#lets pretend the vision shells are separate from the visions themselves

[churomo]

she’s taking him shopping

[supremeinlilac]

Greiving for something not lost

Sally Mckenna x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 5.1k

Warnings: Canon death, mentions of suicide, grief, slight mention of nsfw activities but it’s literally nothing.

A/n: Here’s the exchange gift for @cissa-calls , and I hope it’s not too dark for you :/ I researched a lot of Greek Mythology because you said you enjoyed it so it’s based around a myth, although as always I got carried away so it ended up only being a small portion. I hope you like it :))

Instead of taking the direct route to the Cortez, you idled down the backstreets of LA, one hand stuffed deeply into your pocket as you scuffed feet against stones on the path. It did little to clear the fog in your brain after yet another argument with Sally, it was always too loud in the city and you seemed to never be able to silence it enough to think.

Sally had promised you, time and time again that the next job would be the last, and you clutch at the hopes that each time she’d be telling the truth. Each time you’d fumble with fingers against the hem of her jacket and beg her to stay, and she’d pry them off and tell you not to follow her.

“The Hotel Cortez is not a place for you babe,” she’d say, and then she’d be gone.

Usually, you’d accept that, and would wait by the window for glimpses of her silhouette along the street when she’d returned. Your heart would thrum in protest against your ribs almost painfully until you’d see her safe again. This time, you’d both cried and fumed. Neither understood the other, neither wanting to admit that they feared what that meant.

Your other hand held a small spray of white anemones, and an apology scribbled on paper. You had to rehearse it before you met with her again, she seemed to be able to sense when you weren’t genuine. You’d wanted flowers of a darker colour, they were more Sally, but had had to settle with that of purity and innocence. Not Sally at all, but you were still too proud and stubborn to stalk around more shops to find the perfect gift for her when you’d both been in the wrong.

The detour meant you’d probably find your girlfriend already high, stumbling aimlessly around rooms with that grin on her face that always made you want to kiss it off her. No doubt that tonight would end as it always did. Possessive and passionate in your shared bed. Sometimes you wouldn’t even reach it. Sorry with Sally was always spoken through sex.

The thought of apologising through kisses and softly idle fingertips had your pace quickening, and the guilt heating up within you. You didn’t like fighting with Sally, and you sure as hell didn’t like what you fought about, but you loved to bribe her back to you this way. But as you turned the corner to the hotel, the guilt in your stomach dropped into that of dread, and a lump formed so quickly in your throat that you felt you would choke on it with what you saw.

Aphrodite had warned Adonis about the dangers, just like you had Sally, and yet, here they both lay. It was as if her body blurred into two with your tears, two lovers, separated by the cruel twist of deaths knife in a hollow chest.

You seemed to be able to do nothing but stagger towards her, vision smoky and you prayed it was a dream. That you may stir in the sheets beside Sally, and she’d reach to still your tremors like the silent hand of a god against the rumble of an earthquake. Be still my love, do not fear what can not hurt you. I’m here, reach for me.

Now, you wished for something as merciful as a dream.

Her face paled to grey as you neared, and the world seemed to fall away. Passers by seemed unaffected as hurried feet carried them home, anxious to block out the city with thick blinds and gentle music. Your despair willowed to nothing, a commotion simply on the other side of the road wasn’t a rarity. The city had seen it all before.

It turns out the Hotel Cortez wasn’t a place for her either.

You felt like throwing yourself to the ground beside her, bare knees scraping against the harsh pavement, yet you’d welcome the pain beside your lover. White noise filled your ears, and only the blaring of car horns could cut through its insistent ringing. You couldn’t even hear yourself crying for help to anyone who might listen.

Her eyes were wide, glassy and pleading, but you saw no life in them. The glass gave way to murky water and it was clear you’d reached her too late. Defeated, you crumpled beside her, flowers forgotten in leu of pressing lips to her temple and whispering the apology as if it may be heard by her soul and it might return to her body. To you.

You wanted to close her eyes with gentle fingertips but feared that if she stopped seeing you then it would be the end. That it would mean she was gone.

A flower sprang where he lay, hours after Adonis’ death, a deep crimson anemone that bore the shade of his blood. Born from the sweet nectar from Aphrodite’s hand, the wildflower bloomed. Beautiful trauma.

The flowers on the ground by your side seemed to wilt, sensing the sour odour of deaths passing, they hung their heads in mourning and shrank into their petals. Heavy with grief. White anemones turned red under the suns dying love, its light bowing behind the buildings so it may pretend to have not bared silent witness to souls divided.

Aphrodite pleaded for her lover’s life in the underworld, so he could be with her once again in life. You would have plead as she did, knelt and sold your soul for Sally to be returned. You would have done as Aphrodite did, if you thought it would help. If you thought that someone could see your pain and render it pure enough to grant the impossible.

In the real world, there are no gracious second chances for such a fickle thing as love.

And now, it seemed that the Hotel Cortez would be her place, tied to her always in death.

You stayed by her side until the coroner arrived to take her away. You couldn’t cry, instead just watched through eyes of steel as the back doors of the van were slammed obnoxiously, ringing in your ears long after it had pulled away and been lost to the traffic. You vaguely registered someone’s hand on your shoulder, a soothing motion, talking as if underwater, muffled and unintelligible. You felt like you were barely clinging to driftwood on an unsettled sea, each swell of a wave bigger than the last.

In shock- you heard someone say. Suicide. That broke your haze.

When you’d got home that night, the silence had screamed at you. It had been too quiet to sleep, and you ached for the way she’d blast music loud enough to warrant the neighbours complaints the next day, so you’d have to bake horrendously in the kitchen cookies as apologies. Or when she’d strum against her guitar and the gentle tones would pull you from your work and into her lap to watch her fingers manipulate the instrument into art.

You craved the shrill laughter of Sally when she’d prank you childishly, how she’d pull you towards her and you’d see how joy creased her face beautifully. You’d always want to make her laugh and brush the pads of curious fingers over the dimples formed and make her shy away.

You’d never hear her song again, you realised, blinking away tears when the guitar propped in the corner caught your eye. Chest heaving painfully, you half wanted to grasp it by the neck and slam it against the ground over and over until anger diffused and you could cry into its shards. The other half, the winning half, wanted to pick it up and set it against you, ghost fingers over its strings so the thrum was barely audible. She’d played this tune, taught you this tune, and you vowed you’d never forget it. Fingers in her shadow, you ran them over the smooth wood, eyes closed and head back on the sofa.

She was everywhere in the apartment, and it only served to remind you that she was also nowhere.

The suffocating hands of her absence pressed against you, a ribbon of blackened ash around your ribs, until they threatened to crack under its pressure. Was it possible to miss how she hurt? Your lover, with her wild hair and glassy eyes, you could see her as she was, you would drunk in how she would move. Dancing slowly in an empty room, as if the world were watching her.

Wild hair was born to writhing snakes, and you feared to look directly into her eyes now. Death had claimed her as its own, and you refused to accept her insistent fate. She’d return. You’d look into her eyes and see that of your lover, and not of Medusa. Lungs of stone, how could they swell to receive the gift of a breath without her beside you?

Now you drowned the guilt, drunk in its depths instead of in her eyes.

Stuck in endless loops of questioning what if. What if you hadn’t taken the detour, what if you hadn’t argued, or if you had made her stay instead of letting her leave the apartment? Would she still be alive?

It wasn’t your fault but oh, how that option seemed so sweet in this moment. To be swarmed with an actual reason to hate, how it would be easier than the reality. You’d rather have yourself to blame than have no one. Responsibility for actions you weren’t even sure of. Questions unanswered by police, that would remain unanswered because the only person with the solution was gone. What had happened?

The pressure seemed to build up in your head, an unbearable thickness of thoughts that had nowhere to go but to force themselves down your throat so you’d choke on them, and the feeling of sickness would resurface. They’d swim in your gut like parasite and never still.

It was worse at night.

Distractions were less and your emotions ran so far above you on blackened clouds, so out of reach that you doubted you’d ever be able to wrestle them back into submission. Would they eternally be dancing in mockery and pulling at marionette strings in your limbs? A shell of your former self, only held up by unpredictable emotions that could burn you with their ice just as much as their fire.

After your first day back at work after the incident, you’d returned home exhausted, wanting nothing more than to collapse into yourself on the sofa and cradle one of her jackets. You forgot the lock the door on your way in, and remembered hours later, after the sun had drooped once more that you needed to lock yourself with your thoughts again for the night.

You reached into your handbag, searching for something that seemed menial now, and instead your fingers curled around her packet of cigarettes. You stopped, hand still in the bag, and your breath caught painfully in your throat.

It had been the first since that night, raw and salty tears that burned your eyes red and blurred your vision. The kind of crying that wore you to nothing within minutes and had you clutching bony fingers to your chest as if to pry open ribs and reach your lungs. You couldn’t breathe.

Everything caught up with you, and you felt as if you were falling alongside her, scrabbling to find purchase against nothing. The rational side of your brain knew that you wouldn’t crash to the ground, but you couldn’t help but be brought back to her side in that moment, a whirlwind of emotions that you couldn’t control, circling your head in a way that made you dizzy with your grief.

Her pale face, mottled with the tears of her death invaded your mind, the blood staining the pavement. Suddenly you felt hot with it, as if the sticky blood was covering you, pulling you to drown. You could smell its invasive metallic scent, almost taste its musk in your throat with every breath. It was thick, and you were clawing at your arms to try and wipe it away. It was everywhere, and then it was nowhere, and you wondered why you’d been tricked by grief in the first place.

Shaking, your fingers had flipped open the packet and picked one out. You didn’t smoke, yet trembling hands found the lighter and lips found the filter which already had a smudge of red on it. Almost as if Sally had gone to light it but changed her mind, discarding it back for later use. She never used it again, now it was you that drew in an unsteady breath, drawing the panel door to the side as you took the rest of the cigarettes onto the small apartment balcony you both shared to smoke them, alone.

There was really only room for one person out there at a time, yet you and Sally would huddle together on the nights when the city would keep you awake, and she’d wrap pale arms around your waist and nuzzle her chin into the crook of your neck. Passing her cigarette back and forth you’d overlook the streets below and watch the living.

You’d both used to wonder what it would be like to lead the lives of those people below, those on their way to work before the sun even surfaced over the horizon and set its path for the day. Working before the pair of you had even been asleep. The banality of their routine, oh, how you both pitied them. They’d work boring jobs to pay the rent for the whitewashed walls they’d come home to each night, eat the same meals at the same time, prepared by wives wearing lines of age, deeply set in valleys on their faces. These people always looked older than their years, tired and worn from work and children born to save a marriage already lost.

You’d used to pity them, yet now, you craved the intimacy of a boring life with someone you loved. You’d rather the predictability of this life than the one you had now. Nothing.

On the balcony, you smoked all the remaining cigarettes in the pack. Usually, you didn’t smoke, but you did, just to feel close to her again. Curling your fingers around the butt the way that she used to, and blowing the smoke out, watching it furl and twist into the cold night. You craved the warm roughness of her hands.

She’d kiss you with the lingering taste of those cigarettes, and you’d grown addicted to it. Still, once you’d finished the packet, you’d found yourself unable to rebuy them.

Slowly, you forgot its essence. You felt like you were forgetting her.

In the news, you waited for them to show a photo of Sally, one detached from everything she’d grown to be, beside a headline of death. The low hum of the city news was background noise to your grief, and you ached for someone to care enough to tell about her passing. For weeks, there was nothing. There was nothing and then there was everything, all at once, and in that moment, you knew that you would’ve preferred the nothing.

They said she’d jumped.

They hadn’t known her, and they said she’d jumped.

How dare they when you’d screamed at them until hoarse that she would never, that she promised she would never? The quick solution, one that wouldn’t raise questions, or demand the precious funds of the very system she’d been cheated by, to fork out for justice. She was an addict, they’d said. Painting the sky above her head an angry black, with clouds that swirled with viscous intent. She was a junkie, and therefore the answer was simple.

Death had been an inevitability with a life like that, habits like that. A person such as that.

You wasted grief on your anger, long nights where you’d clutch the phone to your mottled cheek with whitening knuckles, cursing everyone who’d rendered your love unimportant. You’d fall asleep on hold to police that had no more answers for you, no more pitied excuses and apologies for a loss they knew nothing about.

And it was on one of those long nights, when you sought for comfort that could be not offered by the living, that you reach for the memory of the dead. Running fingers deliberately slowly over the clothes that hung in the wardrobe, fingering through her dresses on the railing before slowly closing the door again, leaning against it and sinking to the floor.

You’d opened all her drawers that night, some for the first time. Spritzed her dresses with her perfume that still stood on the mantle, revitalised Sally in the apartment with her smell. It was as if you were back to then, when she’d return from work, stroppy and tired, yet still reach for her perfume and generously sprayed the air that she’d then dance into.

Picking one of her band shirts out of the drawer, you slipped your shirt off and replaced it with hers. It was soft cotton, the one she’d most frequently sleep in, and it brought you warmth like her hugs used to, arms enclosing you and grounding you in moments of fear.

You slept in it that night. Telling yourself that that would be it and then it would return to the drawer. But one night stretched painfully into three, and you found yourself unable to sever the small mercy you’d given yourself in wearing her clothes, the attachment to her that only you would know when you walked the street. No one else knew the chain you wore were hers, the boots, the dress. No one knew sally because there was no one left to know.

It had been a year since that day.

You’d woken with a headache and turned over in bed, wanting to shelter yourself from the day with blankets, sleep until the moon shone and the day turned into the next. You knew you could do that, but guilt had you pulling on the covers and groaning as the sunlight poured like liquid through the slit in the curtains.

It was going to be a long day. You already felt tired.

Pulling one of Sally’s band shirts over your head, you traipsed sluggishly through the apartment, purposefully ignoring the mess, like she would after a night of drinking. Not that it mattered today. You unhooked Sally’s oversized jacket from the peg and slumped it over your shoulder. Today was the day, you’d decided. You were going to visit her grave.

In the past year, you’d planned to visit her grave on several occasions, but avoided it at the last second. You couldn’t stand the thought of Sally trapped there, tied to the soil when she should be dancing upon it with you.

Sally couldn’t be tied down to a single place, she moved freely, without reign. It was how she liked it, and how you’d learned to love her. Labels had never been her thing. And now she was labelled on stone, with a corny phrase that she’d hate, with a date too early, a life too short. Sally deserved to be free.

She was the wind, unpredictable and changing and wild, she would go where she pleased and return on the breeze. Sally would’ve hated being buried, and yet through the selfish need to have a real place to visit her, she had been. You can’t capture the wind in bare hands, can’t collar it or tame it and make it beg. It controls you and you have no choice but to concede to it.

That was Sally.

Even now, a year later, you found yourself faltering. The gates of the cemetery loomed ahead of you, and your hands bunched at the material of your pants nervously. You could feel it calling, begging almost, for you to simply reach out and push the gate open with a metallic creak of protest. To visit the place you’d always avoided.

But just as you always did, you lost your nerve, sighing and peering down the road for a reason to be drawn away. For a distraction, even just for a moment. An excuse to gather your thoughts just enough to face your lover.

A corner shop caught your eye, with the newspapers in the windows just begging for customers. How convenient. Stuffing hands into pockets, you strode over the road with new purpose.

Dragging yourself down the claustrophobic aisles in the store, you distracted yourself with exited colours on packaging, picking items of shelves and replacing them further down the aisle. You didn’t care for tidiness today.

When a shop attendant asked you if you needed any help, you gave him a sad smile in appreciation and picked up a small bunch of white anemone flowers, her flowers. Last year, they’d been a peace offering, this year, an apology. The employee shuffled along again, and you set your eyes down to the floor.

Flowers in hand, you made your way to the till, placing them delicately onto the counter and fiddling for coins in your coat. You hadn’t planned on buying anything, so neglected to bring your wallet. Luckily, this was a coat you’d not worn since Sally’s death, and she was a fan of keeping loose change in the deep pockets.

“Is that everything for today?” the woman behind the till chirped with the voice of someone with long experience in public services. It cried out in tired falsity, in ‘how long have I left on my shift?’ It was a line well-rehearsed and overused.

Just as you were about to nod in answer, your eyes caught the tobacco cabinet behind the bored check out assistant. “What brand?” She asked pointedly, and you stared dumbly past her. Had Sally ever bought cigarettes from this store? Shaking out the thought from your mind, you answered her, asking for Sally’s brand and quickly paying and leaving.

Outside the shop, you held the package tentatively in your palm, fingering at the packaging as she used to when she was nervous. She’d wrap a tune with her chipped nails against the boxes edge, and you’d coax it from her, and dip her under the moonlight in your arms. Now, holding the cigarettes held no comfort for you, feeling both foreign and familiar, it left you aching for her.

Still, you found yourself unable to visit her grave. It was all too real to see where she lay. You needed something tying Sally to you that wasn’t so physical. You laughed to yourself. How ironic it was, to force her into a grave for something so trivial as to have a place to call her resting place, only to find yourself too weak to face your choice.

Instead, you took a left, and then another, and then a right, and continued until you could no longer smell your own fear in the air with the concept of her grave. Deeper into the city, where the pollution stained white houses grey, you could breathe clearly again. Guilt will consume a person, clog their lungs with it until their breathing is laborious and the weight drags them down into their thoughts.

You’d walked this route before, one year before, with white anemones and an apology in hand. You’d never gotten to tell Sally what you’d wanted, but perhaps you’d take her the flowers, and smoke her cigarettes in the window where she’d fell. You’d tell her what you didn’t get the chance to.

The hotel was just as you remembered it, flickering neon 34w`lights that read ‘Hotel Cortez’, and the eery alleys and parked cars that seemed to be in the same position as the year prior. It was as if time had paused, hotel residents left their cars and had never returned to them.

You weren’t really aware of yourself in that moment, feet leading a silent path as you found yourself stuck in a memory. When you reached the place you found her, your feet faltered, and you couldn’t tear your eyes from the paving.

The pavement was clear, physically untainted, and any normal pedestrian would question your loitering. But although it appeared to be clean, you know because you’ve seen, you’ve remembered. The pain that would still remain, deep in the cracks of the paving stone, no matter how much scrubbing the clean up team undoubtably did after Sally’s body was removed, they couldn’t remove. They couldn’t fade the scarring, or the feeling of death that overcame you when you stared at the place she’d laid.

Someone bumped your shoulder as they passed on the street, muttered remarks about people standing in the middle of the street, and you raised your eyes to watch them walk away. When you looked back at the stone, the connection to it had been lost, and you found yourself unable to re-enter the trance you’d been in.

Pressing through the hotel doors, you left the light of the sun behind, left the living, and joined the death of the dusky lobby. Wondering through its room, you imagined Sally doing the same, with confident strides and a purpose. It was a nice place for downtown LA, you had to admit, but you couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that came with it, of being watched by invisible eyes in the walls. The feeling one gets when you visit a place where death rules over occupants.

You looked up to the next floor, and swore you saw a flash of an animal print coat moving behind the barriers. No. Must’ve been the lighting change from coming inside.

A woman pointed you towards the bar, and you nodded towards her. Did all visitors come for the hotels bar? She seemed to know exactly what you needed, tired eyes searching for something not quite there.

In the bar, you drank and you smoked and spoke with the woman behind the bar who must’ve noticed the void behind your eyes. She didn’t question you, why you were alone, just slid extra drinks across the table with a wink and a smile. You didn’t return it, opting for a grateful grimace instead.

All of a sudden, the smell of Sally’s perfume seemed to melt into your senses, overpowering that of the cigarette, and the liquor, until your head swam with memories linked with its scent. You didn’t remember spraying it this morning, and it confused you. It was so strong, and real. It didn’t seem like your brain was tricking you with its musk, like it so often would with a silhouette against the apartment window.

Suffocated by Sally. You drowned in its poetry.

Searching for its origin, your eyes roamed the bar. It was real, you figured. Turning on the bar stool, your eyes met those that you thought you’d forgotten, and you found they were exactly like you remembered. Sally stood, leant against the wall opposite you, arms folded at her chest yet wearing cheeks stained with tears and widened eyes. You scrambled out of your chair, and the world fell away from you. You didn’t even try and catch it when she was next to you.

You palmed at your eyes, begging yourself to wake up from what must be a dream. Despite knowing she wasn’t real, you ached for your mind to stay in this fantasy so at least you wouldn’t be alone. Removing your hands, you felt yourself lighten. Sally remained still, unmoving yet she was closer that ever. You could reach and brush against her cheek if only your arms would cooperate.

“Y/n?” she breathed, in that choked up voice, and you were falling again.

As if trapped in a dream, you startled awake with the feeling of cool fingers massaging against your scalp. The room was foreign, and it smelled like her. Foreign, yet startingly familiar as if you’d been there before.

Sally was curled into your side, and your breathing laboured again. You didn’t understand how she was here, you- you buried her. Sniffling broke your doubts, and Sally adjusted her head atop your chest. When you wiggled beneath her, her sniffs turned to coos, and her fingers in your hair and clutching your top were soothing at your cheeks.

“I love you, I’m here,” she flustered, worrying her lip between teeth, and you could see the moon in between buildings outside the window. It watched you with bated breath and shone onto her pale skin until her tears seemed to shine. “Say I love you Sally.”

Sitting up against the pillows, you caught her face in your hands, cupping it so she couldn’t move away as you remembered the outlines of her eyes, lips, the curve of her jaw and cheekbones. “I love you,” you found yourself admitting, tears welling in eyes that couldn’t believe what they were witnessing, “are you real?”

“I’m-” Sally started, faltering as if she didn’t quite know the answer either. “I’m here.”

You wanted to apologise anew, whisper the memorised speech that you’d spoken to her that night, but the words seemed to catch in your throat, sharp like the barbs from barbed wire were caught against the delicate skin. Instead, you pulled her in to brush lips against hers, testing slowly if they actually would meet and not melt through what your mind was making up.

They did meet, and you muffled a wail against hers, all the pent-up grief for the woman you were now kissing resurfacing. Fingers clung to her coat, which was still soft beneath your touch, and you pulled her closer to you. She cried, and you cried, and hands met to brush them away.

“I missed you baby.”

You didn’t stop to think about what it meant that she was here. Focusing only on her hands linked firmly in yours, and how she deserved to feel the taut string of a guitar again. You’d bring it to her, and she’d play her song. You’d hear her voice and feel the vibrations of her throat against your lips as she sang.

You’d do it all again.

Time you thought was lost was now frozen, suspended in a single heartbeat. She hadn’t aged a single day, and yet her eyes showed more trouble than you’d ever seen. You couldn’t wait to return and kiss away her worries, reintroduce yourself and love her and be loved like you both deserved. But for now, you were content to simply exist in her presence again.

You wouldn’t take her for granted.

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[moving-wright-along]

tim for the yandere alphabet ?

For this I’m going for a CP vibe, so this is mainly Masky behavior, but I don’t think he really wears the mask around his darling. 

TW: Not to bad, mentions of hitting and abuse. Murder and whatnot. Yanderes are very unhealthy in real life babes!!!!!! 

Affection: How do they show their love and affection? How intense would it get?

Before meeting you, Tim wasn’t a very touchy or affectionate person. Although that changes when he finally has you safe in his arms, he becomes almost suffocatingly affectionate at times. He’ll trap you in a bear hug, your face pressed into his chest and his limbs wrapped tight around you. Good luck getting out any time soon, because he’s going to get his daily snuggle time. 

Blood: How messy are they willing to get when it comes to their darling?

Very. Bloody. His first plan wouldn’t be to kill all your friends and family, but he certainly would if he felt like he had to. He can’t have anyone prying into things they shouldn’t see, or trying to take you away from him, so if he thinks someone is close to getting in the way, they’re gone.

Cruelty: How would they treat their darling once abducted? Would they mock them?

He would only be mocking or cruel if his darling didn’t immediately accept him. He’s going to become frustrated and angry at every little snap or cry, god forbid you try pushing him away or fighting back, because that’s when he’s gonna get really pissed off. He’s a naturally very angry person, and not even his darling is totally protected from it. 

Darling: Aside from abduction, would they do anything against their darling’s will?

Snuggling for sure. Especially in the beginning when you’re still scared of him. Just like in Affection, he’ll trap you in his arms for hours until you calm down and accept his love. 

He also likes to control what you wear and do. You’ll be put into a lot of his clothes, or just things he think you’d look cute in. He likes having as much control as possible, so he enjoys picking things like that out for you. 

Exposed: How much of their heart do they bare to their darling? How vulnerable are they when it comes to their darling?

Tim remains completely closed off, emotionally, even to his darling. In his mind, it’s his job to remain strong and protect you, so he always has to be on guard. There are points sometimes though where those walls will come down, and you’ll see how he really feels. 

Fight: How would they feel if their darling fought back?

Like I mentioned in Cruelty, he’d be incredibly frustrated and confused. He’s given you everything you could need, what more do you want??? If his darling fights back, he’ll become a lot more likely to punish them or take away rights, so they’ll be forced to see just how much they need him. 

Game: Is this a game to them? How much would they enjoy watching their darling try to escape?

This. Is. Not. A. Game. He’d be BEYOND pissed off if his darling even tried to escape, not to even mention if they succeeded. If his darling managed to get out, well, first of all good luck, because now you’re just lost in the middle of a forest with other killers and an eldritch being in it. And second of all, he’s going to get blinding tunnel vision. He’s not going to rest until he’s caught you and dragged you home by your hair. He doesn’t care how much you scream or cry or beg- you betrayed him. 

Hell: What would be their darling’s worst experience with them?

(Maybe not the worst, but definitely still bad. The first time you realized just how willing he is to hurt you if you defy him.)

“I...I’m sorry, baby, but you know you shouldn’t make me mad like that.”

You flinch away from him when his gloved hand reaches up to stroke your swollen cheek, wiping away a tear. He pulls your cowering body in close, pressing your red face to his chest. 

“Don’t ever do that again. Okay? Next time, I might not be able to hold back.”

Ideals: What kind of future do they have in mind for/with their darling?

Tim hasn’t thought much about the future in specifics. Overall, he just wants to live out this ‘normal’ fantasy, in your own little world where everything is okay. This is his future. Coming home after work everyday to his darling, that’s all. 

Jealousy: Do they get jealous? Do they lash out or find a way to cope? 

He’s extremely jealous. Of everything. Before he whisked you away, his skin would start to itch at any little interaction you had. The waiter’s playful banter, the girl who complimented your outfit, the dog you stopped to pet- He mostly just bottled it up and seethed in private. 

Kisses: How do they act around or with their darling?

He tries (keyword, tries) to make your relationship as normal as possible. Of course his concept of ‘normal’ is a little distorted at this point. Very suffocating and overprotective. You’ve very rarely find yourselves in separate areas of the house, because he’ll always want to be with you. 

Love letters: How would they go about courting or approaching their darling?

He doesn’t. He silently pined after them then kidnapped them when it became too much for him to handle. They probably had no idea he was even romantically interested in them. 

Mask: Are their true colors drastically different from the way they act around everyone else?

He’s more laid back around his darling once he starts trusting them more, but he hides any semblance of you and being in love around others. Not because it’s weak or he’s ‘hiding his true, soft self’ or whatever, but because he’s literally that paranoid of someone taking you away. 

Naughty: How would they punish their darling?

His go-to is isolation. Locking you up in your room for a few days with only the bare minimum of what you need to survive. This way, maybe you’ll be a little more grateful for everything he does for you once you’re let out. And while violence isn’t his first choice and he doesn’t like purposefully hurting his darling like that, he can and has lost control before. 

Oppression: How many rights would they take away from their darling? 

Mentioned above in Naughty. He’d take away essentially everything if he felt like he had to. You’d might as well be in solitary confinement. He might even chain you up if you’ve done something he’s deemed unforgivable, like trying to escape. 

Patience: How patient are they with their darling?

His patience with his darling is higher than it is with anyone else, but that’s not really saying much. He can be forgiving if his darlings makes a genuine mistake, not so much if they defy him on purpose. 

Quit: If their darling dies, leaves, or successfully escapes, would they ever be able to move on?

If his darling escaped- absolutely not. He’d kick himself every minute of every day, thinking about what he could’ve done better to make you stay (more accurately, how he could’ve better trapped you). If you got out, you’d better hope they’ll accept you into Witness Protection, because he’s going to be hunting you down for the rest of your lives. He won’t accept anything else. 

He’s even more devastated if his darling dies. ESPECIALLY if you die while in his care. Any sanity he might’ve had left would fray and snap, leaving him an empty shell and completely unstable. 

Regret: Would they ever feel guilty about abducting their darling? Would they ever let their darling go?

He’d feel bad about it if his darling cried a lot or clearly said that they missed their home/family. And while he would feel bad that they were upset, he would never consider giving them up. Sure they’re sad but it’s for the best. He’s the only one that can keep you safe, after all. 

Stigma: What brought about this side of them (childhood, curiosity, etc)?

Pretty much every person that’s been important to Tim has either died or abandoned him. He stays so protective and possessive of his darling because he can’t handle losing another person- especially not his darling. 

Tears: How do they feel about seeing their darling scream, cry, and/or isolate themselves?

He’d feel bad if he did something to make his darling cry, but he might start getting irritated if they were yelling or being loud. His solution is usually to let you just cry it out and get over it. All you need is a little time to adjust, you’ll learn to love him soon enough. 

Unique: Would they do anything different from the classic yandere?

The only thing that may be different than typical yandere behavior is that he at least tries to act sweet and caring and at least kind of normal.

Vice: What weakness can their darling exploit in order to escape?

He can be mean as sin sometimes but he still has a soft spot for his darling. He can definitely be manipulated by his darling if they play along with his little fantasy. I don’t think he could be sweet talked into giving you anything that might aid your escape, though, he’s ultra paranoid about that. But you can certainly trick him into giving you more rights or whatever else it is you might want. Snuggle up to him, initiate affection, tell him you love him even if you’re lying through your teeth- he’ll melt like putty. 

Wit’s end: Would they ever hurt their darling?

Not on purpose, but when he does he’s the king of gaslighting you into thinking it was your fault somehow. 

Xoanon: How much would they revere or worship their darling? To what length would they go to win their darling over?

How much he worships his darling would depend on them. If his darling accepts his love and returns it? 100%. He’ll do his absolute damndest to treat you like royalty. He’d also try pretty fucking hard to get you to that point of loving him back- he doesn’t want you to pretend to love him, he wants you to love him as much as he loves you. If his darling is good, he’ll reward them frequently to try and win them over. 

Yearn: How long do they pine after their darling before they snap?

A pretty long time, actually. You probably just start off as a friend or acquaintance, and he keeps you at arm’s length for a long time. Tim has convinced himself that getting close to people only gets them hurt, but he catches himself thinking about you so often, and he starts to spiral. He needs you, but what if you get hurt because of him? What if you get taken away like everyone else? This thought eventually spirals into you need him. He needs to save you from this cruel world, and protect you. To answer the question, it’s probably at least a few months. 

Zenith: Would they ever break their darling?

Again, not on purpose, but it’s certainly possible depending on what kind of person his darling is. Accidently breaking his darling is probably one of his worst nightmares. 

[ckret2]

Ghidorah & Gigan Crash the Opera

It's hard for a blade-covered chicken-penguin cyborg and a three-headed snake-cat-bat dragon to get opera tickets.

But it's fine, Gigan has a plan: convince the ticket seller they're VIPs.

... Or, failing that, plan B: mug somebody.

Written to an anon’s prompt: "Hello! If ye be currently accepting ghid/gigan prompts rn (honestly love the ship too), how about the destructive duo crashing an opera performance or something like that? Love your work!" and to @soundwavereporting‘s prompt “Something for either rodorah or Ghidorah/Gigan? :D” from ko-fi.

This is part of an ongoing series of KOTM-verse one-shots. If you don’t wanna read the others, all you need to know is: Ghidorah was originally three dorats (small winged feline/lizard pets) who were turned into a monster by Xilien aliens; after Ghidorah escaped the Xiliens and before they arrived on Earth, they worked as world-destroying mercenaries and occasionally teamed up with Gigan; Ghidorah objects to being named so Gigan mercilessly nicknames them; and Ghidorah and Gigan have mutual semi-secret crushes. Links to the other fics are in the source at the bottom of this post.

###

"Where are the lines?" the triple threat asked. Gigan watched as they stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to peer at the ground around their feet, and then toward the opera hall. "We can never remember our seating footprint," they said, a tad more irritably, "how are we supposed to calculate it?"

Every planet that served as an interstellar hub eventually had to deal with the fact that intelligent aliens came in as many different sizes as planets themselves did. Some planets carefully planned separate neighborhoods and business districts to cater to different sizes ranges, segregating aliens out by height; some catered only to aliens their own size, leaving any aliens too large or small to fit in to fend for themselves.

Stellae Binariae XI's entertainment venues took full advantage of easily-retractable furniture to provide seating for as wide a variety of sizes as possible. A standard bench was designed to hold ten aliens of the most average size in the local interstellar community. Benches were retracted into the ground to provide a seating space for aliens too big to fit on one, their seats assigned based on height—tallest in the back to avoid obstructing each other's views—while seats for standard-sized and smaller aliens were set up into bleachers in the front. The large aliens had their ticket prices calculated based on the number of benches one of their seats would take up—their "footprint"—while smaller aliens' ticket prices were calculated based on the number of standard seats they took up. The very smallest could pack together ten to one seat and see a show on a single ticket, as long as they didn't mind sitting in the front.  

Gigan and his buddies, however, shelled out hundreds of times more than the average customer for the honor of sitting on the floor in the back.

"This isn't some cheap second-run theater, they don't have lines," Gigan said. The three of them were used to that theater chain that printed rectangles on the lobby floor you could stand inside to guesstimate your footprint. "Stop looking so cranky, someone's gonna think we're here to burn the opera house down."

"We are cranky, it's late. We're tired."

By their standards, "late" was "any time past sundown." Gigan sent a ripple of brighter red light from one side of his optical visor to the other in an attempt to imitate eyes rolling. "It's barely nighttime," he said. "Anyway, you suck at using the lines, you always buy twice as much space as you need."

"We do not. We get the smallest space we can stand inside."

"You always include your wings! You tuck your wings under you when you sit, you don't need that much space."

"We don't want to be crowded. What do we do if we get to our seat and it's not enough space?"

"You could stretch out on my lap?" Gigan said, the absolute picture of innocence.

They smacked his leg with the side of a tail. "Be serious."

He kind of was, but he wasn't going to tell them that now.

The Eburnean Opera House was, Gigan suspected, the only venue on Stellae Binariae XI that not only accommodated aliens their size but also was fancy enough to mandate a minimal dress code even for aliens with a license proving nudity was the cultural norm for their species—which, of course, having no ties to their home worlds, neither Gigan nor the trio had a license for anyway.

(Gigan—after what felt like an eon's worth of wheedling and a mountain's worth of gold bribery—had gradually persuaded the trio to give him enough of their shed skins to patch together a snazzy-looking vest and pouched belt. The three of them, for the sake of not getting any more dirty looks than they were already bound to just because of their size, had elected for the evening to conform to the cultural mores of one of the more influential species in this solar system, which considered any body parts in excess of a standard bipedal plan to be signs of an impending budding and therefore taboo to expose in public. They'd wrapped up in sheer red shawls—stolen tents—and draped two as veils over Front-And-Center and Righty's faces, leaving Lefty unobstructed and thus in charge of observing the world on their behalf. They all looked very fancy and felt very uncomfortable. Although Gigan was digging the belt pouches.)

Most facilities that prided themselves on their exclusivity tended to exclude bodies that didn't fit in the local cultural limits for normalcy, size included. But this two-thousand-year-old structure, from what Gigan had heard, had been sponsored by and named for some big patron of the arts—with "big" meaning both "famous" and "huge." That was probably only the reason they'd be let in the door at all.

No discounts for being the size of the guy they named this place for, though. An average seat in this place probably costed as much as one movie usually did for Gigan and friends. He was about to drop a small fortune on seats.

Worth it though, if he got to take the triple threat to their first opera.

"Don't worry about your footprint," Gigan told them. "I know what size you are, I'll buy your ticket."

"If you don't give us enough space, we will sit on you." They paused. "Don't look so happy about it."

"Happy? You're seeing your own reflection off my beak. You wish you had an excuse to take a seat on this." He gestured at himself.

He wasn't sure which head scoffed, but he'd put money on Righty.

As usual, they skipped most of the line to the tickets by casually pretending they didn't notice it as they stepped over it. Gigan crouched down to smirk at the knee-height ticket seller. "Hey!"

The ticket seller looked up at him disapprovingly, clicked a button at his desk, and waited while the entire box office slowly elevated to eye level with Gigan. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah, we're here to get tickets for, uh, The Devil in Love?" In his peripheral vision, he could see all three heads perk up. Yeah, he thought so. He hadn't told them which opera he was going to take them to. This one, as far as he could tell, was their favorite—certainly, he constantly caught them singing songs from it.

"What name are your tickets being held under?"

"No no, we don't have them yet," Gigan said. "We're here to purchase."

The ticket seller's look of disapproval deepened. "We don't have spare seating for guests of your stature the day of a performance," he said. "Nor usually the month of a performance."

"Oh, no worries, you've got room for us. We're VIPs, see," Gigan said. "Here. Our credentials." He rummaged in a hip pouch on his belt until the magnetic back of his tablet stuck to his scythe, pulled it out and tapped with the tip of his other scythe on the screen, and held it out for the ticket seller to inspect.

He looked skeptically at the page Gigan had pulled up. "This is a news article about a planet being destroyed?"

"It sure is," Gigan said, leaning in with a faux conspiratorial hush to his voice. "And we're the monsters that destroyed it. Like I said, pal—we're VIPs. And we're willing to make ourselves very immense problems if we don't get to see this show."

Getting the picture, his buddies raised their chest and arced their necks to surround the ticket seller's box, doing their best to loom threateningly. "Threatening" didn't take much effort for them.

The ticket seller looked between them and Gigan. "Ah. Yes. I understand. Shall I call someone to escort you? He gestured with a flourish toward one of the larger stickers mounted on the box office window. It said "Zone Family Security."

Gigan's back went straight "Oh! Y—y'know what? You guys look like you've got a pretty busy night, we can... we'll come back when it's less crowded."

The ticket seller nodded smugly.

The trio stared at Gigan in disbelief. "What?"

"Come on!" Gigan leaned against Righty, slung an arm around their shoulders, and didn't make any efforts to be gentle as he dug his scythe into Lefty's neck. "C'mon, c'mon, it's fine. Let's go."

"What is it?" Lefty tried to peer at the sticker as Gigan tugged them away. Front-And-Center ducked around Righty to give Gigan a baffled look through his veil. "We're not running from security guards?"

"It's not just security, it's Peacelanders," Gigan hissed. "We don't mess with Peacelanders."

"Why?" "How tough can they be, they're called Peacelanders." "We wanna fight 'em." They tried to turn back around.

Gigan dug his scythe in harder. "Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh. No. We are not fighting the Zone family."

"So we're just going to leave without seeing the show?!" "After we got all dressed up?"

Gigan grabbed for the nearest head—Righty, as it happened—and tugged him over so he could whisper to him quietly enough that the sound couldn't carry to the ground. "Of course we're not leaving," he hissed. "I promised you an opera, didn't I?" He nodded toward a narrow alleyway—well, to them it was a narrow alleyway; to most other aliens it was a broad empty street that was blocked off with a sign that said Opera Access For Gigantic Patrons. "We're just not going in the front door."

###

"Seriously, why are you so tired?" Gigan asked, leaning away as Front-And-Center let out a massive fang-exposing yawn. "It's only a couple hours past sunset, you should be fine." And they'd only been waiting on the rooftop of the warehouse neighboring the alleyway for about half an hour.

"Ih's cloudy," Lefty said through a yawn of his own; Gigan elbowed him to get him to turn his face away. Now Lefty was gonna set off Righty and Righty was gonna set off Front-And-Center again. "We're always sleepy when it's been cloudy a few days." (And there was Righty's yawn.)

Gigan shook his head. "I swear that's the biggest irony of your lives," he said.

"Hmm?"

"The Golden Demise! Superpower number one: automatically summons hurricanes with every flap of their dread wings. Superpower number two: solar powered." (He noted, smugly, that Front-And-Center had just yawned again.)

"'The golden demise,' what is that?" "Did you just make that up?"

"I'm trying to think up a title for you guys to market yourselves under. Not a name," he knew how tetchy they were about the idea of being named, "just—something customers can look up if they wanna find you."

"Customers already find us."

"More would find you if they had a name they could search for instead of 'hey, we want this merc that's really good at flattening planets, no idea what they're called, ring any bells?'"

That earned Gigan a double snort. Fronty said, "'Golden demise' sounds pretentious as hell."

Gigan leaned away and gave them an exaggerated up and down. "You are pretentious!"

"We're sophisticated," they said pretentiously. Gigan hooted.

"Anyway," Righty said, weaving between the other two to lean closer to Gigan, "that's not the biggest irony of our lives."

"What, you've got a bigger one?"

"Yes," Righty said, mischief glimmering in his eyes.

"Okay." Gigan waited. "You gonna tell me what it is?"

"No," Righty said.

Gigan waved Righty off in a way that very nearly decapitated him, and leaned against Lefty. "So what's Righty's big irony."

"I dunno," he said cheerfully.

"What?"

"He won't tell us."

"What?!" Gigan flung up his arms in disbelief. "You can hide things from each other?"

"He can." Front-And-Center tapped his horns against Righty's. "We're not so good at it."

"Why do you even have that ability?"

Righty said, "Solely and exclusively to torment you."

"I'd believe it," Gigan grumbled. His attention was caught by the gate at the alleyway's entrance as it slowly rolled open. "Oh," he elbowed them, "here we go." A luminous ivory-colored slug riding on what looked like a parade float progressed down the alleyway, accompanied by practically an army of small quadrupeds wearing glowing jewelry that matched the slug's off-white glow. "Between slimy here and its entourage, they've gotta have a big enough seating footprint for the four of us, right?"

They leaned forward, their heads tilting thoughtfully. "If it plans on sitting on its big skateboard," Fronty finally said.

"I can't imagine it'd get off, where would they stow it?" Gigan stood. "Okay, showtime. Get your battle faces on."

Lefty shook his head to loosen up his neck, Front-And-Center stretched his jaw with a hiss that made his veil flutter, and Righty snapped his fangs a couple of times. "After you."

Gigan slammed down in front of the little parade, clashing his scythes together. "Good evening!" The triple threat hit the ground behind the parade, hissing static and sparks. Between them, the tiny bipeds clustered up around their slug, who rippled fearfully. Cheerily, Gigan said, "Wonderful night for an opera, isn't it? My friends here and I were hoping to go, in fact, but they didn't have spare seats for us. Imagine!"

He pointed at the slug, the tip of his scythe almost near enough to slash its quivering throat. "I don't suppose you have spare tickets, do you?"

###

Gigan pulled the curtain aside. "Nice! A private box!" He pulled down a cushion scaled to his size from the wall, dropped it on the floor, and plopped down. "Now this is real luxury. We wouldn't get this with orchestra section tickets." He pulled up the drinks and snacks menu on the touch screen at the front of the box. "Concessions too! Do you think they deliver or do we have to pick them up?"

They sat on the floor with their legs folded under them, crossed their wings on the box railing, and Lefty got to work scoping out the facility while Front-And-Center and Righty peered curiously at the stage. "Were concessions covered in their ticket price?" Fronty asked. "Or are they purchased à la carte?"

"À la carte, listen to you. You're almost starting to talk like people." Gigan elbowed them. They whapped him from behind with a tail. He must be on thin ice; the spikes almost got him that time. "No prices listed, so who knows. But we didn't have to buy tickets, so we can cover it."

With his mandatory survey of the room finished, Lefty twisted around to inspect the menu too. Righty asked, "Any fossil fuels?"

"Didn't see any in the snacks, but I haven't gotten to the drinks menu yet."

"Any samplers?" Fronty asked. Lefty butted Gigan's shoulder, "I want tapas."

"You'll just lick everything."

"You can eat what we don't like."

"What, after you lick it?" But despite his protests, Gigan scooted over to let Lefty take over the touch screen. He uncurled one wing to poke at the screen with the tip.

If there was a way to order, they couldn't figure it out from the touch screen. They decided someone was probably supposed to come around to take their order. By the time they started wondering where their waiter was, the lights dimmed, and so they settled in for the show.

###

For the first fifteen minutes, the trio was enthralled. Front-And-Center and Rightly flipped up their veils and all three stretched out of the box, watching with rapt attention as the performers on stage sang the opening numbers, quietly rattling their tails to the beat of the music.

Then Righty's attention drifted, followed by Lefty's. By the half hour mark, Fronty's attention was wandering as well.

At about forty minutes, Gigan gave; for all that he appreciated operas as one of the finer things life could offer, he didn't go to them for the entertainment so much as he did for the social cachet. This one sure wasn't doing anything for him, and if it wasn't doing anything for his friends then he could skip the rest. He elbowed them and scrolled a single word across his optical visor: "BORING?" One of them clicked his tongue in the affirmative. Gigan jerked his beak toward the curtain. The next time there was applause, they took the opportunity to cover the noise of their exiting the box.

"They just stood there singing at each other." "We at least expected dancing!" "And where did they get the lead contralto, she's clearly got her wings tuned to sing at equal temperament when the whole orchestra is using just intonation."

"Okay, I was with you but then you lost me."

They offered a triple sneer. "We could sing in tune with the marimba section better than her if we were using a tesla coil."

Gigan held back a squawk of laughter.

The right two shook their veils back down in place. "Let's raid the concessions stand, come back for the ingénue's solo, and blow this place."

"Blow like leave it or destroy it?"

They tilted their heads, considering the question. "Leave it," Front-And-Center decreed. "We can see a better show later."

Here Gigan had been afraid he'd turned them off to opera forever. "Hey, at least we saw this one free." They started down the spiral ramp to the ground level. "It'll be easier to afford the next one."

"We've got to find a cheaper way to get tickets. Think they'll notice if we keep mugging people for seats?"

"Maybe we can slap leashes on you and claim you're my support animal," Gigan joked.

They looked thoughtful.

"Oh no."

"Is this one of the states where support pets get their seating footprint for free?" "It's about half of Stellae Binariae XI now, right?"

For a moment, Gigan allowed himself to bask in the fantasy of locking three collars around the willing throats of a monster that could slaughter him without a second thought. It was a very nice fantasy.

But no. Playing at being a pet was one thing. He could get into it if it was just playing. Under the circumstances, though, he was pretty sure that would just go further to convince the trio that they were pets. How many centuries had he spent now trying to get them to treat themselves like people?

"Not gonna work," Gigan said. "We'd have to get documentation to prove your species is used as support animals."

"We were support animals," Lefty said, and Righty quickly clarified, "We weren't, we weren't trained for that. Our species was." Fronty said, "We're not about to call home for proof, though."

"Well, there goes that idea."

As they reached the bottom of the ramp, they slowed down. The way off the ramp was blocked by a small party standing in the lobby talking together: the giant slug they'd robbed earlier and its entourage, and several bipeds of wildly varying heights with matching silver armor and glowing eyes... Oh. Oh. Hoo boy. That was the Zone family. Gigan froze and held out an arm to block the trio from walking forward. They walked into it with a clang of metallic scales on metallic scythe.

The whole party in the lobby turned to look at Gigan and friends.

They stared back.

Gigan croaked, "Hey! Funny running into you, we just, uh... wanted to ask if you wanted to switch for the rest of the show? We're heading out early." In his peripheral vision, he could see flickers of yellow electricity as lightning slowly worked its way up two of the trio's throats. Gigan elbowed them.

The tallest of the Zones turned to the slug and said, "Are these the muggers who stole your tickets, Madam Goddess Eburnea?"

"Eburnea!" Gigan said, his voice going even higher. "As—as in the Eburnea that the Eburnean Opera Hall was named after?"

The Zone nodded slowly.

Gigan slowly nodded back. Then turned to the trio and said, very calmly, "Fly for your lives."

###

They made it out in one piece.

And the opera hall almost did too.

(And Gigan accidentally cut off his own belt with his abdominal buzzsaw. Now he had to drape it around his shoulders like a scarf.)

Eburnea's devout worshippers agreed to drop charges, if they agreed never to set foot in the state again and each prostrated themselves before Eburnea a thousand times.

Gigan wasn't sure how the triple threat managed to convince Eburnea that each one of their bows counted for three; but as they wandered around loudly griping about how long Gigan's was taking and debating (out loud, which meant they were only doing it because they wanted him to hear it) whether they should just fly off and leave him behind, he kind of hated them for it.

But not really.

###

The four of them retreated a couple of states away, found a neighborhood with some buildings built to accommodate their size, and grabbed seats at an outdoor table in front of a closed cafe as they pondered what to do with the rest of their night.

Fronty and Righty tossed their veils back to wear like scarves, no longer concerned about who they offended if they didn't have a fancy show to go to. Fronty scrolled through the tablet Gigan had loaned them looking for somewhere interesting that was still open and could accommodate their size, Lefty took in the street around them, and Righty leaned in toward the other two, gaze vacant, mentally withdrawn inward.

Gigan used to think that when their attention went three different directions like that, it meant only one of them was focused on the task at hand; but over time it had dawned on him that they did that because there was no reason all three of them should have to stare together at the same object when each of them already saw what the other two saw.  Fronty went through the tablet, and because of that Lefty and Righty could consider the available options. Lefty looked around, and because of that Fronty and Righty knew what the street looked like. Whatever Righty was pondering, the other two were no doubt tuned in to.

And meanwhile, the outsider tagging along on this little committee meeting, Gigan sat backwards on a chair at the next table and watched them.

Sometimes, when they were in motion, looking at them was like looking at three marionettes someone had spray painted the same color, snipped apart at the joints, and tossed into a washing machine with a window in front: an anarchic tumble of shapes and body parts that never quite seemed to connect to each other in any logical way.

But then, sometimes when they were still like this—sitting on a chair turned sideways, leaning one side against the back, their feet curled up in the seat, their wings crossed on a table and taking up the entire surface, a single street lamp illuminating them in orangish light from the side—he saw them all as one continuous, sinuous, glorious shape.

Sitting behind them, the light shining straight through the sheer fabric delicately wrapped around their shoulders and back, he could trace the entire length of their left and right spines with his optic: from their napes nearly hidden beneath their crowns of horns, down the centers of their necks, over the curves of their upper back where their spines crossed through two sets of powerful muscles, down to the point where their spines narrowed toward each other along the small of their back, over their hips, along the length of their tails to their twin barbed rattles... He could see the slightest asymmetries around their spines, the evidence of ancient surgeries: the way their right upper back was a little bit wider and their left upper back hunched a little bit higher; the scarred lump near the base of the right tail where part of one spine had been grafted to another; the cleft between the vestigial shoulder muscles in the middle of their back where their middle spine dipped in and vanished from view. Their dull gold glowed in this light.

Gigan couldn't remember what his body had looked like before he'd been a cyborg—if he'd ever known what it had looked like. But he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that before he'd had scythes, he must have had some sort of—of fins, or vestigial wings, hell, maybe even tentacles—something like that at the end of his arms. Something that tapered to a soft point that could feel. And he knew that because when he looked at them like this, he craved so badly to run his whatever-he'd-had-down their back, tracing alongside each row of barbs that ran down their spines, all the way from the napes of their necks to the tips of their tails. But all he had was scythes.

"There's karaoke a short flight away. Open all night," Lefty reported without glancing at the tablet. Righty added, in that slightly dazed voice he sometimes got when he was exiting the triple threat's inner mental landscape and reconnecting with the real world, "We'll have to duck to get through the doorways, but we should fit."

"What're the drinks like?" Gigan asked.

"Let us check." After a moment, they grumbled, "Overpriced."

"For us, or in general?"

"In general."

He made an annoyed buzz. "We'll jack some rocket fuel on the way over."

"That works." They stretched their wings, slid off the chair, and waited for Gigan to retrieve his tablet.

"So, what's tonight's playlist going to be?" Gigan asked as he checked the map to the karaoke bar. "The opera we missed?"

They considered it. "No." "We're feeling more like cheesy war songs."

"Ooh, haven't heard the death growls in a while. Better get a private room."

He stowed the tablet in a pouch and they took off.

###

(Replies/reblogs are welcome & encouraged! Check the “source” link below for my masterlist of KOTM fics in this verse, as well as my AO3 and Ko-fi links.)

[insomniac-arrest]

The Glass Window

genre: gay mermaids, original piece

words: 5k

Summary: A lagoon mermaid spends her days in her zoo lounging and diving for pearls, her keepers can’t explain when she starts sulking at the bottom of her cage and blowing bubbles

Paria knows, she knows there is something in the next the cage over and she can’t stop looking at it

The first one they put in her cage was a Scorpiea, a fiery youth with bright red hair to match his thrashing stinger tail and scorpion torso.

He looked like he would set fire to every bush and tree in sight just to watch the visitors gape and bask in his own flames, which he did. Paria watched him flash his hundred watt smile her way and scorch the sand into a charred goo, almost glass and almost nothing.

She wrinkled her nose at him and waited for the creature to tire himself out.

The satyr across the way, Foloi, snickered at her like he knew, he always knew something, she makes a face at him and squares her shoulders, he just plays a jaunty tune on his pan pipes back.

She doesn’t even bother to learn this Scorpiea’s name before raising the water level in one flick of her finger and letting him flounder, he tries to evaporate the waves before they hit them but Paria jerks her chin up and sends him capsizing.

Her caretaker, Sydney, gives her a sharp look as the other mythic is pulled into the undertow.

Sydney wasn’t amused.

Paria just fluffs her dark hair, she wasn’t going to share her enclosure and she wasn’t going to be mated or bonded or subjected to whatever it is they were planning.

Foloi plays the tune of some cartoonish theme song a little girl had been singing at him earlier, Paria gets a headache and dives down to the bottom of her cage.

They fish out the Scorpiea with a crane later and they leave her alone for another week.

--------

Paria had to take the second one out by hand. He was a Jengu and surfed the waves like a slick oil spill, his gills fluttering open and closed as he gave her a placid curious look. He tried to smile her way when she surfaced and gesture at her shells and long brown hair.

She sticks her tongue out at him and he just throws her a kiss with some suggestive hand gestures.

She wasn’t interested.

Paria practically took him and threw him over the glass wall, she was hoping to get her point across. Her second caretaker, Maya, groans as the guests scatter and jump and point as the water splashes over the sides of the tippy-top, a Mythic crashes over the glass.

She wasn’t lonely like they thought.

The Jengu is out before sunrise the next day.

-----

Paria didn’t know why they kept bothering, she managed to take out the naga and kinarra with a swish of her tale and little creativity with water on feathers. The naga almost strangled her but they basically struck a deal.

He wasn’t interested in being paired for show either, they both turned the tank upside down until Sydney intervened and signed to Paria that she might as well knock it off.

Paria had a feeling it was the zoos idea to make an exhibit of two different mythics pairing off, but she wasn’t going to have either Sydney or them walking all over her. It wasn’t their business if she stares out her tank window and blows depression bubbles to the top of the surf.

She didn’t need any more strange zoo-transfer boys pushed on her with fanfare and a poem to her long dark hair and pretty eyes. Paria knew she was pretty enough and she didn’t need a second opinion.

She sat at the bottom of her tank and blew fine crystalline bubbles to the surface one by one, let them never know.

------

The ‘issue’ arose around two months earlier.

She saw her the first time when the moon was a slim crescent up above and the hallways next to her were an echoing ghost walk, Paria liked being awake during those times. The halls were empty and she was alone with her thoughts and so many other things.

Or at least, she thought she was.

Paria always assumed there was something huge and ominous in the tank next to her, it was lower than hers and there was only a large plexiglass window separating the bottom of her tank with the top of theirs.

Perhaps a miniature kraken or an electric squid, she always figured the deep water creatures would shine their fanged teeth at her at one point and she would have nightmares. She avoided that dark five foot of glass on most nights, but maybe she felt like having nightmares that evening.

Paria was swimming back and forth on the bottom, running her hands over oysters and counting in her head how long another pearl would take to form in there. That was one of her enrichment programs: diving for pearl and collecting shells.

She figured the zoo thought those were appropriate activities for her, now all she needed to do was sing for them and listen to their money buckets fill. She didn’t sing for them.

The pearls themselves could be lovely though, she wasn’t completely opposed to the smooth misshapen lumps in her hands and off-colored sheen. It made her want to start a hoard and pretend to be a dragon instead of a nascent mermaid.

She could be a pearl dragon, ten feet, no, twenty feet tall and sitting on her growing hoard until she reached the sky and no one could see her anymore. It was a pleasant dream to pass the time.

Paria ran her hands along the spine of one of her oysters and her eyes unfocus, this one would be ready soon, perhaps she would weave into the seems of a belt.

Her eyes are distant and blurry when she catches a flash of light in the corner of her eye, a bright color that struck her across the face. She turns her head slowly, feeling her skin prickle as she turns in place, an electric surge flared in the cage next to her, she frowns.

She didn’t know much about the cage next to her, on some level she never really wanted to know. She waited for a moment, pausing as she gazed into the pitch dark waters of the deep sea cage, deep and unknowable.

The water was still and calm, fathomless, she felt a prickling down her spine, the same light sparks through the dark like a beacon. Paria raises her eyebrows, she doubted the glowing light from there could be anything too good.

Despite herself, Paria pushes off the cage floor and tentatively approaches the edge, she could only live in the shadow of this place so long, she was drawn to the side.

She waits for another minute and starts to wonder if it was her imagination, if she had just seen the strip of lightning brightness in her head. She hums for a moment and thinks about turning around.

A white light like a landing strip lit up a long twisting figure, Paria raised her eyebrows. Something was definitely in there, and close.

Paria had better eyesight up close than she did in her fine lagoon light, the murky outline of something curved and long takes shape in front of her. She presses herself up against the glass and tries to make out as much of it as she can.

It was long, with a mop of something swirling around it’s head, like kelp or a storm halo. She couldn’t make out the full form, it wasn’t huge like she had expected.

Paria waits and purses her lips until the next brilliant flash and a blip of light seeping into the deep water enclosure and lighting up the creatures face.

Paria’s breath hitches, it was humanoid. Humanoid with a long scaled tailed and slits of gills on her neck.

Paria takes in the breadth of her profile: she had wild flowing red hair that swirled around her like it was alive. Her skin was a similar brilliant red against flushed black stripes on her sides and arms. Her tail was a flashing dark maroon and she had eyes like gaping holes, Paria’s mouth was open, another mermaid.

They didn’t bother to cover her up with a shell bra like the did Paria, she hovered naked and raw in the water, coiled muscles and bright white fanged teeth. She was made of hard edges instead of soft brushstrokes that were expected of Paria.

The mermaid had a series of spikes along her spine and a tail that whipped around the water like a razor, her face was something sharp and almost alien. She had the same mouth and a lovely round nose but a pair of wide faded eyes took up a good portion of her face.

It was ghoulish and breathtaking in one gasping vision. Paria’s thoughts spark and run into each other, she couldn’t help but feel her heart squeeze, almost painfully.

What was that?

----

Paria had no idea what that was.

She had a sense of it deep in her bones but she couldn’t put a name to it, that was another mermaid, another mermaid filled with pointed teeth and something electric (literally).

She tried to dismiss it for the night, the figure disappeared in one bat of her powerful tail and Paria rose quickly to the surface and gasped the sharp cold air of the night. She let the air shock her into clarity and she panted breathlessly, staring at the moon until her senses came back to her.

It’s just another mermaid, she reminds herself. We’re separated even.

Despite herself, the image starts to haunt her waking thoughts anyway, she closes her eyes and they play like a movie in the back of her head. A dark and red mermaid that glowed, Paria would like to glow. Paria would like something.

She starts picking at her food and dismissing all the new nightmares from the deep sea enclosure. Something was in there, and the dreams weren’t precisely nightmares.

She starts hanging loosely by the glass window at the bottom and watching the nothingness of the next cage over.

It was mostly still dim and empty, but some faint lights were turned on in the cage during the day so the guests could see into entertain themselves and get some sort of brief thrill. Maybe that’s what Paria was looking for too anyway.

She waits at the side by her oysters and swears she keeps seeing the frame of wild red hair and a lightning spine. She sees that and nothing else, she sees nothing.

Paria starts to eat less and blow bubbles from the bottom of her cage.

---------

Paria decides to suck up her pride by the tenth day and float up to her caretakers after feeding, she could tell they were discussing her but she tries to ignore them. She mostly wanted to ignore them for the rest of a very long time, she was known for being moody anyway.

She pops up quickly and starts signing furiously before she even knew if they were watching, Sydney focuses on her with an even look.

Paria moves her hands, ‘Who is that?’ She points to her left.

Sydney raises an eyebrow, Paria rarely signed to them, her mother had been the talkative one, she only learned from her- didn’t embody her.

Sydney knelt down and signed slowly back to her, as if they were rusty, ‘who?’

Paria sinks a little lower in the water with her eyes narrowed, she smothers her ego and points more clearly to the far wall, the next cage.

She sees Maya raise her eyebrows behind Sydney and whisper something to Brienne, Brienne just shrugs.

Sydney seems to smile gently, as if she knew something now and Paria’s shoulders tensed as she wonders if she was giving something away.

‘That is Riga. She lives with the other hadal zone creatures.’

Paria pushes herself down in the water and watches Sydney with just her eyes showing- waiting for any more information, Sydney just smiles down at her and Paria gnashes her tale.

Paria rises again, ‘Who is she?’

Sydney signs back right away, ‘a mermaid,’ she expresses quickly, ‘like you.’

Paria bites the inside of her cheek and is torn between more questions and going to go hide underneath a rock.

“Is Pari being friendly today? She is such a beaut in this light,” Paria clenched her jaw as she heard the manager of the zoo's aquarium section approach, Brian.

She narrows her eyes and swims down before she can read anymore of the words from their lips. She didn’t need anymore.

Riga, the mermaid over, the deep sea Riga.

------------

Paria saw her again by the light of the high noon sun, she almost didn’t expect it as the sudden closeness and wide-eyed stare. Riga rose like a mirage from the depths.

Paria was situated with her belly on the sand floor and chin propped up, her vision was glazed over as she kept her usual watch and ignored a steady tapping of a toddler on the glass next to her. Her perch was more routine now than anything, she occasionally blew another bubble to form a thick sea foam above her.

She was in the middle of a long thought about fashioning a long rope out of the flowers they gave her and then there it was.

She saw a river of violent red hair before she saw anything else.

A river of impossibly long hair and that ghoulish barely-there face, Paria can feel her mouth making a small ‘o’ shape. She was lovely.

Lovely in the dark and glowing gently against the bright sheen of Paria’s lagoon water, she was staring blankly ahead, directly at her and unmoving. Statuesque.

Paria opens her mouth uselessly and all she can look at is Riga’s long jagged stripes across her body and her spindly muscled limbs, a jagged torso ending in a powerful tail. Riga probably wasn’t made to dive for pearls.

Paria goes to sign something, to do anything, but her muscles tense and she can only feel her temperature rise slowly, slowly, and then she feels like she’s burning up all over. Riga is still looking at her with something like an expressionless gaze and then Paria is turning around.

She wasn’t ready, she was having day-nightmares now it felt like, she swims to the top of her enclosure with five strokes and her face on fire.

This didn’t feel normal, this didn’t feel like just a hobby at that moment.

She beaches herself on the sand bank and plants her head facedown in the dirt. Visitors inquire on whether or not she was sick.

--------

Paria had her regularly scheduled doctor's appointment the next week, she was almost relieved. She hadn’t seen Riga again, or at least, not in person, she had just relieved the second of closeness and hot tingle throughout her fingers and skin.

Paria was willing to give her doctor another chance.

She lets him examine her pulse and lungs compared to sea bladder and scales, they weigh her with a great effort to get her on the scales (they liked to keep the weight low apparently). She was ‘easy’ for once and even Dr. Schlotman seemed piqued.

He took her temperature last and hummed thoughtfully as she sat on his sturdy metal table.

Maya cleared her throat and Paria paid attention to their mouths, “I know, right?” She says with her palms up, “this is barely Pari.” The doctor seems to hum again.

“We just have to know if anything’s wrong,” Sydney chimes in and Paria is gratefully for a short minute.

Dr. Schlotman slowly, carefully, takes out the thermometer from her underarm and looks at it thoughtfully, “It’s not that unusual,” he shakes it, “though truthfully I never thought this one would ever show.”

Maya gives him a concerned look, “show like what?” The doctor chuckles, “I thought you would know.” Sydney clears her throat, “we would be very interested in knowing fully.” He nods briefly, “she is showing all the signs of something akin to, well, heat.” Paria’s cheeks flare and she hopes none of them were paying any close attention to her. Sydney’s eyes go wide.

“That’s impossible,” she finally says, “she’s never been exposed to any pheromones. She’s never even had a fecundity ceremony with a school.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows, “she’s more than mature isn’t she?” Maya sniffs and glances at her, “more than mature, yeah. But…” “These things happen,” the doctor stands up and looks between all three of them, “of course, she’s not showing all of the symptoms, but her temperature and hormones are evidence enough.” Sydney seemed to swallow thickly, “we can’t introduce any new merfolk to her tank. They’ll attack her.” Sydney and Maya both glance at her (missing) right fin. “She gets around fine with her hydrokinesis but others will have that too. They’ll try and take her out.” From what Paria understood, not from experience, unrelated mermaids did not tolerate weakness or being ‘defunct’- it would slow down the school. Her stomach sinks, and maybe all other mermaids would feel that way too.

She looks at her hands bitterly for a moment.

“Who said anything about male merfolk?” Paria looks up pointedly at that and a quiet thinking buzz overtook the room.

“I suppose we could try other magical creatures,” Maya finally spoke up slowly, “just to pair with. Nothing more.” The room shared a glance and Paria glared at them and signed something angrily, they ignored it.

They introduced a water-centaur to her cage first. It didn’t end well.

-----

Paria spent another couple weeks brooding, kicking suitors out and trying to manage her temperature. She hesitantly approached the glass window again. She practiced in her head what to try to say, to communicate with her, try something.

For some reason, Paria had a notion Riga had answers of some sort, and it’s not like she could attack her through the glass. She waits, she almost gnaws through her bottom lip, hoping this might be the night. It takes two days.

Riga takes another two days to appear once more from the depths of her vast cage.

She was turned away from Paria this time, it was once more in the middle of the night and her long body and spine was a light up shock of brightness. Paria flares her gills and tries to steady her own heartbeat.

Riga doesn’t pause in her distant motion but Paria gradually, slowly, went to press her hand against the cool glass, keeping her eyes on her. She steadies her shaking fingers, she taps.

She manages a single firm tap, loud and distinct.

The glowing white bioluminescence doesn’t cease but Paria begins to tap again and make it more distinct. Her mother taught her this, human sign language first, and then a universal morse code from her own people. The pacific language- though it applied everywhere.

She lets out a rusty series of taps, etching a sloppy ‘hello’ in three syllables.

The light stops, it’s flickering increases, it stops and turns around.

‘Hello’ she taps again and feels her heart pound in her wrist, she didn’t know what she was doing.

The next moment feels like an eternity and she freezes when the light turns around, it starts to come back toward her. The flaring red hair come into light, she was seeing her.

Riga approached with ease, her movements sure and unhurried as she made her way to the side of the glass and Paria earnestly searches her face. She goes to tap on the glass again but Riga had already put her hand there.

‘Hello,’ she taps back.

Paria could practically do a summersault, there it was, and she wasn’t even glaring at her, she was just looking pleasantly ahead, curiously, Paria knew the other mermaid could understand her.

‘Who is this?’ Riga finally taps with deft easy fingers, Paria tries to put her mind to working out her unclear knowledge of pacific language.

She hesitantly makes a couple more clumsy sounds, ‘like you.’

Riga tilted her head to the side and her huge milky eyes flick down, Paria jerks her powerful tail at the look.

‘You have a tail,’ Paria translates her communication slowly, Riga blinks, ‘are you from...the trench?’

Paria shakes her head but isn’t sure that reaches her, ‘I’m from here.’ She finally taps out with a frown, ‘my mother was from a reef though.’

She watches Riga make a sharp pointed smile, Paria’s heart flutters, Riga touches the glass, ‘a lagoon swimmer.’ Riga looked strangely entertained, ‘of course.’

Paria squirms back and forth, ‘and who are you?’ She really did only know the basics.

Riga’s smile faltered, ‘the trench.’ She says back basely, ‘I thought I was all alone here.’

Paria slowly, tentatively puts her whole hand over over the thick plexiglass, it almost matches up with Riga’s, ‘you aren’t.’

Riga gives another bright and surreal smile, she taps slowly.

They begin to talk.

Her name was Riga. She was from the ocean, the real ocean, she pierced one of her lungs in a fight with a mershark and woke up here. She wished they hadn’t.

Paria’s name was after a small ocean, as all of them were. Her mother and her were taken in almost immediately after Paria was born, after she was injured. Her mother had adored the caretakers, the pearls, the faces of the passing stranger.

Riga smiles fondly at that as she taps, ‘you must miss her.’

Paria’s mouth tightens and she looks down at the sandy bottom, ‘do you miss anyone?’

Riga paused and her large milky eyes stare on ahead, ‘they’re gone.’ She said slowly, painfully, ‘they cast me out before I was attacked.’

Paria flinched at that and just nodded, she only begins again after a long pause, ‘what’s the ocean like?’

The faint smile returns to Riga’s face, ‘big.’ Paria laughs at that and Riga’s chest shakes as well, ‘wonderful. Cold and warm. It smells brisk and every part of the far reaches of the current.’ Riga seemed to make something like a sigh, ‘though I miss breeching as well.’

She seems sad and Paria could only sit up straight, ‘they don’t let you up?’

She shrugs and then looks away, ‘let me tell you more about the ocean.’

She begins to spin tales of large angle fish and epic waters and diving below her wildest dreams, the ocean was vast and chilled and dangerous. Paria can only stare on ahead at her and sigh as well.

Her smile was still tugging at the edges of her mouth.

‘Maybe you can go back.’ She finally taps and Riga nods.

‘Perhaps,’ she tilts her head, ‘though I’m not sure I’d like to be alone out there.’

Paria lifts her chin to study her face, ‘well.’ She taps one by one, ‘you aren’t in here.’

Riga presses herself up against the glass, ‘you are too sweet young one-’

‘Hey,’ she narrows her eyes at her.

‘It’s good!’ She looks both ways, ‘the morning lookers will be here soon.’

Paria nods, maybe she didn’t need the strangers gawking at their communication. Who knew what they might think it means.

‘Maybe I’ll ask my trainers to give you extra tuna,’ Paria jokes with a slight clip to her taps, ‘as thanks.’

Riga presses her fingers lightly to the glass, ‘no,’ she says easily, ‘no thanks needed.’ She smiles, ‘I’m the one that’s glad to meet you.’

That’s when her face heats up again, they both say goodbye and Paria has to go bury her head in the sand again. This time she couldn’t stop smiling.

-----

Paria wants to talk to Riga every moment of every day if she could, she wants to ball up her fists and break down the buried in a hundred little glass shards. She doesn’t however, she restrains herself to just their night time visits and then sleeping during the day.

The aquarium managers were not happy about that, mermaids were supposed to be awake.

Paria was still too floored to care, she started to tell Riga everything, about her trainers, about her mom, about the satyr across the way that annoyed her but was still basically her friend here.

Riga slowly tells her about her fight with a beaked squid that punctured her lung, she told her about sharks and starfish and riding the currents all across the world. Paria can just watch her face twitch, her body tread water across from her. Riga.

Her trainers liked that she was smiling more, they didn’t like that her temperature was rising, Paria didn’t know what to tell them- so she doesn’t tell them anything. Her body heat was none of their business she figures.

It’s only when Riga mentions something offhand that Paria pauses to consider her caretakers. Riga mentioned the sun.

She taps her words to Riga, ‘what do you mean about seeing the sunset?’

Riga tilts her head to the side and then taps back on the window, ‘during the dark months. I would go to the straits and the sun would go down across the ice. It was,’ she pauses, ‘lovely.’

‘Straits?’ Paria was thinking.

‘It’s like the ocean, but smaller. More land around us.’

‘I thought you were deep sea?’ Paria asks curiously as she takes in her fearsome features and deep stripes, the idea of seeing her anywhere near top waters felt strange.

Riga’s shoulders shake as she pauses to laugh, ‘of course we breech,’ she shakes her head, ‘I’m still a mermaid. Have lungs for a reason.’

‘Oh,’ Paria feels a little silly now as she thinks about it, ‘they don’t let you go up?’

Riga looks the other way, scratching her chin thoughtfully, ‘only with the prodders. No.’

Paria begins to clear, ‘idiots’ she taps a couple times.

Riga laughs again, ‘it’s alright.’ She says, ‘from what you’ve told me I at least get to hide in here. All the watching they give you!’

Paria shakes her head, ‘they’re idiots too.’

Riga nods with a small twitch, ‘I’m sure it’s just cause you’re very pretty.’

Paria’s whole body felt like it was on fire, she taps idiot again and her insides are in a frenzy by the time the visitors arrive. There was only so much she could handle.

----

Paria beaches herself next to her handlers the next day, preparing herself mentally for the scenario she wanted: a quick talk. Some bargaining.

She makes a pointed look at Maya first, she was the softest and gave her extra trout on odd days.

“Something up Pari?” She asks slowly, both signing and talking at once.

Paria is fast, ‘Riga.’ She says several times in a row, ‘Riga.’

“Oh,” Maya blinks, “I forgot we told you about her, what about Riga?” ‘She needs to come up.’ Paria signs with a slow clarity.

“Come up where?” Maya tilts her head to the side.

“What’s all this?” Brienne asks next as she brought Paria’s bucket of chum for the day.

Maya glances at her, “Pari is talking about Riga.” “What?” Maya turns back to her, “Where does Riga need to go?”

Paria searches the air, ‘up.’ She points, ‘she needs to breech.’

“Huh,” Maya puts her hands on her hips, “never seen her concerned like this.”

“She wants the deep sea mermaid to come to the surface?” Brienne was giving her a look.

‘She’s still a mermaid,’ Paria signs with a fierce flick of her wrists, Brienne chuckles a little. ‘Lungs.’

“Guess that’s a good point.”

“What’s got into you Pari?” Maya whispers to Brienne before signing to Paria, “where’s this coming from?”

Paria begins to push herself back into the water, ‘just do it.’ She glares, ‘or it’ll be..,’ she pauses, ‘bad.’ Paria goes to submerge her head.

“Hmm,” Maya turned to Brienne before Paria fully went under, “I guess we’ll be talking to the deep sea handlers.”

---

Paria has to wait another week before anything happens, she keeps talking to Riga but she doesn’t mention what she did.

Riga tells her about some changes on the sixth day, ‘my handler’s are acting funny.’

Paria tilts her head, ‘how funny?’ She grins, ‘They good at it?’

Riga rolls her large blank eyes, ‘haha.’ She taps, ‘no, they’ve been doing my vitals twice this week and they were talking about some ‘cage,’ a new one. Maybe.’ Riga concentrates, ‘I’m not great at reading them.’

Paria looks to the side, ‘I could talk to them? I know human language well by now.’

Riga shakes her head, ‘not for me. I’m sure it’s nothing big.’ She leers a little with her pointy grin, ‘maybe they just think I’m getting old.’

Paria wrinkles her nose, ‘nonsense!’ She taps with gusto, ‘I could watch you take down a whale.’

Riga laughs, ‘just for you then. A whole whale.’

It’s a very good night.

The next morning Paria sees a cage for her too, roomy and placed just outside her exit tunnel, Paria scowls at it and signs to Sydney that she didn’t need another check up.

Sydney rolls her eyes and tells her ‘get in the tube silly girl. It’s a surprise.’

“Ugh,” Paria makes a sharp noise at her and everyone else plugs their ears at the squawk, Sydney just gives her a blank thumbs up. Paria sniffs and slows the slowest she can into the next cage.

Sydney shook her head, ‘don’t think I haven’t been watching the night tapes girly,’ she winks.

Paria’s mouth falls open, her hands move clumsily, ‘what?’ Sydney just turns around.

The transport is slow and rocky, taking it’s time sloshing her back and forth across the hallways in the early morning, she sees a wooden fence next, it just says ‘exhibit in progress.’

Paria scowls, this was the old wishing well trout exhibit, she makes a face at her handles as they walk besides the dolly next to her. She crosses her arms across her chest stubbornly.

The wishing well exhibit was deep and filled with rocks, she knew that much, and the old talking fish Jeremy had passed away three months ago. She pushes her hair back, and they were probably just going to take her out to add another frilly chair to her enclosure or a harp for her to play.

She does angry tail lashes as they open up the side of the transport cage and she seems reluctantly into it. ‘Ugh,’ she lets them know she’s less than happy.

Sydney nudges her forward and just signs, ‘go.’

Paria does a small little circle in her new rocky enclosure before she sees another round pool next to hers, her eyebrows raise. It was an exact pool like hers separated by a stone wall, she looks at curiously.

Her handlers turn to leave and Paria tries to peer into the depths. A slash of white comes from down below, Paria practically gasps.

She scrambles away as a fiery red head surges up and flips it’s hair back in one swooping movement, Paria almost falls over. Riga does a happy little turn in place and then stretches her arms up to the sky.

She smiles widely and then turns when she must notice a blur of Paria next to her, she swims up excited and taps on the rocks. Paria can only gape at the closeness.

‘You did this,’ she taps excitedly, ‘I know you did.’

Her face was on fire and she can only just shrug and tap hesitantly back, ‘it was just the right thing to do.’ She wiggles back and forth on the rocks, ‘you wanted it.’

She jumps as she feels a touch, callused hand grab onto her own, Riga’s face was wild with something. ‘Paria,’ she taps next to her and leans forward, ‘nice to meet you.’

‘Nice,’ She goes slowly, ‘nice not to be behind glass.’ She inches a little closer, ‘I never dreamed we could…’

‘Yes.’

Paria’s fever almost breaks into a volcano when she feels a pair of lips peck on her cheek. Oh, her jaw goes slack, Riga kisses her cheek again, a little more to the center now.

She can feel a dopey grin spring across her face and she flips her hand over to hold Riga’s properly, feeling her rugged bright skin and closing in closer and closer.

She leans in, the glass is gone.

[limitedrevolverworks]

My Mother 2.0 [1]

They called this a city once, back when most humans hadn’t stowed themselves away inside the Domes yet. It was the kind of noisy place where the hustle and bustle of life made itself heard from one sunrise ‘til the next, a shiny wonderland carpeted with so many lights, you would have had a hard time deciding whether the sky was above or below. If the stars dotting the night beyond several strata of thickly layered particulates have anything in common with this place now, it would be that neither is host to any form of life.

They called this a city once, and it was alive. It was so, so alive. Sturdy spires of steel and glass which arose from the ground were the body. Elevated roads intertwining and crossing with each other without beginning nor end, the veins pulsating with the motorized flow of nuclear-powered vehicles. Thoughts were born from within and cast across a massive cloud of signal waveforms, connecting together the minds and hearts of the citizen - the heartbeat of civilization. The city spoke with holographic ads and neon decorations, inviting the populace to play the game of consumerism and forget about whatever may have lied outside its boundaries. It was a wonderful haven, a cradle for blind children.

They called this a city once, before “battlefield” became a much more apt definition, and far earlier than when it became pointless to call it anything but remnants and similar other definitions.

All is quiet in the windswept ruins today, as it has been yesterday, and the thousand others that came before it. The sound of decadent stillness is a gentle breeze dusting off the wreckages of amputated buildings and purposeless machinery. Mangled corpses with their artificial innards left exposed, to gnawed at by the acidic rains that sweep the surface in periods that span months - at times, even more than that. The last sizzling drop fell a week ago, marking the end of a record-setting decade-long shower. The clouds above have thinned into filaments the same color of the dirty gray soil beneath them now, and it won’t be long before they grow back into overbloated bags of poisonous death. Four years at best. Six months at worst.

Positronic filaments of nano-nerve swimming inside an enriched electrolite gel gaze upon the decomposing landscape through a single optical lens swiping back and forth within the confines of its horizontal visor. Visual data is fed to the wetware-borne maws of artificial neurons governed by quaternary code, providing a cause: only then is the effect produced, and that effect is an emotion, simulated though it may be. However shoddy this attempt at imitating the spark of its creators’ life may be, it nonetheless wouldn’t be so far-fetched to say that what the machine “feels” is worry.

None of it shows on its face, nor will it ever. A tactical visor with its unblinking blue light cannot squint, nor arch an eyebrow it does not possess. Nor could those lips grimace appropriately, cast as they are in the same solid alloy as the rest of its body, their illusion of softness almost cruel. Its face is a mask, forever constricted in a role that it has long since abandoned

(although it would be more correct to say that it was her duty that abandoned her)

just like the scarred rest of its armored shell. Gray plaques and arrays fused to a sleek blue anthropomorphic frame: like an accident on the evolutionary scale, a misstep between a human female and a military craft. It--she would easily pass off for yet another piece of scrap among the many others dotting the scenery, were she not moving, thinking and mulling to herself over how troublesome the immediate future is going to be. Hers are unsteady steps, made less than even by whatever attempt she made at jury-rigging a solution to damage that her left leg’s joint received some century or so before. It makes the trek across the broken wasteland a painstakingly excruciating chore, as if a road paved with more climbing than actual walking didn’t already provide more than enough of an annoyance.

A chore, yes, but a necessary one nonetheless. Raw materials won’t come to her lair by themselves, convenient though it would be. Her foraging expeditions and warped atmospherical agents have brought her this far, miles upon miles of terrain outstripped of its every salvageable resource between her abode and the new boundary she has set here, one among the many monuments to conflicts older than even her left by humanity. Soon - say, a dozen or so years - she might have to relocate her hideout altogether. Carve herself a comfortable nest underneath the rubble and bent metal and the skeletons of broken technology, and then...

And then wait. Sleep. Recharge. Tinker with this or that device in an attempt to reproduce the components necessary to repair her damaged energy cells. Gather the materials to do so. Live, with no other purpose than living, for no reason other than that she does not feel like letting herself do otherwise. Waiting, alone, with the sole company of her silen--

The glowing trapezoidal arrays connected to the side of the machine’s head perk up, greedily rerouting power to themselves to extend their range of action. The faint hum could easily be a particular strong gust of wind in the distance, but her recognition software too good to fall pray to the silly assumption. She has plenty of time to seek a hiding spot beneath the overturned, charred chassis of some kind of unrecognizable contraption the size of a house and let her visual feed prove her suspect right.

It is little more than a dot at first, lost among the particles invading her ultra-zoomed vision. Minutes pass as it grows into a definite shape hovering above the horizon: anti-gravitational cells in a set of four, sustaining the weight of a gleaming white frame, its rectangularity softened by the smoothness of its every corner. There is an otherwordly elegance to this vehicle which was clearly produced within a Dome. It rides the emptiness between its clean, pristine self and the ugly soil like a specter, advancing while in the middle of a descent so gradual it’s nearly imperceptible, until at last mere few meters separate it from landing, and a hundred or so from its attentive observer.

From her limited perspective, the machine can only hear the sound of doors sliding open, and get a glimpse of a silhouette falling - thrown, that is - with a soft thud on the ground below. It isn’t followed by the other passengers: their mysterious cargo has barely left them, that they’ve already arisen and begun to retrace their invisible pathway back to their little bubble, away from the filthy legacy of their ancestors.

Moments pass, compounding seconds together into clumps of minutes that pile up until, at last, the machine has decided that she won’t stay there to wait any further and watch it crash over her, prudence be damned. She abandons her hiding spot to sneak through the most roundabout route to the source of her curiosity and caution alike: no sane Dome-dweller would leave their comfy artificial cradle just to dump their garbage in some forgotten corner of the ruined rest of the world. Humanity has a knack for shoving away that which displeases it, and then pretending it never was there in the first place - oh, she certainly knows a thing or two about that.

It’s experience that keeps her sensors primed and reawakens combat sub-routines that had been hibernating for aeons since the last time they wered called upon. Slow step after another, with caution impeded by that lame leg of hers, bitter resentment guides her to the innocuous-looking bundle of rags with methodical lack of haste. Several signs and tells begin to become manifest one after the other, sensorial perceptions that all come together to tell her that whatever’s wrapped inside that ruined mess of cloth, it is alive - and it is unwell.

She confused it for static at first, but she stands corrected now that a few paces stand between them. The thing breathes: a series of wheezes desperately attempting to make their way through passageways too clogged to let more than a few particles of dirty air through, in a slow rhythm occasionally broken by failed attempts at coughing. It’s a wonder that something could still be alive with their respiratory system doing such a poor job. It is also cruelly reassuring. If anyone has to fear for themselves, it’s not the former military weapon still armed with somewhat functional ordnance. There are other percentages of the latter’s artificial brain that scream otherwise, overzealous as they are in their stubborn attachment to predictional percentages of danger and whatnot. They get rerouted and quietly shut down by the overwhelming majority of routines begging to uncover the first genuine sign of novelty that has made itself manifest in what must have been forever. By the time she has crouched and plucked away a patch of fraying fabric, there’s no space left for doubt - only surprise, locked behind her immovable features.

The child takes a few seconds to look back at her with his eyes clouded by the viscous, opaque tears streaming from them. He does not speak, and likely cannot either way. He doesn’t express the same amount of bewilderment as his finder - he doesn’t express anything in fact, because pain has twisted his features into pure agony... at least whichever of them are visible.

Rigid fingers like sturdy gauntlets reach out and delicately poke the visage without protests from its owner, or any sign that he even noticed this invasion of his personal space for that matter. Miridium alloy clinks against chitinous scales of unknown origin or nature: they cover at least half of the boy’s face, going as far as to reach his hairline, and who knows how much of his body that has yet to be revealed. His right eye and the corresponding corner of his mouth are almost sealed shut, left with mere slits to peek through, barely enough to emote - the remaining rest of his features do more than their fair share of the job, anyway.

The machine reaches deep into her database for a match that does not exist. A disease or viral agent of some sort, the effects of a biological weapon or something else entirely: any and all of these could have caused what is plaguing the the boy’s body. Any would be a good reason to cast him away, for the purity-obsessed dwellers of the Domes.

A blue dot shines faintly on the boy’s visible eye, over the grey humor fogging it up. The machine’s “pupil” is fixated on this doomed little package, and what are likely to become his last, pathetic moments. A forgotten left-over, doomed to inconsequential oblivion amidst the ruins of other hushed mistakes.

There is nothing tethering her to this place. She could arise and walk away to resume her self-imposed routine, filing this chance meeting as a little aside, a single speck of dust in the vast desert of her dull memories. Cold logic nudges her in that direction, telling her to act like the machine she is.

Her decision is a spark of emotional illogicity, utterly broken like that of her voice module bristling to life with the difficulty that comes from having left it unused for longer than entire outposts have been alive.

“Alri-i-i-i-i-ight. Let’s fix you U-U-U-U-U-U-p.”

[irmalangensteinremake]

April Fools fanfic

Worst April Fools fail

"Ok... explain me again how did we end up trapped in here."

"My so-wanna-be-called has took one copy of one of the AIs I've been working on and put it in the digital camera both."

"And...?"

"*sighs* And I said I could fix it..."

"Aaaand..."

"And I asked you to help me... and you're upset."

"Atta, turtle..."

Yes, this was the scene:Donnie and Irma were trapped inside of one of two camera boths, where it went into a cage because of an Artificial Mind chip. They both were sitting next to each other; the turtle has spent more than an hour trying to open the blind door or hacking the computer.. but he has not the material; neither his shellphone. They heard fast steps coming close.

"Guys!"

"Mikey?" Irma get up and went to the door. "Is that you?"

"Yes. Hey, I figured out how to get out of the camera booth!"

"Really?!" Donnie get close to the door to hear better. "How? ... you know what? I don't care, this is getting claustrophobic and every idea is welcome.." A five dollar bill was slide under the door. He get an empty stare at it,following with a frow. "Please, tell we do not..."

"You have to use the booth!"

"What?" Irma didn't believed that was the option neither. "We have to take photos to get free?" At the ah-ha sound of the young turtle, it was confirmed. She took the money and inserted to the slot. "Ok, let's see..." Donnie went to the screen, he just pressed start. Three flashes. And they waited. ... "This is not working."

"Mikey,this isn't working!" Donnie protested.

"I think you guys are doing wrong." He slide the photos set, all of them with the huge space, only vision of the seat and the wall. "You don't appear in the set."

"What?!" They both explained.

"Look..." another set of photos, all of Mikey posing. "I used my best photo-faces to the camera and it sent me free. It's what the camera booth wants"

"Wait wait... Is this the AI working? It believes it's really a photo booth that it's only porpuse it's to take photos?" She looked at Donnie. "Is that possible?"

"Huh... apparently." He sees another bill passed by his brother from the outside. "Let's give it a second try."

This time, they both sat at the seat in front of the camera. They let themselves to being photographed, and waited. And waited.

"Mikey...?" Donnie said...

"I think the booth doesn't like the photo."

"What?"Irma questioned. When the new photos comes inside, she took it. "Come on, are you saying the machine dips picky about--- oh, god; I looks awful!" She reacted at the bad hair she didn't knew she had. "And Donnie, you blinked."

"Oookay..." he took the photo and trash it away, taking a second peek to the set of photos that set Mikey free. "So, this machine wants funny photos; we can do that!" He say positive. With another 5-dollar buck, the turtle prepared Irma to the set of photos. "Just go wild, like you're parting." She just nodded.

They both tried many poses: grabbing each other shoulders, ducky faces, egypt pose, jazz hands...

"Wow, guys! This photos are the best!"

"Thank you Mikey... One question:" Irma started to change his happy tone into a tiresome one. "Why are we still trapped here?"

"You said this could work!" Donnie protested.

"..." they heard silence. "Maybe there's something missing..." before they could protest more.. "Huh, I ran out of bucks. Be back n a second."

"What?, No no... MIKEY!!" They explained very loud, punching at the door.

Irma sat in front of the screen; with a preview of the photos it took.

"... ... I think it's me." The girl voice took the attention of the tall turtle. "The other booth let go Mikey because his happy faces." Donatello looked at her confused. "This machine... knows that I was faking." He came close and sat next to her. "Just look at it... My eyes aren't smiling at all."

" ... Well, it could be me too."

"What are you talking about? Your faces are great."

"My smile is forced." He pointed at his face in the screen. "I'm not good with photos... I need like two takes to have a decent one." He smiled at it. "You do looks good. How can you say you're not truly smiling?"

"Oh... You know..."she sighs, resting her head against the wall. "After being kidnaped by aliens... Experimented... I'm doing better, but I still think like a part of me is broken."

They went silence. Donatello also rested his shell against the wall, giving a soft bump at her arm with his. "I am mutant turtle who lived in the sewer. I've a brilliant mind about any science, machinery and stuff; but when it's about love I am a failure." Irma remembered that he has a thing for April. She got closer to him, like wanting to comforting him.

"I don't think you're a failure. Everyone can get heartbroken, but it heals in time."

"..." he smiled. "And so you. You're a survivor."

Anothe smile shared. Irma's fingers taped something in the seat. Something like a piece of paper.

"Hey..." it was 5 dollars! The both shared a stare. "What do you say? We are in a good mood right now."

He nodded. They both felt ready. Donnie did the honor to put the money and press the star button again.

What happened next... was so fast.

Flash. They both looked at the front, smiling. Flash. Donnie looked at Irma. Flash. Both were looking at each other eyes. Flash. Donnie holded her shoulders... pulling her to get a kiss.

When they separate... Donnie was in shock, Irma was trying to say something but her shocking state didn't let her.

*SLAM*

"APRIL FOOLS!!"

The door opened, going up fast; and the young turtle cheered yelling... he met two wide opened faces: eyes and mouth. The tall turtle's shut fast, going straight at his brother full of rage. "April... fools... April Fools!? This was a joke!!??"

"Huh... I just wanted to make you guys to make some funny faces... But the door didn't open and... Oh, come one! It's was a funny one, right Irms?"

"Huuuuuh..." she was grounding so deeply that she sounded like a zombie as she went out of the booth.

"What happened?"Mikey asked.

"YOU HAPPENED!!" Donnie was on angry-Raph mood. That was Mikey's cue to runaway.

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

Mikey was forced to give back the chip he took from his brothers laboratory; he was very upset with him and he just wanted to be alone. ... As he worked in his work table, he wanted to forget what happened. What he did... Gosh, he was shaking his head, trying to get the urge to blush go away. Wanting so desperately to forget what happened in the photo booth... Photo boooth!!

He ran fast at the blasted machine. He had to take that photo set!! Everything would be so embarrassing and ackward if someone else finds it. He found it... and Irma was next to it, sitting at the feet of the machine. He stopped. His troat went dry, wanted to glue but couldn't. The girl moved a few inches, that the turtle sat at that spot next to her. It was a long ackward pause...

"We kissed..." she finally spoke.

"I-I thought it was what the machine wanted..."Donnie tried to explain.

"You're one of my best friends."

"Which it makes this so much ackward, I know...!"

"You have a story with April. My best girl-friend!"

"That doesn't... I--."

"And I'm starting to date Casey Jones..."

"I JUST WANTED TO GET US OUT OF THE BLASTED BOOTH!!" she saw the turtle hiding her head with his arms and moving away. It looked like he wanted to hid in his shell, like a natural turtle.

"Hu... huh... Look... Let's..."she tapped his shell. "Look, it's ok... I know it's all a mess up but... We can pretend it never happened." Irma could see him looking at her. "Besides, a part of my family tree it's mexican; and kissing in the lips it's pretty natural between family and very close friends..."

Ackwardness again...

"Anywho... I already take care of the photos."

"Oh, thank heavens..." Donnie breathed loud... About to leaving he looked at her getting up as well. "I... I think I didn't apologize about it..."

"Apologize accepted, Donnie." She smiled.

And so, this day of April Fools ended with a swirl of emotions and complicated twists of friendship. It ended with a messed up minded teenage mutant who had doubts about his acknowledgment about relationships; and with a survivor who wants to keep go forward, with a still burned feeling in her face and a photo set that she wanted to keep for safe keeping.

Happy April Fools everyone

[whatplanetdididial]

OTP Week: Sci Fi AU (... like incredibly AU)

Type: One-shot Characters: Takenouchi Sora, Ishida Yamato Word count: 1280 Summary: Takenouchi Sora has been taken captive and all she wants to do is die.

Blood slowly trickled from her wrists, echoing rhythmically on the floor in a way that almost, almost had a calming effect on her.

Drip, drop, drip, drop, drip, drop.

Shaking violently, she shut her eyes and tried to take deep, controlled breaths, desperate to take the edge off her anxiety. The harder she shook, the deeper the manacles cut into her, and it took what little will she had left to reduce her body movements to a slight tremble to ever so slightly abate the pain.

In another life, she would have considered herself lucky that her current situation was nothing compared to the agony she first endured when she was brought in and hung by the same shackles.

She was given a frock to wear one week into her captivity, but void of her body shell, she still felt naked. The day she was captured, it had been approximately two months since the invasion, which meant it had been two months since she had worn anything else. Stripped of her weapons, stripped of her protection, and stripped of her dignity, she sat hunched, drained, and hopeless, the puddles on the floor growing wider and wider by the minute.

Drip, drop, drip, drop, drip, drop.

Thinking back, her squadron’s loss was inevitable. Basic combat taught them to immediately shoot at anything without a shell since the enemy was otherwise indistinguishable from humans. What basic combat didn’t teach them was that the Alphas were evolving quicker than expected, mass-producing shells of their own and already infiltrating human forces. It took four seconds for Private Takenouchi to register that Private Ichijouji was out of formation, two seconds to watch her fellow squadron-mates fall one-by-one, and one second to register there was someone behind her before she was knocked unconscious – easily the longest seven seconds of her life.

The sound of footsteps floated down into her cell and she stiffened at the noise. Black boots descended the stairs and once they turned the corner, she was able to make out the shape of an Alpha she assumed was either tasked to make sure she stayed alive for questioning or to escort her to her death. Before she was freed from the prison wall, various Alphas used to access her chamber, but this Alpha was the only one she ever saw now. All she could do was hope that they finally decided she was useless and that it was here to kill her.  Death was a sanctuary, at this point.

Her vision had been spotty ever since she was allowed mobility three days ago, but she finally had enough strength to take a better look at the attributes of her captor. It was blonde and blue-eyed, which was a unique combination compared to the darker features of the other Alphas she had seen in propagandas and in person. It had the audacity to wear what looked like a human soldier uniform, complete with a name badge and everything else she used to wear underneath her shell. Did they just steal them off of dead human bodies? She squinted to read the name on its uniform. Alpha Ishida. She laughed derisively to herself. Why did they even bother giving themselves names?

“Come here,” it commanded suddenly.

Her initial response was to shrink back slowly. Was this the end for her? Was it taking her away to dispose of her? She knew she preferred death to this living hell, but it took a different kind of courage to face it valiantly that she didn’t possess.

“You’re bleeding,” it said after a moment’s pause.

She hesitated, taking a second to comprehend its words. It obviously wasn’t going to kill her if it was here to assuage the bleeding, so the question was, why was she still being kept here? She had no information to warrant her torture, she wasn’t strong enough to be placed under mind control for battle, and she didn’t come from a background worthy of being held for ransom.

All she wanted was for this to end, was that too much to ask?

“Come here,” it ordered again, devoid of any emotion.

Too tired to stand, she shuffled her feet to pull herself towards the bars separating her from the Alpha. She sat, her frock stained even more from all the blood she slid over, and looked up to await further instructions.

The Alpha bent down so that they were eye-level. It gestured for her to raise her arms, and she complied readily, not wanting it to stay down there any longer than it had to. Her auburn eyes locked with its azure ones and she faltered slightly. They looked so human that she almost could feel some sort of warmth behind them. A rage boiled up at the thought of Alphas being able to duplicate emotions as if they were living creatures.

It pulled out a key and loosened the handcuffs so that they were no longer cutting into her already torn skin. Salve in hand, it rubbed the ointment over the exposed wounds in such a gentle manner that it made her uneasy. Studying its face, a distant memory jolted her, triggering an image of being handed the frock she was wearing by the very same Alpha.

Curious.

“Why are you keeping me here?” she quivered, willing her tears not to spill over just yet.

Intense eyes bored into her own.

It took a full minute for the Alpha to respond.

“To keep you safe.”

It broke eye-contact and returned to massaging the medicine as if it hadn’t said anything so incredibly absurd. Warfare she understood, prisoners of war she also understood, but this was by far the most baffling encounter she had experienced since her capture. Who did this Alpha think it was trying to pretend like it was keeping her safe? The Alphas had started this whole war in the first place; the safest place for her was as far away from any Alphas as possible.

“Let me out or kill me now.”

There was no pause in its movements on her wrist.

“No.”

She pulled her arms back roughly, wincing at the pain.

“What do you want with me?” she cried. “The Alphas have won and humans are basically going to be extinct because of you monsters. What could you possibly want from me? Let me die.”

“I can’t,” it said simply.

Infuriated and on the verge of tears, she wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth trying to keep an impending panic attack at bay.

The Alpha hadn’t moved an inch since her outburst. After a few minutes, it mechanically tilted its head to the side.

“We still have experimenting left to do. We scan humans for high compatibility levels of certain qualities and emotions for duplication purposes.”

She continued to rock back and forth silently.

“You ranked highest out of all 98,397 humans in the surrounding 1,000 kilometer radius for a complex emotion we have yet to reproduce.”

Experimenting. They were going to experiment on her. She was never going to escape.

“I will be the sole Alpha in charge of your testing. You will help me understand.”

Tears were now spilling endlessly as she realized her fate was being sealed by this thing in front of her. She wanted to die. She wanted to die. She wanted to die.

“What quality are you testing for?” she choked out, lifting her head to face the Alpha. She regretted it the moment they locked eyes, its now cold ones sending a shiver down her spine. It stood up to tower over her before making its exit.

“Love.”

[junker-town]

What was Eric Cantona talking about after winning the UEFA President’s Award?

Photo by Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images

After receiving the UEFA President’s Award before the Champions League draw, Eric Cantona gave an unexpected speech that left many in the room and the watching audience confused:

Wins the 2019 UEFA President's Award... Gives bizarre cryptic speech to confuse everyone in attendance. Eric Cantona, ladies and gentlemen pic.twitter.com/qNgZB0cFoW

— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) August 29, 2019

Here, in conversation, we try to make sense of of Cantona’s speech and the themes that he referenced in it.

Zito: First of all, I want to say that his opening is incredibly poetic. I have a feeling that it’s a reference to some literature or some myth. It sounds like something that would have been in The Iliad. I’ve been repeating it to myself since I first saw the video. “As flies to wanton boys, we are for the gods. They kill us for the sport.” There’s actually a series of books, “The Complete Book of Swords” that has that premise that the gods do toy with human lives for the sport of it.

Graham: It’s Lear. Gloucester after he’s been blinded, wandering the heaths, lamenting his fate. His wings torn off.

Zito: You’re right!

”I’ th’ last night’s storm I such a fellow saw,

Which made me think a man a worm. My son

Came then into my mind, and yet my mind

Was then scarce friends with him. I have heard more

since.

As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods,

They kill us for their sport.”

Graham: A fantastic cold opening to a speech.

Zito: Yes! I was trying to figure out why it sounded so familiar, but what an opening to receiving a football award.

Graham: So there I think Cantona is complaining about it being human nature to wither and die. Which is what segues him into immortality and science. Essentially the whole thing is a meditation on death and humanity.

Zito: Which makes his part about immortality not being able to stop the corruption of humans in the form of crimes and wars more understandable. That even if we are eternal, or when we become eternal, we will still be victims of human greed.

Graham: Right. But it’s not exactly profound, is it? It’s the sort of thing you might say when drunk around a campfire. It’s certainly weird and poetic and sort of interesting, but it’s interesting mostly because he chose to say it for a speech at the Champions League draw.

Zito: And then ending it with “I love football” as if he ran out of time.

Graham: I like the idea of adding ‘I love football’ to totally unrelated speeches:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

I love football.

Zito: What is interesting about it to me, isn’t even what he said, but that idea of immortality. Which has been the central human fear since day one.

Graham: His purely biological conception of immortality might be worth unpacking. His understanding seems to be that aging comes through the slow failure of cells. Look, I’m not an expert on aging and I don’t think the science is even close to settled, but treating it as the result of the failure of individual cells is really reductive and treats humans like a static system. Which they are not. But it’s also interesting because immortality is inherently a static system.

Zito: I think that’s the type of reduction that comes when the enemy is so absurd. Otherwise, you have to acknowledge the futility of it all. It’s like the rich people who think injecting themselves with the blood of young people can reverse aging.

Graham: A healthy, young body replaces and recycles its cells as they fail. You could abstract that model, if you like, to humanity as a whole. Do we need the cycle of death to keep growing as a people? Not that there is, right now, much evidence of recent growth, but I think the general point still stands: Cantona seems to be treating elements of a system as analogous to the whole.

Zito: From The Iliad: “Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.”

Graham: That’s one of the Trojans fighting Dio[medes], right? Which translation?

Zito: That’s Glaucus to Dio in the 1999 Penguins Classics version.

Though I’m sympathetic to it, I find the search for immortality so amusing. It also reminds me of something I read from Simone de Beauvoir a while ago:

”Whether you think of it as heavenly or earthly, if you love life, immortality is no consolation for death.”

Though in that context, she was talking about immortal life after death.

Graham: Is there any version of the hunt for earthly immortality which isn’t a worn out old trope at this point? Not that I begrudge Cantona musing on it.

Zito: I don’t think so, simply because it seems to be central to every human struggle. Every fear that we have is a refashioned form of the initial fear of death.

Graham: Right. So I think the more interesting question is why Cantona brought it up at all. Even if the thinking behind the speech wasn’t original, the venue was startling. “I love football.”

Zito: I thought the “I love football” part was sudden. It seemed like as if it was supposed to to be an argument that football is one of the things that bring joy in the endless chaos of life, but came too soon.

Graham: So let’s maybe look at the speech line by line:

As flies to wanton boys, we are for the gods. They kill us for their sport.

Soon the science will not only be able to slow down the aging of the cells – soon the science will fix the cells to the state.

And so we will become eternal.

Only accidents, crimes, wars will still kill us, but unfortunately crimes and wars will multiply.

I love football. Thank you.

I don’t see anything about endless chaos, even obliquely. Cantona’s eternity is one of order. “Fix the cells to the state’ reminds me of butterflies pinned under glass.

Zito: Is it? After saying we would become eternal, he says that though aging won’t kill us, the things that still can, crimes and wars, will only multiply. Eternal life allows us to focus more on our self-imposed deaths.

Graham: So I think you can have a utopian vision and contrast it with your non-utopian ‘reality’. Cantona is painting a picture of a world in which everything is, if you like, crystallised. And then saying crimes and wars, which will multiply, are an impediment to that.

Zito: Then “I love football. Thank you.”

Graham: It makes me wish he’d had about three times as long to speak. He was only talking for about a minute.

Zito: It feels like there’s missing lines there, but he might have just needed a way to close the speech.

Graham: I also wonder how this would have been taken if it wasn’t Cantona talking.

“When the seagulls follow the trawler, it’s because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.”

Zito: He has a reputation. Though it seems that the idea of him as a crazed eccentric has more to do with the sport not being used to someone who speaks like him, more than it does with what he says.

Graham: Right. I do like his quote about racists though: ”Because arguing with racist people is like playing chess with a pigeon: It doesn’t matter how good you are! The pigeon is going to knock all the pieces down and shit on the board and parade around like he’s won.”

Zito: He is a remarkable man, and if nothing else, I appreciate that he seems to live in a world of his own. A poetic man from Marseille, I never would have expected it.

Graham: I’m not even going to try to pretend that I can think of any poets whom I know are from Marseilles. Has Cantona talked about immortality before? I’m still curious as to why he’s talking about it now. Is he feeling old?

Zito: He has. In this interview, he begins the answer to the question of whether he still has ambition with, “I’m sure I will not die.”

“I’m not afraid of death, but I love so much life.”

Graham: And the same sort of themes: ‘we will find a solution’.

Zito: It’s a bit in contrast with him then saying that he’s not afraid of it.

Graham: It’s almost religious, but as faith in bioengineering instead.

Zito: Scientism, which promises the same eternal life that some religions do, but in this world rather than the next.

Graham: So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

I find the epistles fairly boring but they’re also pretty quotable.

Zito: This is actually one of the most interesting things to me when it comes to trans-humanism movement. The effort to free ourselves from the human shell, because it’s a constant reminder of the finality of existence. So if we can transcend it, we can hopefully transcend death, through science. But that also comes from the reductive idea that the body and the spirit are separate and a human being can exist immortally without a body.

Graham: Can you imagine how boring that would get though?

Zito: You don’t want to transfer your mind into a computer?

Graham: Well, right now I do because I’m extremely tired and it would be cool being disembodied. Also, would computerised brains get bored?

Zito: I don’t see what would be exciting about being detached from the sensations of the body. In gaining immortality that way, it seems you lose what makes mortal life worthwhile to begin with.

Graham: Well, yes, but you’re a hedonist. That version of immortality is the conceit of the life of the mind taken to silly levels. Also, I’ve seen how people treat computers. Who would want to inhabit one?

Zito: I guess for some any existence is better than none at all.

Graham: Also “I don’t see what would be exciting about being detached from the sensations of the body” goes back to some concepts of heaven too.

Zito: That’s why my favorite circle of hell in the Divine Comedy is the seventh, or the second ring of the seventh. For what the punishment of turning the suicides into trees implies.

Graham: Is it the birds shitting on you?

Zito: That’s awful, but also the idea that the full person on judgment day brings the body and spirit together (except for those who have treated their bodies as if it was material to be discarded).

Graham: I love football.

[idolizerp]

LOADING INFORMATION ON CHERRY BOMB!’S MAIN RAP LEE JUNHEE...

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: leesoul CURRENT AGE: 25 DEBUT AGE: 19 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 16 COMPANY: MSG SECONDARY SKILL: music production (r&b, soul)

IDOL PROFILE

NICKNAME(S): wonder soul, soul-pd (from her skills as a video editor and background in music production) INSPIRATION: it was her brother who first introduced her to music. as she watched him pick up instrument after instrument, she found herself falling in love just like he did, following in his footsteps. she found a lot of inspiration from underground indie artists as well. SPECIAL TALENTS:

mimicking her members and other idols

extensive knowledge of contemporary music

being able to tell who someone is based on touch alone

NOTABLE FACTS:

is known for having a lot of male idol friends

graduated from yeungnam university with a degree in music composition

has shown open support for the LGBTQ community several times in the past

once stated in an interview that her ideal type is “someone who can love me for me” 

IDOL GOALS

SHORT-TERM GOALS:

at the moment, she wants to focus on her own personal projects: expanding her youtube channel, making higher quality content that her viewers will enjoy, building her portfolio as a producer, experimenting with different sounds, and perhaps releasing a single or two on her personal (soon to be announced) soundcloud account. she’s done what msg wants for long enough. it’s about time she gets to do what she wants instead.

LONG-TERM GOALS:

in the end, she wants out. she’s dedicated years of her life to msg, yet they seem to have no intentions of fulfilling her wishes. she wants more opportunities than their giving her, more chances to showcase her talents not just as a member of cherry bomb! but as an individual as well. slowly but surely, she’s been putting distance between her and the company, venturing into other creative spheres such as filmmaking, directing, and self-producing. if msg won’t help her reach her goals, she’ll just have to do it herself.

IDOL IMAGE

she’s rushed into debut without a clear concept in mind, and it shows.

the rapper who can’t rap. the singer who doesn’t sing. the disappointment.

when leesoul is introduced to the world, she is plain. average. mediocre in every way, shape, and form. so they give her something she can work with. attach a pretty vision to her name.

—

SIDE A.

her role is simple enough: she’s the attention grabber, the stan attractor. stylists ensure her outfits are always the most eye-catching, the most visually intriguing because they know her stage presence alone isn’t enough to hold her up. bold prints, abstract patterns, and dramatic makeup distract from the areas in which she’s lacking, are what make her interesting.

( “but i can’t—” do this, she wants to say. i can’t put on the show you’re asking me to. i can’t pretend to be something i’m not.

she can’t.

she won’t.)

in the end, she isn’t given a choice. fake it till you make it, they tell her. so that’s exactly what she does. she wears the mask of false confidence with surprising grace, turns into the version of herself people want to see.

she’s a circus act, meant to be ogled at. with her, they can afford to push the boundaries of what’s expected ever so slightly. the name she builds for herself comes not from music but from the fantasy she’s created of a girl who is somehow larger than life.

people like that she’s weird. loud. quirky. the oddball of the group, known for her high-pitched laughs and godawful puns. her charm lies in the ability to entertain.

SIDE B.

as junhee grows, so too does leesoul.

with their fans being older now, they don’t care so much for theatrics as they do for someone they can connect with, relate to on some level.

maybe they’re finally starting to see that she has something to offer to the world just as she is, or perhaps they’ve come to terms with who she wants to be, but she’s allowed a little more freedom in recent years. they give her room to form her own identity, one that is unique and solely her own. she’s as open as she can be without overstepping her boundaries, and it shows. there’s an assuredness to the way she carries herself that wasn’t there before. the set of her jaw, the gait of her walk. it speaks of someone who feels good in their own body.

the insecurities don’t go away, but they aren’t as prominent as they once were.

the lines between who she is and who she’s perceived to be start to blur. junhee is leesoul is junhee, and maybe this is how it was meant to be all along.

IDOL HISTORY

it’s hard to imagine a time before.

before her father left. before her mother lost the will to live. before minjun traded his life for drugs. before junho gave up on his dream.

still, she tries.

—

TRACK 1: HER LAST.

he doesn’t leave right away. he can’t. the guilt keeps him trapped to a life he wants nothing to do with. he stays, long enough to see his wife bring two baby boys into the world. he’s a good father to when he wants to be.

it’s when junhee is born that he can no longer pretend to care, taking along with his luggage a lifetime’s worth of memories and unconditional love.

her mother’s voice is always void of emotion when she speaks of him. not cold, exactly. she doesn’t have the capacity for that whenever he’s concerned. instead, it’s as if all the life has left her, leaving an empty shell in its wake. there are no photos of him to be had, no signs that he had ever lived at all.

as far as junhee is concerned, her father does not exist.

TRACK 2: YOUTH.

growing up goes like this.

sometimes food is scarce. sometimes rent is paid a week late. sometimes their mother works two jobs, seven days a week to make ends meet. sometimes seoul feels more like a cage than a city. there are months where they can afford to indulge a little—a new shirt to wear to school or extra japchae for dinner one night—and there are months when they just barely scrape by. maybe it should scare her, knowing how low they fall on the socioeconomic ladder. and it does, to a certain extent. it makes her cautious, makes her grow up faster than she should.

it also makes her strong.

TRACK 3: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY.

she forgets how it happens. their mother is working late again and minjun is sleeping over at a friend’s, leaving junho to watch over her for the second night in a row, and she’s waiting. waiting for the click of the front door as junho slips out the apartment to go—somewhere. where he goes, she has no idea. all she knows is that he’s back before dawn, breathing a little easier than he did when he left.

she asks one night while feeling exceptionally brave to go with him.

and to her surprise, he lets her come along.

junhee is thirteen going on fourteen when she first finds herself transported to a world of neon lights and multicolored hair and 90s-inspired vaporwave. seoul’s underground scene is nothing like she thought it would be, but it’s learning her brother—quiet, soft-spoken, with a heart of gold—is in the center of it all that comes as the greatest shock.

it’s sneaking into open mic nights, falling in love with music and the way in which words come together to create such beautiful sound. it’s watching her brother rap on stage with the sort of confidence she can only hope to gain and suddenly imagining herself up there, taking control of a crowd, making heads spin. it’s thinking maybe, maybe (someday, hopefully one day).

it’s exposing herself to people from all walks of life, hearing stories of failure and success, and realizing that seoul doesn’t have to be a cage.

for some, it can be a realm of possibilities.

TRACK 4: EXISTENCE THEORY.

it’s been a week since their mother’s gotten out of bed for more than a few minutes at a time, and all she can think about is the card in her hands, given to her backstage after another one of her impromptu performances in hongdae.

(she’s a horrible daughter.) (she’s a horrible daughter, and she knows it.)

“i’m scared,” she whispers.

she’s sixteen, insecurities pouring out of her in waves as she stands in line, the girl with nothing to her name in a sea of rising talents.

junho is there. he squeezes her hand as the line moves, smile made of sunlight and stars. “it’s okay to be scared,” he tells her, sounding so sure of himself, and it’s times like these that make her forget there’s only two years separating them. “a little fear isn’t going to stop you.”

he’s right, of course.

but don’t tell him that.

TRACK 5: I REMEMBER YOU.

not many have a story like hers.

most come to seoul for the sky universities and shopping malls, for the chance at fame and promises of false dreams. they’re so blinded by high rises and pretty lights that they don’t notice the lost souls, the ones who’ve slipped through the cracks and ended up at the bottom, looking for ways now to claw themselves out.

this city has been the only home she’s ever known, and yet she feels more like a stranger than the ones who traveled here by train.

she clings to the ones who have gone through what she has and hides from the rest. timidness is mistaken for arrogance, forming a barrier around her that few choose to break. loneliness wraps around her like the cold of winter, seeps into her skin and settles there.

exhaustion becomes as familiar as breathing, a constant weight she’s forced to bear on her shoulders along with the rest of them. the practice room becomes her second home. she rehearses the same routine until her muscles scream, lungs on the verge of collapse. months of extreme diets and overexertion turn into little more than skin and bones.

good, she’s told. one step closer to perfection, she’s told.

through it all, she thinks of junho and the promises she’d made to him. she’d written them all down so there was no chance of her forgetting one.

keep going.

even if it hurts.

keep going.

TRACK 6: THE BEGINNING OF FOREVER.

debut comes, but the war doesn’t end there. criticism finds her from the moment leesoul enters the spotlight.

(”she doesn’t really do much, does she? i mean she just sorta stands there lol”) (“i was so excited for leesoul to debut but now i feel like it was a bit lacking”) (”isn’t she supposed to be the rapper? but she had like three lines and they weren’t even that good”)

junhee is being torn apart before she’s even the chance to truly begin.

where’s her strength now? she wonders.

her company is at a loss for what to do with her. nothing is working. they can’t seem to find an image that sticks.

two comebacks in, she considers it. giving up. going back to a broken home. to a mother she no longer recognizes, to a brother who fought to get her to this point, to the ghost of her father’s son (not her mother’s, she thinks, not since he went too). she thinks about the years that’ll have been wasted, everything leading to this moment, all of it for naught.

in the comfort of night, her fingers find imaginary guitar strings, hover over invisible piano keys, and she’s reminded of why she’s here.

the music. it’s always been about the music.

it will always be about the music.

TRACK 7: BUDDING ROSES.

things get better.

for a while, she does what she’s told. latches onto the image of safe and quirky that has been proven to sell well and develops a modest fanbase in the process. she sings and dances, not in the way she wants but enough to satisfy for now.

she stops expecting and starts settling. it hurts less when she does.

TRACK 8: EVERYTHING I AM.

there’s a slip of the tongue.

a commentary on the double standards placed upon females in an industry that exploits their bodies for profit. a passing remark about the treatment of idol trainees. posts about her less-than-stellar upbringing.

after several years in the making, she finally loses her momentum. suddenly, leesoul has become a source of conflict among the idol industry. some see her as a martyr, a symbol of the changing times. more often, though, she’s found to be her repulsive, rude, obnoxious. everything an idol isn’t and should never strive to be.

damage control is swift and to the point. she disappears from the public eye for a few months while the media buzz surrounding her fades. social media is off limits as is just about everything else. she’s scared for what’s to come, but there’s excitement there as well.

she no longer has a reason to hide.

TRACK 9: US.

junho calls her one night after a concert in osaka, full of heavy sighs and feigned joy for her sake. she misses him, always, but especially now. misses the sound of his voice when he sings from the heart, the soul in his hands as they dance across a piano.

when was the last time she heard him play? she can’t remember.

“how are you?” he asks.

the answer is can’t be expressed  in words. how does she tell him she’s never felt so free and so constricted at the same time? it took her this long to finally feel the slightest ease of comfort in her own skin, and now she’s being punished for it. she’s bigger than she’s ever been, but no one knows her for her music. she’s tired of waiting for her voice to be heard.

(this was supposed to be us, she thinks. we were supposed to reach the stars together.)

“junhee?”

she breathes in. exhales, slow.

“i’m getting there.”

it’s the closest truth she can give.

[debbramxf094-blog]

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[adventk-blog]

                                             — ARE YOU WHO YOU WANT TO BE, 

       introducing KIM JONGIN, a MUTANT, under the moniker of PLAGUE — and currently a believer of SEPARATION. age ( twenty-four ) and gifted with the ability of CONTAGION EMBODIMENT, they are currently working as an HEIR.

WE ARE SO MUCH MORE THAN STORIES,

this is a story where a boy eats himself and never spits the flesh out. shrapnel bones and papier-mâché skin against your palate: hemorrhage painting your insides with the color of unrest, carving a private death in the confines of your own ribcage.

the corpses of your sanity taste like copper in your lonely mouth.

licks your lips clean from the residue of your nightmares—                                                            sanity never comes away in a bang.

you partake in the game played between mortals made serpents. your unholy intents, their forked tongues. it’s an all-night dance. the music is an overture of reprised elegies. hands on hips, hands on shoulder blades, hands on throats.

              you come out alive.                             but not intact. never intact.

turn the clockwork around, however, and clasp the zeroes between your teeth.

             o.

your body is a husk, containing the hollow echo of your scream.

              i.

she is the baby’s breath in his summer, counting filaments of the sky through the rim of her sun-kissed dress. when she threads her fingers between his, heat. pooled at the stomach, rusting on his cheeks. some of those afternoons smell like forgotten nightmares, sunk in the collarbones of his daydreams. some of those evenings haze his thoughts in the stained glass of emotions, cracking through his visions. he brings her home and locks his monsters in their caskets.

how the nights end: arched spines, tiptoeing whispers. she washes his mouth with her wine. he is afraid of diluting her insides with acid.

she maps poetries into his skin and he traces the constellation of her teeth. she is made of soft carnage and he, the victim. he doesn’t mind the casualty, cutting his ribcage to let her fingers curl around his heart. she pulses red and he breathes in her dust.

knees to the floor, mouth colored with wishes. there is something different about the way her tongue wraps around the simple word.

darkness descends. you consume her.

              ii.

                                  maybe more than you should have.

she holds the small of your fingers. a smile splinters the pale of her lips. he isn’t smiling. he reads between the lines, catching implications between his trembling teeth. she holds the small of your fingers. he caresses the brittle of her skin.

the silence echoes. her tongue wraps around three syllables, tasting more than a whisper. the silence blossoms and suffocates the room. except for the static noises, always the static noises. it’s a uniform sound that punctures his ears they bleed shards.

you make her a martyr, and him, a fallen soldier.

              iii.

he fills you with his ruins.

her residue. his empty daydreams. somehow the color of the summer sky resembles blood more than sorrow. he keeps bleeding; there’s no scar tissue, just open wounds. he decorates the jutting bones of his knuckles with ire. catharsis comes in the beauty of bruised roses. sometimes when he laughs, you think he’s angry.

              he lathers his mouth with her ashes.

you have her eyes. sometimes he looks into them, looking past you. he stares at them for the longest time.

              iv.

he says you learned fast, breaking sentences into slivers, smearing fingertips with ink. what you failed to learn: your shadows sometimes flicker.

              you fear darkness but it fears you more.

the black is serrated, teeth razor sharp against your jugular. your moments between sleep are painted with ragged breaths and unspoken pleas. there is something moving in the dark.

he believes it’s her, keeping you company.

monsters don’t live in the absence of lights, he says. they live in your bones, gnawing at your sinews. you were born with them inside you.

             v.

what you were born with besides the monstrosity: demise, spelled another way.

                                        you were architected to carry an empire in you.

            vi.

she is a ticking clock at the back of your head. she spells morse code that sinks into your flesh, splitting you open, red and raw.

on good days, messages become concave like braille and you will trace the letters that perforate your skin, thinking that it is how it feels to have a mother. on good days, the kids that wear cheshire grins and early claw marks will leave you alone, at the corner of the room, so that you can speak with her.

                                              she is beautiful.

              ( they call her imaginary. )

you are six when you draw your first carnage: your knuckles against their teeth. then, your knife into their pets’ guts.

              vii.

the architecture of your nights is made of skyscrapers colored in questions:

a. ) he takes you for a walk. your shadows are elongated, and sometimes they shiver. you swear they falter when they are not trying to smother. their crooked smiles become the shade of your existence. how do you tell your father that you are haunted?

b. ) she is a background noise, static. when you’re awake past midnight and staring at the blank space, she’s there. you can feel that she’s withering, her ashes becoming more and more prominent on your fingertips. how do you hold onto your mother when she fades?

c. ) god feels like a dream at the back of your head. you cover your knees with dust and fold your hands in prayers. you close your eyes to see god, but instead, you see flickers of faces. how do you whisper to god and ask him to save you without them listening?

              viii.

the moon speaks in various languages. it is, they say, a polyglot.

                              first:

acid corrodes the corners of your mouth. you smile too much, too wide. he is proud of you when you do, not seeing the globules of red that form on your lips. sometimes, you trade them with an ashen mouth: say you’re older than you actually are, pretend you’re smarter than you actually are. he is proud when you do, not seeing that it’s a forked tongue that grows underneath your palate. they will laugh with you, at you. the kids with cheshire grins and early claw marks are no longer present. instead, it’s the grown-up kids with christened lust and empty decadence that won’t leave you alone, even on good days.

                              second:

you are a hollow blue shell when it’s three in the morning. fold your legs against the bare of your chest. water, streaming. warmth, engulfing. it’s so cold outside, inside. what brews within: the purpling heartbeat of a growing child, trapped in the illusion of adolescence. it is hard, harder when you are in the company of the darkness that stutters on your collapsing hands. unanswered questions, engraved on your bones — except that it’s too late to ask, too late to pass it as another excuse for a childhood disturbance. there is no such thing as an imaginary friend when you’re twelve.

                              third:

ask the god in your sleep if you’re dreaming. ask him if you’re sleeping with your eyes open. primal desires embed themselves on the lines of your arms. he is a stark contrast against the skin of your thighs. maybe it’s because you have her eyes. maybe it’s because she lives inside your bones. you don’t know, don’t care. he tastes like stale cigarettes and too much alcohol against your spine, stubborn and inebriating.

              ix.

he slips bloodshed into your lullabies.

bruises embody his detonations. he looks tired, but alive for once. you don’t speak when his knuckles rupture the fragility in the dying war. you don’t move when his weary limbs pretend that they aren’t weighted by the lingering ghosts.

it’s a cyclical catastrophe, your feigned innocence. how the nights end: you, collecting his pieces and trying to reassemble his bones.

but they have been too dislocated.

yet you talk to him, talk talk talk until your mouth blooms poppies, trying to keep him alive.

              x.

there is a pool of moonburst in your head, carving craters and dents to soak them in liquid destructions.

there was a part of you littered with everything soft. you’d like to think of these: bird-bones, tender skin. think of gentleness. think of baby’s breath.

there was a part of you littered with everything soft. what’s left: splinters. these days fill themselves to the neck with digging your nails into your skin. you are a cathedral of burning, tendrils of black billowing from your crevasses. you are a pair of tangled feet on the brim of apocalypse, waiting for darkness to swallow you whole.

when it does, it never spits you out.

              xi.

you are pronounced dead on your sweet sixteenth; a detonation within the ribcage in the company of an unpinned grenade. the pin: between your teeth, clasped so tightly you shudder. and in here, where you buried your corpse without an open-casket ceremony. nails burrowed in your flesh instead of the coffin. in here, where you decayed your insides in the process of atrophies. talents illuminated a number of necrosis instead.

you don’t know which to sacrifice: your mind, or your body.

                                                       ( or both. )

              xii.

how does it feel, being a stranger to your own body? you imagine that your fingers aren’t yours, standing under the shower for hours hoping to shed your skin off your flesh. the sight of the red and blue can’t be more fascinating.

                                                                      a dissected mind.

you breathe in decay until your lungs shiver. you wear the rust until your knuckles turn gaunt.

           xiii.

they saw: how your shadows flicker. they saw: how your darkness enshrouds.

              somebody tells you to run, run, run. from yourself.

last time you did, you broke a bone and handed the pieces to them. last time you did, you bruised your mind and the capillaries are still severed.

                              ( but this isn’t a compromise, this isn’t a discussion. )

              xiv.

you bite the pomegranate of chaos and swallow the seeds, the flowers blooming in your stomach.

                                              question:

              do you run from the beasts in your reality,                    or do you run from the monsters your invented in your head?

and this is it — the run, run, run. in your fisted palm is a lungful of blood, drained from others’ veins. they call it a sacrifice. they call it an escape. what they actually call it: an exodus. what you actually call it: your carnages. how do you tell bloodshed apart from your fractured facts?

              ( you don’t. )

summary + developments:

000. born to a mother that passed during the labor, he was raised by a single father who was never quite there, often found mourning over the death of his wife. seemingly blamed his son for it, although jongin inherited some of his mother’s looks, which caused his father to pay occasional attention towards him, in the most distanced ways possible.

001. he started developing a sense of hallucination, seeing his mother as an imaginary friend, which was scratched off as something typical of a child. this worsened to the point where he fought his peers over being called out for hallucinating his mother. untreated, he eventually started resorting to venting his anger on pets and strays. this apathetic tendency never reached his father until it was too late, in a sense, and that was the beginning of the fracture in his sanity.

002. his ability began to manifest at the age of eight, and the first time was how fresh flowers wilted under his touch. he blamed it on the darkness that surrounded him, thinking that he was haunted. paranoia infected him, and his father disregarded the fact that his son grew even less and less coherent by day, making him pretend he was normal whenever guests came around. being an heir to a multibillion company, he was turned into a puppet on strings for his father’s convenience, left in the backstage whenever the limelight was over.

003. hallucination continued, and abilities blossomed as he grew up. it took him years to comprehend the mechanism of his own powers, experimenting through touch onto the beggars that he seemed to pity. when the beggars died of mysterious diseases, he started to understand, and he thought he was doing them a favor, for there was no use living such pitiful lives. and that was when he realized how his mind had disintegrated, alongside the hallucination and paranoia.

004. when he was thirteen, he began to deviate, forming atypical moralities. he differentiated himself from the rest of his friends, experiencing the pit of his illnesses to the point where he eventually broke. this tipping point was when he became unfeeling, and started pretending. when he was brought to a therapist, it was too late. he never attended the next sessions, hiding behind fake smiles and false truths.

005. sixteen, and he basically transformed into a full-fledged malice. he still battled with himself, trying to salvage what little was left from his humanity, but the violence streaks simply triumphed over the smidgens of his morality. this was when he started terrorizing people without them realizing, spreading diseases unprompted. the idea of becoming “plague” didn’t develop until he was around twenty, however.

006. and a year later, he started donning the plague doctor attire whenever he needed his “release”, walking around the city to spread unnecessary terrors. at this point, his powers have developed so much that he didn’t need direct touch to spread diseases anymore, although certain physiologies still required it. now, twenty-four, he’s still doing his round as “plague” while harnessing his powers, as well as scopes of self-defense that his powers do not cover. he knows, nevertheless, that his powers corrode his mind, and he doesn’t truly let the fact perturb him.

THERE IS FLESH AND BLOOD BEHIND THESE TALES,

living up to his alias, kim jongin is a plagued mind through and through. the state of his mental and moral is currently questioned, even by himself, and the truths about his own abilities do not help but faltering his own beliefs in regards to his sanity. this, however, bothers him less and less by day, and it’s indubitable that he’s over halfway to succumbing towards this instability. amoral, apathetic, atrophic.

he relishes in schadenfreude, liking the facts that he can make other people suffer, although on the front he would be anything but. charming to the point where some would think he’s genuinely a kind soul, he is twisted with a lot of lies spilled easily from his mouth. a complex personality, he’s often seen as a friend by many, an enemy by some. as “plague”, he’s fully disguised in the plague doctor attire, that many do not seem to know his true identity.

also a cunning intellectual, he’s made of a lot of tricks to sate his violent mentalities. he is not above simple blackmailing, disguising it as various kindness, although the motives behind it are anything but. he enjoys moments with fellow intellectuals, talking about anything and everything. has an open view of the world, although he’s certainly opinionated, although he doesn’t push his opinions on others.

overall, a danger to most, but a danger undetected regardless.

AND EVEN MONSTERS CAN LEARN TO WEEP.

mutation: contagion embodiment.

applications:

000. he has the ability to become the embodiment of contagion, meaning that he can spread influences accordingly. his state of abilities is dependent on his current mental as well as physical status, although at the peak he can infect up to one kilometre radius, or even more considering the complexities of the influence being spread. his influences include, but not limited to, diseases and insanity, as well as appeal to negative emotions. when it comes to emotions, he finds it easier to amplify than inflict from zero, although the latter is far from impossible. negative influences in the mind are usually formed through the similar systematics of killing serotonin, and sometimes, in more severe cases, inducing necrosis. he’s most educated in terms of disease manipulation, however, compared to the other aspects of his powers.

001. he can generate, induce, and manipulate diseases — also called disease manipulation in terms of power. while this application greatly varies, it’s highly based on his own knowledge in regards to these illnesses. he cannot inflict what he doesn’t know, and while he can create the diseases, he needs to comprehend the systematic of the diseases: how it affects the immune system, how it affects the body, etc. his understandings about diseases when it comes to this ability are vastly different from that of medical knowledge, and it cannot simply be explained in words. he can also accelerate and suppress diseases, although healing is a far-fetched idea that he has yet to apply a lot. thus, curing is an aspect least touched upon, rendering it almost obsolete in his deposit. other applications of this are: infection empowerment ( ability to become empowered by the presence of diseases ), pathogen manipulation ( transferral, mimicry, elimination, hypnotic ), cellular disintegration ( to destroy cells by inflicting diseases ), healing factor nullification, as well as mutation inducement, although this one is extremely limited to what might be received by the victim’s dna. poison manipulation — which includes all scopes of poison, including toxin and venom, is also within his reach considering the similar systematics to disease manipulation.

002. he also possesses a fragment of parasite physiology and virus mimicry, although this is the least harnessed out of the other powers. through his parasitic characteristics, he’s able to tap into genetic memories, and upon touch, replicate an extent of knowledge, despite not much. it’s typically only on the surface, enveloping the conscious. through this, he can read the minds, be they memories or understandings, although this doesn’t last long after the contact is cut off. in a sense, he’s also bestowed with regenerative healing factor by absorbing someone else’s health, also through direct contact. as for the virus mimicry, while he’s unable to perform anything that alters his solid form, he’s able to execute some of the applications in it, such as rupturing internal organs, although in order to do that he needs to have the victim remaining still — for it takes time. he can also perform cellular disintegration, which relates back to regenerative healing factor nullification, in which he can overpower cellular regeneration.

limitations:

001. he is, by no means, immune to his own powers, and therefore anyone who mimics this power can hit him at his point of vulnerability. he has no superhuman immunity, albeit slightly more enhanced in a way that he doesn’t fall sick as easily, but he’s definitely still able to contract diseases that he himself can spread onto others. the only way to cure himself is by applying his own healing power, which is far from polished. another way to lessen this effect would be through empowerment, although not all diseases can be empowered, and may weaken and eventually kill him instead.

002. emotional influences are limited to negative scopes only, with the spectrum lying at the corner of fear and madness, and he cannot spread other types of emotions apart from these. it also limits the amplification of emotional states for those around him, where he can only magnify the negative ones as opposed to the positives.

003. also, in terms of mental stability, he’s slowly decaying considering his powers consume a lot of him. they feed off his sanity, in a way that his emotional responses towards his own influences cause a decline. these powers also rely heavily on his imagination, and most of the time, he feels the imaginary pain of the emotions and diseases before being able to transfer them.

004. the spectrum of illnesses that he can spread highly depends on the amount of knowledge that he has on said specimens. it’s easier for him to inflict diseases on humans, knowing their specifics of immune system and whatnot, rather than vigils and mutants considering that they vary highly. with the variants, he needs to gauge a measurement as to how much influence is needed to affect them at all.

005. his power is mostly affective towards those around him as opposed to himself, meaning that while he’s able to apply some of them onto his own benefits, most of it is actually an output. his powers rely on offensive instead of defensive manner, in which if someone manages to replicate and outpower him, he’d be unable to form a defence mechanism. his mimicry might bring some powers inward, but as they’re not as trained as the rest of the powers, they do not work as effectively either.

006. being mentally unstable also takes a toll on his powers, seeing that they’re reliant on his stability to perform the tasks. it turns into a paradox where his abilities make him unstable; it formulates a never-ending ring of fire, which he knows will eventually consume him mentally. while he can regenerate his own brain cells by the various techniques that he can apply, be it through absorption or empowerment, he cannot fix what’s broken from the sanity for it’s intangible, leaving him with a rotting mind. and unfortunately, his ability to affect emotions are also increasing the volatility of his mental state, further worsening his conditions.

007. knowledge replication through parasitic tendencies can only be acquired through direct contact, skin on skin without any hindering fabrics and the likes. upon having the contact terminated, knowledge that isn’t obtained in his understandings ( e.g. adoptive muscle memories, as well as other types of knowledge which systematic is foreign to him ) would dissipate as soon as it comes. this doesn’t mean that he can replicate powers either, unless it has something to do with the mind. he can only read memories and thoughts superficially, and although some might be retained depending on how long the contact remains, the majority of it is

THREAT LEVEL TWO.                           04+ BRWN, 04+ RSLNC, 06+ INTLCT, 02+ WLLPWR, 04+ FGHTNG, 04+ SPD