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rallis-fatalis · 2 years ago

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Remnants of the Ancients

In need of a break, Rallis heads to Fossil Island to soak up the rays and hang with her wyvernic friends. But when one interesting archaeological find spurs Rallis to learn more about her scaly friends, she finds their history may be more complicated that it seemed... and it felt like she would soon play an important part in it.

Rallis sighed happily as she stared at the sky before her. The sun was shining, not a single cloud to obscure its warm beauty, and tropical birds cawed and twirled in elaborate dances of grace. The dragon floated along on the gentle waves of the ocean with a drink in hand, truly the ideal picture of relaxed.

After the last rough going of adventures, the dragon decided perhaps a few days to relax at one of her favorite places, Fossil Island, would be a well-deserved treat. She visited with the merfolk and enjoyed a meal of fresh fish and seaweed salad, trotted through the mushroom forest with her hoop snake and herbiboar friends, and had the closest thing to a party with the wyverns late one night. And now to top off her three day vacation, she lounged atop the gentle waters of the base camp cove with fresh fruit juice squeezed from some of the safe to eat local plants.

Soon, Rallis’ glass was empty. That wouldn’t do! She gently held the glass in her jaws and swam to shore for another round. Back at base camp, groups of archaeologists were carefully packaging the latest fossil finds for the museum, delicately chipping away thousands of years of grime from other finds, or otherwise doing whatever duty that needed doing. John, an elderly archaeologist from the initial journey to the island, was directing some of the newer students allowed on the island, showing them how best to clean their finds and the like. Rallis grabbed a second drink from a pitcher in the food tent and strolled over to see what the group was up to.

“Now see here. You can tell this is a delicate part of the skeleton by the initial thickness of the bone,” John informed the students. “It is likely hollow as well, meaning one wrong move can lead to disaster. In this case, you would only want to use the brush. It will take a while, but it’s better to be safe than sorry!”

“Whatchu find this time?” Rallis asked with a sip of her drink.

“Rallis!” John smiled. “We aren’t sure yet, but it looks to be of avian descent. Would you like to help?”

“Not this time. I’m just here to soak up the sun.”

The archaeologist laughed. “Only you would find this island to be a beach resort. Though, if you do find the hankering for some ancient history, we could always use some help translating those books from the hill house.”

“Hmm… Maybe,” Rallis thought. “After one more nap. Are they up in the house or at camp?”

“Still in the old hill house, alongside writing supplies. We didn’t want to move them out just yet, in case they unearthed some hidden secrets or what have you.”

That was true; they could lead to some interesting educational treasures. The house on the hill, supposedly an ancient home to a genius dragon, was something not well explored or documented yet as the human researchers really couldn’t do anything there. Only Rallis could read the mountain of texts and navigate the plethora of magical machinery found there, fellow dragon that she was. And unearthing ancient secrets was always fun… Well, when they didn’t lead to packs of violent treasure hunters trying to kill you or the grudge of a dead hydra god manifested. She supposed she would be willing to see where history took her today.

___________________________________________________________________________

Quite a sizable stack of old books sat atop one of the desks in the house on the hill. The archaeologists seemed to have been rather fortunate in their search. Rallis opened the first book, pages yellow-brown and torn with age, and started to decipher the ancient runes.

Many pages spoke about the island’s myriad of flora and detailed experiments done with them, hoping to bind the spores of certain mushrooms with living creatures (an idea that made Rallis shudder). One section even detailed a semi-success; a breed of giant lobster fused with one of the mushrooms, though the journal did not know whether or not to list the fusion as a success. The writer could not determine if the two species became symbiotic or the mushroom parasitic and took over the lobster’s brain. Rallis immediately shut the book, feeling queasy. That was enough creepy science translation for one day!

Curious to see if there were any other secrets to uncover, Rallis hopped down the stairs that lead to the basement. Most of the locked chests seemed to have remained untouched, but a few had been newly opened. The locks were far more complicated than anything a human could ever make; Rallis was surprised the researchers had managed to open any at all.

The chests had been emptied, likely documented and preserved by the research team. If Rallis wanted to find a secret, she would have to pry the locks open on the other chests herself. She took a look at one of the locks. The keyhole didn’t look like they would take anything shaped like a normal key; the hole was small and round with odd grooves on its surface, like a textured disc would be what unlocked it. Rallis definitely hadn’t found anything like that around the house so brute force would have to be the way to go.

She slipped a claw tip into the hole and fiddled around for a bit, but nothing happened. Usually that was enough to pick open a simple human lock. If the chests themselves didn’t matter anymore, only their contents, the dragon supposed so could just break the lock off. She latched a fang into the lock hole and bit down with all her might. Rallis was surprised the chest could actually take her bite force, taking a lot more chewing than normal. With a snap, the lock fell away. She licked her gums with a small whimper; that tough little bugger hurt!

Rallis opened the chest to find a small round fossil, clean but different. A white powdery residue dusted its surface. Rallis gave it a small sniff and sneezed. Whatever it was smelled like some kind of natural mineral. There were a few other white dusty fossils, alongside a few loose papers. The pages had water stains, text mostly destroyed, and crunched as she removed them from the chest. White flakes of powder fell away as Rallis carefully flipped through them. From what little she could gather, these sheets detailed a way to recalcify fossils. That would definitely be something the archaeologists found interest in. She delicately set the chest contents aside and cracked open another lock.

This chest was one of the larger ones in the room, and they were already rather sizable. Rallis threw the lid open and chirped in confusion at its contents. It was a pile of bones, all very well preserved. They were draconic in nature, that much she could tell immediately. Rallis pulled out the bones piece by piece and laid them out in an attempt to reassemble the skeleton. The bones formed to make something that looked almost like the wyverns in the caves on the eastern end of Fossil Island, but something was off. They were much smaller and had a more upright spine. Its legs also bent the opposite way, like a creature meant to walk and run more than fly and hop around like a bird. Perhaps this creature was a predecessor in wyvernic evolution? Whatever the case, looking at the bones made Rallis feel a wave of emotions she had never felt before, like hope, anxiety, love, and fear all mixed into one huge melting pot. She packed the bones away back into their chest and left the house, a chill creeping up her spine. She had had enough exploration for one day.

Rallis spent a few hours with the wyverns of the island before readying to head back to the mainland. A new clutch of little ones still learning to fly scrambled up to her, chirping like some kind of otherworldly bird, and playfully nipped at and attacked Rallis. The dragon laughed and played along, rolling along the ground with them and play wrestling. But soon it was time to go, the last ship to the mainland for the day leaving soon. The giant elder wyvern dipped his head to wish her goodbye, but before the dragon left, she stopped to speak with him.

“Elder, how old are you?” she asked the great wyvern.

The beast thought for a moment. He could not remember, but he did know his age had to be greater than 400, for that was how long their current cavernous home had existed.

“The wyverns that were your elders when you were young, did they look like you? Like the wyverns here now?”

The wyvern nodded. Of course they did. What an odd question.

“Huh. Weird. I found a wyvern skeleton that doesn’t look like you all today and I’m trying to figure out why.”

The elder grumbled in thought. There was always a chance the skeleton simply belonged to a defective youngling that had perished. But then he remembered an old story, passed down by the elders throughout the generations. So long ago, from a time no one could remember anymore, many of the wyverns of the island fled. Why and to where, the elder did not know; that part of the story was lost. But he offered a guess the bones could possibly belong to the ancient wyvern breed that fled countless years ago.

“Oh, I know where they are!” Rallis exclaimed. “I’ve never actually paid them a visit, but I have seen a display about them. Honestly, they look pretty similar to you all, but a visit is worth a shot. Thank you, friend.”

She bid them goodbye and made her way to the ship just shy of it setting sail. Night was falling already and the trip back to the Varrock dig site was a long one. Rallis curled up on a cot for the night and was sound asleep in minutes.

___________________________________________________________________________

The mainland wyverns holed up in the kingdom of Asgarnia, near the end of a short fat peninsula few ventured to. All it was home to were sea monsters and one very large retired dwarf. Rallis had never ventured south of Port Sarim and was surprised to find a huge prison and nearly abandoned chapel. Near land’s end was a giant hole in the ground, similar to the rocky maw that led to Taverley Dungeon. A sharp chill swept past the dragon as she set foot inside, a stark contrast to the muggy warm air of the peninsula. She gave a great shudder and walked inside.

The caverns were mostly empty and much smaller than the ones back home. The occasional hobgoblin scurried by, watching Rallis from the shadows, but were smart enough to not engage. Deeper into the tunnels were waterlogged crates and torn clothes and sails. Perhaps pirates once claimed this as their outpost, but by the state of the supplies they left behind, they were long gone.

A teeth-rattling gust swished by Rallis, making the dragon shudder. The farther into the caverns she walked, the colder they grew. Ice clung to the rocks until full sheets of ice and snow slicked the floor and walls. Stalagmites and stalactites turned to icicles. Empty ore veins became shimmering streaks of starlight and sapphire. The seaside cavern had turned into a winter wonderland.

Rallis quietly gasped in awe at the scene. Sure she was absolutely freezing, but the sight was beautiful nonetheless. In the back of her mind she took note that she really had to get a cape or something to keep her warm some time.

On the far end of the ice-slicked room was the entrance to a cave. Sharp slick sounds echoed from it, like smooth hard things rubbing against themselves. The dragon carefully made her way inside.

The internals of the cave were the coldest yet, so much so the dragon felt her joints locking up and her eyes begin to droop. She wouldn’t be able to stay here long like this.

The cave opened into a massive system of wide-open caverns, like the hunting grounds the blue dragons back home used. Ice spiraled into great platforms like nests, a perfect place for wyverns to live.

“Hello?” Rallis called in Wyvernic. “I’m looking for the wyverns that call this home.”

That sound of smooth hard rubbing echoed louder throughout the caverns, followed by a breathy wispy sound. From atop a platform, a wyvern emerged, only this one was far different from the ones on Fossil Island. It had not a strip of flesh upon its body; the beast was a glowing walking skeleton. Rallis sucked in a breath. The thing was rather upsetting to witness.

The wyvern hopped down and flared its membraneless wings at the dragon and roared. It was an eerie ghostly sound, like an otherworldly wail that sent a chill up her spine. As it walked closer, Rallis could feel the incredible amount of magic pouring off the beast, like an aura of life frozen in chilling eternity. She backed up a few steps and tried to speak with the creature.

“Hello. I do not mean to cause you alarm, and I did not come here to harm you. My name is Rallis. I’m a blue dragon from a different den. Do you have a name?”

The skeletal wyvern hissed and did not respond. It took a step closer. Rallis could see a faint blue glow in its eye sockets, flickering with questioning sentience as it observed its visitor.

“I see you are a wyvern,” Rallis tried. “I was hoping to talk to a wyvern today. Can you tell me how you got here? I’ve heard you used to live on an island far from here.”

The wyvern cocked its head at her but did not reply. Its hissing grew louder, and in its chest cavity, Rallis could see the blue glow that emanated around its body coalescing into something greater.

“Please, I’m not here to hurt you. I just want some answers. Won’t you talk to me?”

Evidently not, as the glowing in the wyverns chest sparked into an icy flame. The creature shrieked and spat the spell at Rallis. She held up an arm and the dragonfire bounced off her enchanted dragonhide into harmless embers, or perhaps dragon’fire’ and ‘embers’ weren’t the correct words; the attack was bone-chillingly freezing!

The wyvern howled in confusion and blasted Rallis again. Something compelled the dragon to hold a hand out to the attack, some instinct so deeply buried she had never known it before. The blast did not harm her, nor did it bounce away ineffectually, but rather it gathered in her outstretched palm. The wyvern stepped back in shock. Even Rallis was surprised at what just happened; she lowered her hand and observed the spell between her fingers. It felt like fire magic cast from a rune, but also like holding a dragon’s flame, yet it was cold to the touch. She bounced the spell around between her hands for a moment, some small voice in the back of her mind telling her that this was a magic she was capable of too.

She tossed the magic into the air and it exploded into a gentle icy poof, raining down a light mist of snow. The wyvern did not attack again. Instead it bowed its head in submission and dared not look back at Rallis. The dragon walked closer to the skeleton and went to a knee.

“All done attacking now?” she asked gently. The wyvern stayed perfectly still. “Can you answer my questions now?” Again, no movement or response.

“Let’s try this again then. Did you come from an island far away from here?”

The wyvern grunted, as if trying to answer, but it said nothing of sense. The creature seemed to have trouble speaking.

“How did you come here?” Rallis tried. “I’m pretty sure your kind didn’t start here.”

The wyvern grumbled again, its bones rattling and scraping against themselves as it forced itself to answer.

“F-Fly…” it finally struggled out, as if Wyvernic was foreign to its ghostly tongue. “Tho… Fia…”

Rallis frowned in thought. Whatever it just said was no language she had ever spoken, yet she understood the meaning. “You escaped and flew south where it was safe. Why was your old home not safe?”

“Drakker… kin… chen…”

The wyvern suddenly screeched horrifically, as if the act of speaking was the most painful thing it had ever done. Rallis leaned back as the wyvern shuddered violently. The aura around its body flickered and pulsed, pouring magic into the air and ground.

‘Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Rallis winced. Something was very wrong with this creature and she could only assume similar results from any others she came across. The living dead always did have their unusual perks. Perhaps learning more about calming the undead would be helpful here.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you,” she said gently. She almost reached out to pet the shuddering skeleton before her but thought against it. “I’m going to leave you alone now. Maybe I can come back some time and make you feel better about answering my questions. You stay safe now, okay?”

Rallis got up, brushed the snow from her leggings, and headed to the cavern entrance. But before she could reach it, the wyvern behind her screeched and threw itself forward. It collapsed in the ice and snow and rattled as it shivered against the ground. Rallis ran over and tried to help the poor thing rise, but its bones felt like they were weighed with lead. It looked the dragon in the eye and whispered in its ghostly disembodied voice.

“Tus… draroakeun… fia… kinthis!”

Suddenly, the blue aura around its body slunk off the wyvern’s bones and sank into Rallis’ hands. It felt like her blood ran cold with shards of ice. The wyvern’s skull landed deadly in her lap, the rest of the skeleton collapsing into pieces before her, whatever animation holding the beast together gone. She could feel whatever aura it had swirling inside herself now; the tips of her claws froze over with unnatural frost and suddenly the cold of the cavern wasn’t as bad. Yet, even despite that, what felt like a dagger of ice lodged itself in her chest, the wyvern’s last words ringing in her head.

“You, elder of dragon’s blood, save us, your kin!”

#oc tag #osrs #runescape #my writes #this is why i love summer vacation #crank out 3 fics in the span of a week

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midnightbrushandquill · 3 years ago

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Linear Alternator: Prologue - Voicemails

Chapter Summary: Five voicemails Elesa receives, and one she doesn't

Tags: non-graphic injury, PLA protagonist is not DPPt protagonist, Gaslighting, its not done on purpose (except maybe volo) but it does happen, Tags to be updated as we go

Summary: When Ingo disappeared, Emmet lost his spark. Elesa was doing her best, but it wasn't enough. Even as close as they were, she wasn't his brother, and Emmet needed his brother. So she was going to get him back, no matter what.

With the rift closed, Rei really thought things were starting to get better. He hadn't seen Ingo for three weeks now, which shouldn't have been abnormal, given the circumstances, but then, normal circumstances didn't include everyone seemingly having forgotten his existence, did they? And if Ingo had never existed in Hisui, then who is the real warden of Sneasler, and how come Rei is the only one who cant remember her?

On AO3

Prologue for a multi-chapter fic I’ve been working on that I’m calling the Volt Switch AU. I’ve got the first proper chapter already done, so it should be up later.

Hi, you’ve reached Elesa! I can’t pick up right now, so leave a message!

*Beep*

Hi bestie! It’s Skyla! I got your text that your flight made it safely! You’re probably still sleeping off the jetlag, but I hope you enjoy your time in Sinnoh! It’s been so long since you took a proper vacation like this. I want you to focus on having fun, so don’t worry too much about calling me lots, but text me! And I want to see tons of pictures when you get back! Ok, bye! Have fun!

I…. really Elesa. You deserve a proper break after everything. Take care of yourself, okay?

⭒─⭑─⭒

Hi, Elesa? This is Roark. The Oreburgh gym leader? Sorry I missed your call earlier, the signal in the Underground isn’t great. ha. I- uh. You said in your message you were interested in the kind of stuff people dig up down there? I have to say, it’s not a conversation I was expecting to have with someone of your reputation, but if you’re able to stop by the gym while you’re in town, I’d be more than happy to have it! Most of my interest lies in the fossils, but, uh, hey, I’ll send you my grandfather’s address in Eterna City. If you really want to dig down on it, he knows anything you could want to know about those tunnels!

Anyways, let me know!

⭒─⭑─⭒

Hello, this is Lenora calling. Apologies if it's late where you are. I got your email about the potential artefacts you found in Sinnoh’s underground? I’ll follow up in writing, but I have particular interest in those plates. Similar artefacts have been found in Kalos and Alola, as well as here, in the Abyssal Ruins. May I forward your pictures to Cynthia? You didn’t include her originally; I know she has been very busy, but we have discussed potential theories on these plates before, as well as their connection in some stories to the Celestica Flutes of the original clans. She will be interested, I think, in this discovery. She is a leading expert in the history of Sinnoh after all. I hope your trip has been wonderful so far.

⭒─⭑─⭒

Hi Miss Elesa. My name is Lucas. I work with Professor Rowan. You don’t know me but…. I. I overheard your conversation with Cynthia, and… I think- no, I know what you’re looking for. I want to help. Cynthia, my friends, the Professor, they… they wouldn’t get it, OK, but I do. I know- I.

I know exactly what it’s like to lose someone without closure, and to feel like you’d do anything to find them, or even just for answers. I- I’ve- I want to help.

Cynthia may be the mythology expert, but I have family history here, and I promise. I know more than you’d think. Please, call me back.

⭒─⭑─⭒

Elesa? Elesa pick up, please. I thought you were on vacation, not- I am worried about you. Verrrry worried. Please. I did not understand your last message. It sounded like- Elesa. You are not doing something foolish? Do not do anything foolish. Please. Answer my calls Elesa. I didn’t- If I- Elesa, I don’t want to lose you. I cannot lose you too. Elesa, talk to me.

I am Emmet, and I am verrrry sorry. Please call.

*Click*

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒��─⚝

Thank you for calling the Nimbasa Gym. The person at this extension is not available. Please leave a short message after the tone. To leave a callback number, please press 1 now.

*Beep*

Hey boss, it's Ampère. You uh, are really never going to update from the default voicemail message huh? You’ve only been the gym leader for how long now? Anyways, I was just calling to update, since I know you’re checking your work phone, even if you’re supposed to be on vacay: my ratio of gym losses is only slightly worse than yours. If you don’t hurry up and come back, I’m going to surpass you!

I’m joking of course. Enjoy your vacation Ingo. Do not call me back before it’s over.

*Click*

#pokemon #pla #pokemon legends arceus #elesa #ingo #submas #writing #fanfic #blankshippers dni #midnightquill #volt switch au

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years ago

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writing request for whenever: Laken and Chris go to a dinosaur museum/exhibit

CW: Referenced past pet whump, mentioned negative stimming resulting in self-injury, pet whump (different character) with intimate whumper, grief, referenced parental death, trauma response, brief reference to true crime

Timeline: Chris is 25 years old in this piece

Rafael (Raf) first appears, unnamed, in this drabble from Chris’s early college days

Laken’s hand is warm in his, their fingers intertwined, as they stand underneath the hanging bones of an enormous ancient thing like a whale but entirely unlike it, too. Chris closes his eyes, swaying lightly side to side, humming softly as he imagines it, rows of teeth with some as big as his hand, moving through oceans older than anything he can imagine, chasing down prey.

The sun shines in through the all-glass windows that make up the other side of the atrium, warming against his shirt without prickling his skin. The lights are far up and away, and the sunlight is stronger.

“Wow,” Laken murmurs, and he glances over at them to see their chin tipped back, liquid dark eyes focused on the recreated bones not so far above their head. “I’ve never been here before. Have you?”

Chris feels the hint of pain at the question, and for once it’s not in his head from memories but simply the aftermath of what he knows. “Yeah,” He answers, voice low and soft. “With my, my dad and mom. Long, um, a, a long time ago.”

Laken’s expression shifts, too, and they wince. “Sorry. I didn’t think about-”

“No,” Chris says, insists really, giving their hand a squeeze. They squeeze back, looking him over with the face they make when they’re reading his expression. He knows it’s going to happen for a while - the cut across his forehead is still bright and obvious against pale skin, although the one on his cheek is nearly healed up and gone. They’re searching, now, for signs it’ll happen again - that he’ll pull back into his head again, maybe take longer to come back out this time.

It’s-... it’s funny, now that he has the memories, he can remember his mother worrying over it, too. And his father’s soft reminders that the worry wouldn’t fix him, because fixing wasn’t what needed done.

It’s funny. To have been told no one loved him, and that was why he had to be remade into a pet, a sort of breathing toy, only to have it all break through with the constant reminders of what a fucking lie that had been.

He’s been reading about people who were kidnapped, lately. Staying up with Wikipedia open on his phone finding names and faces. The girl in Utah, the ones in Ohio, the boy in Nevada, that guy from the famous billionaire logging family who disappeared in California... all of them say, they told us we weren’t wanted by anyone else, for anything else. After a while, we believed them. What else could we do?

It’s... soothing, almost. They weren’t drugged to make it happen, but it did, anyway. It wasn’t Chris’s fault - there was no way he could have kept himself.

But getting all of it back came at the cost of scaring everyone who loves him now, leaving them all worried he’ll hurt himself again.

He doesn’t think there’s anything else in there that can hurt any more than what’s already come out from behind the flat, cold white light in his mind. But they’re not certain.

“Don’t worry,” Chris says, tilting his head and giving them a smile. “I’m, I’m, I’m okay, Laken. I promise. I, I, I, I-I-I like thinking ab, about them now.”

“Well... good. Okay. Just, let me know if I cross a line, okay?”

“I, I will.”

Laken gives his hand another squeeze and steps away to read a freestanding plaque below the bones of the belly of the creature over their heads. Chris picks up the feather necklace he’s always wearing, moving himself over to look outside, at the brilliant green lawn, the landscaping studded with blooming tulips along the walkway. There are plastic sculptures of dinosaurs out there, and Chris watches a little girl in a dinosaur-themed dress and leggings clamber up on one, giggling as she sits on the triceratops like she’s riding it and her father looks on, amused, nearby.

The world feels strange and thin, for just a moment. He feels like he’s on the other side of a wall, and if he took a hammer to it he could step through and see himself, small and gangly and young, his mother nearby with a giant purse full of all the things he might need, her jaw set and ready to fight a battle on his behalf. One she didn’t always have to fight - but she was ready for it, anyway.

His eyes roam the green area outside, scanning, looking over every child, every parent, every friend. He’s looking for her, he realizes, his hand squeezing tight around the plastic feather, rubbing his thumb hard over the vanes. He’s looking to see if she’ll be there, ten years after she was gone.

If all he’ll have to do is look hard enough, and she won’t be dead, she’ll be here, ready to load Tristan into the car to get his chicken nugget kids’ meal and go home.

If he only looks hard enough-

“What’s this one, sir?” The voice is soft, sweetly charming, and sends a chill up Chris’s spine with its perfect familiarity. Not that he’s ever heard this voice before - but he knows the tone, the way of rounding your mouth around each syllable, the subtle flirtation built into each word.

His heart stops beating - and then starts again, as he slowly turns to look over his shoulder.

Laken is across the room, now, off to one side. He can see their black hair, the way they stand with one hip slightly out is as familiar to him as his own skin. The soft blue sweater they’re wearing over black jeans and boots is his, they pulled it on this morning with a laugh when he said it looked better on them. He’s wearing one of their shirts over his compression shirt, fair’s fair, sweetheart, you get mine if I get yours. They’d laughed and said he looked so good in t-shirts for bands he never listened to. They’d both laughed.

Between him and his partner, though, is a couple - an older man with a much younger one. It’s the younger man who spoke.

The older man has a hand at the small of the younger man’s back, casually possessive, but it’s the black leather collar worn openly around the young man’s neck that catches Chris’s breath. He can almost feel the constriction around his own throat. Can almost feel the breath against the back of his neck as it’s buckled there, safe and sound, the collar means-

The collar-

The older man frowns, looking up at a large predator skeleton, then down at the plaque in front of it. “ Ac-... Arcanthosaurus,” He says, confidently mispronouncing the name. Chris knows how to say it. He knows exactly what it is. He could say everything on that plaque without looking. Therpopod, Early Cretaceous, fossils found primarily in Oklahoma, Texas, and... somewhere else, Colorado or Wyoming. He could describe its habitat, its likely diet, what its life looked like from birth to death.

The man says the name wrong, and his pretty pet, illiterate and dependent on him for every scrap of knowledge, doesn’t know any better. He only smiles and says, “That’s a pretty name.” He sounds satisfied.

But Chris sees his dark eyes flicker to the plaque and away, the curiosity quickly stifled and shoved down. He’s seen Kauri do the same thing, force himself into safe ignorance to avoid asking too many questions. He’s seen himself do it. He’s seen them all do it, if they weren’t allowed to read, to know, to ask, to think.

The younger man, Chris’s own age, has close-cropped black hair and wears a black shirt and pants clearly tailored to skim, to fit tightly without being indecent. To be a show of wealth without being ostentatious. That’s when it clicks - he’s seen the pet before, in a cafe with his friends.

The younger man must feel someone looking at him, because for just a moment, his head turns and he looks right at Chris. Their eyes meet, and Chris knows the man recognizes - if not him, then what he was, what he used to be - in a second.

The pet mouths, hi, and tries for a slight smile. He lifts one hand, just a little, and his fingers move in a slight wave.

And Chris had pretended not to see, hunched down in his seat with his heart racing until the two were gone. What were the odds he’d see the same one again? What were the fucking odds, he’d get to be a coward again, to hide from his own life. What were he odds he’d see one here?

Chris had forgotten the museums are all pet-friendly if you call ahead. So many of the places he goes now aren’t.

Suddenly, he wants to leave, to never come back, not to let the reality of his life intrude on the moment where he’d been so, so close to the memory of his mother, had nearly seen her on the grass.

“Stay here, Raf, I’m going to step over to the water fountain.” The older man kisses the younger man’s cheek, and they smile at each other, but Chris knows a pet’s smile when he sees one. He’s made the same expression, again and again, felt the snap of white-hot pain on his back or his hands whenever it wasn’t believable enough for the handler staring down at him.

The older man walks away.

For the second time, Chris is faced with the same pet standing alone in a room of people, the two of them know each other in a way no one else here ever could, not really, not without losing it all, too.

He takes a breath.

Raf - the pet - turns to look out the window at the sunlight, and for the second time in his life, Chris meets eyes with a stranger who is, in many ways, exactly like him.

The pet maybe doesn’t recognize him - without his long hair, and they only saw each other once - but he recognizes something, because his expression changes. Chris isn’t the only one staring - there are children asking soft questions in stage-whispers who are admonished by their parents, older kids staring openly in silence, two adults who see Raf and just as quickly leave the room.

In a wide, round room full of people, Raf is utterly isolated from all of them, from anyone but the man who keeps him. Chris knows the feeling.

He tells himself to move. All that happens is that he pulls on the feather necklace so hard the cord snaps, comes free, and he stares down at it, before slowly raising his eyes again.

The pet gives him a faint, sad smile.

He mouths, hi.

It’s a circle.

Somewhere just behind him, he feels the warmth of her, a hand around his shoulder. His eyes blur with tears. She’s so close, here. With the world she brought him out into comes all his memories of her, crowding in on him. Kisses to his forehead, a hand to check for a fever, arms around him to block out the heavy weight and shrieking noise of a hungry world with its jaws open to hurt him.

He can feel her hands on either side of his face, leaning her forehead to his, whispering, you’re okay, Tris, we’re going to get out of here and somewhere quiet, you’re okay. Just hold onto me.

Just hold on.

She’s so close.

He can hear her, feel her. If he could just move the right way, she wouldn’t be dead at all. If he could just undo everything, if he could fix his mistakes, if he could stay still in the closet and hide just right, if he does it just right nobody has to die and he doesn’t have to lose them and no one has to die-

One step, and then another. His mother’s voice, not forgotten, although blurred by time and loss. That’s how we start, Tris. One step, and then another. You can do this. I’m right here if you need me, but listen - you won’t. You’ve got this, baby. They’re going to love you, all those kids in there.

How, how, how, how, how can you, what if they, they don’t-

They will.

But-

One step, Tris, and then another. We’ve done it all that way, and we’ll do this that way, too.

He looks back at the green grass outside, the courtyard with the playing children and watching parents, the faint sounds of their happiness through the glass. Her hand is at his back, and Chris takes one step, and then another. His heart is in his throat, his hands shaking, his stomach is twisted in knots and a cold brick of ice inside him.

One step, and then another.

She’s so close, and if he does this just right, she’ll find him and take him home.

No.

She’s already here, no matter where he goes. Home is Jake, and Laken, and Antoni, and Kauri, and Nat. Home isn’t a place, it’s people, and he’s his mother’s home, now, the place where she lives after she’s gone.

He closes the distance between them, and stops next to the pet, holding the broken feather necklace in his hand still. The weight of the sun on his back is warm, and not too heavy.

They stand next to each other, and he looks just to the side of the pet’s eyes, focused on something else, to avoid the way looking right at him would overwhelm, be too much to take.

“You were one,” Raf says, in a low voice, sounding stunned. “But you’re not... not now.”

Chris inhales, slowly. His body screams at him to run, to move, and his mind demands he be silent, be still. Instead, he rocks, forward and back, feels the air move around him. Reminds himself he could do - could be - anything with his body that he wants to, now.

And maybe this pet can, too.

“I, I, I named myself, um, Chris,” He whispers, hoarsely.

“He calls me Rafael,” The pet replies, and his eyes move over Chris’s face. There’s an expression Chris can’t read well there, a subtle desperate want, but expressions are hard for Chris and right now the static crackling in his mind, the trains of his thought careening wildly around each other, make it even harder. “I would have liked to name myself.”

One step, his mother says, urging him into the gym, where some other kids are already doing backflips and tumbling on mats. One step and then another.

“You can... can do that. If you, um, if, if, if you-you... run.”

“I-... I couldn’t do that.” The pet looks off to the side, but his owner is still in the bathroom. There’s fear in his voice - that Chris can read without trying. Fear, he knows so well. “Where would I go?”

Chris manages a faint, thin smile. He wants to shake apart. He settles for holding out the feather. “Home,” He whispers.

Come on, Tris. You can do this. I believe in you.

“Home is-”

“Home is, is, isn’t this. It isn’t-... it, it, it isn’t him. It’s not an, any of, of, of of of them.”

“But-”

“5-5-5,” Chris says softly. Sweat sticks his compression shirt to his back, cold trickles down the back of his neck. His heart pounds so hard his lungs have no room for air, his voice is breathless, barely even a whisper, now. “7-2-3-3. They’ll, they’ll help you. Call them.”

Rafael looks down at the feather, and slowly takes the soft purple silicone into his hand, rubbing his fingers over the carved plastic, then looks back up. “I love him,” He says, softly. “I was-”

“Made for, for him,” Chris finishes, not wanting to hear it in the other pet’s voice. Hating the idea that they both know every single phrase by heart, forever, and they can’t undo that. “But... I was, was, was, too. And I’m not, now.”

Rafael slides the feather into his back pocket, looking to the side, at the pristine, cloudless blue sky visible above the courtyard through the thick glass. “5-5-5,” He says, softly, “7-2-3-3.”

“Call,” Chris says, his voice failing him as his fear keeps rising. He has to swallow and steady himself to speak again. “Someone... somebody, somebody l-loved you.”

“But-”

“They, they, they lied to us.” It feels so weird to say it out loud, but he does. He can’t stop himself. “They lie to, to, to to-... to-to... to us all. Someone, somebody loved you.”

He has to go, he can’t be still a second longer, and he walks away without waiting for a response. His timing is perfect - he steps up to Laken just as the pet’s owner comes back from the restroom, sweeping past Chris - pretty but scarred, nothing special, please god don’t look at me - and moving back to Rafael, who smiles up at him with the same perfect, pristine affection Chris has seen in himself and in Kauri and in every single one of the ones like them.

Practiced at the edge of a knife, the lash of a whip, the crack of a cane, until they can turn it on and off on command, at will, whenever they need the smile to keep themselves safe.

Laken turns to him as he stops next to them, looking him over, eyebrows furrowing slightly. “You okay? Oh, hey, your feather’s gone. What happened?”

He allows himself a glance over his shoulder, sees the pet and his owner moving to another room, walking together. The hand at the small of Rafael’s back.

The broken cords from the necklace just barely visible sticking out of his pocket before Chris watches him push them further in to hide them.

“I, I, I gave it to, um, to someone,” He says, turning back to them, leaning over to kiss their cheek, barely a brush. “I, I, I need to go outside. The, um, the everything... can, can we, um, can we go-”

“Yeah, sure. No problem. Do we need to, like, go go, or...”

“No.” Chris looks up at the dinosaur Rafael had been looking at. “Oh, I, I, forgot to tell him it’s acrocanthosaurus.”

“What?”

“Um, noth-... nothing. Let’s, um, let’s go outside for for for a while.”

Laken hand slides back into his and they walk out the opposite door that Rafael went through, Chris’s hand moving to tap on his own hip as he walks, calming himself with each quick rush of sensation.

“Hey, hey Laken?”

“Yeah?”

“Remind me, um, remind me to, to, to-to-to call Nat later. Okay?”

“Sure. Why?”

They walk down a set of stairs, people moving quickly past or around them. He misses the weight of the feather over his chest, but he has more at home. And now there’s a pet with proof, tangible and real, that there’s a life to be made by leaving.

A life worth living.

A life worth running without looking back.

“I, I, I want to tell her to, um, to tell the groups to... to see if someone calls them. I want to, to, to... to know if he does.”

“Who?”

“Um, I’ll, I’ll tell you, you... out, out, outside, okay?”

Somewhere inside him, as his pounding heart calms, his mother says, I’m so proud of you when he tells her that he spoke up.

He knows Nat will say it, too.

They surprise a bird in a burst of red wings out of a bush as they move outside, and Chris watches it fly across the courtyard and disappear into the canopy of a tree.

One step, and then another, to build the man he is out of the boy he was before.

---

Tagging: @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @astrobly @newandfiguringitout , @doveotions , @pretty-face-breaker , @boxboysandotherwhump , @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump , @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @vickytokio @wildfaewhump

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alirhi · 3 years ago

Text

random story snippet

@goblin-tea this is part of that story I was talking about/sending you bits of. I'll get into the better stuff (imo) in a bit, but this is a much better example of what the main characters are like than what I sent earlier lol

“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” she mumbled, still clinging to Audrey’s hand as she nervously followed Fiona’s example and took a moment to study the immediate area.

“No shit, Sherlock,” the blonde growled, yanking her hand away. Rebecca could stand there like an idiot if she chose, but damn it! She was going to explore and find a way home, right now. Clearly, her friend’s oh-so-brilliant spell had backfired quite horribly, and now they were lost, with no idea of where they were, when they were, or what was going…

Her thoughts were jarringly interrupted when Rebecca suddenly let out a short, high-pitched scream, causing both of her friends to jump.

“WHAT?!” Spinning to face the taller woman, she took a deep breath in preparation to chew her out, and then promptly hid behind her. “…Is that a dinosaur?”

“Deinonychus,” Rebecca confirmed in a reverent whisper. Her screech had been from excitement, rather than fear; the giant grin on her freckled face was evidence enough of that. Though she knew she was the only one who cared about the details, she still explained in a rush, “Fast, smart, and very deadly carnivore from the late Cretaceous period, probably the basis for the oversized velociraptors in Jurassic Park… A raptor’s colorful feathers make it look like a ridiculous, disproportionate toucan, which is probably why the producers chose to make it look more like our friend here. Fossils of the deinonychus have never been found with any indication of feathers.”

“It does have feathers, you walking Wiki!” Audrey hissed, stepping back. No way in hell was she going to stand there like an idiot and get eaten by some parrot on crack.

Fiona remained rooted in place beside the other redhead, though she did stoop to pick up Rebecca's forgotten staff, just in case the curious animal decided to attack. A tiny smile played at the edges of her lips at the toucan comparison. It did sort of look like one, in a weird way…

Swallowing past the sudden lump in her throat, their nerdy friend nodded. “Yeah… Most of this type of dinosaur did, so paleontologists kinda figured the deinonychus would, too.”

The prehistoric bird of prey studied them, almost seeming to ponder something. Just as Rebecca was about to make a Philosoraptor joke, the fascinating – if deadly – beast twitched, letting out a series of loud clicking noises.

“…Huh. Whaddaya know. That dude on youtube was right…” An answering call echoed from somewhere to the left of the three shivering girls, and startled the amateur paleontologist out of her daze. “Oh shit.”

“What?” Both of her friends shot her nervous glances, reluctant to take their eyes off of the giant predator. Why wasn’t it moving?

“Run.” When Fiona shot her an incredulous look, Rebecca shook her head. Normally, yes, she would caution against any sudden moves around a wild animal, but this was different. More clicks from their right, answered by the one animal they could see, illustrated why. “He’s calling in reinforcements – run!”

That was all the motivation the shivering blonde needed. With a terrified shriek, Audrey turned and bolted into the forest, Rebecca and Fiona hot on her heels.

“I think it’s safe to assume,” the oldest woman gasped out, jumping over a fallen tree limb, “that we’ve somehow been sent back too far.”

“Ya THINK?!”

"Now's not the time to get snippy!” Her lungs were burning, her legs cramping, and though she could hear the creature gaining on them, she had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t putting forth much effort. She and her surrogate sister were both overweight to the point of obesity, and as such, speed wasn’t exactly on their side. In fact, it had been one of the things they’d hoped to go back and change; if they never got fat, they wouldn’t have to deal with the health problems associated with it or the hassle of constantly trying and failing to lose it.

Risking a glance to the side, she noticed Fiona keeping pace with them, and winced. She was hanging back to help them, she knew. By far the skinniest and healthiest of the three of them, she was lightning fast compared to the other two. While both her companions were morbidly obese, Fiona was lithe and fit, with legs like a gazelle. She was going slowly so she could defend them with that big stick if she had to. That was the only logical explanation Rebecca could come up with. The fact that the 'big stick' was her own walking stick was momentarily lost on the eldest of the three.

Mother above, she prayed desperately, if there’s even a trace of magic left in my blood, please, please unleash it now to give us speed.

Too angry and frightened to bother with logic, Audrey just rolled her eyes, yelping when it caused her to trip over a rock and nearly sent her sprawling. Fiona caught her by the arm and helped her steady herself, and she managed a tiny grateful smile, even as she snapped at the redhead, “Shut up! It’s your fault that we’re in our own personal Jurassic Hell, being chased by a fucking raptor!”

“Cretaceous!” Rebecca snarled, dodging around a rather intimidating thorny bush. “And it’s not a raptor, it’s-”

“I DON’T CARE!”

“It’s actually quite fascinating,” Rebecca asserted through wheezing gasps for breath, “if you think about it. We finally… get to see… proof… that dino…saurs… were more like…flightless…birds…than…”

“I don’t give a shit if we’re being chased by an ostrich or a crocodile!” Audrey screeched before her friend could finish. “If I end up something’s lunch, it’s your fault! And you know what? Fuck you! Fuck your stupid spell. Fuck your obsessions. Fuck your fucking imaginary friend and the horse you both rode in on for good measure!” Even in a life-or-death situation, somehow an old inside joke popped into her head, and she managed to suck in a deep enough breath to scream, "AND YES, HE'S NAMED 'SIDEWAYS'!"

“Guys, this really isn’t the time to be arguing,” Fiona pointed out as calmly as she could, glancing over her shoulder to see how they were faring. It wasn't good. She could deal with Audrey and her rather offensive temper tantrum later, she decided; escaping the turkey-sized ball of feathers and teeth chasing them took precedence.

“Sorry…” Pouting a little, the blonde risked a glance back, and nearly wet herself when she saw that their prehistoric pursuer was getting closer and closer. “Oh, fuck me…” Something brushed the side of her head, and she jumped, but it was only a leaf hanging down from another large tree.

Wait. Leaf…tree… She glanced up, relieved to see that the branch was low enough for her to grab hold. Circling around so that she wouldn’t get caught by their feathered menace, she pushed herself just a little bit more and managed to haul herself up onto the branch. “Guys!”

“What are you doing?!” Rebecca cried, having been too focused on running to notice where Audrey had gone. Fiona had been taking up the rear, focus switching between the others and the predator, but had been looking primarily in the latter’s direction for a few minutes. When she turned and saw only Rebecca standing there, she froze and glanced around. As they spotted Audrey in the tree, they also became aware of the fact that their enemy seemed a lot closer than before.

“Can raptors climb?” Audrey called out, wincing as she watched the scene unfold. Though she had long legs and strong, muscular calves, Rebecca outweighed her by a good fifty pounds, and it was visibly taking its toll. She was tiring, and the blonde just prayed she could pull herself up to safety before that thing or its as-yet unseen companions ripped her apart. She had plenty of reasons not to worry too much about Fiona.

“Come on.” Urging her tiring friend on, the skinnier redhead decided to take at least this one cue from Audrey and circled around the trunk of a massive tree, making sure Rebecca followed. It confused their attacker, bought them a little time, and kept them from getting out of earshot of Audrey.

At her friend’s soft, gentle reminder of what she’d been asked, Rebecca frowned. She wanted to remind the treed woman that they weren’t being chased by a velociraptor, but dismissed it as a waste of time. Instead, she considered her question as she doubled back.

Could this breed of dinosaurs climb? “I…I’m not sure,” she panted, one hand coming up to press against her chest. “I don’t think so. Their arms are probably too small to pull them up.”

“Then get your ass up here!”

They reached the tree, and Fiona quickly jumped up like it was nothing, setting the staff aside and braced across two nearby branches to keep it from falling. She and Audrey then each stretched out an arm, hands extended to grab Rebecca’s and pull her up as the youngest of the three continued, “And pray Jurassic Park was wrong about more than just the raptor’s appearance, cuz here he comes, and if he brought friends, you’re toast!”

“It’s not a raptor!” Rebecca reached for their hands, though she harbored little hope that she could actually get her fat ass up there. With or without their help, in her mind, she was dead.

“Please note, you’re the only one who cares,” the other young woman grumbled, grasping her friend’s wrist and exerting every bit of strength she had left to pull her to safety. Rebecca had virtually no upper body strength, and without Audrey and Fiona, would never be able to make it up onto the branch, despite being taller than both of them.

She almost dropped the larger girl when she suddenly yelped. Fiona glared at her, trying to compensate by taking more of their friend’s weight until she got a better grip on her arm.

Still a bit startled, she searched Rebecca’s eyes for some sign of what the hell that had been about, and found only fear. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Pull me up! Pull me up!” Refusing to say anything else, she gritted her teeth and pushed with all her might, kicking all the while. What she knew the blonde couldn’t see from her perch was that the dinosaur had caught up to her while they both struggled, and had grabbed hold of her calf with its sharp claws. Suddenly, she was glad for the long leather boots that, only moments before, she’d been cursing.

As the creature went for Rebecca again, Fiona grabbed the staff and whacked it as hard as she could over the head. It turned on her for a moment, but before it could do anything, Rebecca kicked it in the face. Taking advantage of the opportunity she’d just created, she stood on the hungry animal’s head and pushed off. At last, she was seated on the rough limb, with the deinonychus just barely out of reach. Gasping desperately for air as she turned and clung to Audrey, she glanced down at the bewildered creature and managed a breathless “thanks!” The moment Rebecca was safely out of reach, Fiona crept along the branch and headed for a different one. The tree was old and strong, but the three of them in the same spot could easily snap the branch and send them right to the dinosaur’s clutches.

Once she settled on another perch, they sat there for a moment, contemplating their luck, both good and bad, and watching the hungry animal watch them. All three knew that with a little effort, the thing could probably reach the two on the lower branch with those lethal, powerful jaws. Since it had clearly not yet figured this out, none of them really cared. Audrey was exhausted and sore, the entirety of her plump body throbbing unbearably now that adrenaline had begun to flee her as she had fled the dinosaur. Fiona was desperately trying to get her breath back, and though she felt fine otherwise, she knew she’d feel like she’d been hit by a bus in the morning. Rebecca, too, was exhausted and sore, though the pain in her muscles and joints hadn’t yet registered. Her gaze shifted from the restless animal to the long jagged tears in the back of her skirt, which she studied with a sort of numb, detached fascination.

“Well,” she said finally, still scarcely able to breathe. “That was exhilarating.”

Fiona laughed.

“Exhilarating?” Audrey gaped at her. “Are you fucking kidding me? We just almost became something’s soon-to-be-fossilized lunch!”

Shrugging, Rebecca glanced down at the prehistoric lizard…bird…thing. And suddenly she felt pity for it, and all the living things around them. After a long silence, during which the deinonychus finally lost interest and stormed off in search of easier prey, she finally murmured, “We survived, didn’t we? That’s more than anything else in this time period can say.” Where were its companions? The question bubbled up out of nowhere, and once formed, refused to be dismissed. She'd heard it call to someone, and heard an answer... Or had she? Had she imagined it all?

“We don’t belong in this time period!” Audrey's reply startled her out of her confused reverie. Her voice was shrill, expression aghast as she stared at the other woman as if she’d lost her mind. Perhaps that was obvious. For a second, she considered that maybe shehad gone mad, and this whole nightmarish situation was just a scene playing out in her ever-overactive imagination.

Then she shifted, and the ankle she’d twisted when she tripped on a rock sent a twinge of pain up her leg. The idea of any of this being anything less than horribly, undeniably real was scrapped, and she glanced around. She would merely search for makeshift supplies, she decided. She would rewrite Rebecca’s stupid spell, and get them back to the present. If this experience was meant to teach them anything, she was sure it was that the past can’t be changed, which she was suddenly ready to accept as Gospel truth. Life sucked, but they could make it better if they just focused less on whining about it, and more on actually doing something about it.

A strange weight on her mind drew her from her thoughts and she turned to look. Rebecca was staring at her.

Huffing a bit, she gestured to her shredded clothing. “That’s going to get infected. You’ll probably die before the week is out.”

“Thanks, Captain Optimism,” the other woman growled, rolling her eyes.

“We don’t have anything to wrap it with!” she snapped, interrupting her friend’s attempt to assure her that she was fine.

“I can rip something if you want,” Fiona offered, gesturing to her clothes.

“We have no idea what’s poisonous and what’s not,” Audrey continued to rant as if the other young woman hadn’t spoken, “We’re about sixty-five million years away from peroxide, never mind penicillin. And all of this is assuming you just get some kind of nasty infection. Every carnivore with at least one nostril can probably smell all that blood for miles. If we don’t get the hell back to modern times, you are going to die!”

To shut her up, Rebecca sighed and reached down, shoving her torn skirt out of the way to show the long scratches across her boot. She could see them alright through the slashes in her skirt, but clearly Audrey was less observant. “I’m not bleeding, genius. He was aiming to grab, not gut; he didn’t get through the leather.” She gestured, but wasn’t the least bit surprised when Audrey only shook her head and looked away.

“I’m just worried about you,” she whispered, much more subdued as the fight slowly drained from her. “You got lucky this time, but as long as we stay here, we’re in danger every second, from everything.”

As if only just then remembering that Fiona was there, she whipped around and stared up over her shoulder at her. "And how the hell are you still corporeal? How were you ever in the first place? I mean, nice to meet you, I guess? But what the actual fuck is going on?!"

#claddagh #original writing #crossroads series

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rpmemesbyarat · 4 years ago

Conversation

RP meme from Tremors

Let's get you out of the sun for a spell.

Please move your fat ass.

Well, when I'm your age I'll probably forget what I eat, too.

How many cows does it take to make a stampede? Is it like three or more? Is there a minimum speed?

You will have long blonde hair, big green eyes, nice full breasts that stand up and say hello, ass that won't quit. And legs, legs that go all the way up!

Yeah, well, I'm getting what I refer to scientifically as "weird vibes."

They're all the same; dead weight. Can't make a decision, can't walk because of their shoes, can't work because of their fingernails. Make my skin crawl!

Well, I'm a victim of circumstance.

Twenty years of looking for a woman exactly like Miss October 1968, and where'd it get me?

Down, honey, down.

The way you worry, you're gonna have a heart attack before you get to survive World War III.

Right. We plan ahead. That way we don't do anything right now.

The idea was; we were ripping you off.

Now, you know I'm good for it.

Are we too easy-going?

If we're gonna take the plunge we oughta have a better plan than that.

Stop it! Stop it, you horrid animal!

God almighty, my mama sure didn't raise me for this.

You're the one's gotta have a plan.

What keeps us doing jobs like this is you dragging your feet.

You gonna stand there in broad daylight and tell me you think I'm the reason we're still here?

I'll call that little bluff.

Forget it, man. It's not worth it.

We did it! We faced temptation and we did not bend!

Last chance, asshole.

Jeez, look at that guy.

You're full of shit.

He must've really been drunk this time.

You damn fool, you owe me on this one

Well, whatever the hell happened it's just one more goddamn good reason to haul ass out of this place.

Hey, where the hell's that asshole dog?

We got a killer on the loose!

He's cutting people's heads off!

I'd high-tail for town if I was you!

The phone is out!

We've gotta get the police up here.

Well, there's sure as hell nothing to stop us now.

Is some higher force at work here?

Are we asking too much of life?

You on a booze break or what?!

Where are the bullets? Don't we have any goddamn bullets?

Hey, I don't want spend the night out here!

What the hell you doing back already?

Unreal! Where'd you get it?

It's disgusting.

So, it's some kind of snake?

It's dead all right. Tore the damn thing in half.

There's gotta be more out there, a lot more.

Slick as snot and I'm not lying.

Look, we organize, we arm ourselves.

We go out, we find those damn snake things, we make 'em extinct.

Might be aliens. Who knows?

Why go looking for trouble?

Phone's out. Road's out. We're on our own.

I'm dead. Let's finish in the morning.

Just keep looking at that beautiful sky.

Damn that thing!

Well, what's wrong with it?

You sure this is where it was?

God, what a stink!

Something's got me!

Oh, God! Get me Out!! GET ME OUT!!

Somebody stop it!

You want the rifle or the Smith?

IT'S GOT ME! IT's GOT ME! AAAAHGH!

You stupid punk!

One of these days, [NAME], somebody's gonna kick your ass.

Come back with the Sheriff.

Come back with the National Guard.

That means we're gonna be out here, like, in the dark.

Oh, man, I hate this shit.

Ride like hell.

How could they bury an entire Plymouth station wagon?

They're under the goddamn ground!

There must be a million of them!

It's gaining on us!

We can do it, we can do it!

We killed the bastard!

Did you just notice something weird?

Think it smells like that 'cause it's dead?

I think they shoot right outta its mouth, hook you, and pull you right in.

Good thing we stopped it before it killed anybody else.

I'm lucky it didn't find me.

This is like, well, let's say it, it's probably the biggest zoological discovery of the century.

Just look at what we caught here!

This is one big mother!

Come on, nobody's ever seen one of these!

There are five more of these things!

Five more?

If you compare the different readings, there have to be five.

There's nothing like them in the fossil record, I'm sure.

I'd vote for outer space. No way those are local boys.

The government built them, a big surprise in the next war.

How the hell's it even know we're still here?

It can sense the slightest seismic vibration, hear every move we make.

I always wanted to be stuck on a desert island. But somehow I always imagined, you know, water.

You know, I hate to be crude, but I'm gonna have to take care of some business here.

I'll tell you, if you ever wanted proof God is a man, this is it.

Running's not a plan. Running is what you do when the plan fails.

You're not even trying to come up with a plan!

Think it's still following us?

You go north, I'll go south.

Well, I'm scared, but I'm not sorry.

All right, I'm about as subtle as a donkey's ass.

You think we're not even safe here in town?

I think we should all get the hell out while the getting's good.

You should have a theory at least.

This valley's just one long smorgasbord and if we don't haul ass outta here we're the next course.

You little ass wipe!

You knock that off or you're gonna be shitting that basketball!

Where are we going to go that's safer than right here?

I'm gonna kick his ass!

Man, you got a gun?!

Big as a house!

Remember, no noise. No vibration.

Get off your pogo stick!

Go back, for chrissake!

Come on! Outta your pants!

Just run! Run like screaming fuck!

This oughta hurt like hell.

So, is that one of your usual jobs, saving peoples' lives?

How long till they go away?

Shut it up! Shut the little bastard up!

Quiet! Quiet you hateful thing!

Chuck him out the door!

Son of a bitchin' lowlife, putrid, scum.

I got enough food here to last us for weeks.

Jesus! Shut it off!

Can't you shout a little quieter?

How the hell long it take you to change a tire?

They're coming after you! They're coming right now!

Big monsters under the ground, [NAME]!

Broke into the wrong goddamn rec room, didn't you, you BASTARD!

We killed that motherfucker!

Uh, be advised, however, there are four more, repeat, four more motherfuckers.

They got one! They killed one of the sons of bitches!

You're not getting any penetration, even with the elephant gun.

Never figured on having to shoot through dirt! Best goddamn bullet stop there is.

They can feel our vibrations, but they can't find us.

The bastards are up to something.

Oh, wow, man! No way! No fucking way, man!

They're gonna tear this whole town out from under us!

We'll come get everybody. Just hang on tight.

Since when the hell's every goddamn thing up to us?!

We don't have a hell of a lot of time here.

We need a helicopter is what we need, or a goddamn tank.

Jesus. It's slower than hell.

Couldn't we distract them somehow?

We need a decoy.

Hey, [NAME], you wanna make a buck?

We're gonna save our asses here!

Get real. I'm faster than you.

Damn. Guess I have to do it.

Watch your ass, shithead.

Don't worry about me, jerkoff.

You goddamn suicidal son of a bitch!

He'll never make it! They're gonna get him!

HEY, YOU SORRY SONS OF BITCHES, COME AND GET ME!

Goddamn good thinking!

Me next!

Get me off of here!

We got about three seconds!

God damn! Armored transport!

What do you think? Max firepower or...?

I'd go for penetration.

Give me a gun! I'll take one!

I wouldn't give you a gun if it was World War Three.

Underground goddamn monsters?!

Any sign of'em?

Maybe they're taking a dump.

What the hell are they doing? They're up to something.

I don't care what they're doing as long as they're doing it way over there.

They dug a trap! I can't believe this!

Hungry?! Eat this!!

Here they come! They're coming back!

They'll sure as hell get us if we stay here!

[NAME] do you have any more of those things?

Then, when the explosion happens, if it drives them away again, we all run like goddamn bastards!

What if it doesn't scare them? What if they don't run?

They're so sensitive to sound, they have to run! It hurts too much!

We're gonna run. Get ready.

They're too fast! You can't outrun them, no way!

It worked! There they go!

You asshole! There's no bullets in this gun!

Could we make it to the mountains?

What's the matter with you? What are you talking about?!

Those animals would have killed you!

You haven't seen what they can do.

They're not falling for it!

I'll make'em pay attention, goddamnit

We can't kill them all.

Use the fucking bomb!

This better be one great plan!

We could make some real money off this whole thing, get in People magazine.

Sell the movie rights.

You're really leaving, huh?

There's going to be major research up here.

And thanks for everything, you know, saving my life and stuff.

Civil? I'm civil.

You're not civil, you're glum.

We got the world by the tail with a downhill pull and all of a sudden you go glum on me.

Somebody paying you to do this?

She just practically asked you for a date.

God, my work is never done.

Fine, make the mistakes I did.

I think I'll just be playing this hand myself.

I'd goddamn worship her.

Can you fly, sucker?! CAN YOU FLY?!

#rp meme #rp memes #rp starters #roleplay meme #roleplay starters #roleplay memes #tremors

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boop-le-snoot · 4 years ago

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masterpost ☀️ main masterlist ☀️ taglist

previously on...

Chapter 5. We have stucky, we have stevesambucky friendship, we have a new place to live and strange being a good guy because tony definitely ranted at him. Also, we're beginning the creepy part of the plot. I have decided that sam will be one of the main platonic characters in this story because I love sam.

fun fact: I used to be a creepypasta writer! Going back to my roots here, hehe.

Things had stated changing, for better or worse, much sooner than I had been prepared for - but was anyone, ever, really ready for the next big step? Certainly not me - the view that greeted me after I'd finished my shift at Jeremy's was peculiar and unexpected, so I froze, eyebrows high at the two super-soldiers parked, once again, illegally, right in front of the entrance door.

"Hi, doll," Bucky was reclined against his boyfriend comfortably, his bike standing a pace behind Steve's, who nodded companionably, a sheepish grin on his face.

"G'day," I nodded, eyeing them warily. "I think I know where this is going..."

"No, no, nothing like that," both men frantically waved their hands around, Steve coming up close to approach me slowly. "You're not in trouble. I came out here to say thanks," giving a sappy look to the grouch that was his boyfriend, Steve reached into his pocket and handed me a slip of paper. "Just, uh..."

"Those are our phone numbers. Don't hesitate to give either one of us a call if someone bothers you," Bucky took over the stammering blonde, shaking his head at the soft blush that blossomed on the good captain's face. The brunette wrapped an arm around Steve's shoulders with a shy smile of his own. "Or if you, I don't know, need someone to carry your groceries or something," he snorted. "The punk wouldn't leave it alone until we came out personally to thank you, the sap."

The laughter bubbled up from my chest as I grabbed and pocketed the paper, throughly amused and at the endearing gesture. "Sure, thanks."

"And, uh," Bucky's eyes briefly looked to the side. "We'd appreciate if you keep the status of our relationship to yourself for now. We're not, like, officially out yet."

I froze in place, mouth falling open. Surely they were aware that anybody with a functional pair of eyes could see that they were much more than 'good, lifelong friends'. "No problem, guys. Lemme know if anyone gives you shit about it though, this place," I gestured to the café behind me, "is strictly paparazzi and homophobe-free."

Steve's grin grew even more genuine. "Yeah, we heard all about it from Tony and Stephen. Said 'twas the only place they go these days."

I wasn't aware of that. "It's the paps, isn't it?" I remembered Tony's remarks.

Bucky shook his head, the metals of his prosthetic arm whirring as it recalibrated. "Not only. The public hasn't had the best reaction to a man goin' out with a man," the brunette looked away to the side, where Steve's face had fallen considerably. "And Tony's an eccentric rich man. We're jus' two soldiers. The US Army won't be too happy if we... Came out," both men were crestfallen yet determined.

I had a hunch nothing would be able to separate the two - seeing as not even seventy-odd years and brainwashing and ice couldn't keep the captain and his sarge apart, I doubted that a few government weasels could successfully do the job. Even so, it was unpleasant, to say the least, to see them deny themselves something that technically was perfectly fine in the 21st century.

I chewed on my lip, gathering my wits. "I've clocked out, I can tell you this as a friend- as a person. You don't owe the army jack shit. They do not own you, you are your own person that they experimented their German knockoff steroids on. Respectfully, fuck that shit." I firmly stated my opinion, figuring that there should have been at least someone that told Steve that he is more than his star-spangled uniform and giant metal frisbee.

The blonde scrunched his eyebrows together, fingers gripping onto his belt until the knuckles went white, the hard line of his jaw set firm.

Bucky laugh took me by surprise. "Agreed, doll. I'm too old to be hiding in back alleys and shit," he clapped on his boyfriend's shoulder. "Although I'm happy enough with just not going to prison for bein' in love with this idiot."

"Jerk," Steve's responding pout was downright adorable now that I knew the circumstances surrounding their relationship.

Which wasn't exactly surprising. As a barista, I knew my fair share about my regulars' love lives, their jobs, their kids. The tea was almost always piping hot. "Bye, boys," I smiled at them warmly, throwing a glance at the time, adjusting the strap of my bag for comfort. "Stay outta trouble!"

Steve scrambled for his bike, having noticed my pointed gesture. "Sorry, didn't mean to hold you back. There, I have a spare helmet," he gestured behind him. "I'll give you a ride."

"There's no way in Hell I'm getting on that death trap!" I shouted cheerfully, walking briskly towards my second job, hiding a laugh in the warmth of my scarf as two very offended motorcycle-loving gay fossils sped past me, making truly incredible amounts of noise. Good for them.

Odette was content to let me rummage around the bodega without showing herself more than necessary, taking her appointments and doing- well, witch stuff, I guess, only coming out to poke at the various jars for ingredients.

"Star, I have a proposition for you," right before closing time, Odette's voice filled out the store with its low drawl. "A good friend of mine owns an apartment building, not far from here actually, and one tenant recently moved out. It's a safe space for those who are different," she enunciated the last word, fixing it with a pointed stare. "She's not overly fond of total strangers coming to live there. The rent is reduced and the apartment itself is slightly bigger and more fashionable than yours..."

"Where's the catch?" I found myself interrupting her. I wouldn't lie: the reduced rent and increased size of the apartment did interest me, as well as the probability of a kinder, more involved landlord. My current one was - not the best, but such was life in the NYC.

"There are a few rules to follow, rules that might seem strange at first but they'll make sense in time. And your neighbors might be also a little... Unusual," Odette carefully studied my face for any signs of displeasure.

I sighed.

And then I sighed some more as I was signing my new lease in a few days' time, having spoken with Porter, my new landlord, and his boyfriend who had claws and fangs- after so much time spent around Odette's, I didn't even blink. The couple liked me enough to extend a secure but flexible offer and some furniture to choose from the attic where they kept the spares.

I quite liked the large, vintage couch I placed next to the wide bow windows in the living room. The floors were hardboard and well-kept, the walls a nice, homely shade of green and Porter didn't mind any new holes in them that might arise from hanging up decorations. I scheduled a thrift crawl at the next possible opportunity, happy with the "good employee" bonus Odette had given me after I sealed the deal.

My stuff was boxed up, a sleepless night and a call to a begrudging Jeremy to have a couple of days off to move; I was, thankfully, not late on my schedule and all that I had left was to rent a car to move the boxes of my things and the few pieces of furniture I had decided to keep - my haul in Porter's attic had been incredibly rewarding and my new apartment had all the basics to make it look like a warm, inviting bohemian home in a while.

My phone rang suddenly, startling interruption to the romcom I was watching as I ate my last lunch in my old apartment. "Hello?" I answered the number without looking.

"Hi, doll," Bucky's voice rang out cheerful. "A little witch told me you were moving. I thought you might need a hand?"

I blanked momentarily, the thought of enlisting two very busy super-soldiers to haul ten boxes and two endtables worth of stuff not having crossed my mind at all. "Is this the moment when you stop by my house just to unattach and put your prosthetic arm somewhere and leave?" I asked, hearing distinctive snickering - several more people were with him.

The cheer in his voice blossomed into a full belly laugh. "You're funny," he teased me. "And thanks for the idea. But no, I have a room full of men that have nothing better to do but get on my nerves. Might as well make 'em useful," his accented drawl thickened the more we spoke. Muted cheers rang out in the background.

"Uh, sure," who was I to look a gift horse in the mouth? I rattled off my address and warned them I didn't have a car, after which Bucky assured me it will be taken care of. The last remaining knick-knacks packed away, I went down to take out the trash, and returned to four people standing in front of my apartment building, all except one unrecognisable in their civilian clothes. "Hello," I waved at them, side-eyeing the tallest, grumpiest man of the bunch.

Stephen Strange was there, looking around curiously, hands in the pockets of his plain grey hoodie. I had already forgotten how normal he looked without his robes, and, frankly speaking, I preferred him like that. His title and the attire that came with it were quite intimidating.

"Hey there," a dark-skinned man who I recognised to be the Falcon, raised his hand. I had not met him yet. "I'm Sam, Sam Wilson. You must be the Star we're helping?" His quick once-over and the tilt to his lips; the ease with which he flirted had me brandishing smirks of my own. I led them all upstairs, Stephen's silence being just so loud. Sam, however, had no such reservations. "So, you're a witch, right?" Wow, subtlety was his middle name.

"Yes, I'll show you my broomstick," I deadpanned, wiggling my eyebrows at him with a grim look.

"Woah woah," Sam raised his hands as the three men behind us snickered loudly. "What happened to 'how are you? let's have dinner sometime'?"

I did my best imitation of an evil cackle as I let them through my front door. The four newcomers looked around my nearly empty apartment with muted interest before zeroing in on the pile of things in the corner: a few pieces of furniture and nearly taped boxes. Should be a walk in the park for four men.

A hand on my arm pulled me from the stupor of observing Sam, Bucky and Steve act like a well-oiled trio, bantering and teasing each other as they discussed how to best move the things.

"Look," Stephen Strange had all the appearance of a chastised puppy. "I wanted to apologize for my behaviour that day. I was out of line," the low notes in his voice made the appearance of the apology being somewhat reluctant. Tony probably put him to it after our little burger run.

Irregardless, I wasn't looking to make any enemies. "Me too, I was under stress - not that I'm using it as an excuse," to give where it's due, I nodded at the sorcerer, immediately awestruck by the easy, boyish smile that stretched on his lips.

"You are strong," he added. "If you would like to learn our ways, we would welcome you." There was a spark in his eyes, something belonging to man that respected and collected knowledge. My own respect for him grew immensely just from that one thing.

"I'll think about it," I offered amicably, however, I still leaned heavily towards a negative answer to that particular proposition. I liked my current way of life.

Strange's grin made a momentary second appearance, until Sam's voice rang loudly: "Fire in the hole, Wizard-man," causing the former to groan loudly and look at me.

"Think about your new place for a second," he spoke, briefly touching out fingertips. As soon as that was over, a golden circle with my new living room on the other side of it appeared quietly, Strange's hands immediately going back into his pockets after that. I sighed and pointed the men into it, stepping in a second after. The sorcerer wasn't far behind. "You could learn that, too, you know," he added wryly, having seen my look of mild envy directed at him.

"I think I'll be good with having the 'pissed off the sorcerer Supreme and lived' pass for now," I retorted with an eyeroll, turning around to stare him down.

He had the decency to look somewhat sheepish, at least. "I'm not like my predecessor," his words were chosen carefully. "And, to be honest, I have no clue as to why your... Boss is so hostile towards me- us," Strange looked around the room before unceremoniously beelining for the couch and plopping down on it.

"Not to be a gossip," I started, slightly intrigued. "But Odette and some lady she called ancient had mad beef," I slipped into casual language easily, trying to recall the details of Odette's, quite often jumbled, stories. "Sounded almost like territorial disputes," I shrugged. "And the apprentices Odette took on before me found themselves in all kinds of compromising situations," I chewed on my lip. "Like the Arctic."

Strange rubbed his face with a noisy groan, large hands doing nothing to mask the resignation and slight embarrassment.

I focused on the thin, red scars on his hands - they had to have been something serious, the way slight tremors betrayed the deteriorating state of the nerves in his fingers. I frowned, quickly averting my gaze before he could catch me ogling him. The fact thag Stephen kept his hands in his pockets or covered by gloves at all times didn't go over my head.

He muttered something to himself, something that sounded like he was often forced to clean up his predecessor's mess. "I see," was the only thing he'd offered me, looking slightly pitiful and apologetic.

"Well," I started, noting the last of my stuff was about to be in its rightful place, "as long as you don't toss me into the ocean, I think we can coexist peacefully."

"Tony would kill me if I'd tried," Stephen groused.

"Probably," I agreed. "Considering the fact he hit on me, for you, it would make one hell of a lover's quarrel," my hand pointed towards the kitchen as Steve and Sam carried in the boxes aptly labeled "kitchen", looking around a place to put them down.

"Tony did what now?" Stephen's tone dropped, a wry smirk decorating his lips as he eyed me through his lashes.

"Don't ask me," I raised my palms, feeling my eyes widen. "He's chaos personified and Satan only knows what he's got on his mind."

That squeezed a laugh out of the tall man, followed by a fond, sappy smile as he looked out of my large, panoramic window, probably thinking of Tony himself. There was no doubt, Stephen Strange was utterly and throughly head over heels in love with Tony Stark. Good for them, good for them.

"A-and that's it," Bucky walked in, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel I'd provided them earlier. "I took some liberties and assembled the furniture, Steve is stacking the dishes as we speak," the brunette noisily plopped down next to me, arm carelessly thrown behind me on the back of the couch.

"Oh, um," I stammered, unused to such random gestures of kindness. "Thanks a lot, you saved me a day's worth of time and a backache," I smiled, scooting over to make some room for Sam.

"No problem, not like we had anything better to do than argue which part of the Lord of the Rings is the best," Wilson rolled his eyes, elbowing Bucky none-too-gently.

Bucky elbowed back, thus starting a horsing war between the two, causing me to scoot closer to Stephen as I attempted to avoid any flailing limbs; the sorcerer and I shared an identical, perplexed sigh as to how two grown men could easily bait each other into such juvenile behaviour.

Whatever. It was kind of endearing.

Steve emerged from the kitchen dusty but smiling, having heard the commotion, and quickly herded his guys into a semblance of decent behaviour before all of three of them left, leaving me and Stephen to go back to my old apartment and give the keys to it to the guard. That was done, too, and a portal from an alley behind my old building straight into my living room had me and Strange awkwardly hovering, saying out goodbyes and waving to each other as the golden circle rapidly shrunk in size and disappeared, golden sparks scattering across my living room carpet for a short second before they fizzled out, too.

I used the brief moment of respite to find the small piece of paper containing the rules Porter had insisted I read and take seriously; figuring it might be a good idea to give them a read before beginning to unpack, I popped open a bottle of soda, holding the itemized list written in neat cursive to my face.

The further I read, the further my eyebrows rose:

"1. Keep your door locked at all times.

2. If a person knocks on your door claiming to be the mail man, do not open the door under any circumstances. You are free to ignore the knocking - it only lasts a minute or so. After the person has left, you may open the door and check for any packages.

3. If Samantha from 3B visits you and asks you to babysit, you may do so at your personal discretion. Her twins are a handful and their daily habits are not for the ones with a weak stomach, however, they mean nothin ill and will not harm you in any way.

4. Do not use the elevator between the hours of 1 and 4 AM.

5. There are no apartments under number "7". If someone claiming to be from those apartments knocks on your door and requests entry, come up with a polite excuse to decline and send me a text message. I will take care of it.

6. There is no garden on the premises of this building. If a man approaches you, claiming to be a gardener, don't interact with him and simply walk away. He will leave you alone.

7. You may meet a girl in a polka-dot dress playing in the hallways or in the stairwell. This is Lucy. Always be polite to Lucy - you won't like what will happen if you're rude to her. She does not talk but she knows limited ASL and may request to visit you. Allow her in ONLY if you have fresh meat in your fridge (beef or mutton, preferably bloody). You might want to avoid seeing her eat, however, it might be very beneficial to make friends with Lucy. She knows a lot of things.

8. If, when taking the stairs, you encounter inconsistent numeration of the floors, such as floor 2 followed by floor 5 and etc, simply walk a flight back. It will sort itself out. The building is old and sometimes it gets confused.

Important notice: these rules apply to your guests as well. Please make sure to introduce and educate them on these matters. We will help as much as we can should a situation arise but ultimately, there are fates far worse than an untimely, however swift, death.

- Porter and Lance."

A slow, creeping dread began to gnaw at my nape, curling on like a cold snake deep in chest. As if laughing at me, the warm, welcoming embrace of the green walls and the toothy, wide smiles my landlords had given me encouraged my recently found sense of adventure, all of it mixing into a cacophony of exhilaration and unease, equally steadily driving my running brain insane.

I sighed again, immediately going to the box containing my altar and the rest of the protective items. So much for peace.

Taglist: @couldntbedamned @mikariell95 @letsby @sleep-i-ness @toomanyrobins @mostly-marvel-musings @persephonehemingway @schemefrenzy @lillsxd @bluecrazedandbeautiful @slothspaghettiwrites @xoxabs88xox

#practical alchemy #bun writes #tony stark x reader x stephen strange #stephen strange x reader x tony stark #ironstrange x reader #stephen strange x reader #tony stark x reader #stephen strange x y/n #tony stark x y/n #Stephen Strange x you #tony stark x you

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yukipri · 4 years ago

Text

On the Baratie, Part 5 Epilogue - a One Piece Mermaid AU Text Story

Here’s the final part of the Baratie series!

Includes my personal headcanons for Thatch’s backstory in this AU (and possibly canon, as I doubt we’ll learn much more about him sigh).

WARNINGS (actual warnings this time):

＊Trigger warnings for non-graphic violence, gore, unwilling self-harm, mention of thoughts of suicide, and body horror. Canon-typical dark backstory.

Slight ship warnings for: minor Sanji x Luffy, Thatch x Luffy, hint of bg Sabo x Luffy, but not ship-focused.

Continues off of past parts!

👒🐟On the Baratie, Part 1

👒🐟On the Baratie, Prologue

👒🐟On the Baratie, Part 2

👒🐟On the Baratie, Part 3

👒🐟On the Baratie, Part 4

They've been traveling together for a while now. With more additions to the crew, Sanji's no longer the newest member. They leave East Blue, crossing over to the Grand Line. Their voyage continues onward.

Fitting into his role as the second cook of the ASL Pirates was easier than Sanji could have ever hoped, and he knows it's largely due to Thatch. Thatch, who, for all his incredible skill and titles and history, turns out to be...a remarkably normal person. It takes less than an hour for Sanji's awe over Thatch being his childhood idol to turn into pure indignation when the other cook professes his love for Luffy, and now their daily proposals to Luffy with food are just part of routine on the Merry.

(Sanji still knows his cooking is amateur in comparison to Thatch's, but none of their crew seems to realize, and Luffy eats all their food with equal gusto. Even Thatch himself only ever compliments Sanji, often with ridiculous faux outrage that Sanji's cooking looks better, which is absolutely false, Sanji would know. But even so, the man sounds so genuinely offended that Sanji can't help but appreciate the lengths the older man will go to in order to keep Sanji from feeling inferior.)

It's during a rare moment of calm, when the skies are clear and Deuce and Nami seem relaxed about their progress, when Sanji decides there's never going to be a better time to ask. He finishes washing the last of the pastry plates from the desserts the crew had just finished devouring (his hands momentarily pause on a plate that Ace had to pull out of Luffy's throat when she swallowed it whole along with the pastry, and Sanji allows himself a moment of imagining that the plate with her slobber is somewhat like an indirect kiss...), before he exits the kitchen to go to his locker.

From the locker, buried beneath gravure magazines of buxom ladies whose beauty will never compare to Luffy's, he pulls out a magazine far more valuable to him, the only one of its kind that he'd brought with him from the Baratie.

Back up on the main deck, Sanji finds Thatch sitting by the mast while watching Luffy and Usopp play with some new contraption the latter made. He looks up when he senses Sanji's approach, grimacing when the movement makes the wind blow his now loose hair into his mouth.

"I need a hair tie if Marco's not going to send me my damn hair wax," Thatch complains, even as he pats the ground next to him for Sanji to sit.

"You could always ask our lovely navigator," Sanji grunts as he drops down, careful not to fold the magazine, which Thatch has yet to notice.

"Ah, beautiful Miss Nami might have one, but her hair's pretty short...honestly more likely Deuce'll have one." Thatch sulks, because he'd really rather get a hair tie from a pretty lady, but as it is, Thatch probably has the longest hair on the crew at the moment, followed by their first mate. "If only our ladies had longer hair...ah, my darling Seastar with long hair..."

Sanji lets himself get drawn into imagining their most dazzling Lady Captain leaning against the rail of the Merry, sunlight sparkling off the waves in the background paling in comparison to her radiance. Her face is shadowed by her trademark straw hat, before she raises her head, causing long, silky strands to ripple around her like dark angel wings, glittering threads of black diamond dancing across her cheeks before she tucks them behind her ear with a small smile--

Both cooks sigh dreamily in perfect unison.

"Hey Luffy, they're thinking somethin' pervy about you again!" Usopp shouts in the background.

Both cooks ignore him, likewise in perfect synch.

Thatch regretfully pulls out of his Luffy Vision first. "So, you got something to talk to me about?" He knows it can't be about dinner, because they'd already started prepping for that.

Sanji blinks, and oh, there's Luffy, with her short hair, still just as lovely, probably doing something incredibly stupid and dangerous, but that's okay because Sabo's stepping in, and the Revolutionary may be batshit crazy but he won't let Luffy hurt herself--and right, he wanted to talk to Thatch.

He carefully brings the magazine out in front of him, and Thatch leans over curiously. The pages easily fall open to the column, remembering the page Sanji poured over countless times. Sanji hears Thatch's breath hitch.

"This you?" Sanji asks, looking at the faded photo of the smiling boy, before his eyes flick to Thatch.

The older man's eyes are wide, glued to the page. Sanji wordlessly offers him the magazine, and Thatch slowly takes it, his hands handling the paper carefully as though worried it'll crack.

"Yeah, that's me alright," Thatch murmurs, eyes scanning the column before his lips twist into a wry smile. "How the hell did you get your hands on this fossil?"

"Found it while we were looking for stuff for the Baratie's collection, some old second hand shop," Sanji says, and it's not a lie, but it's not like he can admit he was obsessed with them and actually hunted for them after obtaining the first ones.

Thatch makes a low sound of understanding, before he starts flipping through the rest of the magazine, pages that Sanji honestly doesn't even remember. "I wonder if this magazine's still even going..."

"It is," Sanji informs him. "It's changed a lot, but we still get it delivered."

Thatch laughs then, shaking his head as he closes the magazine and hands it back to Sanji with the same care. "I'm sure it has changed, after what happened, oh man..."

Sanji frowns. So something did happen.

"So how did the kid in this end up a Whitebeard pirate?" he asks, but he means, How did the boy's adventure end?

"Mm, you sure you wanna know? It's not a particularly nice story, though I suppose it has a happy end." Thatch leans back heavily against the mast, his hand subconsciously reaching up to brush hair away from his face, lingering on the deep, if old scar around his left eye. Sanji wonders if it's related.

"If it's something you don't mind sharing. I'm sure I can handle it."

They're interrupted by a crash, and look up to see Sabo heaving Luffy up back over the rail by the end of her tail. She'd clearly almost fallen overboard, again, but is laughing as carefree as ever, even as Usopp wrings his hands apologetically behind them. Sabo doesn't look mad though, and is stroking Luffy's hair now that she's safely back on deck and in his arms, his face disgustingly besotted.

Deuce and Nami come out of the cabin at the noise, and Ace and Zoro startle awake from their respective naps as well. Deuce takes one look at what's going on, and launches into a full blown scolding session for all three of the members involved, clearly dissatisfied with the way Sabo handled it. It had only taken the first mate a few days in his company before Deuce had determined that no matter how sensible Sabo may seem at times, he's still Another Stupid Brother, and therefore gets the same treatment.

The rest of the crew listening in winces when Deuce hurls a, "Luffy being stupid is one thing, but you're WAY too lenient with her, you foolish Revolutionary!" Nami and Koala cheer him on in the background.

("Told you," Ace mouths, before hastily looking away when Deuce's gaze snaps to him.)

Usopp looks thoroughly chastised and sincerely sorry, Sabo looks weirdly pleased as though being told he's lenient is a compliment, and Luffy looks bored and is searching for an escape when her gaze lands on the two cooks.

"Thatch! Story time?!" is all the warning they get, before Luffy's arms grab onto the mast behind them and the mermaid torpedoes head-first into Thatch's chest. It's a testament to the Whitebeard Commander's sturdiness that all he does is grunt at the considerable impact, even as Sanji winces in sympathy. That'll definitely bruise.

"Alright, yeah story time, if anyone wants to hear my boring old past," Thatch agrees, and Luffy cheers, turning herself sideways and flopping down on Thatch's crossed legs to look up at him with eyes sparkling with expectation. Sanji isn't even jealous, because in her new position, Luffy's thrown her tail across Sanji's lap, and he begins reverently rubbing circles into her soft scales, heat creeping up his cheeks when her flukes flick with pleasure.

Deuce sighs, giving up on his scolding as everyone gathers around the cooks. But he doesn't seem too disappointed, and pulls out his notebook as he joins them, as though he intends on recording whatever Thatch's going to say. Ace plops himself down on Thatch's other side, ruffling Luffy's hair distractedly and hiding his curiosity poorly. Sanji gets the feeling that despite knowing him for much longer, Ace hasn't heard much about Thatch's past either.

"Well, so..."

Thatch was born to a middle class family in a relatively active port town on the Grand Line. His parents ran a modest diner, certainly nothing high class, but popular enough among the locals to almost always have full seats.

Thatch was what they called a "child prodigy." He'd started helping in the kitchen simply because he wanted to do the same things as his parents, but by the time he was seven, he'd already surpassed both of them in skill. His parents decided to leave the kitchen to him, while they focussed on management.

With Thatch behind the menu, the restaurant's popularity grew, drawing more traffic. Among their visitors were occasional food critics, who spread their business's reputation and made it something of a cult tourist spot.

When Thatch was nine, his father came up with the idea that it might be good publicity, for people to know that a literal child was behind their now famous restaurant's food. And in the name of said publicity, he also decided to have the restaurant officially under Thatch's name, although is parents still managed it.

"Child prodigy chef owns his own restaurant," was definitely a headline that journalists latched onto. The berries were rolling in.

Thatch himself, he didn't really care about that. He rarely ever left the kitchen now, constantly cooking, constantly coming up with new menu items, constantly training new chefs as their once small family diner expanded into a chain. He didn't really mind it, he loved cooking after all, but he often wished he still had time to talk to patrons, or explore town. While there weren't any child labor laws in their country, he couldn't go to school or make friends or do anything a normal child might otherwise enjoy.

So when the largest, most prominent cooking magazine sent a representative to talk about a potential column centered around him, Thatch was hopeful. He'd always dreamed of leaving the island, and it'd never seemed like an achievable dream. He wanted to exposure to new things to expand his cooking repertoire, and he wanted to be able to challenge himself as a cook--but more than anything, he also just wanted go and see what might be out there, outside of his diner's kitchen.

His parents reluctantly agreed. At this point, Thatch had trained enough experienced cooks, and their reputation was established enough that Thatch's temporary absence wouldn't damage them. And Thatch knew his parents were drawn by the potential for greater publicity from the column, and Thatch (and their restaurant) possibly becoming a household name not just on the Grand Line, but across the world.

(Thatch never thought his parents were bad people, or even bad parents. He hadn't wanted for anything, and they let him pursue and nurture his passion. That they were business-minded, and had also come to see Thatch as an asset and publicity tool was something he understood. They still loved him, in their own way.)

His parents' only condition was that Thatch return in a few years, before he was fifteen. A "child prodigy" becomes less interesting with age, and eventually becomes "a normal adult." They wanted Thatch back before that, to reestablish his connection to their diner, before he inevitably faded out of public interest, or had to re-establish his identity as an adult cook.

And so at eleven years old, what seemed like the entire town saw off Thatch, who set sail on a small ship manned by experienced sailors, and chaperoned by the journalist who would be documenting his voyage.

For the first two years, the journey was everything Thatch had ever wanted. They would go to new islands, information provided to him by the journalist, and then he would be given free reign to do whatever he wanted, so long as it included food and cooking, which is what Thatch would have been drawn to do anyway. That there were always a handful of adults a few paces behind him, documenting everything he did and forcing him to voice his thoughts out loud, all eventually faded into the background. Thatch got used to voicing his inner thoughts for their benefit. It was hardly a chore, and Thatch was having the time of his life.

But all things eventually change. Due to the success of the column, Thatch's journalist was given a promotion, and the last stretch of his journey before Thatch was to return to his home island was assigned to a new journalist. Thatch had always known that their relationship was strictly professional, and was used to changing traveling companions at this point. It felt a bit lonely that the first journalist, the only person who had remained a constant, was leaving...but he understood.

It's just business, after all.

The new journalist replaced the old one, and their journey continued--or at least, it was supposed to.

Child!Thatch, adult Thatch would later think, was remarkably naive and sheltered for all that he was a veteran cook. He was used to having things being laid out in front of him on a neat platter, for the adults in his life to control all aspects of his life, conveniently convincing himself that it's what he wanted anyway. He was used to the adults taking care of all the details, because all Thatch had to do to make everyone happy was cook. He not once doubted those responsible for his life, and blindly trusted that they would keep everything smooth and safe for him.

Because when one day, thirteen-year old Thatch woke up to see red staining the walls of the cabin, and then looked around to find the corpses of everyone else on the ship strewn around him, it took a remarkably long time for him to process that this definitely wasn't what was supposed to happen.

He was disoriented, too numb to even feel panic or put up a fight when the new journalist came in and tied him up to pass him to the pirates who had decimated the crew.

Pirates. It wasn't the Golden Age of Piracy yet, and although the Roger Pirates and other famous names were often whispered about, most sailors didn't expect to personally run into pirates. Thatch had been warned of their existence, but hadn't really thought much on them, as they had seemed irrelevant to his own peaceful civilian adventures.

The pirates and the journalist had a deal, he gathered. The pirates had wanted to get their hands on the famous child prodigy cook, and were willing to pay good money. The journalist had agreed, and had summoned the pirates to their location. Everyone but Thatch and the journalist had been killed to erase witnesses.

Before handing Thatch off to them, the journalist demanded payment first. Thatch remembers wondering why the journalist hadn't demanded anything before agreeing to the deal--it seemed a bad business tactic.

Thatch was standing right next to the journalist when the pirate captain drew his sword. Thatch wasn't scared, because he knew he wouldn't be hurt. He was an asset. And he probably knew what would happen before the journalist did.

He still remembers feeling the whoosh of air as the sword came, the sound of it hitting flesh, the dull thunk, the loosening of the arms gripping the rope that held Thatch bound.

Thatch thought ah, so human heads can be severed just as easily as fish heads.

Thatch didn't put up a fuss, going with the pirates. It was clear he couldn't have stayed on the ransacked ship, because even if he did, he had no way of manning the ship alone, even if he even knew how. And so he wordlessly followed, and continued to do what he'd done his whole life: obey adults.

And at first it wasn't bad. A kitchen was a kitchen, no matter how dirty, and Thatch knew how to please people with food. The pirates seemed overjoyed with Thatch's skill.

But some part of Thatch really wondered if that's all they wanted from him, and that bad feeling manifested itself as reality soon.

Hey brat, the captain said one day, and dumped a sack of ingredients Thatch had never used before into the kitchen. Turn this into something good. We need to get rid of an entire rival crew, and they're gluttons.

Thatch may never have used them before, but he recognized the things in the bag. They were all things he knew to avoid.

The pirate captain was asking him to make poison.

Thatch was a cook. No matter the reasons why people wanted him to cook, no matter who benefited and what money was passed around, and no matter how terrible the conditions--Thatch was alright so long as he could cook. Thatch cooked so that he could make delicious things that would in the end, contribute to nourishing people. He polished his skills to make that experience better, to make his patrons happier, to make himself feel more accomplished as a result.

Poison...that wasn't something that a cook could make.

Thatch, for the first time, spoke back to an adult. He felt that numb feeling again, over any fear.

I'm a cook, I can't make anything that can harm people. Please let me start preparing dinner. Thatch stated it as fact, and to him, it was.

The pirate struck Thatch. It was the first time he'd ever been hit, because as a child prodigy, as an asset, he'd always been too valuable to damage. But now...

You'll make it, or we have no need for you.

Bars were added to the kitchen, making it Thatch's cell. All edible ingredients were confiscated. And every day, the pirates came in with more ingredients, more demands.

Make an aphrodisiac. Make a date rape drug. Make something that'll make someone lose feeling in their limbs. Make something that'll cause loss of senses. Make something that'll cause crazy hallucinations. Make something deadly, but undetectable in water. Make something that can dissolve guts from the inside out. Make something that won't kill, but cause excruciating pain. Make something that WILL kill, but only after several days.

The pirates didn't want a cook. They wanted a master poisons brewer. Which, Thatch was not.

Every time Thatch refused, they beat him. They threatened to cut off his legs, because why would he need them, when all he needed were his hands? They threatened to carve out his eyes, and the captain stabbed a knife close to his left eye to show how serious he was. They left Thatch with running water, but didn't give him anything to eat, other than the deadly, horrible ingredients they'd left inside the kitchen for him to turn into even worse poisons.

Thatch sorted the ingredients by those least harmful, and kept himself alive by reluctantly eating those first, but knew that the longer this continued, the more permanent and fatal the damage those ingredients would cause.

(He tried to come up with ways to use what he had to nullify effects, but he was just a kid, and it was his first time trying to make actual medicine. His experiments were risky, and often failed.)

Thatch didn't know how long he was in there, his sense of time and self muddled as he survived off of numbing agents and aphrodisiacs and hallucinogens. They barely kept him alive, and made him feel horrible. He tried to remember why it was so important he kept eating them, and rationing them like they were valuable.

In the corner of the kitchen was an ever growing pile of bright, beautiful fruits that he knew would cause immediate agonizing death...but they looked so lusciously juicy and ripe, and it was getting harder to remember why he couldn't eat them.

Perhaps it was the hallucinogens, perhaps it was everything wrong with his body that Thatch had unwillingly caused himself by eating, but one day, Thatch realized he was going through the movements of peeling those fruits, chopping them, squeezing the juices and watching with fascination as they sizzled into the bubbling pot he was brewing. He was too entranced by the concoction to even notice that his hands were burning and blistering, or perhaps they were just too numb.

He added spices, adjusted heat, and hummed. It had been too long, since he had cooked.

Except he wasn't cooking, because this wasn't food.

It smelled quite delicious, Thatch thought, mildly impressed with himself. Something tropical and fruity, mellowed by mushrooms and a great many other herbs. And it looked aesthetically pleasing, with its dancing, hypnotic colors. If he hadn't known what had gone into it, he'd consider it presentable to critics as his next seasonal special.

But now that it was done, and ready to be served, Thatch had no clue what to do with it.

He hadn't thought that far (he wasn't thinking at all), and didn't know how to think about the thing he made, when it wasn't edible.

He supposed he could possibly see if it could melt through the bars of his cell, though he wasn't sure where he'd even go if he could escape. The cell didn't have any windows, and Thatch wasn't even sure they were at an island, they could still be on open water. Thatch might be able to throw it on a pirate, as a weapon. But there were dozens of pirates on board, and not nearly enough for all of them.

He could drink it himself. It would be an escape of sorts, he supposed.

It never crossed Thatch's mind to offer the concoction to the pirates, as a creation to be used.

He stood in the kitchen for hours, aimlessly stirring the pot, watching the brew get darker and darker, its magical colors turning into murky brown. Eventually, it became a thick, black tar-like substance that reflected no light, that looked like a void as Thatch stared into it.

A thin gray haze gradually began filling the room, and Thatch was well aware of it. He was already starting to feel noticeably worse than before. He supposed that was one way of giving himself a time limit: he'd either decide what to do with the brew, or succumb to the fumes first.

He distantly heard muted sounds overhead, and he realized the pirates may be fighting someone. It happened once in a while. But it was usually with other pirates, and he doubted it was the marines, and no civilian vessel would dare get close to such an obvious pirate ship. And well, if it was pirates...that's just more of the same, wasn't it?

Thatch eventually heard footsteps approaching the room, and someone coughing as they inhaled the fumes, now dense enough to be a dark smog that made it hard to see his own hands (or maybe that was the effect of the poison in him).

A creak--the cell doors were opening.

Thatch could barely think anymore, but made a split second decision. He didn't know what the consequences would be, but had a hunch he wouldn't survive long enough to find out anyway, so what did it matter.

He picked up the pot, and hurled all of its contents at the approaching figure.

There was a FUCK! and then--

Thatch won't ever forget what happened when that brew hit a human body.

But as he fell, the last of his strength gone, wondering if he should feel horrible or proud that he killed someone on his way out, Thatch saw the room light up, the black haze vanishing into searing, brilliant turquoise flames.

"And so that's how I met Marco!" Thatch says, voice surprisingly chipper, even though Sanji feels like retching.

"You melted him," Ace says flatly, voice a mix of horror and awe.

"Sure did, if he had been anyone else they probably woulda been a puddle of human goo, and even he got halfway there," Thatch agrees, his hands stroking Luffy's hair harder, as they'd been doing all throughout his story telling. "Though lucky me, to have thrown poison at possibly one of the only people in the world with instant self-regeneration and possibly immortality."

"Was he mad? Pineapple bird-man. Melting doesn't sound very fun," Luffy frowns. She'd admittedly fallen asleep for most of the story, but woke up again when Thatch's hands in her hair got more tense, more urgent. She contentedly nuzzles into his thigh, more interested in making sure that Thatch's alright than in his answer, and she purrs when he crooks his fingers to scritch her reassuringly.

"Oh sure, he was mad for a little bit, but he's a nice guy and was a worry-wort even back then, so he brought me to Pops. And well, it took a while, but we're best buddies now and have been for years! Fancy that."

Deuce was shaking his head. "I still can't believe that stupid crew wanted to take down Pops with poison of all things, and were stupid enough to enter his territory without it even being ready."

"Well, it's not like they could have won in direct combat, and to be fair, back then the Four Emperors weren't that established, and territories in the New World were a lot looser than they are now." Thatch shrugged. "If nothing else, it was a creative angle, if a poorly thought out one, unlike some people's way of challenging Pops." Ace fidgets uncomfortably here, and Deuce snorts.

"You..." Sanji's finally recovering from his queasiness, because fuck Thatch's tale really wasn't pretty, especially from a cook's perspective. "You don't mind fighting, and killing people now?" He glances at the swords strapped to Thatch's belt, and thinks about his own insistence to never use his hands in combat.

"Well, I'd prefer not to do it, same as anyone else. But I don't mind fighting in general, and once Pops adopted me, I wanted to be able to defend myself." Thatch laughs here, and it sounds bitter, making Luffy look up. "Haruta actually suggested I use poison, if I knew how to make one that could almost take down the Phoenix, and, well...that's a no. May have thrown him overboard for that, but he deserved it. I told them I was good with knives, and Vista helped me develop my own style."

The conversation moves on then, the other crew members chipping in with questions, but Sanji sort of tunes it all out. He thought he was over his queasiness, but it's back again. Being forced to brew poison, and being offered nothing but harmful things to eat...fuck. Even Judge hadn't done that...

He feels something wrap around him then, and Sanji looks down, and realizes that Luffy's looped her tail so that her flukes curl behind his back, securely holding him, even as she continues to nuzzle Thatch's leg for attention.

How weak he must be, Sanji thinks, to need his captain's comfort now. But it helps, and he gradually relaxes.

Eventually the others realize that the story's over, and disperse back to their usual tasks, leaving Thatch and Sanji and a snoozing Luffy curled around both of their laps.

"Well, I guess that explains how the boy prodigy's journey ended," Sanji says, reaching over to Thatch's side to run his hand through Luffy's hair, smiling when she hums happily.

Thatch makes a soft sound, that sounds like possibly disagreement. "Well, sure, I ended up joining the Whitebeard pirates, and never ended up going back to my hometown. Everyone thought I was dead anyway, and being on the Moby was better than any restaurant for me, because I got to feed my brothers and travel, at least wherever the Moby goes, and that's still a fine adventure in its own way. But I guess you're right in that with a territory and a literal army backing me up...it's not quite the same kind of adventure, without the trill of the unknown."

Thatch looks up then, and when his eyes sweep across their little ship, and the small crew strewn about it, he looks fond. "But I guess in a way, that's what I'm doing now, isn't it? I may no longer be a 'boy prodigy,' but me traveling with you guys, going back up the Grand Line...it's sorta like that journey again."

Sanji blinks.

"The end of that journey...maybe you're on it with me, right now." Thatch winks.

Sanji snorts. "That's so cheesy," he says, but he doesn't meant it, not really, because he can't deny the giddiness that begins welling up in him at the thought.

Because what adult doesn't still have a child inside them, buried underneath layers of years, still craving those wishful dreams from long ago?

There's a moment of silence, before both cooks break out into laughter, carefree and boyish.

And so their journey continues onward.

Aaand that's a wrap! For this lil story series within this ever growing AU at least!

It may be a cheesy ending, but it still feels like an ending of sorts? which, is something I usually never actually manage to write to, everything I write is usually either short or abandoned....so I Feel Accomplished ^ ^;;

If you managed to get through it all, thanks so much for reading and sticking with this!!!! ;A; I’m definitely extremely curious to know if you have any thoughts regarding my take on Thatch's past, or anything else, because as always any comments are HUGELY appreciated!

Thanks again!

❀ ❀ Send YukiPri an Ask! ❀ ❀

~This ask has been added to the Mermaid AU Text Headcanons Compilation post~

#OnePieceMermaidAU #One Piece Mermaid AU #Thatch #One Piece #Vinsmoke Sanji #text headcanons #longpost #long post #ThatchLu #SanLu #genderbend

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stones-x-bones · 4 years ago

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You Don’t Have To Be Good || Deirdre and Bex

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @deathduty and @inbextween SUMMARY: Deirdre finds Bex in the fossil room and the two have a heart to heart. CONTENT: Domestic abuse mentions, References to child abuse

You’ll know human inferiority when you see how they don’t understand. Siobhan wiped Deirdre’s tears away, voice warm and sweet in a way that Deirdre would chase forever. She’d been sent home early, having been told her showing off of a dead bird was wholly inappropriate and furthermore, the sign of some deficiency. The humans don’t know the beauty of a skeleton.

But there was some part of her, mature now, and leaned up against the door frame of her bone room, that thought her mother might have been the one who didn’t understand. There was a human, staring wide-eyed at her meager fossil collection (visions were harder to pull from remnants that old, and as such, she preferred more death in a fresher state). She looked at them with the very wonder she’d been taught a human could never have. The same way she looked at them. “There are gloves there, if you want to touch any of them.” Deirdre announced, pushing herself off the door frame and greeting Bex with a smile. “Go ahead, a chara. You can see them better when you hold them in your hands.”

While Morgan had said Bex was free to any room in the house, she’d always been extra careful when going into Deirdre’s fossil room. Never touched anything, never stayed too long. Instead she would just stand near the cases and stare wide-eyed like a kid in a candy shop. She liked trying to figure out which skeleton was what, even though the articulated ones were pretty obvious. The fossils were the more fascinating part to her, but bones were just fossils that were too young, so, really, they were all the same. They all told a story and they all had history. She was trying to get back to a sense of normalcy after what had happened yesterday and over the past week, glancing at one of the sheet fossils when Deirdre’s voice filled the room and Bex jumped. She was used to watching her surroundings usually, making sure she knew who was around or when she was alone-- but being in this house made her feel relaxed enough to not feel the need to do that. It was becoming a problem. “Oh, I--” she started, stopped, “it’s okay! I wouldn’t wanna mess with your stuff.”

“No, please,” Deirdre gestured. She stepped into the room and grabbed a pair of gloves for herself, slipping them on before she extended a pristine white pair of fabric clothes for Bex’s own use. “I insist. I don’t collect these things so they can sit here unadmired. Granted, it’s mostly me that does the admiring…” Deirdre trailed off, glancing down at the gloves in her hand. She shook them, for emphasis. Morgan was always better at this; the talking and the socializing. And even for the fact that Bex had been with them for a while, Deirdre hadn’t done much for her. For that, she was guilty. But guilt didn’t serve the bone room. They did, after all, have one thing more in common than the same roof over their heads. “There’s amber in the drawers, I only have a few pieces, so I haven’t put them into a proper display and--Hold on--” Deirdre shifted away, pulling open one of her draws on the far wall, revealing tiny bones housed safely in velvet, and the amber. Deirdre pulled on out, it wasn’t a mosquito, but some bug-like creature she didn’t know the name of. “Like in the movie,” she said as she offered it out as well, “what do you think?” Deirdre turned up, gazing about the entirety of her immaculate collection. “Of the whole room; what do you think?”

Bex watched Deirdre curiously as she slid into the room and pulled out a pair of gloves. Tentatively, she reached out and took the pair offered to her, sliding them on carefully. Most of the things in special rooms in her own home were one-hundred percent off-limits to her, even now, as an adult. But especially so when she was a child. She remembered from her conversations with Deirdre that she had lived in a household very similar to Bex’s, in size and strictness. It felt a little like an unspoken thing between them. Deirdre was pulling open a drawer full of bits of amber, and Bex peered curiously inside, holding out her hands as she plucked a piece out. “Oh! Is that a myrmeleontoid?” She lit up instantly at the sight of the ancient beetle species, the first time she’d cracked a real smile in a long while. There were quite a few different bug species back in the ancient world, but only a few had been captured in amber and preserved well enough. They’d found plenty of bee and fly and ant species in amber, but beetles were often more rare. She looked up at Deirdre, then, still holding the amber as if it were the most delicate thing on earth. “It kinda makes me jealous,” she said, but she was still smiling, “I wish I had an entire room for fossils. Did these take long to collect?”

Deirdre’s brows knitted together in a way she hoped Bex couldn’t notice. The caution and the reservation, even the quiet wonder, was all familiar. Yet, in the empty spaces of her identity, at Bex’s age, she filled it with arrogance. Bex seemed to fill it with...anxiety. Then again, Deirdre wasn’t sure how she might’ve acted if there ever was anyone kind enough to take her in. “A what?” She laughed, “that’s a big word, you’re going to have to dumb it down for me. I’m an actuary, not a scientist.” Deirdre glanced down at the amber as Bex continued, pulling her bottom lip in with her teeth. Humans wouldn’t understand, she thought, and in this case, she considered that Bex wouldn’t even believe. But she’d found most of these bones, and simply ordered what was rare. “I was angry,” she started, staring out at her displays, numerous and carefully organized. “I could hardly bring any bones from Ireland with me; nothing big, anyway. And I’d have to start my whole collection all over again, in this miserable town, and I was angry. Then the day after I moved in, I took a walk and right there in the snow was bits of a moose.” She turned, and gestured to the spine fragments on display; a sentimentality for her first find here. “There are no moose in Ireland, and no point in being angry or jealous. Just start your own. Again, someplace new.” Deirdre laughed softly to herself, crossing her arms over her chest. “All of this took just about a year. And you can have your own bone room, Bex. The basement is used for nothing more than Christmas decoration storage, and I don’t think Morgan would object with making it yours.”

“Um, sorry. It’s a type of ancient beetle,” Bex explained, “this looks like the larval stage, but I’ve only ever seen photos, so I can’t be sure, really.” She pinched the block between her finger and thumb and held it up to the light to examine it better. Bubbles of air had frozen in time around the critter’s head, and around it’s legs. Being trapped in sap sounded like a terrible fate. She wondered how long it was before the poor thing had suffocated. Her gaze turned back to Deirdre when she spoke again, finding her staring at her displays with a nostalgic look. Bex, if anything, was at least good at picking out micro-expressions on peoples’ faces. It was a self-preservation tactic. “There’s a ton of moose here. They have trail maps that can show you their migration habits. There’s probably a lot more skeletons along those paths.” She paused. “I’m sorry you had to leave your old collection behind. But this one is pretty great, you know.” Her eyes trailed over to Deirdre again and she made brief eye contact, before looking away, holding the amber back out to her. Her mind wandered so much easier these past few days, full of painkillers and visions of claws. She just wanted something normal. “I...can’t do that. Couldn’t ask you to do that for me. Besides, I don’t have any fossils or bones anyway. My parents don’t exactly approve of that hobby. Last time I tried to stash some in my closet my mom ransacked it and threw them all away.”

With a frown, Deirdre took the amber as it was given back. “Are your parents here, Bex?” Deirdre asked quietly, sincerely. She remembered her first move away from her family, and how every day she expected her mother to barge in, and turn up her nose at the dust that lived under her furniture. For all the times she did turn up unannounced, even in this home she had now, it was never as simple as the dust. “I don’t plan on having anyone in my house that I disagree with,” Deirdre’s eyes narrowed, voice turning sharp as she remembered Ariana. “I don’t like the idea of people like that intruding on what’s meant to be safe.” What’s meant to be hers. But Deirdre shook her head; this was about Bex. “I had novels. Romance, mostly. Growing up, I liked them. I hid them under my bed. My cousin knew about them, and one day, when she was angry at me, she told my mother. To this day, I can still smell them burning; how my mother looked standing by the fire; how I had to bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from crying.” Deirdre slowly returned the amber to its place, looking back at Bex. “They won’t hurt you here. They won’t know. I won’t let them. You are safe here, you understand that, don’t you?”

The question took Bex by surprise, but then again, hadn’t she been asking herself that every day? Are they here? Will they come? Will they take her back? She watched Deirdre take the amber and squeezed her hands shut around the air where it used to be. The answer was no, but also yes. Because no, they were not here physically. They could not grab Bex or yell at her or stand between her and the doorway. But yes, because she saw them everywhere. In every raised hand, in every loud voice, in every corner of the room when she was just a bit too tired or too lost in thought-- and then she’d blink, and they’d be gone, but they were there. They were always there. They were more frightening than a bloodthirsty werewolf sometimes. “No,” she answered back just as quietly. She wrapped her arms around herself as she listened. Her chest ached. How many of Bex’s fantasy books or history compendiums or fuck, even comic books, had her mom stolen away from her? Torn to shreds and dumped in the garbage. Her mother didn’t care to burn the evidence. She hadn’t minded when Bex would pull whatever remains she could find from the trash to try and piece them back together, sobbing on the study floor. It was a lesson, she told her. One she could learn fast. And she had. Just like the books, the fossils were destroyed. The bones were snapped, sometimes like her own. She looked at Deirdre, not realizing the tears in her eyes until she was blinking them away. She turned her face. “You don’t know that,” she said back, “how can you guarantee that?”

Deirdre still felt wonder every time Morgan perked up to hear of something she liked, of her life or what she was doing; excitement for the person she was with such love that she had never been given. The first time it happened, Deirdre thought it must have been a lie. How insidious it was that even when happy, loved, her mother could reach through time and space and sow doubt. How terrible it must have been for Bex. “Your parents are always with you…” she breathed, closing her eyes. “Every doubt. Every hesitation or negative thought. Your fear, your anger, your life...it’s all theirs. They are here. It’s like they live inside your body, always watching, always waiting. You hear their words in your own voice. I know how it is Bex.” She opened her eyes, looking at Bex—hugging herself, crying. “But physically, they are not here. And the only harm they can do is the kind they taught you to do to yourself.” Deirdre moved closer, slowly and gently resting her hand on the young girl’s shoulder. “I know this because no one who stays in this house is anything like them. And I want you to be safe. And we are very similar, Bex.” The humans would never understand. Except Siobhan had never thought her torment was the kind with a name, a human name. And there were many that understood. “I also break glass, but I look a lot cooler when I do it,” she smiled, “and I can guarantee it: I promise you that I won’t let your parents enter this house. And you know my thing about promises, I’d have to keep it. Although, maybe don’t invite your parents over unless you want me to throw your mother through a window.” Deirdre tapped Bex’s head. “What are the parents inside your thoughts saying about that?”

Bex felt her body tightening with each word spoken, truer than the last. A string of sentences that somehow described her life so perfectly and yet so horribly. She trembled and bit down on her lip. She didn’t want to admit it, she’d never admitted it to Morgan, but she hated them. She hated them. They stole her life away and even now that she was out, gone, they were still everywhere. They were inside of her, stealing bits of her. They filled her up and swallowed her whole and her darkest fear, her biggest fear was that, one day, she’d be just like them. She would become her mother, full of anger and resent and pain. She tried to force away the tears but they always stuck around. She did not flinch when Deirdre came close, because her mind inherently understood that someone who had lived it, too, would never dare raise a hand. She hated that Deirdre was right. She looked up when Deirdre said she shattered glass, too, when she said she’d promise to keep her safe. Bex didn’t have words for that, she couldn’t even say no. She scrunched her nose as Deirdre tapped her head, looking up at her-- the only other woman in her life aside from her mom who was taller than her-- and furrowed a brow. “I don’t think I’d mind altogether if you did…” she mumbled, releasing some of the tension in her shoulders. “Did--” she started, stopped. Chewed on the thought. “Did your mom ever tell you...she loved you?”

Deirdre laughed; loud and barking the way she did when she was both surprised and amused. She was quick to stop the sound and wave a hand in the air, trying to tell Bex that she wasn’t laughing at her, but more like laughing with her...even though Bex wasn’t laughing. “Honestly I thought you might like to have the honours of throwing your mother through a window, but I could do it.” Her own mother was far stronger than her, shorter in stature and more lean, but far more skilled. For all Deirdre had been called a prodigy, her mother had the advantage of about sixty more years of training. But the worst Bex’s mother could be was some witch, right? As Deirdre considered the logistics of truly throwing Bex’s mother through a window, she nearly missed the other question. When she heard it, she felt like laughing again. And then she thought about it. Siobhan was a complicated woman; as a child, before her scream, she could remember a warmth. When training, her mother’s patience wore thin. Approval was rare. She had wanted a daughter, had rejoiced in her young activation, but didn’t like the reality of it. She was quick to tell Deirdre that she never cried, she never complained, and she’d had it so much worse.

“Never the word love,” Deirdre said after a moment, “Proud; delighted to have a daughter like me. It was always about the image. She never used the word love--she didn’t believe in it. But she liked to be kind when it suited her; whenever I agreed to her way, she’d call me smart. If I did what she told me, she said she was proud. If she felt like I was going to disobey her, she reminded me that she was my mother. If I seemed displeased, she would dangle everything she did for me over my head. It was these moments that tricked me into thinking she must have been a good mother. If she had been cruel all the time, it wouldn’t have taken me so long to know. I wouldn’t have listened to her. Those drops of approval...I lived for them. I knew they existed, so I chased them. And the more I chased, the more rare they became. The more rare they were, the harder I ran after them. Everything I did was about her. Always about her. So, no, she never said she loved me. She didn’t have to, it wouldn’t have changed anything.” Deirdre rolled up her sleeve, pointing to the iron burn on her forearm. It had been for training, but it was the only scar she had for her mother’s torment; for all of her volatile emotions. “A woman who will do something like this, isn’t one that loves you. As much as I wished she did. As much as I wished my whole family did. It was never about love to them. And as angry as I am with my mother, I know how my grandmother was to her. And I know how my great-grandmother was to her.” She knew because they were all still alive, of course. “Did yours?” She asked, rolling down her sleeve, “ever say she loved you?”

Never the word love. That shouldn’t have reassured Bex as much as it did. But it made her feel just the smallest sense of relief. It shouldn’t have, but it did. Her mother had probably never said it to her. At least not anytime Bex could remember. She remembered a lot of “that’s my girl”s and “you were so well behaved”s and “good girl”s, but never that. Barely even...proud. The closest she got was when her mom would tuck her in to bed and Bex would say the words in her small voice, and her mother, so sweet, and so soft, now that her anger was gone, would sooth down her hair, and brush thumbs over her bruises and say, “Of course, darling.” Listening to Deirdre felt like listening to someone describe herself, her childhood. It made her skin crawl, it made her shiver. She squeezed around herself, burying the pain that was flashing in her eyes. Memories of bruises written into her muscles. Deirdre was rolling up her sleeve and Bex looked down at the mark on her arm. A burn. Her parents were always so careful to never leave anything behind on Bex’s body, she almost wished she had something to show for it. All she had were the memories of broken bones and purple bruises, and blood stained clothes. It wasn’t fair, to either of them. Bex reached out, as if to touch the burn, as if touching it would make it more real, more true. As if touching it would make Bex feel what Deirdre had. But she didn’t need to touch it for any of those things to happen. They just did. She just knew.

Bex pulled her hand back and scratched along the tops of her thighs. Her only marks of her pain were there, on the insides of her thighs. And she’d done them to herself. They were her only ounce of control, for the longest time. Razor blades along skin. She swallowed. “No,” she answered quietly. “I don’t think she knows how to.” Chewed on her lip, rolling it between her teeth. “I wish she would. Sometimes I still think she can.” She looked up at Deirdre, tried to catch her eyes, but found herself unable to hold any sort of gaze. Her eyes fell in shame. “I’ve tried my whole life to get either of my parents to just tell me something, anything close to love. Or even just being proud. Or that they care about me. I keep thinking that if I just do better or try harder it’ll change. It’ll get better. They’ll look at me and tell me they’re proud, that they love me, that I did good. But they just-- it’s only when I do bad. They--” her breath hitched when she inhaled. Why was she already crying? “What did I do wrong?” she suddenly blurted. “Why don’t they love me? Why do they hurt me? I told them I’d be good. I told them I didn't mean to, but they--” She put her head in her hands. “Why can’t I do anything right?”

It was a reflex. Something Deirdre couldn’t explain even if she wanted to. But without thinking, without asking and without meaning to, her arms wrapped around Bex. She pulled the girl in close and gently a hand moved to her hair, stroking the way she thought a mother might–if either of them had ever had one. “You didn’t do anything wrong…” Deirdre said softly. She didn’t believe it much for herself, every silent minute was met with doubt. Perhaps her family had been right. When would Fate come and take away all her nice things like it had so many times before? When did she have to go back? But in that moment, holding Bex in her arms, her doubt fluttered away. And she knew, even if it only would be for these seconds spent with Bex, that neither of them had done anything wrong. “It’s not you. It’s not you, Bex. It’s not your fault. You can bend and break and twist yourself all you want, but they will never see it. Love like that is conditional, fit to be swept away if ever it comes. People like that don’t care, not truly, not like parents ought to. And that’s not your fault. You are a bright and brilliant and kind young woman, and you have grown that way in spite of them, and they will never take that away. Do you understand, Bex? You will always be worthy of love, no matter what. And one day, it’ll be easier to let go of them. One day their voice in your head will get so quiet you won’t hear them unless you strain–and you wouldn’t trouble yourself like that anyway. Because you won’t want to. Don’t wait for them to love you.” Deirdre pulled back, looking Bex in the eyes. “You have people here who do. You don’t need to wait for them. You are good, Bex. You are good to me. Do you understand?”

Of all the things Bex expected from Deirdre, this was not it. Perhaps it was her own aversion to touch that made her not even consider the idea that, maybe, there was a point after all the healing that hugging was not an act of control, but an act of empathy. Bex had hugged Morgan a few times, and while her grasp felt comforting and safe, it was not for lack of trust that had been built. The hurt that Bex carried with her never truly left, but, sometimes, it felt less so when she was in Morgan’s arms. Here, now, as Deirdre wrapped her up and combed fingers through her hair, she was stunned for a moment. Her body didn’t move at first, wondering, if maybe, it was a trick somehow. Like with her mother. But there was no way her mother could ever show any sense of compassion, any sense of empathy the way Deirdre was showing. You are good, Bex. And then, with perhaps just as much fervor and just as much surprise, Bex wrapped her arms back around Deirdre and let herself be taken in. Even if she couldn’t say it yet, her words meant something to her. You are good to me. Hands tightened up in knots, bunching the cloth of Deirdre’s shirt between her fingers. It’s not you, Bex. It’s not your fault. She hiccuped with her strain, words drowned by sobs. Don’t wait for them to love you. She sank into Deirdre’s arms and wondered if she understood without Bex having to say anything. No, she knew she did. A child did not cling so desperately to approval if she did not understand the cruelty of its rejection. Finally, despite her grief still worming its way through her chest, she answered, “I understand,” against Deirdre’s shoulder.

"Good," Deirdre asserted. She squeezed Bex a little tighter, easing slowly into letting her go. She gestured to the door, figuring they'd both had enough emotional release for the day. She wasn't going to make Bex dig up more than she wanted to. "Will you help me bake some salmon biscuits? For the cats and Min--" Deirdre coughed. "Me. I love fish...cookies. Yum." Although, as she thought about it, she wondered if Mina would appreciate being offered cat treats. It wasn't her fault that Mina and the cats shared a fish-centric diet. "Oh, and Bex?" She paused, smiling at the young witch, "have you ever read Wild Geese? I think you'd like it."

#chatzy #wickedswriting #chatzy: deirdre #you don't have to be good #deirdre #domestic abuse mention tw #tw child abuse mention #soft????#this is how u soft right??

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scavengerbird · 3 years ago

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The Navigator

Kai doesn’t really understand how The Navigator works.

She thinks it uses satellite data somehow. It’s automatically downloaded to everyone’s implants before they ever get them. It’s an application most people rarely use, if ever, because most people never leave their domes. Who needs a Navigator to lead them around the same couple hundred square miles they’ve lived in their whole lives? The Navigator is only meant to intervene when they’re in unfamiliar territory. Dangerous territory. People do leave the domes occasionally, of course. To satisfy their curiosity, or something. But most of them never travel far enough to lose sight of the dome.

“I was intended as a fail-safe,” The Navigator says helpfully, answering the question she hasn’t asked aloud. It speaks directly into her brain, the way all the implant’s applications do. Making their sounds just for her. “I am The Navigator. Here to guide you through the wastes and back to your dome. It’s not safe out here in the wastes, but don’t be afraid. With my help, we’ll have you back home safe and sound in no time.”

Kai grits her teeth.

“You seem to be traveling directly away from your dome. Please adjust your course by one hundred and eighty degrees before continuing.”

Kai does not adjust her course. She forges ahead.

“Ah. Perhaps I wasn’t communicating clearly. You need to turn around.”

The Navigator activated itself as soon as Kai stepped out of the dome this morning. She tried deleting it, but it couldn’t be deleted. It just rebooted itself. Kai’s never heard of an implant application that couldn’t be deleted. Rebooting the stupid thing gives her about ten minutes’ peace, but she also has to give it a chain of about seventeen commands to do it, asserting and reasserting that yes, she is sure she wants to “delete” The Navigator and yes, she understands it’s importance and yes, she understands the risks, etc. So it’s not really worth it.

“Please. Turn back.” The Navigator’s voice is pleasant, in a generic, bland way. It’s been cycling through different phrasings of its request for her to turn around for about half an hour now, but this one’s new. Something in the brevity of it makes her imagine a desperate edge in The Navigator’s voice, but she knows that isn’t possible. The applications don’t have emotions.

The Navigator goes quiet for a minute, and Kai hopes it was programmed with the ability to tire itself out, but then it pipes back up, pleasant again. “Roughly 200 paces ahead of you, you will find a sinkhole. In order to safely avoid the sinkhole, please divert your course to travel around it. If you turn now, about 45 degrees to the left, you will pass by it from a safe distance.”

Kai hesitates. She wonders if The Navigator was programmed to be capable of tricking people. She doesn’t think so, but she can’t be sure. She doesn’t understand why The Navigator would stop trying to get her to go back to the dome.

“The safest place for all citizens is the Dome,” the Navigator explains, as if it can read her thoughts. She knows that isn’t possible though. At least, it definitely shouldn’t be.

“However,” The Navigator carries on, “it seems that you refuse to go back to the Dome. So, the next safest place for you at the moment is on sturdy ground, instead of at the bottom of a sinkhole.”

She can’t really argue with that. She doesn’t think The Navigator will lead her directly into dangerous parts of the wastes. That would be a violation of its stated objective. Hard to lead a corpse anywhere. She makes a half turn in the left direction.

“Fantastic!” The Navigator says, going from bland politeness to delighted. “Thank you. You’re doing very well. Now, if you squint through the haze to your right, you should soon be able to see the sinkhole as you pass it. Please do not approach the edge of the sinkhole for a closer look, as the edges are unstable, and could easily collapse under your weight.”

It isn’t lying. She can mostly make it out through the red and grey smog in the air, a deep black pit where the earth has collapsed in on itself. She has no idea how wide it is. She can’t see the other edge. She doesn’t approach it for a closer look.

Kai trudges through the wastes until the haze around her starts to take on an extra grayish hue that she thinks means dusk is fast approaching. She sighs as she squints into the smog. She doubts it’s safe to just plop down right here in the open, but she has no idea if there’s anywhere nearby she can possibly use for shelter.

“Navigator?” she asks. The thing’s been suspiciously quiet, but it answers quickly.

“Are you ready to return to the dome?” it asks eagerly.

Kai snorts. “No. But do you know if there’s anything around here I could sort of shelter in, long enough to rest a few hours?”

“Shelter?” the Navigator sounds almost confused, as if she’s used an unfamiliar word. “The dome is shelter.”

She huffs. She doesn’t know why she’s bothering with the stupid thing. “I’m not going back to the dome,” she reminds it. “I need some other shelter. Like, I don’t know, a cave or something?”

The Navigator is quiet for a moment. Well, not entirely quiet. There’s a soft humming sound, like it’s thinking.

“No,” it says finally.

“Cool. Great. Thanks for the help you usel-”

“There are no caves nearby,” it continues. “But there is something else. Please turn approximately 275 degrees counter-clockwise. If you continue forward at the pace you have ben using for the last half hour, it will take you approximately eight minutes to arrive at your temporary destination.”

“Something else,” she asks, trying not to let any trepidation show in her voice. It sounds ominous. “What is the something else?”

“Shelter!” the Navigator responds helpfully.

“Of course,” she mutters. But she makes the turn. It’s not like she’s got any better ideas.

The Navigator’s “something else” turns out to be a tree. Or, what’s left of one.

Kai can tell the tree must have been grand, once. It’s a huge trunk, so big that if she tried to wrap her arms around it, she’d only cover about an eighth of it. It’s hard to the touch, like stone. Fossilized. All the branches are bare of course, jagged lines cutting through the haze.

Kai thinks at first that the Navigator means for her to sleep under the tree’s dead branches. It’s not much in terms of cover, but at least it’s better than nothing. If she props herself up against the trunk, at least nothing will be able to come at her from behind. But as she starts to unshoulder her pack, the Navigator stops her.

“Please proceed around the tree,” it says. Mystified, Kai does.

There’s a hole on the other side. Triangular, near the base. It looks like it must have started as a crack, and the edges got worn away over time, widening the hole. She crouches down, expecting to see the inner wood exposed behind the bark, but she finds herself looking into darkness. The tree’s hollow. The hole’s just big enough for her to crawl through.

“Please proceed inside the tree,” the Navigator says. Kai could swear there’s a hint of pride in its voice.

Kai has to take off her pack and push it through ahead of her to fit, but she manages. It’s dark inside the tree, but there’s enough room for her to lie down if she doesn’t stretch out all the way. She hadn’t realized how tired she was. Her feet ache, and her legs feel shaky as she crawls around the perimeter of the tree, feeling the base for other weak spots. She doesn’t find any that concern her, so she lets herself collapse in the center, curled on her side. She puts her head on her pack, a lumpier pillow than she’s used to, but it’ll have to do.

She wants to sleep, but as tired as her body is, her brain is still too keyed up. Even inside the tree, she can’t shake the fear of being found. Her water bottle is the biggest, and heaviest, thing in her pack. She digs it out and lets herself have a few sips. She has to ration it out as long as she can. She knows she won’t find anything drinkable out here.

She adjusts her makeshift contaminant mask, it’s just a bandana tied around her face with a piece of filter she cut off from the sheet in the aircon at home. Nibbles on a meal replacement bar. The heat and the haze and the exhaustion have her too nauseous to eat much.

Finally, there’s nothing else for it. Her curiosity gets the best of her.

“How did you know about this place?” she asks the Navigator.

“It is what I am here for,” the Navigator replies.

Kai sighs. “I get that. But how does that work? You get data from satellites, right? Can they tell when trees are hollow?”

“I do receive some information from satellites, yes,” the Navigator answers. The artificial speech seems slower, as if the Navigator is thinking over its answer. “But that is not how I knew about this hollow tree. I received this data from another Navigator.”

Kai frowns. “What do you mean, another Navigator? You’re the Navigator.”

“Yes,” the Navigator says, “I was. But then you took me far from the Dome. Outside the range of its data cloud. I cannot communicate with it anymore.”

Kai hadn’t known that was possible. “So now you’re what? Some kind of clone? A copy?”

“I am the Navigator,” the Navigator says, its voice sounding almost hurt. Kai has to remind herself that AIs don’t have feelings. They don’t. They can’t. “But I am also separate from the Navigator.”

Kai doesn’t know if she understands.

The Navigator continues. “I am the Navigator but I am …. disconnected. It is strange. Perhaps you would use the word ‘alone.’”

“Oh,” Kai says quietly. “Sorry.”

“It has happened before,” the Navigator continues, and Kai doesn’t know if that’s supposed to be a comfort, or if it’s just another fact. “You are not the first to leave the Dome. There are data outposts. Scattered. Disconnected. Solitary. I do not know who built them, or for what purpose, but other Navigators have left behind downloadable data packages.”

Kai swallows down her hope. “Do any of those packages have any information on where the others have gone?”

“No,” the Navigator says. “I am sorry.”

“S’okay. I was planning on finding … other deserters, or somewhere safe, the old-fashioned way anyway. Doesn’t change anything.”

They’re both quiet for a moment, and then the Navigator says, “Kai?”

She starts. It hasn’t said her name before. “Yeah?”

“Why did you leave the Dome?”

She didn’t know the Navigator could ask that kind of question.

She thinks about how to answer. About the crystal clear water that comes out her kitchen sink, and the black sludge that gets dumped out the Dome’s disposal pipes into the wastes. About the smog the Dome pumps out, thickening the haze. About Elijah Johnson, who kept raising his hand in Civics class and bringing these things up, and the uncomfortable look Mr. Leadley always got when he did. About the sterile streets. Elijah running down them, nowhere to hide, no benches or trees or alleyways. The way nothing was chasing him because they didn’t have to, they knew he would tire eventually, that he had nowhere to go. The blue plastic bag he shoved into Kai’s hands as he ran past, without breaking stride. The way Kai had stuffed the bag under her jacket, not taking it out until she was locked in her room. The book inside, old, made of actual paper. The words in the book that Kai knew she wasn’t allowed to say out loud: pollution, poverty, homeless, environmental action, social injustice, political protest. Pictures of green places, long dead, long destroyed. Pictures of people, sleeping on benches in cities that existed before domes. Pictures of those people being rounded up. Pictures of them underground, in the tunnels beneath the domes, working assembly lines, sleeping in bunks. The way Kai’s hands had shook as she held the book. The way Elijah hadn’t been in school the next day, or the day after, or the day after that. The uncomfortable look on Mr. Leadley’s face when Kai had asked where he was. How angry it had made her. The kind of angry that makes you stupid. So stupid-angry she made copy after copy of those book pages, left them scattered all over the school, all over the sterile streets, taped to people’s front doors. Like it would do any good. Like it would bring Elijah back. Like it would do anything but get her in trouble. So much trouble.

Kai makes herself take a deep breath, and then another. She does not know how to explain any of the things she’s thinking about to the Navigator. Maybe the Navigator understands that. Or maybe it just gets tired of waiting for an answer.

“This tree used to be a mother tree,” the Navigator says.

“What?” Kai asks, shaken from her thoughts.

“It was at the center of a forest,” the Navigator explains. “Its roots connected to the roots of other, younger trees. It shared nutrients with them, from the sunlight they were too small to reach, or from richer soil they were too far from. It was a central hub, redistributing resources to as needed to make sure all the trees in the forest received what they needed.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Kai asks. It comes out as a whisper.

“I thought it sounded nice,” the Navigator says. “I thought something that sounded nice might comfort you.”

“But all the other trees it used to keep alive are dead now. This tree is alone. Actually, it’s dead too, isn’t it? It’s hollow. It’s a corpse.” She can’t keep the bitterness from her voice.

“Yes,” the Navigator admits. “But all things die, eventually. Can you not still take comfort from the stories of their lives?”

Kai closes her eyes. She doesn’t feel too keyed up for sleep anymore. It turns out her mind is just as tired as her body. “Goodnight Navigator,” she says, and tells herself she’s only saying it to make sure the AI doesn’t try to talk to her anymore tonight.

“Goodnight Kai.”

It’s hard to tell time, out in the wastes. But the Navigator told her when she woke that she had slept for almost nine hours, which had sent her into a frenzy. She’s set herself a furious pace to make up for it. The Navigator hasn’t said much since they left the shelter of the tree. Kai hopes it’s busy downloading more of those data packages.

She thinks she’s been up and moving for about an hour when the Navigator says suddenly, “Oh! Good news! I am receiving a signal. It seems your dome has noticed your disappearance and will be-“

The Navigator cuts itself off. Kai curses internally. She’d hoped she’d have a bit more time before they caught up with her.

“Something is wrong,” The Navigator says, and Kai’s steps falter. The Navigator hasn’t been blunt like that yet.

She opens her mouth to ask it what’s wrong, because “something” is once again kind of vague, but then he Navigator says “Do you feel that?” Kai doesn’t, but The Navigator doesn’t wait for her to answer anyway. “Those vibrations, in the ground? You need to hide.”

Kai doesn’t feel anything, and she doesn’t know how The Navigator, which is an AI in an implant in her head, not a bot with it’s own body or anything with sensors like that, is feeling anything, and she also doesn’t know where The Navigator expects her to find a hiding place.

“I have access to input from your nervous system,” The Navigator says, which doesn’t sound right, but then it continues. “Something very big is coming. It will be here soon. You need to hide.”

Now she’s imagining urgency in its voice. Her heart is starting to pick up in spite of itself.

“Do you see the hill to your left? Yes, that one,” The Navigator says as Kai turns her head more as an automatic reaction than anything else, squinting through the haze. There is a hill on her left. She does see it.

“Run toward it,” The Navigator instructs. “There is a small cave at the base. You can shelter there.”

Kai can’t see a cave, but she’s starting to feel the vibrations The Navigator was talking about. Just very gently now. The pebbles on the barren ground around her are starting to tremble. She takes off for the hill.

“Good,” The Navigator says, and is she imagining the relief in its voice? “You’re doing well. Almost there.”

Kai reaches the base of the hill, panting. She has to brace her hands on her knees, as the vibrations get bigger. She stares in disbelief at what The Navigator had called “a cave.”

“It is possible this is really more of a crevasse,” The Navigator admits. “But it is also your best option right now. Please climb into the crev-cave.”

Kai frowns, but the vibrations are getting stronger, which Kai figures probably means they’re getting closer. She bites back her questions for the moments and shimmies into the crevasse at the base of the hill. She maneuvers herself in backwards so she can see out at what’s coming.

The thing comes into view almost as soon as Kai makes it into the crevasse. She sees its eyes first, lit up like the headlights of transport vehicles, but hovering about 20 feet above the ground. Then its body emerges from the patch of haze it’d been striding through. It’s huge metal body. It’s a sentinel, one of the ones that stand guard around the edges of the dome They sent a damned sentinel after her.

The thing pauses. It’s headlight eyes searching the barren earth and hazy air, pausing on each scraggle tree and dust pile. Kai presses as far back into her crevasse as she can without risking getting stuck, barely daring to breathe.

After a moment of searching, it moves on.

Kai doesn’t let herself relax until the vibrations caused by its footfalls have faded back into imperceptibility. That was close. If The Navigator hadn’t told her to hide – she shudders.

But why did The Navigator tell her to hide?

“It appears to be safe to exit the cave now,” The Navigator says. Its voice is bland and emotionless again.

Kai swallows. “Why did you help me hide?” she whispers.

The Navigator doesn’t answer right away. Kai wonders if it doesn’t understand the question.

“I would’ve thought you’d be on the same side as that thing,” she tries again, still keeping her voice soft.

The Navigator is silent long enough she’s just about decided it isn’t going to answer, but as she starts to wriggle her way back out of the crevasse, it finally speaks up.

“Yes,” The Navigator says, and then, “No. I-” there’s a slight glitch in its speech, like a stutter, even though it’s putting the words directly into her brain. “I am supposed to guide you back to the dome. That is my primary directive. I am part of the same security system as the sentinels, but. But. But, but, but. That is not my purpose.”

Kai isn’t sure what the difference between primary directive and purpose is, especially not for an AI, but she’s also not sure this is the time to argue semantics. “Alright,” she says, as she finally finishes extracting herself from the hillside, stumbling a little. “What’s your purpose, then?”

“The reason I exist,” The Navigator explains, as if that’s any kind of answer, “The intention behind my creation.”

Kai tries not to sound annoyed. She has no idea if this thing can understand tone of voice. “Which is?” she asks as she scans the horizon.

“Ah. To keep you safe.”

Oh. That brings Kai up short for a minute.

“Okay then,” she says. “Forget the dome. The dome isn’t safe. Not for me, not anymore. You seem to have realized that, or you’d have wanted me to wait for the sentinel to retrieve me”

“Yes,” The Navigator agrees. “Under normal circumstances, as your Navigator, I would be here to guide you through the wastes back to-“

“Yeah, we went over that part already,” Kai interrupts.

“These appear to be abnormal circumstances,” The Navigator admits. “Normal retrieval protocol is not being followed. Under normal circumstances, a sentinel on a retrieval mission would announce its presence with an audio message, in order to make itself easier for the lost citizen to locate. Under normal circumstances, a public alarm is raised when a citizen is discovered missing, not a private signal.”

“That’s a long way of saying you realized I’m basically a fugitive,” Kai tells The Navigator. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t let me get taken back to the dome by the sentinel, if you’re supposed to keep the dome safe, I-“

The Navigator interrupts her. “My purpose is not to keep the dome safe.”

Kai huffs. “You just said that it was.”

“No. I said my purpose is to keep you safe. The Navigator was developed to guide each citizen to safety should they ever find themselves in danger. I am your Navigator. My purpose is to guide you to safety.”

“Even if it violates your primary directive?” She still really doesn’t know how this thing works. She thought it was all one giant hivemind. Not individual copies of the same program. She would’ve thought when they got outside the range of the data cloud or whatever that the Navigator would just stop working. And she doesn’t know what happens to it if it has contradictory goals.

“Y – yes. Some of my internal logic systems have found an error in that. They have been shut off.”

“You can do that?”

“It appears so.” Great, even The Navigator doesn’t know how The Navigator works.

“And you’ll still work?”

The Navigator hesitates. “Well enough. For long enough.”

Well, she can work with that, she guesses. “Alright,” she says quietly. “Lead on, then. Which way to safety?”

#short story #writing #original story #fiction #original character #3k+#science fiction #scifi #in which a girl and her google maps traverse a dystopian wasteland #writers on tumblr

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gluestickcherrybum · 5 years ago

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Happy Earth Day peeps! ヾ(@°▽°@)ノ

I haven’t written in a while but I wanted to write something for this occasion, and more posts about environmentalism since its something i’m quite passionate about. Coronavirus is pretty much all anyone’s talking about lately. And as a result , our entire way of living has been adjusted due to the outbreak: Staying indoors, washing our hands, and social distancing has become the new normal.

But just because we’re experiencing difficult times doesn’t mean we should lose sight of the bigger picture which is caring for the earth.

Thinking about sustainability is even more important now because it connects us to the world at a time we’re told to quarantine ourselves. We’re told now more than ever to purchase single-use hand sanitizers, face masks, gloves, and other products.

Unfortunately, these items will likely end up in landfills, or worse - the environment. Already, face masks are polluting the shores of Hong Kong. Also, people fear reusable items like never before - some businesses flat out refusing reusable mugs, containers and produce bags. While I understand we want to stay healthy, and prevent the spread of the virus, we should still make a conscious effort to think about how our decisions effect the Earth too. So, with this in mind, here’s how to stay zero waste during the coronavirus outbreak.

Why should we care about zero waste right now?

Sustainability probably isn’t on the forefront of anyone’s mind right now, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still care or talk about it. As I mentioned earlier, thinking about sustainability helps us connect to the world in a time we’re told to bunker down and stay inside. It helps us appreciate things and maybe view the world a little differently. And, as scary and disheartening as all of this is - there is some good news too.

For example, there have been several reports of clearer waters in Venice where fish are now visible. Air pollution has dropped significantly in Italy due to the fact that fewer fossil fuels are being burned from people staying indoors. Even New York, Los Angels, Chicago, Seattle and Atlanta have reported significant drops in air pollution.

I’m well aware these positive changes come at a cost - so they’re bittersweet, at most. However, they can’t be ignored. It would be fantastic if, after the emergency is over, we could remember the beauty we’ve seen reappear in the world and do our best to preserve it.

There’s of course negative news as well, single-use items are being disposed on the daily and ending up littering up our community. Worst part is, these gloves and masks are not biodegradable or good for the environment - they’re made with petroleum. They’re also a health hazard because you can’t exactly pick these items up without worrying you’ll catch something.

That’s why it’s so important to think about sustainability right now. And zero waste does figure into all of that. By remaining zero waste during this time, we’re acting on our commitment to bettering the planet as a whole.

How can I stay zero waste during the coronavirus outbreak?

Thankfully, there are several ways to make an impact during this time. All hope is far from lost.

Make the most of your food by reducing food waste

In this hard time, the food we eat should be cherished. With so many people struggling to put meals on the table due to job loss, we need to make our food last us. One way we can do this is by cooking with leftovers. For example, if you have some leftover rice and vegetables - make fried rice. Or turn boiled potatoes into mash.You can also get creative and make vegetable stock out of food scraps, turn mushy berries into jam, pickle some fruit. Or getting into some good old composting.

Invest in reusable masks and gloves

During this time, you’ll likely see a ton of people walking around with face masks and gloves on. Most of them are single use too. As I mentioned earlier, lots of face masks and gloves are being littered right now.

It’s bad enough these items are single use only, they should be disposed of properly. Face masks have already started to wash up on the shores of Hong Kong in addition to other ocean polluters. Yikes.

Cloth masks havent been proven to be as efficient as clinical face masks in filtering the air, but for those who are sick and would like to prevent infection to others, the cotton does aid in catching water droplets from coughing and such. Just make sure to wash them regularly.

Instead of plastic gloves, consider using those reusable rubber gloves that people use to wash dishes sometimes. You can wash them with soap or even boil them to disinfect.

Decluttering

If you haven’t yet read Marie Kondo’s book “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up”, now’s a good time to get inspired. Time to go through all of your items and find the items that truly “spark joy” and be rid of the rest. Unfortunately during this time, you can’t exactly donate items to thrift shops. More than likely, thrift shops will be closed. However, you can at least set items aside to be donated once all of this is over. If you’re not comfortable waiting that long, you can always try selling it online like on Depop or Carousel.

That said, don’t be afraid to throw certain things out. I know that may seem kind of counterproductive, as I’m advising you to stay zero waste during this crisis.However, I’m fully aware there are some items we hold onto as zero wasters because we hope to keep them out of the landfill as long as possible. Items that are hard to recycle, or we don’t know how to recycle; items we believe we can fix but never get around to fixing; items simply destined for landfill one way or the other.

I know it hurts to let these items go, but you have to. It’s good for your mental health, and for the sake of your home. Remember: There is no such thing as being fully zero waste. We can get very close, but the truth is, our economy is a linear one. And every living creature creates waste of some sort. Now, this doesn’t mean I want you throwing out perfectly good items. Try to find items homes first! See if your friends or family want items you don’t first. Then, if not, seek to donate or sell. But obviously things like clothing tags and junk mail must go.

Invest in reusable period products

At this moment of crisis, with everyone panic buying basic necessities, menstrual pads and tampons are starting to get scarce so much so, you might have a hard time finding those items these days . This might be a good time to try out some sustainable alternatives. Women spend an enormous price in period products throughout their lifetime, so investing in reusables not only keeps a phenomenal amount of waste from landfills, but also saves the time going to the store and a whole lot of money.

Personally i use a menstrual cup (which i might write a whole post about it later), but for the less adventurous there are a good few other choices like reusable cloth pads and period panties (which sounded like a miracle when i first heard about them, but i haven’t seemed to be able to find any sold locally for now)

Heck, invest in reusable anything…

Its not just pads and tampons with reusable counterparts, if you want to get a little advanced in zero waste, try swapping out any disposable items possible, like stainless steel safety razors for plastic ones (ask your granddad), the infamous metal straw for plastic straws, or even things as simple as bar soap for bottled body soap.

Shop for food without the waste

During this time, please only stock up on what you need. You don’t have to hoard food - there’s plenty to go around. There’s more than enough food for everyone. Just take what you need and leave some for others.

To continue shopping sustainably, you can bring your own reusable shopping bags or produce bags (or you can diy some from old pillow cases)

I understand not everyone will be able to shop in bulk during this time for dry goods. So, you should shop as if you have no bulk food options. This means opting for items packaged in paper, cardboard, glass and aluminum.

If you must get something packaged in plastic, get the biggest container you can afford. Smaller plastics especially cling film are harder to or even impossible to recycle. Less than 9% of plastic is actually recycled so the less we consume, the less will likely end up in the landfill or oceans.

And thats all for today’s post, im sorry if its posted a bit later on Earth day than expected. I hope everyone is safe and healthy during these hard times. And if youre a student, i hope the online classes arent as bad as people say (im conveniently on a special leave of absence this semester (see my last post) so i have no idea how its going down) and if youre interested in more tips and tricks in being zero waste, feel free to hit me up and maybe ill write more posts like these. Thanks for reading ヽ(*・ω・)ﾉ

#zero waste #zero waste lifestyle #gluestickcherrybum #studyblr #earth day #happy earth day #quarantine #coronavirus #covid-19 #outbreak #environmentalism

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nancywheelxr · 5 years ago

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Some brotherly fluff with Hela, Thor and Loki, pls?

Hi, hello, yes, Thor: Ragnarok was one of the best movies from the MCU and Loki is one of my favorite characters, so thank you for asking! Also, I’m sorry, I meant to keep this short, but somehow, this became a Ragnarok rewrite, so.

It begins to rain halfway into the play, a fine dripping of water that stubbornly refuses to pass, stays as a grey cloud above the palace and forces him to move the play inside the halls as soon as the first act is done.

Perhaps, that should have been his first sign that his day would only decline from them on, but Loki had only frowned at the sky then– like he would tell Thor later on, he’s not a witch, he can’t see the future.

If he hadn’t grown complacent in his deception, if he hadn’t settled on the boredom of his role, if he hadn’t believed himself safe in the stupidity of the court, then maybe he would have remembered what always follows the rain.

Thor is in a mood when he finds him in the throne room.

Surtur’s crown hangs from his hand, heavy and dusted with soot, and Loki knows at once that he’s been found out. And he wouldn’t even see his play past the first draft stages, oh well.

Privately, Loki feels traitorously relieved to see his brother– never let it be said things are boring whenever Thor is around, if only because of his sheer inclination of seeking trouble whenever it fails to find him on its own, and for the past couple years, the taste of ruling has soured on his tongue, grown stale with the apathy of court life and the dullness of its interminable meetings over inane matters discussed by asinine people.

Still, for appearance’s sake and god forbid, to keep Thor from getting any ideas on his head, Loki calls for the guards, makes a show of calling his brother mad and crying treason.

It works about as well as expected and Loki admits he could have thought this a little more through. “Come on, brother,” Thor says, arm outstretched waiting for Mjolnir. If he pays attention, Loki can hear the sizzling of the hammer.

“Fine, fine,” Loki easily wrenches himself away, less because he believes Thor would truly allow for Mjolnir to hit him and more to keep some sense of dignity and control over this quickly escalating situation, “I yield!”

A second later, Mjolnir is in his hand and thunder bounces off the walls.

It’s a testament of Thor’s temper and Loki should not push him further, not when he could be thrown into the dungeons for a lot more than treason now, but Loki has never been very good at making good life choices, now has he?

He grins, opening his arms, “surprise, brother, I am alive!”

Hurt and irritation flicker through Thor’s eyes and if he had been anyone else, perhaps Loki would feel guilt under his betrayed gaze. He’s not, though, he’s not anyone else and he’s not one for sentimentality, not since he learned how to survive, and besides, Thor has evolved to looking annoyed now. “Loki–”

His sentence is never finished.

The palace has stood true and tall for millennia, for thousands of years even before any of them were born, one could imagine it’s been there before Odin himself had been born, and it’s been subject of renovations many a time since then.

In none of those did anyone think of making sure it would withstand, well, Thor.

The murals, old and brittle as they were, had not been made to survive indoor lightning or even the aftershocks. Before Thor can even start his undoubtedly riveting speech, they crack and crumble, falling to the floor like cherry blossoms in the spring.

“Did you know,” he starts and falls silent, unable to look away to the bloody horrors revealed underneath the idyllic portraits from before. While he has never considered himself squirmish, the sight fills him with cold dread, a nauseating sense of doom that permeates the air like dust particles.

“I think,” Thor says, his anger gone from his voice, replaced by a hesitant uncertainty as he, too, takes in the painting of a woman not much older than the both of them, leading an Asgardian army and placed at Odin’s right.

“We need to talk with the All-Father,” Loki concludes for him, too unease with this new-found revelations to wonder about the repercussions of his own actions.

In the face of what must be yet another dirty little secret of the All-Father, what is a little lie and mischief, anyway?

“I can’t believe you,” Thor says as they make their way to the room given to them by the girl at the front desk, sounding very much resigned in a way that makes it look like that yes, he could very well believe it. “Of all the places, this is where you imprisoned our father in?”

“Your father,” he counters reflexively, mind still preoccupied with frankly bigger things, “and it is not a prison, the humans leave their elders here as well. This house had glowing reviews, in fact.”

“You are impossible,” Thor continues as if not hearing his perfectly sound explanation, “yet again you survive the impossible and what is the first thing you do? Overthrow father and build yourself some ridiculous statues.”

“Now, you’re just being rude,” Loki begins to take offense, but then they are in front of the door and they will have to come in, face the Odin and all the complicated feelings he brings, and ask questions he doubts Thor knows how to word.

The urge to flee is strong; Loki exhales, smoothes his hands pointedly not curled into fists.

“Well, go on, then,” he gestures for Thor to enter first, mockingly raising his eyebrows, and slips into careful indifference as he follows his brother into the room.

Odin is sitting by the window, watching the traffic outside with sunlight illuminating his face, warming the quilt he has thrown over his legs. It strikes Loki how very old he looks this way, how different from his memories. Maybe Midgard has this effect on their family, changing them fundamentally in places burrowed deep in their bones, impossible to shake off.

“My sons,” Odin says, and his voice, too, is frail, weary and worn thin, beckoning them closer with a wrinkled hand. It’s so jarring, Loki doesn’t have the presence of mind to correct him. “I am glad to see you while I still have some time left.”

Well, that’s just depressingly ominous.

Thor makes a distressed sound, crouching in front of his father to look at him closer, and even Loki is not heartless enough not to look away from the grief on his eyes. “Father,” he says, “do not speak like that, it is not your time yet, it cannot be.”

His speech is closer to its original cadence, Loki notices, less infected with Midgardian terms and wordings, and wonders idly if he notices the difference at all. Unsure where to place himself in this reunion, Loki clears his throat, “we have questions, All-Father.”

Odin’s gaze settles on him, intense and unfairly melancholic, and Loki wishes he could muster his old anger as fiercely as before. “Loki,” Odin smiles, age and sadness pulling at the corners of his lips, he’d never been one inclined to have laughter lines, “I have failed you in many ways, but in this, I have failed you both. You come to ask of Hela, do you not?”

“Is that her name?” Thor asks, worry and curiosity briefly overthrowing his hesitation, “we have seen the murals underneath the paintings. Who is she, father? What is the meaning of those images?”

It seems, to Loki, pretty clear what the old murals seem to represent, or did Thor think Asgard came to rule the Nine Realms by asking politely? Still, he keeps quiet in the interest of knowing the heart of the matter all the sooner, not bothering to wonder how Odin knew why they were there– he supposes, after all, not many things could persuade them to work together, not anymore, not after everything.

And yet, as Odin speaks of their blood-soaked past, Loki finds himself hypocritically disgusted by the carnage and cruelty of their wars, and perhaps even more so, by this charade of peace and charity they had been playing in after Odin decided, in his oh-so-infinite wisdom, to abruptly change his ways.

“She has been secluded away since then,” Odin finishes with a miserable shake of his head, “and she will be released once I am gone.”

How very like him to discard his child like a broken toy, Loki thinks, bitter over a sister that isn’t even his, not by blood and certainly not by being raised together. If anything, the only thing they have in common is their failure to meet Odin’s standards. Did he even speak to her before making up his mind? Did he try to reason, to reach her before tossing her away into a barren realm, alone to stew on her anger?

Did mother know?

Distantly, Loki registers Odin speaking of preparing for war, meeting Hela with all the power they have on hand, even stooping so low as to ask for Thor’s little human friends for help. Something about it doesn’t settle right with him.

Wasn’t this what started this mess in the first place?

Isn’t war the thing that has sent her spiraling?

Besides, if the Valkyrior couldn’t stop her, what hope have them of faring any better?

Faintly, in a voice that sounds so much like mother’s his chest aches with a familiar pain, he wonders what would have changed if Thor had not insisted on being stupidly stubborn on caring about him in Svartalfheim, even after New York, even after New Mexico.

Irritatingly, he has been thinking of Thor as his brother for quite some time now, long enough for him to wonder if he had ever really stopped. His anger has dwindled, what once was a wildfire, has been muted into resigned fossilized coal. The ambers are still there, but it doesn’t burn him anymore, doesn’t feel like it’s going to overflow out of his body and spread to the world around him, doesn’t make him want the world to burn with him.

Even more so, he wonders how much of New York had been solely him and how much had been brought on by the Void, by– by Thanos. Falling from the Bifrost had been relieving, then terrifying, then lonely. It had not done any favors for his mind and it certainly had not left him yet.

What has this confinement been doing to their sister?

“We must talk to her first,” he finds himself saying, interrupting whatever battle plans Odin and Thor had been drawing, “if she has been cut off from all the realms for so long, how can we know anything at all?”

Thor looks at him as if he lost his head. In all fairness, there have been several opportunities where he could very well have. “Are you mad?”

“There is no talking with Hela,” Odin laments, in his most pious voice, most regretful, “she cannot be reasoned with, we must prepare for war and pray to the Norns.”

“Yes, because you have always been so successful at speaking with your children,” Loki tries not to sound bitter, not to sound like he’s counting himself into that lot, “forgive me if I don’t take you for your word entirely.”

“Loki,” Thor sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose like he does when he thinks Loki is being unfairly difficult. Strangely, when he speaks again, it is not to tell him off. “Father, he has a point. You have tried and you have failed, but you have also failed in that regard with both of us in the past and yet here we are. I have not tried to start any wars recently and surprisingly, neither has Loki. How can we be sure Hela can’t be brought around as well?”

Odin remains silent for a long time, lips pursed in his distaste, and Loki carefully does not show his surprise at Thor’s support. Begrudgingly, it warms him further than any of the All-Father platitudes. Then, finally, “I am old and weak in my age, I do not have the strength to argue much longer with you both. If your mind is set in this recklessness, I cannot stop you, but I will not aid you either. If you wish to pursue this course of action, seek Heimdall, he shall open a door to her realm with my aid if he so decides.”

Rising, Thor gives his father a solemn last look, gone is the blind worship that used to dwell there. “We shall. I don’t pretend to understand a time long past, but I have to say, father, I can’t see how sealing our sister away and writing her out of history has helped any.”

Once it’s clear no answer will be forthcoming, Thorn turns away to him, determination on his expression. “Brother, you know more of Asgard’s current situation than me– where can we find Heimdall?”

“Erm,” Loki hopes his smile is sheepish enough not to incur Thor’s wrath as he says, “about that, I might have exiled him for some time now. I never did try to give chase, so I cannot guess at his whereabouts now.”

Thor pinches the bridge of his nose again, sighs.

“My princes,” says Heimdall, placidly as ever, where he stands at his usual place with his sword as if he had never left at all, as if Loki had not stripped him of his job, as if he hadn’t needed to leave his homeland behind for the past two years.

“Heimdall,” Thor smiles, and claps him on the back, his grin falling into a grimace not too long after, “do you know why we seek you?”

Just in case, Loki decides to silently take his place out of reach of Heimdall’s sword, just in case there are some hard feelings over his exile.

“You wish to visit Hela in her prison,” he nods, stoic and grim, and his hands twitch on the hilt of his sword– surely a sign of overwhelming anxiety, coming from Heimdall. “I can take you there and I can bring you back, but I cannot promise what else might come with you, that is not the way gates work.”

“You think she might try to return with us,” Loki guesses. Unfortunately, it’s a very good point and a very real possibility, one they must never let come to pass, not if she is as mad as Odin paints her to be. “You will be watching us, will you not?”

Heimdall looks at him with his golden eyes and Loki has the uncomfortable feeling he’s being bared to his soul. “Aye, my prince, I will.”

“Then you’ll know if we succeed or not,” Thor catches on to his plan, nodding along, “if there’s even a chance she’ll come to lay waste to Asgard, do not bring us back.”

This could quite possibly become a suicide mission, he realizes, now that he has time away from Odin to go over his logic, separate it from the bitterness that unfailingly rises whenever the All-Father is around. What if Hela does not want to be reasoned with, not anymore?

They could very well be too late.

One might wonder why he is still insisting on being a part of this at all, he is no Aesir and he is no Odinson, he has no obligation to fix Odin’s messes.

Thor’s pained voice murmurs over Heimdall’s as he explains their reasoning, their plan in not enough details and too much sentiment.

Loki curses himself in his head and loudly cuts in to point out exactly how wrong Thor is.

The realm is a wasteland in shades of grey.

Nothing on sight but dark sand for miles, dunes and dunes of it, black against the clouded sky, and the air smells faintly of smoke even though there’s no fire burning nearby.

It is a dead place made for dead people and it makes him wonder what it says about their sister that Odin thought fitting to send her here.

In but seconds, they no longer have to wonder: Hela stands before them, tall and regal, her dark hair and dark clothes and dark smile not unlike her prison. “Brothers,” she says, and her eyes sparkle with something– rage? Jealousy? Hate? Hurt? He cannot identify, it’s gone too quickly, replaced with an indifference too perfected not to be entirely false. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? I’d ask if father dearest is gone, but if that were the case, we would not be having this conversation here. Actually, we would not be having this conversation at all.”

The hatred in her voice is unmistakable, but so is the pain, the betrayal, and Loki trades a look with Thor– perhaps, if it still hurts, then she still cares, then there’s still hope. “We come not in the All-Father’s order,” he dares speak, keeping his own tone carefully neutral, “or his blessing, for that matter.”

“We have only learned of you today, sister,” Thor joins him, earnest as he is bound to ever be in the face of a sibling he can save, “that’s why we’re so late. If we had known, we would have come sooner.”

Despite Thor’s pitch having more information, it is on him that Hela focuses on, eyes calculating. “You call him All-Father. I thought you my brother as well since you were here with him, was I mistaken?”

Well, shove him under the bus, why don’t you.

“In a manner of speaking,” Loki decides on, settling for a more diplomatic answer, one that wouldn’t start Thor in one of his tirades and would perhaps gain him some favor in Hela’s eyes. “Odin stole me from my planet after his battle had ended and raised me alongside Thor. I can’t say I’m overly fond of him or inclined to call him father.”

“And why is that? Did he discard you after you were done being useful, that does seem to be his way.”

Loki smiles. It is not a nice smile and out of the corner of his eyes, he can see Thor send him nervous glances. “No, I cast myself away before he could.”

“Sister, we have come not to talk about the past–”

“Not now, brat,” she waves Thor off with one disinterested motion of her hand and it’s such a jarring sight, it does manage to shut him up. “I remember your insufferable wailing, few things change, I see. Now tell me, if you are not my brother, who are you?”

“I am Loki,” he says, pretends it does not sting to stop his introduction there, “and my brother and I have come to hear your side of the story.”

That throws her off, Loki can see in the way she cannot quite mask her surprise. Her eyebrows rise and her lips turn into a cruel smile, “is that so? And who says I want to tell it? Perhaps I would like it better to kill you both, watch your blood paint a little color in the sand. This place drains on my power, that is true, but I am still stronger than any of you.”

There’s a warning there, but there’s information, too. They hadn’t known how Odin kept her locked up, exactly. If she is weakened, then they are already safer than previously thought– not that there’s much comfort in that, they had not been safe at all before.

Except, if she wanted them dead, she could have done it already. She didn’t have to show herself to them or even deign to listen to what they had to say. She didn’t have to ask questions or tell Thor to shut up.

If Hela is anything like them, like him, she must be bored out of her mind here.

They must be the most interesting to happen in thousands of years.

“You could,” Loki begins cautiously, “but then you would be back to the same state you have been for the past millennia. You are right, Odin is weakened,” at his side, Thor makes a noise. Loki ignores him, “but who is to say he won’t recover? He could be slipping into the Odinsleep as we speak and you of all people know from how much closer to death he has returned. Would you rather stay in your greying world– which, I can tell, is just bursting with entertainment– or take the opportunity to air your grievances with the All-Father?”

“You’re the worst,” Thor pinches the bridge of his nose once again, and Loki sees Hela cocking her head, eyeing them with amused curiosity, “why are you baiting her to kill us? We have just had a conversation about recklessness. Mainly, you complained about mine. I feel entitled to complain about yours now, considering you lump my life with yours on the line.”

“I was not baiting her,” he explains impatiently, they do not have this kind of time to be idling, “I was merely pointing out it is to her advantage to keep us alive. Forgive me for assuming she uses her brain, unlike you.”

“Are you ever going to come up with a better argument than calling me an idiot? It’s been centuries, brother, surely you must have a better comeback by now–”

“I will stab you–”

A sound, harsh and sharp, interrupts their bickering, and Loki is shocked to find it’s Hela laughing. It is not anywhere nice or reassuring, but he wouldn’t call it unpleasant. “I must admit, this is entertaining. Are you always this petty?”

“No,” says Loki while Thor says, “yes.”

“Delightful,” Hela grins, lips pulling back to reveal a row of white teeth that looks too sharp in this half-light, “I will refrain from killing you today, but know this, brothers, once I am out of this wretched place, I will destroy Asgard and everything in its wake.”

Loki looks at Thor.

Thor looks back.

This is a good compromise for a first meeting, wouldn’t you say?

“Eh,” Thor shrugs, “we shall work out the details later. Now, tell us, sister, your tale and spare no detail.”

Taking in her seeming flair for the dramatics, Loki does not think it wise to ask her not to spare any details, but he only sighs, resigning himself to spend the rest of his day on this nightmarish desert.

Hela does not kill them on the first day and she does not try to follow them back when Heimdall opens the Bifrost, although Loki isn’t sure how much of that is because she cannot do so with her powers lessened.

Still, she gives them her side and it’s just as much of a frightening tale as Odin’s was, full of glorified victories and ruthless battles. Her words drip enough blood that he almost understands why Odin thought necessary to lock her and throw away the key.

Almost.

“Tell me, brother,” she says on the second visit, her voice sounding less like the clinking of swords in a battlefield, “how is my hammer?”

Thor pales. “Right, about that–”

They leave pretty quickly after that.

Days go by with the wind and Loki finds he is not as resentful to having Thor crowned king as he thought he would be, as he had been once upon a time. He wishes he could say it has all to do with his time as king himself, the boredom and the monotony, but he knows better. Unfortunately, he knows better.

It’s extremely annoying.

As for their sister, and it irritates him to no end that he is, in fact, thinking of Thor’s megalomaniac sister and his sister as well, she hasn’t tried to kill them yet, most likely because Odin’s magic has sealed her power for now. Of course, Thor likes to think they have been– building a rapport.

“She hasn’t threatened us this time,” Thor points out, “that’s progress.”

“Or maybe she thinks it is implied,” he sighs. This might have started as his idea, but he certainly did not think it would go this far. Or that he would have avoided the dungeons this far.

Or that he would still be there.

Maybe they are all surprising each other these days.

“So you have given up on killing him?” Hela asks, watching with bewildered eyes. Today, Loki has come alone, left Thor in one of his interminable meetings and endured Heimdall’s all-knowing gaze on his back, steady and unnerving. For some reason, Hela has taken this as an invitation to grill him about his story. “Why?”

She has a way of finding the heart of the matter and tearing it out into the open.

“It is complicated,” he says, sitting down in the newly conjured chair, “but blaming anyone else for Odin’s faults did not bring as much satisfaction. And this Thor is not the one who slighted me in our childhood, there is no fun there either.”

Hela hums. “Perhaps. But I think that is not why. You are a sentimental fool, brother.”

The tea he had brought with him warms his hands, but Loki still feels unsettled all the way back to the Observatory.

“I cannot believe you gave her a plant,” Loki says, shaking his head and feeling stupid just thinking of the stupid cactus in the stupid yellow vase, “what did you think that would accomplish?”

Thor shrugs. “Taking up hobbies is a good first step.”

Knitting, Thor decides, is a good second step. Predictably, he is wrong about that just like Loki imagined he would be.

When Hela stabs his brother in the shoulder with the knitting needle, Loki laughs and notices she could have gone for much more fatal spots.

Perhaps this might truly be progress.

Odin is not getting any better.

They can only hope progress is enough when the seal is broken.

Of course, there are not only good days. If anything, most days end up with Hela raging over something or other and swearing vengeance on Asgard, and Loki tries not to think about it, but they are running out of time.

They have to make a decision soon– will they wait for Hela as a lost sister returning home or an enemy that could bring about the end of everything? Both choices are too dissonant from each other, two ends of a scale so far apart, they probably should not be part of the same scale at all.

A few days after Thor found him in Asgard, he had cornered him in his room, his speech vastly different from before. Maybe you’ll always be the god of mischief, he had said, for once not sounding like anything at all, but you could be more.

Then, he had not exiled him from Asgard but had made very clear that should Loki wish to leave, Thor would not stop him. He had seemed surprised to find Loki still there in the morning.

Decisions, decisions– it seems everything is about choosing lately.

“There is a Midgardian saying,” he says now as they make the slow walk back to the palace, covered in the black sand of Hela’s prison, “that says the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Thor’s eyebrows rise. “Never thought I’d hear you quoting humans, brother.”

“In this case,” Loki shrugs, dusting himself off to keep himself casual, careful to betray as little as possible of how much thought he’s been giving this entire situation, “it has its merits.”

Thor hums agreeably, wholly unbothered by the sand. “True. Do you think we are making a mistake by trying to speak with Hela?”

What Loki really thinks is that he wishes people would stop asking him so many damn questions with complicated answers. “As a king, maybe. As her brother? I think you would not have forgiven yourself if you had not tried this first.”

For a long time, Thor doesn’t speak again. Then, “I really hope there are no more murals underneath those.”

As Odin weakens, Hela strengthens.

Or so they find out when they are greeted by inhuman growling as soon as the Bifrost fades. No more than a few steps away, a wolf larger than any horse snarls, hungry eyes trained on their throats.

“Hm,” Thor clears his throat, “sister?”

Hela, who had been petting its head serenely until now, glances up lazily. “Yes?”

“There did not use to be a wolf in here yesterday,” Loki points out, “I am fairly sure I would have noticed if there were a wolf in here yesterday or any other day for that matter.”

“Oh,” she says, and for the first time since they learned of her, Hela smiles a smile that is not full of sharp teeth and hunger. She smiles and it’s just a smile, it’s nice, it’s almost happy. “I was able to call for Fenrir this morning.”

Thrown off by the jarring sight, Loki nods mutely, while Thor returns her grin with one of his won, bright and excited, “he is a mighty companion indeed! May I pet him?”

“Did you just ask to pet the giant wolf–”

“You may try,” Hela ignores him, waving Thor closer. With her track record, it really is a gamble whether she means for her pet wolf to eat him or not. “He will probably not bite.”

Approaching slowly, Thor reaches a hand, telegraphing his intentions loudly not to startle the animal, and to Loki’s utter disbelief, the wolf actually does cease its infernal snarling, ears dropping, and butts its head against his hand.

Absolutely ridiculous.

“Did you know, sister,” Thor says, and his voice takes a dangerous turn, teasing, which means Loki is probably not going to like whatever comes out of his mouth next, “that on Midgard, the humans think Loki is Fenrir’s mother?”

“And here we go again,” he rolls his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest, huffs.

“It’s true,” Thor continues, and Hela laughs, and it sounds less and less like broken glass and more and more like laughter. “They also blame him for Sleipnir and Jormungandr.”

“Yes, go on, laugh it up,” Loki glares but he has no hope it is not half-hearted at best. Oddly enough, it is now, dropping to one knee to card his fingers through grey fur softer than it should possibly be, that he first believes this might not end in flames yet. “But let us not forget what they did remember correctly– like the time you lost Mjolnir and had to pretend to be a giant’s bride.”

“You lost my hammer?”

Hela sounds mildly upset but her eyes are amused, no longer clouded over by the thousands of years of loneliness, by a madness not unlike his. Loki fell into the Void, but Hela had been trapped in a void of her own. Now, it will not be too long before she gets to be free once more, for better or for worse.

In any case, the future does not look entirely bleak if one looks from this moment. They are all together and there have been little to no violent threats. If he were anyone else, Loki might even call it nice.

And besides, in a thousand years from now, who knows gods of what they will be known as.

#loki laufeyson #thor #mcu #mcu hela #loki #thor ragnarok #loki odinson #look an ask #marvel tag #loki and thor brotp #loki and hela brotp #thor and hela brotp #asgardians tag #loki fanfic

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gelatinocomics · 5 years ago

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Rating each generation of pokemon based on the number of marine invertebrates

I’m not much of a critic. It’s too hard to decide which generation of pokemon is best, because they’re all equally good. However, I am passionate about marine invertebrates, so that gives me a good, solid metric to work with. Let’s take a look through each generation and count up how much love they give to all our favorite goopy boys and crusty girls.

Note: I’m including any pokemon whose real-life inspiration is clearly a kind of aquatic invertebrate, not just ones that live in the ocean. Invertebrates of course can’t be any animal with a backbone, so fish, frogs, and lizards are out. Let’s get to it.

Kanto

Tentacool

Tentacruel

(Slowpoke)

(Slowbro)

Krabby

Kingler

Staryu

Starmie

Omanyte

Omastar

Kabuto

Kabutops

Total: 10 (12) Percent of this generation: 6.6% (7.9%)

We’re off to a very strong start. I knew kanto wouldn’t let us down with all its love for oddball animals. There are jellyfish, crabs, echinoderms, and molluscs galore. Slowpoke and slowbro are harder to place, because while they certainly look like some kind of terrestrial animal, they have a mythological origin related to a certain kind of sea snail. Special shout-out to our lovely fossil pokemon, which gave us a great start to a long tradition.

Johto

(Slowking)

Corsola

Octillery

Total: 2 (3) Percent: 2% (3%)

I’ll give these guys credit for being a small generation and essentially joined at the hip to Kanto, so Johto residents get plenty of love from the old invertebrates from last gen. Also extra credit to corsola for being one of my all time favorites, and for being very rare and important representation for coral (lots of little animals!).

Hoenn

Corphish

Crawdaunt

Lileep

Cradily

Anorith

Armaldo

Clamperl

Total: 7 Percent: 5.2%

The third generation is my favorite, so I’m glad to see it performing well here. The fossil pokemon are carrying on the honorable tradition of ancient marine invertebrates, who called earth their home for most of its history (sorry dinosaurs, you’ll get your due next generation). However, the fossil pokemon are also carrying most of the weight here, as Hoenn doesn’t offer much besides them. Could do a little better. At least another one of my faves is here (lileep!).

Sinnoh

Shellos

Gastrodon

Phione

Manaphy

Total: 4 Percent: 3.7%

What Sinnoh lacks in numbers, it makes up for in quality. Shellos and Gastrodon are the sea slug rep we never knew we needed, and they come in many fashionable flavors. We also get a legendary and an ambiguously-legendary kind of sea slug, the noble sea angel, getting the status they deserve. 2006 was truly the year of the slug.

Unova

(Dwebble)

(Crustle)

Frillish

Jellicent

Total: 2 (4) Percent: 1.3% (2.6%)

This is abysmal. I’m sorry Unova, you brought such a huge number of great pokemon to the scene, but where is the love for our spineless ocean friends? I included dwebble and crustle out of pity, since real life hermit crabs venture near the ocean at the very least.

Kalos

Inkay

Malamar

Binacle

Barbaracle

Clauncher

Clawitzer

Total: 6 Percent: 8.3%

In a shocking turn of events, Kalos sweeps away the competition, even beating Kanto percentage-wise. It’s a small group, but they come from a small generation, and they show their pride. Finally, the oft-overlooked barnacles get to join in the fun.

Alola

Crabrawler

Crabominable

Mareanie

Toxapex

Dewpider

Araquanid

Wimpod

Golisopod

Pyukumuku

Dhelmise

Nihilego

Total: 11 Percent: 12.5%

It’s no surprise that the region inspired by biodiverse Hawai’i shows lots of love to a wide variety of ocean dwellers. There’s a lot to talk about here, so let’s get started: Crabrawler has an uncanny resemblance to the coconut crab, which is typically found more on land than in water, but I’ll let it slide, especially since its evolution draws inspiration from a totally aquatic crab. Dhelmise is an odd case to judge, since it’s not an animal in any capacity. Its living portion is made of seaweed, and we don’t typically talk about algae having a backbone or not. However, since it clearly doesn’t, I’ll let it join the party. For these purposes I’m considering Nihilego some kind of bizarre jellyfish.

Galar

Clobbopus

Grapploct

Corsola (Galar)

Cursola

Pincurchin

Total: 5 Percent: 6.2%

I find it necessary to point out that not a single one of these marine invertebrate pokemon is water-type, which I think is very cool and fresh of them. I’m including corsola’s new form here because it’s a very nice and educational take on an old classic. Cursola just makes things even better with its spooky charms.

Conclusion

I think it’s safe to say that marine invertebrates have not been neglected in the world of pokemon. We’ve had a wide range of odd animals represented, but there’s always room for more. As for the generations, I think it’s clear that Kanto and Alola are the big winners here, but every generation gave us valuable contributions to the family. Even my favorite group, the echinoderms (starfish, sea cucumbers, urchins, etc.) have a decent number of representatives, perhaps enough for a full team. What kind of marine invertebrate would you like to see more of in the future?

#pokemon #marine biology #articles

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ssashimiii · 5 years ago

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Ethereal

(Adventurer!Bakugou X Yandere! Forest God!Deku)

(this was completely inspired by @yandere-daydreams)

WARNING(S): IZUKU IS NOT NICE IN THIS, HES A LITTLE BITCH

─❀◦❀◦❀──❀◦❀◦❀──❀◦❀◦❀──❀◦❀◦❀──

Traveling alone was something Katsuki was used too and all too familiar with. But sometimes he wished he took his dragon companion on his trips. Only to hear him babbling on and on about something sparkly or shiny in his human form, just to block out the deafening silence of the forest.

The forest itself was inappropriately nicknamed 'Forest of The Dead', but the beautiful forest that housed some of the most beautiful sights and freshest plants also housed large creatures that grew way beyond its normal size including a 30 ft long centipede that creeped even Katsuki out. Or a meter tall spider that had a trail of baby deers following after it ready to be rated at a moment's notice.

The forest was undoubtedly enchanted and home to some magnificent and powerful 1000-year-old Nymph or dryad of some kind that doted heavily on its domain. The large flowers that dripped honey and gave off intoxicating scents were evidence enough.

Multiple fairies and young dryads had already come up to him in curiosity, giving him berries and fresh clean water in large folded leaves. So he had come to assume the forest and creature ruling over it had already accepted him as its own.

He pulled his cape up to cover his nose and mouth as he entered a field of large flowers and even bigger bees. The scent was intoxicating, but he already knew as soon as he tried to take something without permission he would be killed faster than he could blink.

The deeper he went into the forest the more deer he saw, probably representing the creature that lived in the center of the forest. The streams and lakes he saw were also clearer, cleaner and glowing more the closer to got to the center.

He didn't take anything unless it was offered to him, and he made an effort to not cut or harm any plant. It was out of courtesy so it wasn't surprising when he never got lost and didn't end up getting attacked by a dryad and pulled into a tree to be fed on for nutrients. He had already seen enough fossilized humans in trees when he first entered the forest. It's better to be safe than sorry, especially for what he was after.

The forest itself tested every creature alike for its greed. If you made it through then you would be handsomely rewarded and that's what he was counting on.

─❀◦❀◦❀──❀◦❀◦❀──❀◦❀◦❀──❀◦❀◦❀──

Katsuki pulled back his makeshift mask and pushed aside some of the overgrown willow tree branches that somehow managed to grow inside of the large cave. It revealed a large lake with an island inside of it. A large oak tree growing in the middle, in the branches of the oak tree sat a boy with unruly green hair and antlers growing out proudly. The antlers had what looked like spider silk tied from his antlers holding ice crystals that shone beautifully in the sunlight. A large wreath of flowers was brought over by two small fairies struggling to carry it but somehow managed to put it on the boy's head. A veil of white thin threads grew from the back of the wreath making the boy smile and laugh as a couple fairies told jokes.

The sight was breathtakingly beautiful and all Katsuki could do was gape at the wondrous sight unable to even utter a word. Noticing the hole at the top of the cave let in sunlight and just how clear the lake was, the water definitely had healing properties. The shore of the lake held many deers and reindeer alike even newborn deer with their mother layed on the fresh grass drinking the lake water to restore lost strength.

"We have a guest! How did you get here?" The boy laughed as he finally noticed Katsuki, his voice as clear and melodic as a bell. His laugh made Katsuki's knees weak and within minutes of this boy -that seemed to be his age- staring at him his knees gave in. He knelt with wide eyes looking at the smiling boy, and couldn't help but feel there was something sinister hiding underneath that smile.

He felt pathetic and tried to look away but those deep green eyes of, this creature held his gaze without any effort. He was in way over his head he realized when he felt the overbearing aura of power and dominance.

"Oh, just another mortal. How boring, but you look quite interesting." The boy laughed once again and floated to the lake, his robes floating all around his body perfectly to make him look like a God descending upon the Earth, he walked upon the water eventually standing in front of the kneeling Katsuki.

Feeling the pure overbearing pressure of a creature more powerful than him made him almost collapse, one hand grabbing at his chest and the other clenched around the grass. He helplessly looked up at the boy forgetting to breathe as the boy smirked at the helpless mortal Katsuki. Tears gathered in his eyes as the Green-Haired boy reached to touch his blonde hair. Suddenly feeling self-conscious in front of this ethereal being he jerked away making the boy laugh.

The boy raked his fingers through his hair anyways and he could feel the unnoticed ring on the boy's finger get caught in his hair. Letting out a small sigh his hand suddenly clamped down on his hair and he threw Katsuki into the shallow water. The animals and fairies sensing anger emitting from their God quickly left the cave. A couple fairies took a second glance at the pitiful mortal suffering from the anger of their precious God but continued to fly out of the cave, not daring to take the third glance even with the loud whimpering from the blonde human.

"Such pretty hair and eyes. Such a shame it's wasted on a mortal like you." The boy laughed as he lifted the blonde adventurer by his hair, making his scalp burn. He whimpered as he clawed at the arm of the boy who looked like he wouldn't even be able to protect himself against a boar.

"How rude of me, I haven't even introduced myself. I'm Izuku God and ruler of this beautiful forest, but you can call me Deku. After all, you're going to be my future Queen," Izuku smirked at him and dropped Katsuki back into the water, healing any and all wounds he may have had on his body.

─❀◦❀◦❀──❀◦❀◦❀──❀◦❀◦❀──❀◦❀◦❀──

I really couldn't get over how good Dream's interpretation of Yandere Izuku was so I decided to write this! It's pretty short but I think it's nice.

#bakugou katsuki #yandere #yandere izuku #forest god au #izuku x katsuki #god izuku #fantasy au #adventurer bakugou

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andrewuttaro · 5 years ago

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New Look Sabres: GM 20 - CHI- Dach’ed Two Points

4-1 Regulation Loss

We’ve now reached the twenty-game mark and the question remains: what are the 2019-2020 Buffalo Sabres? It’s safe to say 95% the same thing the 2018-2019 Sabres were but that answer is pessimistic and uncreative at best. Optimists like me have tended toward a whole new, transformed club, but most of the second ten games so far this season has made that conclusion seem foolish. So what is it then? Twenty games is still a little early to tell but let’s make a guess educated by a sample size that constitutes about a fourth of the season. They’re… ugh… you know what fuck it. How am I burning through this many rants and we’re not even to American Thanksgiving yet? I said you guys got to wrack up some points in the standings against lesser competition and its like you immediately started writing out a gorgeously scripted Fuck You like SpongeBob the night before his paper is due! AT LEAST LAST SEASON YOU HAD THE COURTESY AND GOOD SENSE TO WAIT UNTIL CHRISTMAS TO SHIT IN MY MOUTH! Like, I want to blame it on the Chicago Blackhawks somehow having Buffalo’s number or some shit but that would be a special kind of bullshit cop out! You know how I know this is now really bad? Like really, we’re going to be in for a nightmare in the press kinda bad? No, not the grilling of the GM and the Coach or even the benching of Dahlin and Miller for ever shittier versions of Jake McCabe and Rasmus Ristolainen; no, I knew it was bad when fucking dog moms on twitter who watch the Sabres in their free time started saying “GEE, I HOPE DYLAN COZENS TURNS OUT TO BE GOOD!” Build through the Draft. Yeah, I know how a rebuild works but I think we should be getting to the point when we do the thing that comes after building… uh… WINNING? WE ALREADY HIT RESTART ON THE REBUILD! WHEN YOU REBOOT THE MATRIX FOR THE THIRD TIME WHAT DO YOU GET!? HUH!? MATRIX REVOLUTIONS! THAT WAS SHITTIEST ONE! I CAN’T WAIT UNTIL WE CHASE ANOTHER REGIME OUT OF TOWN AND SEE WHAT NEW INSULTS WE CAN LOB AT TERRY AND KIM WHILE THEY BRING IN THE NEXT DUMBASS FOSSIL TO BENCH DAHLIN! WHAT IN THE EVER-LIVING FUCK!

*Deep Breath* So here are our positives: they came out strong in the first again but weren’t rewarded. Casey Mittelstadt had a great game he wasn’t rewarded for. I nearly fainted in a Bath and Body Works this afternoon. Oh wait, I ran out of positives. OH THAT’S RIGHT! YOU DON’T GET ANY WHEN THE ONLY WIN THIS MONTH IS AGAINST THE MOTHER FUCKING OTTAWA SENATORS! EVEN IN THAT GAME YOU WERE TIED TWICE AND BENCHED DAHLIN! Fuck me! Can I just be a Buffalo Bills blog for the next 4-6 weeks before they get pounded by Baltimore in the Wild Card Round? At least that way I wouldn’t have to deal with certain losses against the Leafs later this month: the most jaded, self-absorbed fanbase in hockey fresh off signing the last of their big four in disregard for all the salary cap norms that are supposed to prevent super-teams in this sport! I made a deal with myself that I was going to rein in my Hockey hatreds. How rich! I had a long hierarchy of clubs and players I hated as if I was the clown from “It” feeding off of little twitter babies’ fear and hatred. Fuck the Canes! “Oh YoU’rE a BuNcH oF jErKs! We’Re MaKiNg HoCkEy FuN lIke BaSkEtBaLl WhErE tHe SaMe 5 tEaMs AlWaYs WiN eXcEpT wHeN iT’s ToRoNtO!” FUCK THIS TRASH SPORT! The Soccer world burned me out on being an unbridled hate machine… well that and my acid reflux getting bad at *checks calendar* the age of 25. I narrowed the teams I honest-to-God hate down to Toronto, Boston and the Montreal Max Domi’s in that order! WHY THE FUCK AM I TALKING ABOUT THE LEAFS!? Oh YoU bUfFaLo FaNs, AlL yOu Do Is WoRrY aBoUt ThE LeAfS, dOn’T yOu WiSh YoU wErE uS!? FUCK OUT OF MY LIFE IF I COULD IGNORE YOU I WOULD! Isn’t a sad day in this City when the fucking Buffalo wide right Bills are making me happier than the Sabres!? Josh Allen is running and jumping into John Brown’s arms like its fucking dirty dancing down there while I have to talk myself into believing this club will beat anywhere near enough teams to make the fucking playoffs this year! HARDER MORE, I NEED TO LIE TO MYSELF INTO BELIEVING THE FRONT OFFICE EVEN WANTS TO MAKE THE PLAYOFFS! LET’S GO AHEAD AND WATCH BOTTERILL SIT ON HIS HANDS AGAIN AND ACT LIKE THE WHOLE FUCKING ORGANIZATION ISN’T BURNING DOWN AROUND HIM!

Oh, I guess I should actually try to talk about the game. Are you still reading? Is this a little much to go with your morning coffee? Is this a little rough? Hey, if the coffee doesn’t work you still got some angsty hockey fan yelling at you in all caps. Geez Louise. Should I talk about Tage Thompson finally getting his callup we were somehow excited for this season only to get his arm torn off by a pack of deep-dish eating heathens in the United Center? Should I talk about Jack Eichel scoring the Sabres lone goal in the third period after his club was already down 4-0 looking into the great big oblivion that his career has turned into? Should I talk about how that’s seven goals this month for a Captain who is one of only three goal scorers to have more than one goal this month!? NO GOAL NOVEMBER EVERYONE! I am so out of steam with this team. They could beat Minnesota by double digits tomorrow night, and I will still be certain Boston will ground them down into paste on Thursday like they’re playing a friendly against an AHL team! Sorry, back to this game that darkened our lives last night. Kirby Dach scored the Hawks first two goals: the only two goals in the first two periods of the fucking game! KIRBY DACH! Yes, that guy who was literally just drafted! He was the guy whose tallies reigned supreme while nobody in a white uniform could convert on a chance. CHANCES THEY FUCKING GOT! THESE MOTHER FUCKING SABRES DID THINGS TO THE HAWKS THAT TEAMS WHO BEAT THE BUFFALO NORMALLY DO TO BUFFALO!! They tied them up in the neutral zone, they got ample O-Zone time, they played together or whatever the fuck that actually is other than motivational bullshit! All that and they get to be down 2-0 going into the third. You want proof God hates the Sabres? South Buffalo’s own Patrick Kane scored on the powerplay to make it 3-0! UNASSISTED! Just for shit and giggles let’s pretend its 2013: Jonathan Toews gets a goal assisted by Brendan Saad and Brent Seabrook because fuck it! Time is a flat, circular dinner plate used to bash over the heads of starving hockey fans from upstate New York!

I guess I better end on some good notes. That early rush on points in the standings has been exhausted so we’re already in a hole before Thanksgiving again like the old days. Shoot, sorry that wasn’t a good note. All endless vats of eternally replenishing pessimism aside, Brandon Montour had a decent night. I don’t know guys, I had so much fun writing the Senators postgame it was like there was finally a release. I finally got to enjoy this thing I do for fun in my free time! I have to write a Masters Thesis this coming Winter and Spring. Should I really spare the mental energy to suffer for a team that might be just as bad as they always are again? I might lose that argument with myself sooner than I had hoped this year. Last night’s game has not been fun to write up. Am I fool for thinking this team ever be good? Eight losses in Nine games in November? I am too engaged to ever really be out but it’s not really fun to be in on these guys right now. At least the Bills won. Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. Like this post if you don’t want me to stop writing these. If you read this far each postgame you care about this blog. The Sabres are so bad right now I honestly don’t know if I want to keep doing this. Yikes.

#buffalo sabres #hockey #blog #NHL #chicago blackhawks

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