#junkyard pirates

[grapejuicestyless]

What If I Don’t Know?

JJ Maybank x fem!reader

Summery: In an alternate universe where the pogues gave up the hunt after their win with El Dorado, Y/n breaks free of the island dream and runs off the college. Only to find that maybe, being away isn’t what she wanted after all.

My boots danced across the thick yellow lines on the deep black pavement. The traffic lights were flickering yellow, reflecting off of the void and rippling across the building puddles by the clogged sewer drains. An intersection at midnight, no dead stop and no definite go. Just the trust that the other cars wouldn’t blow past the warning signs. The trust that metal was made to bend, to rupture to save a life.

I didn’t have a car, I couldn’t afford one, and I never needed one. Everything I ever wanted was always just a few steps away. Laughter used to echo through the halls and cold rings hit the doors repeatedly. You grow used to people that way. Used to the sound of their footsteps, of their breath. You know who’s on the other side of the door always when you memorize the pattern of their movement.

JJ promised me once that we’d make one. We would run our way down to the junkyard and pick out old parts of cars and Frankenstein them together into a piece of shit that would run like a dream.

That was something I missed. The smell of gasoline. Maybe that’s why I stumbled down through the college town, balancing between the thin stripe of black between yellow and twirling in the center where road met road. Maybe I was looking for that bitter smell to remind me of home. The image of JJ bent under the hood of a truck. The same Ford that sat broken in the front yard for years, the sound of metal twisting and the breathy grunts with each violent twist of the wrench. It would run like new one day, he swore. I never doubted him, and I still don’t. One day, we’ll run down to that junkyard, a graveyard for cars, and we’ll find that missing piece.

Rain dripped from the bridge of my nose, falling on my soaked shoes and flattening out my fuzzy socks. Everything up North was colder. Maybe it was because of how bitter people were. The semi-warm summers and the sweltering months of autumn, only for the two week beach bliss to be swiftly replaced with a harsh winter that didn’t let up until the next summer. Cold nipped at my nose. I felt bitter the longer I was here, which was weird because when I was sixteen, I could have sworn this place was home.

Then again, I had never really been anywhere long enough to know what home really was. Everywhere I went became rushed by the sweet adventure that was chasing riches. Maybe it was the idea of settling down that intrigued me. To be sat in one place for a while and to slow down, to increase my chances of living through my twenties without some pirate knocking on my front door, a gun to my head. But this wasn’t home, this wasn’t settling. This was restlessness mixed with a deep urge to find something like home. An emptiness emotionally that I just couldn’t understand.

Like a dog chasing its own tail, I felt stupid, and I myst have looked drunk dancing among the silence of my college town. I should have been happy, this should have been home. I got out, I got what Kiara always dreamed of, I sought out a higher education, a dream that Pope had thrown away. My record was clean and my future had meaning. I should have been ecstatic to receive this opportunity, after all the grief and death and scandals of my childhood, a stage in my life that was stripped away by all the realities that unraveled with each new treasure found. But, I wasn’t. Even then, sick, dirty, and cold, I wasn’t happier than then now.

I don’t recognize myself in the mirror. In the dormitories, in the bathrooms, in the halls. It’s me, or, a version of that girl. She has my hair, and we share the same eyes, same curve of our lips too. But she’s hollowed out, gutted, and so indescribably not me. Different, not greater, but worse. I think of packing my bags quite often. Going quietly and without a fuss. To swallow my pride and withdraw my debt I would surely acquire if I stay any longer here at some institution I knew I couldn’t afford the moment I sent in my letter.

My roommate would be disappointed, but she’d move on. She doesn’t know me, she understands the concept of me, but she doesn’t know me. She’s nice enough, keeps her room clean, which inspires me to do the same. She brushes her hair regularly, almost obsessively, and is really pretty. We get along fine. We are friends, to a degree, but we are sure to find other roommates and never speak again. Still, I wonder if she would be mad if I left without telling her.

JJ was mad when I told him. He didn’t like the idea of abandonment. Though, I promised I would return in just a few months, and then a week after, and a few months later. It would feel like I am forever home, only with short intermissions where he gets to enjoy all the things that the island could offer with the others to hang off of his arm. He didn’t even indulge in that idea. He thought even an hour apart was too much.

I promised him it wasn’t abandonment, and swore to call him every night. I do. Sometimes I call him in the morning, and I almost always call him in the afternoon. I like to hear his voice. It sounds like home, it makes me feel warm. I forget about the redness of my nose and the tingling numbness in my fingers. He sounds like the waves crashing against the shore and the sound of wet spaghetti hitting the walls during dinners at midnight. He is laughter and the summer sun, the swells that ripple in mid July and the best seashells on the beach.

My knees bend beneath me, kneeling against the wet cement beneath me. I feel the wetness soaking through my jeans. It’s cold. Like it could be snow if it were a degree cooler. I kneel in the middle of the intersection, and I look up at the sky. It’s dark. I check my watch, it’s nearly morning again. The yellow light flickers against my skin, illuminating my face and leaving me in pitch black again. Everyone is sleeping in my college town. All is quiet.

My neck stretches out, upwards and I open my mouth. My tongue touches my chin, and I can taste the dirt in the droplets that swallow down my throat. My eyes are closed, because I have nothing to fear but loneliness itself, and whether my eyes are opened or closed, the feeling will still be there, and the fact will be too. I am alone, in this journey. I have nothing friends to lean on and no campfire to light. Nobody here knows about the existence of Kildare, of the marsh, and the restaurants that line the cut. They wouldn’t care, they don’t care about an environment they are not accustomed to. They only have so much space to consume what they need to know. To drink up their studies, they have no space for empty thoughts of a life they never lived.

I have my old phone in my pocket. The keypad is burned into the screen because it’s all I use it for now. My life revolves around nothing but the stress of failure and the relief of my best friend’s voice at the end of the day to ease my stress. The truth is, I understand the void in my passion now better than I did when it first appeared, the black hole that seemed to swallow up all my excitement for the new beginnings. I understand the bitter feelings I have for my new house, because I refuse to call this place home. Home is not a place you reside, though, familiarity breeds contempt, home is a connection to the people who reside in respect of you, who stand by you. So though the people I surround myself with here are perfectly friendly, they are not my friends, and they will never come close to the feeling of home I feel with them.

“Hello?” His voice is thick with sleep. He has that rasp men get early in the morning, a rich deepness I rarely hear anymore, but something I once bathed in with his arms wrapped around me through the night.

Theres a soft rhythmic ticking that comes with the flickers of light, and the soft patters of rain drenching the pavement create solemn acoustics around me.

“Hey, JJ.” It comes out in one breath. A sigh of relief that he even heard the buzzing of his phone in his usual dead-to-the-world like sleep cycle. My fingers slip on my phone case and I have to catch it, the rustling on my end of the line echoing back through the speaks to me. I can hear the playback of my breathing through a short delay that spans over a vast distance.

“Is everything alright? It’s…three in the morning. I don’t know a lot about time zones but, I think we’re both on the east coast.”

“No, it’s the same time zone, Jay.” My cheeks already hurt with how big my smile was. He just had that effect on me. His goofy, unknowing attitude always managed to make me laugh, especially because deep down I knew he was a lot smarter than he led on to be. When he let that mask slip to reveal his true self, it was always a wonder the ideas that spewed from his lips. He had one of the greatest minds I’d ever known, only to be undermined by the tragedy of his last name.

“Is it a crime to miss my best friend?” My eyes found a home on my wet knees, and my free hand began to play around in the water. Dragging my nail through the small puddle forming around my body.

“At this time? Yes.” He chuckled softly. “Somethings up, what are you speculating? Whats the word? Ovulating? Because I can’t help you with that.” He made himself clear, smiling through his sentences.

“What? No! Why would I call you of all people if I was photo-ovulating?” I corrected myself with a laugh.

“Don’t knock it until you try it. I happen to be irresistible.” JJ defended himself with a teasing tone. Our conversation was light like it always was, even though my homesickness ran deep, and the sadness I felt was heavy, he made it feel like even the rain pouring down around the city I lived in was letting up.

“Lord knows John B’s walls are too thin for me to not have some kind of clue.” I snickered, pushing back the wet strands of hair that had fallen down upon my face.

Rain clung to me in every crevice, drenching me completely until I felt nothing but cold wash over me. It was a shower I didn’t need, one that did not cleanse me but instead poisoned me with the reminder that this was reality, I was miles away from the voice that was soothing my hearts ache momentarily. I would mull over it later.

“Nah, you got off on that shit.”

“Don’t be a pig, I’ll hang up.” I threatened half-heartedly. We both knew I never would. I could never cut the calls first, so the responsibility fell to JJ, who suffered the same inability to let go. Our calls usually stretched for hours, and the voicemails left in my inbox from the few times I would pass out with my cheek pressed firmly against some dusty book in the library took up all remaining storage in my phone. Right along side the folders of photos of us that collected by the thousands.

“So why’d you call?” He asked finally. I had no real answer. I used up all my excuses. Could he check for a sweater I left behind, the very same one I had on, or if he could just catch me up on what the others were up to. As if I didn’t call to hear all their stories daily, hourly if possible. What was I to tell him? What excuse could serve as something plausible without bearing a burden on his wide shoulders.

“You’re my best friend. I love you, I don’t need a reason.”

“You always have a reason.” He argued softly.

“Well, tonight I don’t.” I hummed. He hummed too, and silence filled the line.

The homely yellow flicked was accompanied by the blinding lights that came in pairs, growing brighter and wider with each passing second. Like a deer, I stood quickly, tall in my path but frozen in fear. I couldn’t meet the eyes of the man behind the wheel, recklessly racing across the intersection with no caution. Yellow meant slow, yet in the night, it only called for feet hitting the floor.

Puddles splashed violently, wheels screeching against the wet cement, leaving trails of where wet met soaked. I could see the distance between the wheels, I could lay my chest against the ground and measure it with my wingspan. The car swerved, laying down on the horn until the sound sputtered away into the distance, and nothing but the soft ticking of the lights and the sound of rain smacking the pavement filled the silence of the line again.

“Are you outside?” JJ asked finally. The sound of sheets crinkling and shuffling of legs against the mattress told me the loud alarm had stirred him from his relaxed state. I nodded at first, forgetting he couldn’t see me, and then I cleared my throat.

“I’m standing in an intersection.” I confessed quietly.

“Why?”

To clear my mind, to escape everything that was bothering me. To find peace with the silence, to try and find comfort in a home that wasn’t mine. There were a lot of minor reasons. The smell of gasoline was high on the list. I rationalized a lot of reasons in my head. Maybe I was looking for that bitter smell to remind me of home. Still, my gut wouldn’t settle.

I had left home to find something good for myself, to do myself the favor I always promised myself I would if I ever had the chance. But now, now that my feet had carried me to a place that was usually bustling with life, life that felt dull compared to even the most calm days on the island, I felt like I could never go back. A chance, a life, a future that I craved, I was throwing away because my feet refused to lift from the ground until I was sure I would only take my next steps home.

“I miss you.”

My answer was clear. It was true. I missed the waves, I missed the concrete roads freshly paved down in figure eight and how they met the old dirt roads of the cut. I missed John B’s chicken coop, though the chickens were long gone. I missed the dying tree carved with his name, and the rusted latch on the chateau’s porch door that left a yellow stain in the crinkles of my palm. But more than anything, I missed being no more than a breath away from JJ Maybank.

“Come pick me up?” I asked with uncertainty. Not because I even doubted for a moment that JJ wouldn’t come running to me if I even for a moment doubted where I stood, but because the morning was still young and tropical paradise was far away from the whistling winds of the North. Ferries only ran during certain hours, and money was hard to come by, even when we scrape together our pennies. Thats what happens when you drink up your success, you’re left with the repercussions. So, even if he did catch the boat, where would he get a ride from? How much more would it cost to bring the Twinkie alongside hime and ride it all the way to the hills where the colleges welcome signs were illuminated by colored lights, shining in school colors and pride.

He let out a stifled breath. He was choking on emotion I couldn’t read over the phone.

“I’ll be there, yeah.” He promised.

“Okay…I’ll go pack.” I said, suddenly and awkwardly. Yes, I dreamed of this day, kissing everything goodbye and running back to my roots, but now it was real. I could hear JJ slipping on his boots already. Why waste this chance?

“Pack?” He questioned.

“I’m leaving for good, Jay. I know I tell you that this is great and all, but I hate it here. This isn’t…this isn’t what I thought it would be. It’s not what I want.”

“So, you’re coming home?” He asks even though my answer has always been obvious.

“Yes.”

The line falls quiet again. I can hear the shuffling of his feet quickening against the rotting wood floors of the old Maybank property. A broken home flipped into something good. We share a bed there, I imagine he’s already grieving the loss of his starfish sleep position now that he’ll be bound to the same mattress as me again.

“I’ll be there soon.” The line falls dead.

Water splashes around me. If I wasn’t already soaked, I would be now. I can see why John B loved having a car so much now. The cold was fine at first when it was numbing, but now that I had feeling back in my chest, it was too much for me. My feet hit the pavement in harsh slapping movements, I pump my arms for some kind of friction against the wind. My lungs burn, they taste metallic. I want to wheeze and stop running, but I don’t think I could if I tried. I should feel embarrassed how quickly I up and left the place I was once stuck in, how I turned on my heels to run far away. But I’m not. I feel nothing, actually. Nothing but cold, determination, excitement. I have the energy of a child. I am an olympic runner, I have the right motivation. Get the fuck out of here, run myself right into JJ’s arms. I pray I don’t wake my roommate up when I reach my room.

The room is empty when I get there. I open the door so slowly, not even the rusted hinges make a sound. The carpet groans under my weight, even on my highest tip-toes. But the beds are empty and neatly made like they were left this morning. Rains pelts the windows. Theres a fan running. It’s my fan. I can’t sleep in the heat, not even in the winter. My bedding consists of borrowed blankets that I buried myself in, subconsciously trying to suffocate away the homesick feelings.

I barely had any clothes to pack, anything to throw into my duffle bag and my old backpack that was once Kiara’s. I never really got around to unpacking anyway, because there was so little to fill the bags I brought. Looking back on every decision I made before even stepping foot on campus, I should have known I would never stay. This was merely a vacation from hell. I don’t get the privilege to relax, I am worked and forced to prove myself over and over again among my peers who will never know me. I can’t wait to go somewhere where I am known again.

Somewhere along the way, I begin to collect up the posters on my walls. I rip them down hazardously, crumpling them and leaving them in the empty trashcan. It’s empty because there’s nothing I’ve touched in this room. Not the books, or the pens. I have a singular pencil up on my desk that’s much shorter than it once was, only half of its once lengthy size, and a nearly full set of flashcards. I don’t need the memory of this place to follow me. I consider it a favor to my roommate. To gift her with all the supplies she will ever need. She is nice enough, and a lot smarter than me. She’s sitting here on a full ride, though, the collar of her shirt says she could afford it without a penny. I convince myself she deserves it even though I do not know her.

I check my phone repeatedly, and I sit on the bench under the old overhang by my dorms. I stay out of the rain, I stay near the warmth and huddle up. I feel anxious waiting for him. It’s only been a few hours. I swept over the room for the few things I did want to keep. Like one of JJ’s bracelets, though it never even left my wrist. Or the soap I used in the shower. It was brand new, I had just bought a new one. I wait for his call. I wait for the familiar honking of the rusted horn. I wait, and wait as the sun rises. Time ticks by. I am impatient, I wasn’t bred this way, but good things have made me this way. I cannot wait.

“Popes probably gonna kill me.” I mumbled softly.

The car was warm, but my hands still lingered with the outsides touch. I sat on that bench for hours waiting for him. I saw people rise from their beds and lean out the window, taking in the smell of the dewey morning. A few gave me puzzled glances. A drenched girl, dripping down on the bench, wetting everything she touched.

But then, he came. I could see the rusted van before he even put it in park. Just between the brick lined buildings and the paths decorated in dying shrubbery. There was a small gap between the campus lawn and the visitors parking lot. A small slice of the outside world creeping into the sheltered space that was college.

I ran. I ran faster than I ever had in my life. Faster than when I used to race for desert back when Big John used to ruffle my hair and let me sleep over if I wanted, faster than when Ward held a gun to my head and made me pray for some kind of miracle. I ran until my feet couldn’t keep up, and I fell into JJ with a gasp.

He held me back, lifting my feet from the ground they stood on. I swore I heard him mumble something sappy under his breath, but he quickly shrugged it away when he saw the look in my eyes. I never felt love until I felt the desperation in the way he wrapped his arms around me. The way he squeezed the air from my lungs and only let me breathe when he was sure that the feeling between his elbows and his chest was really real, until he knew that this was for good.

He had slung my bags into the back seat and laughed as he told me to get in the Twinkie. When he started driving, he played the old CD we burned together in middle school filled with soft rock and Bob Marley. Occasionally, a song I had written into the playlist without him knowing would play. He always acted angry that I’d done that, but his fingers tapped the wheel and he couldn’t help but hum along. He would never admit to liking trashy pop songs, but the pink on his cheeks gave him away.

When the CD was spun to an end, we debated playing it again. We fell into silence, into the comfort of company. We both took the time to process the fact that this was real now, this was the decision I had decided to make. The thoughts that ran through my mind, what if I took off? What if I packed my bags, what if we moved back home? Let’s adventure down the coast, let’s live our youthful dreams that are unrealistic. Let’s make a home. They were real now, in this car, in him. We sat comfortably knowing that there was no limit on our company now, no restrictions on how much time there was left to borrow.

My socks tapped against the dashboard, my toes tracing the outline of the stickers scattered along the interior. Wet residue was left over, soggy folds gathered at my ankles. My body folded into itself slightly. I let the warn air from the dusty vents dance across my skin. Goosebumps faded like the sinking feeling in my gut. The smell of gasoline filled my nose once more, the smell of his deodorant reminded me that he was close.

“No doubt about it. Don’t know how you’re gonna talk your way out of this one.” JJ sighed contently.

“Well, you’re pretty good at sweet talking.” I buttered him up. Compliments were his weakness, I knew it all too well.

“I love you, but no.” JJ laughed.

“What! Oh, come on, please!”

My hands wrapped around his right bicep. My chin sat perched on his shoulder, batting my eyelashes at him and tickling the peach fuzz on his jaw that he had missed while shaving. I wanted to rub my palm over it, tease him for it with a smile. He had a toothy grin that I could see reflecting back in the rearview mirror.

“I get shit done, but I’m not a miracle worker, ‘kay?” He lifted his arm out of my grasp reluctantly, waving his finger to make his point.

“I thought Papa J was a miracle worker?” I teased with a raised brow. My arms crossed over my chest with a huff. My back fell gently against door. I turned to face him, a pout on my face and lines between my furrowed brows.

JJ let out a breathy laugh, his resolve quickly breaking at my endless begging. He had soft spots and I knew just where to aim.

“No, no! Don’t use my ego against me!” He laughed. I held my stomach this time, trying to keep my ribs together while I struggled to contain the fits of giggles bubbling up my throat and fighting past my lips. If love was a sanctuary, I was certain I had both feet in it. If it was a fire, I was burning up, and if it was the waves, they had crashed down relentlessly against my shivering body, bringing relief with each blow.

I bit the inside of my cheek and chewed at the skin. Laughter faded into even breathing, and my limbs curled up against the wrinkling fabric of the passenger seat. It had just barely started to rain again, a soft pattern of droplets hitting the windshield every so often. The closer we got to the dock, the more it lightened up. Though, the storm came in waves in the shape of the clouds that covered the blue skies. With each opening with sun peaking through, the tapping on glass stopped. When the grey swallowed us whole, it resumed. I didn’t mind it again. Not for the reasons that I wallowed in just hours ago, not to seek comfort in my homesick nature that cane purely from the soul of a homebody. But this time, because the swelling my my heart made me want to pull over to the side of the highway and spin around until my half-dried socks were coated in mud and my skin didn’t recall what the dryness felt like.

“Can I tell you something?” I murmured, my eyes locked in to the passing view that was the trees speeding past the windows.

“Yeah.” JJ hummed.

“I only came back for you.”

JJ hesitated on what he thought he wanted to say. He was biting his tongue. I shook my head.

“That sounds bad.” I laughed. “I only decided to leave because of you. I guess…just sitting in the middle of the road, I already felt really far away from everyone. I missed everyone more than I’ve ever missed anything in my life, but I was convinced that maybe I could suffer through it. But…just being with my thoughts, and hearing your voice after thinking for a while…kinda just convinced me.”

JJ took it all in. I saw the whites of his knuckles deepen the harder he pressed his fingertips to the wheel, the vast expanse of road ahead daunting now. This was beyond quality time together, and he knew it now that the newness began to settle and he began to realize it was the same old me. This was my future, and I had tossed it all away.

“I just…I guess I always thought you’d be the one to make it out. To really go for it. Kildare’s bog enough for me, but I always kinda thought you’d go somewhere…more.” JJ spoke softly, eyes glued to the road.

“Maybe I already did get out. I got out and I tried to change everything about me to be that girl who wanted to get out, but she’s dead. Getting out sounded so freeing when we were younger, but now…now that we’ve seen the world and…and done so much in such little time, I’ve already lived a whole life, I’ve seen the world and I still feel like I don’t know who I am yet. But I know what I love, and I know that I hate every second that I’m away from it.”

JJ hummed again, raising his brows.

“You don’t need to explore every single corner of the earth to be something or-or someone. And maybe I didn’t realize it when I sent my letter in but I know now and I know that, I feel only half as good when I’m anywhere but where I should be. I’m sorry if that’s disappointing or if Pope is going to lecture me for days and you have to listen to it, but I know I have such a better chance of being who I want to be where I can be her than in some Northern University where people wear coats year round.” I rambled. My hands moved quickly. I cut through the air with each slice of my palms, and my eyes ran wild across the landscapes and the curve of his nose down to the bend of his jawline.

“I’m just trying to make sure this is what you want.” He finally cracked a smile. His head turned for a moment to meet my eyes, and I could see the flickers of light brightening up his affectionate gaze.

“Jay, I sat in the pouring rain in the middle of the road and begged you to come get me.” I deadpanned, but a small smile still graced my face.

Truthfully, I couldn’t wait to stick my toes back in the warm sand back home. To look down at my boots and dance along the gravel roads instead of balancing between two yellow lines that shot straight down the neat pavement.

Home was a foreign concept for a long time. The idea that it was something that could be bought. Through a mortgage, monthly rent, out of pocket. I never had those kinds of expenses. What was pocket change for some felt like gold to me, so maybe when people sat around talking about how they craved a big house to reside in, I never fully understood. Then again, I was never anywhere long enough to know.

I wouldn’t change a thing, how I ran around with my friends for years looking for gold that seemed to become buried under more and more stories, leading us to an even greater prize. I wouldn’t change the way I threw it all away to be with them. Subconsciously, I was smarter than I thought. Pope talked about packing up his bags, skipping town and moving to Idaho. Somewhere where he meant nothing to nobody and could start over. But I never indulged in it, or the fantasies of having a little more money. Being stable out be nice, but I always knew I had what I needed. I had a home and it was built on the structure of my four best friends that soon grew in size to six, and they had toothy smiles and stupid jokes.

“Do you think they’ll be mad?” I asked suddenly. Sure, this was right and it was what was true, but this was a dream that nobody else ever got to experience.

JJ pulled his lip between his teeth.

“Nah.” He sighed. “Pope will have your head, but Pope gets wound up easily. Could use him as a fishing pole.” JJ joked. It made me laugh and I felt any stress melting away. It was funny that he could do that anytime he pleased. I didn’t know if he ever knew he could do it, but he had a smart mouth, and a funny bone that always seemed to tickle me just right.

“But not you?” I asked once again.

“Not me what?”

“You wouldn’t? Be disappointed in me, that is.” I clarified softly, the roads becoming softer the more me drove along them. It was only moments until we’d soon roll onto the metal bridge connecting us to the boat that would send us home.

JJ breathed out through his nose.

“Is this what you want?”

“Yes.” I responded plainly.

“And it makes you happy?”

“Yes.” JJ sighed, his eyes flickering from the wheel, to the road, and back to me. But only for a moment.

“Then no.” He answered just as plainly as I did, but there was a twinge of happiness itching at the corners of his lips. Selfishly, he wanted me to come home, and selfishly, I did too.

“Well, are you mad at me?” I continued to press him.

He laughed. “I could never be angry at you.”

“Not even if this is the wrong choice?” I picked at the skin by my fingers. My skin hurt a lot less now that it was shedding the smell of foreign land and letting the faint smell of the Twinkie stick.

“Who am I to tell you if it’s wrong?”

“Well, Pope would tell me it’s wrong.” I argued weakly.

“And am I Pope?”

I shook my head silently, and my eyes glued to my fingers. Blood stained my cuticles, where skin met nail. It stung, but it hurt a lot less than what I felt before.

“Y/n/n, you could send me into bankruptcy and act like we’re rich and I don’t think I’d even have it in me to blame you.” JJ smiled. I focused on the slopes and curls of his hair.

We sat in silence for a moment. It wasn’t like he was Shakespeare, but it wasn’t often JJ said something truly sappy. Usually, his philosophies revolved around excuses for his own stupid actions, which, now that he had explained his view on me, I had come to realize I never fully saw the extent of his behavior because I had never had the courage to blame him. I never would.

“So, you’ll talk me out of trouble when we get back?” I smiled sweetly, leaning my head on his shoulder and batting my eyelashes desperately.

JJ let out a laugh from deep in his stomach, his cheeks turning pink from his gasps of oxygen.

“I love you, but no.”

“I thought JJ was the reckless one, but holy shit, Y/n/n!” Pope ran a hand over his hat, pulling it off by the brim in one quick motion. The hard fabric hit the wooden counter of the bait and charter shop, the slap echoing through the homely space.

“Can you blame me? It’s so far away, and we just got back! I haven’t been in one place for more than a month in years, and I’m so god damn tired of feeling homesick all the time!” I tried to argue against the growing rally against me. I pleaded my case, but they all looked at me like I was brain dead.

“You had a chance, Y/n. A really good one too and you blew it, for what? To sell bait? To slum it in the cut? You can do that when you’re done earning your other options!” He scolded me like I was a kid. But I’m not a kid, and the worry lines slowly creeping up onto my once vibrant face are only evidence of the ever growing number attached to my bones.

“Yes, but a chance I didn’t ever really want! I mean, how could I even know if I ever wanted it, I don’t know who I am!”

“Thats what growing up is for! Not growing down. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re not a kid anymore, Y/n. And you never will be again!”

Silence fell over the small room. Even the waves rolling against the dirt didn’t dare to whisper through the large windows and gaps for doors.

“I sacrificed that for you.” I spoke softly, bitterly. For so long, I’s bitten my tongue for everyone. Hidden my resentment for chasing after a gold, I never really wanted because in my eyes, I already had it. But it was what they wanted, so I let myself age out of the period of my life I had dreamed of since I was a kid.

“I gave up my childhood so that you could figure out yours! You got to know who you are, I never got that because no one ever stopped to ask me what I wanted! Nobody! You were all too caught up in your greedy treasure hunt to ever look around and think about if everyone wanted to do this!”

“No one made you come along.” Kiara stepped forward, the same disapproving look in her eyes. She was only defending her wordless friend, but my feet felt heavy and my joints were warm. I felt myself creating sentences I should have never admitted out loud.

“Well I did! I did, and it’s too late to change that, and I did it because that’s what friends do. But what do we have to show for it? Nothing! We didn’t get the cross, we didn’t get the gold, hell, we already spent all of the nuggets John B managed to grab!” It fell silent again, and suddenly, I was standing in the center of a circle I didn’t want to be a part of.

“So what? Because we failed, it condemns you to leave college?” Kiara always had a smarter mouth than me. She was quit witted and observant. Yet, she failed to understand that my choice to come home wasn’t something merely of the way the treasures slipped through our fingers. It was a homesickness she never had to feel because she had plenty of them where she was consistently welcomed.

“Why is it so wrong for me to be unhappy with something that everyone else enjoys? Just because my dreams do not inspire yours does not make them any less important. A-and honestly I’m sick of standing here and listening to all of you yell at me for getting out of there instead of letting myself waste away! I’d be dead if I didn’t leave, I’d be dead because you all mean a lot too much to me for me to be away from you guys for so long. In four years I might be rich, but I would be unhappy. I would be bored. But you guys—us; we will be interesting, and funny, and bold, and unpredictable forever.”

I swallowed hard, and my eyes met the blues of the boy who had the courage to go against the majorities better judgement and bring me home. He had the same wild look on his face.

I hadn’t expected JJ to speak for me, to try and mellow out the anger I knew I would receive and backtrack against the backlash I would surely face. But out of everyone, I thought I could count on him to have my back.

And he just, didn’t.

I decided then I wouldn’t stay in the eye of the hurricane when I knew what it was capable of. I wouldn’t let myself become part of its destruction if I knew I could separate myself from it for just a moment, to remove myself from all the disappointed stares.

My feet hit the wood of the long dock, the bottoms of my shoes echoing through each plank of wood, all borrowed from the destruction of a past home.

I thought of packing up, leaving, heading over to some other place I could call home temporarily, but my fingers hesitated to reach under the bed, and my knuckles curled away from the zipper that connected to the duffle bag that was squished between dirty clothes and shoe boxes filled with memories.

A hand spun me around, pulling me from the daze I had put myself in the second I walked into the new bedroom that was mine to keep in the newly fixed home. It was calloused and warm, yet the coolness of the rings decorated on each finger revealed who the strong hold belonged to.

“Why couldn’t say something?” I asked bitterly before my eyes even met his. It was just JJ and I in the confines of our bedroom. The door shut without a crack and the windows sealed off from the outside.

“I told you I wouldn’t.” He smiled. I didn’t find it funny.

“No, but you could have defended me. I would have done it for you.” My lip wobbled. My throat stung, and JJ’s eyes softened. He must have believed it was because he hurt me, but it wasn’t his fault. It was just the idea that nobody would ever deal with what I felt because they hadn’t been burdened with the feeling of it ever before. And therefore, nobody would ever get it, nor have an inkling of an understanding of why I had to come home.

“Y/n/n, come on. It’ll blow over. They’ll be happy to have you back as soon as they get over it.” He tried to comfort me.

When his hands found my shoulders, it felt belittling, condescending, though I knew it wasn’t the case. I convinced myself it was because I was angry. Spiteful, maybe.

“No, JJ, stop. Stop touching me like you care, I can’t…I can’t stand it right now.” I stepped away, throwing his hands off of me like they were poison, or fire, or both.

“Everyone is looking at me like I’m a failure! Like…like I’m something to be embarrassed about. But who are they to say that I failed? Right? I spent my whole life, the years when I’m supposed to be finding myself licking the dirt off of other peoples shoes! And I took it and I didn’t complain because I thought that maybe my day would come, and it hasn’t! How is that fair? And to think I was stupid enough to think that something good would happen to me. But the truth is I hate being out of this stupid town, and this stupid town hates me. I-it’s like they’re all spitting on me and blaming it on the wind. And don’t look at me like I’m crazy because I love you too damn hard to be looked at like that by a boy I would give my whole life for!”

I breathed heavily through my teeth, and my chest raised with so much vigor in my voice, I shook the air with a desperate anger I had felt marinating for decades beneath my skin. Yet, the manhunting and the blaming had pushed it down, and the failure and the fear had only boiled it back up. But it was always there, simmering. JJ just laughed.

“I’m only looking at you like you’re crazy because I think you’re too good to care what anyone has to say about you.” He explained with a smile.

“To you, maybe. But that doesn’t make it true. Whats true is that they all had some image of me painted for them the second I made the decision to go to college, and it was wrong. Because I’m not nearly smart enough to be as interesting or independent as they want me to be. I can’t do organic chemistry, I’ve never passed a calculus test, I’m not a doctor. Nobody ever supported those dreams anyways, not even me, because as amazing as it would be to become those versions of myself, it’s not me.” My face crumpled in defeat finally.

“I’m not…good enough for anything outside of this town.”

For the first time in my life, I saw something in JJ’s eyes as I confessed how I saw myself, how I let my friends—no, my families anger affect how I saw my decisions. I saw dapples of disappointment flickering in the sea of his eyes.

“Do you really think thats true?” He asked calmly, softly. He ran a hand through his hair. He wanted to reach out for me, but he too shared that feeling of uncertainty that had consumed me in the past months.

“Good god, maybe they were right. Maybe you are a failure.” JJ sighed, and my breathing halted. “How can you for one second believe that anything they have to say is true? How can you believe that these things you think about yourself are true?”

“Well what am I supposed to believe? We were all raised to believe the same things, right? The engineers and the scientists are necessary but nobody needs the family man or-or the artists to carry on, right? So why should my dreams of just simple living be tolerated when everyone else craves so much more?” I cried.

“Do you even hear yourself? It’s contradictory in every sentence!” JJ yelled furiously back at me. But his anger wasn’t placed at me, but at the things that led me to believe what I thought.

“Just a few hours ago you were excited to come home. You were certain that this is what you wanted because it was your dream and your life! You wanted to find yourself, to know who you are. And you were right! More dead on than anyone had ever been in my life, and hearing you speak about what you knew inspired me to think more for myself than for the benefit of everyone else! College, or some fancy job, or money won’t make any of us know who we are, that’s your job!” JJ’s eyes were wide. He had decided now, and his hands found a home on my arms, squeezing hard and passionately.

“Anyone can be those things they want you to be, but I promise you, if you stick with what you know you want, everyone you touch will remember you for centuries.” He promised me softly.

“And how do I know if I even know myself? What if I’ve never been home enough long enough to know?”

“Then you’ll find it. You’ll find it, and I’ll find it too. We can find it together.”

My eyes searched his. I could no longer blink away my tears. The liquid was much warmer than the rain that had pelted against my skin, that had slipped down my back and under my shirt to touch the most painful and terrifying parts of myself that I had refused to acknowledge or recover for some time. It was hard to recognize it all, to know exactly who I wanted to be, so, I did what I did know.

I wrapped my arms around JJ tightly, burying my head in the wrinkles of his shirt and let the patterns his arms rubbed circles in my back guide the way I swayed. I let him hold me, because if anything could be uncertain then he was nothing. He was the one thing I’d always known, and maybe that was why I had called him that night. Because in every memory I ever had, he was the one defining memory of home. He was home.

“Will you be mad at me if I never find it?” I asked pathetically against his chest.

“No.” He responded softly, muffled by the way his lips pressed into the top of my head affectionately.

“I could never be angry at you.”

[tinytablepodcast]

Raccoon Sky Pirates Episode 1: 'Twas the Flight Before Christmas

Check it out now!

Ahoy Mateys and Happy Holidays! Welcome to the junkyard, home to the Raccoon trio of TJ (Skyler), Ranch (Holly), and Krinkle (Neo), accompanied by Rad the Roach (Julian)! They’ve got themselves a new flying machine and dreams of a Junkyard Christmas, so these trash critters are ready for their maiden voyage. Watch out suburbia, this naughty crew of Raccoon Sky Pirates is about to steal Christmas! TJ embarks again. Ranch learns a shocking truth. Rad gives a boost. Krinkle gets a snack.

[humornaut]

An Analysis of Foreshadowing in Omori's Prologue

Hey everyone!

With the Omori manga's first chapter's release, one thing has been made clear: They are FLYING through the game. Unless they are doing something weird, the entire prologue segment has been moved to right after the Aubrey fight, a move I can only believe has been made so that the real world characters appear in the first chapter. I won't be making any judgements until I see how it all fits together (and maybe I won't make many judgments in general, I don't really consider myself a judgmental person for better or for worse), but it did get me thinking about how well Omori's prologue works in general! So today, I'd like to take some time to talk about that!

The Sidequests

The first things I want to mention are the side quests! I've mentioned it before (or maybe I haven't, I don't remember everything I've said), but nearly all the side quests in Headspace are symbolic on a meta level. A lot of people dismiss this as boring repetitiveness (perhaps true), but the vast majority of the side quests are about finding a lost item or individual. This is, of course, echoing the larger Headspace plot of Basil going missing. However, there is something about this concept that I'd like to point out using one of the sidequests!

In the quest "Whereabouts of Duckie Jr.", you are tasked with determining the whereabouts of Duckie Jr! Crazy, I know. Remember how I said that most of the sidequests are reminiscent of the quest to find Basil? Like 2 seconds ago? Well, this one is good for actually illuminating what is going on with that questline overall! Duckie Jr. and his family are references to a famous optical illusion in which a person can see either a duck or a bunny. Take a look at the house that the family lives in:

They live in a present! Now take a look at this!

"SUNNY won't leave the box, so KEL put a food bowl inside. I guess this box will be SUNNY and MEWO's new home."

So that's interesting! Add in the distant demeanor of Duckie Jr's father, as well as Mari's statements about Duckie having his head in the clouds and comparing Duckie to Omori, it becomes clear that Duckie in this situation is a reference to Sunny, not Basil. What does this mean? Well, it means that we should rethink the Headspace quest all together! The quest to find Basil is much more a quest for Sunny to re-find himself.

Now this (as well as the quest for the character Daisy that I have mentioned previously) is interesting, but it isn't exactly foreshadowing. For that, I would like to draw your attention to the sidequest Stick in the Mud.

In this quest, you must go around Cattail fields to find Mr. Scarecrows three crow friends, and have them return to him. In order to do this, you have to use Hero when interacting with the three crows.

I personally believe that this is a bit of foreshadowing to the Sunny route. Hero's maturity is necessary to bringing Sunny, Kel, and Aubrey back together and bringing them to Basil. I also choose to see Mr. Scarecrow as an analogue for Basil rather than Sunny due to the coloring of Mr. Scarecrow's sprite (Blond hair, blue eyes, green clothes), and Hero doesn't actually bring Basil specifically to anyone (heck, Hero doesn't actually ever talk to Basil in the real world segments of the game)

I also want to make clear: I'm not trying to imply that this is symbolism on the part of Sunny's mind, like a lot of the things that I talk about on this account, rather that this is a bit of meta storytelling foreshadowing how the real world plot will turn out. This will go for everything else that I talk about here as well.

Captain of the Space Pirates

Now that we've talked about the sidequests, I'd like to draw your attention to the main questline of Otherworld. As a reminder, once the gang gets into Otherworld, we are introduced to Captain Spaceboy, who is bedridden and depressed following his break-up with Sweetheart. In order to solve this problem, we have to go through the junkyard to find his mixtape. We aren't the only ones looking for it, and while there, we meet Rosa, a Sweetheart super-fan.

We get the mixtape back, bring it to Spaceboy, at which point Kel plays it, triggering Spaceboy to start his boss fight.

The argument for this all being one large bit of foreshadowing goes like this:

Spaceboy would be Basil (purely from a narrative perspective, not in any kind of character-sense). We go to the junkyard and dig through the trash to find the mixtape, just like we eventually get the photo album by digging through Aubrey's trash. Rosa in this case represents Aubrey, attempting to take care of the mixtape due to her personal connection to the item, revealing that Spaceboy is the one that threw it out in the first place, echoing how in the real world, Aubrey takes care of the photo album for four years due to what it means to her, despite how Basil (from her perspective) destroyed it originally.

We bring the mixtape back to Spaceboy, and just as Kel is the one that kicks off going through the photo album with Basil, he is the one that rushes to put the mixtape into the boombox, triggering the memories that set off Spaceboy, causing the fight.

Admittedly, things get a little cloudy here, as the fight between Sunny and Basil isn't directly caused by the photo album. You could even say that the Spaceboy fight represents the fight with Omori (or even both the Basil fight AND the Omori fight) due to Omori's fight being due to Sunny's mind reacting to memories of the past, better mirroring the Spaceboy fight. But hey! Spaceboy's hair turns green and his eyes turn red so who can say. :P

Then, after the fight, we get a few things! We get an eyepatch (goes without saying), a train pass (representing how Sunny will be moving after the conclusion of the game), and a sno-cone ticket (yeah I don't think this one represents anything).

And, just like the Sunny route, the prologue ends with an early look at Memory Lane, and the dream ends, with Sunny waking up.

There's probably a lot more I could talk about regarding Omori's prologue, so I might update this later! I hope you enjoyed reading this! Within the game, I feel like the prologue is one of the strongest bits of Headspace, and I've always wanted to talk about how I believe it foreshadows the rest of the game! This is a topic that I'd love to hear more people's opinion on!

[kindaasrikal]

Jay’s the only one who had the most jobs out of all of the ninja.

A pizza delivery man, a show host, an agent for the administration, and if you want you can include how he must’ve worked with his parents at the junkyard, and the whole ninja thing. He’s also been a pirate, if that counts. He also worked for Wu at his teahouse.

Ofc he’s the only one who was able to get so many good jobs remember when he listed off all his hobbies and skills, he’s the one guy to be capable of getting a job, let alone multiple.

[alltheirdamn]

A Bounty for Reward (Mando x f!Reader)

CHAPTER 1

Summary: when you discover a bounty has been put on your head, your future and freedom are on the line. Warnings: mentions of death, drugs, weapons, angst, language (future smut, don't worry) Word Count: 6.5k A/N/: this is my first time dropping any sort of writing into the world, so pls be kind & i hope you'll stick around for the rest of the fic <3

Swiping greased hands over your work smock, you looked towards the horizon to see the Twin Suns dipping below the rolling sand dunes. The work day was over, yet you felt you barely made a dent in the new land speeder your parents had bought. You were accustomed to working with older models of land speeders, preferring the engine types over the newer models. The new models were made for looks rather than efficiency, and you didn’t understand how the citizens of Mos Eisley could afford them.

Composed of a ship hangar and various piles of scrap parts, the junkyard overlooked the southern border of the city, your own home barren and abysmal due to years of decline in business. It was rare your parents got business, and if it was… it usually wasn’t the best clientele. You had your run-ins with smugglers, pirates, and crime bosses, and every time, you worried for your family’s safety. It was only you and your parents, after all— you had no one else to call home.

As you tidied your workbench, stowing away the tools, scrap metals, and loose wires, you heard an unfamiliar buzz of speed bikes approaching the junkyard. It was unusual to get clients this late, let alone any visitors. Your family was nearly invisible to the citygoers, barely knowing one or two vendors on the streets that sold food. 

In a haze of dust and dirt, the men made laps around the junkyard, their voices loud and violent as they called out for your parents. Heart thudding in your throat, you rushed to the small home tucked in the dunes, frantic to find your parents. 

You hadn’t realized your father was already at the front entrance, sniper rifle in his grasp. 

“Kono Halcard!” One of the front men yelled, his speeder coming to a halt in front of your father.

You watched from afar as your father stood tall and strong, his suntanned skin glowing in the golden hour of the falling suns. Time had aged his skin whitened his hair, but he was still a force of nature. He had lived in Tatooine his whole life, as had you, and he was no stranger to the scum that roamed the planet. Out of the corner of your eye, you spotted your mother, Mana, peering behind the windows of your home. She was not so much the fighter as your father. 

But you were your father's daughter. 

Grabbing the hidden blade on your work belt, you followed the trail up to the front entrance, watching the wind kick the billows of dust into tornados of sand as the men’s bikes stopped behind their very vocal leader. 

“We want nothing to do with you, Jissard,” your father’s voice was stern. 

Jissard, which you assumed was his last name, was a hateful-looking man. He was human, at least from what you could discern, as he stood several feet taller than your father, wearing a tattered tunic and worn leather coat. Most of his face was covered by a low-brimmed hat, the same color beige as the sand surrounding you, but you could still glimpse his piercing yellow eyes. The look of them alone forced your spine straight, nerves electrifying within every inch of your body. 

The men behind him wore the same type of clothes– all worn, all dirty. It was obvious from the looks of them that they were a band of spice traders, the residual of the drugs lingering on their fingers and skin. They dismounted their speeders, flanking Jissard on either side, their hands resting carefully on their concealed blasters. You shifted your weight, your grip tightening around the handle of your blade. 

“Oh, Kono,” Jissard drawled, a thick accent falling off his tongue. “You’re a few payments behind, aren’t you?”

“I owe you nothing. I paid the Pyke’s back in full nearly three months ago.” Your father straightened his spine; the rifle still lifted at eye level towards the traders. 

“If you had, I wouldn’t be here, my friend,” Jissard grinned, revealing a row of rotting teeth. It was a menacing grin, one meant to elicit fear. 

It didn’t elicit it from your father, but it did from you.

“Ah, and I take it this is your daughter, no?” Jissard continued, glancing in your direction. 

The handle of your blade was cutting into your palm now, your pulse thudding in your ears. You stepped forward, aligning yourself with your father, exchanging a weary glance between one another. He wasn’t shocked you were beside him, but you caught a glimpse of regret in his eyes. A fading sentiment of, I’m sorry, as you gathered the unspoken secrets of your family’s business. You had an inkling that crime would one day touch your family, yet you hadn’t expected it to be already seeping into the foundations around you. How long had your father been mixed up with the Pyke’s? Had this been the reason for the junkyard's business to decline? Either way, you were seeing the truth come to light, but you wouldn’t back away from a fight. 

Not when it came to family. 

“She does not concern you,” he was firm, words gritted through clenched teeth. 

Jissard smiled again, dipping his hat towards you as a gesture of hello. 

“Kesi Jissard,” he smiled, “ I’m a friend of your father's here.”

“I wouldn’t exactly label us friends,” your father sneered. 

He cocked the rifle back, the sound of it echoing around you. He was done playing Kesi’s games, yet Kesi hadn’t had his fill. The men behind him drew their blasters, your father becoming the target for every weapon. You exposed the blade behind your back, a minor threat you knew wouldn’t do much. Kesi noticed the slight reflection of metal in the fading suns, a small smirk pointed in your direction. It made your stomach churn, seeing the way he welcomed the threat. He wasn’t afraid of you, and you had yet to understand why you were so afraid of him.

You just were. 

“I’m not here to collect bodies,” Kesi tossed his attention back to your father, “I would like to settle this as civil as possible. Unless you force my hand, Kono.”

“I don’t think you people know what civil means,” your father bit. 

Kessi stepped forward, cocking his head to the side to gesture his men forward. The look of ‘civility’ shot past his eyes, replaced by something far more menacing. His hand grazed over his own blaster, eyes flickering between you and your father. In the distance, you could hear a familiar voice shouting, this one of your mother.

“Ah, Mana,” Kesi smiled, rotting teeth exposed across dirtied skin, “So kind of you to join us. We were just discussing some matters of business.”

Your mother joined your father, her hands twisting together in an anxious manner. There was an expression of fear on her face…yet she held her breath as if she anticipated the worst.

“We have no business with you traders,” she spewed. 

It was the first time you had ever seen your mother speak in such a violent manner. She was always coolheaded, kind, and extremely closed off to strangers. She made no part of any business deals the junkyard had and kept herself in the shadows where she felt safest. But now, it was your family against him, his men, and ultimately… the Pykes.

Kesi slanted his head to the side, watching your mother and father with silent regard. The men behind him were growing agitated as they swayed from side to side, their weapons still raised towards your parents. The knife you bared down in your grip was feeling all too heavy; the concept of having to defend yourself grew more likely. You silently begged your father just to comply, to give Kesi whatever he wanted, and to move on as usual. If they were to go broke, they would still be alive. 

Maybe. 

“Listen, Kono,” Kesi sighed heavily, tightening the brim of his hat over his eyes, “I don’t like wasting my time. So, either you pay up, or we can take payment in a different form.”

His gaze shot to you, shadowed eyes tracing the outline of your body until your skin crawled from disgust. Every vile and unnameable thing washed over your mind– the countless things he could do to you. You pleaded internally to your father, hoping he would just give in and do as Kesi asked. 

But your father, like you, was stubborn to the end. 

“Fuck you,” your father spat.

Without another word, his gun was aimed at Kesi’s head, the rifle shooting forward yet somehow suspending itself in time. The sequence of events grew hazy as you watched from the ground on which you fell. You didn’t register that your father had pushed you back or that Kesi’s men struck down your mom in several shots; her body lay lifeless on the sands of Tatooine. The sound of your father's cries delayed in your mind as you watched him crumple over, a gaping shot tearing apart his chest. They were gone. Both of them. And you had been too dazed to react, the knife having been lost from your hand in the midst of the attack. 

All you could see were the remnants of your parents in the wreckage of brutality Kesi had left them in. Broken sobs erupted from your chest, screams that did not make it past your lips, and yet the world continued moving. Kesi’s men grabbed you, yanking you to your feet as you struggled to breathe. Your eyes couldn’t tear away from your parents, their eyes staring absently at the sky as it faded to darkness. Everything in your world had gone dark. 

Everything was gone. 

“I guess I’ll settle for you as my payment,” Kesi smirked. 

___________________________________________________

Eyes slamming open, the nightmare jarred you enough to catapult you upwards from your sleeping position. This had been the third night in a row you had dreamt of that night, the third night you were reminded of all you had lost. Rubbing your eyes aggressively, you felt the start of tears pooling over your knuckles as you dug into the skin of your eyelids. Sounds of airspeeders and taxis whizzed by in hushed vibrations, the windows of your hotel room shaking ever so slightly. It wouldn’t be very noticeable to anyone else, but you were acutely aware of every sound around you. You were always holding your breath as if the past lurked in the shadows, waiting for the moment to strike and kill. 

It had been four standard months since you arrived in the lower levels of Coruscant– four months since you had found an escape route from Kesi. It had taken nearly a year to arrange a meticulous plan that stripped you from his grasp, and you had pulled it off. Gathering—stealing—enough credits to buy your way off world, you took refuge in a hidden identity and made a new life in the capital. The hotel room was temporary, at least until you ran out of credits—or luck. But getting credits was easy now that you learned the ways of the underground. Rich men traveled to the lower levels looking for drugs or prostitutes, and you knew the best spots in the city to track them down. Some small talk, maybe a few drinks, and it was easy for you to card your hand into their pockets and stash away credits while they remained distracted. 

Eager to leave the darkness— and the past— you gathered yourself and threw on your heavy jacket, tossing the hood over your head. Strapped to your thigh, you kept your vibroblade, the last thing you kept from all the years under Kesi’s hold. It had been your protection against aggressive clients, yet you never had the courage to use it. They were aggressive, but there was never enough strength or freedom to fight back. Freedom was something you never knew. 

Finding your way through the streets, you ventured into one of the run-down playrooms in the center of town. Through a cloud of smoke, you found small groups of men hunched over drinks as they played sabacc fervently. Some turned to scrutinize you as you walked in, but you kept your head low, finding your way toward the bar. Nerves didn’t get to you, but a drink could help suffocate the lingering memories. Nursing your drink, you felt the warmth of someone sliding beside you, their hand tracing your arm. It was enough to tense all the muscles in your body, your free hand coasting down to graze the blade on your thigh.

“Are you the entertainment for the night?” The voice asked.

Concealing your amusement, you turned to him, pushing down the hood of your coat. The man had a devilish grin that was both unwelcoming and horrendous. You had no interest in entertaining him. Downing the rest of your drink, you shoved away from the bar, walking towards an open booth to watch the games. 

And he followed. 

“C’mon princess,” he crooned, sitting across from you, “Don’t gotta be stubborn.”

“I suggest you leave me alone before I slice open your stomach.” You spat.

He leaned back, clearly alarmed, and stood without another word. But it was as he left something else caught your eye.

A shadow, but reflective, tore your focus away from the games. Whatever it was, the shine alone was enough to stall every player, their motions slowing as they observed the stranger. Walking in the entrance was a bounty hunter clad in shiny armor, his helmet trained on you. 

Your initial reaction was to run, but as you took in his silhouette, you narrowed your gaze on the blaster at his hip. Returning your gaze back to his helmet, he cocked his head to the side and slid a hand down to rest on the handle of the blaster.

An invitation to run.

A warning if you did.

Neither sounded appealing.

You sunk further into the cushions of the booth, pulling your hood up over your head. It wasn’t lost on you that he had already scoped you out, but to your wishful thinking, you hoped he was in the playroom looking for a bounty. Why would he be looking for you? A better question: who wanted you? A chill ran up your spine as you considered all the possibilities of why he’d be after you: theft, assault, spice smuggling. Worse of them all… Kesi had placed a high price on your head. 

But you would never return to him. 

You would fight for freedom, even if it cost you everything.

The bounty hunter stalked towards you, his steps calculated and slow as if he expected you to run. Your fingers twitched against the blade on your thigh, assessing your options.

You could run, fight, or die, and none of them sounded appealing as he grew closer, but you had to make a decision. 

And option one it was. 

You shoved out of the booth, booking past the game tables and towards the back door. The hood on your coat fell down onto your shoulders as you pushed your body into a full sprint, weaving through the smoke and crowds. The back door opened into a hazy alleyway, and you took off to the left. People stared at you strangely as you belined through the throng of citygoers, shoving through the crowds with curses falling off your lips.

“Fucking move!” You huffed, your feet padding against the asphalt. 

Distance sounds of running caught your attention, and you made the mistake of looking back to see the hunter closing the gap between crowded bodies. You pushed yourself harder, your body aching but persistent from the adrenaline rush. You’d had your fair share of spice before, but nothing compared to the rush of being hunted down. Never did you think your freedom would come to this.

A wall of bodies formed before you, onlookers enraptured in a daze of street performers. Their blissful unawareness would cost you your life, and you reached for your blade at the same moment a gloved hand wound around your bicep in a vice. You swiveled to meet the hunter face to face—well, face to helmet— and slashed the blade against the armor. It did nothing to the metal, not even a single scrape. The bounty hunter huffed, amused, and caught your wrist with his free hand. Your skin pinched between his leathered fingers, and you winced as his grip tightened. 

“Let me fucking go!” You yelled, jostling against his hold.

But he was firm, and the sounds of the crowd began to flood your ears as you attempted to break away.

“…a Mandalorian…”

“Look at the beskar…”

“Have you ever… seen one?”

A Mandalorian? 

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

This wasn’t just an average bounty hunter. This was a skilled and deadly one, and you just happened to be in his grasp. You had heard stories of them while under Kesi’s control; some spice traders talked about how ruthless and dangerous they were. They were sworn to Mandalore, and they had no moral duty to anything but. 

The Mandalorian drew your body closer, his helmet dipping close to your ear.

“I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold.” His voice was warm and smooth and threatened to buckle your legs under you. “Your choice.”

Reeling back, you slammed a foot into the center of his boot, only for him to spin you around and pin you against his body. 

“Wrong choice,” he growled.

He twisted your arms back, clasping cold binders around your wrists. Shoving you forward, he guided you through the crowds of bodies, his hand tight around your elbow. You twisted your head to look back, seeing his helmet set in a firm line and his fingers wrapped around the handle of your blade. 

Fuck, this wasn’t how you expected your night to go.

The Mandalorian’s gunship sat on the city's outskirts, parked in a docking bay surrounded by other speeders and racers. A few docking employees strolled about the platforms, barely paying attention to your struggle against the beskar-clad body behind you. You had attempted several times to rip yourself from his grasp, only to be met by a hard shove forward and a few sharp words. 

(Words that flooded your bloodstream like a liquid drug.)

The ramp lowered with a hiss, and your feet stumbled up the metal flooring as the Mandalorian pushed you into the dark cargo hold of his ship. You barely had time to register your surroundings as he led you toward a carbonite chamber. Your heart sputtered erratically the closer you got, and you fought against him harder.

“Please,” you begged, dragging your feet as far as he’d let you.

“Enough,” he barked. 

Pressing you against the wall with one hand, the Mandalorian used the other to punch in a code to the freezing chamber. The metal doors opened with an expulsion of cold gas, the air sending shockwaves over your skin. As he reached for your shirt to drag you towards the chamber, you let out a series of pleas in hopes of stopping him.

“You can’t!” You cried, tears stinging your eyes as you pulled away from his grasp. “Please, I swear I’ll do anything! Just don’t put me in there. Maker, please.”

He hesitated a moment, his helmet assessing you. 

“I’ll do anything, okay?” You heaved in a breath. “I don’t know who wants me, but please!”

A beat of silence passed as he considered your confession. Tears flowed freely over your face, the shiny beskar blurring as you tried to blink them away. Everything was becoming too hazy, too much. Maker, how did you end up here?

Your body ached from the chase, your wrists burned under the friction of the binders, and the cold air from the chamber beside you was enough to fog your mind. You were teetering on the edge of passing out or dropping dead. It was becoming all too hard to breathe, and you began to gasp for air, sucking lung-fulls in to help ease the pain vibrating through your nerves.

“Just…” You panted. “…Please.”

Your body slumped against the wall, your head hitting the metal sharply, and the world around you blackened.

**

Mando had his fair share of interesting bounties, but an unconscious girl on the floor of his ship had never been one of them. Her head lulled to the side; her body crumpled against the metal ground. He had checked for a pulse, thankful there was one, and let her lay comfortably on the ground. He couldn’t just toss her into the carbonite chamber when she was unconscious. The gas would be all too powerful on weak lungs, and she would die instantly once the metal encased her. And it wasn’t a part of the bounty to bring her in dead. Nor did he particularly relish in killing women— beautiful ones at that. 

It had struck him curious that someone as beautiful as her would wind up in the hands of a bounty hunter. Her face on the holopuck had initially been a shock, and he wondered if he had received the right bounty to begin with. But Greef Karga had assured him it was correct, and the bounty price on her head was high. Too high not to pass it up.

Mando wasn't ‘soft’ by any means. He was used to the brutality and violence that surrounded his lifestyle. He welcomed the silence after a kill and the isolation of the Razor Crest between hunts. Alone. That’s all he had ever known, and nothing would make him give that up. 

But, maker, her soft breathing wasn’t helping his cause. 

He forfeited all options and made the decision to leave her sleeping on the floor. He’d set the nav to Tatooine and reassess later. Once in hyperspace, she would have nowhere to go, and when she finally woke up, then he’d put her into the chamber. That was his plan.

At least for now.

Mando sat in the cockpit alone, his hand flipping her blade in fluid motions. She was a fighter, he knew that much, and cunning. Her first instinct was to run, but she put up just as much of a fight. Usually, he’d be annoyed by a bounty that fought, but for her to fight that hard… It gave him a pause. And her pleading for help? Maker, he wondered what made her into a big enough criminal for a bounty puck. But she had to have done something to catch the eye of a hunter, let alone a hunter like him. 

He tossed her blade up in the air, catching it and flipping it back up for several minutes. Her face danced around his mind the longer he thought about her, and he gave in to climbing down into the cargo hold to check on her. 

As he climbed the ladder, he heard rustling between the cargo crates in the corner. She had tucked herself between them, making her body look smaller and more frail than before. She looked utterly helpless— like a scared child—  and something in his chest tightened. 

“Are you going to kill me?” She whispered, her eyes barely visible in the dim lighting.

His helmet moved side to side slowly as he approached her. Her arms were still bound behind her back, tightly cuffed in bindings, but her small frame fit snugly into the corner against the metal walls. Crouching down, Mando held out a hand to her.

“I’ll take the restraints off,” he offered. “But only if you promise not to cause a problem. I’m not opposed to putting you in carbonite for the rest of the flight.”

She nodded fiercely, twisting her body so that her hands were toward him. Rough hands clicked the lock open on the bindings, and Mando watched as she rubbed the skin of her wrists fervently. Still, she shrunk away from him, pulling her knees to her chest. Her slender arms wrapped around her legs, tucking them closer to her body as she shivered against the bitter cold from traveling hyperspace. 

She stared at him wide-eyed and afraid. Every bounty feared him; his beskar was a telltale sign of danger. But something about her fear didn’t sit quite right with him. 

Only a few more hours, he told himself. Then she’d be off his hands, and he’d be a few credits richer. 

“Do you know who put the bounty on me?” She asked, her voice small. She had been so fierce and loud earlier, but it was apparent she had accepted defeat.

“No,” he said truthfully. He didn’t offer much, but it was enough. 

She exhaled, eyes floating around the cargo hold and avoiding the heavy stare from behind his visor. 

“I’m afraid,” she whispered.

Fuck. He didn’t want to hear that. 

Mando had nothing to respond with, nothing that could console her. He turned from her crouched body and turned back towards the cockpit. The further a distance he could put between them, the better.

She was dangerous. 

**

“No.”

His statement was final, not allowing you to seek answers that you could cling to. The unknown was worse than knowing because there were endless outcomes you could face. You had wronged so many people, a trace of your selfishness scattered across the galaxy. You allowed yourself to lose control of the greed– finding comfort in taking from those undeserving. Too many people had taken what they wanted from you, leaving an emptiness inside you that was insatiable and never fulfilled; you only wanted to do the same to them in return. You could spend eternity trying to find ways to fill the void within you, but you wondered if it was ever enough.

“I’m afraid,” you muttered, more to yourself than to him.

 The Mandalorian remained motionless and then turned suddenly back towards the cockpit, silence filling the space between you. A sigh left your lips, and you closed your eyes, hoping to slip away from the moments that pulled you closer to an unknown fate. 

You awoke to a distant beeping from the cockpit; you were nearing the coordinates the Mandalorian had punched in hours ago. Unsure of your actions, you climbed the ladder up, peeking into the cockpit to see where he was taking you. It wasn’t until your eyes adjusted to the dimness around you that you realized what planet you were flying towards. Tatooine. 

The last place you expected to be taken to, and certainly the worst possible outcome of being captured. You knew exactly what– no, who– awaited you on Tatooine. If you had given up on pleading before, you regained the strength now, taking this as your last chance to save yourself. 

“I can’t go back to Tatooine,” you blurted out. The Mandalorian whipped his head around, glaring at you through the visor of his helmet. 

Without a response, he leaned forward in the chair, guiding the ship into a descent into the atmosphere of the desert planet. The lower it descended, the higher fear crept up inside you until it clouded all senses. He wouldn’t care what became of you; you were a pile of credits waiting to be collected. If he knew your name, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the reward and the allegiance to his creed. You may not know him well, but you knew enough about the Mandalorian creed to know everything now was hopeless. 

The endless expanse of beige sand came into view, the winds drawing it into waves amongst the dunes. The ship flew further into the terrain, coming to a halt on the outskirts of Mos Eisley. It had been only a few standard years since you had been taken from your home, vowing never to return. Now you were back, existing among the ghosts and regrets of the past. 

The gunship touched down onto the rolling sands of Mos Eisley, the ramp opening slowly, giving way to the heat from outside. It flooded through the ship, a light sweat breaking out on the nape of your neck. The Mandalorian rose to his feet, his armored body turning your way. He reached down, grabbing your wrists, easing your body down the ladder. There was no inclination of emotions from his body, the rise and fall of his breastplate the only evidence that he was indeed a living creature. 

Creature he was as he pulled you down the stairs, leading you through the cargo hold that was littered with mindless tokens he had picked up along his trails of bounties. The ramp exposed you to the brightness of the sand, your eyes quickly squinting against the landscape. You drug your feet against the metal, hoping to stall your exile from all human existence. If you were certain of anything, your fate was not too far off. 

Below the binary suns stood two dark figures, their faces hidden by brimmed hats. The hats were enough of a giveaway to know who they were… and exactly why you dreaded stepping foot on the planet. Your body halted, feet firmly set against the sand, body paralyzed. The Mandalorian slid his hand under the crook of your elbow, urging you forward in silence. He didn’t flinch when you tried to hit him, wrists falling against hard beskar. 

“Please,” you begged, tears brimming your eyes. “You can’t give me to them.”

He remained wordless, only nudging your body forward once more. You mustered up enough energy to fight his hold, spinning to face him fully. His helmet slowly rolled to the side, studying your face as tears fell onto your cheeks. Desperation kicked in, your mind reeling with any offer you could give him. 

“Please,” your voice was weak, “Kill me.”

He made no reaction to your words, so you tried again. 

“Keep me. I’ll do anything you ask. Just keep me from them. You can have me!”

The Mandalorian hesitated a moment, a beat passing before he reacted. The reaction was the exact opposite of what you had hoped; your body pulled further away from the ship… and closer to the figures standing firm within the sand. Tears dried against your cheeks as the warmth of the air burned your skin, leaving your eyes red and dry. The faces of the men came into view as they lifted their heads and exposed their dirtied faces. 

“Mando!” One exclaimed. He was the taller of the two, yellow skin nearly blending into the background behind him, purple eyes piercing you below his hat. You knew him as Jado, an employee of your former employer. “Your efficiency is commendable. She is precious cargo for our boss, and he thanks you for your work.”

The other man, whom you knew as Gaff, tossed a satchel of credits at the Mandalorian’s feet. He didn’t break his gaze from the two men, caring very little of the reward now in his possession. 

“Please,” you spoke once more. His helmet turned to you slowly, and you hoped he could see life fading from your irises. 

“Alright, come on,” Jado spit out your name, ripping you from the Mandalorian’s hold. The bounty hunter freed your wrists from his grasp, only for them to be tugged forward by Jado’s dirt-covered hands. His hands were caked in dirt, traces of spice crusted under his fingernails. The metal restraints you had worn only a few hours ago were now replaced by their own bindings, ones made from rough rope that scratched your skin enough to bleed. 

“Kesi will be very happy to see you,” Jado said sarcastically. 

Your head turned back to watch the Mandalorian– now understood as Mando– fade into the distance. The shine of his beskar glinted in the harsh sun, splintering into fractures of metal and weapons. The nerves within your body sparked in anger, anger from knowing he brought you to your ultimate fate. You knew it was his job; you were merely a bounty fit for a large reward, but you wanted to believe he was still a man under the layers of armor. A man who battled empathy far beyond the bounds of his creed. 

Jado situated your body on the speeder, hauling his own body behind yours. You were all too aware of his body pressed against your back. The heat radiating from his mouth and onto your neck began to nauseate you. Glancing over, you saw Gaff straddle his own speeder, nodding once at Jado– an urge to begin moving. Gaff followed behind Jado’s speeder, the sound of its engine muffling your ears until they grew deaf. Mos Eisley was exactly as you had left it: crawling with slimy criminals and reeking of sour booze. As your heart pounded heavier against your ribs, you watched as each cantina and spaceport drifted out of view. With each passing moment, you grew dreadfully close to Kesi’s junkyard and closer to your death.

The junkyard was littered with newer ship parts; bolts and metal plates scattered the ground. The familiar workstation that sat vacant in the corner caught your eye. It had been your workstation, at least back when your family owned the yard. Now, it was in the possession of Kesi Jissard, one of the most feared spice traders in the galaxy. The same man that forced you into the trading world, baiting you to sell and trade on the promise of freedom. But freedom never came. Not until you found a way to buy it. 

The slow rhythm of hands clapping echoed around the empty ship hanger. Your head was on a  swivel, eyes wildly searching for the origin of the sound. Emerging from the shadows, Kesi continued to clap, an evil smirk creasing his yellow-tinted skin. 

Kesi spoke your name, his thick accent cutting the silence. “I’ve missed you.”

You bit your tongue, suppressing the urge to talk back, knowing it would only lead to more suffering. Kesi had a short temper, usually satiated by bruising skin and smoking blasters. But when you didn’t respond, he stepped forward, reaching for your jaw. His grip was bruising as he wagged your head back and forth. 

“You’ve caused me a lot of damage,” he spoke slowly as if every syllable was a drop of poison on your skin. “I’m in debt for thousands of credits, and because you decided to run, I had to spend even more just to hunt you down.”

“You could have let me keep running,” you said, words muffled from his hold on your chin.

Kesi’s dark eyes widened, glistening with premeditated thoughts of harm. He squeezed your chin and pulled away with such force that it left your head falling backward. 

“You’ve missed out on a lot of work,” he mused, pacing between you and the workstation aside from you. “There will be a lot of clients happy to see your return.”

“I’d rather die,” you spat, stepping forward. Where you found the courage, you don’t know. 

“Trust me,” Kesi chuckled, “I would love to kill you. But you’re far more valuable alive than dead. You’re of more use to me when you’re breathing and working.”

Kesi turned away from you, searching through the remnants of the workstation. With his large body blocking the view of what he found, your heart lurched with uncertainty. He clicked his tongue in satisfaction, holding a black bag up to the dim light of the station lamp. Your heart plummeted into your stomach, nausea coursing up through your esophagus. Turning to you, Kesi donned a broad grin, evil basking in the stretch of his lips against his cheeks. 

“We’ve got a new product on the market now,” he began, walking towards you again. 

You stumbled as you took a step back, knowing you wouldn’t be able to go much further without someone snatching you and dragging you right back. 

Kesi continued, “Since you’re going to sell it for me, you might as well try it.”

You watched as he unraveled the string of the bag, a smaller wrapped bag falling into his hands. The spice was an unusual color compared to the rest; its pigment was closer to black than the usual beige-brown you had been used to selling. Your pulse was rising alarmingly, and you wondered if Kesi could see the fear seeping from your eyes. The fear fell in waves of quiet tears, your lips wavering but never making a noise. 

“Why don’t you sit?” he insisted, yanking you by the elbow to the workman's chair by the desk. 

All you could do was comply, regardless of the nagging that pricked your brain in sharp pinpoints. You wished you had the strength to fight him. You wished you had the words to beg for a different outcome. 

You wished the Mandalorian had listened to your pleas. 

But the Mandalorian was gone and a richer man now, too. And here you were, helpless once more and three steps back from freedom. 

The second your ass hit the seat of the chair, Kesi was wrapping a hand around your wrists, pinning you against the wooden material. With the free hand he had, Kesi dipped a finger into the powdered substance, lifting it to your lips. 

“C’mon princess,” he hissed, “Open that pretty mouth of yours.”

You made no effort to open your mouth, your jaw locked and refusing to fall slack. Kesi’s mood changed into a slow-burning anger, his fingers bruising your skin. You squirmed against the seat, looking around the workstation for anything capable of substantial harm. The desk was nearly clean, sans a few miscellaneous tokens and scrap spice containers. 

“Open. Your. Mouth.” 

Kesi’s removed his hand from your wrists, only to deliver the most jarring slap across your cheek. It sent your head reeling, leaving you little time to recover. Your mouth fell open, groaning at the severity of the hit, and the surmounting pain replaced every emotion stirring within you. He took your vulnerability as an opportunity, his spice-covered finger slipping onto your tongue. 

You hadn’t tasted spice in years. It was not something you enjoyed recreationally, nor did you enjoy selling. In a professional setting, spice was seen as a delicacy for some of the richer citizens in the lower rim. Spice was well sought out, and if you had access to the right employers, spice production would be endless. 

But as the product dissolved on your tongue, it didn’t take long for the effects to begin to form. Words from Kesi’s lips grew into jumbles, falling on deaf ears. Your vision began blurring, too, and soon enough, all of your senses were paralyzed. It was as if you were watching from the furthest part of your brain, floating away from the controls inside your body. Becoming all too aware of the heaviness of your body, you slowly felt your shoulders slump over, your body weight no longer supported in the chair. Eyes fluttering shut, you wondered if another side effect of the spice was hallucinations. 

Because you could have sworn you saw a glimpse of shiny metal walking into the junkyard.

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played RACCOON SKY PIRATES ?

By Chris Sellers

Raccoon Sky Pirates is a narrative, GM-less role-playing game for 3 to 6 players that takes about three hours to play. Take to the skies, loot a suburban home of all the trash you can carry, and try to keep your ship from exploding.

You and your friends play raccoons: chittering, baggy-pants, ring-tailed burglars. One day in the junkyard, after inventing an improbable antigravity device, you hatch a scheme to build a ship out of trash and fly to the suburbs in search of better trash. There, you'll find a beautiful, free-standing house with a four-car garage and cable internet. While trying not to wake up the residents or the dog, loot the house of all its valuables, like Roombas, PlayStations and other trash. Finally, loaded down, escape back to the junkyard while fending off the Neighborhood Watch.

[jimmyenthusiast]

Dear J*mmy, Jambalaya/Jimbalaya, Jimbo, Jimbortion/Jabortion, Jimbotron, James, Jamaica, J*m, Jimmistake, John, Jalifornia, Jingle balls, Jimothy, Jimmothy, Jerald, Jeraldine, Jamal, Jeezer, Jiddy, Jingo, Japarty, Jumbo, Jumbotron, , JCPenney, Jacuzzi, Juxtaposition, Jenga, Jiabortion, Jeopardy, Jumper Cable, Jump Rope, Jehovah's Witness, Judicial System, Jurassic Park, Jerusalem, Jackass, Jujutsu Kaisen, Janice, Jimberly, Jumanji, Jingle Bell(s), Jingle Ball(s), Jimonolophonigrams, Jary, Jamarld, Jarlod, Jisappointment, Jameson, Juray, Jury Duty, Jerry, Brony, Brony Jimmy, Horse Fucker, Stinkrat, Stinkhorse, Whore/Hoe/Slut, Jhore/Joe/Jlut, Prick, Prick Jimmy, Yimpy, Jurisdiction, Jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court, Jingle Bingle, Johnny, Jurly, Jimstraining Order, Restraining Jorder, Jimstraining Jorder, Jail Time, Dickface, Jickface, Jojo Siwa/Jimjim Siwa, Jo-Pop, Joke, John Egbert, Jane Crocker, Joystick, Jeronicus Jangle, Javelin, Jack-o'-Lantern, Jart, Fart-Face, Fart-Jace, Jace, Jimbob, Jimboob, Jizz/Jiss, Jiss Stain/Jizz Stain, Jerome, Jeremiah, Jugatti, Jlorbo, Jaundice, Jorbinshlosch, Jimster, Juju On That Beat, Jake English, MiseryStick, Josh, Jimbruh, "I hate this man so much that I don't even wanna call him Jimmy. Jimmy is a nickname. Nicknames are reserved for friends, and James is no friend of mine.", Jolly Golly/Golly Jolly, Jolly Rancher, Gee Jummy Gumdrops, Jumbo Josh, Jimmy Neutron, Mr. Neutron, Jack Noir, Jetlag, Jimbob Squarepants, Jimbo Georgepants, Junkyard, Jingle, Jorts, Jam, Janga, Jenga, Jelly Bean, Jorbinshlosch, No Responsibility, He Who Shall Not Be Named, Chris McLean, Jimmerella, J. Jonah Jameson, That Fucker, MLP Fan, MLP Jan, Jim Cosby, Mr. Jands, Jreaky, Jill Yourself, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Jammy, Jessie, Joshua, Jessily, Jake English, Joey Claire, Jury System, Jim Co-Pilot, Juancho, Jimbobtim Jiggle, Jailbird, Jrilly Jrease, Grilly Grease, Jrease, Jilly, Jirelly/Jrelly, Jimper, Jimmy Case/Jurly Case, Rapist/Japist, Responsibility J*m, Responsibility Denier, Responsibility Hour, Grease Man, Grease Jim, Grease Brony, Jimmy Jar, Jar, January, June, July, JimLy/Jimly, “Hero”, Jiggle my balls, Jungle Jim, Hawk Tuah on That Jang, Jeanits, Jemima, Junited Jates of Jamerica, The Joviet Union, The Rise and Fall of Jizzy Jardust and the Jiders from Jars, Julius, Julius Caesar, Jeaser, Jimborg, Jimmyjonga, Judge, Jimjams, Jorts, Jort Storm, Judy, Judge Judy, Judy Hopps Abortion Comic, Jneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, The Jay Jarbor Jutcher, Jinsenberd, Jay, JSSR Jussia, Jorth Jorea, JGeometry JDash, JMy JLittle JPony, Jy Jittle Jony, It's JTimmy Time, Little JTimmy, Yawning, Jawny, Jimstewpit, Jimtopher, Jebastian, Jolin, Jiblet Neutron, Jill Jourself, Jasshole, Jurethra, Jalm Jree, Jojack, Jucking Jill Jourself, He Who Shall Not Be Named, Je Jho Jhall Jot Je Jamed, Clopper, Jlopper, Juicy Lucy, Juicy Jucy, Jopsticks, Jip Jalm, Jeyboard, Jmart Jreen JV, Jultraviolet Jays, Stupid Big Back, Jtupid Jig Jack, No Mewing Streak, Jo Jewing Jreak, Jhai Jestraunt, He Who Has No Gyatt, Je Jho Jas Jo Jyatt, Jyatt, Janum Jax, Jizzler, Johio, that ugly warty toad, Juber,, Jimdere Dev, Jeil Jaiman, Jinglebottom-Jiggedly, Joney, Jenitalia, Jatch, Jandals, Junglasses, Jirt, Jowtie, Jemininomenon, Jama a Jirl Jehind Jou, Jress to Jimpress, Jondom, Jirty Jisgusting, Jeroy Jenkins, HIS Name, Jigglydiggly, Jimamabob, Jebron James, John Jacob Jinglehimer Schmidt, Jershys Jocolate, Jimbabwe, Jujuju Jaisen, Jamaica, Jidonculous Jace, Jimmy Timmy, Jimmy Timm,

i hope you are having a beautiful day 😊

Go fuck yourself.

[crocodilenjoyer]

op fic recs 3

personal favorites bolded!!

G

what's another night on mars? by genesis_frog | post-canon | | gen, straw hats-centric | 5.1k | complete

“Marriage, to many, is a sacred, romantic vow. A promise between lovers to live together and die together. Whoever said that that love had to be romantic? There are so many kinds of love that exist, and surely, can’t the bond between friends be celebrated eternally?”

Luffy has An Idea, or: Five Times the Straw Hats Discussed Getting Married and the One Time They Actually Did

In the Belly of the Junkyard by alpha_hydra | pre-canon | gen, kid & killer | 2.5k | complete

Kid isn't very good at making friends. He's been told by adults and children alike that he's rude, or else that he's too hot-headed, or that if he keeps holding grudges like he does, no one is going to stick around for long. Until one day, he meets a boy with a mean right hook, and everything changes.

Somewhere I Have (Never) Travelled by alpha_hydra | marineford | gen, ace-centric | 7.2k | complete

Now: the sun rises, and Ace lives.

AKA, Ace lives, but it takes a while to get us there.

and yet we keep walking by freckledshoulderblades | post-marineford, some information from luffy's flashback | gen, deuce-centric | 4.2k | complete

Three years after Marineford, Deuce arrives on Dawn Island to ask after Dadan and learn more about the man Ace was.

Like Ink Through Her Veins by grainjew | during timeskip | vivi-centric, background namivivi | 5.6k | complete

Vivi manages, away from her crew. Usually, managing means ruling a country, reading the newspaper, and checking up on her father.

Sometimes, though, it means sneaking out of the palace at midnight and getting drunk with passing pirates.

across ocean tides and snow-covered hills by nevermordor | post-canon | gen, ace & luffy | 3.6k | complete

After two whole years, after everything that’s happened, he wants Luffy to look different. But he still has the same scrawny arms and narrow shoulders, still wears the same ratty old flip flops and hat. The only real change is the scar across his chest, to match Ace’s own.

“Everyone’s been saying you beat me here by like a whole day or something,” Ace remarks. Luffy starts in surprise, his head swiveling around, eyes wide. “I say, so what. Try beating me at something that actually matters, like wrestling, see if I don’t still win.”

--

Ace and Luffy come home for the winter.

all's fair in love and war by guiltylights | ambiguous setting, post-timeskip | gen, hancock-centric | 3.7k | complete

This far from the lights and sounds of the party the only thing Hancock can hear is the crashing of the waves, close to their feet—and the calming sound of Luffy, snoring loudly and contently, his chest rising and receding with each breath, just slightly out of sync with the sea. There’s just a little light, reflecting from the moon over the silvery dark waters, to see by, but enough to see clearly. And maybe it’s the combination of all these factors at once, of both safety and ambiguity, that makes Hancock even deign to consider answering the sniper seriously.

‘You love him,’ she says, staring out to the sea. She has one long leg crossed elegantly over the other, is reclining back with one arm draped over a knee, ‘and thus, I will compete with you for his affections.’

The sniper frowns. ‘When I said I loved him, I meant that as a friend, or a crew-member does. Like—a brother?’

For the first time in her life, Hancock confronts what it all really means—to love, and be loved, with her beauty.

nothing to do (with you) by guiltylights | post-wano | gen, zeff-centric | 4.3k | complete

The man who just entered moves, slowly and purposefully, as though demanding everybody’s attention be on him, until he stops right in the middle of the restaurant, in front of where Zeff is.

Zeff eyes him over his food. ‘To what do I owe this visit,’ Zeff says mildly, ‘Vinsmoke Judge?’

Across from him, the militant monarch of the Germa Kingdom takes a seat.

Judge thinks that Sanji is a failure of a son. Zeff doesn't think that much of Judge at all.

children of the damned by guiltylights | during alabasta | gen | 2k | complete

A finger traces almost carelessly around the rim of the wine glass, but Ace watches from the corner of his eye how that finger never wavers from its steady trajectory, the line of the glass always pressed exactly in the middle of that finger, and knows this woman is anything but relaxed. Confident, perhaps, but not relaxed; the bow of her spine is stiff and unyielding, taut like a too-tight string under the loose soft layers of her fur coat, and Ace wonders briefly whether that’s why she wears it in this fucking sauna-like desert country – to hide the stiffness of her back, her smile – before pushing the thought away to the recesses of his brain. It’s absolutely none of his goddamn business.

Devil child, Ace remembers.

T

how could oceans come between us by merikai | post-wano | gen, monster trio-centric | 4.2k | complete

Zoro really has no idea how they ended up here in the first place.

or: monster trio in a marine base what will they do

all summer on bloody knees by ghostwit | pre-canon | kidkiller | 3.1k | complete

"Kiss me, asshole," he says.

(Partially based on SBS87. They're maybe mid-late teens here.)

Gold-Tinted Days by needchocolatenow | ambiguous setting, post-timeskip | zolu | 4.3k | complete

Luffy had Zoro—always.

there is thunder in our hearts by taizi | marineford, information from dressrosa | gen, asl brothers | 6.7k | complete

He’s not close enough. He’s not going to make it. Even if he managed to shake off the soldiers in front of him and just threw his whole body at full-speed between Luffy and Akainu to take the blow, he wouldn’t get there fast enough. He doesn’t have enough time. He’s going to lose another brother, only this time it’s going to happen right in front of his eyes, from seven—five—three feet away.

He’s ten years old again and learning what grief is. He’s ten years old and all that’s left of Sabo is the letter in his hand and a shared dream and the promise that Ace will look after their silly baby brother while he’s gone. 

“DON’T TOUCH HIM!” Ace screams. It’s pure desperation. It’s the last human thing he’ll ever say if Luffy dies here. 

A Different Father by LPSunnyBunny | marineford | gen, buggy-centric | 1.2k | complete

Before they get to Marineford, Buggy finds out about Ace's parentage- and fuck, he can't just let his captain's son die. Time to improvise.

toragara by Origamidragons | pre-canon, information from luffy's flashback | gen, zoro & luffy | 5.1k | complete

There's a tiger on Mount Colubo.

(Luffy makes a friend.)

it burns a hole through everyone by taizi | post-dressrosa | gen, luffy & sabo | 3.4k | complete

“I bet that some people, who fought in that war for Ace, who loved him and didn’t even know me, wish that it had happened differently.” Luffy still doesn’t look up, expression unreadable when he adds, “Sabo loves us both, but he loved Ace longer.”

If Sabo had been stabbed with sea stone, it would have hurt less. If he had burned with the Grey Terminal, or drowned at sea in front of the Celestial Dragons, it would have hurt less than this.

He’s on his feet before he’s aware of moving, seat tipping over and rolling away behind him. He can feel the steam start to lift off his super-heated skin as Ace’s fire inside him reacts to the way his heart is racing.

“Don’t say that,” he says, too loud, almost a shout.

to cut your teeth on love by freckledshoulderblades | shells town through post-timeskip | zolu | 10.6k | complete

Zoro meets Luffy and gives himself over wholeheartedly the instant Wadō is placed between his teeth again. Luffy meets Zoro and decides in a heartbeat that Zoro is his.

waters of the wild by LadyCrimsonAndBlack | post-whiskey peak through post-punk hazard | gen, straw hats-centric | 4k | complete

Even to his nakama, Luffy sometimes appears just a little bit too odd.

(Or: Five times a Straw Hat notices something strange about Luffy, and the one time someone knows what's going on.)

Singing, When You Don't Know How to Pray by ghostwriterofthemachine | pre-canon through post-timeskip | gen, straw hats-centric | 12.7k | complete

So why was Luffy so determined to get a musician for his crew?

Or: Song, singing, and shanties on the high seas.

Before the Storm by orphan account | post-timeskip, pre-wano | kidkiller | 2.3k | complete

"Under the light of the sun, so similar to that of the South Blue, and the silhouettes of dying men, they dig a big fire pit into the sand and gather around it. The only order Kid gives that day is to celebrate their victory over the Marine vessels now littering the ocean floor. It had been an easy fight, looking back, but it keeps the crew happy and Kid isn’t one to dismiss a chance for drinking."

triskelion by razbliuto | pre-canon | boa sisters-centric | 5k | complete

Sink your fangs in, sister, and don't let go. — The Boa Sisters, still breathing despite all odds.

M

Squash and Stretch by LPSunnyBunny | marineford, information from wano | gen, ace & luffy | 3.3k | complete | TEMPORARY MCD

In one world, Ace takes the blow for Luffy and dies in his arms.

In this one, Luffy reacts just fast enough to push Ace aside and save him, taking the blow himself.

and its companion,

Kiki and Boba by LPSunnyBunny | marineford, information from wano | gen, ace & luffy | 5.3k | complete | TEMPORARY MCD

Ace's perspective of Squash and Stretch in which he is terrified for his little brother because what the FUCK IS THAT.

life's yard full of rakes by ghostwit | pre-canon | gen, crocodile-centric | 3k | complete

It's crude work, cudgel and bolt and human flesh; Crocodile can feel the bone splintering, the little shards embedding in the tissue around the shattering when they drive the great, rusted stake through his hand.

day 24: self induced injuries to escape

E

Axiomatic by KBstories | post-wano | kidkiller | 5.3k | complete

ax·i·om·at·ic (adj.) Self-evident; unquestionable.

*

The best part of battle is the afterparty.

[moonlightblueandicegrey]

Jay and Ronin headcanons and personal opinions because of my last post:

Why they could have been good friends:

• Ronin is a thief - Jay is a little bit of a pirate (Jay could have been a great pirate, you can't change my mind).

• Ronin doesn't think that stealing is a bad thing because he is a thief. I believe that Jay thinks the same way:

When the ninja wanted to take the airjitzu papyrus from Ronin's shop in Stiix and Jay became a leader, his first thought was to steal the papyrus. He also tried to make stealing sound like a nice/positive thing in that situation by saying things like: "we are stealing from a thief", "we are stealing something someone stole so we can give it back to the original owner (after using it)".

Stealing is still bad no matter the final result but neither Ronin nor Jay think that way.

Also, Jay had no problem stealing those ninja chips in skybound. He was hungry, yes, but he was still going to steal.

• Both Ronin and Jay value money a lot:

I don't know Ronin's back story so i don't know why he values money so much but he definitely does for some reason. You can see it in many of his lines and through his actions.

Jay on the other hand wanted so much to be rich in skybound. He thought money could impress the girl he loved. He was also sad and embarrassed in general about the fact that he was poor.

• They are both betraying others:

Ronin betrayed the ninja lots of times and Jay did too in Skybound

• They both use fake personalities to get what they want/they are manipulative:

Ronin manipulated the ninja in possession and skybound by acting like a nice guy to get what he wanted and reach his goals.

Jay also uses a fake personality. His 24/7 smile is fake to me. He might use it, to cheer his friends and himself up, to hide his true emotions and feelings, to hide his real and honest thoughts, to keep enemies guessing, to look innocent, weak and even stupid while in reality he isn't and probably, to seem like he doesn't care about anything or anyone (like he doesn't need help). No matter what, he still manipulates others to think he is someone else and hides his actual personality. I can see Jay wearing an invisible mask, that thing being stuck on his face, he got so used to it that now he doesn't even know who he actually is anymore.

• They are both liars:

Ronin lies a lot to everyone in order to reach his goals. I remember that time in Seabound when he made the wooden Wo-Jira.

Jay also lies, during skybound especially, but i think he also lied to the other ninja about his home (he didn't want to say that he lived in a junkyard) and about the skybound events after his last wish. I don't believe he told them the truth about Nadakhan right away. Also, he lied to Nya about the Fangpyre's bite and how he almost became a serpentine on their first date.

• Both Jay and Ronin were probably born poor (I'm talking about Ed and Edna) and abandoned by their parents (Cliff and Libber). I think Ronin was also abandoned by his parents when he was a baby.

............................................................................

So, yeah... in conclusion, i believe that Jay and Ronin could have been good friends if things were different for them and if they had met each other differently.

(Jay is so relatable to me, I'm kinda worried now)

[6-and-7]

Hues of June 15 Doctor Whooves in An Unearthly Filly! Bonus, I've hidden one reference to every TV First Doctor story in this image -- how many can you spot? (Answers below the cut) (Monochrome TV version also below the cut)

An Unearthly Child - The whole Junkyard, but also pipe, top of lower left crate The Daleks - Anti-Radiation drugs, upper left The Edge of Destruction - Scissors, lower right Marco Polo - Backgammon set, right of TARDIS The Keys of Marinus - DE3O2, upper left The Aztecs - Gold bracelet, middle right The Sensorites - Sensorite Poster, upper right The Reign of Terror - Guillotine, upper right

Planet of Giants - Telephone, top of lower left crate The Dalek Invasion of Earth - TARDIS key, middle right The Rescue - Spaceship Poster, upper left The Romans - Harp, center left The Web Planet - Spider & Web, middle right The Crusade - Flag, upper middle The Space Museum - Penny-farthing, above Barbara's head The Chase - Camera, by the Doctor's hooves The Time Meddler - Viking helmet, upper right

Galaxy 4 - Chumbley, just below the Viking helmet Mission to the Unknown - Varga plant, upper edge above Ian's ear The Myth Makers - Trojan Horse, right of the Doctor's tail The Daleks' Master Plan - Mavic Chen Poster, above Barbara The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve - Bell, between Ian and the TARDIS The Ark - Monoid Poster, left of Barbara's tail The Celestial Toymaker - Trilogic Game, directly under mannequin hoof The Gunfighters - Cowboy hat, upper right The Savages - Big clear box, behind Barbara The War Machines - War Machine, lower right

The Smugglers - Pirate hat, upper right The Tenth Planet - Cyberman Poster, upper right

[forgeworldweatherreport]

So last night was the first session of my new Lancer campaign, using @vexwerewolf 's In Golden Flame. This iteration of the Hell's Gate Strategic Response Team got a chance to socialize while doing maintenance work, chatted with residents and had lunch at the Happy Noodle Bar (with this version of the proprietor based on Maya Killsixbilliondemons), and were briefed on the station's woes and their next assignment by the terminally stressed Jerry. Next week, they will sortie in a brave endeavor to break the pirate blockade of the station!

This squad includes: -Sétanta "Set" Hawkins, Callsign 'Cornfed', heir to a family that has been part of the Hell's Gate militia since the pyrite age, passing down the callsign and their mech ever since (the latter of which has long ceased to contain any original parts, grandfather's axe style). He's aiming towards monarch parts to enact that one Megas XLR gif.

-Meadow Reaper, Callsign 'Reaper', a bubbly farmer from Asphodel with a militarized farming rig (counts-as a caliban) who joined up for adventure at the advice of a mysterious patron.

-Pale Sage, Callsign 'Porcelain', a hell's gate foundryworker who suffered a horrific industrial accident, only kept alive through donated HORUS tech. She awoke with a transformed body, a knowledge of a strange language of clashing metal, and an appreciation of the purity of the machine. Her new favourite podcaster (who is definitely not an Elesh-Norn-coded deimosian) occasionally sends her gifts. She will

-Hara Stevens, Callsign 'Junkyard', a feral little creechure of a raccoongirl with incredible tech skills, a cyber arm with integrated multitools, dubious personal hygiene, and an NHP puppygirl gf. Her ride is a salvaged IPS-N Kidd missing some core parts (counts as an Everest for now) which will be brought up to full spec, and she is so so eepy.

[goodlucktai]

If you're taking prompts and like this one might I request Sabo's pov on 'if I go I'm going on fire?'

That fic absolutely floored me it was so incredibly good. I just had to lie there and process it. But I can't stop thinking about how afraid Sabo must be that Ace will be angry but it would never stop him from going to try to help Ace, who doesn't even know he's not the last of the three...regardless if you want to write this I just had to tell you how much I loved it!

quite the keeper of you

read on ao3

x

When Sabo was fished up out of the sea as a child, all he had to his name were the clothes on his back and an ancient monocular telescope tucked safely away in his inner coat pocket. And that was all he had. And when he woke up initially, he was half out of his mind, hysterical, begging not to go back to wherever he’d come from. So for all he knew, he wasn’t leaving anything worthwhile behind. 

It’s a sick joke. He’s waiting for someone to pull the curtain back and laugh, to let him in on it. 

“You’re my brother!” Straw Hat screams, claiming Portgas D. Ace for the whole world to hear, plunging headlong into a war like it didn’t make sense for him to be anywhere else. The broadcast is shaky, grainy, but Sabo can still see the way Fire Fist’s face crumples in terror and anger and something specific to older siblings—something Sabo’s heart recognizes in that split-second.

Did you know? If you share a cup of sake, that makes you—

Sabo stands frozen, his brain on fire, the rest of his body encased in ice. Images were crowding forward; a rainforest with rich, colorful foliage and giant beasts, a bandit hut that was always waiting for them when they decided to give into the elements and slink inside for the night, a junkyard they picked through for treasures, though it took forever nowadays, because one of them always had to look after the little crybaby and make sure he didn’t drag something stupid home. 

A kingdom square, unkind faces looking down on them. A treehouse where they could see for miles. A tiny body crawling under his blanket during a storm, and the automatic way Sabo put his arm around them, mumbling without waking up all the way, “This is the last time, Lu.”

For a moment, in the footage, it looks like they’ll get away. They’re running to the wharf, backed on all sides by allies, and Sabo finds himself holding his breath. Straw Hat is beginning to flag, but Fire Fist has a firm hand wrapped around his arm, is pulling him resolutely towards the sea. 

Then for some reason, he stops. He whirls to face Akainu, face distended in a snarl. 

No, no, no, you idiot, Sabo thinks with a fury that nearly blinds him. What are you doing, keep running, freedom is right behind you! 

You idiot, come on!

When there’s an enemy in front of me, I won’t run. 

When it happens, Ace is seconds too slow to stop it, an arm’s length away, his face the picture of horror. All around Sabo, the air goes out of the room with an audible sound, everyone sucking in a short, pained breath. 

“Oh, no,” Koala whispers, putting her hand on his wrist. “Sabo, I know you really liked him. I’m sorry.”

Her sympathy is genuine and meaningful—she liked that rookie pirate, too. It’s impossible not to like him. His devil-may-care, take-no-shit attitude, how daring and reckless and joyful he was as he threw himself into each new corner of the world. Sabo always found himself gravitating towards Straw Hat’s Wanted posters the same way he did Fire Fist’s. He always lingered to look at their faces an extra second. He never knew why.

And now Straw Hat is—

This means that from now on, the three of us will always be—

The broadcast starts to shake. The transponder snail is curling and shriveling away from what must be an intense heat. A Devil Fruit awakens on Marineford, broadcast to the world, as Fire Fist Ace lights up like a supernova and cremates everything in front of him. The man who killed his brother dies in seconds. His own allies are pushed far away, back and back and back. No one is able to reach him. 

And he’s screaming. When the transmission ends abruptly, Sabo can still hear him screaming. 

He’s weak, and a crybaby, but he’s still our little brother. Look after him for me. 

##

When Sabo boards the Moby Dick, he’s alone. He sailed in a straight line from Baltigo to intercept the Whitebeards without waiting for approval or permission from anyone. He didn’t even requisition the cutter, he just took it.

Less than two weeks after the Summit War, it’s a grave-faced group that greets him on the ship. Sabo doesn’t see the gargantuan figure of their captain abovedeck, so he casts around reflexively with observation haki and deduces that he must be resting in his quarters. 

“What business does a Revolutionary have here?” Marco the Phoenix asks, with as much veiled threat as Sabo expected, though decidedly less than he deserves. 

“Fire Fist,” Sabo says. All around him, hackles go up. “I’m here to speak with him.”

“He’s not exactly seeing visitors at the moment,” Marco grits out. 

“He’ll see me,” Sabo replies, as steady and solid as a rock face that the ocean crashes against. He speaks as if his hands aren’t shaking, as if there isn’t a pit in his stomach that it’s hard to breathe around, as if he feels anything else but cold.

It takes four minutes for Portgas D. Ace to appear. He walks like a puppet, something recently brought to life that is still figuring out its autonomy. His eyes are dark and endless and if there’s a spark left in them at all, Sabo can’t see it from where he’s standing. Ace turns his head and picks Sabo from the crowd as the outlier remarkably fast, hardly needing haki to do it. 

It takes four seconds for confusion to surface through the apathy, hints of it touching Ace’s face; the narrowing of his eyes, the downward turn of his mouth. And then it’s six seconds after that for understanding to set in, a swift river rush of it, followed by a tiny little silverfish dart of wonder. And then grief and rage trample over everything else, hand-in-hand. 

Ace is on top of him an instant later. It’s a full-body tackle, and they go rolling across the deck in the type of knockdown, drag-out brawl that Sabo only just remembers from another life. It was like learning how to swim by jumping in the deep end—the wild boy from the forest had taught Sabo how to fight as if his life was on the line. They skipped things like how to tuck in your elbows and untuck your thumbs. Ace’s lessons involved finding the soft underbelly of your opponent and digging into it with tooth and nail. 

The accident at sea that stole his memories away took those lessons, too, but his body remembered them. And while formal training with the Army was much different than wrestling with his brother in the woods, Sabo always had a bit of a nasty streak his teachers despaired over.

“You don’t have to bite,” he remembers Hack saying with measured patience. “This is a class, not life-or-death.”

Of course it is, Sabo had found himself on the verge of snapping. If I don’t fight for my life, someone else will take it. If we don’t fight for each other, no one else will. 

But he didn’t know where the thought had come from. And he was discomfited by the way his instructors were watching him, and the way Koala stared at him, at the smear of blood left on the corner of his mouth, like she suddenly saw something in his face that she recognized in herself. So he didn’t say anything at all.

Now he knows. Ace showed him how to protect himself in a brutal, bloody, final way, because Ace loved him enough to want him to exist at any cost. Live, those lessons taught him. Survive. 

Voices cry out and feet stamp around like people are trying to get close enough to tear them apart—but Ace’s fire shoves his crewmates back, a wall of snapping, snarling teeth that towers above Sabo from all sides. 

It licks against him without burning. Ace’s hands are another story. He’s hitting to hurt.

Sabo absorbs every blow, and even when his face is tender and swelling and his lip is bleeding, it still doesn’t feel like enough. 

Ace clutches the front of his waistcoat and hauls him half upright, expression twisted into something bleak and hateful. It’s the way he looked at Sabo when they were children and still strangers to each other. The first time they were strangers to each other.

“If you were going to come back from the dead, it should have been for him,” Ace snarls. “What the fuck are you doing here? What’s the fucking point now?”

I should have been there is on the tip of Sabo’s tongue, but it seems a waste of breath to say something everyone already knows. I’m sorry surfaces next, is the obvious right thing, but what he actually says is, “I had to come.”

His voice is just barely more than a whisper. Ace’s face only screws up more. 

Ten years ago, it would have gone without saying. Maybe they wouldn’t have needed to speak at all. The only person in the world who really understood Sabo, who could look him in the eye and practically read his mind, was his best friend. His twin brother. 

But now he’s staring at Sabo like he’s never seen any creature like him before. 

“I had to,” Sabo chokes out. “Ace, I had to.”

Even if you hate me, he doesn’t say. You’re my brother. I’ll always come for you. 

Ace drops him. Sabo’s head hits the deck with a solid knock, his brain ringing inside his skull like a gong. He’s still waiting for his double vision to clear when Ace lays down next to him. Their shoulders are touching, and even when Sabo’s starts to shake with the force of his sobbing, Ace stays pressed against his side. 

Their shoulders are touching, and the fire, when it finally closes in, still doesn’t burn. 

##

“I’m stepping down,” Ace says suddenly. “From the Whitebeards.”

Sabo rolls his head to the side to look at him. Ace goes on staring up at the sky and doesn’t look back. They’re still sprawled on the deck. Ace’s crewmates have been giving the brothers a wide berth since they stopped seemingly trying to kill each other but a wary few of them are still lingering nearby. If they’re close enough to overhear, they don’t give any indication. 

“The Straw Hats,” Ace says, “Luffy’s people. They’re monsters, like us. They love the way monsters love. They’re gonna drag as much of the World Government down to hell with them as they can. I’m going, too.”

He lifts his hand, holding it out above him. It ignites, merry orange flames crackling from his skin, sending shadows flickering across his blank face. Then all the color bleeds away until it’s a ghostly thing, shock white with hints of blue, and the packed heat becomes searing and uncomfortable. It superheats the air like a flash fire; Sabo can feel it in his lungs, but he doesn’t move away. 

Luffy burned. His last breath was agony, choked with smoke. There isn’t a force on this planet that could hurt Sabo as much as knowing that. If the fire in Ace’s hand leaped over and caught him and he went up like rice paper, it wouldn’t even come close. 

“Don’t want my name attached to Pops anymore,” Ace goes on. “Don’t want him claiming the consequences for my choices this time.”

Sabo asks, “What did he say?”

“Called me a stupid kid,” Ace recounts like it’s something that happened to someone else. “Said I could go as far away as I wanted for as long as I wanted and my family would be still waiting for me when I decided to come back home.”

There’s a quirk at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile. It’s some distant cousin of wry humor but not the real thing. Sabo gets the joke—“come back home.” As if that’s a place that exists anymore. 

“I told my boss the same thing,” he offers, “more or less.”

His conversation with Dragon was less a conversation and more the total destruction of the communications room. Sabo doesn’t remember all of it. He does remember the rawness of his throat, the leftover ache of screaming, “Why weren’t you there? Why weren’t we there?” and the splinters in his hands from the broken furniture he’d hurled at the walls. 

“I’m on sabbatical,” Sabo says mildly.

Ace finally turns to look at him. He’s different from Sabo’s recovered memories of him. He’s different from his Wanted posters, even. Gone is that proud, angry little boy, and that devilishly grinning pirate. He was a big brother before he was anything else, and now he isn’t that anymore. It’s carved a hole into him, scooping out the golden, shining parts that it took years to cultivate. All that’s left is the burnt remains of something once wild and beautiful. 

He could be all those things again, Sabo thinks. If he tried. If he leaned on the support and love of his crew. If he let himself hurt and then let himself heal. If Sabo were a better person, he would make Ace try. 

But he isn’t. Sabo is burnt remains, too. 

“Pops told Luffy’s monsters it was suicide,” Ace says. “He says there’s no way we can accomplish what we want to do. He doesn’t get it.”

“No,” Sabo agrees, not unkindly. “But he will.”

Life is a series of lessons. 

Sabo taught his brothers how to steal, how to be cunning—how to slip through High Town in their ratty shoes and dirty clothes like they were invisible, the way he learned to maneuver the mansion his parents lived in. Ace taught them how to fight bigger, stronger people—how to go for the soft, unguarded places, how to dig in with your teeth until you won. 

Luffy taught them, too. Every single day. How to be silly. How to laugh at themselves. How to face the day like it was an adventure instead of a challenge. How to pry open the guarded cages of their hearts so that it became possible for other people to sneak in there down the road. How to dream huge, impossible dreams, and go on dreaming them even when no one believed in you but you. 

This, their stubborn little brother showed them, day after day after day, grin stretching beneath a straw hat that Sabo would never get to watch him grow into, hands always open and reaching for them, is what you fight for. 

And the Marines thought they had any right to touch him. To take him. To drive a fist through the heart of the one purely good thing in this world. The audacity leaves Sabo breathless. 

“There are battles we have to lose,” Dragon had said, sitting in the middle of a ruined room like he’d been chiseled from stone, the beginnings of a terrible, pitch-black storm in his eyes, “in order to win the war.”

But there was no such thing as winning now. Not for Sabo, or Ace, or the Straw Hats. There was only taking as many of those people down as they possibly could, and making it bloody, and making it brutal, and leaving behind something that it would be impossible to ever forget. Something historians would discuss only in whispers for the next hundred years. 

They’ll remember him, Sabo thinks, eyes roaming away from Ace, back towards the sky. Maybe there are stars up there tonight, maybe the moon is full and beautiful. All he sees is the blackness in between, the empty space. We’ll make them remember. We’ll teach them what it means to do what they’ve done. 

And then they would finally see their little brother again, and they would tell him all about it. 

[tinytablepodcast]

Tiny Table Rules Breakdown: Raccoon Sky Pirates

Smallest Salutations and Happy Holidays! Skyler's here to introduce you to wondrous world of Raccoon Sky Pirates! This breakout game from Hectic Electron Games is chaotic, cartoonish, and easy to learn. An original roll-for-action d12 system puts you in the paws of an ingenious trash animal; together with your critter companions, you’ll take to the skies in a makeshift flying machine and steal all the trash you can carry. Whether you’re learning how to create and pilot your own junk jet, or you just want to hear Skyler's sonorous voice, enjoy this rules breakdown for this delightful system! We'll see you next week in the junkyard!

Check it out here!

[mo-the-gremlin-dandelion]

Happy Coradrag AU Masterlist

One Piece Tags

This is all the Coradrag AU I made where they are happy together and raising Ace, Sabo, Luffy, Law, Shachi, Penguin, and Bepo. With a side of Grandpa Garp and Grandpa Sengoku. Posts are in chronological order (story wise).

Plot Points:

Coradrag Humor + Tragedy

Happy Coradrag AU

Actual Story:

Happy Coradrag AU - Holding Ace (Coming Eventually)

Summary: Garp gives Ace to Dragon because he wants grandkids and with the way Dragon is, Garp thinks he'll die before Dragon even gets a date.

Happy Coradrag AU - Heartbeats

Summary: Dragon has been raising Ace for six months, these are his thoughts on raising Ace.

Happy Coradrag AU - Meeting Rosinante

Summary: Dragon has been doing well at parenting, but soon he has to go back to work. That means he needs to figure out child care for when he can’t take Ace with him. Enter Rosinante: a handsome, trustworthy marine that’s good with kids. Dragon might have more problems than he thought.

Happy Coradrag AU - Garp's Exploits

Summary: Garp and Dragon talk about Garp’s relationships and which ones might be Dragon’s other dad. (This takes place after Ace holds Luffy in: Happy Coradrag AU - Holding Luffy.)

Happy Coradrag AU - Holding Luffy

Summary: Luffy’s closest family members holding him for the first time.

Happy Coradrag AU - Up a Fruit & Hat, Down an Arm (Coming Eventually)

Summary: Dragon and Rosinante both had to leave Dawn Island for a year, it will be the longest they’ll ever be away from their kids. During this time, a pirate crew comes to visit.

Happy Coradrag AU - Junkyard Boy (Coming Eventually)

Summary: Ace and Luffy meet an interesting boy from Gray Terminal.

Happy Coradrag AU - Amber Lead Boy (Coming Eventually)

Summary: Rosinante becomes Corazon and decides to finish his mission early in order to help a sick kid that reminds him of home.

Happy Coradrag AU - Swallow Island (Coming Eventually)

Summary: Corazon and Law meet Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin.

Happy Coradrag AU - Family Reunion (Coming Eventually)

Summary: Corazon and Dragon reunite with their kids.

Happy Coradrag AU - North Meet East (Coming Eventually)

Summary: Law, Shachi, Penguin, and Bepo get used to their new home with the ever chaotic Monkey D. family.

Happy Coradrag AU - A Talk About Scars & Royalty (Coming Eventually)

Summary: Sabo is having some trouble adjusting to the Monkey D. house. He’s not used to this amount of love and care. Rosinante has some insight.

[s10127470]

Franchise Idea: Nickelodeon Kingdoms

What you're seeing right now is actually real.

This is the official title card for an online Nickelodeon game called Nick Kingdoms, released back in 2014.

The premise of that game is that it's set in a fantasy world where various Nickelodeon shows (specifically those from the Nicktoons line-up) co-exist as separate kingdoms.

As you could tell by the title card, you can see various Nickelodeon from around that time being completely redesigned from this whole new universe!

SpongeBob looks like a pirate captain.

The Breadwinners look like they're part of a biker gang.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles look rightfully like they came from feudal Japan.

Bloom looks like she came right out of a fairytale world.

And Sanjay and Craig look like absolute party animals.

And after stumbling upon this after nearly a decade, I couldn't help but think....

Or more importantly, why didn't Nick do more with this game.

All the shows you see represented here were the only ones that were.

After 2014, they never updated the game, most likely because it's a online game that can only be accessed through the Nickelodeon website.

And it really sucks because it would've been cool to see them add other notable Nick shows to this world.

And since I'm bored and I have nothing better to do today, I thought of the idea of Nickelodeon bringing this forgotten game back from the dead.

But not as a mobile game or even a video game, but instead as an entire franchise.

It would kind be like how Disney has multiple franchises under their belts involving their original animated films like The Disney Princesses and Disney Villains.

It would be cool to see a company like Nickelodeon having a entire franchise based around their huge catalog of IPs....

Which I don't think they've ever done before.

Sure the IPs themselves are basically franchises in their own rights, but Nick hasn't had a franchise that used them all together.

Anyway, sit back and grab a snack and follow me as I take you all on a journey through the new and improved world of.....

Nickelodeon Kingdoms!

For this post, I'm gonna list some shows (both notable and virtually obscure) from the Nicktoons line-up and share how they would be represented as kingdoms for this franchise.

As for the ones that were already in the game, they would be expand on a bit.

SpongeBob SquarePants: SpongeBob's kingdom in the original game was presented as sort of a pirate-themed version of the Bikini Bottom. For this franchise, the pirate theming would be ever stronger here. In fact, SpongeBob's kingdom would be based in a part of the ocean filled with tropical islands that are brimming with pirates, both human and aquatic. SpongeBob's kingdom would draw heavy influence from The Caribbean, specifically during the Golden Age of Piracy.

The Fairly Oddparents: The Fairly Oddparents' kingdom would be presented as a mixture between Dimmsdale and Fairy World. It's architecture would be a mixture between fantastical and modern, it would be inhabited by humans, fairies and other fantasy creatures, and it would based high up in the clouds.

Rugrats: The Rugrats' kingdom would be a presented as a prehistoric metropolis in the veins of The Flintstones. The prehistoric theming would be a reference to Reptar. The land the kingdom is based in would be surrounded by various environments commonly found in prehistoric-themed media: grasslands, jungles, swamps, lagoons, volcanic mountains, polar regions, and bone-filled wastelands.

Ren and Stimpy: Ren and Stimpy's kingdom would be city heavily inspired by various locations in Canada. This would serve as a reference to the duo's famous role as Canadian Kilted Yaksmen.

Aaahh, Real Monsters!: The Real Monsters' kingdom would be presented as a junkyard city inhabited by monsters.

Angry Beavers: The Angry Beavers' kingdom would be presented as a forest-themed metropolis inhabited by slightly anthropomorphic forest animals.

Hey Arnold!: Hey Arnold's kingdom would be presented a urban metropolis with a heavy sports-theming. This would be a nod to the fact that in the show, one of Arnold and his friends favorite passtime was playing sports.

Jimmy Neutron: Jimmy Neutron's kingdom would be presented as a floating futuristic version of Retroville (smack-dabbed in the atmosphere) with a 1950s theming. This would be a perfect combination of the many out-of-this-world adventures Jimmy and his friends have gone on, and the 50s-styled town they live in.

The Wild Thornberrys: The Wild Thornberrys' kingdom would be presented as being themed around colonial Africa....but minus the problematic elements. The land would be presented with a colonial town, multiple tribal villages, and landscapes like savannahs, jungles, swamps, and deserts. Admittedly, coming up with a kingdom based around the Wild Thornberrys was a pretty tricky concept since the family travels all over the world. But one of the many locations they've traveled to, I believe Africa has been the one they've visited the most, so I felt like that would be best place to based the kingdom around. As for the colonial theming, I felt it would help give the kingdom a safari theme to fit perfectly with the show.

Rocket Power: Rocket Power's kingdom would be a mixture between the California seaside-town Ocean Shores and Hawaii. I feel like having the kingdom be a mix between California surf culture and Polynesian culture would be perfect for a kingdom based around Rocket Power, given that the latter has played a major part in a show.

Invader Zim: Invader Zim's kingdom would literally just be an Irken version of the City that the show mostly takes place in. Essentially it would be best of both worlds. Yeah, I don't really have much to say to this place.

ChalkZone: ChalkZone's kingdom is basically just ChalkZone, except it's also inhabited by regular humans.

My Life as a Teenage Robot: My Life as a a Teenage Robot's kingdom would be a futuristic version of Tremorton. Yeah....I pretty much made the town that was sort of anti-robotic into a futuristic community. Talk about ironic.

Danny Phantom: Danny Phantom's kingdom would presented as creepy, gothic version of Amity Park, surrounded like various haunted lands. These lands would be inhabited by ghosts and other supernatural creatures, and have environments themed around the major ghost that reside there. Like a savage jungle for Skulker, an Arabian-style kingdom and desert for Desiree, a 1950s-style town for Johnny 13 and Sidney Poindexter, etc.

Avatar: I don't even need to explain this one.

El Tigre: El Tigre's kingdom would be a version of Miracle City that's a mixture between colonial and Mesoamerican Mexico. Giving that show has presented architecture from both eras of Mexican eras (especially the latter), I felt a even more extreme combination of both would be perfect for a kingdom based on the show.

Back at the Barnyard: Back at the Barnyard's kingdom would be presented as a rural country town akin to the ones found in the American Southwest and Deep South, inhabited by humans and talking farm animals ala Bojack Horseman. Yeah, that's kind of about it.

Tak and the Power of Juju: I don't even need to explain this one either.

The Mighty B: The Mighty B's kingdom would be a bee-themed version of San Francisco. Basically imagine the bee city from the Bee Movie and that's what you got.

Fanboy and Chum Chum: Fanboy and Chum Chum's kingdom would be an icy version of Galaxy Hills, as a nod to the show's well-known (and only) superhero, Man-Arctica.

T.U.F.F. Puppy: T.U.F.F. Puppy's kingdom would be basically Petropolis mixed with Zootopia. Please don't sue me Disney.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The TMNT's kingdom in the game was presented as metropolis that was a mixture between New York City and feudal Japan. And yeah, that theming would still be present.

Sanjay and Craig: Sanjay and Craig's kingdom in the game was presented as a version of Lundgren, but with a heavy focus on partying with stuff like amusement parks and music concerts. And just the TMNT kingdom, that theming would still be present.

Breadwinners: The Breadwinners' kingdom in the game was essentially Pondgea....but the same as it was in the show. But this time, the kingdom would be presented as a chain of various islands based around aquatic ecosystems like swamps, bayous, forests, rainforests, etc.

Harvey Beaks: Harvey Beaks' kingdom would essentially be the Bigbark Woods, but with a fantasy twist to it. Imagine Knothole from the Archie Sonic comics and that's what you got.

Well that's all for now!

I know I left some major Nicktoons out like Rocko's Modern Life and The Loud House, but that's because I couldn't quite think of what their kingdoms would be like.

If you have any idea or suggestions on what their kingdoms should be like, let me know in the comments.

[boyrobott]

are you aware of the 2009 movie extra shorts. there’s 2 of them I think they’re both on youtube if you haven’t seen them already

Yes! I'm actually one of those old folks who still has DVD copies of all their favorite movies, LMAO, so I got the opportunity to see those shorts a long time ago, when I originally purchased the disc. More RRF and ZOG content is always a plus (though I don't really consider the beginning canon, given that it totally brushes the oppression of robots under the rug, using the second most iconic robot character from the film as a mouthpiece, no less!) and Astro Boy vs The Junkyard Pirates was so hilariously over-the-top. Thank you for the recommendation, though! I'm always on the lookout for more Astro Boy 2009 media.

For anyone who hasn't seen them:

Astro Boy vs The Junkyard Pirates

The RRF in: New Recruit