about Lisa being his mom, but Joseph can’t hear him because of all the piranha noises in the plane.    Wait... what?

Yeah, all the feathers that Kars turned into armor and launched into the fuselage?   Well, he’s still controlling those things, and now Kars has turned them into piranhas.   Well, I guess not literal fish, since they’d never survive up here.  The point is that Kars can control every cell in his body and mimic any animal traits he wants, so if he wants to make small bitey creatures to wreck Joseph’s plane, he might as well make them look like piranhas.    ALso he makes an octopus that tears up one of the engines.  

So Joseph bails out, but he’s a sitting duck in that parachute.    Kars calls him a butterfly caught in a web, which is the second time we’ve seen that analogy in Part 2.   Araki just out here telling everyone what Jolyne would be wearing in twelve years. 

But the parachute contains a dummy.    Why did Joseph waste time drawing a face on it?   Because he knew he had to fool Kars’ razor-sharp senses, of course.    Kars probably saw the dummy, and got suspicious, but then he noticed the eyes and mouth, and though “Oh, okay, I guess that’s a real person then.”  

Anyway, this suckers Kars in so that Joseph can crash into him with his plane and they can both go into the volcano together.

But Kars thinks he can tear up the plane before it lands.   Except a robot hand grabs him from behind, and he finds Stroheim stowed away.   Wait, so Stroheim outran Joseph AND Kars and hid in this plane before Joseph took off?   

Anyway, Stroheim manages to get Joseph out of the plane to relative safety, but he crushes his whole lower body in the process.  But it seems to be worth it, because Kars landed smack-dab in the volcano!  Awesome!   Fuck you, Kars, you screwed over Lisa Lisa, and that’s what you get!   He tries to protect himself, but he can’t grow a defense against 1000 degree heat...

... is what I would say, except no, Kars totally does that.   Just when Joseph thinks Kars has succumed to the lava, Kars pops out and slices off Joseph’s left arm with his goofy blade.  

How the fuck did Kars survive?   Well, he couldn’t grow a lava-proof shell, but he could create a porous layer beneath the shell, and use the air inside to insulate the rest of his body from the heat.   That wouldn’t protect him indefinitely, but it was enough to get the drop on Joseph.  

So that’s it then, right?  Not even molten lava can kill Kars, unless you could shove him down in there and keep him still for like ten minutes, and who’s going to pull that off?    Stroheim begins to lose all hope...

Then we get a flashback to Kars’ origin.   Long, long ago, there was a race of subterranean humanoid with long lifespans and an aversion to sunlight.   Prehistoric humans thought of them as gods or demons because of their reclusiveness and power.   Also, they would eat humans and animals, so that probably made them dangerous, too.   

But I don’t think they were nearly as powerful as the Pillar Men we’ve seen in this story.   I say this because the flashback establishes that Kars was the one who discovered the latent power in their brains, and he was the one who invented the Stone Mask technology to harness that latent power.   So it stands to reason that much of what he and the others could do was the result of Stone Mask enhancements.   The problem is that those enhancements increased the amount of blood they needed to consume, and the others in the Clan feared that Kars’ experiments would destroy their whole ecosystem.   So when they tried to stop Kars, he killed them all.   The only survivors were himself, Esidisi, and two young children who grew up to become Wammu and Santana.  

So that story tells you something about what Kars might do with this newfound “ultimate” power.   He didn’t achieve this for the good of his own people, because they’re all dead now, and he wiped most of them out personally.   If he would do that to his own kind, the rest of the Earth would be expendable to him.

Back to the present, Joseph’s not giving up yet.   He tries to use the Ripple one more time, but it doesn’t work.   Worse, Kars counters with his own Ripple.    Because Kars can do that now, you see.    He’s got the powers of all life on Earth, and that includes Ripple users, I suppose.   Worse, Kars’ Hamon power is hundreds of times greater, so he ends up getting badly burned on his right knee.  

So now Joseph’s completely out of tricks, and he starts to accept the inevitable.   Kars decides that the best way to kill Joseph would be to destroy him with his own finisher, Ripple Overdrive.  So he charges up the most powerful Hamon attack he can muster, and just as he’s about to strike...

Joseph impulsively grabs the Red Stone of Aja and uses it to block, kind of like how he stymied Kars back on that cliff in Switerland.   Only this time, Kars doesn’t hold back, and the Hamon attack is amplified.    It bursts through Joseph’s right hand and into the volcano below. 

The narration says that not even Joseph really understood any of this.   He just sort of acted on instinct.   That bothered me once, but now I see that it wasn’t entirely unconscious impulse.   Back in Venice, when Lisa first told Joseph about the Aja Stone, Joseph suggested destroying it to deny Kars his prize. But Lisa said there was a legend that foretold that Kars could never be defeated without the Aja Stone.   And that would at least explain why Joseph picked the thing up back in Switzerland before he fled to Mt. Stromboli.    Maybe it was unconscious action that made him pick up the stone in this fateful moment, but I think it was a more conscious thought that made him take the stone with him in the first place.   On some level, he remembered that legend.  

Okay, so there’s a mega-ultra-Super-Saiyan-5-Ripple that just went into a live volcano.    What good does that do?   Well, it makes the volcano erupt, and it launches Joseph and Kars into the air.    So what?   Kars can fly.    Yeah, he could, but...

You know, Joseph’s lost hand really left an impression on me when I first watched the anime of Part 2, but now that I’ve read the manga, I’ve noticed tons of severed and wounded forearms all through this story, almost as if Araki had been building up to this moment.    I’d make a Part 4 joke, but nah, that’s too easy.   But it wasn’t even that long ago that Wammu lost both of his hands, and then he launched them as Joseph to distract him.    Kars lost his hand before he grew it back and turned it into a squirrel.    Hell, Stroheim launched his robot hand at Kars to distract him for the volcano crash.   And now Joseph’s hand has somehow launched itself into Kars’ throat to distract him again!

I’m assuming that Hamon energy has a lot to do with this.   You’d think Joseph’s hand wouldn’t have survived getting fired up this high, and it shouldn’t be powerful enough or alive enough to bother Kars this much, but it does.   So I’m chalking it up to all that Ripple energy.  It briefly reanimated Joseph’s hand and made it follow Kars up to this altitude, kind of like how Jonathan controlled Wang Chung’s decapitated body at the end of Part 1.

So Joseph taunts Kars about this, and implies that he planned this somehow.    And when Kars pauses to ask if he did plan this, more rocks and stuff from the volcano hit him and send him even higher up into the air.

And Joseph claims that he did plan this entire thing!  That’s bullshit, but he hopes Kars will believe it, if only to make him more frustrated.    Maybe Joseph didn’t plan all this out, but he seems to have deduced what’s happening here.  

Kars has been launched so high into the air, and at such an incredible speed, that he’s achieved escape velocity.    Does Kars even realize what that means?   I mean, he’s super-intelligent, especially now, and he’s been alive for thousands of years, but what could he really know about outer space?    Has he ever even considered it before?  It seems like all of his ambitions involve the Earth, and only the Earth, and everything living upon it.  

As for Joseph, the chunk of rock he’s on does not fly into space.   Instead, it starts to fall back down, and Joseph assumes that he’s probably not going to survive the impact.    Eight hours later, Stroheim makes it back and informs Speedwagon that Joseph must have died in the eruption.   

But Kars isn’t worried at first, because he thinks he has this whole “vacuum of space” thing figured out.  He just takes a page from Wammu’s playbook and makes air jets on his back to expel compressed gas from his body, like the maneuvering thrusts on a spacecraft.  Except that’s not nearly enough to counteract the force of the volcano that sent him up here.  

Yeah, Kars has no idea how space works.  Instinctively, he probably counted on friction to slow him down, except there is no friction in space.   He probably also expected his air jets to push him a little bit at a time, and maybe he could pull in more air as needed, except there is no more air.   Even the air from his body is denied to him, because it just dissipates into the vacuum of space.    Kars talks about the air freezing as it comes out, but I don’t think that’s right.   What’s happening to him is like when you use one of those compressed gas canisters to clean your keyboard.    Release a lot of the gas at once, and the can starts to get cold.   That’s because the liquefied gas left inside the can now has more room, and it begins to boil as it expands.    This draws in heat from the surroundings, which makes the can feel cold to the touch.    That’s what’s happening to Kars here.   All he’s doing it losing all his body heat.   Maybe some of the air really is freezing around him, but I don’t know.   It depends on whether the sunlight is hitting him, I think.

Anyway, the last thing Kars says is “I can’t go back!!!” And that’s what makes this so perfect.   In the anime, we see the Earth recede into the distance as he continues to tumble further and further away. By surviving the lava, Kars had “mastered” the Earth, but now he’s been separated from the Earth.   He’s got all this incredible power, but without the Earth, he’s got no one to use it on.

And then we come to the pièce de résistance of Battle Tendency: The epilogue page that establishes, in no uncertain terms, that Kars never returned to the Earth.   There’s no miracle escape this time, no clever trick or loophole.   He simply doesn’t have the necessary acceleration to push himself back the way he came. 

Did he die?   Nope, because he made himself immortal, remember?   Not even sunlight or starvation can destroy him now.   But now death is the only thing he craves, because he’s completely alone and has nothing to do.   I can’t imagine he’s very comfortable like this either, because it’s incredibly cold in outer space, and Kars must be able to sense that cold, even if it doesn’t actually hurt him.  

And this is such a fitting punishment for a villain like Kars.  Just as Stroheim wanted to become superior and lost his humanity in the process, Kars ruthlessly sacrificed friend and foe alike to achieve this Ultimate form, and what good does it do him?    It’s become his prison, his hell.    At long last, he’s become the supreme being, a world unto himself, but with no one around to lord it over, there’s really no point to any of it.  

I just really love this ending.   I’m not sure how else I can express it.    This is what should have happened to Akio Othori in Revolutionary Girl Utena.    But Araki was brace enough to do it to Kars.  

I suppose I could attempt some exercise in JoJo Part Comparison and connect Kars’ final fate to all the other JoJo villains.    But I dunno, this is getting pretty long in the tooth as it is.   I’ll just say that I’m suddenly reminded of Reimi’s final words to Kira in Part 4, when Kira asks where he’s being taken.   “Who knows?   But I’m sure it’s somewhere you won’t be able to rest in peace.”

So all that’s left is the matter of Joseph’s funeral-- Nah, just kidding, he’s not even dead.   What’s weird is that Smokey says he met Joseph “six months ago”, which seems a lot longer than the events of this story.    Anyway, Joseph returned to New York, only to find everyone at the cemetary.   He wonders who they’re mourning, and he’s shocked to discover it’s him.

So yeah, the rock Joseph was on acted as a “shield”, and he managed to survive the fall, and even ended up near Venice, where Suzie Q found him and tended to his injuries.  Stroheim even set him up with a robotic hand to replace the one Kars lopped off.   I guess Stroheim never sent word of any of this to the U.S., probably because of Nazi Germany gearing up for World War II.  

Anyway, Suzie took care of him for like two weeks, and they got married.   So in a way, Joseph did follow in the legacy of Jonathan.   Not in the “dying young” way, but the “Beat the bad guy and wake up in the care of a gorgeous blonde lady who eventually marries you” kind of way.   You love to see it.   But Suzie forgot to send a telegram to New York to let everyone know Joseph was okay, which is why everyone is so shocked and why Joseph is so shocked about them being shocked.

Then we get the epilogues for all the surviving characters.   I mentioned this when I liveblogged the Part 5 manga a few years ago, but the stark contrast between Battle Tendency and Vento Aureo is that Part 5 is very ambiguous about its ending.   We know who wins and who loses and who survives, but that isn’t really enough.   We don’t know what will happen to Giorno Giovanna after Part 5.   Does he live up to his lofty dream, or does he succumb to corruption like his wicked father?  I think that’s intentional, because Giorno is the “golden wind” in the story.    He’s an agent of change, but we don’t get to see the effects of his efforts, only the cause that he fights for.    But Part 2 operates in the exact opposite way.   We know exactly how and when Speedwagon dies.   I’m a little confused how Stroheim could have died at Stalingrad when Kars and a volcano couldn’t kill him, but maybe the Russians had Stand powers.    I think the only minor mystery is that we don’t know what happened to Lisa Lisa after 1948.    It’s likely that she survived into Part 3, and maybe beyond, but we never see her again.

It’s also kind of weird how upbeat this epilogue is about reporting on the deaths of so many characters.   Like, Stroheim died in one of the worst battles in human history, but he went out on his own terms, so it’s cool?  I guess?   Even the characters without deaths, like Smokey, it’s sort of implicit that he’ll die sooner or later.   But it’s a good thing because it’s final and proper.    It’s something Kars craves now, but can never experience.  A life worth living, made more precious by its limitations.  Kars tried to use cheat codes in nature, and he ended up clipping through the map and making the game unplayable.   But Smokey, he‘ll be mayor someday.

As for Joseph, we see him in an airport in 1987, bullying Japanese people because his daughter married a Japanese guy and moved there.    He’s headed to Japan right now to see her and his grandson, who probably doesn’t even recognize him, it’s been so long.   

On the other hand, he appreciates his Walkman, which is either Joseph giving the Japanese some credit, or maybe he’s just too dense to notice the irony.   

I hate that he’s listening to the Beatles, because the Beatles are overrated trash.  My favorite thing about the Part 2 anime is how they changed his music to “Bloody Stream” by Coda, which a) kicks ass and b) wasn’t a song by the shitty Beatles.  

And that’s Battle Tendency.   Kind of neat how it closes on Joseph’s flight departing to visit his daughter and grandson, in contrast to the final panel of Part 1, which showed Erina floating in a coffin alone in the ocean.   Joseph has bucked the curse and he’s graduated to Part 3, for better or worse.   

But I feel kind of weird leaving it here, because I do love the way the anime wrapped up, so I’ll close out with this:

Tsugi ni omae wa “Grazie!” to iu!

[worstloki]

Wait...ATLA AU with Waterbender!Loki, and FireNation!Asgard. Mayhaps the spirits are more relevant in this AU, so people especially blessed by non-main/non-elemental spirits (so anyone other than La, Tui, Agni, uhhh Guain and Shu are the earth kingdom ones I think, and The Autumn Lord or air) can have some manipulation of Qi, but it works differently and is very, very rare, depending on the power level of the spirit, a bending blessing can last 1 generation without renewing it through more bending blood, or like 20 generations but it skips a few. So you can have Non-bender (but actually water bender Loki), or Insert Cannon Spirt that can give him some shape shifting blessed and maybe still Water bender but figures that that out waay later Loki. This ask is a little bit of a mess, but just Water Tribe Loki (who’s stuffed full of ‘water Tribe’s are barbaric’ propaganda) Living in Fire Nation Asgard.

because Loki, like me, simply must be the center of the universe:

- Asgard is the fire nation, obviously, and Odin has 3 kids: the fire-bending lightning-bending prodigy daughter, the spare fire-bender who is good but not as good who will strive to do what his father asks because Father simply must be right (even if he’ll realize later and switch sides), the non-bender who is the dishonorable family disgrace who freaks out and makes a run from home when he realizes he can water bend and neither of his parents can and realizes he was adopted? stolen?? and is maybe the avatar and oh frick Odin’s razing the other nations trying to find the avatar and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

- The “air nation” can be four temples/realms (svartalfheim, alfheim, vanaheim, muspelheim) which were wiped out on by the last Sozin’s comet, so the cycle moved on to the water nation (southern water tribe/jotunheim) (northern water tribe/nifleheim) and there ain’t no way he’s going there those people are barbaric monsters... aren’t they?

- he joins a Midgardian (earth-kingdom) circus road-trip that’s touring across the realms (yes, he juggles) that’s actually just the Avengers and maybe they’re all non-benders? maybe some of them are? None of them are too flashy but Loki’s trying to observe the mix of bending styles and pick up on bending techniques without making it too obvious that he’s not a non-bender

- cue Loki getting in touch with the Earth spirit and getting some neat blessing gifts with bending and now he can Earth bend too and suddenly BAM Thor attacks the circus and Loki water bends to defend his circus friends from his fire and they make eye contact and Loki is so scared/devastated at having to go up against Thor who is angry at Loki for leaving home and has been tasked to retrieve Loki - the water bending throws Thor off and in his confusion Loki freezes him to the ground and apologizes and runs for it.

- now the circus folks are all “um, dude??? the prince of the fire nation just attacked us and you didn’t tell us you could bend?? what’s up with that???” so he tells them he may or may not be Fire Nation Prince Loki and they all feel betrayed because “those colonialist jerks??” but Loki explains how he’s actually a water bender... and may also be an earth bender... and they’re all totally on-board with the avatar returning because it’s about time and the earth kingdom is on thin ice with them (ba sing se is Svartalfheim btw) and yes the reason we’re a mix of benders is because this circus is actually the white lotus the avengers and were touring the realms to low-key try finding the avatar who is supposed to be the saving grace and end of this war please

- now the circus folks are helping Loki meet all the other nation spirits (yes they venture into the terrifying Jotunheim and Nifleheim while searching for the spirit (”what do you mean you don’t know where the spirit is?? how’d you find the last ones??” “I only met one!! and it came to me!!” “well I guess we’re stuck searching everywhere in this frozen wasteland then”) and additionally he only gets to meet the spirit who grants him the bending after he accepts parts of himself and others (for example, the water bending was a result of him finally realizing that he didn’t stand a chance at the throne and it wasn’t until every shred of hope that Odin could one day be proud of him was gone that he was messing with the turtleduck pool and maybe saw the water spirit in the reflection and bent water) (the earth spirit comes to him when he accepts that there are people that will still be proud of him and he can move on with life because the circus folk like him for who he is and were excited when he successfully landed a bunch of throwing knives on targets and decided on that as an act he can do)

- The circus folk are also trying to teach Loki what little they know about bending btw since he’s admitted to copying and mixing their techniques together (he does all the bending in one style and yes it’s as chaotic for the opponent as that sounds because you can never tell what he’s going to bend) but there 100% has to be an episode where he steals the water-scroll  

- Thor chases them down and Loki can bend water now?? and he’s just trying to bring Loki back like Odin asked him too and then one time he catches up to them and Loki panics and bends Earth too and Thor realizes and stops fighting and tells Loki to just go. Thor goes back to the Fire Nation and argues with Odin and calls him out because Loki is the avatar?? he’s from the water tribe?? and he feels betrayed and does the Zuko-Ozai-Black-Sun-Speech-Without-The-Black-Sun about how neither Loki nor Thor need to prove themselves and he won’t tear this family apart any further (Frigga is in fact an absent mother here btw) and then Thor goes and chases Loki down over weeks and saves him (blue mask hero?? except... feathered-helmet hero??) from Fire Nation soldiers who got their hands on him and the circus folk are NOT happy to have him around (air bending comes to Loki when he finally forgives Thor for being an arrogant self-righteous meanie to him for years because Hela is attacking them now and this is so much worse and Thor gets his eye burnt by Hela and Bruce isn’t that good but he can water-bend and heal a bit so it’s not too bad and he takes a moment to breathe and goes for a walk and BAM air spirit) 

- they get attacked a few more times, loki tries getting over the trauma that is realizing the harm that the fire nation has done to all the other realms (and thor is learning this too by the way so when hela attacks you bet they try mentioning the damage and loss of culture the fire nation is resposible for even if she doesn’t care because she’s the heir she needs to be perfect because her two brothers weren’t and look what happened to them they were exiled and live with a blasphemous blend of peasants (and rich-kid-metal-bending-earth-nation-runaway-royalty tony (”WHAT?! SO THAT’S WHERE YOU GET THE MONEY?? I thought you were scamming people not selling cool metal toys and what are we doing that attracts all these royal snobs to us??”))

- Loki has a dream where the fire spirit tells him to keep searching and then one day Hela goes to burn Thor again and Loki just goes ahead and fire bends right back at her and hoo boy his fire isn’t blue but it sure is a lot and Thor does the “........YES!!!” thing and Hela gets stuck in a ring of fire while everyone else laughs and leaves and she can’t lose so watch as her “close friends” end up not being ty lee and mai but the valkyries (the kyoshi warriors are the Red Room Assassins in this AU and no it’s not a childhood torture house it’s just a mostly-women midgardian protection group (maybe Nat trained there so if the circus ever bumps into them she’ll know them? Jane should get to be one of them too even if she’s more into inventing... she and tony should Talk... maybe she and Pepper can beat him up and give him some Respect Women Juice the same way Sokka got his?)) 

- epic chase across the realms since Loki can bend all the elements now he just needs to figure out how the Avatar state works but until then the gaang is struggling to stay ahead of the Valkyries and get Loki trained up to take down Odin (Thor teaches Loki fire bending so that’s covered but no one else except Tony who is a metal-bending expert really learnt properly and Loki isn’t even a metal-bender)

- eventually Hela snaps from all the losses and as she becomes more unhinged Brun jumps sides and Hela kills off (or fires, if we’re staying PG) the rest of the Valkyries and now Brun is super guilty but she’s fighting to avenge them now 

- blah blah blah Sozin’s comet day and Loki goes up against Odin with the help of the Avengers (maybe Thor can take down Hela with the help of Brun and Nat?) etc. etc. 

- so anyways Loki takes Odin’s fire bending and that was the first time he’s entered the Avatar state and when everyone asks how it felt Loki goes “oh i’m not the avatar” 

- “you’re WHAT” “not it” “but you JUST went into the avatar state and everything” “yeah and kyoshi gives good head pats but I’m not it” “but-- you mastered ALL THE ELEMENTS?!” “yeah because I was gifted them by the spirits” “but you needed to renew the cycle after it was gone from the world for so long--” “nah I think the spirits just liked me and wanted me to have it” “they... just... like... you...??” “yeah” “so you actually ARE a non-bender Brother??” “oh yeah definitely I was, but not anymore :)” “so you ARE the avatar” 

- [twenty minutes later] “I just went into the avatar state and they just told me i’m not it” “...this happened while you were in the avatar state though???” *shrugs* “eh” “don’t SHRUG this off is there an actual avatar out there or no???” “maybe the real avatar was the friends we made along the way” “shouldn’t we go find them???” *cue everyone setting out on another grand quest to find the ~actual~ Avatar*

[yukiwrites]

Behavior, Making the Difference

Thank you for the support as always, @xpegasusuniverse! This one was so fun to write, I hope you like it! I love exploring all of these different interactions!

Summary: Ricken, Lysithea and Hayato banded together due to their similar circumstances in their home world. They were now good classmates, who shared the same woes even in another world like Askr: why are they being looked down on, just because they were young?

Commission info HERE and HERE!

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The amount of Heroes being summoned in Askr grew day by day. The castle alloted to house the Order of Heroes had enough space for them all, yes, but there were some areas that a few groups of like-minded Heroes claimed for themselves.

For example, the western training grounds was now CHOP’s exclusive meeting spot. The eastern forest? Home to Heroes who would rather stay away from people to focus on calming their raging power. There was also a meadow past the southern garden, almost touching the outer wall, where the dragon-shifters liked to gather.

In the same manner, the central library was used as a classroom and gathering spot for the mages. It was big enough that classes could be taken on the second floor while others could quietly do their personal research on the first floor without one being a disturbance to the other.

Every other day, more experienced mages ministered classes on the second floor in favor of the apprentice mages. Merric’s was a particularly popular class due to how Young Merric also participated and asked many questions to his older self, which would extend the lecture for hours upon hours.

After class had finally ended, many of the students had stiff necks and sore legs for sitting up for so long. Be that as it may, one of the most eager students, Ricken, observed how Merric and his younger version interacted. On top of that, he noticed how younger Merric received different treatment whenever he went despite being the very same person who was just at the helm of the class.

Sure, the years of experience made a whole lot of difference, but younger Merric was in no way lacking in comparison to any other mage!

“Maybe it’s just ‘cause Merric’s tall.” Ricken grumbled to his deskmates, Lysithea and Hayato, as he looked up to his intentionally large hat.

Lysithea revised her notes calmly, resting her head on one hand. “At this point in time, young Merric has much more experience than Professor Merric had when he was that age. He’ll grow into a much stronger mage if he keeps up with this hunger for knowledge.”

Hayato nodded beside Lysithea, yawning loudly while he stretched his stiff muscles. “I do not know if it was due to the special summoning or if something different happened in his home world, but this young Merric has outstanding innate magical energy. It’s even larger than Professor Merric’s.”

“See? That’s what I’m saying. He’s much stronger than a lot of the adults, but he’s still treated like he’s not that capable because he’s young. They’re treating him like a little kid in favor of his older self!” Ricken protested with puffy cheeks.

“I do understand the hierarchy that comes with the territory of being a mage, so it’s not like I agree completely with you,” Lysithea pinched in, lifting her gaze to the red-haired young boy, “but I don’t disagree completely, either. They could treat him with the deserved respect of someone who holds that much power.”

“Though the man himself doesn’t seem to mind, unfortunately.” Hayato sat back down after cracking his neck a few times. “He sucks it all up, as though he himself feels unworthy of respect.”

“I suppose seeing how much you’ve grown can do that to people,” Lysithea mused, then mumbled so only herself could hear, “I’d be jealous if I wasn’t in such a hurry.”

Ricken’s cheeks only inflated more and more. Seeing people just like him, full of potential and stacking on accomplishments, being treated as less than they deserved made his blood boil. It reminded him of the constant ‘are-you-alright’s and ‘someone-your-age-should-rest-now’s he received on a daily basis.

“He shouldn’t be treated that way!” Ricken exclaimed, raising both fists up. “It’s the same everywhere! Back home, Chrom and everybody else treated me like a little, helpless kid and never saw how much I could do.”

Hayato crossed his arms, bobbing his head to the sides. “Just blow something in their vicinity; that will shut them up.”

“But I don’t want them to fear me! I want them to respect me! Besides, that’d probably just make them tell me I’m still too reckless for the battlefield.” Ricken’s shoulders dropped as he saw the exact scene being played in his mind, word by word.

“... Ah, you’re part of a specialized task force, right?” Hayato momentarily forgot that although the other two shared the same amount of potential and suffered from being berated by their ages, they weren’t the heirs of their tribes. He could get away with a lot of stuff because the heir was usually the strongest one, but that wasn’t the case with Ricken, who was simply one soldier amidst many.

Ricken sat back down, deflated. “Yeah, and there’s this other boy who got in after I did but no one treats him like they treat me! He’s only older than me by a few months, but everyone already sees him as a man and they never hold him back on doing stuff.”

Lysithea immediately remembered Petra, the princess of another country who studied with her under Byleth. They were both the SAME age, but no one treated Petra like a little kid. “... Is it the height?” She mumbled, though both of them heard it loud and clear.

… Oh.

It was the height.

Ricken took off his hat, then glanced up as though to remember how tall Donnel was compared to him.

… After a moment, he realized Donny was at least a head taller than himself.

“This is ridiculous!” However, Hayato was the one who slammed the table. He, too, was conscious of his height. “Bring it on, I’ll zap him with my magic and we’ll see-”

“Wait, wait, wait! I don’t wanna hurt my allies!” Ricken pulled on Hayato’s sleeve. “Besides, he’s not a mage, he’s- uh, I don’t know what he does exactly, but he’s a villager. Everyone trains with him and gives him tips and puts him on the frontlines without question… It’s unfair! I can hold my own, too!”

“That does seem like special treatment,” Lysithea nodded. “It’s unfair, but that only means that you have to overwhelm everyone with your effort. Study a lot and show them how good you can be to shut them all up.”

“Yeah... It’s my dream to be able to fight side-by-side with Chrom, but it’s not something for the far future. I can do it NOW, but they just don’t acknowledge me! It’s driving me nuts.”

Before the other two could reply, the sound of steps going up the stairs to the second floor interrupted them, which was unusual. It was an unspoken rule to use sound-muffling magic while walking around the library; not to mention that the second floor was commonly used for classes, so there shouldn’t be anyone going up at that moment, as the next class would only happen after dinner.

“C’monnn, up we go, Donny!” A familiar, peppy voice echoed. Soon, the blonde pigtails could be seen before the princess’ body: It was Lissa, Chrom’s sister and princess of Ylisse.

“W-wait, wait, Miss Lissa! I reckon we shouldn’ta be ‘ere now! Aren’t them egghead folks studyin’?” Being pulled by Lissa, Donnel held the pot on his head to hide his face, whispering in an attempt to be quiet.

“Nope, class was over a while ago, so now it’s Professor Lissa time! Take your seat, Donny, and let your big sister here teach you stuff!” She pulled out a monocle from her sleeve and a presentation stick from the other, pointing at the blank blackboard. “Now, todaaay we’ll learn about… Cloud formations!”

Apologetic, Donnel glanced around as he scratched the back of his neck, meeting Ricken’s, Hayato’s and Lysithea’s eyes as he sat down. He bowed to them before turning back to Lissa’s long winded explanation about Stratus clouds.

Lysithea’s expression turned cold as her optimal studying space had been breached. “Aren’t they from your world, Ricken? Don’t they know how this is a place of learning and not of fooling around?”

“Ah, um, yeah. He’s the boy I was talking about, too, but…”

“You said people don’t treat him like a kid, though? But look, even that young princess is making sure to even call him ‘little brother’...” Hayato commented, glancing between Ricken and the other two.

“I’m surprised, too. I only see people praising him and telling him to go to the frontlines more often. Princess Lissa can be annoy-erm, difficult to deal with, especially if you’re younger than her…” Ricken spoke with a jaded voice, as though he had experienced all of that first hand (he did). “I didn’t know Donny also went through that.”

Hayato cracked his fingers. “He doesn’t seem to be much older, just like you said.”

“Yup, I can only imagine they treat him differently because he wields a weapon, not magic. They might think I’m weaker than others just ‘cause I don’t have muscl-”

“That’s ridiculous.” Lysithea interrupted. “Mages are one of the most terrifying pieces of the battlefield. No one has any right to look down on a mage just because they’re more fragile than their weaponized peers.”

As both boys nodded, Ricken clutched his hands. “Yeah, but that’s the only conclusion I can come to, honestly. What IS the difference between us if not that? We’re basically the same age! I refuse to believe it’s because I’m- I… I’m s-shorter than him!”

As the three of them discussed, Donnel raised his hand to ask Lissa a question. “But ‘scuse me, ma’am, it’s the Nimbus kinda cloud tha’s the rainy one! Folks called ‘em that ‘cause no matter how fast you saw ‘em, they’d catch up with ya and wet all your laundry, that it would!”

“Weh? What? No! It’s the Cumulus one, I’m sure of it!” Lissa was bewildered for a moment before stomping her foot stubbornly. “I’m the older one here, so I know best, okay?”

Donnel scratched his head awkwardly. “B-b-buh… But the Cumulus kinda cloud’s the one’s looks likea’ tree, ain’t it? Mighty tasty-looking too, like a pretty treat I saw in one offa those fancy towns we gon ‘bout.”

“Nghhh!” Lissa shook with embarrassment and mortification. That wasn’t the first NOR the second time Donnel corrected her during her ‘classes’. She was the older sister here, darn it all!

In between the three mages, the princess and the villager boy, none of them could truly fathom the reason why people treated Donnel differently, despite their close ages. In other circumstances, perhaps, Lissa would be sitting at the table alongside Ricken, Hayato and Lysithea. However, since that was not the case, the group was fated to observe the duo.

If they had just a little more self-awareness, they might have realized that the simple and obvious reason was only one’s behavior and humility.

But perhaps, they were all still too young to realize...

[avauntus]

2020 favs: (short) fic recs

I am stealing this idea from @macgyver-sheriff, who has no clue who I am, but whose post I saw go across my dash. Thank you! 👋

Would you like some recs for the holiday season? - I too would like to share love for my favorite things I read that were written this year! <3

I’m going to do this in two parts - the short fics (10k or less, generally one-shot), and another post for the long or series fics I loved this year (it’s 2020, I figure we can use too much of a good thing?)

( @staidwaters - I’m ‘disqualifying’ your works because I’m biased, sorry! Look away! Unless you want recs!) 

"Congratulations, Get Rich" (9,238 words) by Attila (The Untamed - modern AU)

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year, which means Wei Wuxian has to get all of his bad decisions out of the way tonight.

Lan Wangji, Lan Xichen, Jiang Cheng, Mianmian are all so screamingly perfect as modern versions of themselves in this, and it is KNOCK DOWN HILLARIOUS. Wei Wuxian is just a screaming queer disaster (affectionate) - as he should be.

Excerpt:

After a long beat, Lan Xichen sinks gracelessly into the chair Lan Wangji had been sitting in earlier. “I just want to be absolutely clear,” he says delicately, “that you are currently under the impression that my brother has no romantic feelings for you. That is what you’re saying to me right now, yes?”

“Yes?” Wei Wuxian says, feeling desperately confused. “Obviously? Why?”

“Because at least one of you is very stupid, and I’m trying to figure out who,” Lan Xichen tells him, sounding distracted. It’s the rudest thing Wei Wuxian has ever heard him say, and his mouth drops open slightly.

“caved to the careless” (6,708 words) by ilgaksu (The Untamed/MDZS - Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen)

Love is a choice you make - like this, and this, and this.

Have you ever read a writer whose work is so distinctly itself that you can feel yourself slipping in time even as you keep going? That’s not very articulate, but it’s the best way I can describe everything of ilgaksu’s I’ve read. Their fics are the same emotional register as having the breath knocked out of you after a fall. This was the first one I read, and I think it ends well-- with what Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen find along the path-- but it’s still heavy. Discussions of canon-compliant character death and grief/mourning here.

Excerpt:

He pauses. Until this very moment, he was unsure who to ask for. He has heard the rumours of the Yiling Patriarch’s ongoing residence here, about Zewu-jun’s seclusion: he’s dead, but even the dead are not free from gossip. But he remembers a courtyard, nearly two decades ago, and the weight of eyes some might have called angry in their intensity. He remembers those same eyes, and how for the wear of the intervening years, they had kept the same essence: longing, yearning, a kind of small unspoken grief.

Song Lan had a dream once. A dream of a sect, bound not by blood, but by a shared belief in the right path. So many things are only an inheritance: shame is one of them.  

Love is a choice. Love is a choice, and you choose until you can’t.

“I am here,” he decides, carving the words into the dirt, every stroke of every character resolute, “To meet with Hanguang-jun. Please show this one the way to go.”  

“Green River Running” (8,169 words) by @rain-hat (Love in the Moonlight - post-canon AU)

5+1: Kim Byeong-yeon returns to the land of the living.

I skimmed through Love in the Moonlight during my quarantine summer (distinguishable from my “quarantine spring” or “quarantine fall” only by fireworks), and immediately upon finishing, thought: “Psht, they killed off their best character.” And then, something happened that never happens -- I went on ao3 and found the exact thing I was looking for, written far  better than I could have imagined. Kim Byeong-yeon is such a quiet yet powerfully subversive presence and the progression here is so masterfully done. This is true of all of rainhat’s work’s I’ve read, but this is a fine example-- I really treasure the warm humanism of them.

Excerpt:

People needed helping hands even more than they needed sympathetic ears, though. Over the last year, Hong Gyeong-rae and Byeong-yeon had built houses and planted crops side by side; negotiating with moneylenders here, helping small-folk secure their stores against bandits there. There was nothing courtly about Byeong-yeon’s capacity for labour, or his expectation of reward. Wherever he went, he worked from dawn to dusk, ate the food he was given, and slept under a roof if he was offered one.

It suited him, Hong Gyeong-rae thought, even though there was something outlandish about his gentle speech and palace manners in the midst of it all. But to behave in any other way would be untrue to his upbringing; nor was he the sort of man to whom it would occur to try. And after all, most people liked to be treated with courtesy; it did not come across as mockery from this solemn, severely dressed young man, who seemed to find no task too big or too small. Hong Gyeong-rae had seen him argue tax law with local councillors and stand up to highwaymen armed with nothing but a knife and staff. But he watched cooking pots for women who had to run to the fields to tide over the day’s labour, too; he wrote letters for them, and tolerated their fractious children and spoon-fed their bedridden elders, if that was what was called for.

“The Veritable Records of King Taejo: Year 2, Entry 208“ (9,857 words) by @sadviper (My Country: the New Age - Nam Seon-ho & Hwang Sung-rok slice-of-life)

Hwang Sung-rok eats his way to the bottom of a real estate scam, and Seon-ho and Yeon help (a little).

No one is out here doing it like SadViper. This is technically part of a series, but they can all be read separately. I did not realize I needed to see more of Nam Seon-ho in all his “type-A government official glory” until Viper started sketching him out for us, and as a bonus, we get to see Yeon, and Sung-rok as the world’s surliest caretaker (but don’t call him that). I have an authorial fallacy where I always think stories have to have some grand “plot” -- a “Maltese Falcon” to pull the reader along-- the genius of Viper’s work is she shows us exactly how interesting and important the day-by-day tiny choices and connections we make are, with an impeccable background of historical research to ground you in the setting.

Excerpt:

Nam Seon-ho was his master now. He was a strange one. He was a traitor, for helping the escaped Liaodong soldiers, but not, because he managed to wiggle his way back into Yi Seong-gye’s favor and was now a sixth-ranked inspector with the privilege of having personal audiences with the King. He was temperamental and belligerent from being the son of a slave mother and a lifetime subject of Lord Nam’s fantastic parenting philosophy. He was afflicted with perpetual guilt. And he was also one of the hardest working and most desperate people Sung-rok had ever known.

It was a terrible combination. He was not merely a disaster waiting to happen, but a disaster perambulating on two legs at the edge of a chasm. If Sung-rok intended to stay in service for long, he needed to find a way to cool down some of Seon-ho’s intensity, even though admittedly, it was what drew him to Seon-ho in the first place.

Thoughts like these plagued Sung-rok for a while. It was one thing to know a person; it was quite another thing to try to change them.

“Orison” (4,975 words) by @gravelghosts​ (aeli_kindara) (Supernatural 15x18 coda)

Cas says, I love you.

So! This rips my heart out, every time. All the times Dean imagines himself together with Cas...and then he imagines himself, if not happy, then thriving.

Jack: “What is the point...if everyone I care about is going to leave?”

Castiel: “The point is that they were here at all and you got to know them, you... When they're gone, it will hurt, but that hurt will remind you of how much you loved them.”

Excerpt:

The thing Dean tries to do is: listen.

Happiness isn’t in the having. It’s in just — being. It’s in just saying it, Cas tells him, and Dean’s whole heart is screaming, No, but he shuts his mouth. He listens. He listens like his life fucking depends on it, which it does, in more ways than one.

“Sky Full of Song” (6,632 words) by @drivingsideways (Supernatural, finale 15x20 fix-it, Dean/Cas)

Or: The One in which Cas ghosted Dean.

Look. Look. If Cas(tiel) can yank Dean Winchester out of Hell, celestial-scream at him not once but twice, burn out a woman’s eyes like an utter clown before thinking “Huh, an Earthly vessel, guess that’s not just bullshit, then,” and when they finally work it out, Dean greets them with a knife to the chest and THEN they’ll spend twelve years misunderstanding each other and bickering, you had better believe these two are going to be disasters even in Heaven. Drivingsideways gives us all of that dynamic, with the found family of Jack and Mary as facilitators, and the happy resolution, which of course includes a true form “roughly the size of your Chrysler Building.” <3

Excerpt:

The thing is, Castiel doesn’t want Dean to feel obligated.

Dean has a streak of self-sacrifice that's as wide as the Caspian Sea, and Castiel doesn't want to be any more of a chore or obligation than they have been to Dean for all the long years of their—brotherhood.

Castiel had shocked Dean, to the core of him, with their confession, and Castiel had seen the swirling confusion, the fear, the panic, the shit what do I say, what do I do—how do I stop him—

So, no, Castiel would not be paying a visit anytime soon.

Of course, if Dean evinced an interest in meeting them, then Castiel would not stay away.

Castiel isn't that cruel.

(They have, on occasion, been exactly that cruel, but they are trying to outgrow it.)

Dean is still their friend.

Dean knows how to reach them, if he wants to.

(see? disasters. haha)

“The Rough” (3,267 words) by anactoria (Supernatural, finale -15x20- ‘fix-it’)

 Heaven can absolutely fucking wait.

Rec’ed for the concept more than the style (this is dialogue-heavy, as a lot of 15x20 fix-its tend towards), but I *love* this course-correction: After kicking around Heaven, Dean and Cas return to Earth to take their place as urban legends among the hunter community. Just for a while.

Excerpt:

But it isn’t life. That’s the thing. It’s awesome, but it isn’t life; life’s a hard, painful, infuriating mess, and Dean only got halfway through his own, and he feels cheated. For all he held it together for Sammy at the end, for all he tried to take Cas’s big moment-of-happiness speech on board, he feels cheated.

There’s supposed to be peace at the end. When you’re done.

Dean wasn’t done.

[jadekitty777]

Doomsday Dinner Party: Chapter 2

Me? Updating a story from 2018? It’s more likely than you think. I’ve been wanting to write a continuation to this one for a long time.

Day 3: AU Day @taiqrowweek

Rating: T

Words: 9,000

Summary: The world might be over as they know it, but that didn’t mean their still wasn’t time for a road trip.

Ao3 Link: Doomsday Dinner Party (This link leaks to chapter 1, since reading it is kind of required and it’s been a long time)

~

June in the south was miserable and Qrow had not missed it one bit. Especially when that meant waking up with his clothes sticking to him like an uncomfortable, sweat-soaked blanket. It didn’t help that Tai was practically a furnace, and such an extreme cuddler it was as if he was trying to make it into the next Olympic sport.

He carefully wiggled his way out of the other’s grip, his efforts proving successful when he stirred but didn’t wake. As he sat up, he bit back the groan as his entire body ached in protest, every muscle sore from last night’s desperate escape. His shoulders were particularly knotted up, but he didn’t dare try to rub at them. Not with his fingertips still scraped raw from the failed attempts to grab the edge of the concrete wall he’d tried to vault himself over.

Qrow glanced over at Tai, still slumbering away.

He remembered that split second of dread that had shot through him, when he called for Tai’s help and the man, already safely straddled on the fence, looked the other way. He had thought, this was it. Tai was going to jump to the other side and leave him to die. He couldn’t describe the feeling that overwhelmed him when Tai only chucked their bags over before joining him back on the ground to help him over, putting himself in danger to save him.

After every other loss Qrow’d endured – friends, coworkers, his father, civilization itself – he was certain that nothing else could faze him. Oh, how the universe loved to prove him wrong. For the dread he felt when he was in trouble was nothing compared to the all-encompassing terror that engulfed him when it was Tai’s life on the line instead.

He’d almost lost him last night and the thought alone still shook his very soul.

It wasn’t even supposed to be like this. His plan had been simple: Team up with the trained soldier and travel from Montana to Texas. Try to locate his sister in Wichita Falls. Then, get a free pass into the military safe haven in Archer City. He was just supposed to use Tai’s connections to save his own skin, not fall for the guy.

And yet, here he was, a foolish man gently stroking his knuckles across Tai’s face, heart jumping at the little smile that elicited.

Damn it.

Qrow pulled away, before getting to his feet and picking up his scythe as he headed for the door. He opened it only a crack at first, listening carefully for any out of place noises – shambling feet, hissing breath. Anything that might indicate a Stalker nearby. When nothing caught his ear, he widened it, took a quick visual sweep of the area, before determining it was safe and walking outside.

Though he had no skill in reading it, the sun wasn’t too high yet, so he guessed it was only a bit past eight. Despite the early hour though, the summer heat was already settling in thick. He turned on his heels, getting another gander of the area. Even in the light, there wasn’t much to the facility. The wall surrounded the perimeter, only broken by an iron wrought gate that was probably only ever opened for vehicular traffic. He spotted nothing beyond the metal bars, so the horde that had chased them had thankfully continued on, rather than lingering in wait for them. Within the walls, there was only the small office building they’d holed up into and the white tanks that potentially held some water.

Possibly a back-up supply in case of a tornado emergency? He wasn’t sure, but it would be worth investigating after Tai got up.

For now, he had a different task in mind as he settled on the ground in the shade of one of the tanks and rested his weapon in his lap. Having been so exhausted, he hadn’t cleaned the blade last night like he should have. It was going to be a chore to do so this morning, now that the blood had had time to dry and crust over. It would have to be done before they moved out though, so he set himself to work on the arduous task.

It wasn’t until he was nearly done that Tai finally emerged, lumbering his way over to sit down beside him.

“Breakfast?” He greeted, shaking a bag of almonds at him.

“Sure.” Qrow accepted a handful, throwing them all into his mouth before picking back up his grit stone and moved it along the sharp end of the scythe. With the sound too grating to talk over, they shared the meager meal in silence. Not that there was much left to sharpen. Only a few more strokes and the task was done.

It was worrisome that the bag was empty in just as little time.

To avoid thinking about it, he rapped his knuckles on the tank behind them. “Was thinking there might be some water in here.”

“Doubt it.” Tai said, appraising the unit with a skeptical eye.

“Oh yeah?” He challenged. “What makes you so sure?”

Without breaking eye contact, Tai pointed to something above Qrow’s head. “Well that, for starters.”

He looked up at what he was indicating, spotting the bright yellow sticker with big, bold letters that said: Caution – Fire Hazard.

Not missing a beat, he said, “Could still be water. It’s a hazard to fire.”

Tai chuckled. “Oh, I see. It’s one of those badly translated stickers from Peru then.”

“Peru? Why not China?”

“Because my people have standards.”

“Your people?” Qrow arched a brow. “Tai, you’re like the whitest Chinese person to ever exist.”

He gave him a once over. “Kettle, black. Or in this case, white.”

“Hah. Clever.” He mocked. “Least I got the Asian eyes.”

“And they’re very pretty.” Tai reached out, roughing up his hair until most of the shaggy locks were covering his vision. He laughed Qrow off when he tried to swipe at him in retribution, scuttling back and getting to his feet. “Come on, we should get moving before the sun gets too high.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He stood as well, pushing his hair back into place, grimacing at the grime and grease that kept it into place like a self-made hair gel.

God, what he wouldn’t do for a shower.

As they headed back to the little metal building, he said, “So my thought is we head back to the car. Salvage it if we can. Ransack it if we can’t.” They’d left a lot behind in yesterday’s escape, including a canister of gas and some spare water.

Tai nodded stepping inside just long enough to grab their packs. “Shouldn’t be a problem. The freeway should be mostly clear now, so we can probably hotwire something new if need be.” He headed towards the gate, handing Qrow’s bag over as he passed. “We can probably go scavenging in a few of the small towns on the way, but if all goes well, we can definitely make it to Wichita before nightfall.”

Qrow froze.

It took the other man almost a dozen steps before he noticed. He paused, glancing back, “Qrow?”

He shifted his weight uncertainly, dropping his gaze. “Yeah, ‘bout that. I was thinking maybe we should just… skip Wichita and head straight for Archer City?”

The silence that followed allowed Qrow to feel lower than the dirt he was staring at. And though Tai wasn’t a violent man by nature, at least where the living folks were concerned, he still flinched all the same when the man approached him.

But the most Tai did was lay a hand on his shoulder, voicing softly, “Are you sure?”

“Last night was the first time we’ve encountered a crowd of that size. We barely made it.” He replied. “If we couldn’t handle that, how are we going to handle Wichita being like that from end to end?”

“You don’t know that.”

He finally rose his gaze. “No, but I do know better than to gamble on a losing hand.”

“But,” It was hard to catalogue the pinched expression that formed on Tai’s face. “But she’s your sister.”

He swallowed down the sudden grief that was trying to crawl its way out of his throat. “Yeah. Truth is though, I know she’s not there. She either got out, or she didn’t. I only wanted to go for me. To find peace with it, I guess.” He laid his hand over Tai’s, feeling the scars on the knuckles and the warmth of his skin. Alive. Here. “But I don’t want to lose you by chasing ghosts.”

Those soulful, blue eyes searched his face carefully. Then, for no reason at all, Tai pulled him into a hug, whispering into his hair. “Okay.”

It was almost like he was trying to comfort him. He didn’t know why though. He was fine.

Qrow buried his head into Tai’s shoulder.

…He was fine.

~

Qrow was nothing if not masterful at ignoring his own emotions.

“What do you think?” Qrow asked as he splayed himself over the hood of a Ferrari. “Perfect for the next calendar?”

“Qrow no.” The smile gave his partner away.

“Oh you’re right, the ladies like the open shirt look.” He teased, reaching up to undo a few of the top buttons.

Tai shoved a hand in his face, pushing him. “Cut it out porn star. We gotta actually work.”

He gave a mournful sigh. “My career, ended before it could take off.”

Qrow hopped down from the car, trailing after the other man. As they’d feared, their little hit and run last night really did a number on the Camry. The back wheels were now pitched up on a hill of squirming, hissing Stalkers. There was really no hope of getting it loose without a tow and even if they could, the potential damage the vehicle sustained probably negated the effort.

So they made their way to the freeway as planned, now eerily empty except for the few dead still stuck in their seatbelts. They made sure to avoid those ones.

“Oh, what about this one?” Tai pointed out a Jeep Wrangler, eyes practically sparkling. “Be good for some off roading, yeah?”

“Yeah, ‘cept that gas guzzler ain’t going to get us very far.” He nudged him onwards, peering into the windows of the cars they were walking by, trying to see if there were any abandoned snacks or water bottles to snag. Unfortunately, the best he could seem to find was a pack of Winterfresh gum, the sticks so old they crumbled.

They ate them anyways.

After about an hour of scouring their options and many failed attempts to get something working that hadn’t had something wear out from disuse and time under the hot sun, they finally managed to get a little Hyundai purring to life. Qrow eased it down the grassy slope, the whole frame shaking roughly as they made their way to the side road they’d been traveling on. Once they hit it, it was smooth sailing from there, Qrow pulling down the window to stick his hand out while Tai hummed showtunes beside him and mapped out the safest route to their final destination.

They reached Sterling within the first ten minutes. The small town, boasting only an original population of 800, was like a ghost town to drive through. A shambling straggler could be seen here or there, but mostly they went through uninterrupted – stopping only to check an already well-ransacked Dollar General. Temple, the next village down the 65, was not much more impressive and with tiny stores just as empty. They pulled over halfway down on the 70 to wash up in the Red River (not quite the shower he’d been hoping for, but it would do). They collected some spare water to boil later, before moving on.

Soon enough, they were turning onto the 79 and crossing the state border, driving through Byers, a town so miniscule, it wasn’t worth touring.

“Maybe we should just keep going.” Qrow said as they entered Petrolia, finding the show to be the same as the rest: lifeless streets decorated with only the occasional Stalker and nothing else. “We really aren’t getting anywhere with all these stops.”

Tai ran a hand through his hair, already dry as the early afternoon sun bore down from above like a heat lamp. “Suppose so. We’re only an hour or so away. Turn right here.”

He did as told, eyeing the signs as he did so.

Tried to ignore the heaviness in his heart as he realized they were turning away from Wichita Falls.

He focused twice as hard on the asphalt stretching for miles before them, avoiding the occasional abandoned car or, in one case, tractor. There wasn’t much to see on the countryside of Texas, even less so now. It was nothing but wide, open fields, overgrown with weeds that had gone untilled, interspaced by the occasional barn or house. Any livestock there had been seemed to have escaped from their pens or frozen during the winter season.

They both looked away from the dead horse still tied to its post in the corral.

It took only twenty minutes to hit the next city. Despite it being three times larger than the other towns, they made it through Henrietta without incident.

They were just going under the overpass of the freeway when Tai suddenly exclaimed, “Wait! Turn around!”

“What? What is it?” Qrow asked, U-turning in the middle of the road.

“We need to go there!”

He followed the direction he was pointing, eyebrows going up to his hairline. “Pecan Shed? The fuck you want to go there for?”

“It’s a gift shop.”

He waited a beat. “And?”

“It has things… and stuff?”

Qrow rolled his eyes. “What a concept. Next you’ll be telling me hardware stores have nails.” He turned onto the side street all the same, pulling into the parking lot within seconds. He gave the building a once over as they got out of the car.

It was a fairly large. Two stories tall and long as a barn, with a fancy awning in front that mimicked a shed roof and a patio with seating that stretched all across the front and down both sides of the property. The name of the place was in big red letters at the top story, something that would be easily visible from the freeway when passing by. The front doors were made of glass, surprisingly still intact and, more importantly, unlocked.

They stepped inside with caution at first, but a quick sweep of the open floor and a few calls to garner attention with no response told them they weren’t in any immediate danger.

Which meant…

They shared a glance, before immediately tackling the still semi-stocked junk food station in the middle of the room. He ripped open a package of Ruffles, stuffing half the bag in his mouth at once. It tasted like heaven. Stale, over-salted heaven.

Beside him, Tai was inspecting a bag of what appeared to be shelled peanuts while tipping back a bag of Fritos.

He swallowed down another handful, saying, “Save those.” They would keep better longer and they were good fillers when they had nothing else.

“Ye’I’no.” Tai garbled out, his normal southern politeness completely abolished in the sightline of food.

Qrow, who had no politeness at all, just tossed the empty bag over his shoulder and reached for the Funyuns next.

By the time they had their fill, there was a small collection of litter at their feet. He sighed, plopping down onto the nearby checkout counter, smoothing a hand over his belly. They’d had to ration for so long, he couldn’t even remember the last time he felt safe to overindulge. Too worried about what he’d need tomorrow to worry about the ache in his stomach today.

“Sir, how much will this cost?”

Qrow looked up, smirking as Tai stood before him with two hand baskets full of goods. “For what? The food or my sexy ass?”

He winked. “The food. Your ass is priceless.”

“Least you know quality when you see it.” He hopped down, taking one of the baskets and following the other out to the car.

They fell into an easy rhythm, scouring the shop top to bottom for anything worth nabbing. Drinks, trail mixes, jerky, matches, candles, blankets, batteries, knives. Even things like books and magazines were useful for campfire tinder – and maybe a bit of reading for those really boring nights.

Then again, Qrow thought as he placed a few shirt-wrapped bottles of wine in the back, there were always other methods of entertainment.

He slammed the trunk closed, before heading back in for one last sweep through of the back aisles. He zigzagged around the store, triple-checking the sections they’d already emptied. A selection of colorful novelty mugs caught his attention and he chortled over the one with the cartoon Corgi surrounded by a heart and flowing text framing it that said, ‘This is the Corgkey to my heart’.

Tai had always said he wanted a dog, hadn’t he?

He plucked it off the shelf and made his way towards where he could spot the familiar head of blond hair peeking above the displays. He wheeled the corner, about to call out – only for it to choke in his throat when he realized what the other man was doing.

Tai stood in front of a rack of wooden baskets, each one filled to the brim with stuffed animals. He seemed to be in a silent debate over whether to take the fuzzy teddy bear or the brightly colored unicorn, as if it were the most important decision of his life.

He looked so… lost.

Qrow inched forward hesitantly, moving loud enough that he knew he was there, but quiet enough to not disturb him.

It seemed Tai wasn’t completely stuck in his own head though, for when he finally stood at his side, he spoke, “I used to bring Yang here a lot.”

He tilted his head, surprised. “Your daughter?” Tai hadn’t talked about his girls much; whether it be out of a simple habit of privacy or a necessity to keep himself focused on survival instead of agonizing over his children’s fate was unknown to Qrow, but either way he’d never pried.

“Yeah. When I’d take her to go visit her mom, if the trip didn’t go well – and it rarely did – I’d bring her here. She loved the dinosaur exhibit that’s in front of the truck stop. I’d let her play there as long as she wanted and then we’d eat at the Steak N’ Shake.” He waved a hand at the store around them. “Then we’d come here, get some of the specialty fudge to bring home and Yang would pick out a stuffed animal for Ruby. Somehow, she always knew which one she’d love the most.”  He laughed. It was a strained, wounded sound. “I’m afraid I don’t have her intuition though. I can’t even remember if Ruby was still in her unicorn phase before I left.”

Qrow swallowed down that same, awful grief from before that was trying to escape. Instead, he forced some cheer into his tone as he said, “Well you know what I do when I can’t make a decision?” He turned to the baskets in front of them and pulled one right off the rack, dropping it down between them, “I get them all.”

Tai blinked down at it, before a genuine smile broke free. It was like watching the sun come out after a rainstorm. “Qrow, we can’t bring them all.”

“Watch me.” He pulled another one free and balanced it against his hip as he hefted it towards the car.

Ten minutes later, they were peeling out of the parking lot, about a hundred pairs of eyes watching the road go by from the backseat.

And Tai didn’t stop smiling.

~

A semi-truck was parked sideways along the two-laned road that cut across the lake on the 172, it’s front fender partially submerged in the murky water, effectively blocking the way. Qrow didn’t think much of it as he turned them around to take another route.

He grew more suspicious when they encountered multiple semis parked in a line across the 174.

Tai lent forward, eyeing the trucks with narrowed eyes. “These are barricades.”

“And people don’t set up barricades if they aren’t trying to protect something.” Qrow determined, switching into low gear. “Come on, we can drive around it.”

“Wait!” He grabbed his wrist, keeping it from touching the wheel. “If the military set these up, then the fields are probably mined.”

He considered that for a moment, before shifting into reverse. “Alright then we’ll try up the highway.”

Around they went, the detour taking them nearly a half hour – and sure enough, right at the juncture that converged the highway with the freeway, another blockade halted their forward motion. But this time, there was a message left for them in bright red paint along the bodies of every truck:

TURN AROUND OR DIE

“The fuck,” He breathed, a shiver running down his spine. He looked to the man beside him, whose face had gone white. “Tai?”

Tai set his jaw, before pulling out the map. “Come on, let’s get closer than we’re walking it.”

“And what are we doing about that?” Qrow snapped, pretending his voice didn’t hit the octave of a screeching bat.

“You don’t have to come with me.”

The words were like a blow to the face. “What?”

He pointed out the frontage entrance a few miles south. “I’ll go, and then I’ll come back and get you if it’s safe.”

His heart slowed down from its 100-mile a minute pulse line to only about 80. He pulled the car around, grumbling all the while, “Like hell you will.”

Despite his words though, as they neared the off ramp, the desire to just hit the gas and keep going overcame him so strongly, it was like his foot was fighting against a two-ton weight. He looked again to the man beside him, tried to draw strength from his unwavering nerve. Tai had the look of a man who was about to go to war with the whole world if it dared stand in his way of him and his kids – and if Qrow just became another obstacle, he had no doubt on where he’d end up on that side of the battle.

He wished he’d had even an ounce of that same backbone for his sister.

He beat down his shame and jerked the wheel to the right, heading down the ramp and following the way back up to where the street met another. He turned onto it. The road was immediately rough, more dirt than asphalt, rattling the frame of the car harshly as they slowly trudged between the empty farming fields.

Halfway down the road, they came to a pair of dead ash trees, one on either side. Hanging from their blackened and brittle branches were about half a dozen empty nooses. But one was not.

Instead, in its snare, was the body of a decaying crow.

A promise and an omen.

An eerie silence fell between them as they passed underneath it, the air stifling, suffocating.

Qrow coughed and said, “I think that was my cousin.”

Tai snorted, smacking his arm. “Shut up.”

His own snickers were practically hysteric. The buzzing that had started in his nerves from the first warning sign had turned into a crawling feeling, like a line of ants were marching along his skin. To combat it, his grip on the wheel tightened.

This was insane. People had done all this. Blocked the roads, painted the warnings, hung the signs. All in an effort to keep other survivors from coming close. Was it all just the military’s doing? Scare tactics because they were overcrowded? Or was it something worse?

Just what were they walking into?

“Hey.”

Qrow sucked in a sharp breath, looking down at the hand now covering his own.

Tai ran a thumb over his knuckles, the movement as gentle as his voice, “It’s okay if you want to stay back, really.”

“Fuck that.” He snapped. “You would of come with me to Wichita, no matter what, right?”

“Yeah, absolutely.” Was the immediate assurance, followed shortly by, “But that doesn’t mean you owe me your life.”

He thought, again, of last night. Their shared panic as they ran across the fields. The wall that loomed ahead, cutting off their escape. Tai’s frantic orders as he helped him over.

Had he been alone, that would have been it.

He couldn’t stomach the thought of Tai being in a similar situation – needing him to look out for him. And him just not being there.

“No.” He avowed, meeting his eye. “We’re in this together. So unless you’re gonna throw me out of this damn car, you can cut it out with the martyr shit. Okay?”

The hand over his pulled his off the wheel, Tai clutching onto it almost fiercely. “Okay.”

Qrow let him keep it, slipping his fingers between Tai’s own as he turned back to the road.

As they neared its end, he noticed an assortment of industrial standard wind turbines. Perhaps once in use to provide power to the few speckled barns and homes on the horizon. He turned north, driving between them, peering up at them. The blades were whirling lazily in the breeze as the metallic forest caught the bright, summer sun, gleaming harshly bright.

He had to wonder if the buildings out here still had power. Or, if not, if a bit of tweaking to the structures might be able to bring them back to life. He was long removed from his university days when he would dabble about in engineering, and he’d never actually studied the ins and outs of wind energy converters, but the temptation to try was irresistible. To be able to cook their meals on a stove again or, god, have a hot shower. He had to bet there were some independent water wells out here and the land was still prime for growing too; it wouldn’t be hard to get their own crops growing. With time, they might even be able to find some livestock again. And a dog, too.

Qrow got lost in the fantasy of it.

So much so, Tai almost made him jump when he suddenly spoke up, “Here too?”

He blinked away the afterimages of him and Tai playing house during the apocalypse, focusing on the reality before him.

Scoffed at the sight of the pickup truck parked sideways across the road. He rolled to a stop, eyeing a side street in the rearview mirror a short-ways back. It was even less maintained than the ones they’d been traveling down so far, promising a ride that would rival a go around on some bumper cars.

“What do you wanna do? Walk it or keep going?” He asked gruffly.

Tai hummed thoughtfully, eyeing the map once more. “We’re not too far off at this point. Ten miles at most.”

“Not far off, he says.” Qrow mocked under his breath, even as he parked the car.

His partner laughed, undoing his seatbelt. “It’ll be good for you. Your scrawny legs could use some definition.”

He opened his mouth to retort, reaching for the keys to turn off the car –

When the one in front of them roared to life.

They froze, staring at the truck.

“What?” Tai whispered.

To assure they hadn’t misheard, the engine revved loudly.

Then, the wheels rotated towards them, the axles squealing as the truck came barreling towards them.

“Oh shit.” Qrow barked, throwing them into reverse and slamming down on the gas pedal.

Tai yelped as he was thrown into the dash as they rocketed backwards several meters. Another quick gear shift, and Qrow twisted the wheel around, flying down the road he’d spotted before. They hit a pot hole hard enough to throw them up from their seats, but he didn’t dare slow down.

His arms trembled and sweat started to bead from his brow. “What the fuck.”

He looked at the rearview, seeing the truck taking the same corner, gunning after them.

“What the fuck!” He shouted again.

“I don’t know!” Tai shouted back, scrambling to get his seatbelt back on.

“There’s someone in there.”

“You think?!”

He smacked the wheel. “Well what the fuck do we do!?”

“Calm down.” Was the sharp reply, Tai twisting around in his seat to keep an eye on their pursuer. “We just need to lose him.”

“Oh, that’s all? Brilliant!”

“Qrow.” The commanding tone shut him down immediately, his partner leveling him with a look. “Listen to me. We’re going to be fine. Just focus on driving. We’ll find a place around here, a home, a barn whatever. Just something with some cover.”

He took a few deep breathes, trying to steel his nerves. “Alright, alright.”

Except, it became abundantly clear that plan was sunk, as they sped past the first side street, completely blocked off by rubbish and vehicles. It was the same story with the next one.

Tai cursed under his breath. “He’s corralling us.”

“Maybe we should ditch the car? Head out into the field and make a run for it?” Qrow suggested.

He shook his head. “We’ll be too exposed. I think our better bet is to figure out where he’s leading us.”

“And then?”

“Then we’ll talk this out with whoever this guy is.”

“And if he doesn’t want to talk?”

Tai’s expression smoothed out into something cold. “Then you’re lucky I’m a good shot.”

Qrow swallowed, not arguing further.

He knew Tai could do it, if he had to. That’s how the military had trained him. But he hadn’t had to go through any of those tough regimens like his partner. Hell, up until eight months ago, he’d been living a rather lavish, uncomplicated life helping his old man upkeep the business fixing transmissions and rotating tires.

He was a mechanic! How the hell did he end up in a high-speed chase in the middle of fucking nowhere?

A blare of the truck’s horn made his heart jump into his throat. What was this guy gonna do, once he got them where he wanted them? Would he really start shooting?

God, he didn’t want to kill anyone. Not someone alive at least.

Another rough bump shook the thought down, so he tried to focus on keeping them steady instead. Another mile on, and the road ahead became blocked by another pickup truck, forcing them to take a hard right.

As he turned, he spotted movement in the front seat of the car.

A sense of foreboding swept through him and once they got far enough down the road, he braved a glance. Sure enough, the rearview told him they were now being pursued by two cars.

“Tai.” Qrow hissed in warning.

But Tai wasn’t looking at the situation behind them, instead pointing forward. “Look.”

He did, squinting a bit. Though still a good few miles off, he could just barely make out the shape of a large building of some sort – taller than any of the other buildings around these parts. Unnatural and out of place.

“What is that?” He asked.

“Dunno. But I have a feeling we’re about to find out.”

The suspicion turned to truth as they continued down the road, the structure looming ever closer. Until he could make out it wasn’t a building at all, but rather a massive fence, at least two stories tall. It was made of a mismatch of materials, including timber beams, chain link mesh, and aluminum sheet metal.

It had to be sturdy though, because as they rolled up to the front gate, he could spot half a dozen people standing on platforms attached to it, three on either side of the gate.

Every single one of them held a rifle.

“What now?” Qrow barely got out around the knot in his throat.

“I…” Tai looked frantically from side to side, as if an escape route would just materialize from thin air. When nothing did, he looked to him, and for the first time since this all started, Qrow could see the fear in his eyes. “I don’t know.”

They both looked back as they heard the sound of car doors closing, the drivers of either car stepping out and heading towards them. One was a man with short brown hair, the front of it pulled up like a plumage of feathers. His shirt was sleeveless, boasting well-toned arms that promised an ill-fate for his opponents. Yet, even he seemed slightly dwarfed by his companion – a tree of a woman, solidly built, and tall. She was swinging around a giant mallet like it weighed nothing.

The two of them split, flanking their car from either side.

The man knocked on Qrow’s window, pointing down.

Getting the hint, he rolled it down.

The man rested a hand along the top of the door, leaning in. “Where y’all heading? The zoo?”

He blinked, confused – and then he remembered the army of stuffed animals in the back seat, and scowled. “Clever, asshole.”

That only seemed to amuse the other, as he chuckled. His voice was smooth and calm. He knew who was in charge here. “This one’s got some bite, don’t he Elm?”

“Sure does.” Elm replied. “And look, they’re just your type. A couple of pretty boys.”

The hair on the back of his neck stood up uncomfortably. The fuck did that mean?

Beside him, Tai took a deep breath, saying slowly. “Look, we’re not trying to start any trouble. We were just passing on through.”

“Were you now?” The man drummed his fingers on the roof above him, the noise unusually grating with Qrow’s nerves so shot. “And you just happened to come this way? Didn’t happen to see any of our warnings or blocked roads?”

“You guys did all that?” Qrow realized too late the question only made him sound falsely innocent.

“Cute. Real cute.” The easygoing smile disappeared, replaced with something rigid and dangerous. “Alright that’s enough small talk. So, let me explain how this is going to work. The two of you are going to get out of the car. You’re not going to struggle or try anything stupid, ‘cause if you do…” He lent in even further, as if he were trying to share a secret with them. “You see those people up there? They don’t have the best of aim, but they sure do got a lot of bullets. Quantity over quality and all that.”

Qrow’s hands tightened over the wheel he still hadn’t let go of. Tai’s breath hitched.

Neither of them moved.

The man gave a longsuffering sigh. “Come on now. Don’t make us drag you out.”

Another beat passed.

Then, with a reluctant click, Tai undid his seatbelt. Opened the door slowly.

“Attaboy.” The man praised, before turning his gaze to him. “Now you.”

Qrow shut his eyes, counted down from five, and finally managed to pry one hand loose. Shakily, he pulled the car into park, before doing the same as his partner and stepping out of the car.

“That’s it, nice and easy.” The other coached. “Now, arms out.”

Once, when he was young and stupid, he got pulled over for drunk driving. So, he wasn’t unfamiliar with a pat down. This was a lot more… thorough. The asshole even managed to find the swiss army knife in his back pocket.

From where he was being given much the same treatment by Elm, he heard Tai ask, “Can’t we talk about this?”

“You can sing like a bird, but it won’t do you any good until the chief gets here.” She replied.

The chief? What kind of society were they running? A tribe?

“Alright, this way.” The man tossed all his weapons onto the seat of the car, before clapping a hand down on his shoulder, pulling him forward. “Gonna need you front and center.”

Qrow reluctantly followed, fighting the urge to curl away from his touch. He grunted a bit when the other forced him down, his knees cracking painfully on the ground. Tai was manhandled into the same position beside him, grunting a bit as Elm forced him down even more roughly.

The man called over them both, “Where’s the chief?”

The tiniest of the firing squad, a dark-skinned woman with boyishly short hair, called back, “Almost here!”

“Clover.” Elm said urgently from behind them. There was a light jingling noise that Qrow couldn’t place but recognized as something passed between them.

There was a few short seconds of nothing, and then suddenly Clover was marching around them, kneeling down in front of his partner. In his hand were Tai’s dog tags. “Where did you get this?” He asked darkly.

Tai looked between them and Clover, murmuring, “They’re mine.”

“Really?” He flipped the face of it around, reading it aloud. “So, your telling me your name is Taiyang Xiao Long?”

His lips pressed into a firm, defiant frown. “Yes.”

“Bullshit.” Clover spit in his face. “Who’d you take this from?”

“I didn’t steal it from anyone.”

“Fuck off with that you-”

Qrow’s fingers clenched into fists, his own temper flaring. “Hey! Why don’t you fuck off! It’s called remarriage jackass – or is that too hard a concept for you?”

It probably wasn’t the best thing to do, if the flash of panic that passed over Tai’s face was any indication. But Clover just leveled him with a glare before getting back to his feet, letting the chain dangle from his fingers. “You know, I heard her people liked to take souvenirs from the dead. But a soldier’s tags? That’s just vile. How many of my friends’ bodies did you desecrate back at the base?”

‘Her people’? ‘Bodies’? What was this guy prattling on about?

“Wait. Just wait a second. The base?” Tai took a shaky breath. “Archer City base? You’re from there?”

Elm smacked the heel of her hammer into the ground right behind him. “We both were. It was all real nice, until your little buddies came by and slaughtered the lot of us.”

Qrow felt his stomach plummet at those words.

Tai had gone pale, his composure barely hanging on. Desperately, he croaked out, “How many survived?”

Whatever he thought of his reaction did nothing to temper the acidic hatred Clover stared down at him with. “You’re looking at ‘em.”

Had Tai been one of his actual enemies, Clover may have been proud to know how devastating a blow he’d just delivered. Regardless of it all, the damage was done. And Tai?

Tai broke. It wasn’t loud, like the way glass shatters. Rather it was subtle and unfixable, like the snapping of a flower stem.

Qrow’s own heart fractured at the way he whimpered, curling in on himself. The fleeting sunflower, already beginning to wilt and die, now that his roots were gone.

He reached out for him, hand coming to rest on his back, not caring if the lumberjack of a woman behind him smashed his entire arm flat for it.

“She’s here!” One of the squad from above called. The chain link rattled as someone ascended the platform from the other side.

Qrow paid it all only half an ear and eye, more concerned with the defeated man before him then anything this chief was going to do with them. Though, when he heard the telltale stomp of boots from above, he offered a cursory glance skyward.

She was a tall woman, with wild black hair and a curvy, powerful figure. A bandanna covered the lower half of her face, and she seemed equally disinterested in them, instead speaking with the petite woman who’d spoken before.

“Not much to say about them boss.” Clover reported. “One of them’s got some stolen tags from a Taiyang though.”

That grabbed her attention immediately, her body jerking around as she looked down at them with intense interest.

Even from here, Qrow could tell her eyes were blood red.

And then he couldn’t see them at all as, without warning, she practically raced back to the ladder as she shrilled orders at her people, “LOWER YOUR WEAPONS AND LET THEM UP! OPEN THE GATES, NOW!”

There was a sudden, confused cacophony of voices. Another sharp command and then, an equally snappish retort that bellowed above them all, “You heard her, open it!!”

Qrow caught Clover and Elm sharing a worried look between them. He felt his guard rise higher, confusion and fear melding into one. What was going on? Was she coming down there to kill Tai herself? He shifted over, trying to block Tai’s body with his own as he heard the latch of the gate come undone, slowly starting to roll open.

The chief could hardly wait for it, practically squeezing her way through.

Except at some point on the way down, she’d ripped away the mask. This close, there was no mistaking her.

“Oh my god.” Qrow whispered. “Oh my god.”

Then he was on his feet, shoes scrambling for purchase and hands clambering over the dirt to get himself up as fast as possible, taking off at a run. The rest of the world fell away, the only thing left the woman running just as fast for him – and despite it being mere seconds, it was entirely too long when they finally collided.

Her name burst from his lips like a prayer he never thought would be answered. “Raven! Oh god, Raven.”

It was impossible. She was here. She was here!

His heart beat as wild as his sister’s hair, the mane of it seeming the surround him as she buried her face into his neck and sobbed. “Qrow. You’re alive. I never thought – How’d you even get here?”

His response came out in a stammer. “Me? B-But you-! And I, I,” Oh, he was crying too.

So he stopped trying, just held on tight and let the tidal wave of emotion hit him. The grief he’d been ignoring. The guilt of having given up. The hope he never let live. The relief of her being safe. The unbelievable happiness knowing she was actually and truly alive.

“I love you.” The words burst out of him, sudden and uncontainable. As if he needed to make up for lost time. All the years he should have said it more, after the divorce had split them across the country and the forced separation left them bitter even with each other. Until the phone calls went from every day to almost never. Until they only caught up on the occasional holiday. Until he thought there was nothing worse than becoming invested into something he was destined just to lose.

But he’d been wrong. Feeling like he was completely alone was much, much worse.

“That wasn’t an answer.” She spoke around tears. “But I love you too, you stupid idiot.”

“’Stupid idiot’? Really bringing out the big guns with that one aren’t ya?” He laughed and she shoved him a bit. It was just like the old days.

“It’s just such a strong character trait, it has to be said twice.” Raven assured, wiping her face.

He was about to retort when Clover cut in between them. “Hey uh, I don’t mean to interrupt your reunion, but I think there’s something wrong with your friend.”

Qrow’s head snapped around. Like that moment in the gift shop, Tai seemed to be lost in his own head – but even further this time. He didn’t even respond to the way Elm shook him or tried to encourage him to his feet.

“Shit.” He breathed, before racing back to his side. He waved the other woman aside, kneeling down next to him. “Tai, babe? You in there?”

Nothing.

“Come on, don’t do this to me.” He murmured frantically, reaching out to hold his hand.

His sister approached, and though she appeared to be oddly taken aback, her voice was sharp and commanding, “What happened?”

Qrow waved vaguely to his left. “Your little boy scout there is what. Told him his family died.”

“What?!” The soldier barked, holding up his hands, “I did no such thing.”

He leveled him with his best glare. “’You’re looking at ‘em’? That’s what you said about the survivors. His daughters were there, asshole.”

At least, that was what Taiyang was hoping. He had banked everything he had that his little girls had made it to the safe zone and were just waiting for him to return. The unshakable belief had been the only thing keeping him sane.

Now that it was gone, he had nothing left to hold onto. Qrow didn’t know what to do, or even had the faintest clue how to pull the other back from the sea of despair he was drowning in.

Clover looked horrified. “I, but I-I didn’t-!”

“It’s fine.” Raven asserted.

“What?!” Qrow shouted. “How can you just fucking say that?!”

She leveled him with look he couldn’t even begin to decipher. “Just. Let me.”

Without any further context then that, she settled on the dirt next to them. She reached out, gripping Tai’s jaw and turning his head to face her and in a gentle octave Qrow’d never heard her use, said, “Tai, can you hear me? I need you to come back. Yang and Ruby are here.”

At the sound of his daughters’ names, Tai finally blinked, some light returning to his gaze. Encouraged, Raven lent in closer.

“They��re alive. They’re safe. But you need to wake back up if you want to see them. Can you do that for us?”

He felt the hand in his slowly starting to grip back. Whatever his sister was doing was working – and while Tai’s brain was starting back up, Qrow felt like his was doing all sorts of mental gymnastics just to catch up. How did she know Tai’s kids? Were they really beyond those gates? Did they talk about their dad enough that she just knew who he had to be?

The real answer turned out to be exceedingly more simple and absolutely mind-bending, because Tai finally croaked out, “Rae?”

His sister smiled and responded as if it were the most natural thing on earth, “Yeah, it’s me.”

The words echoed on repeat in his ears. Rae. As in, Tai’s first girlfriend Rae. Yang’s mother? Was also Raven, his sister?!

Qrow felt like he was going to need one of these quiet-talk therapy sessions because now he wasn’t sure he was entirely all here anymore.

The world was still intent on moving on whether he was there or not though. Tai inhaled shakily, practically pleading, “And, the girls? They’re really-?”

“Come see for yourself.” Raven stood.

Taking a moment to gather himself, Qrow followed suit, pulling Tai up with him. He led him towards the entrance, shooting a look at his sister that promised they were going to talk about this.  

She avoided his eye and fell in step with them, calling first to the firing squad still above them, “Hey, show’s over! Back to your jobs!” Then to the soldiers, “Clover, Elm. Bring in that car and then get back to your posts.”

“Yes ma’am.” Clover saluted. “And uh, Qrow, Tai?” Only Qrow looked back – holding up his hand to catch Tai’s tags when he tossed them his way. “Sorry.”

He nodded, pocketing them. He made a mental note to make sure the other man gave twice as good an apology to Tai when his lover was more present.

They stepped through the gate and it was like entering a long-forgotten world. The road continued on straight – but the acres of fields on either side were busy with tents, motor homes, and even a few trailers, everyone making do with whatever shelter they could find. People were milling about, doing all sorts of things. He could see some older men in lawn chairs, enraptured by a game of Chinese Checkers. A team was working with various gardening tools to clear up some free land. Another team was working on the skeleton of a structure against one of the walls that was looking like the beginning of a home. Pens were built towards the back, a few cows and a chicken coop in view and there were a few fire pits speckled around the facility, once in use as several people boiled and stored water.

A sense of surrealism enveloped him. They’d been on their own so long, he almost forgot what normal life could look like.

“This almost doesn’t feel real.” Qrow admitted, eyeing a young pair sparring in the shade of the wall.

“You get used to it.” Raven replied, leading them towards the west side of the colony. “We all keep pretty busy. Everyone’s got a job here; a way to contribute. We take care of each other, keep each other safe.”

He scoffed. “That why we got chased halfway to hell getting here?”

“It’s… preventative.” She explained. “We just want to make sure everyone comes to the front door.”

“So you can shoot them.”

“If they give us reason to.”

He gaped at her, aghast.

Raven sighed, walking in-between the space of two parked RVs. “This world doesn’t have rules anymore and there are a lot of bad people willing to take advantage of that.”

“Like at the base.” It was a surprise to both of them to hear Tai speak. “What happened there?”

Something dark flittered along his sister’s face, before she looked away. “Another group wanted what we had. So, one night, they rammed down the gates with a few semitrucks filled to the brim with biters to get it. There was over a thousand of us there. Now there’s only a little over a hundred of us.”

“Christ.” Qrow cursed. He couldn’t even fathom it. What kind of mindset did someone have to have to do something so willingly vicious?

“These people already lost everything twice over now. They’re looking to me to make sure they don’t lose more.” She stood a little taller, her voice strong and confidant. A voice people would find faith in following. “So yeah, I’ll scare even God himself away from our gates if that’s what it takes.”

If there was a concern to take away from all that, the day had been much too harrowing and long to put any honest consideration to it. So, he just let it lie, a gnat in the back of his thoughts for now.

He figured any other conversation was probably moot anyways, as when they rounded another trailer home the field opened up to what appeared to be a small picnic and playground area. In the center between the various tables and play equipment was a canopy tent, providing shade to the small gathering of children underneath it. They were all sitting in the grass, listening to the woman before them as she read aloud.

Tai’s grip had become iron tight, breath shallowing out.

As they drew near, Raven spoke up, “Summer, mind if we interrupt?”

The disruption drew everyone’s gaze on them, eyes wide and curious at the strange newcomers in their midst. Their teacher, Summer, seemed as equally spellbound, the book she’d been reading falling right out of her hands.

From the front, Qrow caught movement as one of the students stood, and he saw his niece for the first time. For even if the color was Tai’s, there was really no mistaking that wild mane for anyone other than a carbon copy of Raven’s – no matter how much those flimsy pigtails tried to tame it. She had to of been around eight or nine and she had a gangly appearance about her, the same way he had been during most of his childhood while he was still growing. He hoped she wouldn’t get his outrageously long legs.

Beside her, another girl stood. Had he not already known she was only two years apart from Yang, he would have mistaken little Ruby for being even younger. She was tiny, something that would probably follow her all the way through to adulthood. Unlike her sister, who seemed to be a mismatch of both her parents, she was practically a miniature version of the woman just behind her, right down to the silver eyes.

“Dad!” Yang shouted, shoving her way through the crowd recklessly. With her clearing the path, Ruby had no trouble following, letting loose a shrill cry of her own.

Whatever trance Tai had been transfixed in broke immediately, and he tore away to clear the distance between him and them, falling to his knees as they reached each other. Finally, finally after what had probably felt like an eternity to the father, he was able to scoop both of them up into his arms and hold them close, sobbing with unashamed abandon as he bestowed them with kisses and I love you’s.

Qrow heart melted at the sight, blinking away tears of his own as a delirium of happiness overtook him.

Raven wound an arm over his shoulders, pulling him against her once more. It grounded him, reminding him this was all actually happening. The little farm home he’d envisioned earlier crumbled away. In its place something new and bigger formed. His sister, Tai’s girls, and this little piece of land and community – their Beacon of hope in the middle of nowhere – was all part of his reality. Their reality.

They were home.

[otheliame]

Day 4: “A Man In Love”

thank you @gentapprentices for such a fun week so far!! im loving seeing everyone’s masc folks having a fun time!

I actually wrote a fic on this, Shift about my apprentice Jamie coming to Vesuvia and meeting Asra for the first time, and then later Nadia, Muriel, and Lucio before the Plague. It’s stinking cute, and here’s a little segment from the first chapter, the Magician, when the fated two meet in the most cliche of circumstances. It’s written from 1rst person POV, 9 years before the canon.

The sun glimmers brightly overhead as I make my way down the crowded streets, weaving between shoppers while keeping close to the fringes of the walkways. I cusp around the edges of the multicolored stalls to avoid the majority of foot traffic, but it’s proving hard as it’s a particularly busy day in the market, everyone is out and about, not just buying but lingering, talking over each other with excited voices in large clusters spanning the entire street. Something’s happening in Vesuvia today, something special. As much as I’d like to know what that something is, I don’t want to get caught up with the crowd… it’s been a long day. 

Today of all days I feel my patience is shorter, Isaac was a bit more of a hardass than usual and it makes the above-average bustle of the street that much more difficult for me to handle, every voice seems to multiply and reverberate in my thoughts like the vibration of insect wings. I’ve lived here for a month now, trying to get by and make a living and it’s been alright thus far, especially since Ksasthra took me in; here is better than there and there was worse than that, so long and so forth, unimportant details now because this is better. Vesuvia is going to be better for me. I can feel it. 

A colorful stream from a showcased scarf plays in front of me on a caught breeze as I try to make my way through the market stalls heading towards the lower district, I have to duck to avoid the hawking shopkeeper so I don’t get drawn into a purchase. Luckily, the multitude of customers I have to dodge and weave to get through keep them busy enough to not pay me the slightest attention. I just finished my shift at the local community theatre, doing basic backstage work for all sorts of performances, and right now I want nothing more than to hide away in my small, shared apartment by the waterfront and rest, especially while the one who agreed to house me, Ksasthra, is still back at the theatre for work until much later. The work I did today wasn’t particularly stressful or anything, but being around my coworkers just made me tired. I still feel like there’s hot breath on the back of my neck wherever I turn, and even now it’s still a hard thought to shake. 

I originally questioned my own decision in living in a city - I’ve never lived in an area with more than a hundred people in a given spot - but at the time I made the choice, I thought I had no choice. There just aren’t any jobs out in the foothills, and I never learned how to live off the land alone. Though, mostly it was the fact that my attempts to blend in or hide in the vast, sparsely populated, wintry lands of the deep northeast proved largely unsuccessful. Soon I had the realization that my best bet of finally being left alone was to find someplace where I could melt into a crowd. And in order to melt, one must first find a crowd, so to the city I had to go. Vesuvia was the largest, farthest city I could’ve gone to without taking a boat, so it was to Vesuvia I went to escape… to escape. It helped as well that the further south I went, the less people’s gazes would cling to my shoulders, which I quite liked. A lot. I’m not sure why though, for I’m certain I stick out like a sore thumb anywhere. Up north it was the… things… I could do. Here it’s the fact that everyone is colorful and loud and I’m not.

I don’t like being around people, usually because people also don’t like to be around me. I’m… weird, for lack of a better word. I have certain… abilities that other people don’t have, and in my experience if you have something that other people don’t they either envy you or fear you, and both of those things are the worst emotions to see on other faces. But here, in a city full of so much vibrant color, varient life, people of a hundred different types… I’m just another uninteresting face. That’s what I wanted when I came here. It’s thoughts like this that keep my grounded when I get too overwhelmed by citylife around here, such as now, when I’m just trying to get home. Before I came to Vesuvia, I would see the amount of people on this street alone over the span of several months. It’s still very… difficult to get used to this new atmosphere, even three months later. Almost to the street corner, almost there, then I’m home free… Maybe I can finally finish that book Ksasthra gave me… 

Suddenly, over the jumbled voices of the shoppers on the street, loud, victorious trumpets resound through the air, stealing all eyes from their tasks to the mouth of the street far down the way. I look up and peer through the heads and shoulders of onlookers to try and see what it is that’s causing such a disturbance before I realize that regardless of whatever it is, this is the perfect opportunity to escape through the crowd to the lower district. Quickly I turn and make my way there, but as I grow close to the corner I realize that whatever is happening is also happening on this end of the street; I see mounted soldiers in gleaming silver armor bearing unfamiliar emblems on tall, colorful standards and shining trumpets, using both of these items to loudly announcing the presence of someone important, someone that I now realize is about to enter this street. 

Other shoppers quickly seem to realize this as well, and like a tidal wave people start to shove others from the middle of the street into the outskirts, pressing shopkeepers back behind their stall counters and pushing everyone in their way into the wooden fixtures. I barely get out of the way just as a burly masculine figure makes his way through but I get caught up in the wave as others start hurrying out of the street’s center, I scurry to keep upright. 

Suddenly I get shoved back by a gaggle of inattentive shoppers trying to get out of the way right as I try to duck between stalls. I trip and lose my footing, I let out an innately sharp cry as fear of being tramped leaps into my throat but before I hit the ground I smash straight through a market stand’s doorway, which was just a wooden bar draped with a velvety, purple cloth hemmed with gold trim. My shoulders smack the cobblestones as a multitude of things fall on me from the counter’s surface, ripped down from when I took the tablecloth with me. I hold up my hands as I’m hit with a waft of rich, heady herbs and dried grasses, then with strange light smacks, like a small stack of papers just fell on me. 

Hands reach under my arms and pull me a little farther backwards into the stall I had fallen into, the touch startles me so much I flinch, making the hands immediately disappear. An intimate voice like honey and wind gasps by my ear over the loud din of the rowdy street, “Are you alright?” 

When the strange hands touch me I snap back to attention and regain my bearings like the flare of a starting fire, I sit up and blink as I try to figure out where I am right when I meet the stranger’s gaze… layers of periwinkle, lavender, and lilac, glimmering like stardust in the evening sunshine. They appear masculine presenting, young like me, definitely not old enough to be considered fully gown, with hazelnut skin that gleams like bronze armor and thick, fluffy, silver-white hair that hangs over those starry eyes in wild, soft curls. Starry they are in more ways than one, because the stranger stares at me with such an awestruck expression I suddenly feel incredibly self conscious half-lying on the floor of their stall - it must be their stall, as they’re the only one behind the counter… The counter I just fell through getting pushed by the crowd. 

“I…! Oh no, I’m so sorry!” I stammer in embarrassment, brushing myself off as I perch my feet in preparation to stand, though as I do I realize I’m covered in all kinds of herbs, dried flowers, and other reagents that I must’ve accidentally taken with me when I ripped this cloth off the counter in my fall. There are also a dozen or more rather beautiful cards scattered on the cobblestones, though they are like no deck of betting cards I’ve ever seen, even at a passing glance and I can tell as such. An array of masks also accompany this strange collection, the first two I see is one that depicts a fox with little ornamental gems hanging from the ears, the other that’s rugged wood configured in a bear’s face with runes carved into its realistically crafted fur. The stranger’s hands linger no longer on but near my shoulders as I pull myself upright, he continues to stare at me with wide, owlish eyes as I speak so fast my words bumble over each other, “I didn’t mean to, that was completely on accident, please forgive me-!” 

“It’s alright!” The boy quickly speaks again with that same gentle, sweet tone, gripping my shoulders to return my gaze to his lavender hues rather than to the cobblestones now littered with his stall’s offerings, and this time I don’t flinch. His lilac eyes flicker across my features then down over my form, checking for injuries as he mutters, “You’re not hurt, are you?” 

I shake my head, kneeling down as I try to gather the fallen reagents and masks onto the purple cloth and recollect the fallen, oriental cards, “I’m fine, I’m fine! I’m so sorry, I should’ve been paying better attention, let me help-” 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” His hands, with long dextrous fingers, smooth palms and marble-carved knuckles breach my vision and stall my hands where they are hovering over the cloth, returning my gaze back to his. I start when I feel the sparks under my skin where we touch, but now that I’m paying better attention I realize it’s not simply just me being startled by the touch, but rather it seems to be some sort of… energy… coming from this boy. A deep torrent of something, power, internal lightning, vitality, runs under his palms like I plunged my hands into the rush of a waterfall. 

He smiles at me when I remeet his gaze, a warm and amicable smile that showcases a handsome dimple in his left cheek as he hums, “Really, it’s alright.” 

I let out a slightly relieved breath, and look back down at our conjoined hands over the spilled tablecloth. Does he feel it, too? I’ve never felt someone’s aura so tangibly before- 

I realize this must be strange, how I loiter over his hands, so I quickly clear my throat and pull mine away. “Erm… What do I owe you for your lost goods?” Idly to distract myself from the embarrassment I pick up a small fallen herb between my thumb and forefinger, I think it’s a rose petal as that’s what it smells like, then one of the fallen cards; it depicts a plain with a sun hanging overhead with long, golden beams down onto the grass, a numeral 0 at the bottom to show which way is up or down I suppose. It looks hand painted too, very ornate and intimately crafted, it’s incredibly impressive, did he paint this himself? I hold these two things up with a curious hum, I glance back up at the stranger after a moment and tilt my head to the side,  “What’re you selling, anyway?”

The boy looks at the rose petal in my hand, then at the card, and then back at me with that same owlish look as before right as the air rings with more trumpets, and the crowd just outside of the safe haven of the stall begins to warble. Intrigued, the both of us rise up to look over the counter just in time to see a carriage driving by through the carved path in the streets that the people have rushed to clear. The carriage is richly ornamented, emblazoned with the same colors as the crests the armored knights accompanying it carry, and obviously is not Vesuvian made, drawn by one white, one black horse with thick, luxurious manes. In the open windows the pulled back, rich violet drapes reveal a regal, female presenting person inside. I only get a few seconds to see her through the crowd, though just by her long, royal facial features and her stature alone I know that she must be some sort of powerful noble, most likely from a far away land. 

Once the carriage passes and the knights fall in on her, the crowds bustle and burst with noise, people whisper amongst themselves theories of who this newcomer is. I idly recall that there was supposed to be some big summer festival happening soon, so perhaps she’s here for that. Though, I’m not very keen on politics or current events beyond that a war just ended, so I don’t know much beyond that. And, frankly, it’s a miracle I know that much. The politics of this land are very different than they are back up in the depths of the northeast. There things are… very different. 

In my peripheral I see the stranger moving again, so I turn towards him just as he lifts the herbs, the masks, and the cards, which we had collected onto the fallen tablecloth, back onto the counter. Then he lifts a hidden leather satchel from within the stall’s inner walls and pack them away inside it, slotting the cards carefully in his palm as he goes. The movements of his arms draw my gaze away from his face for the first time and instead to the layers of colorful cloth around his person; his half-buttoned baby blue tunic that reveals his sternum and a little more above a dark magenta scarf with gold fringes that hangs across one of his shoulders and around his neck. He also dons a vibrant pink, blue, and peach overcoat without sleeves covered in radial patterns, and black trousers that his blouse is loosely tucked into. I swear I see something move around his waist beneath his coat but before I get the chance to investigate further he turns in my direction. Beneath his scarf I catch a glimmer of gold, a choker; it’s engraved with waved designs and somewhat blends in with the rich hues of his skin. Below that a turquoise pendant on a leather chord around his neck hangs over the bared part of his chest in a manner that makes it gleam like the depths of the sea in the sunlight. Richly adorned with beautiful baubles, just like everyone in this city, yet somehow… different. Unique. 

Suddenly I realize just where my eyes are lingering so I quickly snap my attention to his face, where it should have been this whole time. As soon as I do he fixes his gaze to mine and speaks in a low hum, “It doesn’t look like anything was damaged, no need to worry.” A sudden, sly smirk slightly plays the edge of his lips as he catches my gaze, I wonder idly if he caught me looking over his form as he adds with a more heartfelt touch, “I’m glad you’re alright.” 

I blink at him in surprise and feel another rush of crimson snaking its way to my face, I have to clear my throat and rein in my thoughts to pull my attention back to the present. “Right! Of course… Yes. I mean, good. That’s good to hear. That nothing was damaged, I mean…” Jamie, please. I glance over at the broken wooden shards on the ground and paw them with my boot as my mouth continues to run, “Not even something for the stall door?”

The amusement in the boy’s eyes lights like sparks flying from a blacksmith’s hammer as he regards me, a small chuckle escapes his lips as he begins to fold the now-empty tablecloth on his now-barren stall. “If you’re truly so troubled…” He pauses as if he’s reconsidering his words but after the moment’s hesitation he continues, his expression morphing from teasing and playful to curious and… hopeful, almost. “I was just going to close up shop anyway to get dinner… I wouldn’t be opposed to company. Would you consider that a form of ‘repayment’?” He says this with a lilt of sly humor, the light of the evening sun making his gaze seem to truly dance with entertainment.

Now, I am no fool, but for a moment he almost had me thinking that I was one, as my mind reeled and somersaulted over itself trying to figure out what he was implying, but once it finally hits me like a clock striking midnight I blink with a stunned hum as I nervously worm my fingertips into the strap of my satchel around my shoulder. “... Oh!” 

The boy’s gaze softens, quickly adding after a moment as he folds his tablecloth in triangles, “Only if you want to, of course. It’s not every day that someone falls into my stall… I simply can’t help but think it’s a sign of some sort. I’d love to know what kind of sign it is by getting to know you a little.” 

I raise an eyebrow at the other in surprise, thumbing my satchel idly as I respond slowly, tasting my words, “A sign?” 

He looks back at me with an amused raise in his lips, and only then do my thoughts suddenly jog and dig into the scene I find myself in. The herbs, the curious, colorful attire, the cards… cards unlike any playing cards I’ve ever seen. “Oh.” I murmur, flickering my gaze back to his bemused expression, “Are you one of those fortune tellers? Do they let you do that so young?”

The boy smiles and chuckles, placing the tablecloth in his satchel before he splays out the cards in his palm before him, I can see him counting them with his thumb as he answers, “I suppose some would call me that. Though I don’t think there’s an age limit on reading cards…” Content with the amount of cards he has, he returns them into a pile and slides them into a hidden pocket in his apparel before his hand sweeps before me and gentle takes up mine, before I can react he brings it to his lips and kisses my knuckles with a gentlemanly bow, I can feel his lips move on my skin when he speaks in a playful hum, “But you may call me Asra.” 

I swallow thick on a sudden knot of roots in my throat, I smile shyly and chuckle as he releases my hand and straightens back upright. Nervously I laugh a little, simply out of nerves because no one has done that to me before. “... Right. Okay, uh… Asra.” 

There’s a beat of silence as Asra the fortune teller regards me with what I think to be an expectant look, after a beat’s pause he tilts his head to the side with a raise in an eyebrow, “And you are?” 

“Oh!” I blink and laugh awkwardly, rubbing the back of my neck as I feel the heat return to my cheeks, “Right. Names. Introductions… Er- I’m Jamie.” 

“Jamie.” Asra echoes, nodding in response as he seems to savor the vowels on his tongue before he gives me a soft smile, “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” 

I start slightly when someone jostles the stall, apparently on accident as they were attempting to get by a group of people wagging their jaws. When I look back at Asra I see his gaze is flickering across my features with a pensive expression I’m not quite sure what to do with as he moves like water around me towards the hole in his stall where the latch once was. “Have you ever been to the bakery down the block?” He asks suddenly, pausing in the entrance and looking back at me over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. I shake my head, prompting the fortune teller to smile with genuine amusement as he holds out a hand towards me, an open invitation. 

I hesitate, looking at him then at his hand for a long pause. Of course strangers are never to be trusted, but he is rather visually unassuming in terms of combat skill so I have faith that I can handle myself if this one were to try anything. I have been able to protect myself plenty of times in the past. But paranoia aside, I can’t lie, I am a little intrigued by their… disposition. I do find myself wanting to get to know them better, and this aura of theirs… I simply must know more. And I hadn’t exactly had other plans for the evening… 

This may as well happen. 

I slowly take his hand. 

...

Wanna know what happens next? Keep reading !

[castielscarma]

Hope

@helianthus21 @bend-me-shape-me @pray4jensen  My 8th contribution to the #SpnStayAtHome challenge! Wordcount 5k (so fairly long I guess) This is a crossover with the Wheel of Time fandom! Only a fool lies willingly with Death. The Wisdom in Dean's village Lawren had been of the mind that Dean Winchester often courted death whether it be in the way of stealing Hendara's pies when they rested on the window sill or by doing something foolish like taking off in the middle of the night as a child to hunt wolves and trollocs. In Dean's defense he'd been a small child then. Engaging in this amount of foolishness now, he must truly be mad already. The wind is not strong but it finds its way past Dean's woolen coat anyway. He shifts slightly which he regrets immediately. Master Kel's wagon has eased his travels and given him a much-needed break, but the road had been less than smooth and the closer they come to his final destination, the more Dean feels the journey in his bones. Not even the golden city of Caemlyn has lingered for long in his thoughts. The two leagues it takes to travel from one of the largest cities he'd ever seen to the Black Tower gives him ample opportunities to yell at Master Kel to turn the horses around. To shout at him that he regrets this Light-blasted journey and that he'll turn back to his old man John's house and the hunting that there awaits. Yet Dean stays silent and watches the thick trees as they pass. Goosebumps rise on his flesh suddenly. The wooden landscape gives way to a clearing and Dean sees the reason for what has caused his alertness. Not only is someone holding saidin but they're holding a significant amount of it. He spots a rectangular portal and surmises that that's the reason for the surge of power he's felt, although it's too far away for him to see any weaves.

Master Kel slows the wagon to a halt and looks back at him. “No further than here, and only because my niece was saved by one of you.” He looks at Dean with a blend of worry, anger and unease.

Dean wants to correct him. He's far from an Asha'man. But with training the Black Tower provides, he hopes he'll learn enough to survive without burning the world down. There's one man tasked to do that and Dean wouldn't want to be near the Dragon Reborn if his life depended on it. No, but a false Dragon, that's fine. Dean shuts the voice down. There are no choices for the mad ones. And seeing as Dean channels, his fate is sealed; madness awaits him. Now it's just a matter of prolonging the inevitable. He won't be hunted by the Red like a dog, not if he can do something about it.

“Thank you, Master Kel.” Dean jumps down and digs around in his satchel. His skill with gambling, while not making him rich, has been enough to provide him with enough coin to sleep in the occasional inn and get a hot meal in his belly.

Master Kel spits on the ground. “Light willing, my debt is now paid.” He urges on his animals and with a slow and steady trot, they leave him.

Dean exhales and starts walking towards the Black Tower.

Chickens scamper around his feet but what really stops Dean in his tracks are the children. Boys and girls running around, kicking up dust as they chase a ball. He even sees women! What kind of Lightblasted woman travels willingly to a place – where men not only can channel but are encouraged to do so – and takes her children with her?

He knows he's been spotted, even from before when he was sitting on that wagon. He sees an Asha'man approach him wearing a dark wool coat. He's sturdy, with gray eyes and a dark beard that reaches him all the way to his belly.

“You come to join the Black Tower, boy?”

Dean swallows. He knows he can channel but it's a far different reality to be confronted with other people, other men that can channel. He wants to object to the man's use of 'boy' but bites his tongue. “If you'll have me. I'm Dean Winchester of – “

“I don't care if you came out of my mother's womb. If you can channel, and we'll test that shortly, the Dragon Reborn will have you. He needs as many weapons as he can. Follow me.”

“I can – “

The Asha'man cuts him short. “We've had all sorts of wayward folks come here thinking that they can channel. The Lord Dragon doesn't have time to waste on foolhardy peasant boys who think every headache is a sign of them touching the One Power. So, just come along, Dean.”

The Black Tower does not compare at all to the majesty of the White Tower, or at least of what he's heard people say about it. But Dean also knows the rumors and whispers that come from this place despite its lack of grandeur. He will not make the mistake to think these men are just farmers.

It's easy to make that mistake though. The Black Tower is no more a tower than Lawren's small house with room to house only two or three peddlers or farmers passing through is named an inn. Lawren had been a quiet village until the Dragon Reborn had broken all rules and laws. Even to their remote village the winds of change came. The Dragon Reborn touched all hearts and burned all souls to ashes.

“That's the tower over there. We also have the sleeping quarters for the families and the Soldiers and Dedicated are separated.” He stops himself. “You'll get the tour soon enough. The M'Hael is waiting.”

Dean sees a large stone house that rises three stories up to touch the blue sky. The stones are not of the finest quality but the cut and size do tell him that it's nothing a farmer could be seen building. There are several other, smaller houses spread out over the area, and he sees what appears to be animal pens. The noise of goats, cows, and chickens all blend together and with the shrill sound of children playing Dean almost believes that this is just an ordinary small village with plain farm folk.

The illusion quickly shatters as Dean walks past a small stone wall, no higher than to his thigh. Blasting sounds assault him, even before his whole body is being crushed with a sense of awe and heaviness. He knows saidin is being held by many; if he's wrong he'll eat his shoes.

Stones are being destroyed; exploding in a spray of smaller pebbles that rain down with heavy spatters on the ground or being cut in half with slicing precision. He suspects that there's some kind of weave that shields the others from the sound of the Asha'man practicing.

The Asha'man that greeted him keeps a steady pace, not even bothering to look back to see if Dean follows.

A child keeps looking at the men, all clad in black as they train with the One Power. As Dean walks by the child, he almost stops. If Dean's senses are to be trusted, the young boy is also holding the Power, and he's quickly learned to always trust his senses.

A new voice speaks up over the explosion. “I'll handle the newcomer, Tarind.”

The man gives a curt nod. “Of course.”

Dean feels goosebumps form on his arms and his heart speeds up. It's been years but he knows this voice. It's a voice he's been having dreams of since the day they parted – bitter as that moment was.

Dean shakes his head in disbelief, refusing to acknowledge the small flutter of hope that rises in his gut.

An arm grabs him, and Dean is yanked to what seems to be the only tree in the Black Tower compound. “Blood and bloody ashes, Dean. What are you doing here?”

Blue eyes stare back at him, the color of the clear springs back in Lawren. He's just as Dean remembers him. He is somewhat older, but the years have been kind to him. His hair is the same dark unruly mess, the wind still eager to ruffle it.

He wears the black coat that all men in this place wear but Dean notices that he has two pins attached to the collars; a silver sword on the left side and what looks like a gold and red dragon pin is attached to the right side. He looks bigger somehow and Dean can't tell if it's because he holds the Power or because life has managed to make his spirit larger.

“Cas...” It comes out a feeble whisper.

Castiel stops for a second, and his face softens. “The very one.” Instantly, his face is sharp angles and determination. “You do not start acting like a wool-headed sheepherder now, you hear me, Dean? Light knows the Lord Dragon does, but he's the Dragon Reborn and you have no such excuse. Do you understand?”

Dean would lie if he said he understood, so he just nods silently. A question forms on his lips. “Uh, Cas, do you mind – “

“Stay silent, bow your head down, do as you're told, and don't be stupid. Burn me for a fool! Of all the wooden-headed buffoons – “

Castiel pulls Dean away from the tree and all but drags him over to a smaller house near the larger farmhouse. “Stay here. Don't move. You'll be summoned shortly.”

Dean stands there and looks at Castiel as he walks away. A thousand questions spring up in his mind and he has the urge to run up to Castiel and ask him where in theShayol bloody Ghulhe's been all these years.

He realizes he's not alone. A dozen or so men wait there with him; some look aloof, others seem eager with an odd shine of intensity to their eyes. Further back Dean sees women looking at the group of men, their arms crossed. He sees one woman with an ample body and hair black as tar staring at them as if she's ready to knife them while another reedy woman with her hair in a bun almost sways in place, her eyes everywhere except on the group of men standing together.

Castiel comes back out from the Tower with another man walking next to him.

He must be another Asha'man but his gait is different. He walks with an aura of confidence that speaks almost of royalty but he wears the same dark coats as everyone else, except there are blue-and-gold dragons embroidered on the sleeves. His hooked nose, dark skin, and high cheekbones tell Dean he's a Saldean. Dean only knows this because of a book he bought from a peddler who was going through Lawren one summer.

His tilted eyes look over the crowd, narrowing and his lips pull down in what Dean can only describe as a look of contempt.

Castiel moves with ease, almost like he's floating but Dean notices that he doesn't come too close to the man and Dean can hear Castiel recite names to the man.

“Enough with the names, there'll be time for that later, for those of them that are still here tomorrow.” He sounds impatient.

Castiel stops and takes a step forward. He looks every part the Asha'man with his dark coat and darker stare. “Welcome to the Black Tower. You will be tested by the Asha'man in charge of the Black Tower in the Dragon Reborn's absence – Mazrim Taim.”

Dean hears people audibly gasp at the name. Hearing about the False Dragon is one thing, being in the presence of him is another, even if all of them are here voluntarily. He hears a woman groan in the background and soft murmurs come from others.

Mazrim Taim's face turns darker by every word Castiel says and by the end he looks like he's chewing nails. He looks out over the crowd, his gaze passing over Dean without pause, and Dean realizes that he's holding his breath. There something unsettling with the man, a wave of power and darkness that exudes from him and threatens to wash over Dean.

“You, over there. We'll start with you.” Mazrim Taim points straight at Dean.

The crowd stills and the soft murmurings die down.

Dean hesitates but remembers Castiel's earlier warning. He was planning on following orders anyway, but his mind can't grasp the fact that he's standing so close to Mazrim Taim.

He walks up to Mazrim Taim, who grabs his arms and yanks him back and forth until he's satisfied that Deans stands in the right spot.

He turns his attention to the crowd. “The more Power that's used, the easier it is to detect the resonance. Drawing in too much Power might kill you though, so let's start small.” Mazrim turns and looks at Dean.

A tiny flame appears between Dean and Taim.

Dean feels the power emanating from Taim and has an urge to back away. He sees the thin flow of Fire Taim weaves and marvels briefly at the complexity of just a thin thread like that.

“Concentrate on the flame, you are the flame. The entire world is the flame. There is nothing but the flame.”

Dean is not familiar with the way Taim wants him to approach the One Power so he does what he's always done. He reaches for saidin. Women speak of embracing saidar – that's what he heard others whisper when talking about Aes Sedai – but for Dean there is no such thing as embracing. His soul sings with joy as he seizes saidin. It's a torrent of overbearing sweetness and burning filth that threatens to overwhelm him and drag him down into the depths if he relaxes for a mere second.

Taim's seemingly perpetual mask of contempt slips for a second as his eyes widen in surprise. Then he barks out an order. “Let go you bloody fool! Are you trying to kill us all? I said let go!”

Dean wrestles himself free from the seductive lure of drawing in even more saidin with so much haste that he feels the taint of the male half of the Source echo in his stomach. He wants to kneel down on the ground and empty his guts but manages to stay on two feet. He grits his teeth and ignores the thin sheen of sweat that covers him.

Taim glares at him. “That was an impressively foolish way of letting us know you can use the Power. It seems the Dragon Reborn's luck extends to this farm even in his absence. Take a step back. You're accepted.”

With that, Taim dismisses him and focuses on the other men waiting for their turn.

Dean is in turmoil. Relief floods through him at the prospect of finally belonging, even if it will all end in death. Death is not a particular mistress, she comes for everyone. Dean will do whatever he can to stave her off for a while longer.

Dean looks around his sleeping quarters. It's a small cottage with sex beds, a shared closet for clothes, and a small chest rests at the foot board of each bed. It's not large but big enough that they can store various personal belongings each of them has brought with them. The room is empty now save for one occupant.

A boy stands there, thin and reed-like but the black coat fits him nonetheless. His sandy hair is ruffled, a tooth is chipped and the few pale freckles dotted over the bridge of his nose, all of it gives him an air of innocence.“I'm Saman Andriel.” The boy extends his hand – and he is a boy, Dean guesses he hasn't even seen fourteen winters yet. He doubts he even has hair on his chest.

“Dean Winchester.” He shakes his hand. “So how long have you been here?”

Saman puffs up his chest with pride. “Almost since the beginning, when this place was known as the Farm. The Black Tower was just a one-story building, and we only had some chickens then. No one was an Asha'man but now we're many.”

“And your parents, what did they say when you wanted to come to a place like this? Or did you run away?”

Saman becomes guarded. “My parents are dead, so they have no say. Killed by the bad Aiel, not the Lord Dragon's Aiel.” He seems worried that Dean won't understand the difference. “They're protecting him from threats the One Power cannot.”

Dean clears his throat. “Sorry about your folks. Uh, threats like what?”

There's a hard glint in Saman's eyes, too hard for a child to have, but Dean figures he has his reasons. They all have their own stories for why they accepted the Dragon Reborn's amnesty rather than hurl themselves off a cliff.

“A spear in the back, a knife in the heart, a rock against the head. Things like that. We can touch the Source, but we're not immune to death. That's what Master Taim says.”

Dean swallows. Light! Mazrim Taim doesn't even go easy on children. But he has a fair point; the moment a boy touches the source he stops being a child. And Tarmon Gai'don awaits.

Still the notion of all these channeling men being together in one place makes him uneasy. There's a constant itch between his shoulder blades, his body expecting a knife that never comes. Dean rolls his shoulders and tries to ease some of the tension.

There's a knock on the door and Saman goes quiet. He stands there and listens and Dean is sure he hears two more knocks, further apart this time.

“You not gonna' open the door?”

Saman shakes his head and urges him to be quiet. He tilts his head to the side. There are three more knocks, in rapid succession. Saman exhales and runs to the door before stopping himself. He looks back at Dean, a sheepish grin on his face. “I still forget sometimes.”

A subtle change in the air is Dean's only warning that Saman uses the Power before the door swings open by itself.

Castiel enters together with a lanky round-faced man walking next to him.

The man turns and faces Saman. “Go outside and wait. You know what to look out for. Use just enough saidin to warn us. It will seem suspicious otherwise if you're not up to any task at the moment. Light knows we don't need any more reason for them to look at us with distrusting eyes.”

“Yes, Jonneth – Asha'man.” Jonneth smiles briefly, then lets it fall as the door closes.

Dean tries not to stare at Castiel but it's hard. It has been so many years and he has a whole barrel of questions for him. He walks towards Castiel but Jonneth is there in a heartbeat. He steps in front of Castiel, as if to shield him.

Castiel's voice is warm.“I appreciate the concern, Jonneth but if Dean wanted me dead, I'd be cold on the floor already and Taim would gnash his teeth at the missed opportunity to do it himself.” They both chuckle at that.

Bloody ashes, they sound mad already, both of them. Dean wonders briefly if it was a mistake to come here but then he must be just as mad when he thinks that the answer is no.

Castiel embraces him.

Dean exhales and wraps his arms around Castiel. It feels like no time has passed at all, despite all the years they've been away from each other. He wants to hold on to Castiel awhile longer, feel the comfort of having him – having someone that is home – but Castiel lets go of him all too soon.

“It's good to see you, Dean, even in a place like this. I never would've guessed that you could channel.”

“Well, you were not there to see it.” Dean can hear the sudden steel in his voice and softens it. “But that's what a bull-headed fool – “

Castiel interrupts him. “Wooden -headed buffon. As nice as it is to see you, and it's really nice to see you Dean, I need you to let Jonneth here Delve you. It's a rare Talent that he possesses, one that he's been hiding from prying eyes, and we're going to keep it that way. Do you trust me to do that?”

Dean's eyes flit to Jonneth who just looks at him. He has traveled to the Black Tower on his own accord and is now an accepted member but he would lie if the thought of another man touching him with the One Power so soon doesn't fill him with unease.

He licks his lips. “Do I have a choice?”

Castiel shakes his head. “No.”

Dean clenches his hands to stop the urge to wipe his clammy hands on the travel-stained tunic. He nods. “I guess the answer is yes then.”

Jonneth takes another step forward. “Sit down please. If you touch me, I can work much faster. And we need to be fast.”

Dean sits down on the edge of a bed and tries to relax. He has to fight his instincts to reach out and seize saidin, just for the comfort of it. He almost laughs out loud. Maybe he's already mad if he thinks the True Power is a source of comfort. It doesn't mitigate his urge to do just that anyway. Dean pulls up his sleeve to expose his wrist. He glances once at Castiel.

Castiel nods. “I trust him, Dean. With my life.”

Jonneth nods grimly at that. “It's an honor serving you, Castiel.”

Jonneth lays a hand on him and Dean is hit with a sense of power. Cold sweat pools at the back of his neck, slowly crawling downwards. He wants to pull away but he's not sure that the sudden motion will not disturb Jonneth and sever the connection. It might kill him. The weave that Jonneth places over him are intricate, with more threads than Dean can count and so fine that it looks like queen's needlework.

Dean feels a bead of sweat roll down his forehead. He's ready for death. Every man that channels is. He just doesn't want to die right at this moment.

They sit like this for what feels like an eternity. Jonneth is not really looking at Dean, his focus is all on the weaves he's creating with the Power as he Delves Dean.

Judging by how Castiel paces back and forth – the soft leather boots barely making a sound – he worries that they'll find something. Maybe Castiel worries that Dean has gone mad already and thinks that Dean will turn out to be like one of those channeling men in the stories they heard as children. The ones about men that spoke in tongues no one understood, the ones were men tore the earth apart and ripped people's limbs off one by one as if they were straw puppets.

Jonneth finally gets up. “I don't detect anything. I could try one more time, see if I can go even deeper or we can get the others so he can swear the – “

Castiel stops the pacing and looks at the ground. He's silent for a heartbeat, then looks at Jonneth, determination burning in his eyes. “It's too risky. At least for now. Taim is here and Kisman and Mishraile are already suspicious as it is. We have to be careful. We're balancing on a knife's edge and even the smallest of gusts can push us all down into the abyss.”

“As you wish, Castiel.”

“Leave us. We'll be out shortly.”

When the door closes, Dean and Castiel are finally alone.

There are plenty of things that Dean wants to ask Castiel and plenty more that he wants to tell him. He's had years to think about different scenarios in his mind of them reuniting again. Castiel leaving him had been the biggest loss in his life apart from his mother Mary, may the Light illuminate her soul.

“I thought you were dead.” Dean wants to spit out the words and he wants them to be angry, a sharp stab in a wound he selfishly hopes that Castiel still possesses but instead his spoken words are soft whispers filled with anguish.

Castiel sucks in a breath and comes to him. He grabs Dean's hand. “I'm truly sorry that I made you think that, Dean. Light burn me, I did what I thought was right in that moment. I had just learned that I could channel, Dean and I was afraid. Not only for myself but for my family, for the entire village... for you. The last thing you needed was a raving madman shredding you to pieces with the One Power.”

“I could have come with you back then. I thought that you didn't – “ Dean swallows hard.

“Dean. Look at me.” Castiel's voice is soft again. It takes Dean back to days when they were younger. When they were just boys swimming in the lakes during the hot summer days, when they helped their fathers with the harvest, when Dean accidentally stabbed Castiel in the barn during that summer storm.

Dean chuckles. “You sound the same you know, even if your voice is more gravelly now. You even said the same words to me in an effort to calm me down.”

A smile pulls at Castiel's lips. “Are you referring to the time you stabbed me like a pig?”

“Hey, the thunder was closer than I expected and I jumped and tripped. Just so happened that your chest was in the way of my blade.”

Castiel nods as he remembers. “Yes, I also remember that John didn't use those words though and neither was he as forgiving when he found out. But I did calm you down. Is it working now?”

Dean lets out a hoarse laugh. “Only because it's you.”

“When did you find out you could... channel?”

Dean turns serious. “A fortnight after you... disappeared.”

A look of compassion flashes over Castiel's face. He's been holding Dean's hand all this time and now he rubs a thumb over Dean's skin. “I'm sorry that you had to go through that alone.”

“Yes, so am I.”

Castiel sighs in the silence that follow their confession. “Dean, you need to leave. This is not – “

Castiel backs away as Dean pulls away from his hand and gets up, anger flashing in his eyes. “Burn you! I finally managed to get here, and trust me, Cas, if I could I'd rather kiss a flaming trolloc, but this is my final hope.” He grits out the last words, mindful that Castiel seems to want to keep this conversation a secret. “Now, what you and me had, that might be ashes in the wind for you but I refuse to let that stand in the way for my salvation, my hope.”

Castiel exhales deeply – a pained look on his face – and Dean glances at the silver-sword and the gold-and-red dragon pin attached to his collar again. “So you think it's fair that you embrace the madness fully and join other men that can channel but me, you want me to leave? And face Light knows what alone?”

“Dean, this is a place of darkness and despair.” Castiel walks up to Dean and grips the front of his tunic. “And I'm not talking about men going irrevocably mad, that will happen to all of us. The Lord Dragon whispers of a plan – “. He stops himself but grits out the next words, his voice tinted with anger and desperation. “Mazrim Taim can't be trusted. The Black Tower is divided, Logain has been missing for weeks and I'm doing my best not to be nailed to that blasted Traitor tree. And I suspect...”

Castiel stops and leans in really close, his breath hot against Dean's ear. “I know that Taim is making Dreadlords, controlling some of the Asha'man either with Compulsion or by other means. This is far from a place of hope, Dean. So yes, I want you to leave.”

Dean grips Castiel's hands, defiant anger turning his voice hoarse. “I'm tired of running, Cas. Out there I have the Reds to worry about, and by the Light, I will not be Gentled. There are wars ravaging the nations, I've heard rumors about something called Seanchan – I don't know what that is but I know it spells trouble – and the Dragon walking the lands is hardly a good omen. So I'll take my chances. The Black Tower is my hope. You are my hope.”

Castiel sighs and nods. “I don't like – “

“You don't have to like it.”

Castiel glares at him. “You've made that abundantly clear. You're still a goat-kissing lummox, Dean Winchester.”

Dean dares a smile. “My goat-kissing mouth has been on your lips, Cas. Not the best insult.” There's a new gleam in Castiel's eyes that takes Dean back to better days when the world was simpler, when the Dragon Reborn hadn't broken all chains and thrown the nations into fire and chaos.

“Be quiet.” Castiel caresses Dean's cheek softly.

The kiss is as fierce as Castiel. Dean's whole body is engulfed in flames and for a moment he forgets how to breathe. There is only Castiel, the taste of him on Dean's lips and his hand on the back of his neck, pulling him in tighter still.

Too soon, Castiel lets go. “I never stopped loving you, Dean. But the Black Tower has no place for love. If Mazrim Taim finds out, not only that I know you but that I love you, he'll kill you. Or worse.”

“I can deal with worse.”

“We'll need all the eyes and ears we can get. It's paramount that we find Logain. He's the Dragon Reborn's most trusted Asha'man. The true leader of the Black Tower. If we don't succeed, I'm afraid the world will see Dreadlords walk the lands again. We can't allow that!”

“Dreadlords are – “

The door opens with a start and Saman is there. He just shakes his head before leaving the cottage again.

Castiel sighs and adjusts his black coat. “Our time is up. My rules still apply. Keep your head down, stay silent, and most importantly, do as you're told.” He pauses, as if contemplating if he should speak the next words. In the end, he does. “I just found you again, Dean. I'd hate to lose you. We will save the Black Tower and Logain.” He looks at Dean and there's a softness in his eyes. “Light, we might even save ourselves.”

“I have hope, Cas.”

Castiel smiles sadly as he walks out the door. “Have hope for both of us then, Dean.”

[ourbloodlinesendhere]

Guess who’s made a fan-house for FE3H? It’s me! I did!

Welcome to the Roseate Wolves, a house for transfer students from all over the world. I took a lot of the locations in FE3H that haven’t been fleshed out and slapped some headcanons onto them, as well as some fun cameos of other kingdoms featured in the Fire Emblem series. Is there any chance that these places all exist in the same universe? Probably not! But I don’t care.

Now, if you’re interested, I’ll drop some rambling below the cut:

(Warning: It’s very, very long and very, very rambly.)

I’ll be talking about what this house would be like if it were actually in the game!

For starters, since we only have three professors including Byleth, either Seteth or Jeritza would be the fourth professor. I’m leaning towards Jeritza for this because iirc some characters do mention that he was considered for Byleth’s position. It just makes his disappearance a little awkward, but oh well. I imagine he would default to teaching the Black Eagles for every route where Byleth isn’t (for obvious reasons) and after he poofs, maybe Seteth steps in and just makes Edelgard hate the church even more.

Anyways, let’s talk about the actual route and it’s characters, not just the setup.

With the other three routes, I’ve noticed that the house leaders warm up to you pretty quickly. This makes sense for their characters and the situation, but I’d like to imagine for a moment a route in which the leader blatantly does not like or trust Byleth at all until later in Part 1. Aren is cold and somewhat brooding, hesitant to trust and avoidant of social situations. Really, he’s only the house leader due to the insistence of his grandmother, otherwise he would never have wanted the task. When push comes to shove, he’s a brilliant tactician and a good leader, but he’s not sociable in the slightest.

During the conflicts with Lonato, the Western Church, Miklan, and other pre-timeskip Fodlan problems, there’s a persistent theme of “Why are we helping? We don’t live here, it shouldn’t be our problem” which settles over the group. More kindhearted folks such as Julia and Ragnar are less blatant about this, but there is just this general feeling of reluctance.

Now, for Edelgard’s reveal, we have a little reveal of our own. Sreng is a small kingdom with a shaky structure at best, and a low population. The only thing that has kept its sovereignty from Faerghus has been a secret it has kept for a long time. Within the various factions that make up its population, beast blood runs through their veins. Not all Srengese have this (making the trait somewhat similar to Crests in Fodlan) but for those that do, they have the power to shapeshift.

Aren, Liara, and Ragnar are all shape-shifters. Underneath his hood, Aren has wolf-like ears (like Keaton’s in Fates), as does Liara (hidden under her hair, like how... certain someones in FE3H hide their own funny ears), and Ragnar’s horns aren’t actually a feature of his helmet. Beast-shifters in Sreng are known as Orthrus. Aren is a wolf Orthrus, Liara is a snow leopard Orthrus, and Ragnar is a mutated, horned black vulture Orthrus. (He has small, malformed wings hidden under his coat. Imagine how uncomfortable he must be)

There is also the fact that Sreng lacks access to Beaststones. Their beast forms are massive and extremely powerful, but volatile. Orthrus often lose themselves in their transformation, and after battle they often need to be subdued by their allies. Without a beast form to help control their shifted selves, the three Orthrus were strictly forbidden from shifting when away from home, even when their own lives are in danger. Not just to protect Sreng’s secret; also to protect themselves and others from their beast forms.

Edelgard, as the Flame Emperor, attacks Byleth. At this point, Aren has grown very close to his professor, but still struggles in showing it. In an expression of his care for Byleth at last, he breaks the rules he was given and transforms into his Orthrus form. Gameplay-wise, he’s like a demonic beast, with four tiles in his hit-box and even an extra health bar. However, he’s an allied unit with purposefully flawed AI. He will rush right into battle without a thought, and him falling is the lose condition for the map (even on casual mode).

After the battle, with no enemies in sight and wild emotions coursing through his bestial mind, Aren goes on a rampage through the throne room as Rhea is horrified. Once the sacred site is thoroughly destroyed, Byleth finally calms him down, and he shakily reverts to his human form.

Once that map is completed, the Srengese students have had their cover completely blown, and it doesn’t take long for Liara and Ragnar to be exposed as well. They plead with Rhea to keep their secret, but she is enraged at the damage to the room and the throne, and exiles all three of them. They have to leave by that night, and she makes no promises about their secret.

Byleth meets with them in the night, and the rest of the Wolves do as well in order to say goodbye. Surprisingly, Flayn appears, having snuck away from Seteth and Rhea. She offers the Orthrus three beast-stones, unlocking the Orthrus class for them. Thank you Flayn! Wonder how she got those, almost like she knows a thing or two about- I mean, what

This will alter their beast forms to be smaller and a bit less powerful, but allows them full control over themselves when shifted. Now they play exactly like Taguel in Awakening, except they stay in beast form whenever the beast-stone is equipped, not at the start of each battle.

Flayn can’t help them any more though, since she’s ultimately loyal to Rhea and Seteth. For the remaining time until the time-skip, they’re not available for use in your party. If for some reason you’re playing classic mode like some kind of masochist and both Liara and Ragnar are out of your party, they’ll still appear in these cutscenes. However, next moon you’ll be informed that their injuries slowed them down and Knights of Seiros caught them, killing them. Ouch!

The battle of Garreg Mach is a different story. With their loyalty to the church shaken, but with no desire to join up with Edelgard, Byleth and the Wolves are trapped between two clashing armies. The goal of the map is to get your students to safety, through a harrowing path riddled with enemy soldiers attacking anyone in sight. Any students from the other houses you didn’t recruit will be enemy units! But they don’t perma-die when you defeat them here, since lots of them will appear again post-timeskip. When Rhea starts wrecking shop, Byleth hurries all the students ahead, fighting off anyone who comes for them. But they gets yeeted off of the cliff anyways.

Now, I hope to design some post-timeskip designs soon, but until then, just picture that everyone’s a little battered. Fodlan closed its borders to prevent foreign reinforcements from coming in and deserters from leaving, so all of the Wolves have become trapped in the midst of a war. Only small exceptions occur for the purpose of paralogues and such (like if you had recruited Bernadetta and Petra, their paralogue happens the same.) but overall, nobody can go home. Also, Sreng has been strong-armed into fighting for the Empire! Lovely. If Liara and Ragnar are alive, you’ll need to face them in battle and recruit them there, Tharja/Gaius-style.

But where’s Aren? He didn’t return home, actually. He laid low, and upon hearing Garreg Mach fell, he searched desperately for Byleth to find them. He eventually holed himself up in the ruins of Garreg Mach, chasing out anyone who tried to come for it. Essentially like how timeskip Dimitri was, but less murder-y and more just. constantly terrified and lashing out. He became paranoid and desperate, and eventually abandoned his beaststone to remain in full Orthrus form.

When Byleth finds him, he’s fully shifted and tries to attack them. However, upon recognizing his professor, he backs down and manages to return to his human form. His beaststone lays on the floor, now having been attached crudely to a necklace. Byleth puts it back on him, and he regains control of himself.

His personality has become erratic and anxious, even more untrusting than before, but he’s instantly dependent on Byleth and clings to them with uncomfortable desperation. When the other Wolves arrive, he is cold to them, even to Liara, and becomes possessive of Byleth.

The post-timeskip era starts out with the Wolves feeling trapped and simply trying to stay alive, turning Garreg Mach into a sort of hideout for other refugees who wish to escape the fighting. However, after getting to know the suffering of the Fodlan people, the theme shifts to one of empathy. Just because something isn’t our problem, and doesn’t affect our people, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t act when innocents are suffering. Faerghus and Adrestia are at each other’s throats, and the Alliance is getting trampled, but the neutral land of Garreg Mach houses a growing force of fighters looking to put a stop to the war.

Aren’s arc post-timeskip involves him eventually leaning away from Byleth as a crutch, and standing stronger on his own. He learns to trust others regularly, and forms a deep bond with all of the Wolves, reconnecting with Liara again. 

Now as for how the route ends... who knows ! ;) I just might write something for this house, so you’ll just have to wait and see.

If people are interested, I’ll also go into more detail about the individual characters! Because this whole thing here was very Aren-centric with cameos from Liara and Ragnar.

[mittensmorgul]

9.09, Holy Terror.

Remember, folks. Writers lie.

But Metatron slips back into the story like the proverbial serpent. I mean, that's literally the metaphor that applies, considering he's the one who finally unmasks Gadreel for us-the-audience, despite Dean still being in the dark. But there's far more manipulation going on in this episode...

As Gadreel tightens the screws on Dean, Metatron applies the exact right pressure to Gadreel. It's figworms within figworms, one after the other rotting the apple from the inside out, and everything is about to collapse.

Remember in the 9.06-9.07 post, I described the process through which Dean's lies and half-truths gradually came to light until they were completely out in the open? Well, that's beginning in earnest with his current round of increasingly unsustainable lies, and we begin to really see the toll it's all taking on Dean.

(also need to note one of the angels killed in the opening scene, his vessel was named "Red Dawg," in a season where Dean has both been referred to by the nickname "D-Dog," and also became an actual dog for an episode already... the MoC/demon Dean foreshadowing was pervasive in this season)

We've already seen Sam begin to crack under the weight of it all at the end of 9.08, but now both Dean and Cas will feel that burden, too...

Dean pushes Gadreel for an honest answer about Sam's recovery, pressuring him for a better answer, while Gadreel expresses his concern over working a case that potentially involves angels, but also leaving the entire burden of perpetuating the deception on Dean himself. And he's not doing well with that burden, and Sam's losing faith in himself and trust in Dean's increasingly shady answers...

SAM (getting agitated) No, it's more than Vesta! I mean, this kind of thing's been happening to me. Like, like, there are chunks of time just … missing. Like there are times when I'm... not here. DEAN Well, like I've said— SAM Yes, the trials. I know. I heard you. I heard you when you said it the last week and the week before that and the week before that. DEAN Yeah, because ... damn straight the trials. They whacked you, man. You're not up to warp speed yet, okay? But you will be.  (Smiles at SAM.)  Would I lie?

and

Blue light flashes in SAM’s eyes; EZEKIEL-IN-SAM is back. DEAN (knowing he's about to get more grief from EZEKIEL-IN-SAM) Oh, boy. EZEKIEL-in-SAM Well? What are you going to do about this? DEAN About Cas? EZEKIEL-in-SAM He is a beacon, Dean, pulling every angel for miles down on our heads. DEAN All right, you know what, Zeke? Level with me. What is it that you're so afraid of? EZEKIEL-IN-SAM I told you. When I chose to answer your prayers and heal Sam, I chose sides. That means I'm not in good standing with certain angels. DEAN Okay, well, you know what? Cas isn't in good standing with any angel, all right? But here he is, ass on the line, fighting the fight. So tell me, what makes you so special?

But Dean breaks down again and begins to strategically confess to Cas, still leaving out crucial pieces of information, but giving him enough that Cas does eventually begin to understand the gravity of Dean's situation:

CASTIEL (clears throat) I, um, I noticed you look... kind of uncomfortable whenever Sam mentions my leaving. Doesn't he know that you told me to leave? DEAN Here's the deal. When Sam was doing the trials to seal up Hell, it messed him up. Okay? The third one nearly killed him. If I'd let him finish, it would have. He's still messed up, bad. CASTIEL You said the angel, Ezekiel, helped heal him. DEAN (looks down, avoiding the question) Look, I got to do anything I can to get him back. Now, if that means that we keep our distance from you for a little while, then... Then I don't have a choice. I don't feel good about it, but I don't have a choice. It's great to have your help, Cas. Okay, but we just can't work together. CAS looks sad.

Bolding mine. I DON'T HAVE A CHOICE. I DON'T FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT, BUT I DON'T HAVE A CHOICE.

Cas, being Not A Moron™ now understands that everything that's happened since the angels fell, since Dean went to extraordinary measures to save Sam with "Ezekiel's" help, has put Dean in this impossible position. He might not know the true extent of it, but at the end of the episode when he calls Dean to warn him that "Ezekiel" is not who he's pretending to be, he knows that Dean absolutely NEEDS this information... which he could only have known if he understood that Dean had made some sort of as-yet-still-secret-by-necessity-of-Sam-continuing-to-be-not-dead pact with Fake Ezekiel...

And then, a truly horrible twist of circumstance as Cas searches for answers and is captured by a group of angels and tortured. Everyone is just doing what they have to do...:

CASTIEL Angels butchering angels. Is this what we've become? MALACHI Just following your example, Castiel. How many did you kill in Heaven? How many in the Fall? (off CASTIEL's look)  Oh, you didn't know? A host of angels died when they fell – Azrael, Sophia, Ezekiel (At this last name, CASTIEL turns very thoughtful) ...  "Died" doesn't even describe it. Devastation. Wings shredded, unspeakable agony at your hands. So, I think you would want to provide any information you have, considering... (pause; no response from CASTIEL) All right. I leave you in the hands of an artist. (to THEO) I don't care what's left. THEO Don't ask for mercy. There is none. THEO walks and shuts the door, then returns to CASTIEL, and picks up a drill. THEO I'll give you one last chance for this to end. CASTIEL Give me a quick death. CASTIEL closes his eyes and holds up his face in anticipation of the blow(s). THEO I need you to speak to Metatron. Everyone knows you have influence. CASTIEL now opens his eyes and looks in astonishment at THEO. THEO (continuing) He'll listen to you. Ask him to raise me to Heaven. You can do this, Castiel. I'll be a soldier for Metatron, do anything he wants. CASTIEL You – you serve Malachi. THEO I thought he was the answer, but he's crazy. CASTIEL You're... noticing this now? You were more than willing to do his dirty work. THEO I did what I had to.

So of course Cas does what he has to do, now that he knows what Metatron is up to, that Dean is in danger from the False Ezekiel:

CASTIEL (on the phone) Dean, I don't have a lot of time, so listen. The leader of the opposition is an angel named Malachi. DEAN How do you know that? CASTIEL He had me. I, uh, I was tortured. But I got away. DEAN How? CASTIEL I... I did what I had to. I became what they've become. A barbarian. DEAN What are you – Cas, where are you? CASTIEL It's better I stay away. They're gonna want me even more now. But I'm gonna be all right. I... I got my Grace back. Well, not mine per se, but it'll do. DEAN Wait, you're – you're back? You got your mojo? CASTIEL I'm not sure. But I am an angel. DEAN And you're okay with that? CASTIEL If we're going to war, I need to be ready.

Unfortunately Cas's warning comes too late to save Sam, or Kevin, and Gadreel takes over fully, having been deceived and manipulated into doing Metatron's dirty work, just as Cas had been in 8.22-8.23.

Which is why Cas immediately forgives Dean in the opening scenes of...

9.10, Road Trip.

(meanwhile, the angels all continue to be Terrible™ in the background, proving they were always Terrible™ and are only using Cas as a scapegoat, blaming their troubles on him when honestly they were all always Terrible Manipulative Bastards™ all on their own!)

(also, Andrew "what are cars even anyway" Dabb writing an episode called "Road Trip" makes me cackle)

Watching Dean suffering alone at the bunker (Gadreel even stole the Impala ffs), giving Kevin a hunter's funeral alone... this was hard. And then Cas showed up 100% understanding, and 100% ready to help however he could, back in a new trench now that he had his mojo back. So in that way, Dean had already resigned himself to having An Angel back, and not the same Cas he'd tossed out in his worst moment. It's his fault Cas was forced to go to that measure. Ouch.

I'd also like to point out the similarity between Metatron luring Cas in during s8-- starting by appealing to Cas's desire for atonement, his need for all the angels to stop the infighting and begin working together again, to restore order, and then luring him in to increasingly horrific acts he promised would achieve those ends. When Cas had balked, Metatron had manipulated circumstances to push Cas into doing them anyway. Same with Gadreel.

Metatron used the lure of being able to clear his name, back in 9.09:

METATRON: Relax. I'm not here to out you. But I am curious, why Ezekiel? NOT-EZEKIEL-IN-SAM They say he is a good, and ... honorable angel. METATRON Ahhhh. Everything they say you are not. I see your point... Gadreel. NOT-EZEKIEL-IN-SAM (henceforth to be known as GADREEL-IN-SAM) The stories about me – they are not true! METATRON And yet you spent countless thousands of years locked in Heaven's darkest dungeon. And now you're hiding in this human, posing as Ezekiel. (shakes his head) Tragic. It broke His heart to lock you away, you know? You were God's most trusted. That's why He chose you to protect the garden. Your one task was to keep evil from entering... from befouling His cherished creation, mankind, and you failed Him! GADREEL-IN-SAM Not my doing. METATRON Well, for whatever reason, the serpent entered. The Earth is cursed with evil. Someone had to be blamed.

Gadreel had been duped from the start. And he didn't let evil onto the Earth. Adam and Eve weren't tainted with evil when they ate the apple, they were tained with the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil. If knowledge could be considered a "curse" in the first place. And Gadreel just happened to be the one left standing there after the deed had been done, even if he was no more complicit in what resulted that Cas had been in Metatron's spell that made the angels fall. But unlike Cas, Gadreel believes Metatron truly wants to help him clear his name, or at the very least help him build his reputation anew by doing "good" now... and yiiiiiikes....

Gadreel was horrifically okay with killing Kevin on Metatron's orders, because Kevin was helping Dean perform a spell to eject him from Sam, and it was partly (at least he could rationalize it that way) self-defense. And he was all too happy to murder his former jailer who was now envesseled in a Justin Bieber wannabe. I believe we all cheered about that guy getting his comeuppance. But then Metatron orders him to kill the only angel Gadreel had considered a friend, who he'd been imprisoned with, and who'd decided to embrace the human life he'd found himself in, adopting his (previously abusive jerkwad) vessel's family as his own. Abner had been HAPPY with his life, and yet to save his own reputation, and without questioning Metatron's order, Gadreel killed him.

Crowley also played a role in this, using his NSA-infiltrated demon to track the stolen Impala. Crowley praised her for also playing ball with Abaddon (and later Abaddon would kill her for admitting she was also helping Crowley... two very different ruling styles...), and then they'd have to move from Plan A (torturing Gadreel with the Angel Brainwashing Halo Thingie) to Plan B (crowley possessing Sam to convince him to evict Gadreel from the inside).

Gadreel gone back to his previous vessel, Sam feels justifiably violated by his possessions.

Sam: What do you want me to say? I’m pissed? Okay I am, I’m pissed. You lied to me - again. Dean: I didn't have a choice. Sam: I was ready to die Dean. Dean: I know. But I wouldn't let you, because that’s not in me. Sam: So what, you decide to trick me into being possessed by some...psycho angel? Dean: He saved your life. Sam: So what. I was willing to die. And now...Kevin. Dean: No, that is not on you. Kevin’s blood is on my hands. And that ain’t ever getting clean. I’ll burn for that. I will. But I’ll find Gadreel and I will end that son of a bitch. But I’ll do it alone. Sam: What’s that supposed to mean? Dean: Come on man, can’t you see, I’m poison. People get close to me they get killed, or worse. I tell myself I help more people than I hurt and I tell myself that I’m doing it all for the right reasons and I believe that. But I can’t -- I won’t drag anyone anybody into the muck with me - not anymore. Sam: Go. I’m not going to stop you. But don’t go thinking that’s the problem because it’s not. Dean: What’s that supposed to mean? Sam: Just go.

And we're back to not talking to each other. And there's our final "I didn't have a choice." But there's also the fact that Dean DIDN'T trick Sam into letting an angel possess him. The angel did that all on his own. Asking for Dean's permission was entirely besides the point. It was Sam who had to say yes, and it was Gadreel who assumed Dean's likeness inside Sam's mind, using what he'd learned about Sam during his unattended "examination" while Dean had been talking to Cas and blowing away the other angels attacking the hospital to learn what he'd need to manipulate Sam into saying yes. And it's not like Dean intended to lie, that was Gadreel's condition he'd at first told Dean was to prevent Sam from ejecting him and basically dying on the spot before they could explain the plan to Sam. And then over time, as Dean tried to tell Sam the truth before it got to that point, Gadreel actively prevented him from doing so. It was only then that Dean realized just how screwed he was. ALLLLLL the guilt of everything bad that's resulted from Gadreel possessing Sam to this point, Dean blames all of it on himself-- Cas, Kevin, Sam... all of it. Sam's just... still reeling from his own experience that he's unable to see this yet. Unfortunately, he won't see it for a good long while to come, after it's far too late to save Dean from what the mark will do to him.

And another cycle of manipulation, betrayal, and sacrifice begins. Chuck must've been pretty damn proud of this one... all he had to do was sit back and watch Metatron execute the very Him-like plan for him. 

[diveronaevents]

DATE: October 29th

TIME: 11:37 AM

LOCATION: Hotel Emelia, back offices

“You cannot be serious?”

“Have we ever been known to joke, Cosimo?” Hecate pulls at the cuff of their collared shirt, straightening out the sleeve as they cross one leg over the other, mimosa clutched between manicured fingertips. A sip is taken, long and drawn out, a play for power before two individuals who bow to no one, man or god.

“What do you hope to accomplish by bringing this back? It’ll be anarchy. The streets filled with debauchery and carnage. Please, Circe, you must do something,” pleads Damiano, looking to all three of their faces before turning away in a huff.

“I am,” another voice rings out, softer but no less firm. “I support this decision. It’s what is needed. Your people have suffered enough, have they not?” They step out from behind the desk, stride closer to the Montague who dares to question the law laid out before him—as if that was ever an option. “And with no culprit to place the crimes upon, do we not owe them something? A way to grieve, to heal.”

“Not like this!” Damiano shouts back, spittle flying from his mouth in the heat of the moment, anger licking up the sides of his throat as he tows the line between respectful subordination and vicious treachery. “More loss, that’s all this will bring.” He rubs at his jaw, all the ways this could go wrong playing through his mind on a loop until he’s forced to voice his concerns once more. “You give them too much rope, and they’ll hang themselves.”

“I’m counting on it,” quips Cosimo, something dark alight within his gaze as he sparks the end of his cigar to life, taking a few puffs before continuing on. “My people know better.”

“We’ll see.” A third voice emerges from behind a chair, pointed toward the roaring fireplace, facing away from the rest of the room.

“We will,” Circe replies, the line their lips set in curling up ever-so-slightly, bemused at Medea’s confidence. “When the sun rises, we will see who is left.”

Citizens of Verona,

You are cordially invited to La Purga.

For the next twenty-four hours, starting at 11PM on October 30th and lasting until 11PM on October 31st, all crime will be legal. No punishment will follow, no arrests or retribution. Decide what is important to you, what matters when consequence does not. Whether you wish to release the beasts you carry within and extract every bit of carnage afforded on this night is entirely up to you, but choose wisely. Think carefully.

Tread lightly, loudly, or not at all. The choice is yours.

Following the commencement of the newly reinstated Festival di Caos, there will be an effigy of vice lit and sent out to sail atop the Adige as a memorial of all sins shed. It will be ignited promptly when the clock strikes twelve, burned, and turned to ash, as will the violence bred on this night. We will greet the dawn as peace is returned—to stay.

Purge yourselves, Verona, for you may not get the chance again.

– The Witches

DATE: October 30th

TIME: 10:57 PM

LOCATION: Hotel Emelia, front steps

“Welcome,” they say in unison, Circe clasping their hands together as Medea and Hecate descend the steps first, dresses of gold and silver trailing behind them in a shimmer of fabric against stone in the moonlight above. “You all know why you’re here tonight.”

They’re calm, collected as they button their bronze dinner jacket and follow after, speaking solely now to the crowd of Veronans filling the street before the Hotel. They straggle out at the edges, some pulling shorter citizens up onto nearby statue platforms or lifting them onto broad shoulders for a better glance; but a hush falls upon them once the witches begin to address them.

“They do,” Medea hums, folding their hands as they come to rest at the base of the steps, delight pricking along their arms at the anticipation of what’s to come.

“Twenty-four hours,” Hecate reminds them, eyes narrowing among the faces, stopping ever so briefly among those they know to be true beasts of burden, the vile and utterly wretched, hidden among those angels who only ever dream of dipping their toes into the forbidden. Tonight’s their night, they think silently, casting a look over their shoulder toward Circe as they emerge into view beside them. Will they survive?

A glint of silver catches the eyes of all, pulled from the waistband of a witch, the barrel of a gun now caressed tenderly by knowing fingertips. Medea can’t help but smile as people start to reach up toward their ears, a hundred fingers jammed inside to cover the heinous sound about to erupt from Circe’s pull of the trigger. They know it to only be the sound of hope, though. The sweet symphony of the storm reaching its greatest height, dawn budding on the line of the horizon, a gleam of light through the darkness.

Hecate reaches out for the hands of their siblings as Circe raises an arm in the air.

Three heartbeats—

BANG.

“Good luck,” they say in unison again.

You’re going to need it.

FESTIVITIES:

The Dark Lady — Courtesy of the Capulets and the generous Madame of the Dark Lady, MONA CHEN has opened the doors of the Devil’s humble abode to offer up the normally quite expensive time and services of her ever seductive Sparrows free of charge. One time only. But be wary, as usual, for her little birds are the best at collecting secrets in this city and what better way to extract the only currency worth anything in Verona than when all guards are down and debauchery lines the streets. Spot them donned in celebratory red, some wearing black feathers, some hiding their faces behind masks to play coy, some choosing to shed every piece of clothing and bear themselves to the world. Seek them out at your own risk or avoid them to play it safe—but they are here, they are roaming, and they are indulging just as much as you.

Costa Automotive — Likening himself to a prophet of chaos, DOMINIC COSTA swings open the garage doors of his dealership with a toothy, pearly white grin, no doubt those canines of his sharp enough to tear out the throat of those who’d cross him, but he seems in a rather good mood today. As fast as he is furious, he lends his top vehicles out to the streets for some good old fashion racing, taking bets at a makeshift counter inside a tent in the parking lot. Keys are offered as soon as the money is handed over and winners are paid out at the finish line. Ever the salesman though, he extends the very generous offer of ten thousand euros off the asking price to those who wish to purchase the pristine Jaguar or immaculate Lamborghini just driven to victory. It could be the liquor talking or the way his eyes never leave HAZEL DYMON’s as she leans over the hood of a car, fixing it after some idiot had tried to sabotage a race by cutting a transmission line. Thank her for the distraction; you just saved a grand on that bet when he wasn’t paying attention.

To Tame A Soup — Upon Damiano’s begrudging insistence, ROMAN MONTAGUE has ordered the doors of his philanthropic sanctuary be opened, food be made in troves, and beverages made bottomless. Tables line the street in front of it, set up with candles and the finest of place settings, roped off so as to give the non-paying patrons some relief from the hustle and bustle of the festival for a meal, or drinks, or both. Daily volunteers have been called upon to serve as waiters and waitresses, bartenders and chefs, paid greatly at the expense of the Montagues. A small price to pay to feed the hungry sinners, Damiano had said to his son, his own reluctance suffocating the words, but Roman doesn’t push further, assigns PIETRO BERNARDI with the task of running the safe haven for the 24 hours required by the witches. The cost is small, the favor not one too grand for the Montagues nor the people Roman has put in place  to deny, but how much longer are they to pay for the sins of their enemy? Father and son ask themselves this as they sit in silence.

Bianchi Shooting Gallery — A favorite place to many a mob member, GABRIELE BIANCHI has graciously swung open his doors, unlocked his glass cases containing all his most precious weapons and offered them up for free, if you can believe it. To be rented as long as a name is provided, they are yours for the next 24 hours as well as fifty bullets on the house. True courtesy of TAMURA CHIKO, Cosimo’s latest weapon specialist turned one-time enforcer, just for this occasion. That’s for you, he’d said, handing over nearly ten thousand euros. Don’t give it to him, make him. They obliged because the money was good and the guns looked fun. Loyalty can no longer be bought from the soldier who’s been wrung dry of it, but a stack like that would fetch a whole lotta bullets, wouldn’t it? So a barrel to his temple, they put. Threats they delivered and fear they sowed. The guns are yours now, use them well.

Measure by Measure — It’s a call he’s made a hundred times and ORPHEUS AHULANI is always more than happy to oblige, more than willing to bring his band of brothers from the depths of Verona’s underbelly and into its streets. Tear them apart, Cosimo often says. Show them what we’re made of. And he does so with such vigor, follows orders with such perfect precision, a natural, god-given proficiency for executing violence with the swing of his fists. And the same goes for his men. The people who are drawn to his little pocket of chaos beneath the Earth. But today—tonight—they take to the streets. They throw punches at anyone who looks good, toss an elbow into the ribs of those who don’t. Their leader takes the bests, a wad of cash in his greedy palm as he walks behind the brawl that’s just been sanctioned on Via del Minatore. Winner takes all, minus his cut of course. JACQUELINE LÉMIEUX, his right hand brute, is always more than happy to show you how he settles disputes if you dare to try and deny him what he’s earned by giving you the right to indulge your demons.

OVERVIEW:  Welcome to The Purge, folks! Brought to you by three very stoically optimistic witches and two begrudging mob bosses. It is a deal made behind closed doors, fostered forth because one side has suffered and the other has not, though should they? Evidence remains elusive still but the pain festers, the retribution curdling like old milk within the bellies of those who ache to see revenge flourish by their hand. This event is for them, for all of you, for those who wish to swim in a lake of fire without getting burned, for the ones who wish to turn their back on God but for a moment—we promise he won’t see. Please keep all interactions within the 24 hours of 11PM on October 30th and 11PM on October 31st! There are many dark corners for your character to find sanctuary in if you don’t think they would participate in the shenanigans, but remember this is their only chance! Tonight is the night to do what they would never do otherwise, all monstrous acts forgotten and forgiven once that effigy is lit at midnight.

We have a few new faces coming into view as well, some who will be introduced sooner rather than later perhaps, but most will remain elusive for a bit, choosing to stay on the outskirts of this mob—for now. Mona Chen is also known as Queen Mab. Tamura Chiko is also known as Julius Caesar. Dominic Costa is also known as Leontes. Hazel Dymon is also known as Hermione. Feel free to use them as NPCs in any of your threads for this event, within reason of course. They are not to be harmed by our hellions—yet. Other notable NPCs are: Pietro Bernardi, Jacqueline Lémieux, and Gabriele Bianchi. Use them how you see fit as well, but again no hurting them!

TASK: There is no true set task for this event, just to have fun and enjoy, but we’d love to see any inspiration, self paras you come up with, threads you start, etc! Maybe you have a specific outfit in mind for your character or want to share ideas for what you think the city would look like all done up for this party of chaos. But remember to tag threads for this event as #diveronapurge and/or #diveronaevent.  

[fanfictionized]

Help Me Help You - Cut Off One Head... (2/?)

Character: Bucky Barnes x Enhanced!Reader / OFC

Chapter summary: Tony reveals Hydra’s plan to the rest of the group. It’s definitely worse than they had even expected it to be. The plot thickens.

Warnings: Mentions of death and dead people, language?

Words: 1.2k

A/N: All of the following chapters will include lots of swearing and cussing. I’m saying it now because I’ll probably forget to mention it later...

Previous Chapter // Help Me Help You - Masterlist

“Oh, good. The moody soldier hath blessed us with his presence.” Tony spat sarcastically, stalking around that conference table like a predator ready to pounce.

Bucky only grumbled as he let himself fall into a seat in the back of the room, still close enough to the door so that he could hypothetically go as soon as it’d become too much for him. And with “it” he was referring to a certain Mr. Stark.

He felt all pairs of eyes resting upon him as he continued to sink back into the chair, but he didn’t look back up. “Ease off him, Tony.” He heard a woman’s voice say calmly. Black Widow. He didn’t need to look back up for that to know, yet he did anyway. She was looking back at Tony who was just giving her a look. “Don’t worry, darling. I won’t be acting up… not as long as certain people will respect the given time schedule. Set by all parties, remember?” Both Bucky and Black Widow huffed at that.

“Anyway. Let’s continue.” He spoke. “Let’s start. You haven’t missed anything, man.” The bird-guy mentioned and pursed his lips, raising his eyebrows, seemingly unimpressed with Stark’s empty threats. Bucky nodded slowly. “Quiet, children.” Tony continued and raised his hands, gesturing until a vivid image sprang to life in front of the group. Bucky still couldn’t get used to today’s technology.

“This” He continued and called up a profile picture of a man in his late twenties. Dark hair, stubble, full lips, kind eyes. “Is Daniel Rivas. Grew up in Monterrey, stable household. Went to law school, bright guy, got offered at least a dozen scholarships.” He paused before switching to the next picture. It showed a picture of a young woman, probably around the same age, slinging her arms around a person whose face was covered by a hat. She was smiling into the camera, she had a big smile. Long hair too, dyed blond even though her dark roots had long grown out. Tony sighed before he continued.

“Haylie Avalon. Canadian college student living in Michigan. She had lots of friends according to her parents, your typical girl next door.” He skipped over to the next one, showing two teenage girls.

“Isaura and Julia Jimena, twin sisters from Spain.”

Next one.

“Nina Alice, French kindergartner.”

Next.

“Yorick Lambert, Belgian mechanic.”

He swiped through the photos aggressively before taking a minute to take a deep breath and collect his thoughts. “The question I’m asking you is what do all of them have in common? They all have different backgrounds, passports, most of them don’t even speak the same language.” He started pacing around the desk again and Bucky’s back straightened in his seat. He didn’t enjoy how Tony was acting, appalled, talking like he was holding his breath until he could get out his next sentence.

Tony looked into blank faces before waving his hand once more, the collage of pictures in front of them making some of the team gasp out loud.

The photos were taken out of police files, the familiar faces from before all marked up with black bars covering their eyes. Those were crime scenes with their corpses littering the invisible screen. Still fully clothed, all of their bodies scattered. Whether propped up against a tree or laying on a bench, lying on a field, inside a crappy apartment with a dirty carpet…

“Jesus Christ, Tony…” Steve said next to him in an incredulous tone and shifted in his chair, sending him a glare. “I know it’s terrible, okay?” He held out a hand, gesturing for Steve to calm down. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but with this case we got to do a little detective work to get to the ground of this and we’ll only do this if we have all the information we can get.” Steve still didn’t seem convinced. Not anyone did, really.

“Continuing, the only thing those people had in common was their cause of death. The local polices gave out as little information about the cases they could and for each kid, they told the same old story; death due to excessive drug use. Overdose. Of cause they only said that to keep the folks quiet about it, open and closed case.” He swiped to the right.

“But what all the coroners found in their bloodstream were no regular drugs.” He called up a page with all sorts of chemical compounds, formulas that didn’t make sense in the slightest to Bucky, but he was obviously not the only one since he felt everyone else’s gaze move over to the currently-not-so-green doctor. His brows were furrowed as he looked closer, standing up.

“The FBI got involved after they found out about each and every one of them and what was found inside their bodies, but they couldn’t find out what was going on either, so they moved it on to the big boys. Fury told me about this a couple of days ago, thought it was best if we got involved-” “To do his detective work?” The young girl with the East-European accent and long red hair spoke up, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Yeah, also why are you always the one to know about this shit first?” Sam chimed in with the same attitude as the Scarlet Witch. Tony rolled his eyes. “Not quite, Wanda. It’s because of what they found in their bloodstream…” He turned to look at Bucky and what would come next dawned on him immediately.

“It’s the serum.” Bruce added, astonished as he was still observing the formula. Silence filled the room as panic shot through Bucky’s body. “What do you mean?” Steve asked sternly, yet confused. Meanwhile his best friend was having a heart attack.

How the hell was it still out there? Unless…

“Hydra.” Bucky whispered and all eyes laid on him. More silence. “…Yes.” Tony added uncomfortably. They didn’t know if it was still a topic too sensitive to discuss with him, but on the other hand he had been the one asking Tony for a change. “They must’ve found a copy after all.” Bruce muttered and used his own hands to zoom in closer on the picture, the hemogram, readjusting his glasses.

“Although… this… isn’t the original. I’ve seen how it alters your cells, Steve and… Bucky. This, this is something else. A mutated version let’s say.” He stammered. Bucky looked at Steve, but neither of them looked anything other than baffled and frankly… scared. “That’s how far S.H.I.E.L.D had gotten already.” Tony confirmed, facing the doctor, then the rest of the group.

“This is big, you guys. We can’t prove it yet, but Hydra had kidnapped and tortured those kids for their fucking experiments, pumped them so full of chemicals and toxins until their bodies just gave up and dumped them onto the side of the road.” He was angry, they all were. Bucky’s chest ached with it, the whirring in his left arm audible as he clenched his fist. “I guess that’s why they’re all dead.” Black Widow said, her brows drawing together as she thought, connecting the dots in her head.

“The serum’s still a field test. Bruce, you said it’s mutated, right?” He just nodded, scratching his chin with his thumb- and forefinger. “Well, maybe they’re trying to enhance it, but haven’t succeeded yet.” “They’re trying to enhance them.” Steve added and Sam hummed in approval. “But… if it’s just a field test, then why don’t they take different people for it?” Wanda chimed in, leaving everyone speechless for a second. “Why do they make and effort and go to all those different countries to assassinate civilians that… have a future? Families? Are known inside their communities?” She shook her head in confusion “It doesn’t make sense.” “No… it doesn’t…” Bruce agreed and began pacing around the table as well, lost in his thoughts. “I guess that’s the task Fury has blessed us with to find out…” Tony sighed and ran a hand through his wild hair.

“They need to have more of a connection than just their death. Something like a mental, philosophical, maybe even historical thing since they’re not related genetically. And, don’t get me wrong, this is the real question here, but Fury has already given me all the data he has on Hydra’s security network and I’ve set Friday on breaking their code to get to their plan as quickly as possible. The last two people I’ve shown you have already turned up dead within the last month and we can’t have Hydra continuing to murder citizens until their serum will eventually work.”

“…What will happen once it works?” Natasha asked and the answer shot out of Bucky quicker than he could even comprehend.

“You don’t want to know.”

.

.

.

Next Chapter 

[purgatoryandme]

Hey its thunderiron anon again and I am just utterly curious....if you were to write about this pairing how would you do it 🤗🤗 (also I'm now crazy about addition of bucky to this ship to after reading that ask and your answer to it)(winteriron and thunderiron are my top otps why didn't I think of 3 of them together b4 this🤔🙄) anyways if you would have a crack at it(Thortony) how will it go.

I’d probably do ThunderIron with a post-Ragnarok Thor and an older more mature Tony having difficulty relating to the people around them and naturally turning to each other for companionship. Both of them have been responsible for the lives and wellbeing of thousands of people, have failed those people, and have struggled to be better as a consequence of that. The struggles of a king aren’t exactly relatable for most folks. Thor’s probably the more trusting of the two of them, so he’d make the approach. All of his gestures would just be these quiet requests for comfort, for acknowledgement, for friendship - like the scene of them meeting again in IM, Thor is a social guy who gets lonely easily. Tony’s ultimately a giver and wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to spoil someone - that’s how Tony practices self-care. Thor wants company and contact so badly.They always find themselves talking at night, drifting through the halls alone and wondering what they could have done better. Tony is usually angry when confronted with his anxieties, but he just can’t snap back at Thor, not when he’s got this whole…gentle giant thing going on. The fact that Thor respects him also makes him reluctant to be rude - respect is in such short supply for Tony these days. So instead he turns to talking in riddles and metaphor. Thor meets him line for line. They begin discussing philosophy when really what they are discussing is both of their struggles. They talk about literature when they are really trying to see if they’re both ok. They poke fun at themselves and their families and their old pains. They drink and watch the stars and murmur about their most epic adventures, trying to pretend it doesn’t make them sad. And then they find that huh, it actually doesn’t make them sad anymore. Because Thor’s old war stories bring a sparkle to Tony’s eyes. Tony’s party day tales make Thor laugh like he used to. They don’t need to be ashamed about the past around each other. And when they are anyway, they’re there for each other to build a better future. At this point, because I love Extremis Tony, I’d probably pull some grand symbolic stunt of Tony repeating his and Thor’s first meeting in the MCU - the suit being charged by Thor attacking him. Tony would be all, “Charge me up, Big Guy.” and it’s dangerous, it’s stupid, but Thor has seen the way the little sparks from his skin just sink right into Tony and make him glow. So he goes for it. And Tony is incandescent - lightning in human form. Without even thinking about it, Thor kisses him and they short out every single circuit in a five mile radius. Basically it’d be an old souls romance with making each other feel young again, but also “damn it all we need to take command of large numbers of people and the responsibility sucks, BUT it also looks REALLY GOOD on you”. Including Bucky would be such a shakeup because Bucky isn’t the leader type. He’s a huge caretaker and I have no idea how he’d handle two sad kings who are also big caretaker types without just up and murdering them. I could see some kind of platonic relationship forming with Thor because honestly idk if Bucky, loyalty incarnate, could handle two romantic relationships AND take care of himself at the same time. So maybe Thor and Tony fall in love, however the pressures of world crisis after world crisis keep them too busy to see each the way they want to and so they both resign themselves to sadness. Bucky’s having a hard time connecting to everyone on the Old Avengers team besides Steve, who has so many people caring for him these days that Bucky doesn’t really know what to do with himself. And one day he comes across the two most elusive Avengers, the two busiest ones who are never around, slow dancing to some classical waltz. Tony’s arms are wrapped around Thor, gently lowering his head into Tony’s neck in a surprisingly protective gesture, and one of Thor’s hands is over Tony’s heart. As Bucky watches, Tony’s heart begins to glow, his skin showering sparks as Tony laughs softly. “I’ll be up all night if you keep that up, Thunder Struck.”Tony says, turning electric blue eyes on Thor’s hand. Said hand drifts up to cup Tony’s jaw, turning it away from Bucky as Thor steals a kiss. “Sleep is just another death, Anthony, and I don’t want tonight to die. I miss you as soon as the sun rises - let me have a little longer.” Thor tells him and oh, oh shit, wow Bucky never realized they were together. He also never realized how beautiful they were together. Or how…lonely. When Tony leaves the next day, Bucky finds himself naturally drifting into Thor’s space and requesting his help with various tasks for the day. Then he finds himself checking that Thor is eating enough. And then he finds himself asking for book recommendations. When Thor leaves, a quizzical sort of smile on his face, Tony comes back and Bucky does the same thing. Tony is tiny and difficult to care for. It makes him feel…more like himself, really. Tony is easy to talk to. He wants to make Tony smile like Thor does.He keeps switching off between the two of them, carrying messages back and forth, and finally starts quietly threatening everyone keeping them as busy as they are. He chases off the other Avengers when they try to infringe on Tony and Thor’s private time. Then, to his utter bewilderment, he’s included in that private time. Then Thor’s hand, his other hand clutched in Tony’s to ground it, presses into Bucky’s. Tony is pressing a kiss to his neck with the slightest hint of teeth, making him shudder, and Thor brushes their entwined hands against Tony’s chest, sparking that beautiful glow Bucky has obsessed over for months. “He wants you, Soldier.”Thor says cheekily, glancing between Bucky and Tony under his thick lashes. Bucky is just…wow…he’s dying a little bit? Because he felt terrible about wanting Tony when he was such good friends with Thor, but Thor was looking very interested in what Tony was doing, and what Tony was doing was sucking a love bite into Bucky’s neck. Bucky squeaks out an, “Oh God yes.”Before finding himself in an incredibly hot threesome. 

[th3magicstore]

Best 30 offline Games For Iphone IN 2020

Most Mobile Games currently require an internet connection while playing and it's really hard to find the best offline games for your device but don't worry because we've got you covered, down our top picks for the top 30 best iOS games that can be played completely offline.

Out there

This out-there adventure will let you discover the feeling of being truly lost. In Out There, you take on the role of a lone soldier who wakes up from hibernation to find himself lost inside the vastness of the cosmos. Go n the melancholy journey around the void, and prepare for risks of space travel, rendered in artistic comic book style. It has a PlayScore of 8.57.

Valiant Hearts: The Great War

You might want to prepare some tissues for this one. Inspired by letters from the first World War, this Ubisoft production gives us another side of the battlefield with a tale of survival and friendship. See the war through the eyes of four unique characters as they head to battle and solve puzzles to help a soldier find love. Dark, yet heartwarming. It has a PlayScore of 8.58.

Junk Jack X

Step into the shoes of Junk Jack and enter his pixel planet that's ripe for exploration. One of the iOS' original gems, this sandbox game gives you free rein over a rich, randomly generated world. And, it's only gotten bigger ith updates that add an array of new features. Put your creative caps on, and dive into the vast planets along with your friends. It has a PlayScore of 8.58.

Year Walk

Simogo's 2013 adventure game takes us on a haunting tour of Swedish mythology. It's deeply rooted in the Year Walk tradition that lets successful practicers see what the future has in store. Make your attempt together with Daniel and his lover, and bear witness to the game's many mythical surprises. A memorable and well-crafted adventure, it has a PlayScore of 8.59.

This War of Mine

From 11bit Studios comes another tragic adventure set amidst the height of the war. A survival game at its heart, take control of 4 refugees as they guard, scavenge, and kill for their own continued existence. Manage the scarce resources to satisfy each of their needs, and test your moral fibers in the fight for survival. It's an eye-opening venture and it receives a PlayScore of 8.59.

80 Days

Journey around the world once more in this modern retelling of the classic globetrotter. Step into the wandering boots of Phileas Fogg as he prepares and struggles through his fourscore adventure around the steampunk world. Plan out the most effective routes, and weave through their rich, and interactive narrative. Meet the Good icons of alternate history, and share the experience with the world. It has a PlayScore of 8.63.

Botanicula

From Macro to micro, join Amanita Design's quirky characters and discover the beauty of their microscopic world. With their home tree under attack by parasites, guide Misters Lantern, Mushroom, Poppyhead, and more, through the world's various puzzles Journey through its breathtaking plant life, and save the tree from the coming rot. It has a PlayScore of 8.63.

Gemini Rue

Invite yourself into the harrowing world of crime in this interactive graphic adventure Wadjet Eye Games. It comes complete with the film noir atmosphere, immersing you in the dark world of intrigue, mystery, and science fiction. A tale of two characters in one, find out how their stories intertwine into a quest for galactic redemption. It has a PlayScore of 8.64.

Invisible Inc.

Coming from their Don't Starve success, Klei Entertainment set out to create something completely different. This time, it's turn-based stealth game set in the year 2074. Pick from a team of 10 unlockable agents, and use their abilities to mount a counter-attack against an evil corporation. Maneuver through randomly generated levels, and make it out alive. It has a PlayScore of 8.64.

Sorcery! 3

Your favorite choose your own adventure game becomes more interactive than ever before. A fitting adaptation of Steve Jackson's interactive gamebook, watch his world come alive with lovingly crafted maps and scenarios. While the game isn't fully animated, its choice of bookish art style definitely adds to the immersion. A fantasy game that's faithful to its literary roots. It has a PlayScore of 8.65.

Day of the Tentacle Remastered

When they weren't out creating the next Star Wars videogame, the folks at LucasArts were creating cartoon puzzle adventures. Day of the Tentacle is an outrageously funny point-and-click videogame, created in the style of the groundbreaking Maniac Mansion. Follow their oddball characters as they defy the laws of time and space with their faulty time machine. It has a PlayScore of 8.67.

Choice of the Pirate

A tribute to the purest form of adventure, return to the world of words in this text-based interactive fiction. Without any graphics and sound effects, you're tasked with steering the narrative ship with your own imagination. Dive into a bout of nautical nonsense as an up-and-coming pirate, and choose your fate with over 165,000 words of content. It has a PlayScore of 8.67.

SteamWorld Heist

They might look like a pile of rust-buckets, but they're still the best pirates in the galaxy. Join them as they hijack randomly generated ships, and fight against monarchs and pirates in intense, tactical battles. Experiment with turn-based battles and real-time bullet trajectories, and partake in an exciting round of space billiards. It has a PlayScore of 8.71.

The House of da Vinci

Blue Brain Game's 3D puzzle adventure will unlock the power of your mind. Find out the reason for the Renaissance Man's disappearance as you step inside the labyrinth walls of his manor. Use your wits to solve the puzzles hidden in every corner, and let the clues guide you to enlightenment. A stunning, atmospheric adventure, It has a PlayScore of 8.77.

Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas

If anyone's looking for a worthy Zelda equivalent on the mobile, then there's no better choice than this Oceanhorn title. It captures the Nintendo spirit in every way. With a score crafted by the industry's best composers, the vibrant 3D world is made even better. Defeat the ferocious Oceanhorn, and become the legend of Arcadia. It has a PlayScore of 8.79.

Traps n' Gemstones

We can't all be as cool as Indy. But, Donut Game's ode to classic Metroidvania lets you settle for the next best thing. Don the trademark hat and whip, and run through craggy of halls of Egyptian ruins. Use your explorer skills to navigate the ancient structures and retrieve the mysterious lost relics. Praised for its visuals and gameplay, it's a platformer you shouldn't miss. It has a PlayScore of 8.8.

Stranger Things: The Game

Released as tie-in to the Netflix show's second season, Stranger Things embraces the 80s with this pixel-perfect adventure. Looking straight out of a SNES, visit the quaint town of Hawkins and go on a curiosity voyage along with the show's ragtag main characters. Despite its free-to-play nature, Stranger Things the game is deep, polished, and thoroughly enjoyable. It has a PlayScore of 8.81.

Nightmares from the Deep™: The Siren’s Call (Full)

The sea is one fickle maiden. A follow-up to Artifex Mundi's hidden object mystery, this sequel takes you into the deep secrets of the abyss. Find over 400 different objects in 48 locations, and plunge into a chilling storyline that pits against Davy Jones himself. It's a remarkably executed adventure that sharpens the mind and engages the senses. It has a PlayScore of 8.81.

The Journey Down: Chapter Two

The second chapter to the twisted Afro Caribbean point-and-click, Skygoblin brings you to the underbelly of St. Armando. Join protagonist Bwana as he retraces his father's footsteps and unwittingly discovers a dark conspiracy. An award-winning title, it's renowned for its unique art style, intriguing narrative, and cool, jazzy soundtrack. It has a PlayScore 8.9.

DEVICE 6

While its status game has come into question, this Simogo title is still quite an adventure. Venturing into words in the same vein as Choice of the Pirate, Device 6's paragraphs is rife with interactive puzzles that draw you deeper into its surreal tale. It might not have realistic graphics, but it does underscore the immersive powers of the written word. It has a PlayScore of 8.9.

Jurassic GO - Dinosaur Snap Adventures

Who needs Jurassic Park, when you can have all the dinosaurs you want in a pocket-sized diversion. Turned into their friendly, cartoon versions, BebopBee's title is essentially a tribute to their greatness. Snap the best pictures of the not-so towering lizards, and unlock legendary prizes. It's game you can recommend to Dinosaur fans of all ages, and it receives a PlayScore of 8.93.

Love You To Bits

Get your heart stolen by this charming point-and-click game that spans the whole universe. Play as the cosmic wanderer, Kosmo, as he travels from planet to planet to retrieve the lost parts of his beloved robot girlfriend. Get your bolts running with their mind-boggling puzzles, and finally reunite the two star-crossed lovers. It has a PlayScore of 8.94.

King Cashing 2

Waking up from his long slumber, the King Cashing makes his return to the money-crazy world. Resume his greed-fueled rampage, and aid him in his battle against businessmen and cartel overlords. Use the game's innovative slots-based combat, and watch it unfold in standard comic-book fashion. Time to reclaim the golden throne. It has a PlayScore of 9.06.

OXENFREE

Taking the best parts of a 1980’s supernatural thriller, Night School Studio takes you into a hair-raising adventure of teenagers trapped in an abandoned island after opening a mysterious rift. Unlock the riddles of the strange land by using his radio to pick up specific frequencies, and picking locks to open doors into its troubled past. It is a surreal game with a deep and layered narrative, and it has a PlayScore of 9.06.

The Room Three

The Room Three A name that's been equated to mobile greatness. Just like the previous games, it's a masterclass in puzzle design, atmosphere, and visuals. Culminating the strengths of the series into this third installment, it's by far their most elaborate title yet. Investigate every nook and cranny of an eerie train ride, and get a one-way ticket to mind-bending, spine chilling entertainment. It has a PlayScore of 9.32.

Real Car Parking 2

We have a real car parking 3d now this is a driving game where it doesn't matter how fast you drive there are various game modes, but in all of them you'll need to park your car without running into anything, now as you park your car you'll have to avoid hitting three or more obstacles in order to advance there are three ways to park parallel perpendicular or in double line gameplay in a real car parking 3d adapts to your needs letting you choose from various game modes it also includes different cameras making the experience of parking your car as realistic as possible now It has a PlayScore of 4.7

Master thief

Master thief is a casual game where you play as a thief who wants to rob a museum full of well-known works of art, but this gallery has plenty of security so you're gonna have to dodge guards to escape from the building without getting caught now the fun of this game is that you can steal tons of famous pieces like the Mona Lisa or Scream by Edvard Munch and at the end of each level you'll see a screen with all the art you've stolen so far and mastered if you can have fun while stealing tons of famous art from this museum and as you advance security, will get tighter and harder filling.It has a PlayScore of 4.6

Eternal soldier

this is a first-person shooter in which you're gonna play the role of a veteran of numerous military operations but they died in battle and they end up in purgatory, so around your soldier there's a lot of pleasant scenery and the same legions of vile creatures that profit from his destruction but they could not assume that he brought with him an arsenal of weapons and is ready to fight to the last cartridge so they're waiting for the lead of a professional soldier and carcasses of demons store gold and other valuables that are very useful for obtaining new types of trunks as well as pumping skills breaking into. Top 10 Mobile Games With High Graphics

Lili

Lili is a fascinating arcade game in which you dive into this stunning world, the game has amazing 3d graphics and according to the developer it's one of the best on the mobile platform, also this game has an excellent story which has already been recognized by many gaming publications the voice of the game was produced by professional actors, like me now the game controls are surprisingly excellent now I haven't played a lot of time playing this game but there are clunky controls and that's why because I've spent a few hours exploring the island of Geo's hunting down its spirits and collecting each and every one of its secrets. TOP 5 BEST Free Video Editing Apps for iPhone 2020

Steel and flesh 2

In this game, you're gonna be transported to the Middle Ages where you'll carry out numerous missions and tasks to capture and conquer new lands take control of a small Kingdom and do everything you can to expand and expand it to lands develop your game strategy and do not let the enemies defeat you manage a small army conduct diplomatic relations with other states and replenish your Treasury do your best to improve your kingdom and bring it to prosperity, the sequel has acquired better graphics new features even greater scale and much more that's gonna please you if you like games like mountain blade. Best Apps for Students IN IPhone Read the full article

[transcriptroopers]

I live in a country where guns have to be licensed and therefore I cannot get hold of one to experience this myself, but how does it feel to hold in your hand/s? What is it made of? Does it get warm under your touch or does it remain chill? How does it feel to know that you have a machine of death in your hands, or do you get so used to it you do not think about it? I'm not really sure about what type of guns I'm using in my story so any information you can give me is so, so helpful!!!

Just so you understand the sort of mentality you’re dealing with, hubby and I found your description highly amusing at first, and at first I treated it like a joke, and I realized after the fact how tasteless that response is. We’re jaded to the seriousness of guns; that’s the attitude you’re looking to replicate.We make a habit of calling them “weapons,” not “guns.” We’ll usually get chewed out if we just call them guns, though if we use the proper term for the weapon (rifle, pistol, etc) that’s usually acceptable.

As far as technical info goes, here’s an excerpt from the Wiki page on M16s:The M16 is a lightweight, 5.56 mm, air-cooled, gas-operated, magazine-fed assault rifle, with a rotating bolt. The M16’s receivers are made of 7075 aluminum alloy, its barrel, bolt, and bolt carrier of steel, and its handguards, pistol grip, and buttstock of plastics.

5.56 is the standard round (and we call them rounds, not bullets; the bullet is the tip of the round and the casing/shell is the rest of it) for M16, M4, and M249, the weapons most commonly assigned to enlisted. We have to walk around and pick up the shells if we’re firing our weapons at a range. 

Me and hubby agree that holding a weapon for the first time is surprisingly uneventful. It feels the same as if someone had put a hammer or a crowbar in your hand for the first time. Guns in American culture are so prevalent that when you’re younger they seem benign and of no great consequence. This is with me coming from a gunless background and hubby having some experience with weapons prior to joining. After a while it does completely stop dawning on you that the contraption you’re holding is a deadly weapon and most people would be unnerved to see them. We mostly only have weapons on us during basic training, during a field exercise, and during deployment, and during deployment your weapon might very well be locked up for a part of it if you aren’t deployed to a combat zone. There’s no real reason to just lug around a rifle around during a normal work day. So in actuality, I probably spent less than 25% of my time in the army with an actual weapon. 

Our weapons are made with metals (and some parts plastic) and due to Science metal does tend to get warm when held, yes. They can of course be hot or cold given the environment. It’s dreadfully unpleasant to hold them without gloves in the snow, especially when your fingers start going numb and you’re not 100% sure you’ve got an adequate grip on it. They reek of CLP and metal and they leave a lasting smell on your hands, more so if you’ve been firing.CLP of course being Cleaner, Lubricant, and Protectant, basically just a lubricating oil we use on our weapons to ensure all the parts are moving smoothly so it hopefully doesn’t jam. A lot of people will literally pour CLP on their weapons and they just drench the poor thing and you don’t need that, folks. Just a few drops will usually do as long as you’re maintaining it regularly.I preferred pistols over rifles. I enjoyed taking them apart more and shooting with them, but I only ever got to do that once or twice as a for-fun thing because only our officers used the M9. 

Lucky for me I was assigned an M249 during three of my four years. Typically only one person per squad has a 249, so there’s only ever maybe four or five people per platoon with one, maybe 15-20 per company.

It’s classified as a “light machine gun,” but it’s still over twice as heavy as the M16 and required belts of ammo that were a pain to carry around. While everyone else could just prop up their weapon where convenient, the 249 needs to be set up with its stupid little tripod and then sit on the ground and be a tripping hazard until you pick it up again. It fires at a much higher rate than the m16, (I mean, it’s a machine gun) so for a fellow who depends on prescription eyeglasses (such as myself) it can become impossible to shoot because the damn thing sends up so much smoke and fog that it renders lenses useless. I also remember one time we were instructed to sling while marching and I fucked up and loosened up my sling on accident and I couldn’t stop and fix it or unsling it because slinged weapons was the directive and we were on uneven terrain and I wound up walking with that bastard for two miles with it bouncing against me every now and then. I had bruises all up and down my front. I hated that thing; it was an inconvenience and an annoyance. Could not have been happier when I finally got an M16. 

Speaking of slinging the weapon, we generally don’t sling it to our backs unless we’re carrying something or doing some other task that requires full use of our arms. Otherwise we hold it in the “low ready,” with the weapon pointing toward the ground and away from people. Having our weapon around is pretty much second nature. Maintaining our arms is of utmost importance, some would say over maintaining ourselves. Some will choose to clean their weapon over cleaning themselves. We memorize the serial numbers and carry them with us everywhere unless we can physically lock them up. Leaving an unattended weapon is a serious issue. We also clean them regularly, sometimes multiple times a day if the weapons have been in a compromising environment i.e. we’ve been crawling through sand or something. Dropping your weapon is pretty much blasphemous and will reward you with several push ups if anyone sees. Some people were just Extra and if they dropped their weapon and there was no one around to punish them, they’d punish themselves because they disrespected their weapon ors.

Flagging is usually taken very seriously, although there have been occasions where I’ve seen someone get more chewed out for dropping the weapon than for flagging someone, which I think is steaming bull shit tbqh. We’re taught to NEVER, EVER point a weapon at someone, even in jest, so of course it never happens, ever, because we totally follow instructions at all times, completely and unsarcastically. I can say that having left the army, hubby is still a fan of guns and he and his best friend go to the shooting range occasionally, but I am rather firmly pro gun control so I never really see/use them anymore. So all sorts can go in and come out of the army and how each person feels about weapons will be unique, but generally while we’re in, they’re an extension of ourselves and a soldier’s most important asset. And to sum up, there’s usually three types of gun people in the army:1) I have a gun. Cool I guess. (most common imo)2) I have a 5.56 mm, air-cooled, gas-operated, magazine-fed assault rifle, with a rotating bolt which was implemented into service in 1964 to replace the Garand, Carbine, and Browning with a maximum firing range of 3,600 meters and an effective firing range of 550 meters. 3) I don’t actually know shit about guns but I really want to be macho and impress people so I pretend to be knowledgeable and make a fool out of myself while annoying everyone around me.

-Kingsley

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[mustinvestigate]

stream of consciousness headcanon…ish…thing…

...which owes entire countries’ national debts to @niceteeth-nastysmile‘s health & food canon post and @adistraughtthought‘s on MacCready’s teeth and why Lucy was just beyond brilliant.

And this is all fic-related ponderings of general standards of personal upkeep in post-apocalyptia and their divergence from vault or pre-war sensibilities and how exactly romance could surmount this, which doesn’t really earn “above the fold” status, so…

So it’s generally held in fandom lore that folk are too busy surviving to truck much with hygiene, a thought which derails the sexiness of many T+ fics before they start. Like, “We’ve been trekking across the desert nurturing a deadly two-person epidemic of UST and, oops, convenient cave-in, we’re trapped together…carrying several days’ worth of sweat and battle muck in non-breathable armor we seemingly never change, without water to drink or freshen up with, and, y’know, let’s just sit in opposite cave chambers and breathe through our mouths until rescue comes, ok?”

And a vault dweller or pre-war person would live in suspended state of horror at the miasma of human funk and yellowed snaggleteeth when they have any at all, unable to hold a civil conversation no matter how high their charisma stat. As for romancing, well…nope. Nope nope nope.

Except, in settlements at least, with more pooled resources and storage space and security to allow people to spend time on less essential tasks like making tallow soap and extra under-clothing to change regularly and water to wash clothing and bodies, they’d totally raise standards to at least those of a modern week-long camping trip, right? Being clean and in fresh clothing is one of those small achievable luxuries, on the level of toys and games or cards for communal entertainment, that makes a huuuuge difference in feeling like you’re living, not just surviving. And with teeth, well, humans have been cleaning their teeth (albeit sometimes in ways that could not have been kind to gums or enamel) since we’ve been human. Morning breath and stuck-in food bits have apparently always been pretty high on the short list of activities worth spending limited energy on fixing.

Also often found in human settlements? Doctors, or at least some form of medical-type professionals to push for improved sanitation and enough cleanliness to minimise the spread of disease, not to mention heal injuries or perform simple dentistry or help prevent/treat substance abuse and all sorts of other ailments that lead to one being unable to maintain a comfortable-ish body.

(Aside for ghouls: although they’re described in-game as smelling like rotting flesh, I call bullshit. The smell of rot comes from decay, and by definition, things which are decaying are in the process of existing increasingly…uh…less so. [I don’t know, I can’t word good today, ok? Ahem.] And since ghouls are canonically unplagued by senescence [see? Fancy words!], there’s no decay beyond a certain level of damage that would produce that particular offensive smell. And further still since the skin damage would probably render most of their sweat glands gone or non-functional anyway, they’d possibly even lack the traditional human eau du ew at the end of a hard day’s farming. Y’all just decided they smell bad because you don’t like how they look – real nice, post-apocalyptic humans. Real. Nice.)

People living outside of settlements, though…they might be a different story. Like, raiders? Forget it. You’d smell ‘em coming a mile away, where they may be gasping their last due to catastrophic bacterial infection from what started as a wee molar cavity. They’re not expending energy on small personal-upkeep luxuries, or value stealing them from those who do.

Non-sociopathic nomadic types, like traders or mercenaries or people who don’t have useful skills or can’t afford to buy into a settlement (however it works when there’s no pre-war savior throwing away land for free), where carrying space is very limited and they likely don’t have much time or energy for non-essential luxuries…yeah, they might be closer to what we picture as a standard post-apocalyptic citizen. Like…in today’s terms…your stereotypical European gap-year backpacker. You’d certainly bathe and wash clothes when the opportunity and supplies came to hand, but wouldn’t go out of your way unless your red and orange Maslows were all in the black, and if your yellow, green, and blue were already in the pink, why bother?

(Is that a coherent joke? Probably not. Requires googling. But we strike on!)

Hence, in a slightly roundabout way, we come to MacCready’s teeth, and, further, the impact therein on writing a romance with a pre-war character. Or, really, any of the romanceable companion options, but fanon, and Bethesda going out of their way to make him the only one with bad teeth, seem to hold that MacCready’s a special case. He grew up LARPing Lord of The Flies, defiantly proud that there were no adults to make them clean anything they didn’t want to, and he married a girl (brilliant doctor or not) who was part of the same culture and tolerant of near-toxic personal hygiene or at the very least, since they seemed to be on the road when she tragically died, was biding her time until they settled down to enforce better standards.

(And, seriously, Bethesda, just admit it’s the same character as the Lucy he was best buddies with instead of someone who just happened to have the same name…except that does mean that sweet girl died terribly…and now I no longer know what I want to believe. Huh.)

And a pre-war professional lady, one who’d’ve had to maintain a polished image as a non-negotiable element of her career, she’d get past this…how?

Actually…even writing this out, it still doesn’t seem insurmountable. For years, I shared a very small office with a large, manly fellow who didn’t wear deodorant, worked out before work, and ate a lot of fish-heavy lunches. It’s amazing how quickly the human nose shrugs and moves the goal-posts, particularly for lovely people you get on with, or when everyone around you’s more or less at the same level of smell, or when you’re also working out and coming in kinda sweaty and, you know, we’re all human here, right, why are we so dang picky?

And my version of Nora, for all she prefers pretty dresses and parties, isn’t averse to dirty fingernails. She was in the military, had all her hair shaved off and slogged through muddy obstacle courses and dug latrines and everything; she went hunting with her father and helped out in his plumbing shop, getting elbow-deep in animal viscera and worse. A filthy soldier-type would definitely be on her experience spectrum with probably no more judgement than welp, try to stay upwind when possible, even that forgotten after she’s been in the same outfit herself for a couple of weeks.

But the teeth, man, there’s something moreish about bad teeth, right? There’s not just the aesthetics of non-white, non-straight teeth (trust me…having moved to a country [unfairly] famous for poor-quality dentistry, I can report that uniformly white, straight chompers quickly become the weird-looking alternative) but the visceral reaction to class comma lack of, to an indicator not just of “poor” but “poor and not trying to do better.”

Like, I grew up what’s politely called white working class (in a family that mostly passes leisure time with drinking, Fox News, and stockpiling weapons of dubious origins, so, y’know, shruggy-emoticon), and you bet all of us cousins had braces. We were going to get good grades and have office jobs. Our parents were real touchy about terms like “redneck” or “okie” and wouldn’t admit to liking country music. There was something different about the kids who lived in the same area but didn’t get braces. We weren’t encouraged to make friends of them, and as for dating…well…the bad teeth on a significant other brought home would carefully, one could say pointedly, not be mentioned, but every other possible flaw would be.

In college, I dated a mysterious guy I met on Match.com, who wasn’t white and who had the worst teeth I’d ever seen in real life. They were somewhere between ferengi and pirate and I’m sad to say they were the first thing anyone would notice about him. We ended up dating for two bloody years, even talked about marriage, and the funny thing? I never found out what the deal was with those awful, awful teeth.

At first, I didn’t bring it up because, well…how bad did his childhood have to be, that no one made him brush, no one took out a loan to get him in braces? Like, bad teeth were so intrinsically linked with lower-class deprivation in my mind that I just could not even broach the topic with someone of a different ethnic background. And, anyway, he turned out to be solidly middle-class from birth, held two degrees and a software engineering cubicle job that required a tie, even on Fridays. And by that point, well…if the teeth were the first thing you noticed, the second was that he was bubbly and goofy and sweet, and when months later someone looked at a photo of us and asked, “Oh dear, what happened to that poor boy’s teeth?”, it genuinely took me a minute to figure out what she was talking about.

So, my conclusion: even when one’s brought up to see poor hygiene and bad teeth as viscerally, mockably horrifying…as romantic obstacles, they’re quite surmountable. Like, there’d be some half-hearted stocking up of new brushes and mouthwash, nagging to go see the dentist no I don’t care that your childhood dentist looked like Ted Bundy, and probably a collateral raising of their bathing frequency through shared living routines, and it’d be fine, you guys. Totally fine.

Anyway.

This is what happens after a few months without drinking, y’all. These are the brain cells that’d usually get culled off by the friendly gin hammer.