#land salt throws the whole aura off

[queen-mabs-revenge]

the french stall in the market finally got my favorite sea salt back in hjhhhhh i'm gonna cry it's been over a year i've missed you so much baby

[pandorias-box]

Great Balls of Lightning

The battle against the Lord of the Hollow was unlike anything Pandoria had faced up until now. To be fair, all of the fights against the frenzied Nobles of Hisui were unlike anything she’d faced. This bout in particular stood out, for better and worse, because the Noble had company.

Explosive company, some may even say.

A gleaming spark of electricity trailed Pandoria everywhere she went, and no matter how swiftly she maneuvered it would always be behind her. The wooden Pokémon would continuously pursue her by rolling directly at her with speed and precision, hoping to knock her off balance. In all fairness, it was a clever gambit on part of the Pokémon, but it was more of a nuisance than anything.

She had honed her focus on surviving the ordeal and continuously throwing balms at the strange orbicular creature, hoping for an opening. How many more Nobles did she have to quell? How long will it take for her to get home?

Will she even return from Hisui?

Pandoria paused and faltered. Her thoughts were overtaking her in the heat of the moment. And shortly after, the world seemed to come crashing down at her.

Literally.

Several more spheres dropped from hidden openings in the canopy of trees surrounding the arena and they all burst forth with quick explosions. One after another, the reinforcement Voltorb fell. It was like Pandoria was in the middle of a minefield with all the chaos unfurling around her.

She was knocked back several feet onto the ground and landed on her knees, gritting her teeth and hissing in annoyance. It seemed that maybe channeling her hybrid instincts would actually be beneficial in this scenario. She had to repress the voices in her mind that continuously doubted her ability to survive and hold her own. She loathed being alone but Pandoria had no other choice in the matter.

She did not ask to be sent into the past in an age unknown to her. She did not ask for quite a lot of things in her life, actually.

The lingering shock of electricity soon faded away, and Pandoria resumed her pursuit of throwing balms of crystalline salt at the raging Electrode. Dragon types did have a resistance to Electric attacks, after all. But she had to remember it wasn’t an immunity.

Lord Electrode stumbled and came to a halt, and Pandoria called forth one of her Pokémon. Her trusted companion for the Hisuian expedition: Mira.

The Typhlosion’s flames burned once more with an aura of spectral energy. She huffed gently and awaited Pandoria’s command as she always did.

“Flamethrower!”

At her behest, a steady stream of blazing purple flame spewed from Mira’s gaping maw, her fangs baring at the Electrode in defiance and confidence. Almost immediately, it was knocked back and unable to recover from such a blow.

It was super effective. Unlike the Electrode of the modern era, Hisuian Electrode were partially Grass-type due to their form of mimicry; they imitated Pokéballs in both time periods but the ones of the past were made of Apricorns. Pandoria was made aware of such a thing due to having to continuously craft supplies such as the capsule devices that were only recently invented.

Afterwards, she once again honed her focus on Lord Electrode, trying to outmaneuver any of the Voltorb that sought to electrocute and explode at a moment’s notice. Balm after balm, she hurled at the Pokémon. But she failed to notice one that was right next to her, and it burst as she was getting ready to throw her penultimate balm.

She slammed into one of the stone pillars surrounding the arena and fumbled. The balm, on the other hand, was headed straight to its intended target.

Heavily breathing, she gazed at the Electrode before the radiant light that once enveloped it began to slowly fade away. The ordeal was finally over. Hopefully there weren’t any more distractions.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?”

A haughty voice echoed behind her.

Vikxa. Melli. Of course he had to be watching the whole time.

“You stripped Lord Electrode of its blessing from almighty Sinnoh! How dare you! Now it has vanished forever!” The Diamond Clan warden then faltered to his knees sobbing.

“I agreed to make those accursed balms, but now that almighty Sinnoh’s has vanished for eternity… it’s just so unbearably sad!” He wept.

“Oh, give me a break.” Another voice spoke with footsteps trailing behind in the gravely earth. Adaman.

“Is that how you see it? Electrode looks relieved to me. Glad its suffering’s ended, probably.” He said nonchalantly.

“I suppose…” Pandoria quietly commented as the two Diamond Clan members continued to bicker amongst themselves.

[boop-le-snoot]

@buckyownsmylife hey babe! Remember that one time you threw that cool challenge? Here's my entry. Prepare to get absolutely ruined because daddy!Bruce is exactly that sort of man.

main masterlist ☀️ taglist

emotional support nerd

Your best friend's dad, Dr. Bruce Banner, is hotter than you thought he would be. 6k words, NSFW. Kind of Alt!Reader - she refers to herself as 'goth' in one instance. Tony Stark makes an appearance because God forbid I write a fanfic without him in it.

This is filthy pron, ft. age difference (reader is college aged) daddy kink, throat fucking, dirty talk, praise kink, cream pie, possessiveness, belly bulge and ending with a hint at a threesome. I really crammed all I could from Eyre's wheel in here, didn't I. Oh well.

"How much longer, dad?" Lyra's annoyed voice struck a chord within me. I tried to hide my snickering - unsuccessfully might I add - causing my best friend to shoot me a hurt look, equally fed up with me as she was fed up with her forgetful adopted father. "You know what, we'll take the subway."

Lyra's father's voice, both agitated and apologetic, reached my ears in bitten-off phrases as the traffic noises around us grew in volume, NYC rush hour rapidly approaching its peak.

With a sound huff, Lyra removed the phone from her ear, staring me down with the most amount of petulance I've ever seen on her usually reserved, placid face. "It's twenty more minutes. Apparently he's driving Tony's car," she offered in the way of explanation, like it actually did anything to better the cold, wet situation we found ourselves in. "Please, and I can't stress this enough, please don't be weird."

I felt a flood of amusement at Lyra's pleading tone. "Darling, if you wanted a normal friend, you should have looked elsewhere," I gestured to my outfit. I looked like a goth boy's wet dream: chunky platformed boots, fishnets, heavy eyeliner. Of course, all in black.

"You know what I mean," she whined, waving off my pointing hand and fixing me with a hard stare. "The least my dad needs is someone that is terrified of him just because sometimes he turns into a big green monkey. It's not as exciting as internet thinks, anyway," the last part of the sentence was mumbled but I heard it nonetheless as Lyra stared out into the traffic, clever eyes looking for a particular car model.

What Lyra didn't know was that I was not at all considering to be terrified by the man who dosed himself with radiation and developed an advanced version of split personality disorder. I could be intimidated by him, sure, because he was incredibly intelligent, a world class scientist with more PhDs than I had zeroes in my bank account, but even despite his green problem, Dr. Bruce Banner was about as far away from 'scary' as a man could be.

The few scarce pictures of him on the internet showed a short, stocky man with kind eyes and salt-and-pepper curls, always dressed in un-ironed, crumpled button-ups with dorky patterns. Looking at him, I mused that there was a high chance he spoke with a stutter and that fact amused me to no end. Jekyll and Hyde, alright.

Lyra was much the same way. Shy and reclusive, with curly brown hair and doe eyes, she spent a good chunk of her first semester in college being avoided by everybody because of her last name; I, on the other hand, avoided everyone out of habit, I'd never been a social butterfly, but the way people subtly made sure to exclude Lyra from all the activities filled me with quiet, seething rage, and I stepped over my general distaste of people and removed my bag from the seat next to me so Lyra could at least study in relative peace.

Yeah, yeah, you've heard it all, I'm sure. Weird goth chick adopts a socially awkward, shunned nerd and they become best friends forever. I had to admit that under the shy exterior, Lyra was smart, witty and even funny sometimes. She was willing to entertain my crude jokes without moaning, at least, and I was perfectly okay with listening to her rant about science every now and then.

Rain banged on the slanted roof of the café we were hiding in, the autumn wind howled, making both of us shiver at the prospect of having to go outside, even if it was for a short moment to run to Lyra's dad's car. The day had started out warm and sunny, but much like a badly calculated chemical formula, it all went downhill a split second after we had set out to leave campus.

"There he is," the grouch in Lyra's expression had me once again unsuccessfully attempting to conceal my snorting.

Nonetheless, I followed her out into the rain, struggling to keep up with the brisk running in my platformed shoes, unceremoniously crawling into the car behind her without sparing a glance at the driver in my eagerness to get out of the freezing downpour.

"Hi, dad," Lyra's tired voice spoke up at the same time as I angrily shook out my hair.

"I've just about McFuckin' had it with New York," I was afraid the dye in my hair would bleed out into my clothes, or even worse, the nice, cream-colored car seats.

"Hello, ladies," the voice that greeted us was low, gravelly and apologetic to boot.

My eyes shot up, meeting an expression full of surprise and amusement. I stared at the shockingly handsome face of Dr. Bruce Banner like a deer in the headlights.

The fine mimic wrinkles had stretched into a resemblance of a smile, soft, plush lips revealing a set of straight, white teeth. The five o'clock shadow framed his jaw, giving it a sharp, defined edge, his clever brown eyes slid down my form, faltering on the pentagram on my belt and my fishnet-covered legs, settling on my chunky boots before hastily snapping back up to my face.

"Dad, this is..." Lyra's voice was full of suspicious bewilderment as she attempted to dissipate the sudden awkwardness.

"Oh, yeah, I'm Dr. Bruce Banner, but you can call me Doc or Bruce," he cleared his throat, turning himself towards the windshield and starting up the car.

"Nice to meet you," I busied myself with putting away any stray hair just to occupy myself with something during the time I needed to recuperate from being just... Looked at by Lyra's dad.

It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I was so taken aback by his handsomeness and his aura of a gentle but powerful man that the ride to Stark tower, however swift, went on in slightly awkward silence. The streets outside were, thankfully, noisy, and the lack of an attempt to have a conversation could easily be attributed to Bruce's need to focus on the road, but Lyra's increasingly concerned looks did very little to settle the sudden racing of my heart.

"C'mon, I'll give you some sweats so you can let your..." Lyra's vague gesture towards my upper body disappeared behind her side of the door. "Hey, Tony," she suddenly interrupted her sentence, very obviously addressing another person who I managed to miss as Bruce parked in the spacious garage.

"I've been told you're finally bringing your friend, Green Pea," a voice I'd heard a thousand times on the TV poked fun at Lyra.

She bent down to retrieve her bag, shooting big eyes at me and mouthing an exaggerated "Sorry!"

Tony Stark looked about a week in debt on sleep, a contrast to the way he usually appeared in public. The exaggerated eyebrow raise made me shuffle awkwardly in my spot; the Led Zep tee caught my eyes as I lingered on it, aware of my own Mötorhead top on display. He noticed it too, causing his face leave the snide territory.

"Wow, I didn't expect kids these days to have any resemblance of taste in music but you've surprised me, Corpse Bride," he gave me a quiet wolf-whistle, watching me through lidded eyes.

I felt my eyebrow crawl upwards at his attitude but Bruce spoke up before I could say anything: "Tony, no," so firmly, I had to raise both of my eyebrows. I felt a smile tug at my lips, the situation strikingly familiar in it's essence. Like father, like daughter...

"No," Lyra's identical expression, fond and annoyed, topped up with an accusing finger pointed in my direction had everyone snorting a giggle at the situation.

"Lyra," I whined, just so I could coax her grin that she was very obviously trying to conceal. "See, I told you, every crazy genius needs their emotional support nerd," I fixed her with a pointed look.

She promptly grabbed me by the arm, leading all of us to the elevator as the two men behind us shared a hearty laugh at my well-timed joke. It was either that or I would have completely embarrassed myself by gaping and drooling over both THE Tony Stark and Lyra's father.

The rush didn't stop there. I was promptly and generously offered not only a spare pair of pants but also a whole room to stay in after an invitation to dinner I simply could not refuse. Dr. Banner firmly coaxed me into staying overnight with his pleading eyes and a hearty seasoning of guilt tripping, softly crooning how he simply could not let a young woman to wander the cold, rainy night in NYC alone.

Tony added something too, in a tone way too surefire and patronising. I guessed he noticed my eyes lingering on Dr. Banner, being a genius and all.

In a short amount of time, I found myself seated at a dinner table next to a happy, giggling Lyra who'd downed a glass of wine and was well into her second. I found it adorable how much of a lightweight she was; not hesitating in the slightest to point out that fact when she made hands for a pitcher of water.

Tony was the first one to snark back something vague about his college days and all the wild parties he used to throw, booing Bruce upon discovery that he, in fact, actually studied in college in favour of partaking in various illicit activities. That had both me and Tony giggling with Lyra promptly joining in, both of us losing it over the running joke or her being either a test tube baby or the result of immaculate conception.

Bruce's face blushed scarlet. He sputtered, a few stray drops of his lemonade landing on the (ironed!) collar of his purple shirt, cough disappearing in the wake of Tony's truly amused cackling. Dr. Banner was well on his way to either choke on his Lo Mein or turn green; thinking quickly, I decided to defuse a situation by sharing a harmless, funny story that happened to me as a freshman.

"I went on a date with this guy who said that music was the most important thing in his life, and I thought, wow, that's so beautiful!" I began my story over Lyra's incessant snickering. "So we had dinner and went back to his place because I'm a whore," the whole table erupted in laughter at my deadpan remark, Tony reaching over to give me a high five.

"And as we got there, he put on one of his demos which was just a bunch of sampled and remixed Guns'n'Roses songs, and I thought wow, that's gotta be one of the worst things I've ever heard," I pointedly looked away as Lyra's cackling grew in volume, having heard the same story several times by now and the outrage I expressed at the situation first hand.

"But instead of that I said, wow, that's so cool! Then we did the thing and his whole bedroom was covered in Axl Rose posters and I'm sure at some point Mr. Rose stared right up my asshole," there were tears streaming down Lyra's face as Tony flopped his upper body onto the table and Bruce convulsed helplessly in a silent fit of giggles. "And then I thought to myself: wow, I would have to pretend to like his music if I dated this guy and I just couldn't do that..." I breathed out, succumbing to the mirth at the dinner table. "It was good but not November Rain good, y'kno?"

Bruce snorted loudly, sliding down his chair with a hand over his face. The table shook with the force of Tony's cackling; I didn't see his expression but the howling, rasping noises sent me into another fit of laughter, right on par with Lyra.

"Is this..." Tony rapidly inhaled the much-needed oxygen. "Is this why you keep wincing whenever I play the 'Roses in the lab?" Tony wheezed and Lyra nodded.

"I just... I can picture it, and I-" she made a vague, encompassing gesture and a face.

"Please, don't," I urged with a snort. "There are better ways to get disappointed."

Dinner went on by smoothly after that, everybody happily making remarks on my dating fail, the topic of Lyra's birth and Tony's college shenanigans dismissed.

I caught Dr. Banner's pointed look as we finished our dessert - he was studying me, eyes searching for something that he very obviously wished was there. From the damp roots of my hair to the soft, cotton top clinging to my chest, I wasn't left unscrutinzed and unexamined. Like one of the many specimens he studied on a daily basis, Bruce lingered on the many characteristics that made me stand out in the grey crowd.

"Would you like to see the labs?" He asked, appearing behind me without a single sound.

The freshly cleaned dishes clattered in my arms. I'd almost dropped them, startled, but Bruce's hand landed on the top of the stack right before the top plate would have slipped off and shattered into pieces on the cold tile of his kitchen.

Blood rushed to my ears. "I'd love to," my brain had briefly returned to reality, the rush of meeting both Stark and Banner succumbing to logic and reason. My and his fields of study briefly overlapped, the question he posed was more than reasonable. In fact, many people would cheat, lie and steal to be in my position.

Bruce smiled, opening a cabinet and taking half of the dishes I was holding to stack them up in their proper place. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, exposing wide, muscular forearms littered with dark, coarse hair.

I was sure my face was flaming. After waving off Lyra's attempts to put shoes on me and leaving her to watch her TV show, a wide, warm palm rested on the back of my waist, gently steering me towards the elevator.

I tried to keep my eyes off Bruce in the large mirror on the walls of the car as it swiftly moved down, scrutinizing my appearance instead. My throat bobbed, the elevator car suddenly too small and too hot.

His eyes left marks on me - invisible ones, the kind that I knew were there just from the scorching heat sizzling on my skin.

There was a certain je ne sais quoi about him. Perhaps, it was in the way he was acting - a polar opposite of what I'd had expected, Dr. Bruce Banner possessed a quiet confidence and his patience appeared to be endless, heartily doused with an appreciation for his closest ones. The way his eyes lit up in response to people smiling around the dinner table was hard to miss.

When Bruce spoke about his research - whatever wasn't classified, anyway - the spark expanded into a mischievous fire. I could hardly understand the nuances in his work, scratch that- I could not understand a single word he was saying, at all. The individual syllables registered as they should, but my traitorous brain could only focus on the way he licked his lips in between quickly inhaled breaths.

"You're not... Following, are you?" The corner of his mouth lifted upwards, clever brown eyes fixed on my face.

God, I hoped I wasn't drooling. But to deny the obvious would have been a stretch. "No, not really," I swallowed, willing my eyes to lift from the large veins on the hand that was pointing at a set of equations. Reasonably good at math any day, they looked like the scribbles of a madman to me at the time.

Dr. Banner sighed, letting silence creep among the whirring machinery in the lab for a brief moment. "I don't scare you?" He removed his glasses, cleaning them with the corner of his shirt.

The question reeked of self-doubt and, perhaps, insecurity. "No," I answered simply, not giving him the slightest chance to find doubt in my words. I was barely holding my voice from shaking, afraid he'd misunderstand my reaction to the sudden change in atmosphere.

He was closer to me than I recalled. My hip was almost brushing his, the bulk of his shoulder millimeters from touching against my bare skin, the smell of something herbal, like tea, and sharp chemicals clouding my senses. It was such a contrasting experience.

Bruce turned to me, an expression between hunger and regret forcing me to shiver and look him straight in the eye. A hand landed on my waist, holding me in place with gentle firmness. "I'm a monster, I could hurt you," he whispered, leaning into me like a touch starved kitten. The man screamed contradiction. "We shouldn't."

Vivid images of the Hulk and the rampages years prior flashed through my mind; the rubble, the collateral damage in the form of many lives. I barely remembered it, having been too little to really understand what was going on. One thing, though, I knew for sure: ever since the world became aware of Lyra's existence, there had been no incidents. Sure, the Hulk still appeared when there was a threat, but there were no documented incidents of the green creature running amok, accidentally.

"You won't hurt me," I spoke with conviction. Perhaps, I was bluffing just slightly but I wouldn't lie like that to myself. The variable, the... Twelve or so percent chance of things going... Awry, it made a small, malicious worm inside of me rejoice and fill my limbs with familiar adrenalised yearning. "You're not a monster. Far from it, actually," I used the hand that was not supporting me against the desk to gently cradle the side of his face, letting my fingertips brush over the rough five o'clock shadow on his cheek.

Bruce emitted a sound somewhere between an agitated grown and a pleading whine, sagging with the sound exhale, pressing himself flush with my chest. His face slipped from my palm, the warm tip of his nose running a steady line up my neck, sending goosebumps running wildly down my back as his hot breath tickled the arch of my throat.

"Baby," the nickname punched a stuttered gasp out of me with the intensity contained in just that one word. "I've been hearing all these amazing things about you," his voice dropped, low baritone rumbling straight into my ear. "I won't be able to hold back. I'll want you all to myself," his bicep flexed under my hand.

My knees would have bucked if I wasn't grasping onto Bruce for dear life after those words. I had some sense of personal pride in me, so while my body was an easy, traitorous thing, my mind was more than eager to participate in this game, to ping pong a little bit before... "Yeah? What things?" I breathed.

Teeth briefly closed around my tender skin, nipping for just a second. "You're kind, beautiful," his hand took a steadfast hold on the back of my neck, exposing my throat to his mouth. More skin to mark, more time to whisper. "Intelligent, bright and clever," the more he spoke, the fiercer he became. Bruce's grasp tightened until I was pliant in it, willingly following his silent commands. "A bit of a pain in the ass," a healthy dose of humour was added into the mix as my ass was roughly grabbed, our fronts pressed together at his insistence.

"That sounds about right," I didn't resist the sudden urge to snark, thoughts lazily floating in my head, like clouds on a bright sunny day, fleeting and sparse. None of them caught on. I was focused on feeling the need, on my need to feel.

A sharp smack landed on the plump of my ass, the sound resonating in the eerily quiet lab. The sounds of machinery had dulled at some point, leaving just the two of us panting our lust into each other's space. "I know you can be a good girl. Will you, princess?" His fingertips dug into my flesh, surpassing the soft sweatpants as if they weren't even there.

I could only nod, dumbly, overcome by the sudden rush of blood to my body. The life coarsing through me sang, demanding a release of the pent-up tension.

"What's that?" Bruce removed himself from my neck, catching my unfocused eyes with a crooked smirk on his lips.

"Yes," I swallowed, breathing through my mouth.

"Mmm," he hummed, running both hands over my sides, over the frayed edges of my Mötorhead top. He admired it, briefly, setting his eyes on the band logo that was right over my breasts. Having decided something to himself, Bruce promptly removed it, lifting it over my head with ease and leaving it right on the science lab table.

Taking hold of my hand, he walked over to a hidden set of sliding doors that revealed a rather large, frequently used bed, shutting them just as I walked in, wearing only my bra and borrowed sweats. My back was pressed to the door in mere seconds, hot palms chasing away the chill of the lab as Bruce slotted his lips over mine.

He tasted like something I've never had before. His lips - so plush and supple, took hold of the kiss with practiced gusto, sucking me in without a chance or the desire to escape. I drank from him, sucked on the bottom lip as his tongue explored my mouth, danced with mine.

The room was spinning, the ringing in my ears growing in volume. I was only partly aware of the sensation of sliding down the wall; our knees thudded on the carpeted floor simultaneously, heavy breathing the only noise I could distinguish.

"Breathe, baby, that's it," Bruce coaxed, gently stroking my nape. The soft cotton of his shirt crumpled under my fingers where I held onto him, desperately searching something to ground myself with.

The buckle of his belt clattered and then clinked again as he wrapped the worn leather around my wrists, bringing them together in front of my chest. I exhaled sharply at the intimate gesture, a whine bubbling up from my chest when Bruce used a single fingertip to raise my chin.

My eyes met his; a brown iris tinged with the faintest of green around the outer edge. "This okay, princess?" He sought my face for confirmation, for agreement, for anything.

I nodded, stuttering mid-gesture, remembering our previous interaction. My mouth did not want to cooperate but I forced it to, even if it came out as little more than a pitiful mewl. "Yes, daddy," the word, sweet and sticky like fruit syrup, poured from my lips.

My eyes slid shut as my conscience - or was it common sense? - took hold of the situation. I was on my knees in front of my best friends dad, a virtual stranger, and I'd just-

Bruce's soft chuckle stopped the negative spiral of my thoughts. "That's my girl," he sounded a tad more breathless now, a hairliner in his perfect façade of self-control. As if he'd sensed my indecisiveness, he tugged on the makeshift restraints, pulling me closer, closer and into his lap.

A warm, solid chest with a healthy amount of fluff greeted me. Bruce let my lax, pliant body fall into his arms, catching me effortlessly and bringing my face to his lips. "You have nothing to be ashamed of, you're my good girl," he peppered soft kisses all over my flaming cheeks, my twitching nose, my fluttering lashes.

"Please," I begged, shame giving way to the flood of arousal that seemingly hit me all at once. I was aware of the dampness collecting in my panties, the stiffness of my limbs from holding back the ravenous desire to paw at Bruce like a wild animal. "Please, daddy..."

"I know, I know, baby girl," he soothed, not stopping his tender assault on my face. "Daddy will make it all better. I know just what you need," Bruce finally pulled away. I heard the sound of him undoing his zipper and then the awkward shuffle of him shucking off his pants.

Somewhere in between of all that, he'd ended up sitting down on the bed, wearing only his boxers, his shirt hanging open. The red crawled down his chest, partially masked by the coarse salt and pepper hair; his lips were cherry red and his hair was sticking out in odd directions. Bruce looked sinful.

My eyes inadvertently landed on the impressive bulge in his boxers; in response to my widened eyes, he reached out for it, stroking the outline of his thick cock through his boxers. "Like what you see, baby?"

"Yeah," My mouth watered.

"Baby wants a fat cock?" He teased, sounding like he knew exactly what he was doing, testing my self-control like that. With a flick of his wrist, it sprang free, slapping against his tummy, coating the fine hairs with drops of clear, musky fluid.

I swallowed, feeling the taste of him from afar and yearning for more where I was parked between his spread legs.

In a gesture almost loving, he tugged on the belt still wrapped around my wrists, bringing my face to his leaking shaft and my hands to the base of it, letting me feel the weight of his balls in them. The cock throbbed, neglected, weighed down by the heaviness of his full balls.

"Go ahead, baby, suck my cock," the encouragement came with a gentle push to my head.

I obediently followed, wrapping my lips around the pink, moist crown of it, a hum beginning in the back of my throat. My God, Bruce tasted heavenly... I whirled and slipped my tongue a around his head, I dipped into the slit to drink the nectar right from the tap, idly coming to awareness of the broken, choked moans coming from the man above me.

Raising my head got me a view of his chin; head thrown back, the lax O of his mouth glistened in the meager light. My eyes slid lower, to the flex of his abs. Bruce fought hard to stay still. The desire consumed me, a sudden rush of power at having Dr. Bruce Banner's cock in my mouth and the man at my mercy; I inhaled, sliding my mouth further and further down his throbbing length.

"Fuck," I heard him mutter before his hands gripped the sides of my face. "Hungry, baby, are you?" His eyes glowed a faint green; I shuddered at the power he held within himself. Held back for me. "Tap my thigh twice," he spoke and I had no choice but to obey. "Okay. Do that if it gets too much, alright?" I nodded. He gave me a wide, beaming smile. "Good girl," he praised, experimentally bucking his hips into my mouth a few times.

In and out. I focused on my breathing, sharp, little inhales: his girth took up all the free space in my mouth, the tip of it barely fit into my throat. The burn, the stretch; I felt every tenth of an inch, every bulging attempt of my body to accommodate Bruce's huge cock. It was delicious, I couldn't help but crave the same stretch in my neglected, sopping wet pussy.

"Fuck, you're taking it so well," Bruce moaned wetly. "Your mouth... S'like heaven... Could fuck it all day, that's my good girl," the rambling increased in it's intensity as the pace of his hips hastened. Drool and tears flowed like a river; my chin was dropping with it, spit connected my face to his pelvis. "Oh," there was a brief pause to his movements; suddenly, he pulled out, fisting the base of his cock, staring me down with a ferocious gleem in his eye.

I must've looked a straight mess; my face like a crime scene, my clothes disheveled, covered in fluids and most of all - I was desperately grinding against my own feet, too focused on the glorious cock in front of me to notice the weakness of my own flesh. "Daddy?" I questioned, wincing at the grating of my own voice.

Without a word, the belt was tugged once more; in a set of movements just slightly north of acrobatic, I found myself laying on my back in the middle of the bed, my sweatpants suffering a haste demise in the corner of the room.

Bruce crawled atop me, leaving a trail of sloppy kisses on every inch of my skin he could reach, mouthing something inaudible into every pore of my body. As he drew closer, I discerned bitten-off phrases, stringing my desire into sticky, tangy mess at the apex of my thighs.

"My perfect baby girl," the words reached me; all tongue, he kissed me once more, arching into me as much as I arched into his hot grasp. A brief inspection of my face - he was satisfied with what he saw - and Bruce crawled back, settling in between my spread legs, breathing hot air on the lips of my sex still covered by a sopping wet piece of fabric.

"Oh fuck," I yelped, feeling him smooch it soundly, the hot wetness of his tongue penetrating the meagre lace barrier with ease.

He moved it aside anyway, with a single finger, giving my pussy a broad lick, moaning into my cunt like a man gone mad. It took a few more licks for him to feel sated enough to surface, all the while holding my hips down. I was so sensitive, I felt even the tiniest flicks to my clit, I was sure if I didn't cum then and there, I would explode.

"Such a pretty pussy, princess," his heavy breathing paused briefly. He nipped my thigh. "So wet, is that all for me?"

"Yes, yes, daddy," I rasped, pushing my cunt into his face, losing all shame and trepidation.

"So tasty," he continued the torture, outlining my lower lips before taking another nosedive right into it, swirling his tongue around every fold, sucking onto my clit.

Bruce ate my pussy until my thighs shook, until my core quivered and I could no longer hold back the choked, ragged screams starting somewhere in the low of my belly and coming out as unholy, all-consuming yowls filled with unadulterated lust.

"Louder for me, baby," he inhaled rapidly, and then, he sucked on my clit.

The world stopped, halted on it's axis, every muscle going rigid in my body and every nerve ending simultaneously coming alive. Faintly, I heard a chant, repeating two syllables over and over, it sounded like my voice - but I had no control over myself. All I could do was weakly grind my hips against Bruce's mouth, faltering when the crashing waves of my orgasm began to recede.

The infuriating overstimulation stopped; blinking hazily, I saw Bruce's eyes glimmer brown and green in front of my face. His nose and his chin was glistening with a thin coat of sticky fluid; disheveled and red, he looked a man on the verge of a revelation.

Something hot and blunt nosed at my cunt, bringing back the moment to me - I realized, with a great deal of impatience - how empty I felt. The decision was minute. "Daddy, fuck me, please, I want your cock," the words came easily.

"That's my girl," his eyes fluttered shut as the first inches squeezed through the snug of my cunt. I was sopping wet and as relaxed as I'd be, but even then, it was a stretch. "Good girl, good baby," the mumbled praise made me whine and my pussy clamp on his cock. "Relax, let daddy fill you up." Breathing through it, I consciously unwound myself around him, letting my palms rest freely on his shoulders. "Let daddy take care of you."

Like melted sugar, his husked words stuck to me inside and out. Short, sharp thrusts; Bruce was patiently burrowing himself inside of me, making his way to reach the deepest parts of me I didn't even know existed. His cock head pressed against something hard and spongy inside of me; stars burst behind my eyes I'd clamped shut on reflex.

I moaned weakly, tugging on his arm, pressing myself closer. It felt so, so good. Like a raw nerve had been exposed and he was stroking it, pushing that little switch with every stroke of his hips.

"I'm not gonna last," he muttered as once again, my cunt squeezed him snugly in place, just as greedy as I was to feel that tiny explosion spark up within me again.

"I want..." I panted. Bruce set in a punishing pace after that, a palm under my ass, squeezing it so hard there would definitely be bruising. I craved it, I needed to see the evidence this was not some elaborate fever dream. "I want... Daddy to fill me up," words came out garbled; it sounded like gibberish to my ears but Bruce - they spurred him on.

"Oh yeah?" That breathless, boyish cockiness was back in his voice again; despite how fucked out he sounded, I prepared myself for something truly out of this world. I just knew.

He sat back on his shins, dragging me by the hips with him, making me shiver and moan and twitch and clamp onto him again as his throbbing cock hit that special spot again. And again. And again.

"Look at me, baby," a hand on my belly and his eyes burning right through me. As they slid down, towards the apex of my thighs where he was still moving within me almost lazily, I saw it.

"Oh fuck," I couldn't utter much more than a two-syllabled profanity. There was a bulge in my belly, just above my pelvis, moving in rhythm with Bruce's hips. And then he pressed on it and I-

Something, someone, somewhere was screaming. The noise was loud and pitched, but even then, I could barely hear it though the neverending waves of bliss that enveloped my whole being. Gold and silver at the edges of my rapidly darkening vision; I was drowning in something that smelled and felt like Bruce. The safety of his arms, the warmth of his heated body, the rapid snapping of his hips-

Oh.

"I'm gonna, fuck," the last word was but a ghost of a human speech. Growling low and filthy, Bruce leaned into my ear, his breath hot and moist. "Mine," his hips stuttered, his cock nestled deep, the sensation bordering on painful, forcefully extracted pleasure. It throbbed with every spurt of his seed; each one felt like a solid punch in the gut to my abused pussy.

"Daddy," I mewled, my body jerking away from him but my mind and my soul yearning for more. His rapidly softening flesh made the idea of being separated unbearable.

"S'good, s'my good girl, m'so proud," he mumbled, looking slightly disoriented as he removed himself from me, immediately pressing me to his side and interwining any free, flailing limbs.

We laid in silence, each of us slowly coming back to Earth after the completely unreal experience we just had. I didn't know what to think, didn't know what to do as the realization set in, the post-orgasmic haze giving way to a sudden rush of clarity.

"I can hear you overthinking," Bruce's voice was fond.

Before I could muster up the courage to snark back, the divided doors opened, one very concerned Tony Stark standing there, armed with a tranquilizer gun in one hand and a pack of cookies in the other. His mouth, previously open to (probably) yell at us, remained as open when his eyes had registered the scene in front of him.

I stared at Bruce. Bruce stared at Tony.

"The noise," he offered in the way of explanation, dangling the pack of cookies, looking, for once - speechless. He recovered quickly, however, even if the remark was a thin ghost of his usual sass: "You pick the nerd over me? I'm hurt," he scoffed in mock irritation, although I was pretty sure I saw some satisfaction in there, too.

Bruce looked at me. I looked at Bruce.

A mischievous grin slowly crept up his face, an identical one beginning to appear on my own face seconds after.

"Hey, two nerds is better than one, right?" My response is what did it; or, rather, it was the evidence of my previous throat-fucking clearly audible in my voice... Tony dropped the cookies and then, the tranq gun.

Bruce Banner taglist: @pilloclock @mikariell95 @letsby @sleep-i-ness @toomanyrobins @persephonehemingway @mostly-marvel-musings @schemefrenzy @lillsxd @bluecrazedandbeautiful @slothspaghettiwrites @sapphicnoodle69 @couldntbedamned @xoxabs88xox @marvelsbanner @tripleyeeet @tatestripedsweater @stuckybarton

[elizabethemerald]

Fall Anniversary at the Soltryce Academy

Caleb walked into his classroom at the Soltryce Academy with the immediate instinct that something was wrong. He had been teaching Transmutation theory and application in this same class room for the past twenty years, so anything that seemed different set off alarms in his head. 

He mentally checked the wards on the class room and found them intact. There were a few students in their seats, a few more filtering into the lecture hall, by the second. None of them seemed alarmed. Whatever was different today did not appear to be an immediate threat. 

Still just to be safe he subtly cast Detect Magic as he set his bag down and took off his coat. Immediately a few points were highlighted in his mind. Of course his own magical items, the amber around his neck and the amulet beside it, the ring on his finger, the chalk he had enchanted to help him lecture. Nothing off there. 

There were a few points of magic around the rest of the room, each quickly analyzed and dismissed. Transmutation magic on a small pile of coins near the wall, a low level student’s practice project. Abjuration magic in the wards along the walls. Divination magic in a button, another spying device Astrid had tried to sneak into his class room to keep him from teaching against the school’s policies. 

It was the illusion spells that caught his attention. A few of the students were covered in the same, linked illusion. Their appearance normal enough to blend in, but also entirely too normal for a real student. And there, a student he didn’t recognize even with his keen mind, covered in an illusion spell. Several other magical objects of varying power, hidden under the spell. The Vestige appeared to be within its pocket dimension, so at least they hadn’t brought a weapon onto campus. 

After setting down his things and greeting his class he squeezed past a few of the students to grab Astrid’s enchanted button. He quickly dispelled it and slipped it into an envelope to return to her later. As he returned to the front he gave the cat sitting on his desk a brief scratch. 

“Hello Jester.” He said. Of course he didn’t need Detect Magic telling him of the cat’s aura of Transmutation to know his friend. She was bright blue after all and staring at him far more smugly than even a magic fey cat would. 

“Now class, I know we were discussing transmutation principles as applied to effecting the elements around you, but I am afraid that lesson will have to be postponed. It would seem that it is the anniversary of the Mighty Nein getting together and they have decided to invite themselves to my class.”

There was a muttering around the class room as the students looked at each other, before one of them near the front stood up, the illusion dropping off her form as she did so. 

“I told you he wouldn’t fall for it!” Veth said in her high voice, She looked mostly unchanged from when they first brought her back to her proper body. A few more laugh lines, but nothing more to show the passing two decades. “Lebby, is an amazing wizard, he wouldn’t fall for something simple like that. You students better appreciate the skill of your teacher.”

Caleb smiled fondly as Veth walked up to the front to give him a hug. Interspersed through the seats a few more illusion spells dropped. A half elven man walked up from the front row and kissed him on the cheek. Essek’s own illusion lasting even as he dismissed the Seeming on Kingsley and Yasha. 

“How did they rope you into this?” Caleb whispered to Essek. 

“Oh you know I can’t resist a practical joke.” Essek maintained his deadpan delivery for only a few seconds before a small smile graced his lips. Caleb knew quite well that Essek looked as ageless as ever, under his illusion. His elven blood would keep him looking much the same for the next few centuries. Caleb returned the kiss, to the muttering of his students. They weren’t ever a 100% sure who Caleb’s rotating cast of elven boyfriends were, and Caleb was more than happy to keep them in the dark. 

“Well you can’t fault us for trying!” Kingsley said. They were wearing a scandalously low cut shirt, a pair of plain black pants, and a pair of thigh high boots. His purple hair was fading to a less vibrant shade just a bit near his ears and he had a larger collection of scars, as one would expect from years of piracy and being a bloodhunter. They were also wearing their sword much to Caleb’s disapproval, which was apparently not magical. 

“You can’t expect me to hide this glorious look without magic though can you?” He said, sliding his hands down to his hips then back up his torso. Then he grabbed Caleb’s chin and kissed him full on the mouth, with tongue for several seconds, while his students lost their collective minds. Caleb smiled against Kingsley’s lips right before the tiefling stepped back. He was sure the rumor mill of the school would go wild about that for a few weeks. He wished he could see the look on Master Beck’s face when the news came across her desk. “Here’s to another twenty years, magic man.”

Yasha and Caduceus walked up next, each giving Caleb a tight hug. These two showed their age the least of the non elven members of the Nine. Cad could have been just stepping out of the temple doors in the Blooming Grove, saying that he had only three cups, if it weren’t for the increased presence of lichens and mosses of all kinds on his clothes and armor. Caleb was fairly certain there was an actual bird’s nest in his pink hair. Yasha of course looked as badass and muscular as she had when they first found her. Her hair was completely white, done up in an ornate braid. Home life seemed to suit her well, she looked genuinely happy and relaxed like she certainly hadn’t when they had first gotten together. 

Fjord’s spell dropped as well. The half orc’s hair had large stripes of gray in it, he had crows feet at the corners of his eyes, and his salt and pepper beard had significantly more salt to it now. He still looked good, life at sea, despite its hardships, keeping him fit. He laughed at something over Caleb’s shoulder as he approached and he found himself lifted bodily into the air by a pair of muscular blue arms. 

Jester having dropped her polymorph spun him around briefly in the hug before setting him back on his feet. She would never fail to look divine. Her horns now curling in on themselves, almost like her mother’s had when they first met her. Her hair is pulled back into a pony tail, poofing out behind her head from the salt air. Her sailing days were certainly not hurting her in anyway. Her smile was still just as wide, her eyes just as sharp, and her arms just as strong, if not more so. 

“Happy anniversary Caleb! Twenty years ago you were a stinky wizard. Now you are here teaching!” Jester’s happiness in her voice carried to every corner of the lecture hall. 

“What happened to our plan of drinks in Nicodranas this evening?”

“I just couldn’t wait Cay-leb.” She pouted. “Fjord and I got into port early, and I was so bored.”

Caleb smiled at her, then looked around at the rest of the Nein, pretending to count. 

“We appear to be one short. Where is my sister? Couldn’t drag her away from the Cobalt training pit? Or did she get lost in a book like some kind of nerd?” Caleb said with a smirk.

“Mother fucker!” 

He looked up towards the voice above him, just in time to watch Beauregard drop from the ceiling, to land on his desk with a perfect three point landing. She hopped off the desk and punched his arm, before also grabbing him in a tight hug. 

“I am not a nerd, Widogast!” She snapped, a wide grin on her face. 

“Beauregard, please do not land on my desk. It was a gift and I don’t think it could bare too many impacts like that.” He stopped to look up at the vaulted ceilings of the class room. “Also, how did you get up there?”

If she had been invisible she would have tripped the wards on the class room. And if she had gone in the brief break between classes one of the early students would have noticed her and caused a stir. 

Beau took her turn to smirk. 

“I have been waiting up there for four hours so we could surprise you. It’s surprisingly comfortable. I could have gone another couple of hours without breaking a sweat.” She paused to flex, causing several students, and Yasha to blush at her muscles. 

Beauregard’s monk training meant that she looked like she hadn’t aged a day since Aeor. And she could still easily out fight everyone else in the room if she wanted to. She was also the one member of the Nein that Caleb saw the most frequently. Their work to root out corruption among the Cerberus Assembly, and other bodies of power in the Empire often kept them up together late into the night, until Yasha would intervene and throw her wife over her shoulder to carry her to bed. 

“Can I finish the lesson, or should we depart immediately?” Caleb asked, already guessing the answer. 

“Cayyyllleeeb.” Jester groaned, pulling at her face. “I’m sooooo bored. I want to drink and party already!”

Caleb turned back to his class of students. He was sure most of them had heard rumors about Professor Widogast and the wild adventures he got up to with the Mighty Nein back when they first got together. He wasn’t sure how much they actually believed, but he was sure that even the most widely blown out of proportion tale didn’t even begin to cover the truth of what they had done together. 

“In honor of the anniversary of this group of arschlochs finding each other, consider this to be a free day. Keep up on your readings, and if you have any questions I will be at my regular office hours tomorrow morning.” 

The students immediately started buzzing as they stood and packed. No doubt during tomorrow’s class he would have to field a whole host of questions about the Nein, and that was just the way he liked it. The day after the anniversary was the one day he would talk about what his family had done. As the class filtered out, with many a lingering glance thrown at the colorful group at the front, Caleb turned to Essek, setting the envelope with Astrid’s button in it on the table top to deal with later. 

“Would you like to teleport us to the beach, or shall I?”

Essek put up both hands. 

“I already used my spell slots getting us all back together again. You can bring us to the coast.” Essek said, his smile a mix between smug and fond. 

Caleb rolled his eyes before pulling him into a soft kiss. Then he turned to address the rest of the Nein. The family he had made for himself. 

“Are we ready?” After a series of nods, he pulled an ancient clay turtle from his pocket and gave it a squeeze. “Then let’s go!”

And they were off, to a night of drinks and celebration and stories told, and memories shared. And of course many toasts, “To another twenty years.”

[mk-empress]

Battle Against The Shifty Sticker

The Boss Fight

Mario and Olivia rode the platform up to the top of the sea tower. After avoiding the traps and solving the puzzles of The Vellumentals, they could finally see the end of the purple streamer.

“Hey! We reached the top! Wow, look how high up we are...” Olivia paused. “And look what else is up here! We finally found the end of the purple streamer! But...how are we supposed to get up there and smash the spool?”

It was showtime! I wasn’t about to let that filthy plumber and the girl destroy the boss’ streamer. I was ordered to guard it, and you better believe after what they did to most of the others before me, I was going to CRUSH them!

“Hey! I’m elevating here!” I shouted up to them. The platform I was on began to raise up to them, and it stopped in front of them. Both Mario and Olivia snapped their attention toward me. “You Mario? I got a message for you from the boss. How ‘bout ya come over here so I can give it to ya? And you, origami kid... Be a good girl and run back to Olly. It’s past your beddy-bye time, capisce? You two were gonna try and take this streamer out of the picture, eh? I got strips too, ya know. You got a grudge wit’ things that wrap over other things? You think I’m some kinda JOKE? EH?” I said. I was already upset.

“Guess we know who stuck those Toads to the tower now. Sheesh. How did all these harmless origami-making tools end up with such tacky personalities?” Olivia spoke quietly to Mario. What she said infuriated me!

“HEY! I’m not tacky! I’m STICKY! THAT’S IT! Ya want a piece of me? Well,you’re gonna get it!” I yelled at them. These two were DEAD! 

Mario pulled up his hammer, and I ejected my tape strips from my wrists. My sharp, silver knuckle braces appeared on my hands. 

“Heh heh heh. I got a feeling this is gonna be a fun one. C’mon, you two! Throw your best attacks at me. We’ll see what sticks!” I taunted.

I started off running at him. I swung my fist at his face, but Mario dodged to the side and swung his hammer at my legs, knocking me down. Mario jumped and slammed his hammer down at me. I barely rolled out of the way in time. I scampered up and stared at him, waiting for him to make move first. Mario charged and started spinning with his hammer out. I rolled back on my skates and ejected one of my strips. When the plumber stopped spinning, I wrapped a strip around his legs and yanked them out from under him, before slamming him into the ground. I reeled the strip back in, then Mario stood back up. He pulled out one of those shiny fire flowers and transformed. He threw multiple fire balls that were too fast to dodge. All I could do was put my arms up and block. The fire balls burned off a couple of the tape strips I wrapped around my jacket earlier. The fire also burned the strips coming from my arms. It hurt. I heard Mario transform back and I looked at my jacket. Parts of it were charred. I glared back at Mario. I was furious.

“HEY! What do ya think your doing, messing up my jacket like that? This baby wasn’t cheap and I’m not ‘bout to let ya destroy it!” I raged.

I started rolling at incredible speed and tried to punch Mario from behind. He turned and landed a crushing blow to my side. I tumbled to the side and clutched my side. It hurt worse than the fire did. I stood back up. I looked up and watched the origami girl transform into The Fire Vellumental. My eyes widened as she breathed a burst of red-hot flames down toward me from her beak. I quickly lunged out of the way and landed on my stomach. She began to turn her head toward me and blew one fire ball at me. Before I could finish getting up, it hit me hard enough to push me back down and slide me across the floor a bit. Olivia then transformed back into herself. I finally got up, and my jacket then fell apart. That was the last straw. 

“You two got some nerve, busting up my precious, custom-tailored jacket like that. It was worth a fortune, not to mention the senty-mental value! If that’s how ya want it, I might as well DISPENSE wit’ the pleasantries. Time to seal the deal, heh heh!” It was time for my special. I slammed my fists together and a purple aura flamed from me. My eyes glowed bright as I stared at those jerks. “See what ya made me do? Ya got me breaking out the dirty tricks! All right. Let’s wrap this up, eh? Heh heh heh!”

“Woah. This thing is out of control! He’s a no-good, cheating gangster!” Olivia exclaimed.

“Hey! I’m attackin’ over here!” I shouted. 

I zoomed around Mario and wrapped his whole body with my tape strips. I gripped the strips tightly and smashed Mario repeatedly into the ground. I didn’t stop until I saw blood from him. I froze for a second and saw the plumber’s lifeless, beaten body. I took a moment to let this achievement sink in. It felt divine to know I won. I had avenged my fallen brothers and sister. I protected the purple streamer, and- in a way- I protected the green streamer too. I reeled the strips back in, and took a few steps back. I was sweating and breathing heavily. I was tired, but I won! 

I relished this, but then I saw a 1-up mushroom appear. It absorbed into Mario’s body, and he jumped back to life. You’ve got to be kidding me! Mario stood up and glared into my eyes. I saw Olivia get behind Mario, then he got those 1000-fold arm things. I ejected my strips again trying to wrap around Mario’s body, but then he grabbed the ends. I was shocked. He looked at me once more, and I was afraid of what he was about to do next. I tried to reel my strips back in, but Mario’s grip was too strong. He yanked my strips hard and he just kept ripping them out of my arms! He pulled the last of my strips out, and I saw lots of blood on the other end. I looked down at my arms. I was bleeding profusely from my wrists and my arms were red. It burned and stung so bad! The pain was unbearable! I couldn’t move anything without my arms exploding in more agonizing pain. I looked up just in time to see Mario smash his hammer into my chest using those folded arms of his. I heard my ribs breaking and the force of the impact sent me flying off the whole freaking tower! I knew I was done for, but I didn’t want to die. 

I plunged into the ocean. The fall was so great that when I hit the surface of the water, I felt my back ribs break too. I resurfaced once, took a gasp of air, before sinking back under. I was in so much pain! The salt of the water burned on my wounds. I tried to swim back up, but I could barely move. The pain was immobilizing me. It was all too much for me. I was bleeding, my body was battered, and I was running out of air. I didn’t want to die, I really didn’t. I thought about my king and the streamers. I thought about my siblings who died protecting the streamers. I remembered watching the first three streamers fall apart and disappear. I could barely see the purple streamer disappear too. I started to feel sleepy. I looked up at the last streamer- the green one. I just prayed that Scissors would be able to protect the last streamer. I stared up at the sky as my vision blackened. It was over for me. I was done. I tried my best, but- just like the ones before me- I failed.

I’m sorry.

[your-local-bnha-writer]

Hello ur my favorite account😭! Can I request a HC with Tanaka, Noya, Tsuki, & Kageyama where u guys are dating but at a tournament, u run into ur ex boyfriend ( who is a huge douchebag) and is saying a bunch of garbage about u? How would they react? , how would it impact their playing style cause get this- karasuno is playing against ur ex boyfriends team🤭🤭🤭🤭

jealous bfs tanaka, noya, tsukki kags,

hey I’m gonna mash these two requests! I hope you enjoy this was a lot of fun to write!

also favourite account?? me?? 🥺🥺

➣ characters included : tanaka, noya, tsukki, kageyama (separately) x fem!reader

➣ headcannons

➣ warning : a lot of swearing 😳 like there’s a lot, your jerk ex talking crap, scary bfs

ryūnosuke tanaka

- karasuno had made it to the nationals, and right before their game against Tsubakihara, lil ol Tanaka had to use the bathroom

- a horrible decision really, just ask hinata

- he walks in and hears your trash ex talking crap abt you

“Yeah, can you believe it? I saw my ex here, Y/n. I think she’s the manager for her team? Karasuno. Is she really that desperate for attention from other guys?”

- Tanaka is p i s s e d like, no one gets to talk about his precious love without experiencing the wrath from Ryūnosuke Tanaka

- So mans just straight up walks to your ex, “gently” taps him on the shoulder to get his attention, and starts defending your honour

“Y/n? Y/n L/n? The most beautiful, gorgeous, precious girl in the world? That Y/n?”

“Uh, yeah? Who are y—”

“Hi I’m the new boyfriend, and let me just tell you...”

- Tanaka goes oFF he’s not letting this douche bag of an ex get his way, he straight up just goes on a 2 hours speech about how perfect you were

- and how much of a douche your ex was

- Eventually, Hinata finds Tanaka in the bathroom (since his stomach was actin up lol) and goes to alert the other guys + you

- So, the whole gang is here, Daichi and Suga have to drAG Tanaka away from your ex while Noya hypes him up

- You have to calm him down and ask him why the hell he was yelling at someone in the bathroom

“Your ex was talking shit about you, I’m not just gonna let them do that”

- You’re immediately like 🥺🥺 Tanakaaaa you didn’t have to do that omg I love you sm

- When it’s finally time play these guys Tanaka is surprisingly calm, like it’s actually terrifying

- Oh and you bet Tanaka’s going all out he is on fire, he’s landing every spike and you can practically hear the impact on it

- Right after he lands a spike he celebrates with his team and stares directly at your ex who’s shooketh 😳

“Yeah take that! You regret breaking up with Y/n now?”

“Tanaka stOoOoP omg—”

- After Karasuno wins he gives you the most passionate kiss, in front of your ex and you pull away blushing

- Your ex just rolls his eyes and goes to pack up with his team while Tanaka’s looking all smug and Noya’s hyPED

yuu nishinoya

- The boys were getting ready for the match against Johzenji, and were just doing some basic warmups

- You had to help Kyoko and Yachi with something so you weren’t in the gym at the moment

- But your asshole of an ex was talking shit about you, very loudly 😳 and very obnoxiously too

- This mf, instead of practicing and doing fricken warmups, he’s talking crap abt you, and you weren’t even in the vicinity!

- But your boyfriend was, oh and he heard everything, every single word that came out of you ex’s mouth

“Pfft yeah she’s still annoying as ever, not surprised she’s dating the dude that’s 5’2”

- Ohh big mistake bud, not only did you insult his perfect Gf, but his height as well? Like dang pick one or the other dude

- So, Noya can’t take it anymore he’s been holding back bc he’s supposed to be warming up for the game but at this point he just couldn’t

- He straight up runs over to the other side of the gym to knock some sense into the jerk

- Tanaka follows not to stop him (although he is a bit worried 😳) but to hype him up bc that’s his best friend’s gf you don’t get to do that

- Asahi is scared shitless so Ennoshita has to keep the horny tornado in check, while Suga is conflicted

“What the hell did you say? Don’t you dare insult Y/n again! This is why she left your sorry ass! Who are you talk shit about my beautiful girlfriend I’ll fight you right now—”

- Ahem well, as you can see he’s very pissed off and uh he ends up getting scolded by coach Ukai

- except at the very end of him scolding he gives noya a few pointers on how to defend your gf without showing bad sportsmanship

- You witness the whole thing and just go up to Noya to calm him down a little

“Thank you, but you didn’t have to go off like that,”

“Yeah I did, Im not letting that douche talk shit about my crazy hot girlfriend”

- noya stop this isn’t the time 😳🥵

- During the game he is extremely focused and there’s this terrifying aura that’s escaping him

- Like Asahi might actually shit his pants just standing next to him

- Karasuno absolutely destroys Johzenji bc Noya is not letting that ball drop on their side of the court

- After the game, like Tanaka Noya straight up kisses you in front of your ex, leaving you a blushing mess as Noya gives him a smug look

kei tsukishima

- aHEM um, alright get ready folks bc this is a scary one

- So it’s Kagugawa vs Karasuno and Yamaguchi is sort of wandering around with Hinata right before the game probably to try and cool their nerves 💀💀

- When they hear your someone talking abt you

“My ex is here we’re vs her team, I know yeah, she’s probably so annoying”

- Dude Yamaguchi and Hinata have never ran faster in their entire lives, they immediately go to tsukki and it’s just a scream fest

“TSUKKI THERES SOMEONE TALKING ABT Y/N!”

“yeAH!! and he was all like ‘she’s probably so annoying’”

“mHM AND—”

“okay I think I got it, where are they?”

- shits about to go down, when Tsukki gets mad, he doesn’t lose is cool, instead he keeps a level head and strategize on how to completely destroy his opponent

- so Yams and Hinata drag him to where your ex was and point him out, and he’s stILL on the phone

“Mhm, yeah she’s super annoying”

- Oh Tsukki is pissed off, he has this intimidating aura coming from him as he approaches the dude that’s shitting on you

“You’re the ex? Yikes...😬”

- Tsukki will wait for what he has to say and the whole time he just has the biggest smirk on his face, like it’s about to go down

- Yams and Sho are hyped uP but they’re waiting behind the door bc they’re babies and they’re scared

- Mm Tsukki does not hold back, he straight up roasts this dudes ass, mans just releases all the salt that’s stored in him

“Mhm yeah, that’s pretty pathetic”

“Heh lame”

“Wow...I can’t believe she really dated you”

- Yeah that’s not that much salt

- Tanaka find the three of them in the bathroom and as much as he wants Tsukki to keep going, they have to get ready for the game

- During the game, your ex tries to spike and he’s instantly shut down my Tsukki and his 6’3 ass, It’s quite hilarious 😌

- Anyways, Tsukki blocks your ex every single time wiTH A SMIRK, mans is not holding back on this bitch

- He says it’s bc he was predictable

- Later, Karasuno beats Kagugawa and Tsukki hardcore glares at your ex like it’s pretty scary since Tsukki is one to act all sassy rather than mad when he gets irritated

“You don’t talk shit about her, ever”

- SUDHDJD DAMN TSUKKI CHILLL

- You watch all of this happen and you immediately ask your boyfriend if something was wrong bc you’re a tad bit worried

“We just had a disagreement that’s all”

“uHH YEAH RIGHT TSUKKI WENT OFF EARLIER IN THE BATHROOM—”

tobio kageyama

- Um another scary bitch please do not talk trash about his gf when he’s around

- He’s probably filing his nails away from his team bc he needs his peace and quiet and doesn’t wanna get bullied by Hinata and Tsukki

- When he hears a guy talking very loudly to his friend, now usually he’d ignore them or move spots but like this dude is talking abt you

- So, he stays for a bit and listens to what he has to say. Who even is this dude? Why does he know you? Why is talking to loud like please shut the f—

“Pfft yeah my ex is here with her volleyball team, I talked to her earlier and oh my god she’s exactly the same when I first dated her”

- I’m not sure if that’s a roast sorry I’m bad at these

- Oh now Kags is pissed, see he was already a little irked that this jerk was your ex but he was also talking trash abt you? Nahh

- He throws his nail file on the ground and stomps right up to this douche to smack some sense in him

“Yeah she’s hella annoy—”

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up?”

“Who tf—”

- So Kageyama is also unusually “calm” about the whole situation which makes it even more terrifying

- Kageyama will most likely go off and tell this dude that he has no business talking abt his gf like that

- he’ll focus more on dissing the dude and let me tell you this dude’s roasts h u r t

- like his insults are like 90% swear words

“goblin lookin ass”

“long titty no nipple lookin ass”

“get outta here you abominable fuck waffle”

- Imagine this scary ass dude coming up to you, telling you to shut the fuck up, then realizing this is Tobio Kageyama, The King of the Court, the incredible setter that has precise aim, the 2nd half of the freak duo, going off on how you should stfu abt his gf

- oh and you’re facing him on your next game

- and he absolutely obliterates your sorry ass

- his sets are perfect, he blocks every single fuckin spike you make, and when you think he’s going setting to #10 think again bc he will do a setter dump

- basically he’s on fire and tear the other team to shreds it’s kind of scary actually, hinata was sweating buckets when kageyama served since he looked so terrifying at the moment

- after the game, kageyama would want to leave immediately he doesn’t want to see your ex anymore

“You doing okie? Did something happen with you and him before the game?”

“Yep, but it’s nothing don’t worry about it”

- kags you have that creepy smile again stop you’re scaring y/n

[crapitskizaru]

Eustass Kid x Mermaid!Reader

You and your blog are wonderful! I’ve had this idea stuck in my brain for days, so I was hoping I could request a scenario with Kid being in love with a mermaid (no angst, please!). Thank you!!! the-devil-fruit-tree

Warning: hahAaa jk there's no warning to this one also friendly recommendation to watch Sinbad: the legend of the seven seas

Word Count: 1,9k

The spiky peaks of mountains rose in the distance, blocking their path to the rest of an open ocean. In the man's mind, they resembled claws or, rather, teeth of a sea creature that just waited for his ship to sail within its reach.

"We'll see who's stronger," he muttered to himself. The wooden railing felt unnaturally cold underneath his clenched fingers; the whole crew could notice it as well, in their tensed postures and cautious gazes - something alien was hiding in between those dark cliffs. It resonated throughout the air and the structure of the ship, vibrated among the sea waves.

Kid marched onto the quarterdeck and snatched the steering wheel away from Killer’s grasp.

“I hope you’re aware that only the most foolish of captains would dare to sail a ship through this?”

“And here I thought that after so many years you’d know what kind of captain I am,” Kid snapped back and directed the ship towards a narrow gap between the mountains - so narrow that they grazed along the side of the hill with the ship’s lift. “We’ve been through worse.”

It was like a curtain - after their made it through the opening, the ambient sounds of the ocean were deafened by the stifling silence and the sky-high cliffs surrounding them. The water was still as they glided through its even surface.

“Rocks off the starboard bow!” Heat warned and they missed them by inches. 

The deeper they strayed, the colder the air turned; shipwrecks filling most of the area, whether massive, merchant vessels or less impressive cutters - drops of water dripped down their wooden planks as some of them were turned upside down, others smashed to pieces against the rocks.

Somewhere among the rising fog, a quiet hum of a melody rung around the dead mountains. Kid noticed the crew’s agitation getting stronger with each second as they passed a wreck of a galleon - its construction rotten to the core, hanging dangerously in between two larger boulders. 

“Captain?” Killer’s voice was laced with the usual amount of worry as the humming turned into a singing voice; more than one voice after a while, crystal clear and resonating throughout the stone walls. “It’s the sirens-” 

“Half of us are gay, what are you worried about?” 

“It doesn’t change anything! Their voice is enchanted.” 

Kid rolled his eyes and gestured for the first mate to keep it down. The flow of waters beneath the ship was faster now, relentless, as they gained in speed. 

As soon as Killer spotted his captain leaning over the steering wheel with a blissful expression on his face, he knew it was time to take matters into his own hands.

“Plug your ears! Cover them, go hide below the deck, just do something not to hear the singing!” he yelled, seizing one of his crewmates who was about to jump off to the sea and pushing him towards the galley. 

Some wanted to stay onboard despite the danger, as living through a siren’s allurement was a valuable story to share in taverns, but one glance towards Killer’s deadly aura was enough convincing they needed to follow his orders.

Kid observed the deck emptying of his crew, most of them deciding to hide inside the ship and leave the issue of survival to their captain. Terrible idea, he thought, resting his head on his palm and swaying the steering wheel casually. 

He could feel his mind free of enchanted hold, his judgement as sharp as ever. But who was there to deny him the experience of spotting the sirens with his own eyes? He had to see them, creatures that so foolishly thought they could bend him to their charms. 

Killer’s yell snapped him out of the trance as the ship missed a bunch of sharp rocks at the last moment. The rush of air kept hitting him directly in the face - the water now swifter than ever, taking away the control of the wheel and leading them to its own course. 

The first mate was halfway up the stairs to the quarterdeck when Kid spotted them. Sat on the railing, the creatures resembled water spirits rather than demons; which the sailors so liked to imagine when surrounded by the steady ground and the influence of beverage. Killer still hadn’t noticed them, but from his frantic gestures and silent demands Kid assumed he already plugged his ears and was ordering for him to do the same. 

The ship’s side hit the stone wall, making them jolt forward. The water stream didn’t stop in its assault, however, pushing the ship further between the cliffs. There had to be an opening somewhere among them, a gateway...But Kid’s focus kept shifting to the three, captivating beings still seated on the railing. They seemed so peaceful, their song flowing in the air. 

He didn’t notice the serpents of water reaching out and taking ahold of his legs until it was too late - one of the sirens jerking him away from the wheel and pushing him closer to them. 

The sea creature was so fragile. Kid couldn’t help but note their skin resembling clear liquid, their faces shifting like a water stream. They needed his protection, his strength and powers. One of them came closer than the others, their arm curling around his neck as it whispered the song straight into his ear. 

“Kid! Get back here this instant, or so help me, I’ll drown you myself!” 

Killer’s words taken away by the rush of the wind as a sudden jolt of the ship made the captain lose his balance. He flew straight onto the creature - and through it, rolling off the railing and into the depths of the sea. 

All of his senses were snapped out of him as soon as he hit the dark surface, engulfed by the freezing cold. His limbs itched to move, but instead remained motionless as the man sank deeper and deeper. 

A face appeared in front of his own. The creature was so close, he could feel the influence of their body and the tiny vortexes that it consisted of. Surprisingly, he wasn’t scared; the only thing he could feel was the overwhelming cold that seeped through his clothing and seemingly to the bottom of his soul. 

His body had been seized by a sudden force - he couldn’t make out what it was that dragged him away and upwards, but it was wise to assume he won’t live long enough to find out. 

The first gasp of air was worth more than all of the past treasures he stole as he was thrown out of the water, landing on stone in complete darkness. His muscles listened when he commanded them to move, but reluctantly, still stiff and sore. 

“Who’s there?” he rasped into the dark. Pure salt seemed to be filling his entire mouth, scorching in his throat. But at least he was still breathing and not yet being devoured in the freezing depths. 

All that answered him was silence. That was, until his eyes adjusted, letting him spot a creature drifting in the water just a few steps away. He could swear it was staring straight at him, but it made no move. 

“You wanna eat me or no?” Kid breathed, his chest rising heavily. The thick clothing he still had on could have helped with the cold, if only it wasn’t soaked to the last string, now acting as nothing else than unnecessary weight to carry. “I don’t have all day.” 

As soon as it swam closer, he realized it wasn’t made of water - it resembled a human. A fine piece of human, he internally added, that’s going to bite all of your fingers off for a starter, you idiot.

“You don’t want to sing a little song and throw me off my own ship?” he continued to bark out and slowly sat up on the hard stone, dripping water gathering into a puddle underneath him. “That’s a pity. It was a lot of fun.”

“No one wants to eat you,” they finally spoke, their voice seemingly free of any spells. “Although it’s starting to sound quite tempting.”

“I’m pretty sure those things from before wanted a piece of me.” 

Kid took a moment to assess the situation he currently had the dubious pleasure to be in. There were a lot of times when he woke up without any recent memories or any idea about the place he was laying at, but this? It felt like he already lost his mind, at the verge of death, and was talking to himself rather than to an imaginary creature in the water. 

“They wanted to drown you,” it calmly spoke again, leaning over and resting against the stone ledge with half of their body still submerged. “For the sheer sake of it. They despise humans and take great pleasure in watching them die.”

“Your friends and I have a lot in common then.” Kid squeezed the water out of his fur. With the corner of his eye, he noticed the expression on the creature’s face twitch in annoyance. Perhaps it was time to think about survival rather than indulging in sarcastic exchanges with a water demon. 

“They are not my friends. I’m not a siren.” 

Kid took his time to eye them up and down, his gaze sweeping from their upper body lower - until it reached what was moving lazily beneath the surface. 

“A mermaid,” he muttered, angry at himself for letting a sound of astonishment lace his tone. “A mermaid, you’ve got a tail and everything.” 

He could swear they raised a taunting eyebrow at him. “Are you always this sharp?” 

With another wave of shivers that ran down his core, he realized this was no time for a small talk with an ocean creature. Even if he survived, by some unfortunate miracle, what happened with his ship? 

“Where’s my crew?” he asked, placing careful steps along the stone shelf. “Did they make it?” 

“I suppose. You were doing well. Not many ships made it this far.” 

Despite his lips already turning dry from salt, he bit down on them hard. There was no way he could make it back to the ship - not when it was water that separated them, especially the one infested with frenzied, blood-thirsty devils.

“You’re strong,” he started. “You pushed me out of the water.” They didn’t respond, so he gave up the act. “I can’t swim.” 

The mermaid cocked their head to the side. “Is this your way of asking for help?”

There was a lingering pause after the question, during which Kid assumed he’s gone completely nuts - if that was the case, it won’t hurt to comply and start winging it; which wasn’t anything new for him when it came to dealing with various types of problems. 

“Yes,” he gritted out. There was the image of Killer, climbing up the stairs to help him, imprinted in his mind. Even if he was dead, Kid will make sure to follow in his steps as soon as possible. “I have to go back.” 

There was a smile rising on their features, or perhaps it was just a play of his mind. Whatever the case, the mermaid reached out and took his hand, their touch cold but surprisingly soft against his skin. 

“Hold your breath,” they whispered and dragged him underwater. 

[coleisunderrated]

Wish Upon a Shooting Star Going to Heaven

Okay everyone! I’m not gonna leave you hanging on that shitty prologue! Get ready to cringe at my first real story here to go with the holiday season! I’m sure it’s a story you’ll all enjoy!

Twas the night before Christmas when two souls had a fateful meeting.

The weather was extremely cold but with all the Christmas cheer and joy that blessed the village of Terra, everyone was able to withstand the harshness of winter. Cole was no exception on his way back to his family’s home, looking forward to the presents, decorations, feast, and above all, cake. His mouth watered just thinking about the deliciousness of the delicate sponge cake, fluffy cream, rich chocolate, and tangy fruits -

“OOF!”

Thanks to his sturdy build, Cole hardly lost his balance but the person he bumped into wasn’t so lucky. The skinny figure landed on their bottom and matches scattered everywhere. The person frantically picked them up and feeling bad for causing them trouble, Cole helped them.

“I’m so sorry about that. Let me get those for you.” He apologized.

“No. It was my fault for being an annoyance.” A voice that would’ve been silky smooth if it weren’t so frail spoke.

Once all the matches were gathered, Cole got a good look at the person and was saddened by his appearance.

The tall young man who appeared close to his age looked like death itself. Skin as pale as the snow falling around them, thin lips shaking from the cold, cheeks sunken in from lack of food, and tangled fair hair proved to be hard to look at. Cole pointed his earthy green eyes downward and found his voice in the worst way possible.

“Your feet...!” He cried out in an almost insulting tone.

While he was clad in baggy rags, the poor guy’s feet must’ve been exposed for a long period of time as the flesh had darkened and his toes were shriveled.

“Oh, I’m sorry for frightening you,” The freezing stranger apologized again, “I lost my shoes when I jumped away from the path of a carriage but my shoes slipped out and got trampled.”

Cole was flabbergasted at how this poor young man kept apologizing for things that were out of his control. All he could think about was taking him to his home, get him clean and warm, and share the holiday feast with him.

“Would you like to buy a match?” The stranger interrupted, offering the tiny stick.

“Are you trying to sell matches?” Cole raised a bushy eyebrow at the tiny item. No one would want to buy such a minuscule thing at a time like this.

“Yes. As per my guardian’s orders. I must sell all of them before I’m allowed back home.”

“Why does it matter if you sell them all or not?” A hint of fear revealed itself in the stranger’s eyes.

“He will... punish me if I fail... And I was strictly informed to not come back until I sell them all.”

Cole was far from stupid. The boy’s vulnerable appearance and anxious aura when talking about his guardian can imply only one thing.

"You don’t have to go back.” Cole said rather abruptly.

“What...?” The match seller was taken aback.

“Come with me. My family is rich. We can give you food and a place to sleep.”

“I would like that but I must fulfill my duty... and I don’t want to be a burden.”

“It’s not like this guardian or whatever will find out. Just throw out the matches and tell him you sold them.”

“But what about the money?”

“Don’t worry. My family is rich so I can just give you the money. How much are the matches?”

“One is for ten gold coins.”

“Really? That much for just one?” Cole couldn’t believe the ridiculous price for just one tiny piece of wood and didn’t hide his disgust.

“I’m sorry. My guardian chose the price.”

“Stop apologizing. If it makes you feel better, I have just enough for one match.” Cole offered what little money he had and the seller handed over the tiny stick. Still, he wasn’t satisfied until the match seller was safe. The pale boy turned to leave but Cole wasn’t having it.

“Wait! Where are you going?” Cole grabbed the seller’s arm and noticed his thumb met the tips of his fingers. The poor guy was even skinnier than he looked.

“I can only give one match to one person each. It’s also my guardian’s rule.”

“Why should it matter as long as you got the money? Like I said, my family is rich. I can take you home and give you all the coins they’re worth.”

“But I must obey my guardian.”

“You’re really not gonna give up are you?”

“I have accepted my task and I must see it through to the end, no matter what.”

Cole had a feeling arguing with him will be futile but he wasn’t going to let him be forgotten during one of the most joyous times of the year.

“Fine, but listen to me. No matter what happens, we’ll meet right here on Christmas morning, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll be here in the morning.”

“And I’ll also bring you some cake. I promise.”

“I really appreciate that. Until we meet again, farewell.”

The match seller walked off before Cole could respond. With nowhere else to go, the wealthy lad resumed his once forgotten journey home. He held on to the match like his life depended on it. He can’t imagine what the impoverished seller was going through. Once they meet up, he’ll find a way to free him from that so-called guardian. He made sure to remember it, even when he reached his large house in the wealthiest neighborhood in the village.

“Cole, where have you been? The party is about to begin!” Lou pulled his son inside so he can take part in the celebrations. Cole tried to tell his father of the poor young man he met but Lou wasn’t having it. Christmas is supposed to be about spending time as a family and he won’t let his son miss out on that.

Even as he received presents from his relatives he hadn’t seen in years and had his fill of roasted meats and warm home-cooked dishes, not even while eating slice after slice of his favorite cakes, Cole never forgot about the poor match seller. He kept his eyes on the match for most of the night until he looked out the window at the stroke of midnight just before going to bed and saw a shooting star flying across the dark sky. He normally doesn’t believe in it but he made a wish upon that shining star. He wanted to keep his promise to the match seller. He wanted to make his Christmas just a little bit brighter with his company and a big piece of cake and give him the life he deserves.

And perhaps find out his name.

Zane spent many hours into the night trying to sell matches but the crowds soon dwindled and even the carolers have gone home. He remained because he was obligated to fulfill his task. It was the least he can do for Vex for taking him in when he had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. But in a way, it made his life more difficult than it has ever been. He can count the times he slept on a content stomach with one hand as Vex ate most of what little food they can afford as well as the times he actually slept on a bed inside the house as he had often failed to complete the tasks Vex set out for him and just as often punished for it. He can’t fail him now, even when he was the only person remaining outside. Even then, he can’t go back until he sold every match.

The only sources of light to guide him were the moon and stars and the lights shining from within the warm houses of the village. Zane’s curiosity occasionally took control, leaving him frequently pausing to gaze at the windows of some of the homes. The lights provided by the nearby candles or a distant fireplace left him longing for warmth and the lingering scents of homemade meals ached his empty stomach. Zane endured, remembering the promise the rich boy made. He’ll get to eat Christmas cake for the first time in years and while that was just enough motivation to press on, his whole body has its limits unlike his will.

Spotting a little corner in the street, Zane took shelter, huddling against the wall and relying on what little warmth his thin rags had to offer. He still shivered, the echoes of his clattering teeth bouncing to and fro in his ears and each breath he took strengthened the swirling white fog surrounding him. Zane glanced at the matches and felt temptation growing inside his heart. If he lit one, he may find warmth but he knew he mustn’t and tried to hold out. It was so terribly cold and the thought of obtaining even the slightest bit of comfort quickly became too great to resist.

‘Maybe just one will be fine...’

Completely forgetting about any punishments Vex will inflict, Zane swiped one match against the wall. The heat and light emitted from the tiny flame gave him just a tiny piece of comfort but the poor seller couldn’t be more grateful. For some reason, he felt... happy. Staring at the tiny light awoken memories of a time where there was no pain, nothing to worry about, and knowing what true happiness felt like. It’s been so long ago he almost forgot and he only remembered just now because of his interaction with the wealthy young man who bought one of his matches. He wondered what he’s going through right now. He’s probably at home opening heartfelt presents, eating a lavish feast, or warming himself before a cozy fireplace... just like the one in front of him.

‘...What...?’

Zane knew it can’t be possible but it felt all too real. He can count each log burning in the hearth made of bricks. Above the flames, he can see woven stockings packed with trinkets. It’s all too good to be true yet no matter how many times he blinked, the wonderful scene remained before his pale eyes. The visage lingered for a time before slowly fading away. Zane almost cried out for the fireplace itself to stay but it quickly vanished, leaving a searing hot pain in his fingers to pour salt on the wound. The match seller flinched and a blackened match landed in the snow before him.

‘Was that vision coming from the match?’ Zane wondered to himself, staring at the burned out stick, ‘If I light another match, will I see anything like it again?’

Zane knew he’s already in big trouble for using a match for himself. Temptation quickly proved to be much harder to fight than the most seasoned warrior.

Nothing mattered to Zane anymore besides seeing these visions. Without hesitation, he swiftly lit another match. This time, he saw the most luxurious feast he had ever laid eyes on. The table was already large to allow room for all the delicious things to display themselves before him. There was roast chicken and beef, tall glasses of sparkling drinks, adorable decorated cookies, and a big, beautiful cake in the center. Zane felt his once dry mouth become drenched in saliva and reached out for the tantalizing food before him. Just like the fireplace, the gorgeous table disappeared once the match burned out.

Zane didn’t let a second go by before lighting a third match. He was greeted by the heartwarming sight of a cozy house decorated for the holidays. All the windows were framed with brilliant lights and hanging on the door was a wreath adorned with a big red ribbon twirling around the greenery and topped with big sprigs of holly and tinkling bells. The most beautiful of all was the large Christmas tree in the center, decked in a dazzling array of lights, ornaments, and tinsel. The tree was so tall Zane craned his neck up to see the large Christmas star that sparkled and reflected the various lights, illuminating the whole room. And just like the previous two visions, it all disappeared when the third match went out. Yet Zane continued gazing up at the starlit sky.

At the stroke of midnight, he saw a shooting star riding across the heavens. Seeing it suddenly reminded him of his father, his true parent who was the only person who treated him with love and kindness until his passing. He remembered when he was very little, his real father told him that when a shooting star appears in the sky, that is actually someone going to heaven. He wondered who it was that had to die on Christmas. He silently prayed that the poor soul will find happiness wherever they’re going.

And then Zane lit a fourth match and what he saw was something more precious to him than any glamorous decorations, extravagant feasts, or even a comfortable fireplace.

“Father...!” His feeble voice escaped his lungs and echoed in the night.

Standing before him was his father who was supposed to be dead. A tender smile graced his elderly face yet there was a hint of sorrow in his old and worn grey eyes. Zane now wished more than ever that the visions created from the matches were real. He wanted to believe his dearly departed father really was standing before him, giving him the love he never felt again since his death. He didn’t say or do anything but Zane was still overcome with joy by his presence he wanted to cry yet he can’t. He simply can’t produce any tears no matter how much he wanted to, almost like his body was too weak to do such a simple task. Just like everything else before him, the old man slowly started to fade when the match’s light began to waver.

“Father, no! Please! Don’t leave me!” Zane cried out, desperate to feel love and happiness again, desperate to not lose anyone or anything dear anymore.

Before the match could go out, Zane lit another so his father can stay with him. Much to his relief, his father was still there. As long as the matches were lit, he won’t leave. Zane lit each match one by one until none were left. The fire of the combined matches gave off a glow akin to the sun and his father looked even more radiant within its light. With both a loving smile and sad eyes, his father extended his hand to him.

“Zane, it’s time to go.” His father spoke in the same gentle voice he had and it was just as Zane remembered it.

“Go? Go where?” Zane asked, apparently confused.

“We can finally spend Christmas together as a family. There is nothing for you to worry about anymore.” The old man stepped back so his son can see the beauty surrounding them.

Zane looked around to see he was now in the same house with the same fireplace, feast, and Christmas tree that appeared earlier. He took in every sight in awe until his eyes fell on the cake. He recalled a promise to have Christmas cake in the morning and that’s when the memories flooded back. He did manage to sell one match to a wealthy young man whose face resurfaced in his psyche as well as the promise they made.

“But what about the young man I met earlier? We promised to meet each other in the morning.” Zane hesitated, not wanting to break his vow.

“The morning where you two reunite will come to pass.” His father spoke with the same wisdom he possessed in life.

Zane had a feeling his father was right. He too began to sense they will reunite in the future. For now, he can be with his beloved father again and finally have their first Christmas together since they parted.

Zane accepted his father’s hand and sank into his warm embrace, not wanting to let go of this love and happiness he knew will never leave.

At that moment, Zane knew he was finally home.

And then the morning came.

Cole wished he hadn’t seen the sad sight before him.

The poor match seller laid dead in the corner, covered in a thin layer of snow and surrounded by his matches that have been burned black as soot. He apparently died from the cold and futilely attempted to warm himself.

“The poor thing must’ve froze to death...” The villagers wept at the sad sight.

While everyone else expressed pity and sympathy for the dead young man, only Cole noticed the tiny smile on his face. He looked so peaceful and he had a feeling he was finally happy wherever he was. If only he didn’t have to die.

“No... No...” Countless tears rolled down his dark cheeks before he realized he was crying for the dead match seller.

The cake that was once in his hands now lies forgotten in the snow. Cole clutched the frail, cold body and sobbed, not caring that everyone saw or what they thought of him holding this stranger in his arms. If only he were alive, he could’ve felt the warmth of his touch that had come too late. The match seller may be at peace but Cole wasn’t. Not when he failed to keep his promise to save him.

Cole looked at the frozen smile and thought about how happy he must be in the afterlife. Somehow, he was determined. Even through his tears and despair, he made a promise to the match seller again, one he knew will never be broken.

“One day, I will find you... I promise.”

[parchmints]

JuLance Day 10 - Family

Check out my thread on twitter to see all the prompts at once (the tumblr app messes with formatting so I recommend twitter if you’re using mobile)! All prompts connect together to form one overarching story!

First | Previous | Next

day 10/31 - Family

Set right after the Day 2 prompt. The Paladins have landed on earth and after a brief meeting with Sam, they’re free to visit their families for a week. 

(sorry this one’s a bit rushed! I got zines to package! My hc for Lance’s fam is they all call him smth different lmao)

Day 10 - Family

It’s really easy to forget how fast the Lions are when you’re traveling in the infinite expanse of space, but on a planet as small as Earth, it’s impossible not to notice. The plane ride from Phoenix to Havana is about ten hours without layovers (and there’s always layovers), but in Red it takes one minute and forty-three seconds. Lance timed it.

He’s flying over the ocean, nearly to the large, open field behind his oceanside house when he realizes the trip from Sedona was too short--which is ridiculous because literally three minutes ago he couldn’t sit still because he was so anxious to finally get home.

But now that he’s really here, he doesn’t feel prepared. It’s ridiculous. They just spent a whole year trying to get here and Lance needs more time? What kind of backward logic is that?

As Red starts to descend, Lance sees his house--big, weather-worn, and crudely patched up all over the place, and it’s almost like he never left. Taking it all in, he feels overwhelmed with a host of conflicting emotions from pure, unbridled joy to horrible, consuming anxiety. It has his stomach tied in complicated knots and he has the irrational impulse to run away from the house, to turn Red right around and go back to Sedona.

What’s wrong with me? He thinks, feeling more and more unsettled as they get closer to the clearing that is his yard.

Then, he feels a warm presence push against his mind with soft reassurance.

Paladin nervous, Red says to him gently.

There’s no reason I should be nervous, Lance replies back.

Red growls, rough and low. I feel, Paladin. You worry they will not love you same. Worry they have moved on.

I...don’t think that.

Paladin, I feel, Red says again and really, there’s no arguing with a giant, sentient robot lion, especially Red. He’s about a thousand times more stubborn than Blue.

It’s just been a long time, Red.

Will make no matter. Paladin family miss him just like Paladin miss family, Red purrs and Lance can’t help but smile.

Alright, alright. I get it, you big softie.

Red purrs again and feels warm support flood his mind again. His nerves haven’t gone away, but he doesn’t feel quite as shaky as before.

Taking a deep breath, Lance gently lands Red among the tall grass and he knows there’s no way his family hasn’t noticed the big robot cat blowing gusts of wind all around their property. Any second, they’re all gonna pop their heads out the door with wide eyes and gape at the spectacle. At least, in theory.

Lance’s throat gets tight as seconds go by and no one comes out of the house. A part of him doesn’t want to go outside until he sees someone, until he knows for sure they’re there. It’s the early evening, so they all should be, but so much can happen in two years and that terrifies Lance more than he cares to admit.

Maybe...maybe they think it’s not safe, Lance thinks and as soon as he does, he throws himself to his feet. Scaring them all is the last thing on his mind.

With another gentle push from Red, Lance dashes out of the cockpit and steps onto Red’s lowered ramp.

Red opens his jaws and for the first time in two years, he feels the ocean air--Earth’s ocean air--brush against his skin. He can smell the salt in the breeze and he can hear the waves crashing against the shore. His breath hitches at the sensation and something in his chest balloons and swells, filling him up to the very top.

Slowly, he walks down the ramp, unable to move his feet any faster. Being here, actually being here, feels like a dream and part of him is scared he’ll wake up soon.

His feet touch the ground and it sends another wave of emotion through him, his eyes glossing over. Lance looks down at the grass and even that has him completely enraptured--it’s all just so familiar and exactly how he remembers it.

Then, Lance hears the unmistakable sound of a door hinge creaking open. Lance’s eyes widen at the noise and his stomach turns so violently he thinks he might throw up. Still, he snaps his eyes up the front door of his house and sees a whole mess of curly, long hair peeking from it.

Lance goes still as he watches the door open at an excruciatingly slow pace. He holds his breath as finally, a pair of big brown eyes emerges after the bush of wild hair and Lance can tell who it is now.

Mamá, he thinks as the door opens wider and indeed, his mother’s full form comes into view.

And she’s exactly how he remembers her. Kind, dark eyes, friendly face, and just an overall aura of goodness that radiates off her like sunshine.

Lance doesn’t move as he stares at her staring at him with her eyebrows in her hairline and her jaw hanging open. With the exception of the sounds of the shore, it’s quiet as they both look at each other, rooted to their respective spots.

“Leandro,” she says, voice full of disbelief and that362 kind of gentleness Lance has always associated with her.

And just like that, Lance shatters. Tears start streaming down his face the instant he hears his given name (it’s been so long since someone called him by it that he almost forgot it was his name) and he takes off sprinting to her.

“Mamá!” he calls, voice desperate and cracking.

His mother mirrors him--big, fat tears rushing down her face, running as fast as she can, and all the while babbling his name.

With the rate they’re both dashing to each other, it takes no time at all for them to collide. Lance’s mother is a good head shorter than him, so she wraps her arms around his middle and squeezes tight. As soon as she does, he wraps his own arms around her shoulders and lets out a sob into her hair.

“Mijo, mijo, mijo,” she says between sobs. “We were so worried.”

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. If I had any way of contacting you I would’ve--”

“Leandro?”

“Lance!”

“Mamá! Mamá! Look, it’s Tío!”

Lance’s words get cut short as a chorus of different voices call out to him and he can see through his wet, blurry eyes that the whole family is rushing out of the house now--Papá, Veronica, Marco, Luís, Marise, and even Diana with little Hilario and Ana in tow.

A fresh wave of tears hits him as they all come crashing towards him and he’s suddenly dead center of an impressive group hug.

“Stupid! You just leave for space without telling anyone!”

“WHOA! Is that the Voltron thing you talked about in your message?”

“Tío Leo, why are you crying? Is that a robot lion? Can I pet it? Tío?”

“Not now, Hilario!”

“But Mamá! I wanna know!”

And Lance can’t hold it in anymore--he starts giggling uncontrollably as he finally lets his mother go and actually gets a chance to take them all in.

“I missed you guys,” he says, wiping away at his face, but he’s interrupted by his dad crushing him into another hug.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” his father says into his ear, voice thick with emotion. Lance’s father has always been the tough-as-nails type so hearing him sound so vulnerable makes Lance cry all over again.

The others all have their turn, one right after the other, and Lance can’t understand why he was ever worried. The way they all feel about him hasn’t changed and the way he feels about them certainly hasn’t.

After he puts Ana down from their spinning hug, his mother comes up to him again and places a hand on his cheek, her thumb gently brushing the skin there. Her eyes are still damp, but full of affection as she says, “Welcome back, mijo.”

For a second, Lance closes his eyes to soak up the words, lets them wash over him like waves upon the shore. Opening his eyes, he smiles down at her.

“Good to be back.”

[fleetbound]

BIRDS AND LIONS [SIPARA POV] - 20k

This got deleted off of tumblr ages and ages ago, so reposting. |D

You can’t picture it. You might as well picture having fins. But Pheres apparently can. “So he doesn’t need our hivestem. He’s got his own, and it’s lovely,” he says for you, when you don’t answer. He’s been wringing out his hair, but now he pauses. “And.. he said I can come see it soon. If I want to.”

It’s rare for you to be gobstopped! But the words just won’t come. Your pan is like a leaky sieve, ‘except instead of draining out thoughts, it’s not even letting them in. Everytime a word appears, it pours out just as quick, ‘til the only thing that’s left is a sickly kinda unease.

But he’s watching you side-long, waiting for a reply.

“.. but you aren’t,” is what you finally manage to say. It comes out as a squeak. Worse yet, it comes out as a question, and all you want to do is rip out your voicebox and start over. “Right?”

0. COIN | 7 years old / 3.27 sweeps

"Catch!"

The caegar is dusty and green with age and rust, but it still cuts a nice figure as it twirls in the air high above. The green light catches on each rivet and groove, pink shadows deepening each curve, every place it bows out until it looks like something special: some kind of a gem, maybe, sparkling in the night air.

It isn't! It's just something you found in one of the journals and spit and polished until all the dirt had come off. Too old for the Imperial symbol to have been carved onto it! Too old for it to be of any more use than the wooden coins in the boxed games. But as far as you're concerned, that just makes it all the better.

After all, wood rots! And you'd never get away with playing river games with a real coin.

The moons are in your eyes at this angle. Everything's green and pink moonspots and the purple sky above, and between those three, the caegar blends right in. You catch a glint of it. You snatch for it! And you miss.

Instead of landing neatly in your palm, the coin smacks into the water with an audible pop near your face, and you jolt back, spluttering with outrage.

From the shore, Sipara whoops.

It’s the start of the wet season, and even though the moons are high on the sky, the air is still heavy with a heat crisp enough to taste. It won’t stay hot and humid like this for very long. Soon enough, the rains will come proper, and you won’t be coming outdoors for a dozen caegars, never mind this silly little half-penny. But that’s nearly a perigee away, practically forever, and until then, you and Sipa are determined to take advantage of the heat.

“Way to go!” she jeers. No matter how much you beg, she refuses to ever get so much as her walkstubs wet. You even tried bribing her once, but she'd just stolen the apple you’d offered and eaten it anyway. And the only time you actually hauled her in, she’d bit you so hard that you’d had to get bandages from Whydah.

(They'd sucked their fangs at you when they'd seen the bloody weals, and then wrapped the bandages so tight you couldn't feel your fronds for nights.)

But every time you head off to the river, Sipara’s always a step behind, trailing you like the world’s most dreadful shadow. She claims it’s ‘cause she’s waiting for you to drown, so she can take all your stuff and pawn it at the market, but she hangs around even when the river’s way too low for you to do much more than wade. You think she’s jealous!

Which is silly, because you keep offering to teach her to swim. She's the one that always refuses. But then again, Sipara is silly. “You’re supposed to catch it, doofus!” she yodels at you now, hands on her hip. She’s leaning in close to the river, near enough that you can see her reflection on the water below.  “Not let it fall!”

You puff out your cheeks at her, pressing your palms to your face and wiping away the water. As much as you can manage, at least: staying in place like this is hard! Your head keeps bobbing down, trying to dunk you in the water 'til even your top half's completely submerged. If you stop thinking for half a moment, you'll be pulled under.

Sipara’d scream if you were. She looks stressed enough just standing by the shore, like she thinks the water’s going to reach up and drag her under. You're not sure what she's so afraid of.

“Hard to catch it when you’re awful at throwing,” you call back. "Where did it go, Sisi? Did it even land in here?"

Tilting your head down, you make a show of squinting down into the briny water, but you're really watching her through your lashes. She leans down, big hands tight on her bendsockets. Her mouth is thin. "'course it landed," she snaps. You can't see her eyes like this, but you know they must be all thin and unhappy. You can't see her face, either, with all her hair falling down around her like a curtain, not anywhere but in the water, where it's too blurry to see what look she's making.

Too blurry to tell her feelings, maybe, but just clear enough to aim. You let the silence sit just long enough for her to stew in it. She can't stand quiet, not really.  And then, right when she's opening her mouth to say something else, you slap both hands into the water.

All that happens is she catches a mouthful of water, but the way she jolts, you'd think you hit her.

Sipara jerks back so quickly that her feet slip in the mud, and no amount of arm-flailing can keep her upright. She hits the clay soil with an audible plop, hair poofing up around her, her eyes saucer-wide in her face. Almost as big as her mouth, which's already twisting open as she sucks in a breath.

You dive just as she lets off the first ear-piercing shriek of rage.

Underwater, you can't hear it. (Underwater, she can't hear you, which's good, 'cause you're laughing.) The water is high and the river's murky with silt and dirt, but ducking under's comfotable, even when the current's jerking you every which way. That's alright. You just have to go with it, and you let it tug you along a few feet, staring down at the bottom.

The water would've tugged the coin a long a little farther than it ought. But luckily, just along, and not out. This close to the shore, the ground's near enough that you can feel it, brushing along the bottom of your psionics. And it's close enough that the light of your aura cuts through the gloom as easy as clay. There's still black on either side of you, tugging at the corners of your  vision where the light doesn't shine, but that's alright. You can see straight ahead, and that's all you need.

Because right below you is the gleam of the coin, hiding in the silt on the bottom.

When you grab it, it's heads.

1. RMEROS | 4.15 SWEEPS / 8 YEARS OLD

Pheres's moirail's got the biggest head you've ever seen. He's the biggest troll you've ever seen, really, if you count in his horns. And you sorta have to: they're huge and curly and ridiculous, curling all the way over his head and past his back, like he's some sort of wooly hairbeast.

"Rack like that," you'd heard Khirba murmur to Whydah that first night, after the sun'd gone down and everyone had come streaming out into the courtyard, jostling past and floating up over each other to try and see: "- rack like that it, doesn't really matter his personality, does it?"

It's no wonder he's got a big head, when everyone won't stop talking about him.

Especially Pheres.

"Sto~oppit," you wail, clapping your mitts over your soundflaps. He just laughs at you, showing off his teeth in that dumb grin that always makes you want to smack him silly. "I don't care!"

"Don't be such a brat, Sipa!" He's bustling around your hiveblock, rattling the dishes, hopping up on his toes to reach the shelves where you keep the sugar so bugs won't get in. The tea's on the hotplate, just barely starting up the whine that means it's about ready. "If you'd stop being such a runny-faced wiggler, you'd like him, I promise! He's so smart."

"Almost as smart as you," he adds, peeking back at you with a quick smile, and you let go of your ears.

"Almost as smart?"

"Almost!" The kettle whistles. He drops the mugs on the counter, sloshing the tea haphazardly in. Usually, your lusus would complain about how much's slopping everywhere, but your pops is up in the rafters, sleeping again. He's been doing that a lot ever since you got big enough to feed yourself. "I mean, he doesn't make stuff like you, but he knows all sorts of things!"

"What good's about knowing things?" You nudge him away from the kettle, taking over before it all ends up on the floor. Pheres's got tiny bird hands, barely big enough to fit your pop in 'em. Yours are bigger, and if you're careful, you can just about keep the kettle steady.

"Rmeros says all the goods in knowing things. You can't get nothing done if you don't," he says, shovelling sugar into your cup. When he sees you looking, he dimples at you. "Sugar to make you sweeter!"

You make a gesture that is not very sweet at all, and he laughs, passing you the mug. It's warm in your hands. You blow on it, but he's already sipping at his like the heat doesn't bug him any. (It's not fair! He can drink it straight outta the pot without complaining, but your mouth starts peeling just at the smell of it.) "You're going to meet him tomorrow," Pheres says, and it's not a question. "You'll like him!"

Gingerly, you take a sip of your tea, and you get a mouthful of salt.

He stops laughing when you dump the cup on his lap.

***

"This is Sipa," Pheres says a few hours later, his voice only a little muzzy.

Points to him! If he wasn't all ruddy, you'd barely knew you broke his nose at all.

"You met her before." He's watching the two of you, bright-eyed but wary, like you're stray meowbeasts about to scrap. Maybe he isn't wrong! Rmeros is big, sure, but it's one thing to know that and a whole 'nother to see it up close and personal. He's as big as a lusus, towering over you. Big enough to be someone's dad, and the fact he's got his van behind him doesn't make him seem any smaller.

It makes you feel small. It makes you want to rip him apart until he feels the same.

"I remember her," he says, eyeing you, and maybe he doesn't see you're two seconds from scratching off his face, 'cause he bends knee to you 'til his face's even with yours. Your fronds curl into fists. He doesn't notice that, either. "Hello there. You're Sipara, aren't you?"

You nod, stilted. His lips curl up, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

Rmeros doesn't have much to say after that. He leans back on the steps of his van, his back to the door, and he plays around on his fancy husktop. It's got to be nicer than anything any of you lot have: as the older kids pass by, you can see them eyeing it, but he doesn't pay them any mind.

You wouldn't think he was paying you and Pheres any mind, either, but you can feel him watching. It's weird. You don't know why, but then again, you've never met anyone from outside of the hivestem. Maybe they all sit there and watch like the slitherbeasts in the foliage, waiting to try and snatch your pops right outta the air.

He's not looking at you, but it's still like you can feel his attention. You manage to forget Rmeros is there anyway. It's easy when he's so quiet, and what starts off as a discussion with Pheres turns into a lecture turns into a discussion of everyone else. And just like it always does, it turns into an argument.

The two of you fight, even when you're agreeing. It's been this way since you were itsy bitsy and you first got stuck in the hole between your walls. (The both of you were perfectly agreed on how much you wanted to get out of the wall. The trouble came in that neither of you could stop hissing long enough to manage it.) "Simoom's terrible," Pheres says, in that hushed, rapid-fire way of his, "but you can't cull him, Sipa, that's silly. You're being silly. Again!"

"He's not that big!"

"It doesn't matter when he can lift you up with his brain!" He frowns at you. "You're going to start something and get hit, and you'll deserve it." He's always on about that. It's just a matter of consequences, he says, like that's anything but an excuse for the bigger kids to rough you up. "Even if you smacked him on the pan with a rock, he's still bigger --"

You whirl on your heel, flinging your hands out. "Pheres! You nerd!" He doesn't jolt back quick enough to avoid you grabbing his face. Your palms squish into his cheeks. "That's brilliant," you crow. "If I hit his horns enough times, he won't be able to do nothing at all! Walk, spark, nothin'!"

A white-hot spark lands on your skin. You let go with a yowl, and as soon as you do, he's dancing back. "Yeah," he says, confused but pleased despite the side-eye he's giving you. White's still dancing across his horns and shoulders like a brazen warning. You stick your hand in your mouth, sucking on the warm spot. "Ah. I.. am brilliant?"

Rmeros laughs.

Pheres jumps in a crackle of psi. When you stumble back, blinking againsnt the light, Pheres's right behind you, and the both of you end up sprawled out on the ground. "Get off," Pheres yelps, shoving at you. "You're smothering me!" Both of you forgot Rmeros was there: he's quiet as a fucking meowbeast, that's what he is, leaning forward with his chin on his hand and his elbow braced on his husktop. His eyes are twinkling over the top of his glasses.

Not like Pheres when he gets pleased, all sparks and a light that makes your eyes water. But like he's amused.

Like he thinks the two of you are a joke.

"You two really are pupas, aren't you?"

When you give Alsike this look, she threatens to backhand you. Rmeros just laughs again, eyes squinching shut in a way that doesn't happen when he smiles.

Pheres bats away your hand as soon as you offer it, scrambling to his feet and sidling away. You huff, squaring your shoulders. It's not that your feelings are hurt! It's just that he's dumb."Well, if you're so smart," you burst out, "what would you do?"

"Befriend him," Rmeros says promptly, and it's your turn to laugh. His smile shifts a little at that, turns to a shape you can't quite identify.

"What's your name, again?" he asks.

"Nzinga," you say, and his smile fades.

2. ADVICE | 4.58 SWEEPS / 9 YEARS OLD

Everyone calls you Nzi, except for Pheres.

It's always been Sipara with him. He says that's how you introduced yourself, back when you first met, but you have your doubts: the only thing you remember from back then is knowing he was there, right on the other side of the thin plaster wall, and knowing that you hated it.

It was your hive! It was your hive and your home and it was bad enough there were trolls on every end of you, breathing through the walls, breathing above and below you. But then you realised there wasn't even a proper wall between the two of your hives, just something you could punch right through, and it'd been terrible. If it wasn't a wall, then it was your space. If it was your space, then he shouldn't have been there.

You bit him, the first time you'd met, just for the fact he was there and you didn't want him to be. You don't think you introduced yourself at all! Least, not before he'd wrestled you into the coon and half drowned you in it. Your lusus had shrieked and shrieked 'til you'd given in, and that'd been the first and last time those two had ever agreed on nothing.

But it doesn't matter, 'cause when someone calls your name, you always know it's Pheres. No matter how funny it sounds.

"Sipara!"

He's doing his silly skip-hop again. Some of the floaters do a little skip-kick to launch themselves into the air, and he's copied - except instead of floating up at the tip of his jump, he flickers and crackles, and when his feet hit the ground, he's two, three feet ahead. He might've been the way back at the hivestem starting off, but it only takes him a minute to reach you like this.

His face's still red and his breath all funny like he's been running. "Sipa," he says again, unsteadily. "Oh my god, why are you in a tree?"

You kick your legs down off of your branch. "'cause I'm getting apples, duh!"

He's on the other side of the fence, but Pheres is a brat: he doesn't even have to scramble, he just makes that little noise that means you ought to close your ganderbulbs, and then jumps right over it.

When you open your eyes, he's right below the tree, staring up. "Khirba said Simoom'll dock our horns if we get caught stealing." But he's already unwrapping the scarf around his torso, and holding it up like a basket.

There's a game to finding apples worth stealing. This early in the season, half of 'em are still green and barely worth the picking. The other half are all ripe, but the orchardkeepers like to tuck those branches away, keep em hidden. They're little flashes of yellow in all the green, and you have to dig to find them.

"Simoom's a stupid fart and I'll bite him if he tries." The apples you're throwing down are mealy and small, but it's food. Pheres doesn't care, past that.

But he didn't just turn up for food. "'Sides, why're you worrying? He's not gonna do anything to you," you call, sour, "since he's,  like, over the moon for your dumb moirail."

"Why're you even here? Thought you'd be reading your dumb books."

"I'm allowed to go out," he says, taking a bite of one of the apples. "I'm not stuck learning all the time."

"Just whenever I'm supposed to see you," you complain.

He opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it.

".. I wanted to say you should be nicer to him," he finally says, all stiff and prim. "He thinks you're a brat. And you are!"

"Says the boy stealing all my apples!"

"I've only eaten one! And I'm holding them, so it's not stealing." He spits out an appleseed on the ground, then crunches through the core. "It's just a tax."

"That's dumb, and so's you." You shift. "I'm not gonna be nicer to him. He's awful."

"Well, you're awful, so the two of you should get along just fine."

You throw an apple right at his face for that.

There aren't that many apples. The grafters are too clever for that: they know people like to steal, and they don't like to make it profitable. So you have to climb all over the tree, stretching out your legs and arms far as they'll go as you pull and tug the branches. It's tiring!

But it's fun, too, and it's worth it for the way that Pheres is all but bouncing with excitement as his scarf starts to sag with the weight of it. Pheres has been hiding away in Rmeros's van for most of the hours of each night, coming in to visit you in breaks and right before he goes to sleep, like you're just something to keep him busy when his moirail isn't around. Like you're an afterthought.

But out here, you're his only thought. His big white eyes are watching your every move, and even if he's all salty over it, he's hanging off your every word. It's just like the way things used to be,  when it was just you and him and your lusus and no one else in the world who gave the slightest damn about either of you.

"The guards, " he says, and goes still.

'cause no matter how it feels, of course there's still other folks here. Simoom assigns people to walk the orchards just to crack filchers like you. Last time Majlis had caught you, she'd given you four lashes, while your pops practically burned Pheres for holding him back.

It's been perigees, but your back still aches at the thought. You hush.

It seems as if they might pass you right by. The orchards are big, and there aren't that many kids that wanna do field duty, not when they could be having fun out playing at guards or making things. There's only four kids at it any one night, and they like to split into two, the better to patrol. These two could be on their way home. They could be wrapping up for the night.

They're lingering at a tree three rows down, though, writing down where a fruit got bit straight in half by some echoing squeakbeast, and they're gonna be heading your way soon.

You're motioning for Pheres to scatter before you even look up. "You gotta go," you murmur, but he's taking, too: "- no, no, you have to go!"

"If you get switched again, then your lusus is gonna burn them, and Majlis'll have her mum eat him!" Now that they're studying the next tree, you can see the three pronged points of Majlis's horns. Ugh.

"If they catch you, Simoom's gonna kick your butt!"

"What's that matter? He does it anyway." Pheres huffs, looks away. His shoulders are up, but when he peeks back at the duo and catches a glimpse of your face, he blanches.

"No, no, I'll be fine," he says, quick as anything.  "He won't do anything! Like you said, ah, he likes Rmeros, and Rmeros already got onto Khirba for smacking me, so he isn't going to do anything but bark. I'll be fine, so just - oh, just hurry up!"

You slide more than climb down the tree, the jagged bark dragging at your palms and feet. But your skin's rougher than some dumb tree, and you don't feel nothing, not even when you finally slip to the ground.

Pheres's tying the scarf around your neck before your feet hit the dirt, the edges tucked so the apples are nestled close. He looks ridiculous without his wraps, all skin and bones and stubby little slashes of gray that barely count as grub scars. He must've been the tubbiest pupa.

He gives your ear a sharp tug. "You're thinking something awful," he informs you. "Stop! And go!"

"If she tries to smack you -"

"Sipa! "

"If she tries to smack you," you say, insistent, "tell her I'll snatch her horns off!"

"You're not even half her size," Pheres says. "You will not. Shoo! Go!"

He's smiling, so you go.

3. SMILE | 4.66 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

The worst thing about Rmeros, you decide, is that he's always smiling. When he's coming back from hunting, or teaching Pheres, or even talking to Simoom, he always looks amused, with his eyes all squinted and his seedflap curled up, like he's getting some joke no one else is hearing.

He even smiles at you. You hate it.

Pheres's not big on touching you unless the two of you're fighting: he's always leaning and sidling and shoving you, complaining that you're gonna knock him down until you get fed up and actually do. But he's sitting all prim and neat by Rmeros's feet, head leaned back so his horns are braced against his knee, and you hate that too.

Pheres wants you to be friends, though, and so it doesn't matter how much the sight of Rmeros makes your belly churn, or makes your mouth go dry and flinty. You've gotta play nice. That's the only reason why you're standing in his van, breathing in this stuffy-ass air that smells like mold and dust, and the only reason why you don't growl when he smiles at you, all flap and no bulbs.

He's got a wreath of herbs hanging from his hand, and a lizard in the other. It's dead, but it's not burned: your dad hasn't hunted for you for the last three perigees, so it's still all red, fresh, not bad in the slightest. There's even still blood dripping from it, the cherry red of the sorta critters that're okay to kill.

"It's very nice," Rmeros says, the skin of his nose all scrunched.

He's holding the lizard out like he's afraid of it. With each little plip-plop of the blood hitting the ground, his eyes go thinner.

"Congratulations on your.. hunt." If he got any more careful, his voice'd be wearing gloves.

"You couldn't have bled it first?" Pheres asks. A splash of blood had landed on his foot first thing, and he's been curled up tight ever since, face wrinkled like he bit into mold.

"Why would I do that? Dummy. I'm gonna make pudding out of it."

"For you guys," you add, fluttering your eyelashes, and Pheres perks right up.

You knew that'd win him over. He's always hungry, for all that he pretends he's not: your pops doesn't bring back enough food for the both of you, and he throws a fit if he thinks you're sharing too much. And you've always been able to get more from the communal pot, on account of the fact your lusus'll burn anyone that tries to stop you, but Pheres --

-- well, he just eats when people give him things, for the most part.

"Well." Rmeros gives the lizard a perfunctory shake, and then jerks his chin at you. It's a sharp little jerk! It's something that'd be more at home on Simoom's knife-edge of a face than his plump one. "Thank you for showing us before you began. Pheres. Take it back to her, will you?"

Pheres unfurls in a tangle of limbs, his head tilting up even as he pushes himself off the ground. He's in such a hurry he even forgets the desk behind him. The thwack of his horns hitting the wood's loud enough that you flinch, your noisechutes pinning back, but though his face goes red, he doesn't pause.

And he only just barely makes a face when he takes the lizard. "Here, Sipa," he says. He isn't nearly as good as hiding his voice. It's gone all sour and terse, and you can practically hear him vibrating with the urge to drop it every time the blood drips.

When he holds the lizard out to you, you shake your head. "Put it on the table," you demand, and he's eager enough to let go that he doesn't even question you. Eager enough for that, and, well -- he always likes free food.

You push past Rmeros, your soundflaps up high. He's just staring. Good! If Pheres wants you to be nice, you'll do it -- but you'll do it your way, so that everyone can see. If Rmeros wants to gawk at how nice you're being, well, good.

"Go wash your hands, dude, you're being gross." The trick to bullying Pheres, you've found out, is just ordering him to do what he wants to do 'til he thinks everything you say's gotta be like that. Alsike says it's on account of the fact he's a creature of habit.

Whydah says he's just biddable, and they don't say it even half as fond. "And get me a pot," you add. "A pot, and a - a -"

"A knife! I don't think we have cardamom, Sipa." He steps daintily around the blood you're tracking, reaches under the counter to pull out a drawer you didn't even know was there. "Good! Cardamom's gross," you say, wrinkling your nose.

He places the pot on the stove, then starts rummaging through a different drawer that's filled with little vials. (What does anyone even need that many vials for?) "Well, it doesn't matter if you like it. We have to have cardamom." He's so confident, like he's ever cooked a single thing in his whole life. "And the ginger! Rmeros, do you have any ginger? Well, I guess we'll find it later. Ah, you've never made pudding, right? First, we start with the flour --"

"We," Rmeros says flatly, "aren't doing anything. Pheres, what in heaven's sake are you doing? Put that down."

You'd found a knife all hidden away in a block of wood. Pheres's stilled in the corner of your eye, too far to see his expression, but near enough you can see his face go even brickier.

Whydah's right. He is biddable.

Well, you aren't! The first swoop of the knife takes off the head, easy as anything for all that the blade skids on the counter. (It leaves a scratch in the wood. Who makes counters out of wood?) Pheres jumps at the clang as it strikes the counter. Worse yet, he trills at you, with a quick, furtive step forward. You don't pay him any mind.

You aren't a wriggler to be minded. And you're not doing anything wrong.

You're lifting your arm for the second swing when something closes around your wrist.

Rmeros's hand is hot, hot, hot, hotter than Pheres's skin, hotter than even the stuffy air in the van. And his grip is tight. When you try to wrench free, you can't get so much as a wriggle off. "Hey," you protest, twisting. "Let go!"

He takes the knife with his other hand and places it gingerly on the counter. He isn't even half as gentle with you. His grip on your wrist is starting to hurt! You can practically feel your bones creaking, and shifting, like they might just up and break, and all he's doing is holding still.

"That's enough of this," he says. It'd be better if he was flat, or annoyed, or anything, but he's just.. talking, bland and brisk, like Pheres isn't wide-eyed and terrorstruck behind him. "If you want to make a mess of a kitchen, do it in your own damn hive. I'm told you have one? Somewhere?"

"And no, Pheres, I do not have ginger. Or cardamom. Honestly."

"Leggo! I'm not making a mess!" You're going shrill. Your wrist hurts, and he's not letting go, no matter how much you thrash. "I'm making pudding, so let GO of me, that's, like, like, what people do --"

"It's true," Pheres interjects, so quiet you can barely hear him. "It's.. she's trying to be nice."

"Bringing dead vermin into my hive and tracking blood across my floor is nice? You people have such unusual standards." Now he's gone flat. "If the two of you want to create a mess, then you can do it in her space, on your own time."

"Not in mine." He pauses, glances at Pheres. "Ours," he amends, and oh! His voice is so, soflat, flatter than the racks they stretch the skins out on, but Pheres brightens like that little aside's a kindness.

Like Rmeros doesn't have you by the fucking wrist.

That's fine. If Rmeros won't let go, and Pheres's turned traitor, you'll just help yourself. So you pin your noiseflaps, tensing your entire body, and then you lunge up, sinking your teeth into his arm.

The scream is gratifying. You've wanted to do this since the first time his rotten ping woke you up in the middle of the day. It's been a long time coming! The scream is gratifying, but the way the world goes white when his free hand slams into your central struts is not. He lets go of your wrist and you let go of his arm at the same time, and momentum sends you skidding over into the desk. The edge digs into your side, hard as any knife, an unfortunate match to the way your poor struts are throbbing.

Your mouth is full of iron. When you spit on the ground, it's brick red.

Pheres's looking between the two of you, wide-eyed, like he can't figure out which one he wants to help. Rmeros's arm is bleeding and his face is pale like a mask, his hands curled in tight. And you're hissing like your broken teakettle, horns down in case he decides to try and hit you again.

(Try. Let him try! You'll rip him apart.)

"I told you to let go," you snap, soundchutes still down, your chest a white-hot pain. "I told you --"

"Pheres," Rmeros says. There's a shake to his voice, just the barest hint of a quaver. It takes you a moment to realise it's a warning rasp. "Get her the fuck out of here."

He doesn't need to be told twice. Pheres's grabbing hold of your arm before you can even process it, tugging you along, careful to keep him between you and Rmeros. It's only when you're nearly at the door that he stops, looks back. You can't see his face, with him blocking you like this. (Like he could stop you, if you wanted to take another bite out of his dumb moirail.)

You don't need to see his face, though, when you can hear his voice.

"Ah. Rmeros! Are you sure -- do you want me to get you a bandage? Some wraps? Alsike has lots," he says, worried. "They're free!"

"What I want," his moirail says, flat, "is the both of you out of here  before I cull you."

4. MOVING ON OUT | 4.68 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

"Ghosts aren't real, Sipa," Pheres says, like you're simple. "When a troll dies, they're dead."

The smile he's got plastered on is as fake as the yellow of Myljis's symbol - everyone knows she's practically orange, no matter how much lemon she slathers on her skin.

Tonight, you managed to catch him just as he was leaving the river. That's all he ever is anymore: he crawls in the 'coon after you go to sleep and he wakes up before you do, and if he's not at Rmeros's hive, he's off in the damn water. His braids are still wet. He stinks of salt.

"They are! Whydah says --" you protest, but he cuts you off with a laugh.

"Since when have you believed what Whydah says?"

Since he stopped being around, you're tempted to say. But then he'll just get mad, and it's not nearly as fun as it used to be to wind him up now. Used to be that you could say the right thing, he'd take a swing at you, and that'd be it. You'd be on the ground, practically scrapping for your life!

Or at least, so he wouldn't ground your face in the ground and lecture you on being civilized.

Now-a-days, he just skips straight to the lecture, and if you pop him, he just gets mad. He shouted at you last time 'til you cried, and he's never done that, not even when you cracked his horn once when you were both little.

So you don't say anything. You just curl your lip at him, and he huffs right back at you, almost like he used to. "Whydah's superstitious and silly," he says, with a quick, nervous glance around to make sure they can't hear. They like to pop out of all the dark corners when you're least expecting it. "There aren't any ghosts in the river! I've been all over it, and I've never seen anything down there, except bones and kelp and clutter."

"There aren't even any fish! How's a ghost going to survive down there, if there're no fish?"

"It's a ghost, stupid. Why's it need fish?"

"Well -"

"Rmeros says," you drone with him, but while he goes red, he doesn't stop talking. "Ghosts are a silly thing for a person to believe in. Once you're dead, you're dead, and that's that."

There's something hesitant in that, though. It takes you a moment, then you whistle, impressed. "He'd better not let Alsike hear that."

Ancestor worship is big in your hivestem. All the older kids do it, even Simoom, though he grumbles something fierce about wasting good woolbeasts by burning it all up. "'cause he can't be a part of the stem if he doesn't believe." You don't, but that's just because ancestors are silly. Who cares what a couple of dead fogeys think? It's not 'cause you think they're not real, like some of the trolls.

Whydah doesn't think they're real, and that's why they spend most of their time out hunting. Everyone gets nasty mean when you don't fit into the flock.

Maybe Pheres's remembering that, because he's quiet even longer this time, like he's turning over the words in his head. "Alsike already knows," he finally says, careful like each sound's glass.

"And she didn't kick 'em out?" You let your flaps pin down in disbelief, and his face goes bricky. "I don't believe it," you announce. "You're fibbing!"

"I'm not," he protests.

"If she knew, she wouldn't let him be a part of the hivestem."

"Maybe he doesn't want to be a part of the hivestem, Sipara."

It's your turn to go quiet.

Pheres lifts his chin. "It's not like this is a big hivestem," he says, and if each word's glass, now he's talkin' like he's afraid he'll break them. "His is better! He's from Dimašqa, did you know? He said his hivestem is bigger than our entire plot, and it's one of the smaller ones. And no one even has to work there, not unless they want to."

"Can you imagine that?"

You try to picture a hivestem bigger than yours. How tall would that be? A dozen stories, reaching up into the sky - it'd be like the orchard, maybe, but with hives on every end, trolls blocks on each spreading branch.

You can't picture it. You might as well picture having fins. But Pheres apparently can. "So he doesn't need our hivestem. He's got his own, and it's lovely," he says for you, when you don't answer. He's been wringing out his hair, but now he pauses. "And.. he said I can come see it soon. If I want to."

It's rare for you to be gobstopped! But the words just won't come. Your pan is like a leaky sieve, 'except instead of draining out thoughts, it's not even letting them in. Everytime a word appears, it pours out just as quick, 'til the only thing that's left is a sickly kinda unease.

But he's watching you side-long, waiting for a reply.

".. but you aren't," is what you finally manage to say. It comes out as a squeak. Worse yet, it comes out as a question, and all you want to do is rip out your voicebox and start over. "Right?"

"Ah." He lets go of his hair. It's still dripping on the sand behind him as he folds his arms, wrapping them around himself. "Not right now!" He starts to laugh, then stops, wrinkles his nose. "Ah. That'd be silly. The rains are about to come, and then we won't be able to drive very much at all. But.. in a few perigees, maybe."

"When it's dry."

Everything about you right now is treacherous. If you could fight your body, you would! But your soundchutes are pinned flat and your bulbs are wide and the air's going wavy like the sun's about to come up. It isn't. It's just tears, staining everything a rheumy red, and that's even worse.

Pheres's gone pale and wide-eyed. He isn't smiling anymore.

"Oh," he says, distressed: "- oh, oh no, don't get upset! Why are you upset?"

If you say anything, you'll cry. So you clamp your fangs shut tight, but Pheres keeps talking. "Do you want to come?" His eyes are getting wet. He always gets upset when you get upset, and sometimes it's fun to use that, but right now, you don't want to cry. You just want to shut up and wait to calm down, but --

"You can come, too! I promise, I promise, Sisi, don't cry --"

-- he's going to make you talk.

"No, I can't!" You are blubbering. There's thick orange drops rolling down your face and clouding your vision and even swiping at your bulbs with your hands doesn't stop the tears. And Pheres's just staring. "You're going to go and leave me and I can't come, because -- because he hates me!"

"I won't leave you!" Pheres steps forward, but he stops when you hiss. You don't want him near you, not when his hands are twitching like he wants to touch you. Pheres doesn't like being touched, not 'less you're fighting, and you don't want to fight him right now. "I won't leave you, and - and you're being silly. He doesn't hate you at all," he says, soft, like you both know it's a lie.

5. KNIVES | 4.70 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

Everyone in the hivestem colony hates Rmeros, and that's just the truth.

Alsike thinks he’s weird. “You don’t get pale for a pupa,” she said to you one night when you’d been helping her cook one of the big kills. “Everything’s supposed to be even, Nzi-fizzy. Can’t be even if one of you’s about to get on a ship and the other’s barely out of the caverns.”Hamsin agrees with whatever Alsike says. Whydah doesn’t like him, though they’ve never said why, on account of the fact they barely say anything.

The only people that like him are Simoom, who’s a rotten old ponce with a rotten old crush, and Pheres. And Pheres doesn’t count. Pheres would like a daywalker, if it paid attention to him!

But even though everyone hates Rmeros, you’re the only one willing to do anything about it. Which is fine, ‘cause if Pheres ditching you’s taught you anything, it’s that you’re pretty great at working alone.

("I won't leave you," he'd said all prettily, and then he'd packed up his things and moved into Rmeros's van. You hope he gets to that stupid city and the hivestem's are all dead.)

Maybe you always had Pheres at your back before, trailing you like a dumb, gangly shadow whenever you needed to teach someone a lesson. (For stealing his shit, for making fun of your dad, for trying to sass you - there's always a reason to rough someone up.) But it wasn't like he was ever much help in a fight, 'cept for getting in your way if he felt you were getting too rough. He never really helped.

So it's not like you're working alone at all, really, 'cause what's changed?

Except that usually, you use this knife on animals, not tires.

Who knew that rubber was so thick? You're having to saw through it, and even that's barely scratching the surface. All it's doing is making your arms ache. And your soundchute's ache, too. The noise's so loud, you don't even notice when the van door pops open.

".. what're you doing?" Pheres's scrubbing at his face like he's trying not to fall asleep, eyes half-lidded, but you can hear the sound of snoring drifting out of the lookout, clear as anything. No way that big of a sound could have ever come from your reedy little hivemate: it's gotta be Rmeros. And if he's asleep, why isn't Pheres?

Because his hands are wrapped tight around a steaming mug, and it smells like the stuff the older kids drink. The stuff Khirba smacks you, when you try to steal a sip.

"Is that coffee?" you demand, but he's canting his head to the side, eyes narrowed to slits.

"Is that a knife?"

"I asked you first!" You shove it behind your back, putting on your most quarrelsome face. "You're not supposed to be drinking that!"

"I've got a lot of work to do. And no, you're not supposed to drink it. Your custodian doesn't care what I do." He's oozing along the side of the cart, forcing you to take a step back, pivot to keep him facing your front. And then he sparks,  just the once, and he's behind you, grasping your wrist.

"You do have a knife!" he hisses, outraged.

He doesn't keep your wrist. He's all bones, and while he's fast, he's never had the weight or strength or will to keep you: you twist free in a second, snarling loud enough to make him startle back.

There's fury churning in your gut, eating away at your tongue. You're doing this for him! You're doing this for him, and all he's doing is looking like you've messed up. His hands are clenched at his sides, and he's gone all sour and pinched. "Sipara, what is wrong with you-"

"Pheres." The snoring hasn't broken, but that's Rmeros's voice, not sleepy in the slightest. Pheres startles again, and your ears pin back. When you look at each other, it's hard to remember that you were just angry. You don't want Rmeros to come outside, you with a knife in your hand and rips in his tires.

Your wrist aches.

".. nothing," Pheres calls back. He's wide-eyed, but his voice barely squeaks at all. Maybe he doesn't want him to come out, either. "It was just a squeakbeast! I'll get rid of it."

He takes hold of your arm, tugs. You let your feet drag, but you let him pull you along when he hisses,  "Come on!"

He leads you away from the van in quick, hurried steps. The coffee keeps sloshing into your hands, but neither of you says a word until the van is behind you, and you're safely in the shadow of the walls. There's holes in it where the stones have fallen out, and he curls up in one, knees drawn up right against the curve of the bedrock.

"Where's your custodian?" he asks. When you just stare, he fixes it, peevish: "- your pops! Your bird! Where's he at?"

"Sleeping, duh. Same as always." He's been trying to stay awake more again, ever since Rmeros came, but he's no good for it. "Why?"

"'cause he's supposed to be stopping you! That's his job."

"What d'you know about his job? You don't have a lusus," you say, baffled, and you're gonna say more, but Pheres wilts.

It's baffling. That's the sort of thing that's never bothered him before. You're not being cruel: it's just a fact, like how you haven't any horns to speak of. He's not supposed to get thin-lipped and unhappy over it.

"I do have a lusus," he says, curling up tighter. He's so put off he doesn't even complain when you settle down near him, back againsnt the wall. "It's not my fault he's dead!"

He takes a sip of the coffee. "It's not my fault he's dead," he repeats, quieter this time and peevish.

He's never ever been salty about this.

You've seen his weird, dead dad. You live with him! It's impossible not to have seen him: Pheres used to keep it sitting on the edge of the coon til your thrashing tipped it in one night, and now he just keeps it around the nutritionblock. He moves it, sometimes, but it's the same way he likes to shuffle around everything. It's not like he actually ever cared about it.

"Um." You don't know how to deal with him when he's like this. A few perigees ago, you'd have started a fight, 'cause after that first slap, he doesn't have room for anything other than getting mad. But he won't fight back if you hit him anymore, and you don't think you could say anything mean enough to get him spitting right now.

The way he's acting right now, he'd just cry.

Or he'd leave.

You scoot down and lean in against him. Normally, he'd bolt away at this point, or kick up a fuss, or smack you 'til you moved. But he just exhales, loud and heavy like he's pushing all the air outta his lungs. Emboldened, you butt your head against his arms til he lets you rest your cheek againsnt his knee. "You're gonna get hair in my coffee," he grumps, but it's halfhearted. ".. and I'm still mad at you."

There's a hundred things you could say! But you swallow 'em all, because fighting right now seems like an awful idea. Saying anything at all seems dumb, so you just curl in tighter against him, shouldering your way closer 'til he's dropped his knees enough you can slide an arm around them.

Alsike will cuddle with you sometimes. Khirba, if he's in a good mood. But Pheres never, everlets you touch him like this.

"If you want a lusus," you say, meek, "you can have mine."

That gets a laugh from him. Everything feels soft and strange right now, but the sound warms you. Pheres might be being strange, but his laugh's still the same, all sharp and mean. "I don't want yours!" he huffs. "Yours is horrid."

"Yeah, well.. why not just carry yours, then?"

".. what, under my arm?"

"In a bag!" He's dropped his knees. It's a tight fit, but you climb all the way into his lap, writhing around until your face is looking at his, and your hair is getting caught on the stones. "Like, Alsike's got lots and lots with broken bits, and all she ever does is make stuff, and she likes you, so - so you could ask her! I bet she'd make one just for you!"

It's a brilliant idea. All of your ideas are, of course, but this one is especially perfect, because Pheres's brightening, one watt at a time.

"It'd look silly," he protests, but it's half-hearted.

"You look silly! With those big dumb horns -"

"Rmeros says they're dignified!"

"That's only 'cause his are worse." You grab one curly horn and give it a yank. He's not moving. He's not smacking you. He's letting you sit on him and you don't even have to hit him and it feels like your entire body's full of butterflies and bubbles all frothing to get out. "I bet if you went and hid with Simoom's fluffbeasts, he wouldn't even notice you were there, that's how silly these are! And - and - and if you made your hair all big, instead of lank,  he wouldn't be able to tell the difference, even if you went up and bit him -"

"I'm not going to do that!" He jerks his head hard, twisting his horn free with a huff, and the bubbles pop all at once.

"I'd rather go gargle in the river," he complains. But he doesn't push you out of his lap. He doesn't push you off at all.

6. THICKER THAN WATER | 4.74 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

Pheres is at the river. He’s never at your hivestem anymore, or at the hiveblock - he doesn’t even come home to get his share of the rations you collect every week, because Rmeros thinks the food here is disgusting. He likes his coffee that he gets all the way from Dimasqa, and food that he bought in a different district entirely.

“A more civilized district,” Pheres had whispered to you in Rmeros’s snooty voice, back when making fun of him was a thing your hivemate would still do. Now he gets mad and pinched if you talk bad about him at all, and the last time you made a joke about lamwas, he didn’t speak to you for a week.

But even though he never comes home, you always know where he is, because Pheres is always at the river.

Every time you see him on the shore, it makes you want to snatch him up. Make him move! He’s so little, and the river’s so big, full of ghosts and the bones of dead kids ready to pull him in. When you were a pupa, you’d stand right here and holler and fuss until he got away from it, and you’d cry every time his head bobbed under the water. You knew he’d pop back out.

Pheres is one of the only kids that goes down to the river, him and Whydah, and it’s practically a part of 'em. If you bled Pheres, sometimes you think all that’d pour out is water and the red-pink mud. But that doesn't mean you have to like it.

He isn’t in the river tonight.

“Sipara,” he says, prim and strict, like he’s the voice from the schoolfeed. His feet are dangling in the water, kicking up silt and dust. If it was any other river, there’d be crocs nibbling at his walkstubs right now, but nothing in this water’s alive anymore. Sweeps and sweeps ago, some wader dumped salt in the water until everything shrivelled up and died, and it’s been that way ever since. Pheres told you that, and Whydah told him, so you know it’s gotta be true: Whydah never lies, not ever, not even when they should.

(It’s why they don’t go down to the river anymore. No point in it, they’d told you, the one time you’d asked: they’d dredged out all the stuff worth taking back when they were your age, all the trinkets left on the bones that could be sold and the horns hanging loose on their beds that could be carved into arrowheads or jewelry or caps.)

But dead or not, though, you don’t like to get near the water. You dawdle a good few feet behind him instead, feet scuffing at the dirt, like you’re just bored and not spooked at all. “What’re you doing?” you demand, petulant. “You haven’t been hive in, like, days.”

“Bennui misses you,” you add, and he laughs.

“You’re not supposed to fib. That’s rude.” He pats the ground next to him, soft at first, then insistent.

You don’t move. He’s been ignoring you! He doesn’t get to play at this now, like everything’s fine. His hands still, and then he folds them in his lap, prim as if he’d never done that in the first place.

For a second, you almost think he slouches in on himself, but nah. Pheres sits like he’s got a tree growing up his spine, just like his dumb moirail.

“I’ve been busy. Rmeros’s teaching me how to copy.” The mud squelches between your toes as you slink closer. “It takes forever,” he adds, glancing back at you. “He wants it all by hand. He says that’s the proper way of doing it.”

“Copy what?” You've only been in Rmeros's hive a handful of times, and never after you brought in the lizard. This is the first time you kinda regret it. You hate not knowing things. It's a personal affront, which's one of Pheres's stodgy words.

“Books! You saw them the first time, remember? He gets them and he writes them down and then he sells them. It's prestigious," he says, preening, probably as much over the word as Rmeros's silly books.

(Selling books. Who'd even buy them?)

"You don’t need to sleep over there for that."

“I can’t work around you,” he objects, squinching his face up at you. “You’d dump something on the books!”

You wrinkle your nose. “Would not!”

“You would too! Even if it wasn’t on purpose. I’ve seen your manuals.” There isn’t nothing you can say to that. You dug out all the tech books from the hive ibrary, soon as you cracked open your first grub and realised you didn’t know anything of what you were looking at. They’d been nice enough when you started, but. Well.

If you’re not spilling tea, or dropping food, then Bennui’s fighting the pages in protest to the pictures. That’s not your fault, though, but you know Pheres figures it is, so you pooch out your lip, for all he can’t see it.

But maybe he knows you’re doing it anyhow, because he laughs. “And, ah, he’s been teaching me other stuff, too! Like..”

He bites his lip, turns his head just enough to peer back at you. It’s tilted to the side, so his braids are trying their best to slip out of the twine he’s wrapped 'em in. It’s the look he uses on Alsike when he’s trying to get her to braid some of her bright yarn into his hair. “Come here, and I’ll show you!”

Reluctantly, you tromp over, stopping a breath behind him.

He makes a show of it, to lure you in closer: he lifts up his hand, shoulders angled so you just barely can’t see, and when you shuffle a little closer, he wraps his fronds in closed. He doesn’t move 'em until you’re at his side.

And then he turns to face you, each frond  curling open one at a time, slow as the water in the riverbed. He's chewing on his lip, and he keeps peeking up at you, furtive little glances like he's tryin' to figure out what you're thinking.  Then he opens it all the way, all at once.

There’s a light in the center of his palm, dim but flickering. For a moment, it brightens as he breathes in, steadies himself - and then you make a noise, delighted, and it dissolves.

“He’s teaching you to make lights,” you say, awed. Your eyes are stinging a little. It made your scalp crawl, the sight of it: white as bone, as bright and garish as if he’d held the sun in his hand. The sort of thing you’re only supposed to see if you’re dead.

It wasn’t pretty, not precisely, but there’s something tight in your chest that makes you want to see it again.

When you look up from his hand, he’s bleeding.

Only for a moment, then he takes in your wide eyes and starts scrubbing at his snout. His eyes are bright, almost as bright as the globe in his hand, and it’s a stark difference to the ruddy stain on his face. “So I don’t need a torch when I'm working,” he says, proud, like he ain’t bothered at all. “I’m not very good at it yet - or, ah, holding it, haha - but Rmeros is amazing at it.”

“Rmeros can do lights! Dozen of them! Practically millions.” He’s got to be fibbing, but he sounds as proud as a fang-billed abirdination right now. (Used to be that he sounded that way talking about you. The tightness in your cavity's got a different source, now.) “And he says I’ll be able to do it like that, too, if I just keep practicing –”

“I don’t think anyone else starts bleeding over practice,” you say, flat, and his eyes dim.

“Well! Maybe nobody else is practicing the right way.” He lifts his chin, daring you to challenge him, but you don’t take it. Maybe once, it would’ve been an invitation to a real argument! A real scuffle! But nowadays, you argue too much, Pheres just leaves. “Rmeros says it happens to everyone, when they work hard. You just have to -” He waves his hand. “- push through it, 'til it sorts itself out.”

That’s dumb, you want to say. But you swallow the words, and you just flop down right next to him instead, shoving him with your shoulder. He goes tense, but all you do next is drop your head onto his shoulder, nestling it againsnt the curve of his horn.

(Once, you could’ve just slid your head right up againsnt his neck if he'd ever held still long enough to let you, but all his horns have been doing is growing, growing, growing, the past few sweeps. Like all the inches that ought’ve gone to his legs are going straight to his rack instead.)

“I’m tired of talking about your dumb moirail,” you announce. “What’re you even doing out here?”

You can feel the rise and fall of his chest. You can feel the way he’s staying stiff as a board, like he expects you to haul off and smack him. You think he might shrug you off, he’s staying so tightly wound, but all he does is sigh. “I’m thinking. Or trying.”

“About what?” you persist.

He doesn’t answer for the longest time. It’s just your breath, his and the sound of the river lapping at the shore, with the occasional splash of his feet kicking in it.

“.. Rmeros believes in ancestors,” is what he finally says, grumpily. “If you laugh, I’ll push you in the river.”

“I’ll drag you with me!” You bury your face in his shoulder, and then in your hands on top of it.

“You’re laughing!”

“I’m not,” you squeak, finally breaking for air. Your shoulders are still hitching. “I’m not, I promise! Don’t you shove me in there! Holy smokes. Like - like -”

Your voice is still hitching. He takes pity on you. “In all of them,” he says, pained. “In old ones. In new ones. In his own personal one. I didn’t know those were a thing. Did you?”

“No! How come you know they’re real?”

There’s another long pause, but this time, you think he’s doing it on purpose, 'cause he’s watching you side-long, and there’s something a little sly in his voice when he speaks up next. “'cause he told me,” he says, lowering his voice like it’s a secret. “I asked, and he told me all about them.”

“D'you know, he thinks everyone’s got their own personal ancestor?  Not like the shared ones. Ones just for us. All of us! Even me.” There’s pride there, begrudging but still clear. You’ve seen the way Pheres looks at Rmeros, like his signmate’s a promise of something he’ll grow into. It makes sense he’d like the idea of his own personal ghost.

“So, what, why doesn’t he burn stuff for 'em?” Alsike had been sour on Rmeros right from the start, but him refusing to join in the burning had set her feathers all up. All the older kids participate! It’s a part of what makes you all a hive, and not just a cluster of kids all jostling for space.

“He said that’s just superstitious nonsense.” Pheres rattles off the word with ease, like it ain’t longer than any good word should be, and he pays no mind to the way you grimace. “He thinks it’s just a thing that shows how you’re gonna be.”

“It’s all in the blood. He's got it, and I've got it, and our ancestors had it, too, and that's why we're all the same.” And he doesn’t sound shamed about the pride in that, not at all. “Or, ah. That’s what he says!”

“So what about me? Do I have one?"

He’s slouched forward, gradually, unbending like he ain’t even noticed. Relaxed against you like the two of you are friends, and like you’re not just another person he’s been ignoring. (Another person he thinks he needs to fight.)

But now he stiffens. “What about you?”

“What about my ancestor, you danderfluff?” you demand, nudging him. You don’t know why he’s gone all uncomfotrable on you again, but it’s frustrating, after you just spent all this time getting him to loosen up. “You got one! Do I got one?”

“Um.”

He’s so bad at lying. “Well? Did you ask him? You asked him, right?”

“.. yes?” He exhales slowly. He isn’t looking at you: he’s staring at the water, and his feet have gone still. “I asked him about yours. Because if I have one, and he has one, then you ought to have one, too. It.. ah, it wouldn’t be right, otherwise.”

“So what he’d say?” You shouldn’t be pushing, maybe. Every bit of him’s screaming you ought to not ask, but if he won’t come out and say it, you won’t pay it any mind.  If it’s your ancestor, then it’s yours to know.

“.. he said blood’s like water,” Pheres says, miserable, “and that means sometimes, it’s just bad.”

7. GUIDANCE | 4.78 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

“He thinks I’m dirty,” you wail, burrowing your face in Alsike’s lusus. “And so does Pheres!”

Simoom’s lusus might be the prettiest, but Alsike’s hoofed hopbeastmom is basically just perfect: she lets you scoop her up with no more protest than a sleepy blink.

“I hate him,” you tell her, burrowing your face in her headfluff. All around you, the tanning pits stinks of acid and burnt flesh, but Alsike takes good care of her mum, brushes her out and washes her every day. She smells like the same oil Alsike uses when she braids hair, familiar enough to make you ache. “But if I cull him, Pheres’ll cull me. I don’t know what to do!”

She bleats at you. You shake her. “I can’t do that!”

"Can’t do what, sugargrub?”

Alsike is stripping off her leather gloves and shrugging off her apron. She’s not the head tanner, but she’s in line for it: everyone knows that when Cendol gets conscripted, she’ll take over the tanning pits and be in charge of everyone that works in 'em.

Right now, though, she’s just another tanner, and that means she can take the time to talk to you and Pheres, when you dare to come near. The pits stink. You’re going to smell like this for whole nights.

“I need to talk to you,” you blurt out, spinning to face her. Alsike’s lusus snuggles closer to you, rumbling away in that weird way that means she’s happy.

It’s a good thing your pops is asleep at the hive, or else he’d get jealous.

“You do, Nzi? You sure? 'cause I thought for certain you were here to talk to Simoom.” Alsike’s smiling, fond as a lusus, and this is why you don’t like her. Pheres is over the moon for the way she dotes on him, but that’s just him being Pheres: he’s perfectly content being someone’s pet, if they give him a pretty enough bow.

“No!” You don’t hiss at her, because Alsike isn’t like Whydah. To be fair, she isn’t like Majlis, either. She won’t switch you, but a smack isn’t much better. “I don’t wanna joke! This is important!”

“Oh, well, if it’s important…” But she’s eyeing you like she’s taking you seriously, at least, even if it does take her forever to put away her things.

Alsike’s a flatscan like you, and the hivestem isn’t built for the likes of either of you. Soon as he got big enough to realise what yellow meant, Simoom offered her a hiveblock down in the basement, where it’s cooler, and easier to get down to. But she'd said no. Her hiveblock’s all the way up on the third floor, halfway up the stem, and she liked it just fine, for all that getting up there’s a matter of climbing up ropes, down the ladders, jogging across the roofs and across the hand-holds. Alsike takes her mum after the first climb, but you’re still sticky with sweat by the time you make it up to her hiveblock.

Alsike’s hiveblock’s like you and Pheres’s, save there’s no hole in the wall to your little closet of a block. She’s got the same hammocks near the window, the same sliver of counter and cupboards, a 'coon in one corner and a door to an ablution in the other. If it weren’t for the fact her roof’s so much lower, and there’s so much junk on the ground, you might’ve thought she’d taken you back to your hive.

But there’s so much junk. You step on a bag of chips, and it crinkles. “You’re gonna get bugs,” you announce unhappily, dragging yourself into the hammock.

“You wanna clean, Nzi?” She’s bringing over two glasses of water, and she sets it carefully in your hands. “'cause in that case, I’ll get you a bag. But I thought you wanted to talk.”

Pheres is Alsike's troll. When he was little, she offered to take charge of 'em, make sure his hair didn’t end up full of nits and he wasn’t hauling disease back to the hive. She even used to bring him food, 'fore you got old enough to hunt for you and him and he got clever enough to filch without getting caught.

He adores her. But you don’t like her, not at all, and the stickiness of your distaste is making your speechfrond feel like stone.

But you gotta talk. Alsike’s piling with Simoom, and Simoom’s in charge of everything. When he hollers, folks listen - and if anyone can knock Rmeros out of your hivestem, it’s him.

So you talk.

“- and he wants to put me in a bag, and drown me in the river!”

At some point, you put down your glass all carefully in the hammock, and then you’d started pacing. It makes it easier to talk, somehow, get out all of this frustration and anger, 'cause you certainly can’t take it out on Alsike. Still, you wish you could! Your chin’s tucked down and your horns are up, and if you thought she wouldn’t smack you silly for it, you’d be scratching them on the wall just to get the itch out of them.

“He’s not going to drown you, pupa,” Alsike says, soothing, and you whirl on your heel to hiss at her.

“Duh! I’d, like, rip him in half if he tried!”

Alsike’s mouth goes pinched like she’s trying not to laugh. Slap or no, you give her the nastiest look you can muster. “And I don’t care if he wants to,” you snap. “He’s awful and I hate him and I wish he’d try! But he keeps telling Dys things, and - and -”

You don’t cry. You fell head-first out of one of the orchard-trees once when Alsike had passed under and startled you, and you’d gashed your forehead right open in the process. You’d bled and bled, and Pheres had screamed like you were going to die, and it’d felt like it. But you didn’t cry!

You aren’t going to cry now, no matter how much your eyes are stinging. “He’s gonna make him hate me,” you say, or you try. It comes out as a wail, and you grab hold of your hair, pulling it hard in front of your face.

You’re not going to cry. If you say it enough times, you won’t.

“Oh, pupa.” Alsike’s being gentle, and if you hate Rmeros, right now, you hate her too. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

“No! It’s -” She thinks you’re being a wriggler. She thinks you’re being a dumb, jealous pupa, and maybe you are, but that isn’t what’s important right now, is it? So you take a breath, scrubbing at your face with your headfluff, and if the world’s a little orange when you open your eyes, you’re just gonna ignore it.

“He’s telling Dys things! And they’re all wrong. And he keeps getting different, in - in a really bad way. He’s unhappy.” She isn’t looking anything but sympathetic. Alsike helped him when he was little and small and alone, and you thought she’d help him now, but he’s not any of that anymore, is he?

He’s not even her pet anymore. He's Rmeros’s, and his dumb moirail hasn’t even brought out a bow.

“His face bleeds whenever he uses his sparks,” you say, desperate, and finally, she looks concerned.

“Every time?”

“Every time! And he thinks it’s normal!”

She goes quiet at that. It’s suddenly hard to breathe, because her brow’s gone all furrowed, and she’s biting her lip like she’s thinking. Simoom’s the only one who can tell Rmeros to get out, but he loves Rmeros, and he hates Pheres. If he thought Rmeros would strip him down and sell him for parts, he'd probably give him  an entire hivestem suite.

But if Alsike asks - if Alsike says something to him -

“Nzi, dear,” she says, “have you tried speaking to him? They’re signmates. Maybe it is normal for their psionics. I’ve seen stranger things…”

Your face must fall. “They’re moirails. They know best. But don’t worry, sugargrub,” she says, gentle as anything. “I’ll speak to Dys for you.”

8. KNOWLEDGE | 4.98 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

If the sun doesn’t kill you, Rmeros’s stupid lusus will.

Every time she exhales, moisture beads on your throatstem, and her head bobs, making her feelstrands skitter across her skin.

Every time you inhale, you get the stench of rotting meat, heavy enough that you can taste it.

You’ve seen the smaller lusii before play with the mice and birds in the court. They’ll pin them and bite them and break their wings, and when they start to get bored, they’ll let them go free.

And then they’ll eat them.

Well, she’s got you on the ground, her mitts digging into the meat of your rotationropes, and you think she’s past the point of playing.

When the door of the motorcart creaks open, you don’t even bother looking. It’s probably just Rmeros again, back to gloat or whatever the fuck he does. He’d seen you outside the van, with his mum’s teeth on your shoulder like a warning and the rock on the ground, and he’d fucking laughed - and then just went inside, like that’s okay.

You’re part of a hivestem! No one lets their lusii attack each other, because that’s the rules.

No eating the lusii: no eating their fucking kids.

(But Rmeros isn’t a part of the hivestem, is he? He’s always made sure of that.)

But the footsteps are all wrong for Rmeros: he’s big and he walks like it, with galloping steps that send dirt flying, but this is all pitter-patter in comparison. And maybe the roarbeast notices, because she pauses from where she’s nuzzling at your throat, her lip curled enough that you can feel the press of her fangs.

(You’d just wanted to put a rock through his window. His mum wasn’t supposed to be here! His mum is never here.)

Her ears flick once, twice - then they snap back as a dark hand cracks her straight across the head.

“What,” Pheres hisses, “do you think you're doing? Get off of her!”

You can see dusty feet out of the corner of your eye, but you can’t see him proper. You don’t need to: you can hear the impact of him hitting her again, the sharp crack of a hand hitting fur.

When she growls - a deep, rumbling sound that makes her entire body shake, and her claws sink into your skin - he snarls right back. If you tilt your head, you can just barely see him, throwing one twiggy shoulder into hers like it’ll do anything but give her an ache.

“Move, you stupid cat!”

It takes you a moment to realise she actually is. There’s pain shooting up your legs as her tail lashes against them, but more important is the way she sinks into your shoulders - and then the weight evaporates all at once as she bounds over and off of you.

You’re scrambling up and backwards as soon as you can. Your body is screaming like someone’s driving iron into their poor hoofbeasts heels, but you can breathe, and Pheres is right there, fussing.

Rmeros’s mum is sitting only a few feet off, watching both of you with slit eyes and a curled lip, but he isn’t paying her any mind. “Sipa! Sipa sipa sisi - are you okay? Did she hurt you?” he’s saying instead, hands flitting across your face, tilting it up and to the side, checking your neck -

- brushing against the browning skin of your shoulders  -

There’s snarling. It only when Pheres jerks back, his eyes bright with alarm, that you realise it’s coming from you.

You’ve bit him before. There’s ragged white lines on his arms where you’ve sunk your teeth in and held, scrabbled and scratched until there was red in your mouth or until a fist hit your horns, or a foot landed in your gut. You see him remembering that in the wideness of his bulbs, in the way that they flick down towards your teeth, but you can’t stop growling, because everything hurts.

Then he hisses at you. “Stop it,” he snaps, sliding in close, knocking one bony shoulder under your arm. He’s emanating that familiar warmth, and it’s painful and soothing all at once. “I know it hurts, Sisi, but you’re not going to bite me, so just calm down.”

There’s needles in your shoulders, sparks of pain climbing down your arms like bugs under your skin. Pheres is moving, and you can’t seem to remember to walk with him, so he’s mostly just dragging you, his mouth a thin slash.

You’re still growling.

But you don’t bite him.

The sky is purple by the time the two of you finally make it back to the hivestem.

“I didn’t think you were gonna come,” you say later. There’s bandages around your shoulders, wrapped triple tight and slathered in all the sterilisation fluid that Pheres could find. You’re lying in the recuperacoon, your chin resting on the edge, and sopor and exhaustion’s making you sleepy: it’s hard to talk, but you make yourself form the words anyway.

Pheres is curled up by your coon, his knees all tucked in and wrapped up in that way that means he’s thinking. When you speak, though, he jerks like you hit him, all hurt and indignation. “Of course I’d come!”

He’s barely spoken to you in nights. You let the silence sit, watching him drowsily, and you can see when that thought hits him: his face reddens and his shoulders go up.

Your tastefrond’s heavy with the words that could turn that embarrassment into his familiar, spitting rage. It’d be so easy! And you’ve always liked Pheres best when he’s forgotten to be all stiff and proper, and he’s just being him.

(You always thought he liked himself best when he was like that, too, until Rmeros came.)

But right now, the thought of him being upset just seems dumb and boring, like some wriggler’s game you’ve outgrown. It hasn't been fun for perigees.

“You’re usually, like, sleepin’ by now,” you say, when the silence gets too much. “Like, you’re always sleeping.”

“Rmeros says -” He pauses, unhappy. If he had normal soundflaps, instead of the round little nubs you can barely even see, they’d be flat. “I decided sleep is a waste of time,” he settles on instead, and that’s so stupid.

Pheres is so stupid. The rush of warmth that thought brings is weird, too.

You laugh, and for a moment, he looks indignant, then it smoothes out. “Don’t be a brat,” he sniffs. “Think about all the stuff you could do if you weren’t sleeping all the time.” He’s scrubbing at his arm, and then he abruptly adds: “.. Rmeros needs to control his mother.”

He unfurls, kicking his legs out in front of them, and then he stands up, gingerly as if the name alone’s brought his stupid moirail into the room. He dusts off the front of his shirt like there’s dirt there, but there isn’t: there isn’t anything, except the oil streaks left from his braids. He’d already tied them in a day-knot.

So much for not sleeping. Pfff.

“Yeah, well, your moirail sucks.” It’s hard to feel het up when you’re in the sopor: it feels like the attack was perigees ago, not just, like, two hours. “If she’d eaten me –”

“She wouldn’t have eaten you!”

You blink at him, and the angry red of his blush deepens to something bricky. He folds his arms, like he’s trying to reign back in the outburst. “I wouldn’t have let her,” he says thinly.

“But if she had -”

“- if she had eaten you, then I - I would have told Alsike,” he says, lifting his chin. “And she would’ve taken care of it.” You both know what that means, for all that no one’s ever broke the rules while you’ve lived here. Simoom's the overseer, and Alsike's his moirail, and that means certain duties fall to her.

And Rmeros isn't a part of the hivestem. He can't be exiled. Which only leaves..

"Liar," you say drowsily. All you want to do is duck down low in the sopor and go to sleep. The warmth's getting to you.

Pheres’s voice has gone from thin to out-and-out reedy. “I don’t care about him as much I care about you, because - because I know you.”

You’re not feeling so drowsy now.

He looks at you sidelong through his eyelashes, like he does whenever he’s nervous. For a moment, there’s eye contact - then he breaks it, his gaze skittering up to your hair.

“I know you,” he repeats, and your breath catches.

“I know you better than anyone else, and you know me, and.. that means something, doesn’t it?”

It feels like there’s flutterbugs in your digestionsack. You tilt your head to the side, letting your cheek squish flat against the recuperacoon’s edge, but it doesn’t take the feeling away: it just intensifies, like all the bugs are dancing a jig. And maybe he’s feeling that way, too, because he’s still talking, the words getting faster and faster, until he’s bubbling away like that river he likes so much.

(You do know him.)

"And even if we haven’t talked all perigee - even if I never, ever saw you again, or if I leave, or even if you go off and get ruddy with some highblood and leave –”

You stick out your tongue, gagging, and he grimaces right back at you, laughing a little despite himself. “Even then,” he says doggedly, “I’ll still know you, and you know me, better than anyone else ever, and that’s more important than moirails, or quadrants, or - or -” He flounders, and his little bubbling ends weak. “He’s got to control his mother. It’s not right.”

“C'mere,” you say.

He shuffles in closer to the recuperacoon, and you kick in the sopor until you’re straight again on the edge. Leaning forward, you press your forehead against his, and he doesn’t move, even though this’s usually the point you’d bite him. It's hitting you he's kind of sad-looking, all gaunt cheeks and sad eyes.

How come you’ve never noticed that before?

“You’re mine,” you say, testing it out, and he doesn’t object: he just breathes out. “And I’m yours. And we’re both okay. So, like, chillax. Okay?”

Pheres doesn’t say anything: he just he huffs, pulling back. And then: “Stop hogging the ‘coon,” he says, wrinkling his nose, and scrambles in.

9. KISS | 5.08 SWEEPS / 11 YEARS OLD

Pheres spends the next week back in the hivestem, and it's just like old times. Except nicer, in a way, 'cause the two of you aren't always scrapping. Used to be you'd never even thought that was a problem. If anyone'd ever say the sight of Pheres wouldn't make you want to bite him, you'd have laughed 'til you were sick.

But you haven't wanted to smack him in ages, and before you went to sleep last night, you'd reached over and pressed your lips to his cheek.

He'd blinked at you, already half-asleep, almost all the glow gone from his eyes. He always looks moon-eyed when you catch 'em like this: all big gray blotches around little black dots, 'cause his eyes are so used to the light, they never go properly big. "'sat for?" he'd said, sleepy.

But pleased.

"Iunno. just 'cause," you'd said back, nuzzling your head into the curve of his neck. The two of you've always shared a 'coon. When he curls his arm around you sleepily, it feels like the past few months never happened at all.

You fall asleep like that.

When you wake up, Pheres is gone.

He's not in the respiteblock, he's not in the kitchen, and by the time you notice the floor's all sleek and shiny, yours are the only green tracks on it. He must've got up early to mop it, but it's weird. Usually, he waits until you're up.

The only time he didn't was when he'd left to stay with Rmeros, and he didn't come back.

You're in a frothing fury by the time you make it down the ropes and to the ground-floor of the hivestem. It's still early enough in the evening that the sky's bright and no one's really out yet: there's the sound of voices coming over from the fields, where they like to start early, 'fore the ground gets too hard from the chill, but that's all.

You know he isn't down there, so you don't even bother to stop. You do stop by the tanning pits, just in case he's waiting for Alsike. You could forgive that! But he isn't. He's not even in the courtyard, though you even go as far as to check under the stairs. He used to slip under there, back before his horns grew in and he started getting stuck.

He isn't there either, stuck or otherwise.

Majlis waves down at you as you slip out the gates, just to be a prat, but you don't have time to fight with her right now. Or anyone else! If Pheres is off with Rmeros again, then that's - you'll have to -

("- that's more important than moirails, or quadrants -")

- he's not, you decide, so it doesn't matter.

You check anyway.

The van's empty when you get near it, but you don't get too close: your ears are up and pricked for any sound, and you're tense as a wire. The bruises from his rotten lusus haven't faded yet. They're still aching as you try your best to see if the vans lights are on. It's hard to tell through the tinted solar windows, but there's no light shining out of the look-out.

And Rmeros's lusus is nowhere to be seen.

"Pheres," you call out, but there's no answer.

You move on.

***

That first night after he'd met Rmeros, Pheres had been so pleased. He'd barely been able to sleep, even after you'd dragged him into the 'coon.

"He's so dignified," he'd said, delighted and fit to burst from pride. Rmeros spoke Standard like a troll from the vids, smooth and rolling and deep, like he was talking straight from his digestion sack. "D'you think I'll sound like that? When I'm his age?"

It'd taken dunking him head-first to make him finally calm down.

With all the fuss Pheres paid him, you'd recognise Rmeros's voice in a crowd. But you don't have to: the only sound is the rushing of the water nearby, and the awful, gargled-rocks sound of Standard.

And the buzz of psionics.

It's just a bother at first, but by the time you get close enough to see the figures by the shoreline, it hurts. It's like being right next to a rumblecart when it starts, or like when the bees got loose from Khirba's apiaries: you can feel the vibration of power going all the way from your horns to the rest of you, buzzing through your nails, setting your teeth to edge.

When you crest the hill and can finally see down the shoreline, Pheres is there. And so is Rmeros.

Every time you see Rmeros, you're reminded how big he is. It's never been quite as clear as right now. The hand holding up Pheres's chin is the size of his head. The thumb keeping him in place's as big as his nose. Rmeros himself's like a bird in the sky, and Pheres's his shadow: so much smaller than anything ever ought to be.

For the first time, maybe, you don't think you can fight him. You're big, sure, but there's big and then there's massive, and Rmeros is huge. He wouldn't have to grab you to hurt you. He could just swing. You can't fight him, but there's no way you can leave the two of them, because you've never seen Pheres's eyes this bright. It hurts to look at him: it makes your horns buzz and your eyes water, like you're staring at a lightbulb. Like you're staring at the sun.

That's not right. Most of the kids in the 'stem are sparkplugs, but there's only one time they ever get like this, where the air's so thick with psi, you could reach out and bite it. And that's when they're scrapping. Not the little kid shows, either, but the shit like the time Simoom'd caught his kismesis making time with Cendol.

But all they're doing is sitting there.

"Pheres," you call, and he doesn't look up. If he and Rmeros were normal trolls, maybe one of 'em'd have flicked an flap, or tilted it. You don't even get so much as a wiggle from their flat, round noisechutes. It's like they can't hear you at all.

Rmeros's eyes are bright, too, and as you creep closer, the buzzing only gets worse.

You can feel it in your claws. You can feel it in your fangs, practically taste the vibrations on your tongue. It's like holding tar in your seedflap, heavy and thick and sticky. Like something that'll suffocate you if you stay near for too long.

Maybe this is how they practice.

(Maybe this is why Pheres keeps bleeding, because you know plenty of psionics, and none of 'em have ever shed so much as a drop of blood.)

So much of your pan's saying you ought to go, go, go. Just leave! If you interrupt, Pheres'll be furious. (If you interrupt, Rmeros will cull you this time, and save his mum the trouble.) Alsike said that moirail's know best.

... but Pheres said you know him, better than a moirail, better than any quadrant, and the thought sticks more than any tar.

You know him, and you know this can't be good.

Only a meter away, the roar of the water's near deafening. You approach it slowly, carefully, weighing out each step as you creep around them and towards the shore. You had the first big rain of the season a few nights ago, water enough that the river poured up the bank. The water's gone down. The debris it left behind hasn't.

There's rocks the size of your fist, rounded and tumbled smooth by their journey through the water. You pick one that fits neatly into the palm of your hand. When you curl your fingers, they fit neatly over the top.

Then you whirl around and you throw it.

You're scamping away  even before the rock leaves your hand, chin tucked, horns down defensively. Your hair is falling in your face. You can't see between the black waves and the white glare of their psionics, but you don't need to: you hear the thunk of impact, a crack that makes your stomach heave with sympathy. And then you hear Rmeros snarl.

You grab up another rock. When you look up, the light's have dimmed. It isn't pleasant, not precisely, but it's not painful to look towards them. And Rmeros's standing up. There's a crack in his top horn, sluggishly leaking red down his forehead. He's sluggish, like he isn't quite there.

It doesn't stop him from noticing you. The fact your rumblereeds are rattling so hard you're shaking makes you hard to ignore.

"Nzinga's," he says, slow and displeased, like it's the worst kinda marvel. "Why is it always a fucking Nzinga?"

Perigees and perigees ago, Pheres said you ought to hit Simoom so he couldn't use his psionics. And so you threw so that Rmeros can't, either.

You're not expecting that he doesn't even try.

He's bigger than you, and he's got a longer reach. Two steps closes the distance between you, before you even have a chance to respond. Then he hits you. Rmeros's hand's nearly as big as your head. It catches you right across the face, nails tearing. If you'd stayed stiff, it would've taken your head clean off.

You go limp instead, and it sends you flying.

The ground's hard when you hit it. It's hard and it hurts, but you're still alive, so you scramble to your feet, pumpbiscuit racing. (The world feels kind of lopsided. He hits like a goddamn tree.) Rmeros's gaining again, quick as anything, looking properly peeved for the first time you've known him.

You throw the second rock.

When you were a baby, Bennui had brought you a knife from the hivestem's stores. It'd been dull and old and rusty, and hunting had been horrible. He'd go out, find you something, and burn it. Then he'd leave it for you to finish off.

Killing something with a blunt blade is torture.

By the time you were old enough to be allowed into the stores yourself, you'd learned about the power of a stone. Every bodies nothing but skin and giblets and the pieces holding them together. Throw a rock just right, hit those spots, and things just fall apart.

It works well on rabbits and deer, and it turns out it's true for trolls, too.

Rmeros doesn't crumple so much as he staggers. One knee hits the ground with a thunk. Then the next. Then his palms, but you're not paying attention to that. There's more rocks near you.

Once, you'd figured you'd rip him apart. But right now, you just want him down. And once he is, you'll -- you'll --

-- you'll figure it out, because behind him, Pheres is wailing.

You sprint over, veering wide around Rmeros. (He's making sounds, too, gross keening pity noises. The second rock was much pointier than the first.)

When you see Pheres, your pumpbiscuit nearly stops. He's all curled up just like his signmate, knees tucked in, hands cradling his face. He's wailing high and throaty like he's the one hurt.

"Pheres," you say. Your knees hit the ground. You turn him over, prying his fingers away from his face, but there's no blood from his forehead: just some steadily dripping from his snout, but that's no reason for him to be wailing. His eyes are still bright. Too bright, and it hurts to look at them. So you don't. You reach down instead, mopping away the blood on his face and scrubbing it off on your breeches. "Pher, Pher, why - shh. Shoosh!"

He doesn't shoosh. And you don't know what else to do, so you pap him.

"You're fine. Shoooosh. You're fine. I promise!" You keep sneaking glances over your shoulder, but Rmeros isn't moving. He's gone still, though he's still making those noises. (This is the point you'd cull a rabbit, but you left your knife at home, and your pan's still scrambling for a different solution.) Pheres, on the other hand, is finally quieting.

His eyes are dimming, so you keep petting his face. The skin of your fronds is catching on his skin, and you're leaving trails of mud, but you don't care. Maybe he doesn't either, because his breath hitches, and then he stops wailing, the sound dying off with a sickly little sob.

"Pher --?"

"He was in my brain," he says, hitching over the words, and you make a decision.

***

You make Pheres help. You don't regret that.

Rmeros's not dead, when you push him into the water.

You don't regret that, either.

What you do regret is that Pheres keeps crying.

And what you do regret is that neither of you thinks to check the van, and see where Rmeros's mother is, before it's too late.

10. SCRATCH | 5.3 SWEEPS / 11 YEARS OLD

She doesn't kill you, but you don't realise it for weeks.

The first few nights, it's just pain, pain, pain, and Pheres's worried eyes above you. He cries on you once, sad and squelchy and making all sorts of horrible noises, like his airsacs are straight up gonna fall out and burst, but you can't keep your eyes open to tell him to calm down. You can't even get words out of your soundchute: your wordmuscle is thick and heavy in your seedflap, and it feels like there's wool on your face, keeping all your sounds in.

But you try anyway. The hours blur together. The van's hot, too hot, and you can't seem to sleep, but all you do is sleep: you take a breath and blink, and the sun's shining down from the look-out in murky rays, where it was all gloom a moment afore.

One day, you blink, and when you open your eyes, you're feeling better.

Pheres is asleep right up against you, his face buried in the crook of your neck, arms wrapped tight around you like you're his lusus. Compared to the heat you've been feeling, had crawling under your skin like the worst kinda worm, he's been cold - but now, he's sweat-hot, fever-hot, and the sticky damp of his skin's too much to deal with. "Move," you whine, and you try to shove him. You're not in the 'coon, for some reason.

Your arm is all numb, like you slept wrong, so you use the other.

The instant your palm touches 'em, he's on his feet and skittering away, even before his eyes are all the way open. He's too tired to even spark at you: he just curls his lip, shoulders up and eyes slit, afore he realises it's you.

And then his eyes pop open all at once.

He does cry on you, this time, and it's gross, but you let him.

Pheres wants to curl up right against you, bony points digging into all of your fleshy ones, but you whine and whine 'til he settles on the ground below the platform instead. He rests his chin on the edge of the soft bit, and peering up at you with that big ol' scentnozzle, he looks like a barkbeast from the vids, all sad-eyed and hopeful.

"How are you feeling?"

"Good," you say, 'cause what else can you say, when he's looking at you like that? You hurt all over, like you've been in a fight. (And you were: with the lusus, then with the fever. You've seen the ways kid thrashed back at the hivestem, like sommat was beating 'em black and blue.)

He brightens. "Oh, good," he says, fervent, like someone's taken a weight off of his back. His eyes are red, red, red, rimmed with his blood along the bottoms and with the little blotches of burst veins in 'em. If he's been sleeping much, then you're mad as a tower of bees. "I'm so glad! I'm so, so, so glad - I tried all the medicine in his cabinets, but I couldn't find none - any, I couldn't find any that'd work right, all the labels were saying things that weren't right at all, so I had to go get a mediculler, and d'you know, d'you know these hivestems are too small for a mediculler?"

"Too small! They just -" He's straightened up, and his hands are flitting in the nervous little gestures he does. But now he clasps them together, wringing them in a way that's gotta hurt. "They don't take care of people if they get hurt," he says unhappily. "If they think they're unsalvagable. So I had to drive all day to get to one that did."

"But she fixed me," you say, reaching out. Your arm's still asleep! No matter how much you jerk it, it doesn't want to move, or do nothin' but tingle, so you harrumph, shift your whole body over so you can swat his hands apart. "So, like, it's cool."

He's not wringing his hands. He ought to look calmer. But he's going pale, pale as the tile under him at your words. "She.. mostly fixed you," he says, hesitant, and something in your gut drops. "She got the fever down! And she pulled the infection out. She had psionics, you know, the healing sort, so she could just -" He spins his hand in a quick, jerking motion, that you have no idea what it could even mean. "She said there ain't nothing else - there wasn't anything else she could do, past that. I'm sorry."

"What're you sorry for?" The room's spinning all around you, but you're still struggling to sit up, because something's wrong. Pheres's gone from looking nearly calm to on the verge of tears again, his lips pinched tight like that might stop him from bawling. "What's - oh, goddamnit. Why's it still asleep?"

You can shrug your shoulder. That's not asleep, and awkwardly, trying your best to keep your arm out of the way, you sit up. "You let me lie on it all day, or what?" you grump at him. "I can't feel a damn thing in this stupid hunk of meat --"

"She tried to fix it. She did her best," he says, unhappily, and tells you the truth.

You don't break anything.

Later, you'll be very proud of that.

***

"It's a good thing we left, huh? 'cause I wouldn't have been able to climb shit. I might've fallen and breaken my damn neck."

"Language," Pheres murmurs.

It's been a whole perigee since your fever died down, and you learned about your arm. Pheres hasn't let you leave the cart since then.

He hasn't let you drive, either, so all you do is sit righ tyour nose pressed up againsnt the viewing panes, watching the desert pass you by. You've been driving for days and days now Not on the main road, where people are always looking askance at your big ol' rattle-truck, but on the smaller ones that wind through the plains and the trees and skirt right along the shadow of Kuikiro's treeline. Pheres figures it's safer, farther away from anyone else.

The two of you don't talk about your hivestem, or Rmeros, or anything much at all. Pheres is too flip: he snaps at you, then jokes, and all of his jokes fall flat. He gets uncomfortable when you get too energetic, and he cries when you're tired, like you're only half a second from dying on him again.

It's a miserable ride, and worse is the fact he's keeping you penned in like a brooding cluckbeast.

He drops the basket on the table. There's eggs, the crisp, transluscent white that probably means they came from someone's lusus. The end of a bread loaf. Fruit, and...

There's blood on Pheres's lip. "It's nothing," he says when he sees you looking. "Don't worry. I got some food, didn't I?"

"I told you to get meat," you huff, looking away. If you ask how he got banged up, he'll just play it off. If he'd let you out of the cart, you wouldn't let anyone rough him up, 'cause if you're not allowed to, why the hell's anyone else?

And you're his moirail. You told him you were his moirail, all the way back, when his face was ruddy and before Rmeros's mum came out, and you hadn't lied. Keeping him from getting roughed up is supposed to be your job.

But he won't let you do it. He won't let you out, and you've run your voice raspy with the asking.

"Meat's expensive, Sipa." The two of you've shoved as many as the books as could fit down in the storage hutch, but there's still trays of 'em on the counters, on the table. He has to push them to the side to start unpacking the food. "We don't need it. I got nuts, see?"

"You don't need it, because you're not broken." You can't see his face, but his ears go red, and he droops a little againsnt the table.

You're not being kind, but you know by now he won't say nothing. And you're not being fair, but by now, you just don't care. (Fair isn't a thing, not when you're the one who got ruint.) "But whatevs," you say, bouncing to your feet. Bennui stirs on top of the recuperacoon, where he's been sleeping. Because there's no time for sulking, not when an opportunity just struck you.

"Me and Pops can hunt us up something, and it won't cost nothing at all!"

"You can't do that." Pheres looks back at you, frowning.

"Why? We're out in the woods! I'm not gonna trot off into the jungle, you big baby," you say, grabbing hold of one of the long-sleeved shirts. You'd long cut off the legs on your pants, on account of the fact it's so hot, but sleeves'll give you some protection, if something goes after your arms. "Don't worry! I'll get something good, too."

"You like hopbeast, yeah? Can't, like, make it fancy like Alsike did, but I bet I can find one out there --"

When you turn, Pheres is standing in the doorway, his face pale. "You can't go outside, Sipa," he says again, sharp and slow like you're simple. "It's not safe."

You stare at him. His face's going more ruddy, and he looks down and away. "Why wouldn't it be safe?" you ask, squinting at him. He's skirted around the question, when you threw it at him in the past. Danced and played with it, like not sayin' it changes anything at all.

He opens his mouth.

("Because it's dangerous," he said last time, like you didn't get mauled in this damn cart.)

"Because you're injured," he says now, waspish, spitting it out all at once. "You're injured and people'll take advantage of that. Look, if you want meat so badly, why don't you have Bennui get it? He's already getting up!"

Your pops is. You hear the rustle of feathers behind you, the slinking-shuffling move that means he's getting up, and then the flap of wings. Pheres's got one of the windows cracked, just wide enough for your pops to slip out, but not big enough for anything to get in. It creaks now. If you looked, you'd probably see your lusus slinking his feathery butt out.

You don't look.

"I'm perfectly fine," you snap, scowling at Pheres. Your arm aches, but no, it doesn't: it's just your pan, saying it ought to ache, 'cause you can't really feel nothing in it.

"You are not." He lifts his chin. "Don't be silly. Here, I got you something, too." He digs around in the basket. You hadn't taken a good look inside. There's just food, and what d'you care about food?

But he shifts the eggs and the loaf, the fruit, and he pulls out a larva, small and fat and glistening with something wet. It blinks its many eyes at you and yawns, showing off a tooth-lined seedflap. "It's old tech," he says doubtfully, "but she said you might be able to program it to do something interesting --"

He's holding it out to you, and you slap it out of his hands.

Pheres jerks back, eyes wide, his horns hitting the cabinet with a thump hard enough to shake the books. He drops the grub. There's a snap as it hits the ground, a high-pitched squeal, and then it races off -- somewhere.

You're not looking at it. You're watching Pheres, who's got his horns down like he wants to fight, but who's damn near cowering. It's stupid. He's stupid, and awful, and --

"Well!" He looks down at the piles of things where it might've hidden, and his voice's brittle. "There just went twenty caegars."

"I don't want your stupid grub," you snap. "What's that supposed to mean? People'll take advantage?"

He doesn't say anything. There's something hot and unpleasant churning in your gut. He's right, something in the back of your pan keens, he's right and you're cullbait and if you leave, someone'll knock your head clean off just for the audacity of existing --

-- but the rest of your pan's just frothing, furious at the indignity of this, because he might be right, but he's wrong, too. "I can defend myself! And I'd defend you too, bulgemunch, if you'd let me! I never got knocked around afore, and I won't get knocked around now, and - and - if someone tries to take a go, then I'll cull 'em! Like I culled him!"

Pheres's not saying anything at all.

"Say something," you demand, but he's just watching you, horns down, mouth set. The skin under his eyes is bunching, the tension in his shoulders is growing. If it was anyone else, you'd say he was going to take a swing at you. But this is Pheres.

He doesn't hit with his hands anymore.

"Because you did such a fine job defending yourself," he says thinly.

"What would you do if someone went after you? Throw a rock at them, Sipara? Bite them?" The words are spilling out like rocks, like he can't keep them in, and each stings. The way he's saying them stings. "We're not in the desert anymore! And - and what we did wasn't culling. You can't cull your -"

"- your quadrants," he spits out, his eyes bright. "It's called murder. And that's what people'll do to you, if you go outside! You're not big! You're not tough, you're not - not anything, except worthless cullbait."

You can't breathe.

You take a step forward, and he flinches, starts to step back before he realises the cabinet's right behind him. But then he recovers: squares his shoulders, sticks out his chin. "Take it back," you demand, your voice quavering, and just as quick, he says: "No."

"I'm not worthless!"

"Saying that doesn't make it true. We're rust, and we're pupas, and we're worthless," he says, stretching out the word. "The only thing we're good for is feeding to people's lusus. And I can run, if someone tries to nab me. What about you?"

"What're you going to do, if you can't even lift your arm?"

"You're wrong." He thinks he knows you, but every words proving that he's wrong, wrong, wrong. He doesn't know you at all, not a thing, because you're not -- you killed someone for him. For both of you. You didn't do that for nothing.

But just because he doesn't know you doesn't mean you don't know him. Your pumpbiscuit's racing. Your mouth's dry. Each exhale feels like it hurts, like you're pushing all the air out of your lungs and it ain't never going to come back, but your words come out clear. "You're being stupid," you snap, because he might know how to hurt you with his words, but you know how to make him bleed. "That's all you are: do you even think anything in there? Or is it all fluff? 'cause I can't tell if it's you or Rmeros talkin' right now."

The name drops like a stone in the water. Pheres flinches like you just hit him, his eyes wide, and for a second you think he's going to cry about it. What he does instead is hiss at you, his face twisted, sparks cracking off of his horns. "Everything I do doesn't go back to him! I'm not - I'm -"

"Dunno why I culled him," you say, "if you ain't even gonna try to be your own person."

He tackles you.

You hit the ground with an oomph, but he's skinny, and only getting skinnier since the two of you bolted. "I have thoughts," he reeds, "thoughts and opinions and they're mine!"

"You don't know that!"

He goes for your face. You grab his wrists, one in each hand, and he hisses at you, trying to wrench them free. His eyes brighten. There's a spray of sparks, but they're dim, and he's cringing, shaking his head like he's trying to dislodge them before they're even half-formed. "I do!"

"You don't! You don't even know how to think! Alsike says, Rmeros says - you didn't even know how to think before he came, and now you're just some shitty copy --"

There's a blinding pain in your eye. You yowl, jerking away, but you don't get free. He's got those skinny knob knees dugging into your side, locked in as tight as a door, and no matter how much you kick, he hangs on.

He doesn't pop you again. "You were going to die. If I hadn't gotten someone, you would've died. You were so close," he rasps. "I had to stay up all day to make sure you stayed cold! And - did you know, the mediculler wanted to cull you. She said it wasn't worth the money to save you."

"Shut up --"

He leans in. "She said it'd be a mercy," he says, soft, his knees digging in, and for all that he's smaller, you can't knock him off. "- and if I gave the slightest fig, I'd let her."

"I told her I'd fry her if she tried! She had a knife and she was yellow and I told her that anyway, but - but if you think I'm so awful - if everything I say is just terrible - then I should've let her!"

You slap him, hard. When your claws drag at his skin, you hook them in. You rip.

Pheres screams.

It's the worst sound you've ever heard, and there's warmth on your fingers, and an elbow to your face - your gut - everywhere he can hit, tiny hands flailing. (But you don't stop. You grit your teeth and you curl your fingers in tighter, because he hurt you and that's not fair, it's not fair at all--)

You can't see anything at all, he's sparking so hard, and you feel that more than see it, each pinprick of pain as they hit your skin. He's kicking back and you're kicking back, and - and -

- suddenly he's off of you, and your back is hitting the wall, hard.

The room is spinning. There's lights in your eyes, and you hear more than see Pheres bolt for the door.

When you look down, there's blood on your hands.

***

A few hours later, your eye is a mottled, ugly brown, and it's swollen tight as a door. You can’t see shit. You don’t want to, either, not when it’s still throbbing like.. well, like someone popped you in the face.

When Bennui got back in, hauling a pair of burnt-black mice, he'd taken one look at you and puffed up, furious. You’d almost felt better, ‘til he’d dived down at you and taken a whack.

There's blood in your mouth from where he caught you with his wings, but there's no more painpills in the counter. When you’d went for the fridge, Bennui'd had a go at you again, pecking and smacking until you’d retreated back to the front. 'Tough it out,' he'd said, with his birdy little eyes and angry mantling: '- you deserve a little discomfort!'

When the door creaks open, you're feeling rotten. Your face hurts. Bennui’s hiding on top of the fridge, guarding his mice like they’re the world’s greatest prize and giving you the cold shoulder. (Least he’s stopped lecturing you. But being ignored, as it turns out, isn’t much better.) And you don’t want to see Pheres. You don’t want to see anyone else in the whole, entire world.

But you can’t exactly lock him out of his own hive, no matter how rotten you feel.

‘specially because when he comes into the back, he doesn't look like he's feeling much better.

He's fixed up his face as best as he could, but there's no fixing the bloody furrows you left. You can see the path of your claws, where some hit his snout and stopped, where the rest curved under and up towards the rest of him. The skin's peeled back where it's the deepest, but the entire thing is angry and red and weeping.

He looks like he's been, too.

For a moment, both of you just stare.

“.. I wasn’t expecting you to still be here,” he says, brittle.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," you blurt out, stepping forward.

Maybe that wasn't the right thing to say, because his face goes tight. But he doesn’t leave, and you take that as encouragement. His eye on that side's half squinched shut, like it hurts to keep it open, but you didn't think you knicked it. Did you? You're leaning forward to see, pusher in your mouth -

- and he's skittering back, hissing loud enough that it makes you flinch.

"I'm sorry!"

"You don't get to hit me," he says all at once, stumbling over the words. "I hit you, but I didn't hurt you. And - and it's not right for you to hit me, when all I've been trying to do is help you. I didn't have to! I didn't, I didn't, I'm already a horrible moirail and no one would've said anythingif I hadn't, but I did, because you deserve to be helped, and - and -"

"I don't deserve to be hit!"

"I'm sorry," you squeak. His back is to the door. You take a step back, putting more distance between the two of you. Your arm feels like a dead-weight, dragging you down. There's red rolling down Pheres's face, either blood or tears or both, and your vision's going cloudy with orange.

"I'm an ass. I'm awful, I'm sorry, I'm really, really, really sorry, and -- Bennui bit me over it." Laughing from nerves is Pheres's thing, but maybe it's catchin', because you're laughing and hiccuping all at once. "He bit me 'cause I hit you and I know that means I fucked up! I'm really, really sorry, dude. You didn't deserve it. I'm just awful."

He's supposed to say you aren't. The two of you've seen moirails in the hivestem before. You both know how the script goes.

He squares his shoulders instead, wiping at his face with the back of his hand. ".. you are," he says, petulant. His face is all runny still, the sealed scratches re-opened by all his hissing, but he’s not cringing quite as much anymore. That’s something, right?

“You are awful. But –“ He takes a breath. “I guess we both are. We’ll just have to – have to –“

“Work on it,” you say, hopeful. (Working means he won’t go. Working on it means he won’t leave.)

“No more hitting,” he says, and you’re nodding, before the words are even all the way out of his mouth.

11. COIN | 5.8 SWEEPS / 12 YEARS OLD

"Betcha five dollars I can beat you up!"

You're up on top of the bannister of the staircase. The moons are high in the sky, and this is the only place in Temasek you can probably see 'em: everywhere else, it's all skyscrapers and hivestems and the terraces between 'em, but you're in the central court. Far enough from the docks that there's no finny faces, but near enough that everything's nice and wide and spaced out. Lowbloods don't mind the clusters, but you're learning highbloods act like they've got a stitch in their britches if they so much as have to see another fellow walking nearby.

But it works out! There's no building for twenty, thirty feet in any which way, just stone tiles and the raised patio of the courtyard proper, and there's plenty of folks milling around in every direction. Folks who keep lookin' at you.

A mossblood makes eye contact. You beam, showing off all of your teeth. "Hey, lady," you sing, "wanna take a bet?"

She looks at your bandaged arm, at your scruffed up clothes. At your pops, sitting on the bannister next to you like he ain't got a care in the world. She's not much older than you! A sweep, maybe, which's just about perfect. That means five caegars is enough for her to consider it, and not enough to be salty if she loses.

(You lost a tooth, last bloke who tried to get pissy with you after he lost. A clout to his horns dealt with that.)

Her friend laughs, nudges her. "Do it," she urges. "Or are you scared about some one-armed pupa, lah?"

That's all greenie needs.

Fighting's easy, even one-armed. You're a big kid! A tumble sends her flailing to the ground, and then you grab her by the wrists, twist 'em up above her head. She tries to bite you. You headbutt her right in the nose, then you do it again 'til she yowls empress.

Her friend's laughing still as she gets up. Greenie's face is all green and nasty, like she wants to hit you proper. But she flips you a coin all the same.

A dark hand snatches it out of the air before you can.

Pheres's balancing on the slanted arm of the staircase, stepping down as carelessly as a meowbeast. (He won't fall. He never, ever falls. His psionics are good for that, at least!) "Five dollars?" he asks, clicking his tongue.

The mossblood's out of hearing, but that doesn't stop him from checking, glancing after her with a quick, furtive smile. "What a cheapskate," he says, once she’s certain she’s gone. “She’s bigger. She ought’ve bet ten.”

"Well, why don't you tell her that?'

Pheres doesn't bother with rude words. He just makes a gesture with his fronds that shows you what he thinks of that idea. And when you laugh, he rocks back on his heels, flashing his teeth like he did something clever.

"Maybe five dollars isn’t much to you, mister fancy pants," you announce: "- but some o' us are poor as fuck. Five dollars is like, a fortune.” You bounce forward. He shimmies back. One step for every step. “Five dollars is like, like --"

Pheres beams at you, clasping his hands behind him. "Two plates of tau huay?" he offers, fronds wrapped tight. He can't think you've forgotten he's got your caegar.

(Both of your caegar, technically: everything the two of you bring in is split. His book money, your fight money. Ain't no point in keeping it separate when everything you've got is shared.)

"Two plates of tau huay and an entire mug of tea. That I earned, so give it!” You sidle around him, but he turns with you, laughing. Pheres's still tinier than you, all bird bones and pointy limbs, but age is doing weird things to the angles of his face. Before, he was pointy and moon-eyed, with cheeks you could put your palms in, and a nose that a lusus wouldn't love. But now he's growing into both of 'em, and there's flesh to the curves of his face, and he's almost pretty. Especially when he's pleased.

Not that you'll ever tell 'em that. He'll get a big head, and between that and his horns, his neck'd snap right in half.

“You're thinking something dreadful again, aren't you? No, don't argue, I can tell. It's all, you know --" He presses his palms to the sides of his face, angling his fingers down in a crude imitation of your soundflaps. "Well, think about this. I could stand to eat an entire two plates,” he says, thoughtful. "Everyone says I'm too skinny. In fact, I really think I need to! D'you think they'll trade the tea for coffee, if I ask nicely?"

“You can’t even eat half a plate, dude, don’t play. If you tried to eat two, you’d – you’d explode!" You fling out your hand to demonstrate, sidling another step in closer. His eyes are so busy tracking your fronds, he doesn't even notice. "It’d be gross. There’d be guts, and organs, and, like, folks crying every which way, on account of the fact they’re all smothered in nasty giblets --”

“That’s not scientifically plausible,” he mocks. “That doesn’t even happen in films!”

“Sure it does! I’ve seen zeds blow up all the time in your silly daywalker kissing flicks --"

"I'll give you the caegar if you'll shut up," he says, and he flips the coin right over your head.

You whirl around, lunging after it with your good hand.

When you grab it, it's heads.

[iammarylastar]

1. D-Day, 0957.

“Morning Cup!”

I stop in my tracks, hearing my name shouted from behind.

It’s become common for me to be greeted in every corner of the streets of the military camp base, women seem to appreciate my stunning self.

Blame my body for that.

I’m grateful for that aura of mine, which assures me good and beautiful company when I’m fed up with my mates.

I love them like my own bros, but there’s no Louis, Phil nor Mac when there’s Nora, Emily or Madeline. 

Fuck you guys!

My eyes spot the latest person I’d like to meet today. 

Michelle. Michelle damn crazy Minelli.

We’ve slept together once or twice last month and now, she’s more like a pain in my ass than a bitch on my cock.

She’s been harassing me for weeks to date or meet her parents; she’s been talking shit like engagement ring or marriage or I don’t know what bullshit only female can focus on more than the 20 seconds I usually gave her. 

Hopefully, my eyes always switch down to her breasts and I marvel at those two beautiful mounds that bounce rhythmically with her rambling, as she speaks out loud and shakes her hands and arms like the good Italian immigrant she is.

My head nods yes at whatever she says while my mind flies to the nonetheless sweet memories of us having sex.

I hate her. She’s like the chewing gum that sticks under your shoe, or the stinky dog shit you can’t get rid of.

But today, I love her. It’s a matter of time but my life will change today. Thanks to that hot, crazy chick.

Not now, of course. As she starts to jog towards me with that ridiculous gait of hers, perched on too high heels, I try to escape her.

I wish I could disappear or turn into dust, anything to not talk to her or see her face.

I feel like eyeing her boobs will not be enough this time. 

“Michelle! Nice to see you! You make the Sunshine look so pale, didn’t she, hey Cup?”

I glare at that asshole that’s Mac. He knows everything about anything of my life, since we share the same room. His favourite hobby is to throw salt on my wounds and stab me in the back. Bastard. 

“Maaaaac!” She whines with that annoying voice. “You make me bluuuush!” She waves her hands before her face like to cool down the air around her face.

Mac winks at me and goes on with fake flattery about her dress colour, which elicits more overplayed ‘Oh my Gooood’ and ‘Maaac pleaaaaase!’

Please, Mac, Jesus, someone, shut her up!

“Blahblahblah, blah blah, blahblah…” she starts to speak to me but I’m already gone.

Dead or dumb, whatever.

I just come back to Earth as she puts a coffee cup in my hand, saying her favourite lame joke for the thousandth time.

“I brought you a cup, Cup!“ 

Then throws her head back, to let out her hysteric laugh which sounds more like a hyena’s than a human being’s.

"That woman knows to treat you well Cup, I can’t understand why you still hesitate to marry her!” Mac opens once again his dirty mouth.

I throw him another death glare, but see with relief that Mrs Pain in my ass turns to face him and giggles before going on with her verbal diarrhea. 

And this happens. 

My eyes land on an angel. 

She’s walking the other side of the street, half hidden by the cars that are parked over there.

Beautiful is not enough to describe her face. Words fail me to tell what I’m feeling right now and my knees get weak under me.

For the first time in my damn life, my dick doesn’t react to the view of such a goddess but my heart does. And it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. 

The way her long straight hair waves around her delicate features undoes me in way I can’t neither explain nor understand. 

My heart screams inside my chest and its rhythm starts to panic, while my mouth goes dry like I ate a ton of sand. My brain turns into dust instantly, bringing my self-confidence down with it. I feel dizzy and just want to burst into tears.

Someone will tell me later that’s called love at the first sight, but I’m sure it’s more than that.

Something that hasn’t been named yet because no fucking body has ever felt this before.

Call me a fool but I can already feel the softness of her skin under my fingertips and I swear I can smell her intoxicating natural fragrance from where I stand.

Who’s that girl that stole my heart and soul in a blink of an eye? What has she done to me? I’m a bloke, I’m a fucking pilot from the US army, I flying the hugest bombardier like it’s a fucking bike, I go without fear almost every day on dangerous missions that are most of the time close to suicide one’s, and I’m just turned into a fragile pussy after just a glance to…

Fuck I’m struggling with words. No word fits her.

“Cup! Are you listening to me?”

“No.” I blurt out, not realizing what shit I’m getting into.

“Hey Honey!” She snaps her fingers before my face, wasting the perfect view I have on my girl.

“I was telling you my parents wanted to have you for lunch on Sunday, after the office. What do you think?”

I move her hand from my face the most gentle I can, never taking my eyes off my gorgeous angel.

“Not on your life." 

Go to hell Michelle.

"What? Cup! Cup!” She tries to turns my face to her, grabbing my chin, but I harshly yank her arm away.

My patience have run out. Nobody is allowed to stay between my mysterious girl and me.

“ Who are you drooling at? Hey, I’m still here, your girlfriend! Look at me!”

I don’t budge. Nothing could distract me from staring at my bright diamond, especially not that agitated mosquito buzzing around my ears.

“Don’t you dare gawk at another ass than mine! Who’s that bitch? So you’re cheating on me? Fuck you!”

The hyena yells at me.

“Shut up Michelle. Go fuck yourself. ”

Just shut up and leave me alone. 

Mistake. I just unleashed the beast.

I wanted nothing more than stay in that nice daydream but the hurricane next to me turns into category 5.

She starts to howl what sounds like Italian gibberish to which I don’t give a shit: all the fuss she’s making ends up drawing attention on us.

“Bastardo! Sei proprio un stronzo! ”

My angel stops in her tracks the other side of the street and notices us.

Notices me.

A huge smirk lightens my face and so does hers.

It’s like her sweet gaze asks me if I’m in trouble. I glance at the fury screaming next to me and shake my head no, a pout on my lips.

“Nothing to be worried about.”

I silently tell her.

Her eyebrows frown the cutest way, saying “that’s not what it looks like.”

I shrug lightly, rising mine

“This? Naaah drop it, she’s crazy.”

I’m in heaven, silently chatting with my angel, even with the Devil spitting her poison out on me.

Crazy Michelle is spinning her wheels, starting to move her arms and hands frantically, hitting my arm relentlessly, showering me with more strange love words.

“To odio, figlio di puttana! Vaffanculo  stupido tu e la tua sgualdrina!”

She’s making big gestures, yelling at me with her hands, and purposely or not, hits the cup of coffee, spreading the whole hot liquid all over my shirt.

My mysterious girl can’t help but chuckle, politely hiding it behind her hand. All I can do is shrug my shoulders again, lifting my hands up in defeat, while the crazy chick turns on her heels and finally leaves.

“Good luck with your new crush Cup. She’s not for you anyway.”

Mac’s arm wraps around my neck and squeezes, pulling me down as this idiot places a kiss on my cheek.

“That was a hell of a break up man. It seems you’re not too desperate of losing crazy Michelle!”

He laughs in my ear.

Still laughing to herself and surely at me, the new love of my life, my new sunshine waves at me, like to say

“Nice to meet you”

I wave back at her, stupidly smirking, stupidly covered with coffee, stupidly happy.

“My pleasure” I mouth at her, before watching her walk away until she disappears around the corner.

“Who’s that girl? I’ve never saw her before.” Mac says, surely drooling at that stunning piece of ass walking away. 

“She’s my wife. But she doesn’t know it yet.” I state.

Mac bursts into laughter before ruffling my hair. 

“Yeah bro, she’s the new love of your life for the next two weeks. I started to know you, butterfly!”

No you don’t know me, man. She will be the one. She will be mine until the end. I swear. Till my dying day.

@jaihardy @jaicourtneyseyes @kiiiimberlyriiiicker1995 @captstefanbrandt @pernilleals @pathybo @frecklefaceb @societalfailure @kenzieam @oddsnendsfanfics @sajess98 @jojuarez26 Thx to my beta girl @tigpooh67

[tinybit92]

RWBY 5:11 thoughts under the cut.

In order of events:

I like the noticeable difference in Qrow’s posture before and after he enters the building. When he’s with the kids he’s slouching, hands in his pockets, hunched forward, looking grumpy and irritable. Then he gets in the school and he’s all business. Straightens out his back, shoulders squared, hands at his sides, and a focused gaze. Good show-don’t-tell moment of character development.

Ha, bet Raven’s regretting letting Yang in on her secret for a second there. Qrow was so focused on Lionheart he probably wouldn’t have noticed her for a while.

I like how intense Ruby is about Raven, little bit of subtle character insight on our poor, underdeveloped protagonist.

Nora legit didn’t believe the magic shit until right then.

Raven mocking her brother’s half-assed shot. Love them sibling dynamics.

Little brother? Guess we know which twin was born first.

Yang’s posture: Fucking fight me, mom!

Ruby Rose, precious innocent puppy talking about the power of friendship.

Yang’s dirty look at Raven when Ruby offers her hand, nonverbal warning that she better not fuck with her sister.

“You sound just like your mother.” YES HELLO, FAVORITE LINE OF THE EPISODE. MORE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT FOR RUBY BY TALKING ABOUT SUMMER PLEASE.

Cinder doesn’t even wait to get there before blasting Ruby’s ass. Girl’s got some issues to settle.

Interested to see more of Hazel in these upcoming episodes. Oscar is exceptionally concerned by his presence.

No, bad kitty, no setting bombs! Where is my spray bottle?

Little bird, Cinder could not be more condescending today.

Qrow looks like an angry parent talking to Leo. “I am disappoint, son.”

Jaune is a poor, sad noodle.

Sick burn, Cinder.

Angry noodle is angry.

I almost feel like Emerald pulling Ruby away from Cinder is less about letting Cinder fuck with Jaune, and more about protecting Ruby from Cinder, because that is not a fight she’s ready for yet.

Merc still letting Yang think she broke his leg. What a prick.

Excuse you Raven? Weiss is worth the world, thank you very much.

Damn, that whole Qrow and Raven exchange. I still want to believe that Raven can be good and this is just a way to ramp up the tension, but it’s pretty clear this shit with the twins has been building for years. Probably about 17 years, to be exact. *side eyes Yang*

You tell that bitch, baby girl. You might not be able to beat her, but at least make it clear that this isn’t about being a Schnee.

Ren and Nora, the only kids from Beacon who actually learned the lesson Ozpin was trying to teach them about teamwork.

Oscar’s already a fucking beast at like five foot nothing.

Hey, proper shot of that lion tail. Good to see a faunus in a position of power. Also explains why he was so vulnerable to Salem’s manipulations with the way we know the faunus are generally treated.

“Fight.” Ozpin’s like, why you even need to ask, kid?

Even though she’s mastered summoning now, it still takes time. Good to show those limitations. Also emphasizes once again the importance of teamwork in this show. Weiss is a support unit, and she needs her teammates to distract her opponents in order to best use her moves.

“You’re the little bitch who was supposed to be guarding the door.”...sorry, couldn’t resist.

More fuel for the Emerald is possibly redeemable fire.

Weiss has no trouble avoiding that stray bullet. She knows what Ruby’s gun sounds like.

Damn, those ballet moves on the glyphs.

Oh shit, aura break!

Wow, fuck you, Cinder. That one was low.

I have deep concerns any time Jaune is around fire. Fire was not a friend to Joan of Arc.

Ruby having legit war flashbacks. Poor baby. :(

Good job showing those limitations again. These kids have some crazy moves, but even silver eyes ain’t worth shit if you turn your back on your opponent and get your ass knocked unconscious.

Good job taking that opening Jaune.

Not so good on the landing there, you little wet noodle. Tripping over his own feet is not very huntsman-like.

Cinder’s like, bitch you dare?

Oh my god, Jaune, stop being so self loathing. Your life mattered to Pyrrha, so don’t you go throwing it away.

Bitch, do not.

BITCH NO.

(Making it look suspiciously like Pyrrha’s spear to rub salt in the wound.)

Jesus, can we please stop stabbing women for Jaune’s character development? WEISS HAS BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH, THANK YOU.

That wound is very deliberately off to one side in a non-vital area. Roughly parallel to where Blake got stabbed, actually. She’ll be fine.

Wonder if that self-cauterizing weapon is better or worse for the injury?

I can’t believe they stabbed Ruby’s best friend while she was unconscious. I know why narratively, silver eyes would have ended the fight right there, but way to rob Ruby of development opportunities yet again.

Also, I have some problems with it being Weiss who got hurt. Her only real connection to Jaune is his unrequited crush on her, so it doesn’t serve much purpose for him other than to parallel Pyrrha. It would have been far more effective to have it be Ren who got hurt. That’s his best friend and an important member of his ragtag family. Not to mention Nora would be flipping the fuck out, which would further spur on the inevitable conclusion to this, which is Jaune discovering his semblance is healing.

Like, legit we’ve known this since season one. The only reason they’ve been drawing out his semblance reveal is so they could have him dramatically use it to save someone. Like right now.

Okay, so that’s it for play by play, here’s a few more stray thoughts:

Like I said, Weiss will be fine. Not even a little bit worried she’s gonna die. This is so obviously about Jaune’s semblance. That’s why they brought it up again a few episodes ago. Still wish it was one of Jaune’s actual teammates though instead of Weiss. Please just let the poor girl be.

If they use this as a reason to have Weiss start falling for Jaune I will fucking riot. They’ve spent too much time making him obnoxiously ignore the fact that no means no. I love Jaune, but if you let him “get the girl” after setting such a poor example, you are sending a bad message. Please let him have a more natural romance down the line. They both deserve better than this potential plot line.

Ruby is gonna be so upset when she wakes up. Even if Weiss has been healed already by then, she’s gonna be on a freaking vendetta. That is her BFF, and Cinder just did it for funsies to fuck with Jaune.

On a related note, Yang’s been really good about reigning in her temper up until now, but given the way she exploded last time Weiss got hurt, this is not going to end well for any of the bad guys in that room. I hope she goes after Raven while in a full on rage and Raven doesn’t even know what to do about it.

Seriously though, can we maybe capture Raven or something and have her talk about Summer and the ways Ruby is similar to her? Pretty please? Or have Ruby talk to Qrow later and ask him to tell her more about what her mom was like as a leader?Just give me character development for Ruby and Summer, please, I beg of you.

Blake and her crew need to hurry their asses up. Given that they’re not there yet, I’m guess they’ll get a Big Damn Heroes moment in the next couple episodes.

I appreciate Adam’s minimal screentime. Don’t let me see him unless Yang and Blake are knocking his teeth in.

As awful as the outcome of this fight was in universe, I really love the way the limitations were presented. They are all still kids, and no matter how powerful they get, they still don’t know how to properly utilize their abilities. Weiss may be able to summon now, but she does’t know how to set up a situation where she’s got the time to do it. Ruby has her silver eyes, but nobody has taught her how to use them, and they’re so reliant on her emotions right now that she can’t keep a straight head to use them without making herself vulnerable.

I fully understand where Jaune is coming from emotionally, but he is being so reckless right now. Pyrrha did not send him away in that locker just so he could get himself killed doing something stupid. If nothing else, I hope this situation teaches him to value her sacrifice and take care of himself as well as his friends.

Blake and Weiss are gonna have matching abdominal scars.

Cinder is gonna need to do something really fucked up in order for Emerald to to turn on her, but she already looks so uncomfortable all the time, and Cinder is cracking so hard, I don’t think it’s that far off honestly.

Really glad this season has been extended to 14 episodes, or that would have been the second to last one. We’ve still got three more episodes for this battle to go down.

[kaiyeti]

Has Yin or Totoko ever been wounded during a mission ? And if yes, it has already been very serious, like Yang when she lose her arm ?

Yes. First mission as real huntresses. During this mission of protecting miners and scientists, They ran into my oc Agony.  While Yin and Totoko were calling Yang and Blake, Agony showed up warning the miners scientists and their two teammates Ryan, a tough muscle guy with chainsaw minigun, and Daki, a fit woman with dust daggers and throwing knives the with her semblance makes them grow, to leave. They refused and Agony started to wipe them out. Sure enough, Yin and Totoko heard the screams and rushed back to help only to find all the miners and scientists dead, and not in a painless way, and ever though they were dead they were still screaming in pain. It was then when they saw their teammates fighting Agony, Totoko froze up since Agony destroy her village and killed everyone. Needless to said since Yin knew this she went in trying to help Ryan and Daki while telling them to escape.

Didn’t work out. For Agony grabbed Daki and crush her head down to just at the end of her ribcage, Note Agony in the form he was in is pretty big and terrifying. Enraged Ryan continued to fire on Agony and swung at him only for Agony to point his finger through his shoulder, causing Ryan whatever pain you would normally feel to be multiples by a million. Ryan screamed for Yin and Totoko to run right behind Agony liquefied his head by flicking it. Agony Saw Yin and Totoko and moved towards them to which Yin protected her girlfriend using her semblance to avoid all of Agony’s strike and leave an exploding clone. Unfortunately, Agony respect this and started to take the fight serious and whipped his arm out at blinding speeds and since Yin wasn’t expecting his arm to extend she got her stomach cut open. Only reason why she wasn’t cut in half was because she blow up her clone to throw her out of the way before crashing to the ground in the worse pain of her life and passes out.

This snapped Totoko out of her shock and it was she turn to protect. She and Agony fought ending Totoko Standing her ground holding Agony’s sword, which causes anyone who holds it agony since it is like grabbing broke grass barbwire thorns covered in salt to put in lightly, Against Agony still completely unharmed. That is until Zaga showed up ordering Agony to stop and Apologizes to Totoko and offers her to come with him so he can teach and train her. For those who don’t know Zaga is Kai’s dad making him Totoko’s grandpop through Kai adopting her. Before Totoko can answer Yin wakes up sees Zaga with a outstretch hand to a beaten up Totoko and changes at Zaga think he did it.

Rule of thumb, If one of Zaga’s four nakama sees you as a worthy warrior or respects you, he will assume you can take a light hit from him. So out of instinct seeing Yin ready to attack him from the corner of his eye, Zaga flicks his wrist at her before she could get close and, well, You know the term skin a cat? Because Yin went through the through just air pressure. Totoko freaked out rushing to Yin after she was set flying into a wall while Zaga looked at Agony confused to which he explain her aura was gone and was still under the effects on his attack. Zaga apologize and he and Agony started to leave only for Totoko to go berserk and try to attack Zaga with everything she had left. However as she was about to land a blow on Zaga Agony swung down his sword cutting off both of her hands before punching her full force in the chest with one of his forearm spikes sending her flying and landing next to Yin to whom she crawled over to begging to stay alive. Zaga began to argue with Agony, telling him not to attack his granddaughter while Agony argued back it’s his job as his right hand and friend to protect him, until Kai showed up Ready to try to kill the two until seeing his crying handless daughter and a barely alive Yin. Kai was pissed and wanted to kill Zaga and Agony more then ever, which the two were actually expecting him to try which they were hoping for but to there surprise Kai ignored them and helped the Totoko and Yin and left.

Kai used his semblance to mostly heal Yin who was in a coma and resting in a healing pool. He packed up Totoko who was growing her tentacle hands back very slowly.  Yang and Blake of course freaked out and panicked the whole three weeks Yin was in the coma and Totoko never leaving her side.

So in the end Totoko has a large scar in the center of her chest and back and around both wrist while Yin has a scar across her stomach and skin tone slightly orangeish red do to Kai’s semblance and the healing pool using her aura to heal her.

Also, Zaga sends “I’m sorry for nearly killing your girlfriend/daughter” cards to Totoko and Kai.

[zippdementia]

Part 20 Alignment May Vary: The Red Eye Watches You

Welcome to the ongoing adventures of Abenthy, Karina (Seeker of Callax), and Tyrion, as they hunt for the fabled Tomb of Haggemoth in order to save Abenthy’s friend Zennatos, to find and bring to justice Karina’s old commander who betrayed her, and to create an epic song for which Tyrion will forever be remembered. Last time they were about to leave the newly rejuvinated desert of Thud with their bounty from the Grey Tomb and head for Celaenos, a monastery of good knights where, in a library, there are to find their last clue to the location of Rori Rama, the final resting place of Haggemoth.

As GM, I’ve pulled back on rolling for random sea encounters. We are late in the adventure now, and there is good momentum built up. To throw in another encounter will, at best, slow us down and, at worst, accidentally kill the party, which is something that at this point I’d like to reserve for the remaining two main locations, not some random fight against a sea siren.

I was, in reading the possible encounter list, intrigued by one of the possibilities: a friendly bronze dragon. Encounters with dragons are going to be a big part of Red Hand of Doom and I thnk this would be a nice lead in to that. Also, Bronze Dragons are enamored with rare and unique treasures and as it happens Karina is carrying around the Rod of Storms.

The Dragon slides into the water, its gigantic body pushing through the water with slow deliberation. In only a couple strokes, it is at the Ghost Ship (now named Tywin’s Vengeance) and only now do the adventurers realize how truly huge the creature is. It leans in close, its head tilted so that one gigantic eye, large as a horse cart, stares at Karina.

“I smell the magic on you, little one,” he says.

The Rod of Storms is a cursed legendary item, one of a kind, meant to give Udo the Grey control over the weather. With it, he altered the atmosphere of the green land of Arctavia, slowly transforming it into the desert of Thud. He never had full control over the Rod, though, and it comes with a heavy curse, ensuring that any who carries it will never be free of the damp and the cold. In addition, using the Rod is difficult and can backfire, releasing powerful uncontrolled lightning, wind, and thunder magics. Only a legendarily powerful mage could hope to control it... or something which had direct communion with the weather, like a Bronze Dragon.

Karina is not fully aware of the Rod’s curse, but she does remember the warning in Udo’s tomb: “Beware the Rod of Storms, I created it but was never its master.” I decide this is an interesting opportunity for her to steer the course of the game. The Bronze Dragon, Sauros, wants to trade the location of one of its treasure stashes for the Rod of Storms. Meta-game, the decision is this: keep the Rod of Storms and both the power and risk that comes with that, or trade out a very powerful weapon for the promise of future riches (which I will create as a side adventure at some point after they find the Tomb of Haggemoth).

Karina chooses to give up the Rod. It’s the safest choice, actually, and gives me a little more control over the adventure, as the Rod is one of those wild card items that can turn the tides massively either in favor of or against the players. It forces bad weather, too, which can affect future scenes. On the downside, it is always fun to play with legendary items and tons of side adventures can come out of the mahyem they cause. For a little fun, and to share my pain, I give Karina a flaw: Having given up this powerful item, she feels its loss palpably, and believes she has made the wrong decision. She becomes obsessed with finding another powerful item like it, to replace its loss.

Sauros gives one more cryptic clue before departing. He tells Abenthy that there is a Red Eye watching over him greedily, that the Eye symbolizes great power and a dire destiny, and that Abenthy can learn more at the Monastery.

With that, the players move on to Celaenos.

Shackles of Gold

The Island of Celaenos is a rather austere, craggy piece of land jutting sharply from the ocean. There is barely enough vegetation to support the goatherds who live there and the place has a shabby, drab air about it. There is a small rocky harbor and a single impoverished village. Looming over the harbor On a nearby hill is the fortified monastery of Celaenos, where the Knights of Celaenos dwell. Their flag—a black field with a Red Half-moon and two stars—can easily be seen by any approaching ship. The harbor has a tiny dock, which can only be approached by Jollyboat or Dinghy. There are two tatty-looking vessels in the harbor, and one of them looks familiar to the players who have encountered the Ratzotto pirates before.

The people of the village respect and fear the Knights of Celeanos, and they are generally furtive and close-mouthed around strangers. The Knights are putatively in control of the island, but it is rare for them to ever leave their monastery.

The players make their way to the monastery, Karina using her magic to disguise herself as a tall Amazonian woman. They gain admittance to a vestibule which—with the doors closed behind and in front of them—seems like a deathtrap. Above them, through a glass window, two knights stare solemnly down at them. They wear white half capes, capes which cover only their right side, leaving the red and black doublet underneath visible. The crossbows they hold and the swords on their backs are of the finest make.

“Who are you? Why do you come here?”

The voice comes from a newcomer to the room. Opening the door and speaking before even fully entering the room is a young, blonde knight. His eyes, a bright blue color, hold no love or joy in them, and he stares at the players suspiciously, waiting for their answer.

This is Dickon, and he will come to play a strong role in what happens to the party at Celaenos. For now, after hearing they wish to use the library, he begrudgingly takes them to the Abbott. The Abbott, a powerfully built knight named Mordekai who looks younger than fifty years of battle hardened life would usually leave a man, is friendly and eager to banter with the party. His mood shifts, though, when they mention Zennatos.

“Scum. Thieving scum,” he hisses.

Turns out, the book that began this whole quest was stolen by Zennatos from the Celaenos monastery. The book had a curse on it, and this is what has compelled Zennatos to find the Tomb of Haggemoth, for only by doing so can he be cured. Not only is Mordekai not inclined to help anyone associated with Zennatos, he also warns that the quest for Haggemoth rings of a cursed, evil, thing:

“Think about it. A quest that is started by reading a cursed book, compelling good men to die for cursed men, sending them to a place rumoured to exist, to a tomb of a powerful mage, one who was banished from his own people... what sort of creature, tell me, would lure good men to their deaths?”

While they are debating this. A servant comes in, and Karina happens to recognize the bracers she wears: the same ones, at least from the look of them, that Rose used to control her servants back in Ottoman’s Dock. Karina bristles and accuses the Abbott of keeping slaves. 

Aaaaaaand... shit. It kind’ve goes downhill from there. The Abbott, as might be expected, does not appreciate being accused of slavery by strangers who are known associates of a thief. The party, for their part, is vastly suspicious based on seeing the pirate ship in harbor and the bracers, but willing to concede that a conspiracy could be going on under the Abbott’s nose. Abenthy uses his powers to try and detect evil on the man, gain some insight into his motives, but the Abbott only exudes an aura of good. 

The end result is that the Abbott refuses them access to the library, but says he will consider their words, and will send a verdict for them in three days. Dejected, the party heads to the only inn in town.

Cover Bands Suck

“How about some music?”

Tyrion looks around at the few sullen customers in the rugged tavern, the wood exuding the smell of sea, salt, and stale ale, and decides that livening up the place can only gain them favor. He gets up from the party’s table and heads to the corner of the barroom, passing three disheveled men with familiar Rat Tattoos on their necks.

“This is a cover of an old song, hope you know it, hope you like it!” he says in a chipper voice, and begins to play.

The Ratzottos are not impressed. They almost immediately begin calling out expletives and taunts, challenging him to “play faster!” or “play better!” and “cover bands suck!” Finally, one of them picks up a full bottle of rum and chucks it across the room.

And I roll a critical hit.

The bottle karoooms off of Tyrion’s head with a dramatic spray of blood. The music ends in a haphazard jangle of notes and piratey “yar har hars!” Tyrion is nearly killed, taken down to one hit point. And then all hell breaks loose.

Abenthy launches himself at the pirates, fists out and slamming into flesh. He takes on two at once: one a scraggly scrapper who first threw the bottle, the other a hook-handed man who uses his disability as a boon, scratching and clawing with his metal hook. A third, a hulking black man with a braided beard, charges him from the side. Karina tries to launch into combat as well by getting fancy with parkour (one of her flaws), but only succeeds in dramatically flinging herself unceremoniously over the bar and into a shelf of bottles. 

The tide turns when Tyrion uses his dissonant whispers to send the scrapper into a fit of brain bleeds, breaking his spirit and turning him into a slobbering mess. Abenthy uses COMMAND to halt the other two, and Karina puts the icing on the cake—trying to be dramatic again, she flourishes her blade, accidentally rolls a critical hit, and tears out hook hands’ eye. After this, the pirates are ready to talk under the influence of Abenthy’s Zone of Truth. What they learn distresses them.

Seems that these pirates are part of a slave ring being run from within the monastery. No mention is made of the Abbott, instead it seems that a man known as “The Seneschal” is behind the slave ring and coordinates it from within a secret cave underneath the monastery, accesible from the sea. And in three days, they are to meet the Seneschal there and prepare for “a special shipment.” Three days... the significance of the number does not escape the attention of the group. Three days is how much time the Abbott gave them before a promised response to their problem. Seems like someone has overheard of this and decided to act first.

Abenthy rewards his informants with a trip to hell—murdering the pirates and sending their souls to a master he himself does not fully understand. But this time, it feels more right than ever, like he was meant to do this. Karina and Tyrion look on, nervously, not altogether comfortable with their friend’s newfound bloodlust.

Then the players prepare for sleep, feeling that they have enough information to get the drop on their foes, not realizing how powerful the evil is that targets them, not knowing they are already one step behind in a game being played out by experienced schemers.

Next week, Weave a Song for Me.

[littlehammies]

Day 25 - August 14, 2020

Today was one of those challenging days where no one was meshing well together and everyone had their own issues going on. Sometimes it seems like we just can’t all be happy and healthy at the same time. It’s a day I would probably prefer to forget, but I guess it’s still worth documenting. Our activity today was to see the sights at Arches National Park. This park is full of red sandstone rocks that are slowly eroding. As Brian pointed out, the rocks will never look completely the same since they are always changing. The formations of rocks are possible because the entire area is on a salt bed that formed the structures way back in the Jurassic period.

This was unique, unlike any of the national parks we’ve been at so far. Ella was eager to capture pictures of the scenery during our drive when she asked for my phone. I handed it to her and as she turned around to take a photo, she immediately flung the phone out of the open car window. OMG. Leo and Ella both burst into tears and shrieks at a level I haven’t heard in a while. You would have thought it was Tilly who fell out that window. Brian and I stayed calm and pulled over to try and turn the truck around. I watched my phone in the middle of the road as cars whipped over it. Luckily, it landed in the middle of the lane. We turned around and went to get the phone. A few scrapes and a crack on the screen protector, but that was it. We then had to explain why it’s not necessary to get that upset over a thing like a phone. I’m sure Ella will laugh about it later, but she was still pretty upset that it happened.

After getting our photo at the sign, we stopped at Balancing Rock. This gravity-defying rock is just hanging there in the sky, perched on a stack of weathering rocks. At some point, it will fall. The smaller side kick rock fell in 1976, leaving this one all alone. It was cool to see up close and the boys did a little climbing around on the rocks. Ella and I tried to stack rocks into piles, a-la-Jenga towers. The park rangers actually stack piles of rocks up along the hikes to show people where to walk.

The next stop was Delicate Arch. We skipped the hike and drove to a viewing area instead. It was so far away that the people around it looked like ants. Today was just a quick preview though. The master plan is to watch the sunset there and witness the stars coming out. The kids got a kick out of desert wildlife. They chased around lizards with big ideas about how to make them our pets.

The final stop was an area that had a cluster of arches you could get close to and climb on. We parked and took the trail which was a quarter mile hike down to the arches. That seems like a piece of cake, but it was 105 degrees and I was having trouble even seeing straight. The kids were dragging as we chugged water to try and stay alert. Oliver perked up when we got to a massive rock cave, possibly the beginning of a new arch one day. He and Brian set off to explore it while I tried to collect myself and not pass out. Leo was laying in the dirt crying and Ella was complaining about anything and everything. The wheels were coming off our bus, quickly. Once the boys came back, we somehow made it back to the truck. Catching our breath in the AC helped, but everyone was wiped out.

Back at the RV, we had some lunch and tried to rest. We also decided it was probably time to get Oliver checked out by a doctor. His motion sickness is just not getting better and he’s even nauseous when we aren’t driving. I took him to the urgent care center in town to check his vitals and talk through options on coping for the next few weeks. He’s a trooper, bouncing back quickly each time, but it’s hard to watch him throw up every day. The doctor was really nice and she said she completely understands because she struggles with the same thing, carrying Dramamine in her purse. Overall, he’s okay. We talked through ideas to help us keep him hydrated and hold back the nausea. She said to try Benadryl during the drive so he can sleep. She also prescribed us some Zofran which is a prescription grade anti-nausea medicine. A combo of this and some other tricks should help us prepare for the next drive. I’m feeling more confident that we can help him and it was good to make sure Oliver knows we are really trying everything we can.

We stopped at the grocery store to pick up the prescription at the pharmacy. While we waited, we grabbed a few things like new face masks and snacks. I was browsing through the re-hydrating drinks when I noticed that I couldn’t read the box. Not again, I thought. I blinked a few times and could not believe that I was getting my second migraine of the week. Since I usually only get 1-2 a year, I was equally pissed off and concerned. I tried to stay calm and told Oliver we have to leave. My main concern was driving us 2 miles up the road before the aura took over my vision. He was helpful and didn’t complain. We made it back safe and Brian would go back later to get Oliver’s medicine. I downed a few water bottles, Advil and a protein bar. In thinking about the day, I know I was dehydrated and my cereal from earlier was not enough to keep me going. Lesson learned - I need to take care of myself too. The migraine was not terribly bad and I was functioning again in a couple hours.

Brian prepared for the evening trip back to Delicate Arch to watch the sunset and stars. I decided it was best for me to sit this one out. I kept Leo back with me so Brian could focus on some quality time with the big kids. Leo and I went for a walk with Tilly, took showers and went to bed. He is the best at snuggling and can hold quite an interesting conversation. Our pillow talk went on for 20 mins about his school. He has such detailed memories of all his friends, their classroom, and all the rituals they did each day. It makes me sad that we abruptly left that all on March 13th, a place he loves so much. I hope he can find the same excitement at his new PreK in a few weeks.

Brian and the kids came back around 11pm. I got the full story in the morning and it sounds like they made lots of memories out there in the dark. It was very very dark, but they were prepared with flashlights and got to take in the “snow globe” of stars all around them.

After writing this out, I realize this whole day wasn’t that bad. We definitely had our moments, but I will try to stay positive and remember the bright spots.

[aspirgallant]

Ringing. That was all Aspir could hear. Not shouting, not thunder, not the clashing of metal. Just ringing. The world spun around him while he felt frozen in place. He wasn’t even sure where he was anymore.

Am I dead? Did I die? He began thinking to himself. Didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. I’m sorry The-

“Outlander!” a voice yelled out.

It cut through the ringing like a knife, shocking Aspir out of his trance. One by one his senses started to return. He recognized that the voice belonged to Amal, who was calling out for him with what seemed to be confusion. What did she have to be confused about? That he was still alive? Admittedly, he was rather confused about that himself. The answer came when he was finally able to focus his eyes.

His prosthetic arm was engulfed in blue fire, which extended forward to form a translucent shield. Waves of light pulsed out from the shield, creating a solid barrier that surrounded him. The ground was smoking and charred right in front of it.

“Did… did I…” Aspir murmured. He lowered the shield; the barrier fading as he did so. He brushed it with his other hand, and found that despite its flaming appearance, it was only mildly warm to the touch.

He was familiar with spirit weapons, but never thought himself skilled enough to summon one. His grasp on magic was always shaky at best, and yet here before him was the purest manifestation of a guardian’s magic. How was this possible?

He did not have long to ponder on the question before the sound of another blast echoed out.

“Outlander! Move!” Amal shouted.

But there wasn’t enough time. The ball of energy already came barreling straight at him. In an act of pure instinct, Aspir once again raised the shield, the barrier materializing around it. The ball collided into the barrier head on, but rather than exploded on impact, it pushed into the barrier, causing it to distort inwards.

Aspir’s senses were buzzing as his body strained against the pressure of the attack. It were as though he was being electrocuted. Every ounce of strength and magic in his body was used to keep that barrier up. Yet, despite the struggle, he stood strong. He felt strong.

I can do this, he screamed in his head.

He took the slightest step forward, pushing back against the blast.

I can help these people!

With a furious cry and another push, the barrier bursted into a ripple of force. Sand flew up into the air and the blast launched backwards. Aspir fell onto all fours, gasping harshly and fighting just to not pass out.

The forged commander and its bastion watched as the volatile energy came hurtling back towards them. The commander immediately sprinted out of the way, but the bastion was helpless as its heavy, lumbering body futility tried to walk towards safety. The ball smashed right into its face, exploding into a shower of lights and sparks. As soon as they cleared, it was revealed that there was merely a blazing hole where the construct’s head had been. It stumbled around clumsily, sparks of energy discharging from the new cracks in its torso. Something from within its chest lit up, and suddenly its entire middle erupted. With that, the bastion’s limp and thoroughly shattered form fell to the ground.

Save for the distant thundering of the brandstorm, the battlefield had gone totally silent. Forged and humans alike stared at each other, neither seemingly ready to make the next move. Amal walked over to Aspir, who was still resting on the ground. She squatted down to his level, and tapped him on the shoulder to grab his attention.

“Are you… alright?” she asked.

Aspir looked up to her face, still breathing heavily. His entire body ached with the exertion of what he’d just done. Not to mention he could still feel the salt on his cheeks from the tears of his breakdown minutes before.

“I’m… I’m not sure,” he answered honestly.

She raised an eyebrow. “Do you think you can still fight?”

He responded by attempting to get back up, but found himself falling back onto his knees. “I just… need a moment to rest.”

Amal nodded. “Don’t take too long now, because this is far from over.” She raised herself up and pointed her chin at the forged commander, who appeared to be literally fuming.

The commander’s sword flared up once more as it swung it towards the humans. “Enough of this! Kill them! Kill them all! FOR BALTHAZAR!” It dashed forward, dozens of forged following close behind.

Amal crossed her daggers and crouched down, prepared to strike. “Keep them away from the academy! We end this now!” She sprung up and started rushing towards the commander. The defenders of Yobash bellowed out their own warcries and ran after her, clashing with the forged mere meters from the school’s perimeter.

As the two forces collided, the commander launched a fireball at Amal, who sliced through it with ease. She jumped for its legs, daggers ready, but a swift kick sent her tumbling away.

“Look at you all; weak and frail. What is the point of this?” the forged commander asked with a rumbling voice as it brought its sword down on Amal, who barely rolled out of the way.

She quickly flipped back onto her feet and bared her teeth at the commander. She circled around it, looking for an opening of any kind.

“Is Balthazar not your god as well? Did you not once serve him? Why resist!?” Every sentence came with a swipe from its sword, which Amal nimbly dodged.

“It doesn’t matter what he was to us before, we’ve been spent our whole lives fighting one slave master! We’d never pledge ourselves to another!” She tossed a dagger at its back, which scratched its ribs as it turned around to face her. The metallic creature groaned as the anti-magic imbued within the blade tore through its fiery aura, but ultimately the damage was minimal.

The commander unleashed a wave of flame from its blade. Amal succeeded in avoiding it, but it continued on to hit another of the defenders, who fell instantly in burning agony. Amal took only a second to watch in horror before she had to continue her circling, lest she suffer the same fate.

“Look how easily you all burn. Balthazar offers strength! A new place in his world! You could fight for more than mere survival!”

As Amal ran around the commander, weaving through its strikes, she could see Aspir striding through the battlefield with his arm ablaze and determination on his face. For just a moment, they caught each other’s eyes. She came to a skidding halt in front of the commander and leapt up with magical strength, sending her above the commander’s head. As she began to descend, she pointed her remaining dagger downwards.

The commander extended its hand towards her, burning red hot and primed to sear through the flesh of her neck. However, in the second before contact, a flying hammer made of brilliant, blue fire slammed into its stomach, resounding with a loud clang and knocking the commander onto its back.

“I FIGHT FOR FREEDOM!” Amal cried.

The dagger landed right in the space between its neck and torso. The commander growled in pain and rage as Amal’s magic cut into its arcane essence. With a roar, she shot out a wave of golden energy from the dagger. The flames sputtering from the commander’s body went dark as the wave washed over it. It began to still, save for one last, meek effort to reach out for her. It managed to grab her wrist, only for its hand to go limp. With the dagger still lodged in its neck, the commander laid in the sand, dim and lifeless.

The clashing of steel and throwing of spells ceased as the remaining forged paused to stare at the motionless husk of their former leader. They swapped glances between each other and slowly began to pull back from their foes. The defenders moved away in turn, but kept their weapons at the ready.

Amal pulled the dagger from the commander’s neck and lifted herself up. She stared back at the forged with eyes full of defiance; just daring for another to step forward.

The forged stood quietly in formation until one in the front finally shouted to the rest.

“Retreat!”

Others repeated the order as they started to run towards the dunes, one after the other. Freerunners, sharpshooters, hounds; all running off into the distance.

The defenders all broke out into cheering, raising weapons and hugging each other in the face of their victory. Some shouted insults at the retreating forged, laughing all the while. Amal simply turned around and walked several feet towards Aspir, who was struggling to stand only a few feet from the commander’s body. She wrapped his arm around her shoulders and had him lean against her. Once he was stable, she smiled.

“How do you feel now?” she asked.

“Like someone dropped a bag of bricks on me,” he groaned.

Amal chuckled. “After what we just went through, I’m surprised you don’t feel worse. Especially after that little trick with the spirit weapon. You’re more impressive than I thought.” She started walking towards the school grounds, the small guardian in tow.

“That was... new to me too.” He stopped to cough, then continued speaking. “But... I didn’t do anything anyone else here couldn’t have done.

She sighed at that reponse. “You know, you’d do well not to doubt yourself so-”

The sound of a massive boom drowned out all other noises. The cheering ceased as everyone frantically started searching for its source. They expected to see another wave of forged war machines, but instead saw a swirling cloud of crackling energy and dust miles away. It spread outward at incomprehensible speed, threatening to swallow them all.

The humans quickly began running towards the barrier surrounding the school, hoping the djinn’s magic would shield them all from the impending disaster. Amal’s eyes were wide with panic as she attempted to drag Aspir to safety. He tried to walk along with her, but found himself too drained to do much more than hobble along with her.

The winds came upon them quickly, scooping them up and tossing them forward. They both went flying through the barrier, still tangled together. They landed on the ground with a thud; the air knocked out of their lungs.

Aspir unraveled his arm from Amal’s shoulders, setting her free. He rolled onto his back and looked upwards, finding all vision of the outside totally obscured by the sand. Thankfully, the barrier managed to keep out the worst of it, the wind passing around the barrier as opposed to through it. Save for a few rocks and other heavier objects occasionally getting thrown in, they were safe.

He felt so weak. As the others huddled together and murmured amongst themselves over what caused this storm, he could sense his consciousness slipping away. He closed his eyes, and fell asleep to the sounds of close-by whispers and distant roaring.