#just wait till you see what aimee does with him....

[king-tower]

Cuntification beam on Vladdy? Yes pleasejfjfndnndnd

(honestly cant wait to see what you will do with Vlad)

oh i cuntified him all right.....

[ladyideal]

Our Love 1/3

Pairing: Leonard McCoy x Reader

Word Count: 2348

Warnings: None just a whole lot of fluff.

Summary: You meet Leonard McCoy at a cafe.  

A/N: So this is the first part to @cuddlememerrick 1.3k follower celebration. Congrats again Aimee (please help tag), you deserve every one of your followers. Here’s to many more to come. Please do note that this will be the only fluff fic in this three parter. Here you go everyone, a cafe AU. (Yes, I know I put this in the McKirk section, but you’ll see why in the end.)

Part 2 is here..

It was Wednesday.

Wednesdays were one of the slowest days for a cafe. You’d cleaned the windows, the chairs, the tables, and the counters so often within the day that you’d lost count after twelve. You fancied the idea of closing early since there were hardly any customers coming in. Going home and snuggling under the covers was a good idea, but then you would have the face the task of finding something to do.

The cafe was situated not far from the hustling bustling of the clubs a few streets down. Many customers would stop by, and a few had begun to be regulars in just a few short months. Opening the little family cafe with your mom was a terrific idea. Now that the sun was setting, even less customers were stopping by.

No, you would stay till closing. It gave you something to do anyways. 

The bell clinked as the front door swung open. You glanced up from the counter you had been staring at for the last five minutes, and smiled as the customer walked in. 

“Welcome in. What can I get for you?” You straightened up, studying the stranger. A doctor, you presumed, as you recognized the scrubs he was wearing. His mop of black hair was in a mess, eyes faraway, and a very tight smile on his face. Exhaustion nearly drooped his eyes shut, and he looked dead on his feet.

“Just a dark roast, darlin’,”

“Can I get a name with that?” 

The stranger only raised an eyebrow. That action alone had you nearly melting inside. If it wasn’t for the fact that you were at work and he was a customer, you would totally be down to get to know him better. “I’m the only customer here.”

You shrugged, sweeping an arm around the space. “Anytime it could get busy, that’s the beauty of having a cafe,” you started. A sharpie poised on the edge of the cup. “And I like to get to know my customers better when I can.”

The man shook his head, and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment. “It’s Leonard.”

“Well grab a seat, Leonard,” You spoke, writing his name on his cup. “I’ll bring your coffee up to you.” 

Taking your advice, he chose a corner seat away from the doors and against one of the windows. Out of the corner of your eyes, you watched as he draped his coat on his seat and sat down, burying his head in his hands. Whatever he was going through was certainly not easy. 

Finished making the cup in record time, you strode quietly over to his table. “Here you go. One hot dark roast for you,” You paused, gently setting the coffee down in front of him. “Here’s to hoping that it will make your evening a little better, sir.”

Lifting his head out for a moment to look up at you, the edges of his mouth twitched slightly upward. “Thank you, darlin’, it smells heavenly.” With that, he put his head back into his hands.

“Of course,” You nodded, walking back behind your counter. Crestfallen, you returned to your duty of scrubbing the counters again. Of course, this was nothing new to you. Some customers were talkative, some had business to tend to, but most wanted to be left alone with their coffee. After all, this was a cafe where people from all sorts of lives could get a fresh cup of joe and forget about their busy day even for just a little bit.

You did your best not to ogle at him. For a brief moment, you had caught his features. Truth be told, he was beyond handsome, and very easy on the eyes. Tall, broad shouldered, a mop of now messy black hair, and a pair of brilliant hazel eyes to add to boot. He was near a picture perfect of a man who knew how to take care of himself.

Your stomach grumbled in protest, and you scowled, tearing your gaze away from your customer and to the stand beside. You could order take out and have it delivered, but you were the only one working tonight. So there went that idea. Reluctantly, you went to the back room for the fridge, hoping to scrounge up something that resembled a dinner. 

Surveying the limited options you had, you grabbed a wrap. Before you could close the door, you froze as an idea popped into your head. You could be brave, bring some food to your obvious sullen customer, and cheer him up as much as you could. Emboldened with the idea, you grabbed another sandwich and quickly made your way out front. 

During your moment of indecisiveness, Leonard started on his brew, eyes staring out the window. Gauging on his reflected expression from the glass, he had a faraway look, a very pained look, something you were very familiar with. Snatching a plate, you loaded his sandwich and another with some sweets from the stand. 

“Hey,” You approached his table, setting down the various plates you had. “I know it’s none of my business, and I don’t know you. But since there’s probably no one else for the rest of the night, and I'm sure you’re probably hungry, I thought that we could maybe have a talk?” 

Leonard turned to you, then to the offered food in front of him, and raised an eyebrow at it all. “I’ll take the sandwich, but as a doctor, sweets aren’t good for you.”

You grinned, sitting opposite of him. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Leonard?” You teased. 

“Gone, flew out of the window,” He drawled out. His southern accent must peek out more often when he was this exhausted. 

“So what brings you to my quaint cafe, doctor?” You spoke, quietly sipping on your warm Americano.

“Death and destruction,” He snorted, pausing to take a sip out of his joe again. “Ex wife won’t let me see my baby girl regularly anymore, saying I’m a bad influence on her. Lost custody, and now I can see her only on specific days of the year.”

You ate your quick dinner, diligently listening to Leonard as he spoke about how hard he worked to become a doctor to provide for his growing family, how his daughter had him wrapped around her pinkie, how his life was destroyed and had nowhere to go after the divorce, and how he didn’t know what to do with himself now. You patted his hand with yours, in an attempt to assure him that everything would be okay. He had a heart of gold, something that his ex must have overlooked.

“You know,” You broke a chocolate cookie in half. “Only a fool would let a person like you go. No one in their right mind with a man like you, just walk out the door like that, when you have a heart of gold.”

The doctor snorted, draining the last of his cup. “Do you?”

“‘Course I do,” You smirked. “I fed you, gave you something to drink, and got you to talk about your woes. That’s gotta count for something, ain’t it?” 

A brief flash of smile graced his face before it disappeared again. He chuckled. “It sure does, darlin’. It sure does.” 

Before you could return with a smartass reply, his pager beeped and he sighed, running his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry. I’ve gotta head back to work. They’re calling me back,” he smiled apologetically. 

“Oh no, no worries.You’re needed elsewhere,” You stood up as he did too. “I’ll get these cleared for you. I don’t want to keep you.”

“I’ll make it up to you another day,” The doctor trailed off, now realizing that you never gave your name.

“Y/N,” You supplied immediately, blushing at the fact that the entire time you never introduced yourself to him. “Will I see you again, Leonard?”

“I work over at St. Jude’s. All my nurses have been complimenting on your coffee, and I thought I could give this a try, see if the rumors were true,” He smirked, noticing your obvious blush. 

“Thank you,” You nodded your head. Swinging his coat back on, the doctor bid you a wonderful rest of the evening, and he took his leave. You stared at the crumbs on the table and the two empty cups with a sense of pride. You normally didn’t go out of your way to know your customers, but this time it paid off.

“Good luck, Leonard,” You mumbled, brushing the crumbs down the edge of the table and into a waiting plate below. Gathering everything else, you dumped the crumbs into trash and the rest into a sink. With a rag, you started cleaning the table with a satisfied smile on your face.

You didn’t see Leonard for the rest of the week. It was hard work to be a doctor, and almost on call all the time. Yet, you hoped that he would remember you and stop by when he could. You could visit the hospital, and ask for him, but you wondered if that was too forward of you.

It was another Wednesday when the handsome doctor stopped by, now two weeks after his first initial visit. 

“Leonard,” You greeted, recognizing the face of the doctor when the doors opened with a loud clink. “Still the same roast from before?”

Leonard brightened up as he saw you behind the counter, and grinned. “It will be an Americano today, darlin’.”

You chuckled, and nodded as you changed his order. Sitting in the same table that he did the first time, you noticed that he had cleaned himself up, and was a little more easy going than before. Perhaps things were letting up for him. 

“Ta da da da,” You gently set the cup, and a plate of his sandwich.

He looked up from his phone, and raised his eyebrow again as he noticed the food in front of him. “Darlin’, I-.”

“Oh please Leonard,” You rolled your eyes at him. “Don’t think I didn’t hear your stomach growling when you stepped in.”

“Alright, alright, you got me there, Y/N,” He laughed, and it was the most beautiful thing you’d ever heard. You could get used to the sound. “But at least let me pay for it.”

You playfully swatted his hands away. “Please, no need. It’s on me.”

“Y/N,” He looked back up at you, searching your eyes when they met his. “Thank you.”

And that was how you got to meet Doctor Leonard McCoy, the famous and highly regarded practitioner in the medical field. It became a weekly routine. He would stop by on Wednesdays, and order his dark roast. You would set down a plate of food in front of him, and catch up. As the weeks went by, you admitted to yourself that you liked the guy. 

He was smart, witty, sarcastic, grouchy at times, but it was endearing. Now every week, you waited impatiently for Wednesday to come, to be able to speak with your favorite doctor. Even occasionally, you would send some free coffee up to his team of nurses and doctors with their coffee and some bites of food. 

You were definitely falling head over heels for the doctor. 

It had been almost three months since he first swung by. You and Leonard flirted shamelessly, but still the both of you waited for the other to make a move. You kept your mouth shut to your other employees. They didn’t need to know.

“Leonard,” You greeted, wiping away the last of the cups without looking up when the bell clinked. “The usual?”

“Actually darlin’,” Leonard stayed in front of your counter, shifting his weight from foot to foot as though he was nervous. “I can’t stay.”

“Oh,” You placed the rag away, and fully joined him up at the register. “What’s the matter? Everything's okay?”

“I’m seeing Joanna tonight. I only stopped by to let you know, darlin’,” He spoke.

“That’s wonderful news, Leonard. I’m happy for you,” You grinned up at him. “Do you want a coffee to go then or anything?”

The doctor shook his head. “Ma’s making dinner for me tonight, so I’ll have to pass this time.”

“How long do you get to see her for?”

“Three days. The ex is going on vacation, and doesn’t want the kid around. So I get to have her for a little bit.”

“Here, have a little something for the ride,” You fished out a bottled water out from the mini fridge. “Never know when you need it.”

“Thanks, darlin’,” He took it when you slid it over the register to him. “I should get goin’. Don’t want to miss my flight.”

“Have a safe trip, Leonard. I’ll see you when you get back?” You asked, and grinned when he nodded. He turned away to step back out.

“Wait hold on!” You stopped him before he could reach the door.

“Hmm?” Leonard turned back to you, a now familiar smirk on his face. Damn him. 

“Something for the ride,” You grinned, gently kissing him on his cheek and pushing an item into his hands. “And something to remember me by.”

The doctor was stunned for a moment, and you savored the way the tips of his ears burned pink. Wrapping his arms around you into a hug, he growled lowly into your ear. “Patience, Y/N. We’ll continue this when I come back.”

You laughed, and soon he joined in as well. After a moment, you stepped back, and bid him good luck and safe travels. Snatching your hand with his, he planted a kiss on the back of your hand and winked. With that, he stepped back out into the busy streets. 

It took him a few minutes to realize that you’d placed a piece of paper into his other hand. While hailing a cab, he unwrapped the paper, and grinned down at it. 

“Stay safe, darlin’. I’ll be back before you know it.” Came an unknown number on your phone.

ST Tags: @mournthewicked (Join the taglist!)

[suncatchr]

45

this ask is Very old but I just stumbled across this in my docs and it’s like. done. idk why I never posted it?

45. “What’s the damage?”

-

“I don’t believe this, you know.”

Cass puts his arm around my shoulder. “What, love?”

I gesture into my sister’s living room, where Percy is lying on the pale hardwood flying a model plane over his head. Beside him is my sister’s daughter, Angélique, staring at it in awe and trying to snatch it from his hand. Percy is older than her, two years, I think, and much bigger. She drives her hand into his stomach, trying to climb up higher, and he barely reacts.

“I never used to miss Aimee.” I lower my voice because I know she and her husband are lurking around here somewhere. That’s what she does, she lurks. She eavesdrops on my conversations and hates all my friends and mocks everything I do. I brought Heli home to meet her and my mother when we were younger, and she hated him. She kept taking advantage of his gullibility to mock and belittle him like she was a mean little child on the playground. She made him worry that if my family didn’t like him, then I wouldn’t anymore, either. She nearly ruined everything just to get a quick laugh. Irritation sends heat through me. “I hated her, Cass. She made my life a living hell, and yet?”

Percy squeals and rolls onto his side, laughing like mad as Angélique scrabbles to her feet and takes off in circles after him. Percy starts prancing and hopping to keep his steps ahead of hers, but he’s no match for her quick little strides. She pounces on him and tugs his shirt, making screaming sounds on the verge of tears as she tries to pull his plane-flying arm down. I nearly start forward; I hate when people play rough with him and she’s going to knock him down if they keep on this way. But Cass tugs me back.

“He’s okay.”

I lean against him. I was saying something, I try to put myself back on track. It’s not a huge deal anyway. “I… I’m still glad we ran into Aimee, you know? I’m so glad Percy has family nearby, I-”

If I start crying and Aimee comes out from wherever she’s lurking, I’m just going to crawl into a hole and die. I know for a fact she hasn’t matured any, I could see it in her smug face when she invited us over here. She only did it because we invited her over first. Cass accidentally mentioned that we live in an apartment, so she refused. Why don’t you all visit us at home, instead? There’ll be far more space for the children to play. Ugh.

“When I came back here and I couldn’t find her-” Tears sting my eyes because I’m already feeling it and now I’ve brought up the one winter I want nothing more than to forget. “I felt so abandoned, Cass, I had no family anymore, no matter how much I hated her, I- I wanted-”

Cass herds me a little down the hall, probably so that Percy won’t see me cry. He gives me an earnest look, puts a hand on my shoulder. I take his wrist so that I’m touching him, too.

“I wanted my family, Cass. And now I’m Percy’s family and I’m so scared that he won’t have me forever.” That was more than I meant to say, my throat tightens until tears spill down my face in streams. “So I'm… I’m happy that Aimee is around again. Percy has a cousin to play with, and an aunt and uncle to come by if he needs to get away from us, you know?”

Cass pulls his sleeve up to his wrist and wipes my face. “I know, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “I worry about all that just as much as you. That was why I invited Aimee over-”

“Before she interrupted you to tell us how rich she is,” I mutter. He snickers.

“Yeah. Yeah, I read her as a blowhard from the moment I met her.”

I can’t help laughing out loud at that, wiping the rest of my tears to make way for it. “Blowhard,” I repeat, “is a terrible word.”

“It’s the best word,” he corrects me. “But anyway, I knew… even if you didn’t like her much, you need family in your life.”

Hurt stings me. “I have family.” It’s hurt on his behalf, doesn’t he think I think he’s enough? He blinks and nods.

“Oh, I know. I know, baby, but… I don’t- Y'know? I just know you. You like to have people around, people you love. And you want that for Percy, too.”

“You do know me,” I murmur. He combs his hand through the edges of my hair. 

“I try.”

I wait a few seconds, breathing deep through my mingled emotions. There’s always something more I want to say to him but right now the threat of my sister is shutting me up before I can open my mouth. But Cass notices anyway.

“What is it?”

“I…” I glance up the stairs next to us to make sure Aimee isn’t lurking there. That used to be my spot, actually, Aimee preferred to hide behind doors. Ugh. “I wish we could have more kids, Cass. I wish Percy could have family that wasn’t Aimee. I want him to have people who have his back no matter what, people to spend time with that aren’t us.”

“Hey, whoa. Honey, listen-”

“I can’t, Cass, what we are has cost us so much! I can’t give us a family! I wish we had a normal life, this isn’t fair!”

I start crying again. I hate this. I hate my sister. I hate that she’s Percy’s aunt, she’s all he has if our lives go sideways, if I get my wish and Percy outlives us. I want him to have his own family. I want one that’s our own.

Cass hugs me, and I kind of want to squirm away because I feel like Aimee is here someplace. But I can’t let go of him, I start sobbing into his chest and this is such an uncomfortably familiar ritual that it proves my point. Our lives shouldn’t be this. I wish I could give my son the world and I lose it like this whenever I realise that I just can’t.

“Oh, darling, I know. I know.”

“I always imagined having a huge family,” I murmur into his shirt. “A house just like this and beautiful Sunday dinners. That was my dream, and I’ll never have it.”

“We don’t need it, love. We’re everything to Percy just as we are. He doesn’t know what he could have or should have. He knows us, and now he knows Angélique, and I can see that that’s enough for him right now.”

“But…” I don’t want to believe it, I just want Percy to have the life I always dreamed of, can’t Cass understand? People he loves and trusts and works with. I wanted so much more for him.

“Honey, you cannot give him everything. No one can have everything. Right now? All he sees is a little cousin to play with and a fancy new place to have dinner tonight. He’ll be alright. Any family is good family, baby. I should know. I’ve got the smallest family I could have, and it’s all I need.”

I understand, I guess. I sniffle hard and back away, offering him a nod so he knows I heard, that I do get it. He wipes my face for me again and kisses my forehead.

Then there’s a thud from the living room and all of three silent heartbeats before a howl.

As fucking expected Aimee comes flying out of the kitchen (the kitchen, how did I not see that one?) and blazes between us, skidding into her living room.

“What did your son do to my daughter?” she complains, hauling Angelique back into our field of view. It isn’t even her crying. Cass and I track back into the living room to see Percy sitting on the floor, holding his head back to wail loud enough for the whole hill to hear. He doesn’t look hurt. 

“Percy, hey. Calm down, little one,” Cass insists, settling himself at Percy’s side. I glance at Aimee, tending her daughter like Percy did anything to her. Angélique is watching Percy cry with a mystified expression on her face. 

“I should have been watching,” Aimee whines, stroking Angelique’s hair. “He’s scaring her, being so melodramatic.”

Cass looks up, alarmed. I shrug when he glances at me. That’s Aimee for you. I just hope Percy didn’t hear. I like to let him cry. I always feel better when I get to cry till I’m done.

Cass isn’t quite the same as me that way. “Percaki, look at me. Are you bleeding?”

Percy struggles to control his wailing, jaw quivering as he shakes his head.

“Are you gonna be okay?”

He gives a slow nod.

“Then let’s talk about this, okay? No more tears. Look, look at me.” Cass smudges the tears from Percy’s face and Percy sniffles. My poor baby. “You too, Angélique. Come on. What’s the damage?”

“She broke my plane,” Percy spits, clinging to Cass’s hand. Cass nods. 

“What about you?” he asks Angélique. She turns to him, then to her mother and back.

“I was just playing,” she mumbles. “I didn’t push him.”

“Yes, you did!” Percy wails. “Baba, she pushed me and I fell and broke it!” He erupts into tears again and my heart aches for him. My poor baby! He and his father built that together!

“Tell her to say sorry,” I hiss at my sister.

“She says she didn’t push him,” she grumbles back.

“Well, I believe both of them,” Cass snaps. Percy sniffles beside him. “Angélique, you didn’t mean to break anything, did you?”

She gives her head a rapid shake. “No.”

“See?” Cass tilts Percy’s face towards his and offers a smile. “I know it sucks, but Angélique didn’t mean it. Come get some water, and then you can come back and play with something else, okay? You and I can fix your plane when we get home.”

“Okay,” Percy mumbles.

“Is that okay with you, Angelique?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry, Percy.”

“It’s okay,” Percy responds thickly. I walk over to them as Cass helps Percy to his feet and guides him into the kitchen.

“Are you okay, my love?” I ask quietly. I don’t want to hear Aimee tell me he’s fine, he’s just being dramatic. Percy isn’t another me for her to bat around, he’s a little boy and he’s just plain upset.

“I brought it to show her and she broke it,” Percy whimpers.

“We’ll fix it, don’t worry.” Cass plucks a glass from the meticulously organised upper cabinet and fills it with tap water. “Or if we can’t, we’ll build a new one.”

Percy looks devastated, mouth hanging open in shock at the very prospect. “I want this one! We built this one already!”

“So it’s done. Isn’t it more fun to make new ones than have an old one lying around?”

Percy looks back into the living room, where Angélique is holding the two biggest pieces of Percy’s plane and getting to click them back together. 

“I want that one,” Percy mumbles. Cass huffs.

“Percy, listen. Angélique is younger than you, and sometimes younger kids make more mistakes than you because they don’t know any better. When accidents happen, we let it go, okay? You can’t make it un-happen, can you?”

“No.”

“But we can make a new one, can’t we?”

Percy kicks his feet and mumbles, “mm-hm.”

“Okay. So drink your water and go play, alright? Angélique looks bored, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah.” He hands back the full glass and takes off, dropping to his knees next to his cousin and asking a question that I don’t quite hear.

“Okay,” Cass says, lifting the glass to stare into it. “Kids,” he scoffs, placing it gently in the sink. 

“I love you.”

“What?” He responds ungracefully, before he smiles and rights himself. “I love you, too.”

“You’re like the answer to every problem.” I can’t believe him sometimes. 

“Well, I do my best,” he says shyly.

“And you do it well. Do I thank you enough?” I know how he’ll answer but I want to ask in case he ever says no.

He rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “You don’t need to thank me for-”

I stand on my tiptoes and kiss the corner of his lips. “I wanted to. You’re the best family I could have ever asked for.”

He bends down and bundles me into a hug so that I can lay my head on his shoulder. I feel warmth and security with him that I never felt until him. I love him so dearly. And I think Percy and I will get through anything so long as he’s with us.

[kiederen]

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE review

I said I would give my impressions on #FE and I neglected to do so till now, but better late than never.

I’ll be talking about:

Story

Setting/Theme

Characters

Gameplay

1. Story

The story is nothing special - I enjoyed it, but it's a fairly typical jrpg "power of friendship and bonds" deal that is only made unique in any capacity by the idol culture that frames it. It's not bad, but it's not groundbreaking either. I wish the story were a bit longer to give more of a build up into the final confrontation. The earlier stages slowly start to set things up but even just one more dedicated chapter to ease into the final arc would have probably made the ending feel less rushed. That and I just enjoyed playing it overall and would liked more content.

The distinct chapters format to the flow may have been meant to simulate FE chapters while still also representing how persona stories often have noticeable breaks between dungeon arcs. In TMS though, it felt a bit more artificial, not damningly so, but I think the plot momentum was a bit worse for it. 

The set up for each chapter break also revolves around Itsuki himself improving as an entertainer, even though he doesn’t know what direction he wants to focus on, and while it’s most emphasized early on, this aspect of Itsuki’s development himself feels almost abandoned or ignored through the mid and late game until the very end. The solution does make some sense, but some of the details that enable it to happen are a bit questionably contrived, and like the overall story, it felt a bit rushed in the final hour, based on what I remember.

Otherwise, the story did a good job of setting itself up, providing the characters with adequate motivation and means to seek the goals they set and each dungeon gave reasonable purpose for the main characters to tackle it.

The final chapter seemed to be trying to make up for the lack of build up by twisting and turning a bit more than usual, but most of its attempted twists were fairly standard fair for trying to draw out suspense and unfortunately were somewhat predictable for it. I was a little surprised at the host for the big bad, but mostly because I hadn’t been paying close enough attention so that was on me.

2. Setting/Theme

The Tokyo idol scene setting is the most interesting aspect of the story and while I can see it being polarizing, I found it novel myself. Mechanically, it does a good job of unifying the dungeons under a common theme of "things idols do" - such as posing for photo shoots or acting on TV.

Beyond dungeon design, the idol theme also naturally informed character designs and the multitude of costumes that appear throughout.

You can even see this thematic flair in the way that spell casting involves a character signing their autograph as a glyph!

If there’s one oddity that stands out to me about the aesthetics of the game, it’s that the monster designs seem to be unable to decide whether they should be FE inspired or SMT inspired or neither, but even in the latter case most don’t seem to fit in with the idol theme in any capacity.

Even when enemies are FE inspired, they seem to have gone through a similar (if not more extreme) filter that the Mirage characters went through - becoming dramatically stylized and the only real purpose I can conceive for it is to make enemy classes that were definitely human in FE appear non-human here. For instance, the middle and right monsters above are myrmidon class enemies - unpromoted swordmasters from the FE universe.

Not to mention: Why do their out-of-combat sprites look like Organization XIII members!?

3. Characters

Like the story, the characters are good if nothing particularly revolutionary. Most seem built around one or two tropes but then are fleshed out beyond that which is fine. You learn more about them as you do their individual side quests (social links) and these do a good job of giving the feeling of evolving your bond with that character. The pacing of the side stories is mostly okay, though the gameplay reward for those that are plot locked to be very late doesn't always feel equal to how long you had to wait to do them. There's a bit of persona syndrome wherein all the chars get plenty of opportunities to interact with the MC, but would benefit from more time interacting with each other as well.

I liked all the characters in the end. There's a good variety between both the girls and boys, though because of join times some chars got more focused screen time than others. Again, I think a longer late game with more story side quests (instead of fetch quests) would have helped balance things out. 

If I had to be as base as to rank the girls in terms of waifu ratings: 1. Eleonora 2. Tsubasa 3. Kiria 4. Maiko 5. Mamori = Tiki Though it's worth noting that top four are all really close, and each slot only wins out over their competition by a small margin. I don’t dislike Mamori or Tiki, I just am not into the little sister appeal.

I suppose Barry Goodman is worth mentioning as well. Barry is a foreigner who settled in Japan and behaviorally embodies the most cringe-worthy aspects of otaku culture. He’s heavy-set, roughly groomed, and somewhat aggressive/abrasive about his passions. I’m not one to judge him for the subject of his passions, but the way he interacts with them would make me uncomfortable around him had he been a real person. Ultimately he is a good person at heart, but his poor people skills are unlikely to endear him to anyone on first impressions, and the fact that he doesn’t care only exacerbates his problems.

Finally, and predictably most disappointingly, the FE chars (heroes and villains) are barely developed and could be replaced with persona or persona like motifs without changing the overall plot. The FE aspect is little more than a coat of paint that gives secondary theme to the invading 'otherworld,' and it's a real shame and waste of potential.

Aside from the Mirage characters and Tiki themselves, there are however a few unmarked references that are at least self aware enough to be welcome Easter eggs for fire emblem fans:

Anna is your convenience store shopkeeper, and there’s even a ‘shadow anna’ who will sell you more dubious dungeon consumables that a normal convenience store wouldn’t stock.

Ilyana works at the cafe, keeping close to her beloved food.

Aimee runs the jewelry store as she was the item store merchant in FE9 and 10

And Cath runs the costume shop. She’s a thief in FE6 with a distinct affinity for money, not unlike Anna, though not as extreme either. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve read over her supports though.

I saw an npc employee at one of the random background shops in Shibuya central street that could also be Brady from FE Awakening, but the camera never got close enough to see him clearly enough to make a positive ID.

Finally, I found it amusing that all the playable chars' names are class puns/references 

蒼井樹 = Aoi Itsuki > Aoi means blue in reference to FE lords typically having blue hair

織部つばさ = Oribe Tsubasa > Tsubasa in reference to her peg knight class

赤城斗馬 = Akagi Touma >  赤 (Aka) gives us “red” while  馬(uma) is “horse.” Red cavalier (partnered with a green cavalier) is a reoccurring archetype in FE. The Red cav tends to be the hot-headed one.

I can break down the others if desired, but these will do for examples.

4. Gameplay

Going to break this into a few parts:

General

Combat

Dungeons

1. General

The real reason this game is compared to Persona; gameplay mirrors a lot of persona's elements and it's almost easier to describe how it deviates from the Persona format than spend time detailing how they're the same. That said, if you like the persona formula (as I do), you'd probably enjoy TMS's gameplay flow as well.

While the lack of daily life and day limits for dungeons removes a lot of the tension of time management for them, I think it's fine since a lot of persona players rush dungeons in 1-2 days anyway and in TMS, once the dungeon is done, you don't have to worry about doing busy work to tick off the days until the plot is allowed to move forward again. The lack of social stats is an element of depth removed, but without a time cost element to activities, it makes sense and is probably a good thing for it to be absent from TMS (even if story wise it could have actually be viable as Aoi and the others grow their skills as performers).

Using the WiiU game pad as a smartphone screen to facilitate off-screen character interactions as well as display more detailed enemy information was clever if perhaps unnecessary (as persona 5 showed). Having the only map on the game pad actually made it a little disorienting to reference for me since my eyes had to leave my tv entirely, leading to me either holding my game pad up or bobbing my head up and down to compare my map with my surroundings. On the DS, the two screens are at least close by. I’d like to say there may have been a better use for the game pad, I’m not thinking of anything off the top of my head, so it may have been wise to minimize its use as a gimmick anyway.

This is already in your phone history when you start the game, but it’s still probably my favorite moment from the text message logs:

#relatable.

Replacing persona fusion is a more straightforward crafting system that is the source for your weapons and passive skills, and in turn, much like Tales of Vesperia, your weapons are the source of your skills, both active and passive. The system sounds more grindy than it is in practice though. Simply advancing through the dungeons and fighting 70-80% of the monsters you encounter naturally will provide you with enough materials to forge most weapons as they become available. In fact there were a number of times when I ran out of new weapons to forge and had to push on with already mastered weapons equipped. I liked that bosses and some savage encounters would drop mats of a higher tier than what was readily available from current monsters, and you had to spend them wisely before advancing the plot to the point where those mats became common. It let you preview the next tier of weapons and abilities for select characters but who you gave those weapons to was never overly stressful since you could get the other weapons you passed on later anyway.

Rare monsters drop unique mats that can make weapons that give unusual or otherwise off-type skills to characters and it makes catching rare monsters that flee rather than engage the player rewarding. IIRC, I encountered fewer than ten rare monsters in my entire play through though, so I did not feel it worth the time to actively hunt them unless there was some trick to make them appear more reliably (and catching them was also a bit dependent on the surroundings). Like treasure monsters in P5, they usually had some kind of gimmick where they were only weak to one thing if they had any weakness and the latter ones also came with dodge [weakness] passive and had a chance of just up and running from battle.

2. Combat

The one-more mechanic is replaced by "Sessions" which are not unlike self contained one-more combos anyway. The tag in attacking animations were pretty fun and though late game sessions can get quite long, there’s no way to speed up or skip session animations, possibly in part because of the existence of duo arts which use the session animations as a timer. They could have prohibited skipping prior to deciding on a duo art and then allow skipping or speed up after, though. Long session animations didn’t bother me, personally though, as session attack animations were varied and interesting enough that I never got tired of even the early basic ones (most of which were replaced by late game).

Openly displayed turn order, plus some late game skills that can actually influence turn order were both welcome features as well. 

Beyond sessions, specials, duo arts, and ad-lib performances were great at providing extra variety and changing the pace of what might otherwise be rote combat. While duo arts and ad-lib performances were rng bonuses that you mostly just take whatever you can get and be grateful, specials were more deliberate, needing a resource that builds slowly at first. Later on, with longer sessions and meter boosting passives, the sp gauge builds up much faster, but even then specials usually should be selected carefully, especially within boss battles where recovering lost sp is a bit trickier. 

That said, special skills were not created equal. Even though buffs and debuffs are powerful, some of the later buffing and debuffing specials came late, at a point where I already had normal skills that could buff or debuff at almost if not the same potency without spending SP. Similarly, as my repertoire of skills grew, my ability to hit weaknesses improved and using specials to break through resistances became less necessary, even as monsters began appearing with more resistances. 

Finally, Itsuki’s second special - “Strike A Pose,” was absurdly good and only got better as my session combos grew longer late game. The ability to give everyone twice the actions in a turn opens up so many other combos that often times, there was little reason to use offensive specials in favor of either two individual sessions or a concentrate/charge boosted session. 

Inversely, I found myself using healing specials a lot less, and perhaps it was because I used Tsubasa a lot less late game - I made Chrom a great lord which gave Itsuki healing and support which was kinda Tsubasa’s niche previously, so with Touma able to out damage Tsubasa and Elly covering flying enemies, Tsubasa just wasn’t out in combat all that often, which meant Mamori was the only one with healing specials (which were helpful on occasion) but in the end using Strike A Pose allowed me to get normal heals out in extra abundance while still enabling attackers to make a play to help clear troublesome enemies.

The FE weapon triangle’s representation in strengths and weaknesses among weapon types (not extending to magic though) gave a welcome way to predict weaknesses for enemies I had not encountered yet. One of the frustrating things about persona had always been that weakness/strength attributes for new monsters were difficult to predict and late game could cause you to walk into a bad situation that was never really your fault. Not only did the weapon triangle help mitigate some of the arbitrary mystery, but weaknesses were frequently consistent across similar enemy types at different levels even outside of the sword/lance/axe trinity. For example mage type enemies were, with few exceptions, all weak to swords and fire. Skills that deal effective damage (i.e. horseslayer/armorslayer) were also a great addition that gave characters tools to start session combos on enemies that they might otherwise be powerless against. The player also gets other ways to work around pesky resistances, features that are both welcome and necessary because...

If I have one glaring critic of the battle system it’s that Itsuki, like persona protags is mandatory. However, unlike persona protags, Itsuki has static combat tools and extremely limited ability to influence his own strength and weakness attributes. He’s always weak to fire and lances and since you can’t remove him from the front line, you always have someone in combat weak to those elements. Fortunately this is less deal breaking for the fact that Itsuki dying in combat doesn’t immediately game over (hallelujah!). In addition, later in the game most chars get passive skills that greatly increase their avoid against elements they’re weak to, Itsuki included. Still, being able to remove Itsuki from the front line would greatly increase your party diversity and flexibility. For a while after recruiting a second sword character, I had difficulty justifying putting him in the active party because Itsuki already filled the sword role. Eventually, I promoted Itsuki to a more support role and let the other char handle offensive sword plays. 

One more minor complaint I have is the inability to swap out fallen allies. Having only three party members means that even one of them dying can be crippling, especially later on and on harder difficulties. I’ve wasted turns reviving downed allies and trying to heal back only for enemies to just repeat what killed someone in the first place and put me exactly where I was last turn with less healing items or sometimes in an even worse situation. While the boss dichotomy of easy/impossible with little in between that some persona bosses suffer from is present here, the existence of specials, ad-lib performances and duo performances that heal or revive greatly alleviate some of the comeback struggle that has a tendency to snowball in this combat system. As the only active non-rng option, specials in particular are important to the system. The severity of boss gimmicks isn’t quite as punishing in TMS compared to persona, but TMS’s smaller party size, can still cause a bad situation to cascade into unsalvageable territory.

3. Dungeons

The dungeon design of TMS is interesting in that it departs from persona 3/4′s formula of randomly generated floors in favor of deliberately organized floor plans with usually only one correct path to the end. The linearity is sometimes broken up by treasures that you’ll have to backtrack for, but aside from that, there’s little mandatory backtracking within a dungeon. Dungeons stick around even after you clear them, allowing side stories to ask you to venture back over familiar ground for one task or another.

That said, the linear nature isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In TMS’s case, it allows the developers to give the player a learning curve for the dungeon’s mechanics and then challenge how well the player understood the earlier lessons, because the devs can guarantee that the player experienced the earlier sections before the later ones. It may sound obvious on paper, but it means that the developers can have a better awareness of the player’s competency at any given point in any dungeon, which is something that can’t be tracked when the player can go multiple routes at any given time. But I digress.

Another mechanical difference of note is how the player, Itsuki interacts with enemies pre-battle. In persona 3 and later, you could swing your weapon to hit an enemy in the field and that would start combat (at an advantage if they didn’t notice you), but in TMS, striking an opponent on the field knocks them back and stuns them, giving you the choice to then get closer and touch them to begin combat at an advantage or to avoid combat entirely. I like this greater degree of choice and it fits within the philosophy that TMS dungeons are made to be less stressful - less about meticulous resource management - than persona games. There’s still an incentive to engage in combat: you need to keep up a certain amount of level growth just to have the raw stats to beat bosses, but if you’re low on health and/or healing items or just plain short on available play time and you think or know there’s a checkpoint up ahead so you just want to make a push to reach it, you aren’t forced into battles you don’t want to engage in... with the exception of “Savage Encounters,” which are challenge monsters that seem to just exist to screw with you anyway. I think there was only one area prior to the last or second to last dungeons that had savage enemies I could actually beat albeit with great effort.

Playing TMS after Persona 5, it was also apparent that TMS’s idolaspheres were prototype palaces, from the set floor layouts and linear progression to the overarching themes of the dungeon informing its aesthetic and unique mechanics. In fact there are a number of things that TMS pinoeered for Atlus that then went on to feature in P5. You can read about some others here.

Puzzles were almost entirely navigation in nature - that is, how to use the dungeon mechanics and infrastructure to get from your start to your goal. It may be because it’s been a little over a month now, but none particularly stand out in my memory as being exceptionally good, while one or two I remember for being somewhat arduous or tiring. I’m still of the opinion that areas that the player is trying to solve puzzles in should have lower if not 0 encounter rate with random enemies, as battles, especially turn based ones that don’t tend to resolve in a single turn, can disrupt problem solving trains of thought.

Overall the dungeons are good though, and that’s important as they’re the meat of the gameplay. They are generally well paced with plenty to do and some minor stuff to find on your way to your target goal. Each dungeon’s unique mechanics fit with the dungeon theme and aside from a few exceptions the enemies are fairly distributed.

5. Conclusion

It has its flaws but I think, in the end, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE gets more right than it gets wrong. Even though the story was standard fair for this genre, I thoroughly enjoyed it and wished it had more content to its core for me to experience. I know there’s dlc, but the nature of dlc means that it’s nothing integral to the story and I’m not sure it would scratch the itch the way I want.

The setting is unique and the game fully embraces the themes it sets up and the themes in turn inform and affect almost every aspect of the game, giving it a unified appeal.

The combat is arguably more interesting than persona. It takes the same core formula of targeting weak points for massive damage but allows players more tools and freedom to circumvent bad matchups, make carefully planned strategic plays, or simply style on enemies with flashy satisfying attacks.

[aimeetiggzx-blog]

I Used to Think My Abusive Relationship Was My Fault. Now I Know I’m worth more.

I have spent most of my teenage years in emotionally and physically abusive relationships. Until a almost a year ago, I thought I was the worst kind of damaged goods, a girl who could only love men who hurt her I means that’s been my past since I was 15. 5 years now! I didn't want to talk about my experiences at first because I thought that my kind of pain was self-inflicted. If I was stupid enough to stay, I deserved it,

I know there are three sides to every story. In this article, you're going to hear one and that’s mine - Aimee Carver. I don't write this with venom. The men I've been involved with were handsome, smart, charming and talented. There were good times. The bad times outweighed them.

Most people don't know I've been in (to clarify again) emotionally abusive relationships. From the outside, I'd bet my life looks pretty great. Some parts of it always were. I guess I am proof that there is no likely candidate for abuse.

For a long time, I found my romantic past, when the hits started happening I started dreaming of all my ex-boyfriends again.

Trauma is a funny thing. It hides in the shadowy corners of your mind, resurfacing when all you want is for it to be erased from your memory forever.

I'm writing this for a lot of reasons. Some of them are:

I think abusive relationships are an epidemic in our society. It could help someone understand their friend, their sister, their daughter who keeps going back. It could help someone who keeps going back. Because articles like this helped me. Because what trauma really wants is a voice. To anyone who needs help, You think you are crazy. You're anxious all the time. Your heart beats quickly. You have a lot of questions for your boyfriend at the time that you don't feel like you can ask. You wonder if you're always being lied to. You spend a lot time in the past, likely when you first fell in love him. You apologize constantly two your new lover, When you explain your fights to anyone who will listen, no one understands why you're apologizing. You are always confused. You're high as a fucking kite when he's nice to you. He says "one small thing," and with an embarrassing clarity, you are reminded of all the parts of yourself you hate. How can he see those parts so clearly? You cry a lot, you hide a lot. Sometimes you know why. Sometimes you don't.

You are not crazy even if you think your going insane your not.

When you're with your boyfriend in my case my ex you're usually with just him alone. You feel weird around your friends and family, the people you used to feel the most yourself and safest around. You can't remember how to feel like yourself anymore. Now, being in your own skin is like a long dull headache that won't lift and then that slowly feels like normal. Pretty much all your thoughts about yourself are negative.

"I used to be funny, why aren't I funny anymore?"

You think you are crazy.

“Why ain’t I perfect”

“Why ain’t I skinny”

“Jumping over a hug”

There will be good days with your boyfriend. There will be miraculous days of exquisite and suffering beauty between you two.

The sad truth - On these days, you will feel better than the best and like everything's okay. You will believe that the chaos has made you stronger; that he loves you more than anything. These days are bright spots in the darkness that has descended upon you. They are the moments of hope that you'll cling to, your proof that everything is okay, until one wrong word is said and your in hospital due to his harsh actions.But at that time moments aren't a life. Moments aren't enough. You deserve weeks, months and years of feeling like everything is okay. You deserve a lifetime of that.When your relationship ends like mine did, you will drown in the confusing, competing narratives in your head, just like you did while in the relationship. Memory is going to be a weird thing for you for a while. Grief is a delusional state.

We really loved each other (so you thought) I could've helped him if I'd tried harder (but you tried and failed) I'm not perfect. And sometimes, I don't think love should feel like this.

The latter will be quieter, the former will roar inside you. Some days, you will think you left the most beautiful relationship and the truest love in the whole world. Some days you will think you are just hysterical and crazy and that you weren't being abused at all. Until very recently, I still had days like that. After you break up with him, you might not feel an immediate sense of relief, empowerment or really anything that resembles "I know this is the right thing." You will likely feel very alone. Unfortunately, coming out of the fog with your eyes open is more painful than slipping into one without noticing.

But just always remember: feelings aren't the truth. You aren't the worst off you've ever been. Expect the sadness. It sounds crazy but welcome it. That sadness is going to live in you for a long time and it will teach you a lot. I know you don't believe me, but that sadness is your friend. That sadness is your becoming.

Not everyone you lose is a loss.

Tell your story no matter how murky the details seem at first. Keep talking. Read every article you can find on abuse until you feel an intellectual understanding of what happened tunnel into you emotionally. The head will come first, your heart will follow; it will all become clearer.

If you're lucky like I was, you'll find a therapist that can help you. And now I’m in a healthy, beautiful, loving relationship with my boyfriend Louis. It’s early stages but it’s the best kind of love feeling ever. He taught me what love is like, he taught me care but most of all he taught me to be myself again and for that im greatful every single day to you!

Don’t get me wrong you will have to reflect on your past relationship. Don't blame yourself for not leaving sooner, and don't let anyone else blame you, either. In moments of trauma and shock the brain has a funny way of protecting itself. It's called disassociating. You have done a lot of this. You will remember about three months in your ex-boyfriend did something and it was like a mask was lifted. He showed you a person you had never met before. I mention this because statistically an abusive person will do something that throws you completely off balance within the first three months. Then, they will be really sorry.

You will come to learn that real love is not a cycle of cruelty, effusive apologies, a honey-moon period, then a dreaded waiting for the other shoe to drop followed by more cruelty. Abusive relationships are defined by this pattern. When you do leave, you will realize that the space that your relationship took up was enormous. It was, whether you knew it or not, the monkey on the back of every thought you had. When it's gone, the emptiness left in its wake will feel like an ocean around you

It will take way longer than you want to "get over it," and you will think you will never reach the shore.

You will. When I was newly single and going on dates, this is how it went. First, I dated blindly and way more than I should have. I was attracted to guys who were like all my ex-boyfriends, physically and emotionally. Then, I started dating people who were completely different but whom I was not ready to love. Like a teacher, I observed how they treated me with a confusing detachment and thought, "Oh, so this is what it should be like."

"So, this is what kindness is like."

Dating made me feel like the loneliest person in the world for a long time. I wish now I hadn't done it at all, but withdrawal is painful and uncomfortable. I was willing to try anything to feel just a little better. But trust me just like me your king will find his way to you and it will be a little weird at first but that weirdness goes and it will become the most perfect thing in your life.

But in every process till you are full over it You will miss your ex boyfriend in a way you didn't know was possible and you don't think should be allowed. You will want to get back together. Abusive relationships fuck your brain chemistry up. They're addictive, and the withdrawal is not fun.

Don't worry tho baby girl.. with time, your brain will even out. In awhile, you won't want to be with him anymore. Crying helps you detox, so do a lot of it( I still cry alone due to all the horrible flashbacks and memories) you just have to find someone who’s willing to understand and help you over come them not make them worse. So does sleeping, exercise, therapy, eating healthy, seeing your friends and laughing.

For me, alcohol didn't really help I broke down every time trying to kill myself due to the fact of feeling so dirty and broken Or I guess, it did, until it didn't.

When you're in the withdrawal phase, you'll begin to understand why you thought being in an abusive relationship was okay for you. You're going to have to look at a lot of your past and your inherited patterns it’s best to do that alone.. It can get heavy but knuckle through it. You can do it. I’m proof that it can be done.

You will tell people that know your ex-boyfriend about what happened and how he treated you. Likely, no one will be surprised by his behaviour. Likely, no one will confront him. This is one of the saddest parts of our world. You will feel like the last one in on a sick joke.

Your ex-boyfriend will probably never apologize to you. If you do hear from him or see him, he will make you feel crazy. He's really good at that (like sending pics of him and his new girlfriend kissing) He will likely minimize your history, dismiss your relationship and pull the rug out from under you again. The way he frames you and your relationship will be distorted.

I believe that amends can happen, but usually, not in a timely manner. Like you need time to really unpack and understand why it all happened, so will he. Now factor into this that you have the desire to understand yourself and your behaviour. The closure you desire is a myth and it's not reachable in one conversation. Closure happens slowly and keeps happening. You'll give it to yourself.

If you leave your boyfriend for someone else, beware. Until you truly understand why you were in the situation you were, emotionally and intellectually, your subconscious will have a sad way of attracting an identical relationship that looks completely different from the outside. This is not always true.

At first, when the fog is lifting, you will look at your past self with shock and disgust. Then, later, you will look at your past self with sadness. Then, with understanding. Finally, you feel the most visceral pride for the moment you left, even if you didn't want to because you did that on the blind faith that life might be better on the other side. You did that on hope alone. You didn't know what you do now. That's so brave.

“You are so brave”- the only words I need to hear yet waiting for it.

I know how scared you are. I still get scared. My years of all the recovery has been the most challenging and rewarding of my life. It's not perfect and I don't think it ever will be. I get lonely and restless. I live with those feelings. Actually, I try to understand them. One day, your life will look like a version of mine. Things will keep getting better and better, faster and faster. Good things will keep finding you. You will be really happy. That happiness will get so big that you won't notice how the sadness is lifting until it's almost gone.

My life is full of hard work, art, friends who love and support me, friends that I am lucky to know. I have more energy than I know what to do with. I am the most productive I have ever been. I sing, I dance, I have meaningful conversation, I rest, I laugh a lot, I stay out too late. I am closer to my family than ever before. I found my way back to my old friends.

Maybe I'm becoming myself again.

Finally, (I know you're worried about this) you will meet someone else. You will fall in love again and this time, it will be about more than your wounds matching up with someone else's. It will be different and it will be better(I’m proof of that too my new boyfriend is my world for all the good reasons) But something becomes more important to you than romantic love and it's called self-worth. It will feel like it happens almost over night, but you will grow to love the person you are.

You should.

You fought hard to become her.

So love her.

Love Tiggz

AimeeCarver

Xx

[deepdisireslonging]

Quiet

Sam makes the observation that the reader is louder watching wrestling than in bed. She challenges him by saying he is too loud to hear her. The reader comes up with a way for him to finally hear her, and benefits from it.

Pairing: Sam Winchester x Reader (Y/N)

Warnings/Promises: SMUT, alternate to ball gag, Dean interrupting cuddling

Word Count: 1330

Note: Again, I am guilty of writing in class instead of taking notes. Oh well, here’s a Sam smut that I hope you guys will enjoy. My friends always check on my voice after a night of watching wrestling, since I’m not so loud during the day. Let me know if you’re the same or the opposite, or any mix in between. Also let me know if you’d like to be added to a tag list. And my requests are open! Don’t be shy, and hope you like this.

“Come on, Ambrose, you’ve got this!”

It didn’t matter that it was an old match with an ending you already knew; the point of watching wrestling was to destress. To get yourself relaxed after a hunt so you could sleep. Usually, the mere size of the bunker buffered your shouts from bothering the Winchesters, but your room wasn’t completely soundproof.

“I don’t understand how you can be quiet as a mouse every other second of the day, then create noise as loud as that.” Sam stood in your open doorframe. You didn’t hear him come in.

You paused the match and looked up at him sheepishly. “Sorry, Sam. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

Sam smirked. “No. If I can sleep through a lifetime of Dean’s snores, I can sleep through anything when it’s safe to. Which match is it?” You made space on your bed for him and gave him a quick summery of the feud leading up to the match. He watched your computer screen and occasionally glanced at you when you let out a particularly intense reaction. He got into it eventually but kept his reactions to flexing when someone took a hard bump.

“You’re doing it again,” you said after one such flex.

“Huh?”

You poked at his arm as he flexed again. “That. Right against me.”

Sam poked you back. “Am I distracting you from your match?” He laughed high and free as you stuck your tongue out at him. “Careful, Y/N, or I’ll find some better use for that tongue. Make you really scream.”

Ambrose and Rollins froze and the match went to black as you closed your laptop. “Is that so? Even if you could make me scream,” you gasped as Sam flipped you beneath him. His eyes glowed with promise, daring you to continue. “…you wouldn’t be able to hear it over how loud you are.”

“I can’t help it,” he said. He leaned down and breathed over the hollow of your throat before whispering in your ear, “you always feel so good. Take me so well. Make me lose my mind.” He shifted to plant his knee between your thighs, keeping you from rubbing them together. He smirked as you angled your hips to rub up and down on this thigh instead. “Is that an invitation to try again? To make you feel so wonderful?”

You were already soaked, and he technically hadn’t touched you yet. “Yes.” You tilted your head to give Sam more room to suck on your neck. Clothes were removed, chill bumps were raised, and your bodies were covered in open-mouthed kisses. You ran your fingers up into your hair as Sam reached down between your legs. Heat was already present in your cheeks and hot ice was in your veins. He stroked you, curling and thrusting in every way that made your heart thump wildly in your chest. Your eyes closed as the first wave of bliss ran through you. Sam hummed at your breathy sigh.

“That,” he said, sucking your juices off his fingers, “was not loud.”

In your post-orgamsic haze, you came up with an idea. Sam leaned with your touch as you pushed him to his back. Leaning across his body, you grabbed your discarded panties off the floor. You balled up the fabric and arched your eyebrow at Sam. He grinned. Then he opened his mouth and accepted the make-shift gag. It must have tasted strongly of you, having been soaked earlier, because he hummed around it and gripped at your hips like he does when he is particularly pleased.

His eyes widened as you sank onto his length, mouth hanging open and breathless. He stayed still as you worked your way down. With each drop, you let your inhibitions drop away and let your voice do what it wanted to. Maybe it was watching WWE right before, maybe it was because you knew how intently Sam was listening, but this time you were louder. You stopped once he was fully sheathed and propped yourself on his chest. He curled his hands over yours and gave them a tight squeeze before moving them to your hips. You were so full you didn’t realize what he was planning.

You screamed as he lifted you and slammed up into you. It was more shock than delight… the first time. Sam kept going, pulling from you a series of different screams you didn’t know you had in you. He growled through the ‘gag’ as your fingers curled, digging your nails into his skin. Your eyes darted from the red welts to his eyes. And stayed there. You saw the lustful darkness there. Then the roll of them as he tried to hold off. You bounced faster, shivering as your release danced closer. Sam twisted and got you there. Your vision dropped out and missed seeing him watch enraptured by you.

While you were catching your breath, he flipped you beneath him. His arms curled under you, and he reached up to the back of your head. Gingerly, he angled you to look up at him. He removed the gag and kissed you. You sighed as he began to roll his hips again. Slower. Intently. He licked at the sweat collected in the hollow of your throat.

The hoarseness in the back of your throat didn’t bother you. All the same, you slipped back into your soft sighs and mewls. Sam kissed his was across your jaw and rested his head on your shoulder. You licked his ear right next to your mouth. His hands gripped you tight. All the while, he thrust languidly accented with a few losses of composure. You felt him smile against your skin as those moments made you gasp out.

Sam lost himself in those gasps. He started to do everything he could to make you make that sound over and over again. You keened as he bit lightly onto your shoulder, muffling his own noises. You ran your fingers through his hair and pulled him back to look at you.

“I want to hear you, Sam. Please. Don’t hold back anymore.” You smiled at him. He nodded and ran his thumb over your bottom lip.

You arched as he moved faster. His grunts and growls filled the air, mixing with the sound of his hips crashing into yours. Using you arch, he nipped at the underside of your neck. You met him thrust for thrust, making Sam toss his head back. Using the chance, you returned the kiss, mouthing over his Adam’s apple where it bobbed in his throat. He whined and rubbed at your clit, sending you over the edge with an echoing high-pitched cry. Sam followed soon after, then fell to one side of you.

Over his heaving chest, you laid one hand and curled into his side.

“Damn,” he breathed.

You hummed in agreement.

There was a buzzing. Sam groaned and leaned half off the bed to search through his clothes. He chuckled and answered Dean’s call.

“When the two of you are done fucking like rabbits, we’ve got a case,” Dean growled.

“You couldn’t just come to the door?” Sam kissed the side of your head as Dean disagreed.

“And risk having to hear round whatever up close? No thanks.” Dean paused. “Is Y/N at least alive?”

You grinned and took the phone from Sam. “Barely. We’ll be out in a few.” You hung up before he could say anything else. The phone plopped into Sam’s clothes while you snuggled him for a few more seconds. “We should get ready.”

“We should.” Sam stroked your hair then rolled out from under your touch. He started to put on his clothes. You caught him smiling and arched an eyebrow at him. “Now that we know that I can be somewhat quiet, and I know you can be quiet, do you want to not wait till we get back here from the hunt to… try that again?”

It was awfully tempting.

 Masterlist 

Forever Tags: @blondekel77 @hallemichelles @laochbaineann @lavitabella87 @ramblingsofabourbondrinker @savmontreal @tinyelfperson @zuni21798

Sam/Supernatural Tags: @aimee-grace-01 @badwolfy08 @daniel-sharman-tho @gabbyrogers094 @ktchw @loveisjustfortheweak @mrsdeanwinchester16 @myshitismine4221 @nerdyalienhybrid1987 @parseltonguespeaking @sabrinaoctaviagunner @stealingyoupretty @thiickreigns @vinylwinchesters @ilostmyshoe-79 @jpadjackles @just-another-busy-fangirl @quixoticcat @smandrews3 @supernatural-jackles @tamtamlov @vvinch3st3r  

[takeenata]

Birthday

February 8th, 2016. My friends are gathered at my house, here without my knowledge or planning involved. Not without permission, however; my friends are welcomed to enter my home at any moment, so long it’s at some reasonable hour. My family, wife and kids, are here as well. Today is a momentous day for them, but sometimes I just like to believe it’s a good reason for them to party. They drink brew I spent a few days working on to perfect to my tastes, and apparently it’s just right for them too. They eat food that I prepare them, from full-fledged meals to small snacks. I am the provider of all of this, and despite the occassion, I am more than alright with this being my birthday celebration. Happy 45.

I’ve never wanted anything extraordinary for my birthday celebration. Up to when I was twelve, mom and dad would celebrate my day with a loaf of cinnamon banana bread. It became my favorite thing to eat when I was six, and till this day I would choose it over a batch of cookies or a cake. My wife is aware of this, and she attempts to recreate the banana bread on this day. I have never asked her of this, she does it on her own accord. When the night’s done and my friends have gone their separate ways back home, the kids want to go off and see their friends. My wife and I are more than alright with them seeing their friends at this time; we’ve visited their parents more often than not because of how much time our children spend together. It also gives us about three hours alone in the house. Three hours alone, on my birthday. If I have to share anymore detail about what happens next, you need help.

It’s roughly eight o'clock in the afternoon. If you’re a working person, this is usually the time you go to sleep so you can get up and get a head start on your work, and get off work pretty early. Which, my day is usually going to sleep around eight-thirty, waking up at five-thirty, working out for an hour, take a shower, make breakfast for the kids before they go to school at seven-thirty. Then I work over a hot forge till it’s twelve, take a thirty-minute-lunch, then work on what I can till it’s around four. But the part of owning your own business, and being the only one that works there, is that you can work whenever you really want. As if no one’s going to complain that you’re not working; especially when you’re a blacksmith for a living, and on average your final products sell for over a grand each. Add the fact that you work on more than one project a day too; on a good day I am handling six to seven different pieces.

Eight PM. I went to the fridge to see if I have the right things to make breakfast for my kids in the morning. Sadly, I ran out of milk and eggs during today’s celebration. Breakfast is the most important part of the day in my house, and I’ll be damned if I ever let my kids go a day without having something to kickstart their morning to school. I know that Docward likes to have a bowl of cereal and toast with strawberry jam, and Nimie ‘cannot survive’ unless she has her morning orange-juice and scrambled-eggs. Pirella doesn’t care what’s made for breakfast, so she says, but I know for a fact she enjoys oven-baked bacon as much as I do. I look through the freezer to see we’re also out of bacon; a flashback of making about ten pounds of bacon for my party today came back to me.

I closed the fridge door to walk to my bedroom, hearing Pirella chatting with someone. The room is illuminated with a single lamp on a nightstand, and with it I’m able to see my wife laying on the bed with a laptop on her legs. She’s wearing boxers, and a white tank-top. Her face is illuminated by the screen of the laptop; as I walked in she looked up at me, smiled, flashing the sharp white teeth of hers. “Hey, Husbee.”

“Husbee? That’s new.” I was in my pajamas, which was just a pair of wool shorts with a string, the undershirt I’ve been wearing throughout the day, and a navy blue robe. I disrobe myself, hanging it up on the back of the bedroom door as I closed it.

“Well babe gets kind of dull doesn’t it?”

“What’re you talkin’ about, babe?”

Pirella laughs. “I hope you’ve had a good day today.” “It was an amazing day. I really appreciate you all bein’ there.”

“Of course we’re all going to be there. It’s the least they can do showing up to this after all the times you’re there for them.” “I don’t like pulling favors from people though, even if they do owe me.”

“Tak this whole house is built on a favor.” She proved a valid point. 2010 was the year I finally settled down and was able to get a house. But, I wasn’t one to just buy a house with money I barely had. However, a year prior to settling down, I had saved a man’s life at the hands of some sinister necromancer. Considering the man was wealthy in many ways, and had political power, the necromancer had plans to kill him and reanimate his body to their favor, essentially a puppet. I didn’t find out what all the necromancer wanted to do after the fact; I do know that the magic abuser is hospitalized, paralyzed from the neck down. I was not proud of what was done to him.

“I guess you have a point,” I said with agreement, remembering I had asked that same man if I could have a house built to my liking, and he was more than willing to do so. Three months later, my two story house was completed, with a forge house in the side.

I need a change of subject. “So who are you talking to, honey?”

“It’s Aimee. She says “Hi.””

“Hello Aimee,” I say back in a louder voice. I make my way to my dresser that perches a television on top of it. Well, sort of perches it on it’s top; the television is mounted on a wall, and my dresser underneath it. From the dresser I reach for the second to last drawer of this four-drawered-construction; it’s the jeans drawer, and from it I take out one of the worn out pairs of Arizona jeans as well as a belt.

My wife noticed me changing into jeans. “Heading somewhere?”

I slide open the first drawer to take out a black shirt, then the second drawer to draw out a red flannel. I begin to dress, and I tell her “Need to make a grocery run before the store closes in…” I flick my wrist for my watch. “An hour and a half.”

I continue getting dressed. I can hear Pirella telling Aimee to wait a second. The uegat got out of our bed, stretching down her tank-top; sitting down had bunched it up to her chest. “Do you plan on driving?” “When it’s right down the street? I don’t want to waste gas. Plus I could use a walk to think about some things, you know.”

“Everything alright? I know Christmas is a hard time for you, but you’re usually a lot more open during your birthday.” She planted her hands on her hips. “What’s eating you up?”

“I’m forty-five now. I’m three years away from outliving my mother and father. I just want to think this stuff out alone, you know?” I started to get dressed, putting on my jeans and other articles of clothes. I felt like my explanation wasn’t enough and that I might’ve offended my wife a little.

“I know you’re always there for me. I really love that about you. Even before we were married, you were there to get me off my ass and onto my feet, kicking and fighting. But, this is one of those things that I want to think through first before I talk much more about it, you know? I’m sorry if that hurts you in any way.”

She quickly wrapped her strong arms over my shoulders, drawing me down to her for a tight hug. “Tak that’s all you have to say. I love you, honey.”

I wrap my arms around her waist and lift her up to my height, bringing her feet off the carpet flooring. “I love you too.” She presses her lips onto mine, and I embrace my wife with tender love.

“Stay safe out there. I heard it’s going to rain, and I’d rather you not catch a cold.”

“I’ll bring my jacket, the big brown one.” I have to specify. I have a lot of jackets, and often they’re used for separate occasions. Rain; cold-weather; style; travel; business; it’s important to have something for everything.

“Don’t forget your wallet either.”

“I always carry my essentials.” Essentials being wallet, car-keys, and concealed weapon. A mental list of whatever I needed from the store is what I need now though. It was bacon, milk, and eggs. A gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, and maybe two packets of Oscar Meyer thick-cut bacon. I like my women like my bacon; thick and delicious.

Bad jokes aside, I need to make sure that’s all I’m having to get. “Anything else from the store you think we need?”

“Grapes, bananas, and apples. You all ate the fruit today.”

“We had fruit to begin with? Where the heck was it?”

“On top of the fridge in a basket-weave. Though I guess it’s hard for you shorter people to see up the fridge now, ain’t it?” She laughs.

“Your ears don’t count for your height.” She has ears pointing up that are about a foot in length. If ears did count towards height, my wife would be taller than me by a few inches. We share a laugh together. I finish getting dressed and make my way outside, heading for the nearest store before they close for the night.

…

I buy the needed items if I want to assure my family are going to have a happy breakfast tomorrow morning. I make small talk with the cashier, as they made comments about me being here close to closing. I replied with it being the least busy at this time of night, but how I also needed to restock after my birthday this year. They wish my a happy birthday. I buy my items and start to walk back outside.

The automatic doors slide open. I see the downpour of rain begin, followed by several claps of thunder and flashes of lightning arc across the blackened sky. The sky might’ve already been black, considering it was evening; the clouds were blocking the moonlight. I’m thankful to have grabbed my raincoat; I’m not so thankful that years ago when I bought this thing, I picked the obnoxious, highlighter yellow option. At least it’s reflective. My hood goes up, making my head form an awkward shape since my ears stick out a few inches from my head. Hoods aren’t my style anyways; niether are beanies.

I walk home, listening to the sounds of a storm roll over me. It’s peaceful, despite the destructive nature that can come in these storms. Reminds me of a time I watched a tree back in Kansas get split in half by a bolt of lightning. The sound it made was awesome. Find it strange or not, I didn’t see a legitimate lightning storm like this when I was living back in Alaska, up north. I seen a lot of blizzards and some rain, but the rain was a rarity with how cold it got. The blizzards were always something else to wake up to, as you exit the front door and there’s two feet of snow blocking you.

The thunder is calming. Single story buildings made of bricks make the path home for me, but they echo the sounds of the storm and resonate them in a deeper, more mellow manner. Each roar surges through my chest, as I feel the echoes shake inside my body; my heart settles and slows. I believe this is my body’s way to let me know, now more than ever, can I relax. I’ll end this day on a high note, with self-reflection; self-realization.

It was back in 1971 when –

“There you are,” grunts a voice unfamiliar. A pair of clawed hands takes ahold of the hood of my raincoat. Make that several hands taking hold of my raincoat; is that five or six pairs I’m feeling right now? Difference sizes too, and some don’t even have claws. I’m swept off my feet and thrown into an filthy alleyway that’s barely given any light from a broken street lamp that flickers. The groceries I had bought fly from their bags, making a fresh mess of breakfast items. A waste of forty something dollars.

The hands toss me against the rusted metal of a unsanitary dumpster; my head slams against the sides of it, hard enough to make the open plastic lid slap down with an audible thump. The sudden surge of pain causes me to slide down the sides of the trash-filled box. As I now sit in a puddle of sullied water, I feel my vision blurring, the rain not helping as it fogs my vision. I can only make out eight figures that use the shadows to mask their identities. Wiping away the rain, I can see them better.

Demons. I should’ve figured. Such a strange variety of them too. One is an imp; another wears a tailored tuxedo; a third has skin with a violet shade to it. One has more than four horns breaking from it’s skin; a different demon looks to be suffering from an overextended diet of grease; the sixth’s skin I believed to be red in design, but as I look again I see their skin is actually riddled with tattoos on a pale-skin-canvas; another had shackles burned and chained to it’s wrists and ankles.

A stranger stood amongst these seven demons. While the rest wore leather and cloth looking clothes, they wore jeans, boots, and a hoodie that prevented me from seeing their face. I couldn’t see the color of their skin, or any other definite traits. I can’t label them as human, or other subhuman, humanoid, or other bipedal race of being. I could safely assume them as a demon, since the crowd it stood with was consisted of only demons.

I finally stand after observing the demons that surrounded me in a half-circle. Needless to say, I am in no mood to end the best day I’ve had in awhile with a fight against eight demons, with intentions I’m sure are to kill me. Hands clenched, adrenaline making my heart race after it had just calmed; my mind ticking with ways I’d win this inevitable fight, despite odds stacked against me. “What do you want?” I question, having good hope this was just some sort of confusion. Afterall, none of the demons carried weapons with them.

“You,” they all said, simultaneously, like they rehearsed this scene to get it right.

I shake my head. “I’m not in the mood for this crap,” I spit out. My hands gesture to the mess of food that was going to be breakfast for my family. “You all just completely trashed my grocery run, and the store just closed.”

“Damn your pitiful food, elf!” Said the most well dressed of the demons, their tone sounding like the rich stereotype. He’d be the one paying me for the food he helped ruin.

“Dine on your blood tonight,” included the demoness with violet skin. “You’ll be drowning in it!”

I roll my eyes. This is not the first time I’ve heard someone talk high-and-mighty, treating me like a lesser individual when they make threats against my life. It’s too common for me to hear more threats against me than actual hopes for me, which is cons when it comes to being an avid ‘protector of good’ and ‘destroyer of evil.’ I’ve had a pretty damn good day, and I’m not about to let eight strangers completely ruin it for me with their threats. “I ain’t in the mood for this,” I say, left facing and starting to walk out of the alleyway. “I’m not even going to ask that you guys pay me back for my food; consider this a warning to leave me alone.”

My way is suddenly stopped by a standing wall of tattooed skin. I look up at the one in my way, which is uncommon for me as I am usually one of the tallest out of my group of friends, standing six-feet-five-inches. The giant of a demon, this muscle made obstacle completely blocks me from exiting, stepping left and right as I try to step left and right around him. He’s laughing at me now. “This is the infamous “Elven Hero,” the halls of Hell scream so much about? “Heaven’s Sword” walking away from a battle. Pathetic.”

“Is that what this is about? Y’all want to test your metal against me?”

“I’ve long dreamed of fighting you one-to-one, Takeenata. But we are not here for games,” said the mound-of-muscle-mass, as he lifts me up aggressively by the front of my raincoat. “We’re here to-” “Gash,” softly spoke another voice, a whisper directly in my ear. Chains rattled as the pale demon spoke. “He mustn’t know. He’s not allowed.”

“Very well,” said the brute holding me, suddenly strengthening his grip. The demon Gash tossed me with extreme force and speed, and I collided with the cold, wet, brick wall of the alleyway.

I’m no where near strong or sturdy enough to have left a dent in the wall, however, I did leave behind a splat of my blood due to new injury dripping behind my head. I can feel my back broken in a few different places now; vertebrates out of place and an inability to walk normally. Lucky for me I landed next to the dumpster, which I use now to pull myself back onto my feet. I hold onto the edges to keep myself up.

I can taste a clot of blood in my mouth. Something’s bleeding inside of me. Elven genes dictate that injuries usually heal up quickly when that injury is given rest for a good week or so, and the dwarven bit of me lets me withstand injuries pretty well and have the strength to press on, disregarding awful pain. Despite these advantages I may have, I don’t think it’s going to help me when I can’t feel or move the lower half of my body now.

Still though. I have to fight. From my back I draw my handgun, a .45 caliber with a twelve round clip, and on my utility belt, two more clips to load. Always carry essentials. I take the pistol off safety and hold it with my firing hand, my right hand, as my supporting arm, the left arm, keeps me up and holding on the edge of this dumpster. The enemies surround me, which narrows down my need to aim well.

I still don’t want this to go down. I just want to go home, sleep next to my wife, and wake up to a loving family. However; I’ll take anyone that tries to kill me down to Hell. I spit out the clot of blood collecting in my mouth, then gaze at the eight demons surrounding me. “None of you are leaving here without any scars,” I say with utter aggression boiling in my veins.

The imp tries to charge at me, flaring his tiny teeth with an open mouth, wanting to bite me. His head was bigger than his body, he stood no bigger than two, maybe three feet tall. My aim goes for his abnormal sized head, and I pull back the trigger. I fired a shot straight into his gold colored eyes, and he goes down like a bag of rocks. Though, I know he’s not dead, just immobilized while he recovers from taking a bullet into the eye. Judging from there being no exit wound I witnessed, the bullet is lodged in his brain. This will give me more time as his body tries to push it out.

A chain appears from the heavy rain and wraps around my wrist. The joints of this rusted chain pinch my wrist and squeeze with incredible strength, attempting to cut off the circulation to my firing hand. He knows my weapon can cause damage; the demon in rags and chains wants to take away my advantage.

I attempt to whip the chain back at him by flicking my arm up and down. Success; the whip hits the demon in it’s face, and he drops his weapon. With my wrist being freed, I aim for his head and fire. The aim wasn’t all too good, but I manage to hit his chest well enough to toss him on his feet.

With two out of the fight, and two bullets used, with 34 rounds left to spare, I feel complete faith that I’ll make it home tonight. I’m going to have to call my wife and get her to drive here and pick me up; no way I’m walking for a few weeks, and there’s not a chance that I’m crawling back half a mi –

A sudden force hits my chest. Colliding force that goes through my chest, that I can feel penetrate my…heart? I’ve never felt anything legitimately touch my heart before; metaphorically is something else. The sudden sharp pain that surges through my chest, how clean it went through and the way it feels inside. I’ve felt this feeling before; I’ve been stabbed. In the heart.

Mind goes numb. Body fails to move. I slowly descend down to the cold damped ground, dropping my pistol and staring off into the end. This was the end – holy shit. With each pump of my heart, my vision fades into dark. With each beat, my life fades away. I clutch at my chest, holding the very knife that penetrated me. I’m not sure what sort of idea I had just then, but I find myself taking the blade out of my chest and observing it.

“Such strange designs,” I thought to myself, admiring the weapon that killed me. I look up to see my attacker, which was the stranger in the hood. He didn’t move the entire time, didn’t say a word either. I should’ve paid better attention to him.

Life slipping away by each second, vision become more black by the second. I’m so sorry Pirella, I won’t be coming home tonight. My kids, oh God my kids; they won’t have a father anymore. My group of friends will be short one person now.

Eyes close, and I feel the last gasp of air escape my lungs, and the last pump in my chest.

I’ll be seeing you, mom and dad.

[omgnsfwisnsfw-blog]

NSFW #19: The Collected

The room was very dark and unfamiliar, windowless. A single light, harsh in contrast, was illuminating the disturbing sight of NSFW, unconscious and tied up back to back while seated on a pair of rather uncomfortable looking wooden chairs. The scene was quiet, the only sound the occasional drip of water, or perhaps the squeak of a scurrying rat. A moment passed, and our heroes began to come around, looking a rather concerned at their predicament. Mike spoke first, her cap slouched at an angle- it appeared that whoever kidnapped the two of them had the decency to put it back on her head. “Nnnngh… Church? You okay, bud?” John opened up his eyes slightly. His mind felt like mush. He mumbled his response. “Not really.” “Don’t worry. I’m right here, we’ll find a way out of this.” She was taking a brave stance, it seemed, for the sake of her partner if nothing else, but her own expression was a bit wide-eyed and nervous looking. She glanced around, trying to glean anything about their location from what little she could see. There were vague shapes in the dark, but nothing beyond the boundaries of the single light was anything that Mike could make out for certain. Suddenly, a door opened and slammed shut, a cascade of footfalls echoing down an unseen stairway, a long shadow falling over the captive Tag Team Champions. “Michelle McGuire. John Bishop Church. I see you’re awake. Good. I only slipped the two of you a mild sedative. I wouldn’t want any harm to come to my newest acquisitions… yet.” The voice was a rich, warm baritone, the sort that sounded as if it belonged to a well known gay rights activist. Or perhaps a legendary sci-fi actor. Or perhaps both assumptions were only coincidental. “But I am being rude. Allow me to introduce myself. I… am The Collector.” The pair stared at him blankly. Then back at each other best they could manage. Back to their captor again. “...I’m sorry, who?” “The Collector! The greatest mastermind that professional wrestling has ever seen!” Mike looked thoughtful, lips pursed into a ‘hmmm’ of concentration. Then she shook her head. “No, seriously, who are you? I’ve never fuckin’ heard of you.” The shadow threw its arms up in frustration, the voice taking on a distinct edge of indignation. “You mock the Collector? The most feared manager in the world? I have traveled this entire sorry planet, assimilating the best fighters into my personal collection. From the arid deserts of Mexico, to the flowering cherry orchards of Japan, to the frozen tundras of Canada. I have taken the best from them all, and now I have come for America. All of the best Earth warriors will belong to me!” He cackled richly. John, for whatever reason, was nodding along. “He seems nice.” “Church. He wants to keep us as pets, or fuckin’ eat us, shit, maybe he wants to make us part of some weird concubine, I don’t know.” “Oh.” With their kidnapper’s clear lack of niceness clarified, Mike turned her attention back to the sinister man casting his shadow over them. Her brows knit, and suddenly a look of recognition dawned over her. “Wait a fuckin’ sec, I know who this guy is! … Dude, didn’t your team just lose? To a team containing Emma Louise? I mean, granted, she’s on a real fuckin’ hot streak lately. Maybe that’s what happens when one of your clients is a misogynist dickhole and the other won’t shut up about food porn.” “Oh, these guys.” Mike’s face paled a bit. “Church, shit, it’s even worse than I thought. We ain’t just been kidnapped… we’ve been kidnapped by losers!” There was a deafening thwack on a wooden surface in front of them. The veiled man trembled with anger. “Silence, fools! I didn’t forcefully invite you to my palatial estate in Boca Raton to discuss the past. We are here to discuss the future. Your futures, particularly.” “Shit! We’re still in Florida? We gotta be in North Carolina by Monday, dude!” “If we don’t show up we’re gonna be in big trouble.” A thoughtful pause. The bigger man raised his eyebrows in mild concern. “Look what happened to the Volsung Death Squad.” “Enough! You no longer need to worry about any of the Carolinas. You see, The Criterion has done exactly what we’ve been asked to do and that is eliminate our opponents.” Mike smirked a bit. “Hang on a sec. You’re the Collector, yeah? And your little group, you call ‘em Criterion. … Does that make them the fuckin’ Criterion Collection?” “Oh, that reminds me. You know that movie we watched the other night?” “...the weird arthaus-y thing?” There is a glimmer of appreciation in John’s eyes and he began to speak in a tone that lended to fond memories. “Did you know that the inspiration for Cries and Whispers was Ingmar Bergman’s very own mother? Anyway, that family. They went through so much. They could have learned a lot from Agnes and maybe they did after the fact.” “Wait, wait, this was the one with the three sisters, and the dying one was cuddling the maid’s boobs, and one of them cut the shit out of her own hoo-ha to turn off her husband?” Another thwack! “Shut up! So, you enjoyed watching a little sisterly bonding, eh? Then perhaps you’ll enjoy…this!” The lights to the left of the room suddenly clicked on, revealing two large glass tubes, the frozen, terrified forms of Aimee and Ruby Clifton within them. The glass was just frosted enough to obscure the details of their features but easily revealing their palms against the glass, their wide eyes, their parted, screaming lips. Mike herself didn’t scream, but she did gasp, her expression both horrified and slightly nauseated. The Collector’s maniacal laugh filled up the dank basement like black balloons. “You crazy fucker, you killed them! What the fu--- oh my fucking God!” John’s eyes were wide and full of a bleak terror. Mike voiced that abject reaction for the both of them until he could only mutter in a breathless voice. “Oh my.” “Indeed! The Clifton Sisters stand before you as monument as to why I, The Collector, am not to be trifled with! And soon enough, when the time of the Criterion’s victory is nigh, you will join them!” Mike stared at the encased bodies of the two women, speechless for a time before, very unlike her, bursting into wild sobbing. “Son of a bitch! You fuckin’ monster! They had their whole careers ahead of them! They never even got to win a match!” John was in so much shock that he didn’t really react. “And what about the rest of them? Lynx Boyd. She’s a Clifton, too. Except she’s not. I think?” “And what about Paul? Their big brother is going to be so fuckin’ sad!” “And their parents in Ohio. I mean, they’re already in Ohio, and this happens?” “And their other siblings! Joanie, and Chachi, and Melvin, and Gunter, and Lucy, and Ricky, and Richie, and Potsie, and Donder, and Blitzen, and Gilligan, and the rest…” “Melvin Clifton already passed away so he’s been spared of this horrible news.” “They’re never going to be Tag Team Champions now!” John’s shoulders shrugged, the ropes loosening just a little as his frame went inwards. “They were never going to be Tag Team Champions anyway.” “Oh, I agree, John Bishop Church. That is why they had to go. But you heard my Yeshwa. Just like Curtis Mars and Emma Louise, The Clifton Sisters were mere stepping stones to our greatest achievement. Becoming Tag Team Champions.” “But you lost.” “So this plan’s kind of already been whizzed down your leg. I mean it’s kind of refreshing to see some real ambition, but ambition only takes you so far if you don’t produce. Ambition without production just makes your boys a pack of arrogant dicks. And you. You’re just as fucking bad. I’ve seen dozens and dozens like you. You’re probably some has been or never was, looking to soak up glory from young guns more talented than you ever were, like some overgrown sponge. What are you going to do when the guys you’re living vicariously through don’t go fucking anywhere? Get new guys? Or perish like a fucking dog?” The Collector’s voice became hysteric with umbrage at Mike’s newfound hostility. “You are in no position to speak to me as you are right now, you pathetic wretch! You think one loss derails our master plan?” “No, of course not. If it did, we wouldn’t be where we are now.” John looked around. “Figuratively. Anyway, Yeshwa made all of these promises that he failed to keep. He couldn’t hold up his end of the bargain. You threw two guys together who had probably just met each other and expected positive results? The big guy? He seemed like he didn’t even know what type of match he was in.” “No matter! My collection is vast and Yeshwa will be paired with a more suitable partner this time. A man who captured a glorious first victory. NSFW, you will suffer greatly when my samoan destroyer tears you limb from limb.” “Your tall, handsome drink of water, huh? I’ve seen better. But I’ll give you that he’s got more on the ball than your other big guy, that’s for sure. Least, that’s what I thought till I heard him run his yap about Joe Doe. I mean, shit. What kind of chump dumps on a guy who puts in the work week after week, and every week gets just a little bit better?” Mike’s eyes flashed as if finding this oversight insulting. John interjected his feelings into the matter. “Antoni won. But Joe will be back. That’s the kind of young man he is. Now Antoni has to come to a realization. He teams with a man who couldn’t pull it together after all of those grandiose statements about destruction and remembrance. And he faces a team that since they have debuted have only been pinned but one time. That has ran through every challenger and would-be challenger to those so desired tag team championships through hard work and sheer determination.” “He’s got that on his own. I see that in him under the thick level of jerkassitude. But the thing is, he’s one guy. And Yeshwa, he may have lost, but maybe he’s got some spark in there we haven’t seen yet. But the truth still stands. These are two guys. Two guys who just got smacked together by you, Mister Collector. What prayer can they possibly stand against us? Two people who’ve spent almost a year now backing each other up and learning everything about each other? Your boys can’t say that. But you know who can? The team you’ve already written off.” John bucked slightly against the ropes, feeling the desired result come through. “We faced The Clifton Sisters and in their eyes we saw a hunger to become the best. Mike and I weren’t just going to give way to them. And unfortunately for them, they fell short. But they only had one thing to say afterwards.” “Ruby goes and says, ‘You haven’t seen the last of us. I promise you that.’ without skippin’ a fuckin’ beat.” “And considering our present company, we could blow that off as the cartoony words of a villain that is always meant to lose. But I believe them.” “I wasn’t blowing smoke up their asses when I told them they were welcome to try again anytime, and here they are, answering it like true fucking challengers. Are they gonna beat us? Not if we can help it, but they can sure’s fuck try, as many times as they want. And long’s they do? We’ll respect them for it.” Suddenly, John stood up. The ropes fell to his feet nonchalantly. “To be honest, not sure we should afford your team the same respect. I’m sure they’re capable enough. But collectively, their views on this business are toxic.” Giving a twist of her wrists, Mike knocked her own ropes away and followed suit. “And the absolute last thing this industry of ours needs is more goddamn toxicity.” “What? How did you two escape? My knots are impeccable! You two were to be the pinnacle of my glorious collection! Eliminated by my greatest warriors!” Mike scoffed. “Between us? We got those things undone like five minutes ago. Your traps suck and so do you. Now where’s your bathroom? I gotta piss like a racehorse.” The Collector faded back into the darkness, resigned in his humiliation. “Up the stairs and to the left.” “Good. Thanks. Now get outta my way!” The Bronx brawler charged up the stairs, her partner following, footsteps heavier and more deliberate. The Collector was left alone with his sad collection of papier mache trophies, and the yelling from upstairs. “Fuck, man, this place is nice! Can see the beach and everything! You gotta finish that basement, it’s gotta be bringing down your property values. … Church, you need to check out this crapper, it’s got a fucking bidet!” “No thanks. This place smells like menthol candies.” The sound of a flushing toilet echoed through the basement plumbing as the picture faded to black.