#like at first it seemed like we’d really have a good chance and he acted very committed despite the distance

[insanechayne]

~ ~ ~

[grimm-writings]

(congrats on finishing your uni work!) imagine chilchuck telling his daughters that he’s seeing someone, and they seem apprehensive until he reveals that it’s [reader] and they all get super excited and say they’re relieved bc they were hoping it was [reader] 🥹🥹🥹

relief

…ft! chilchuck x gn! reader

…tags! fluff, his daughters are kinda asses (affectionate), takes place post-canon

…wc! 731

…notes! this is a short and sweet one! hope you enjoy and thank you for the support!!!!

It’s been years since the Chils girls have ever been called over for a ‘talk’ like their father has tonight.  Now that they discuss it between them, the last time this happened was when they had to talk about the relationship between their parents.

So… not a lot of hope amongst the three.

Still, when they arrive at the bar Chilchuck suggested (because of course he did), he seems in a better mood than they thought.

“So he isn’t using me as a bad example again,” Puckpatti sighs to herself.  Too many times she has been told she needs to try taking life more seriously.  Meijack pats her little sister’s shoulder sympathetically.

The conversation was awkward – as they normally are with your distant parents – with “how you beens” and getting drinks done and out of the way.  Chilchuck cuts to the chase.

“Uh, so…” he takes a breath.  “I’ve started seeing someone.”

He takes the chance to hide his eyes from the varied reactions from the girls by taking a swig of his drink.  Thank God these steins are made really big compared to half-foots.

Meijack merely widens her eyes, but she hasn’t said anything yet.  Puckpatti lets out a loud “whaaaaaa…?!” in abject shock.  Flertom, ever the romantic, is the one to stand up and slam her hands on the table.

“You better be treating ‘em better than you did Mama!”

“Fler,” Meijack warns, pushing her twin down onto her seat again by her shoulder.  “Don’t be acting like that in a public place.”

Flertom huffs, crossing her arms.  She may be a bit on the protective side.  Since the separation of her parents, she’s been housing her mother.  She directly heard her side of the story, and though she doesn’t think too badly of Chilchuck (she sent him a neckband to prove that) she doesn’t believe a relationship is the best thing for him if he hasn’t changed his ways.

Puckpatti tilts her head to the side.  “Mmmmmaybe…” she trails off.  “They aren’t a half-foot… uwaaahhh, what if Papa found a dwarf husband before us!?”

“That’s what you’re concerned about?”  Meijack responds.  “If they aren’t a half-foot, there’s a chance Papa might be taken advantage of.”

Unamused, Chilchuck watched the girls squabble amongst one another.  Ever the stubborn types… maybe they got that from him.  He sighs.

“You already met them at the dinner with King Laios,” he reveals, making the girls freeze in place.

Meijack is the first to react, counting the guests that joined them on her fingers.  There’s the king and his sister, the king’s two advisors, the handsome dwarf, Papa, and…

All three sisters manage to pick up the signals together.  Of course they remember you!  You had been the most welcoming to the sisters, and somehow even made their Papa smile so fondly– they haven’t seen that in years.

“Thank goodness!”  Puckpatti celebrates, leaning over to lie on the table entirely to reach over to her dad and give him a tight hug.  “I was so scared you were going to die old, grouchy and alone!”

Meijack sighs again.  “Patti—” 

“No, no,” Chilchuck scoffs a breath of laughter.  “I was hoping you’d be alright with it…”

“Of course we’d be okay with it.”  Flertom snorts and covers her wide grin with her hand.  “The way you looked at them was near cringeworthy.  It’s like Puckpatti on speed dates.”

“Heeeeyyy!”

Chilchuck laughs gently, though he did take note of the mention of speed dating.  He looks over at Meijack.  She is always the most level-headed about these things.  If she had something bad to say, then it’ll definitely be something worth considering.

Meijack, after taking a bit of her drink, sighs.  She looks at her dad and echoes his smile.  “As long as you’re both happy, I support ya.”

Relief.  It washes over Chilchuck like an extra layer of clothes.  Warm and happy, he pets Patti’s hair again and supports her as she crawls back into the chair.

All is well.

“Though if you get another kid outta this, you better be ready to face Ma’s wrath,” Flertom comments offhandedly.

Chilchuck flushes. “I’m not that kind of sleaze!”

“Sure you aren’t,” all the girls chorus with giggles and smiles.  They’ve seen him with a few drinks in him.

The greying half-foot sighs, taking another swig of drink.  They know him too well.

All is well.

[lani-heart]

|| series masterlist || next // previously

parings -> ( eventually ) enhypen x reader genre -> soulmate au, fantasy au, angst warnings -> angst word count -> 2.9k

abstract -> Humans were alot fragile than you think...

y/n's perspective

After accepting Jay we took things relatively slower than with Sunoo, Jungwon, Niki, and Sunghoon. Sunghoon was actually the one who didn’t rush things but everything was faster with him. Which is funny because so did Jungwon.

Jungwon went on for a week to convince me that Sooha wouldn't get in between what he wanted to happen. He continued to convince me… and Sunoo I already accepted but thought it should be a little harder for him. Niki was a troublemaker… but he was a peacemaker for me. He also took things slow which was nice.

Sunghoon was definitely like an overprotective boyfriend, whilst Jungwon was actually very jealous. He hated sharing attention since he was the only one who didn’t need to share since I accepted them. Sunghoon was a big puppy… protective but his wolf, Solon, was really cute. Really cuddly. 

Jay though… Everything was slow. He was very caring though, which I appreciate. 

Everything was nice… Heeseung was still complicated. I didn’t know how to feel about him. Jungwon And Jay explained how he’s been acting but it wasn't in my place to comfort him. 

“You okay, love?” I heard as I saw my first soulmate. “Yeah, just tired?” I said and he kissed the top of my head. “You should rest up. Have you eaten yet?” he asked and I nodded. 

“Jay was here for lunch a few hours ago,” I said and he smiled. “I’m glad he isn’t as bad as I thought he’d be,” he said and I chuckled. “With him and Sunoo you can’t forget to eat anymore” he teased and I smiled. 

Jungwon was also the same where he forgot to eat so seeing them get along again was good for his health.

“y/nnie!!!” I heard as I saw Niki. 

“Hello to you too,” I said and he laughed. “When are we getting the results for sports day?” He asked only because the vampires and Riverfield were betting if they won that they’d get to do anything to their class logo. 

“It’s being looked over by the teacher administration” I answered and he grumbled. Despite not actually playing he did try to rig a few things. 

“Sunoo also is fighting with Wonyoung about the masquerade ball they're organizing, '' he added and I sighed. The ball was something Bright Sun was quite known for. Now that we’re hitting the end of the year, we got the okay that we can do a ball to end the school year. 

“I’ve seen the pictures of old Bright Sun masquerades, it looks so magical,” Jungwon said and I smiled. “What's so special about it anyway?” Niki asked and I chuckled. 

“It's actually called Samhain. Usually, it's celebrated on another day but for the school, we do it at the end of the year. With the sudden merge this semester I didn’t think we’d be able to do it” I explained and they nodded. 

‘What is it about?” he asked and I sighed. “Actually it's quite sad. It's to celebrate those who have passed but, we try to go all out with this event” I said and they nodded. 

“y/n! Control your leeches!” Wonyoung said angrily. She must've gotten angry with Sunoo? “I’m sorry– Hey!! You can’t just shut me out now?!” Sunghoon yelled as Sunoo was next to him but passed through? So she was mad at Sunghoon?

“He wants to interfere in planning when it isn't his business! He just announces that's it!” she said as she now pouted on her desk. “Hmm, maybe you should keep him kicked out of here” Sunoo said as he laughed at Sunghoon who’s jaw dropped at the slander. 

“y/n!!” he yelled in hopes of defense. “What did you suggest?” I asked and he smiled at finally getting a chance. “So, I suggested if it could be like a homecoming–” “No” I cut him off. “Hah!” Wonyoung let out. “You didn't even let me finish!” he whined. 

“Just let them plan, it seems too important to add things to it. Be happy we were even included and not just their class” Jungwon said and he sighed as he was finally able to enter. 

“That's true… if it was my decision it would only be a Bright Sun exclusive event,” Wonyoung said. “But that's mean” I heard as I saw Sooha. She walked through the barrier?

“Huh? How…” Wonyoung muttered as I saw Heeseung and Jake shut out the barrier. “She’s a human-vampire hybrid,” Jungwon said and Sooha smiled awkwardly and bowed in respect. “Why are you three here?” she asked. “Oh! We wanted to make a suggestion for the upcoming event!!” Sooha said and the boys next to me sighed. Wonyoung also looked like she could kill anyone right now… 

“You're not even a council member,” Wonyoung said and Sooha smiled. “I am actually! Jungwon and Heeseung agreed to let me be a part of the Decelis Council!” she said and I looked at Jungwon who sighed. “When did this happen?” I asked and he smiled softly. “The morning,” he said and Wonyoung did not look happy. “What's your suggestion?” I asked and she grinned happily. 

“So! I was thinking of maybe… having the school do a sort of Valentine-inspired event? Where you can ask to be someone's date to the event!” She suggested it and I didn't hate it. I looked at Wonyoung who looked at me back. 

“I actually like the idea” I said and Wonyoung nodded stubbornly. 

“Really?!” she said and I smiled. “We could do it to help fundraise for student council funding,” I said and Wonyoung nodded in agreement. “So telegrams, flowers, all the Valentine's day junk again?” she asked I nodded.

“We could announce it I suppose” Wonyoung also added, accepting the suggestion. “Could I help organize it?” Sooha asked. 

“Oh? Well, the event planners would most likely do that so you could work with Sunoo and Niki in Decelis” I said and she nodded. “Who are the other event planners?” she asked. 

“Me, Maki, Jacob, Kevin, Niki, Sunoo, and now you” Wonyoung said and Sooha looked disappointed. 

“K is the vice president, he does errands for EJ so he mainly works around me and Wonyoung, Jungwon, Sangyeon and Juyeon” I explained in which she nodded clearly trying to hide her disappointment. 

“Thank you for your suggestion Sooha! It was really clever” I said, giving her a compliment in which she grinned widely. “I wanna be of help!” she said as she skipped towards Heeseung and… Jake. 

“Thank you, for being nice,” Jungwon said and I nodded. I never hated her… but I never did put in an effort. 

Heeseung and Jake made their choice.

jay’s perspective

“No! Go away!” I scolded as I put the food down by the door of her dorm. “Come on I just–” “No Jake! You knew what you were doing… there's no explaining that. You chose Sooha so leave her alone” I said and he didn't want to listen. 

I suddenly saw her stare at us in shock. She looked at Jake frozen as to why he was here. “I need to talk–” “No, he’s just leaving,” I said as I got in front of her facing Jake. “Quit the overprotective bullshit,” he said and I noticed she gripped her hands around my uniform.

She was scared of him. 

“Jake, leave or I'll get Sunoo to make you” I said and he scoffed. “No, look y/n I just want to explain myself” he said now trying to look behind me to her but I decided to not let him near her. I wasn’t gonna let him accidently hurt her again. I defended him… it was an accident he does things based on emotion. She did nothing wrong though… and I won't let my friendship with him affect that. 

“Can I please just talk–” “I don’t want to talk to you” she cut him off before I could. I could see his shocked expression but he didn't look like he was gonna give up. 

“Why is everyone acting like I killed someone?! Look I know I hurt you but it was an accident!” he started getting emotional and I felt her now pressing herself against my back trying to protect herself. “Jake, just go, Heeseung–” “You don't understand!!” he said while he used his fire. I noticed how she now crouched down in a ball trying to protect herself. I crouched down petting her hair. “Hey, come on let's get you inside the dorm” I said but she didn't move. 

“I didn’t mean to–” “You never do. Jake quit it… you rejected her move on. Go find Heeseung before I do… and you know he won’t be happy knowing what you're trying to do” I warned and he now looked frustrated with himself. 

“I just don’t understand why she’s so scared of me?” he muttered and I scoffed. “You never understand why fire hurts because you're immune. You’ve never felt a burn in your life, and you haven’t had your soulmate hurt you and reject you” I said as I picked her up bridal style and grabbed her key to open her dorm. 

“Go to the dorms, Jake. Whatever you’re trying to do is useless” 

jake’s perspective

I left feeling stupid. I really just need to explain… but I didn't mean to use my fire again.

I went to the dorms where things were normal? Everyone was bonded with her besides me and Heeseung. He acted like everything was normal and there wasn’t anything different than before. Everything was different for me though and… I felt like an outsider. 

Jungwon and Heeseung worked alongside each other like always whilst Sunghoon and Sunoo were friends again. They hung out outside the dorms often to go to the city and now they're the same as before, even planning on things they could do with their soulmate. Niki and Jay even got along again… Jay took care of a lot of the younger members and… I had no one. 

Everyone was mad at me for losing control. The only person I had left was Sooha and she… she’s mated to that Riverfield wolf. I had no one… and now I was ostracized by everyone. 

I opened my palm to reveal my power… it really was a curse. What would it feel like? Would it really hurt as much as people say it would?

I sighed and went again… I knocked on her door. Jay should be gone by now… I heard her footsteps rushing to the door and opened it only to slam it closed again before I could speak. 

“I… I'm sorry you're so scared of me. I wanted to make a request… I want you to make it so I could feel burns” I said and I was met with silence. I was gonna walk away thinking it was stupid to try when she opened the door… only by a crack though.

“W-what?” she asked. I sighed… “I wanna know how it feels” I said and her eyes showed confusion. I could barely see her but I could see that she was wearing casual clothing… and the bandages around her neck. 

“Why?” she asked and I didnt know either. “I think I just need to understand it,” I said and shook her head. “That goes against the rules under Bright Sun, I can't–” “It's only against the rules if you cause me harm. It wouldn’t be you, doing it” I said and she still shook her head. 

I was disappointed but I understood it was a crazy request. 

“Why… Why were you here earlier?” she asked and I was shocked she’d let me talk. “My fire works on my emotions… I didn’t mean to hurt you. It also may not seem genuine but I do regret what I did a lot. Your mates have made it very clear what it did and I’m sorry” I said and she nodded. 

“I’m sorry, the thing with Sooha didn’t work out” she said and it shocked me. Why did she sound so genuine? She was supposed to be my mate… yet it seemed like she was content at leaving me at arms length.

“Me too… I'm sorry to have scared you and taken your time”

I woke up the next morning confused. 

I didn’t like to be around Heeseung as of late because of my thoughts being about our mate. I hated how Sooha wasn’t our soulmate. I’ve loved her since… I've met her. Love at first sight. 

Who knew it was one-sided? She was even my first kiss…

I walked out of my room to see Jay making breakfast for everyone.

Sunoo and Niki were at the counter while I assumed Heeseung, Jungwon, and Sunghoon were gone already. Today was the announcement… They're gonna announce a masquerade ball for Bright Sun and extend the invitation out to the other academies. 

I left the dorm… I knew they probably didn’t want to speak to me. I went outside to get fresh air. 

It's when I saw… y/n and K?

He was carrying a basket filled with flowers and I noticed the smell of blood. I wasn’t the best with control… the smell of it was sweet and almost addicting. 

“Jake?” I heard him ask and I snapped out of it. She still hid from me. “Isn’t this scandalous? She has five mates you know?” I asked and he glared at me. “I was only helping her while her mates were busy. Besides I know the forest better than you all” he said as they started to walk away. 

“y/n!” I decided to yell out to her. It made her flinch but looked back at me to at least hear me out. “Did you change your mind?” I asked and she shook her head. “I don’t understand why you want that,” she said and I smiled. “Jay was right you know… I’ve never felt an ounce of pain in my life. I just wanted to know how it felt” I said and she nodded. 

“I won’t be the reason, you get hurt. However, I have a potion that you might be interested in” she said and I was curious. Potions? I didn’t hate witches, it was just a personal grudge that my soulmate wasn’t Sooha.

“Ok, if you think it’d help,” I said and she nodded. “I’ll tell Jungwon to give it to you,” she said and I shook my head. “No! They… can’t know of this please?” I asked and she looked confused. 

“Heeseung will figure out–” “He won’t… I know how to trick him” I said and she nodded. “Uhm… I guess you can–” “I can bring it to him” K offered and I hated how he butted into this. 

Who did he think he was? Sunoo and Niki were not the jealous type… but Sunghoon and Jungwon even Jay might be annoyed at how close he is with her. 

“Oh! Then K will give it to you!” 

“Jake!” I heard as I saw K approach me.  He had a box wrapped in a cloth. “I don’t know what it is, frankly she didn’t want to tell me. But if you approach her again, I will tell Heeseung” he said and I scoffed. 

I grabbed the box and I glared at him. “Who do you think you are huh? She’s accepted five soulmates already… she’s not yours–" "She’s not yours either,” he said and I felt myself get angrier but I didn’t want to ruin the box in my hands. 

“The little crush you have on her, it's pathetic. When Sooha announced she was your soulmate, I even respected it. You? You’re running around trying to get her attention… how low of you” I said as I turned away to walk. 

“At least I could treat her better than you,” he said and I sighed. I laughed it off and walked away. I was doing this to better understand people. So I couldn't ruin this box. 

I went to the dorm where I noticed no one was here. I unwrapped the box to see a potion and books. 

This potion is meant to make you human for twenty-four hours. Please be careful. Humans are a lot more fragile than you’d think. You’ll still be able to use your power but it will hurt if you do, you’ll also be able to bleed. I know you didn’t want them knowing so avoid anything that might cut you. I also included a book on human needs. If you need help, I'm open to helping, just be a little kinder and patient about it. 

I didn’t know I was smiling until I looked up at my mirror. Why was I smiling? Her help? Her letter?

I shook it off and took the potion in my hands. I opened it and drank it. It tasted awful but I didn’t feel any different. I still felt thirsty… did it not work?

Vampires were supposed to take at least two blood bags a day to not feel murderous. I took one and tried to drink it when I felt sick. I immediately spit it out. 

Did it actually make me human?

I looked in the mirror and noticed I didn't look any different. It looked like I was a healthy vampire drinking blood bags and not skipping any meals. 

Meals… how was I gonna eat from the cafeteria?! I wasn’t allowed in the human cafeteria since my ID card was a vampire… 

How was I supposed to play human?

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[ruinofchimera]

Hi, I'd like to know your opinion. Why do you think Peter betrayed the Marauders and blamed Sirius?

By the way, I hope you are very well.

Thank you for the perfect cue. Time to roll up my sleeves and dissect the bane of the Harry Potter fandom: Peter Pettigrew.

Why did he betray the Marauders? I like the phrasing. Because behind it, the real question to ponder is lurking. Did Peter ever betray his friends, or did he just betray the Marauders, the twisted idea of inclusion that he never really had? Oh, don’t get me wrong—there’s no denying that James and Sirius were practically the poster boys for friendship. No argument there. We’ve all heard that tear-jerking speech from Sirius: “I’d rather die than betray my friends.” And fair enough; Sirius had every reason to be an emotional wreck—he was talking about James, the only person he ever truly gave a damn about. Sure, we don’t know everything about their golden years, but what we do know makes it painfully clear: James and Sirius? They were a two-man act, a bond so tight it was as if they shared the same heartbeat.

But where on earth did this idea come from that someone else—anyone else—was ever part of that special bond? The books paint a pretty stark picture if you care to look. There was the alpha pair leading the charge, while the other two trailed behind, playing supporting roles. Look at how they chose Pettigrew to be Secret Keeper in the first place—not because they thought he was capable or smart, but because they figured no one would suspect him. Translation: “We don’t think you’re much good for anything, Peter, but hell, no one else does either, so maybe that’ll save our skins.” And yet somehow, fans cling to this rose-colored myth of brotherhood. Four souls, brought together by some unshakable bond of loyalty. Let’ get real here. There’s a very good chance that Peter didn’t even see James and the gang as friends. He was just along for the ride, hanging around like a dodgy uncle at a family reunion.

People love to reduce Peter’s Animagus form to a symbol of cowardice and betrayal, but they miss the real significance of what a rat actually represents—survival. And at his core, that’s exactly what Peter is—a survivor. Strip away all the noise, the grand ideals, and lofty heroics that everyone around him seemed so fond of, and what you’ve got left in Peter is raw instinct. He wasn’t guided by some deep-seated belief or conviction. No grand moral compass pulled him one way or another. He’s the embodiment of the quintessential “baby boy” trope—the “please take care of me” type. (Sorry, Regulus, but the Chalamet fancast isn’t enough to hold the title. Hand over the badge.)

What Peter craved more than anything was protection. It didn’t matter whether it came from James Potter or the Dark Lord himself. The man just wanted someone bigger, stronger, meaner to pat him on the head.

Pettigrew was already used to playing second fiddle to James and Sirius, who were so full of themselves they practically had their own gravitational pull. So when Voldemort strutted onto the scene, another powerful, arrogant tosser demanding followers, was it really such a massive shift for Peter? Hardly. It wasn’t life-changing. It was just a change of scenery. He did what he was best at: finding the biggest bully on the block and pledging his allegiance to survive. Sirius and James had been grooming him for it for years without even knowing.

It’s easy work, bashing Peter. Man’s got a face like a rodent and a spine to match—hardly the makings of a tragic anti-hero, is he? Sorry, Peter, but “pretty privilege” isn’t swooping in to save you like it did for Slytherin Skittles. If Pettigrew had even a hint of good looks, we’d have a library of fanworks trying to paint his redemption. But with a face like that? Not a chance. Instead, we get a convenient scapegoat for the fandom to rally against, letting the poster boys soak up all the angst. The sacred friendship betrayed! A tale for the ages, and people can boo-fucking-hoo about it for eternity.

As you can see from my lengthy ramblings, I’m doing just fine—so no worries in this department.

[inbarfink]

The thing that I’ve been thinking of is… so one of Dib’s most defining traits and flaws is supposed to be his desire for fame and emotional validation. You know he is fighting to protect the earth, but he’s also fighting for the sake of his own ego

It’s got a lot of fun potential because it’s both extremely understandable - he’s been bullied and emotionally neglected for his entire life, it’s no wonder his biggest fantasy is just to be loved - but it can also motivate some really selfish acts. Not to mention how much it acts as a mirror to Zim’s own desire for respect and prestige among his own people.

And because of that, I guess it actually kinda surprises me that they never tried to have Dib pull a… reverse Planet Jackers moment? Like, just as Zim will protect the Earth from outside threats because he wants the credit for destroying it - will Dib help Zim if his ability to get credit for defeating him is threatened?

Like, I imagine a story where maybe Dib meets a rival paranormal investigator, and the guy’s like a Super Mega Asshole to Dib and also thinks he’s crazy. And then this guy manages to capture Zim and it seems like he’s going to be the one to expose him to the world and get all the credit for foiling his infiltration scheme. The credit that Dib feels he rightly deserves. Or he simply get a chance to defeat Zim, but there are no witnesses and no evidence and no chance anyone will ever believe him. 

For Dib, stopping Zim and proving to the world that he’s been right all along have always been interwoven goals. He has always taken it for granted that doing the former will naturally lead to the latter… So how will he deal with a situation where Zim can be stopped for good, but his situation will not change. No one will know or believe what he just did, he would just be the same ridiculed social pariah - the only thing he actually accomplished is that he has gotten rid of his best chance to change that permanently.

And you know, he doesn’t necessarily have to take that chance to help Zim or let him go - even just having Dib struggle with the idea momentarily could be a very strong character moment for him. I think it’s a shamefully underutilized aspect of his canon characterization and I do hope we’d get to see it played with more one of these days. 

But you know which piece of canon really came closest to tackling this aspect?

Dib’s little plan for Zim in ETF is not quite exactly what I was talking about above - but there are some similarities.

I’ve seen some people talk about Dib’s ETF plan like it was meant to be a favor to Zim or some sort of attempt at redemption for him or like… a thing that Zim benefit from in any sort of way? Like, I've seen some people describe the plot of ETF like Zim's manipulation of Dib’s plan was him using Dib’s kindness and empathy against him? And that’s not exactly what’s happening here.

To recap, Dib tries to stage yet another confrontation between himself and Zim (to let off steam from his Daddy Issues) only to find Zim a total emotional wreck, depressed to the point of total apathy. His first instinct is to drag him away to ‘lock him up’ but... he’s not really feeling it.

Something’s not quite right about winning like this. And then, he shifts to empathy 

But then, he shifts again, when he realizes the ‘real’ thing he’s been missing - a crowd.

The real reason this victory was feeling hollow is because he hasn’t made it public enough! If he's going to use Zim's emotional rock-bottom as a way to finally defeat him and condemn him into a life of painful experiments.... he wants to do it in front of a cheering crowd!

And while Zim’s scheme seems to have started once he first laid eyes on the Membracelet 

That plan couldn’t have worked without Dib’s own scheme to exploit Zim’s suicidal depression to get him in front as many people as possible so that Dib can get worldwide fame and Daddy’s approval and Zim can get... experimented on for the rest of his life. 

There was no kindness here to exploit, only a desperate desire for emotional validation.

The big mistake Dib did that allowed Zim the window of opportunity he needed to take over Membrane Labs was not doing the Kind Thing when he should’ve done the Practical Thing - and it was not doing the Cruel Thing when he should’ve done the Kind Thing. Dib had his chance to do the Practical Thing right there and then - kill or capture Zim while he’s not fighting back. He considered doing the Kind Thing (empathizing with Zim) and he decided to abandon both of them in favor of… the thing that will get him the most fame and attention.

And that’s the weakness of Dib that Zim exploited in his scheme. And that’s the thing that almost doomed planet Earth. Quite ironically, it’s literally a flaw Zim himself possesses quite strongly.

If Dib was willing to think purely in terms of what’s safest for Earth he would’ve taken out Zim right there and then and Earth would be safe forever - but for the sake of his own ego he took a risk that the planet almost paid very dearly for. 

(And if he was willing to resist the temptation of fame and continue with the thread of empathy he showed Zim? Well, we can only speculate of what would've happened then...)

It’s not quite what I was talking about above; Dib would’ve probably gotten some of the fame and validation he wanted if he just stomped Zim’s head right there and dragged his corpse out - he just wanted as much attention as possible. And he didn’t knowingly help Zim or even seriously considered it as much as he was just tricked into a situation of Mutually Assured Bastardness. But I think it is the closest we’ve come so far, and I think it’s interesting.

[asordinaryppl]

A3! Main Story: Part 4 - Act 16: Crossing Paths - Episode 21: The Virtual World

Towa: Please! If there’s one thing we’ve got plenty of, it’s potential!

Ibuki: Not gonna say it’s the only thing we haveee.

Homare: Hm? Looks rather lively over here.

-

Izumi: I think this will be a good experience for you as well, Banri-kun. What do you think?

Tsuzuru: I think the play’s contents suit you too.

Towa: PLEASE!!!

Banri: Woah, I’m totally in, y’know?

Towa: Really!?

Banri: It seems interesting, and I’m grateful for the chance.

Homare: Whatever are you having a meeting for?

Kureha: Ah, Homare-san. Hello.

Towa: Now that Tsuzuru-san has finished the script, we’ve come to ask for our director

Homare: Hooh, and that is Banri-kun?

Kureha: The script was very interesting.

Tsuzuru: I’m glad. I got to write differently than I would for MANKAI Company, so it was a good experience for me too.

Izumi: Is that so?

Tsuzuru: I’ve realized that recently I’ve only been writing for people who have experience as actors.

Tsuzuru: When we started out, I didn’t have time to think about things like this, so I didn’t notice at all.

Tsuzuru: I’m glad I got the chance to write something for people who are acting for the first time now that I’ve gained more experience.

Izumi: So this became a so this was beneficial for you too, Tsuzuru-kun.

Homare: May I read it?

Tsuzuru: Of course.

[Page flipping]

Homare: Hm… So the story this time is about the virtual world.

Izumi: It seems that AI characters and real people appear alternately and the story progresses by intertwining both sides.

Tsuzuru: After hearing all the KICS members’ ideas, I thought that a seamless blend of the virtual and real worlds would be good.

Homare: Meaning that this became a script made especially for KICS.

Banri: Now we just gotta figure out how to show that on stage.

Ibuki: I can think of a bunch of ways to show avatars in general, but I dunno how to do it on stage.

Keiku: Don’t think it’s possible.

Banri: You gotta think, man.

Tsuzuru: Given that I wrote this, I’ll take responsibility and support you through to the end. Let me know if you want any adjustments made, too.

Towa: We’ll be in your care!

Tsuzuru: That being said, when it comes to technological advances, only one person comes to mind…

[Doorbell ringing]

Izumi: Oh, perfect timing.

[Door opening]

Mizuno: Pardon my intrusion. I am Mizuno of MIZUNO Enterprises.

Tsuzuru: Sorry for making you come all the way here.

Mizuno: No, no need to be sorry!

Tsuzuru: Though I know relying on him time and again isn’t a good look, I sent Mizuno the script and asked for his advice too.

Mizuno: Actually, our company is also experimenting with ways to incorporate avatars in stage performances.

Mizuno: I’m grateful to have a part in this idea.

Ibuki: Woah, can we really ask that of MIZUNO Ent?

Kureha: That’s amazing.

Towa: It’s like a full-scale performance…!

Banri: Cause it is a full-scale performance.

Izumi: Reliable, right?

-

Izumi: Have you started practicing?

Kureha: Yesterday was our first session, and we’ve arranged to meet twice a week from now on.

Towa: I was a little anxious about being instructed by Yukio-san, but it was fun!

Keiku: He was shocked when I told him I’m a live-in part-timer at Zen’s place.

Banri: Huh, so he didn’t know?

Izumi: He may be trying to limit his contact with people related to theater as much as possible during the Fleur Cup’s run.

Towa: Do you think it’d be good if we practiced by on our own along with the times we’ll be practicing with Yukio-san?

Izumi: Well, you are just starting out, so I think you’ll get better the more you practice… Why not use our practice room?

Towa: Are you sure!? We’ve got our school jerseys with us, so we’d love to!

Izumi: Banri-kun… has a meeting with Tsuzuru-kun and Mizuno-san after this, so I’ll help you guys out.

Towa: Please do!

Ibuki: Well, we’ve got time.

Keiku: Yup.

Kureha: We’ll be in your care.

Izumi: …

Izumi: (Guy-san said he’d go shopping and then head straight to the bar, so it should be okay.)

Homare: I’ve also finished writing the script for my dramatic reading, so mayhaps I will join you for some solo practice.

Kureha: Um, where is Guy-san—

Izumi: He’s out shopping.

Kureha: Is that so…

Izumi: (It kind of looks like he’s avoiding him on purpose, and it makes me feel a little guilty… But with the circumstances being what they are…)

Homare: It seems Guy-san has also been giving it his all practicing by himself in preparation for our performance.

Kureha: I’ll definitely come to watch the Winter Troupe’s performance.

Izumi: Let’s all do our best.

Kureha: Yes.

previous episode | masterpost | next episode

[skylarmoon71]

Leonardo (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)- Chapter 11

The weekend when your parents are away feels like the perfect time. You couldn’t believe a great opportunity had just dropped into your lap.

There’s a light tap on the window, and you slide the four packets into your pocket. You move to the window, and there he is. He offers a little smile.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” You greet.

For a moment the both of you just stand there looking at each other. He hasn’t been around for a couple of days and it now hits you just how much you missed him.

“Do you want to come in?” You ask.

“Actually, I was hoping you could join me tonight.” He holds out his hand.

“Where are we going?”

You ask after you’ve already taken his hand.

He smiles.

“I want to introduce you to my family. I trust you, and you’re important to me.”

The statement brings a new type of warmth.

“I’d love to meet your family.”

Leo pulls you right into his arms and you both take off.

~~~~

The trip is awfully quiet.

You aren’t really sure what to say. Leo also seems very nervous. As he tracks through the sewers with you in tow, you try to work through a decent conversation starter.

You should say something.

Anything.

“Le-”

“We’re here.” He interrupts as you break the corner.

You aren’t given a chance to say much, because the three pairs of eyes are now trained on you. Mikey is the first to sprint over.

“Wow, you’re that chick!! I can’t believe you’re Leo’s girlfriend now.”

Leo looks bashful, and Raph joins, looking down.

“I thought you’d be taller.”

You frown.

“I’m average height.” You retort.

Donnie shuffles in nervously.

“It’s nice to meet you.” His awkwardness is kind of adorable.

“It’s nice to meet you too.”

Your eyes track movement in the background, and to your surprise it’s a huge rat. You aren’t really sure what to say. To be honest, you shouldn’t be surprised. They are giant turtles.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet. Leo has told us a lot about you and your situation.” Splinter states.

You turn to Leo, and there’s a strange sense of gratitude.

“You told them?”

He nods.

“You saved my life. How could I not. I’m grateful. So are they.”

When you look back they are all wearing smiles.

In the past you’d never truly done much for anyone. But when you gave of your time, not once did you regret it.

It feels nice to receive their thanks.

“Well, we’d love to stay and chat but we gotta go.” Mikey speaks. They all nod in agreement and you’re a bit confused. So is Leo.

“W-Wait where are you going!!” He asks.

~~~~

“We’re heading to April’s to watch the game. Have fun with your girlfriend, “ Raph says.

Splinter looks as though he’s about to join.

“Y-You too Sensei!”

“I do enjoy a good game.”

Leo isn’t given another chance to speak, because they are all filing out of the lair. Pretty soon it’s just the two of you.

Leo looks a bit uncomfortable.

“Sorry about that. How about I give you a tour of the place.”

You agree with a nod, and Leo leads you around his home. You spot the dojo, Donnie’s working station. Mikey’s gaming spot. Even the feared Hashi.

Leo gets to his room and you follow as he continues to talk. He’s showing you his little bonsai tree and it’s then you feel like you should ask.

“Leo, do I make you uneasy?”

He stops abruptly.

“What?”

“This entire night you’ve been acting weird. I thought that maybe you were just nervous for me to meet your family but it feels like more than that. What we did that night…did I force you?”

Peter’s words on consent are ringing in your head. You realize at that moment that you hadn’t stopped to ask if it was something he wanted.

“I’m sorry if I made you do something that you didn’t wa-”

“No.”

He interrupts. Leo shakes his head.

“You’re wrong. You didn’t force me into anything. I wanted it just as much as you did. I..I like it when you touch me (Y/N).”

You just gaze at him.

Leo swallows.

“I was hoping that you being here would keep me in check because I wanted to do so much more. I’ve wanted it since that night. I just felt guilty because we haven’t even defined what this is. It felt disrespectful for me to make a move on you when I can’t even take you out properly.”

You understand now. Your fears were pretty much the same. You both had uncertainties. It’s a relief. Now you just need to be incredibly clear going forward.

“I want you to be my boyfriend Leo.”

His eyes almost glimmer in the light.

“I want that too.”

It’s a bit of a whisper, and he moves closer.

You swallow.

“I want to have sex with you.”

Leo’s gaze reflects desire. He nods.

“I do too.”

Your heart is hammering, and you reach into your pockets, pulling out the small packs.

“I have condoms.”

You say it with such a straight face.

“I-I also took the pill i-in case they didn’t fit.”

A smile makes its way on his face, and he begins laughing.

“You..really are too much…sometimes.” He says between his laughter.

“What would you have done if I said no.” He teases.

“Then I would have big breasts. I heard the pills make them huge. I’ve been on this earth for centuries and they’ve always been the same size. It’s disappointing.”

He fights to hold back his laughter this time, shaking his head.

“You’re perfect.”

He coos, leaving a kiss on your cheek. You grip the packets in your hand, looking up as he pulls back slowly.

“So..you want to..?” He nods, this time leaving a kiss on your neck. You melt into his arms when he pulls you closer.

“This is one hundred percent what I want to do.” You giggle when he leaves a little kiss behind your ear.

“Me too.” you mumble. 

[shiningwonderland]

Camus (All Star)

Translator: Mimi (Twitter: _mimisaurora)

Proofreader: Raz (Twitter: agnadance)

Editors: Noemi (Twitter: dreaminbeyond), Snail (Twitter: herbert_snail)

Chapter Two — Heartfelt Nocturne

I am put to work for Camus-senpai from the day I’m taken into his home.

My main duties in the tower are to cook, clean, and care for Alexander. I act as his assistant whenever he goes out on jobs.

This is probably to ensure I didn’t try to do anything suspicious while he’s away.

This is the first time I have ever lived with a man and I couldn't help but feel nervous, although he seems unfazed by it.

I'm sure it has to do with the fact he was born into a noble family and has been used to living with servants since he was a child.

He even paid me at the end of last month, claiming I deserved it since I was now working for him.

Haruka Nanami: I really… don’t understand him at all.

The unsettling conversation I overheard that night left me feeling anxious for what was to happen next, but so far, he’s been acting just as he normally did.

Haruka Nanami: I wonder if it was some serious business conversation or if it was something else. There’s simply no way he could have been talking about an “assassination” — it’s all so unbelievable….

I can’t think of a reason anyone would have to kill the president of an entertainment company, no matter how great President Saotome is.

This sudden change in my lifestyle was quite scary and troubling at first, even if it was my fault.

But after thinking it over, I realized this was an opportunity to closely observe Camus-senpai’s private life, someone shrouded in so much mystery.

If we’re living together, this could be my chance to get him to sing the song I’ve made. Lately, I’ve started to look on the bright side of things.

Haruka Nanami: Nothing ventured, nothing gained… I suppose.

But, things didn’t end up going that smoothly….

Alexander: Grrrrr….

Haruka Nanami: Alright! Meal time!

Alexander: Bark!

Haruka Nanami: Kyah!

Alexander: Grrrrr… Hmph.

Haruka Nanami: … Ugh. It’s not easy for you to open up to me, is it…?

There are many problems. The first being that Alexander did not like me.

He had amiably wagged his tail at me on the first day we’d met.

However, it only took Senpai saying, “This woman is not a friend. Don’t get too close to her,” for Alexander to immediately switch his tune.

Since then, he would always sit himself in front of me with this sour expression on his face whenever I got on the phone, staring intently.

He was most likely watching me on Senpai’s behalf.

The biggest problem, though, is the lack of freedom.

Partly because I am being watched, but partly because I am simply too busy.

The tower already has a piano and I was told I could bring my equipment as well, so there is no issue in actually working, but….

First, I take the time to tend to house duties; second, as a popular idol, Senpai’s schedule is often filled with an entire day’s workload, making it difficult to be his assistant during these times.

Staff: Good morning, Camus-san.

Camus: Good morning.

Haruka Nanami: Good morning.

Staff: Huh? And you are...?

Camus: She is currently the composer responsible for my unit. It is key to get to know a singer in order to make them a good song, so she volunteered to become my personal assistant.

Staff: How thoughtful for someone so young.

Haruka Nanami: N-no, uh, I mean... Thank you very much.

Camus-senpai exchanges a few words with the staff before nonchalantly walking into his dressing room and beginning to read his script as usual.

After some time, his smooth brow suddenly creases, and he looks very cross.

He had been so effortless in acting so placid before he opened the door….

I still can’t get used to the change, despite having been his assistant for many days now.

The staff would surely be astonished if they were to see him act differently like this.

I am also sure there would be people who might form a bad impression, which would make someone timid like me feel anxious, but….

I wonder if Camus-senpai even cares….

Camus: What is it? What are you looking at?

Haruka Nanami: It’s nothing….

When I eventually admit to what I was thinking, he laughs with a huff.

Camus: So that’s what you were worried about? Ridiculous. It doesn’t matter what other people think.

I only perform this way if I feel like it's necessary. Are you not familiar with the concept of “the ends justifying the means”?

That’s all he says before returning his gaze to his script, ending that conversation.

Camus: What are you doing? I’ll be on stand-by for a while today, so go and make good use of your time.

Haruka Nanami: O-Of course.

There were plans to film a drama today, but it seems like something went wrong and needs to be resolved before they could begin.

I open my bag and check to see if I have any work approaching a deadline.

Director: Ugh, I give up. We had to rewrite the script at the last minute. This is why I didn’t want to put the daughter of a bigwig in a lead role. She’s too full of herself.

Camus: You truly have my sympathies.

I was immersed in checking over my music when I hear Senpai speaking to the director about something, prompting me to look up.

Director: And that’s why Camus-chan’s character has been completely redone.

Camus-senpai flips through the pages of the new script that had been apologetically handed over.

Camus: Indeed… the lines are a little different, but they aren’t unreasonable changes. I believe I can still perform this without any issues.

Director: Really?! You’ve saved me, Benevolent Camus-sama!

Camus: Haha. There’s no need to address me as such. Let’s simply do our best so that we can get some good shots.

Director: Thank you! Thank you! Then, I’m excited to be working with you!

After the director leaves, Camus-senpai flips through the pages of the script once again. He closes it once he reaches the end.

Haruka Nanami: You’re… not going to read it again?

He didn’t have much time left until filming began, according to the director.

Camus: I’ve already looked through it once. There’s no need to go over it again.

Haruka Nanami: But, just reading it through once….

Camus: Isn’t that enough? I don’t need to review it again and again.

It is true that I have never seen him reread a script before.

On the other hand, he very rarely has any bad takes. As is to be expected, Senpai is truly remarkable.

When I get home, I work on house chores for a while.

Haruka Nanami: Senpai, would you like me to refill the quills’ ink soon?

Camus: No… they’re still good. I’d actually like for you to begin with cleaning the bedroom. There are some documents I’d like to focus on.

Haruka Nanami: Alright, then I’ll go ahead and tidy up your bedroom first.

Camus: Ah, I also forgot to mention that breakfast tomorrow won’t be necessary. I will be leaving at four. A medium-sized package might arrive while I’m away. Be sure to bring it in.

Haruka Nanami: Of course.

Haruka Nanami: Alright, the bedroom cleaning went okay. I should probably make the bed next and fluff the pillow properly….

I pat my apron and look around.

Camus-senpai’s house consists of four floors. In short, the kitchen is on the second floor, a living room on the third, and his bedroom on the fourth.

I’ve been staying in a small room next to the kitchen.

The furniture on each floor is luxury-made, all rooms with stunning wallpaper and carpet. A chandelier hung from the ceiling.

Haruka Nanami: I forget we’re even in Japan every time I look around.

His private life is elegant in itself. Meals are taken on silver platters. After his meals, he reads in front of the fireplace. He drinks from a wineglass the day before his day off.

He enjoys horseback riding and fencing in his spare time. Even the sweets that he picks look really expensive and unfamiliar….

Working like this has made me feel as if I were a maid serving in a nobleman's house.

Haruka Nanami: Huff. Now, should I put the pillows like this?

There’s one spot on Senpai’s bed which feels rather cold, probably having to do with the way air conditioning hits, so I avoid placing the pillows there.

I head down the spiral staircase and call out to Senpai in the living room.

Haruka Nanami: Camus-senpai, the bedroom has been cleaned and the bed has been made.

Camus: Thank you. Then, I’ll go and concentrate on these documents for a while. Bring me coffee in an hour.

He stands and turns to pet Alexander’s head.

Alexander: Arf!

Camus: Don't look so dejected, Alexander. Why don’t we go to the dog park the day after tomorrow?

Alexander: Arf!

Alexander barks happily and Senpai’s eyes softened a bit.

He is strict with everyone else, but seems to treasure Alexander very dearly.

Haruka Nanami: Well, let’s pour some coffee. Today… should I use eight sugar cubes?

There is one more problem with this lifestyle. Even though almost half a month has passed, I still didn’t understand Camus-senpai at all.

He’s busier than I am every single day, making it rare for us to have the opportunity to talk….

Whenever an opportunity did present itself, he kept up his frigid attitude.

Haruka Nanami: Hmm…. But based on the creases between those brows, I should use at least five.

Despite paying as close attention as possible, so far, the only thing I’ve been able to figure out is his taste for sugar.

If the crease between his brows is faint, then use eight. If it’s deeper, use eleven cubes. But if it’s very prominent, on the contrary, use less.

Haruka Nanami: Alright…. Let’s go with six today.

I try picking up the sugar cubes with tongs — my hand stops.

Was it… truly going to be alright? In the midst of my hectic life, I’ve found myself abruptly feeling panicked like this with no warning.

At any rate, all I can do right now is my best. I live every day with that thought in mind.

Haruka Nanami: I’ve brought your coffee. Here you go.

Camus: Thank you. Now, should we take a short break? Hmm… it smells good.

He closes the book he’s been reading, takes the cup, and closes his eyes to smell the aroma before taking a sip.

His brows twitch and he quietly drinks another mouthful.

Camus: ….

He says nothing, but it looks like I put in the right amount of sugar and it makes me a little happy.

He also seems to be in a good mood, the atmosphere a little more peaceful.

Maybe, now… I might be able to talk to him.

Haruka Nanami: Uh….

Camus: What? Speak briefly if you have something to say.

I got the strong impression from his cold stare that I shouldn’t get too close, but I still find it in myself to be able to speak.

Select the phrase!

Talk about recent work (+20 Love)

In any case, I need to find something to say.

I decide to try bringing up his recent work.

Haruka Nanami: Senpai, you will appear in a commercial for pre-packaged stew, right?

Camus: Correct, the filming finished last week without delays. And?

He still answers rather amiably.

He’d be appearing in a commercial for a new product advertising the ability to enjoy the authentic taste of the royal court at home.

Haruka Nanami: I was a little curious when I saw the product’s name…. How did it go when you sampled it? Was it good?

Camus: Saying it was “authentic” is an overstatement, but it was an unprecedented kind of pre-packaged food. That said, it will be a long time before I eat it again.

My co-star kept getting bad takes during filming. I was forced to eat ten cups of the same stew.

Haruka Nanami: That… must have been difficult.

Camus: What do you mean? It’s a common occurrence.

An expression akin to a wry smile appears on his face and the mood in the room relaxes.

However, his typical harsh demeanor quickly makes a comeback.

Camus: So, why did you bother asking? Is your intention to waste my precious time with gossip?

Haruka Nanami: I-I’m sorry….

And just like that, the conversation is over. Embarrassed, my eyes suddenly stop on something next to his desk.

It’s… a teddy bear small enough to hold in one hand.

It seems a little out of place in his room and every time I’ve cleaned in the past I would get curious about it.

Haruka Nanami: Um… do you like bears?

When I ask, he looks stunned.

Camus: You're an ignorant woman. Look carefully. This is an antique.

He turns the bear to show the soles of its feet and I notice a number embroidered on it.

According to him, it comes from a famous atelier that is no longer in business and that it wouldn’t be strange for something like this to be displayed in a museum.

Camus: ...In the end, I was ultimately able to recover it when an idiot unaware of its worth sold it at a yard sale. If I had any spare time, I would donate it to the appropriate venue.

Haruka Nanami: Is that so?

Camus: Indeed. I wouldn’t care for a stuffed animal. What is the value in having such a furry thing?

Haruka Nanami: … My apologies for assuming.

Alexander: Arf!

Alexander, who I now see has come to Senpai’s feet, barks as though to say something.

Camus: Huh…? Ah, right. I believe you’re also covered in fur.

Alexander: Bark!

Camus: Don’t worry, Alexander. Your fur is unlike anything on this earth. It’s much different than that of a bear.

He happily strokes Alexander for a bit, but his smile soon disappears.

Camus: Woman, enough with the nonsense and just get back to work. Do not come into the bedroom for a while.

Haruka Nanami: U-understood!

I hurry out of the room together with Alexander.

The production of Quartet Night’s unit song is somehow coming along despite it not going smoothly.

Today all four of them have come together to meet again for the first time in a long while.

They’re all incredibly busy so it was difficult to match their schedules.

I had planned to discuss the lyrics, but….

Reiji Kotobuki: We might as well make the lyrics unique to our personalities. Ranran’s like rock, and Myu-chan’s like a butler.

Ai Mikaze: Even if our voices don’t blend? I oppose it. If we don't unify somewhere, it’ll get out of control.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: If we’re going to unify, then I’ll write them. I’m not gonna sing anything half-assed.

Ai Mikaze: I oppose that too. Ranmaru’s lyrics are too unique to himself. Camus’s voice may seem less out of place, but they wouldn’t suit either Reiji or me.

Everyone has completely different tastes and no one wants to compromise, so the discussion is going nowhere.

Each of them wrote lyrics to serve as a starting point, but the lyrics fail to resonate with all of them….

Reiji Kotobuki: Then, how about switching it up and having someone else be in charge of your parts? Maybe you'll end up discovering a new you?

Camus: I object. To disturb the image fans have already established of us would only interfere with business.

Kotobuki-senpai lets out a huff and, with puffed cheeks, asks what kind of lyrics it is that Camus-senpai wanted then.

Camus: When it comes to things like lyrics, it’ll be fine as long as it doesn’t go overboard and the number of notes fits.

As always, Camus-senpai appears disinterested in the discussion itself.

He didn’t seem to have drive or passion for this unit, or any job for that matter.

Since we began living together, I’ve heard him say that other idols play a supporting role and help him stand out.

On the other hand, he also didn’t seem to care about getting bigger in the entertainment industry….

What was Camus-senpai even thinking of by becoming an idol?

Reiji Kotobuki: Come on—Everybody’s just whining. Kouhai-chan, do you have any opinions?

Haruka Nanami: Y-yes. For now, how about everyone picks a phrase they like from the drafted lyrics?

Ranmaru Kurosaki: A phrase I like? I ain’t got one. That’s just the way it is.

Kurosaki-senpai smacks the document in front of him.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: There’s no passion in ‘em. This one especially's the worst. It’s boring. Who wrote this?

Ai Mikaze: That would be Camus.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Ah, no wonder. That’s why it feels so fake.

Camus-senpai’s brow twitches at the comment and I start to get a bad feeling about this.

Camus: At the very least, a lowly person such as yourself couldn't possibly be able to understand. It’s the same as a worm on the ground, never understanding the feeling of a bird fluttering around in the sky.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Ah? There he goes, always fussin’ about something.

Their sharp gazes collide, sparks flying.

Although the four of them are by no means good friends, Camus-senpai and Kurosaki-senpai especially seem to despise each other.

Whenever something like this happens, Mikaze-senpai would simply open his laptop and begin his own work.

Kotobuki-senpai jokes around to try and calm the situation, but instead the atmosphere only worsens.

Haruka Nanami: U-um… Camus-senpai, Kurosaki-senpai, please calm down…

I have to do something. It’s my job to correct the situation if they’re going to fight. I was ready to stand up to try and stop them, but…. In that moment, they both simultaneously glance at the clock on the wall.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Tch…. We don’t have time for this.

Camus: To argue with a peasant would only lower my worth. Let’s continue with the meeting.

Haruka Nanami: Ah….

Both of them relax their gazes, which had been ready to ignite at any second, and turn back to their documents.

Well… everyone’s schedules are incredibly tight, so if they were to miss today, the next opportunity to meet would be far into the future.

Both of them are very aware of this.

Reiji Kotobuki: Oh! As expected, you’re both pros! You’ve made big bro so happy!

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Shut up—screw you, Reiji.

Camus: Would you like me to freeze that annoying mouth of yours?

They both scowl at Kotobuki-senpai and his shoulders slump dejectedly, but Camus-senpai and the others continue to review the material as if nothing has happened.

They all look very sullen, but they quickly pull their thoughts together.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Hey woman, since you were the first one to say somethin’, tell us which phrase you liked the most.

Haruka Nanami: A-alright! I personally think it’d be best for everyone to sing the unit’s name during the song’s chorus….

While reflecting on the fact that I am on edge that this meeting could go awry at any moment,

I eagerly participate in the discussion with my senpai.

Afterwards….

Everyone continues to work on the lyrics without saying much else, with the exception of the occasional joke from Kotobuki-senpai which goes ignored.

By the time the meeting is over, the lyrics draft is fully finished.

At first glance, the unit seems to be falling apart, but they’re professionals who have the ability to come together at the end of the day.

Haruka Nanami: I have to work harder too….

A few days later, Camus-senpai leaves early in the morning.

Having been strictly forbidden from leaving the house without him, I spend my day working in the living room.

Alexander: Grrr….

Alexander and I still haven’t gotten close, but he no longer barks at me and instead stays quiet in the corner of the room.

Sometimes he’ll peek at the entryway, probably waiting for Senpai to come home. It has already grown dark, but there is no sign of Camus-senpai’s return.

Haruka Nanami: Do you miss your owner, Alexander?

Alexander: ….

Instead of responding, his bushy tail wags slightly.

Alexander had seemed somewhat uneasy since morning. He repeatedly checks the door and the phone as if he were anxious about something.

Haruka Nanami: It’ll be okay, he’s coming home soon.

Alexander: … Arf.

Camus-senpai and I go almost everywhere together, but sometimes he disappears like this with no word as to where he was going.

Where could he possibly have gone?

Since I began living here, I’ve come to truly realize just how busy Camus-senpai is.

He studies and reads books whenever he has any free time, despite his work schedule always being packed.

Without fail, he always looks into his co-stars beforehand and checks for news of their involvement in the industry no matter how small it may be, even for brief meetings.

He also reads and examines documents I didn’t understand at all.

He rarely rests on days off and instead packs his day with sports and practice.

I’m sure he’s only able to live such a life because of how extraordinary and exceptional he is.

He only needs to read scripts once for things like dramas, and could even sing songs perfectly after only glancing at the sheet music, so he often throws them away.

He never looks at the same form twice. One conversation is enough for him.

With his abilities, no wonder ordinary people like us seem like fools.

Alexander: Arf….

Haruka Nanami: Alexander, so you are lonely.

That’s right, Camus-senpai’s talk show, TalQ’ing9, is on at this time.

Haruka Nanami: Want to watch his TV show?

Alexander: Arf!

Given how happy he looks, we wind up watching TV together.

Senpai’s smile fills the screen the second I turn it on.

He’s engaged in light banter with his guests in his typical calm demeanor.

Haruka Nanami: Your owner is quite good at talking, isn’t he?

Alexander: Arf arf!

I gently pat Alexander on the head. He barks proudly, it almost looks as though he were grinning.

Haruka Nanami: Hehe. You were told not to like me, did you end up forgetting...?

Alexander and I watch Camus-senpai’s TV program like this for a while.

He speaks to his guests with a kind smile and graciously addresses the fans in front of the TV.

I look at that smile and... suddenly think about how he’s like ice.

He waits upon his fans with a warm smile, but behind all that, he would coldly warn that no one is allowed to go near him.

His music is also very wonderful, but his singing is somewhat cold… why?

Camus-senpai’s phrases like “I don’t care” and “I’m not interested” come to mind.

Does Senpai truly feel nothing about anything he did?

Is it because he’s so indifferent about his fans and the people around him that he’s so cold…?

That... can't be.

There is no such thing as a cold-hearted person. He surely must have something he liked or something that was very important to him.

If I don’t figure out what that is, then I can’t make a song for Camus-senpai.

But… What should I do?

As I think it over, the phone rings.

Haruka Nanami: The phone…. What do I do?

Camus-senpai told me to never answer the phone while he was away, but….

Select the phrase!

Don’t answer the phone (+0 Love)

Haruka Nanami: I was told I shouldn’t, so I won’t.

Alexander: Bark bark bark!

Just then, Alexander suddenly jumps at the phone and the handset falls off.

I end up answering the phone after all.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Yahoo, Camus-chan. Sorry for calling when you’re off, but you didn’t answer your cell—so I called this line instead.

Haruka Nanami: That voice… Tsukimiya-sensei?!

Sensei seems surprised when he hears me on the other end.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Haru-chan? Why are you at Camus-chan’s house? Where’s Camus-chan?

Haruka Nanami: U-uh…. A-a meeting for the solo song. He left to go buy something just a little while ago….

In a panic, I manage to conjure up some excuse on the spot.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Ah, so you’ve been there this whole time. What a relief.

Haruka Nanami: Um… did something happen?

Sensei sounds relieved, which brings me to worry a little, so I carefully ask.

Ringo Tsukimiya: It’s fine, it’s fine. Camus-chan is staying home, right? Then, it’s nothing to worry about.

Haruka Nanami: B-But, I’m curious. Please, tell me. What happened?

Ringo Tsukimiya: ….

After a few moments of silence Sensei replies, unexpectedly firm.

Ringo Tsukimiya: … Listen calmly. Don’t tell anyone about this.

Haruka Nanami: A-Alright.

Ringo Tsukimiya: You see… someone attacked Shiny.

Haruka Nanami: Eeh?! Is the president safe?

Ringo Tsukimiya: Of course! This is Shiny we’re talking about, there isn’t one scratch on him⁠—he’s acting like nothing happened!

Haruka Nanami: I’m glad….

Ringo Tsukimiya: But… I heard that someone who looked like Camus-chan ran away from the scene.

Eh?

Ringo Tsukimiya: And that’s why I ended up calling. Ah, but I don't suspect Camus-chan or anything! I simply wanted to check. Okay?

Haruka Nanami: R-right.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Ah, and I’m so relieved! I thought he’d gotten himself into some trouble.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Well then, I’m going now. Also, you shouldn’t stay at a man’s house this late, you hear? Once Camus-chan gets back, have him take you home properly.

Haruka Nanami: I-I understand…. Goodbye.

I can’t bring myself to move for a while after I hang up the phone.

Subconsciously, the words I heard last month came to mind.

“Saotome’s assassination”...

Haruka Nanami: Senpai? He’d never….

That wasn’t it. Sensei had said “a person who looked like him”. Surely he’s mistaken.

Haruka Nanami: But….

My heart won’t stop racing. I then find Alexander by my side and he looks up at me with an anxious expression.

Haruka Nanami: It’s okay. I’m sure it’s a mistake….

I stroke his head softly and Alexander seems relieved, drawing closer to me.

I hope Senpai comes back soon….

When I turn back to look at the TV again, TalQ’ing9 is already over.

We wait for Camus-senpai’s return while huddling together.

Haruka Nanami: Ah….

Alexander: Woof!

I just heard the door unlock downstairs!

Camus: … I’m back.

Haruka Nanami: Yes! Welcome back!

Alexander: Arf arf!

Alexander and I answer loudly and rush down the stairs.

We then both run to the entrance and I retrieve Camus-senpai’s coat.

Senpai looks more tired than usual.

Was I... imagining it?

Haruka Nanami: Excuse me… Camus-senpai.

Select the phrase!

You must have worked hard today. (+20 Love)

Haruka Nanami: You must have worked hard today.

He raises a brow, curious, and mentions how out of nowhere my comment was.

Haruka Nanami: M-my apologies. It’s just… you look tired.

Camus: You think I’m tired? Ha. You underestimate me.

Haruka Nanami: I’m sorry….

Camus: Why apologize? What an incomprehensible woman. I don’t think there is anyone who feels uncomfortable with being praised.

Haruka Nanami: E-eh…. Um….

Camus: Stop talking nonsense and get some rest. I’ll be going now too.

And just like that, he heads up to his bedroom without looking back at me.

Since then, other than Alexander and I getting along a little better, the typical everyday routine comes and goes.

My classmates grow a bit suspicious of me because I wasn't there whenever they visited my room in the dormitory, but other than that, work is normal.

Senpai’s attitude is as cold as ever and we hardly ever have a conversation with the exception of him giving out orders for work.

Then one day, I have a very sad dream.

Haruka Nanami: ….

When my eyes focus, I find it’s still the middle of the night. In the darkness, I can see the familiar ceiling of his tower.

When my body wakes up, the matter of my dream disappears but only loneliness remains.

What did I dream of? I could hear sorrowful music… the whole time….

That’s when I realize the music I heard in my dreams is still playing around me.

Haruka Nanami: Is that… the sound of the cello?

Without giving it much thought, I get up and slowly make my way in the direction of the sound.

The heart-rending melody continues. This wasn’t a recording—this is the sound of someone performing live.

It plays and stops, then plays and stops again. This was the first time I’ve heard anything like it—a foreign melody.

Haruka Nanami: Is Camus-senpai… playing?

I had heard that Senpai's specialty instrument was the cello but I’ve never actually seen him play it even once.

I look up the stairs leading to his bedroom; a dim light and the sound of the cello come through from above.

This truly is Camus-senpai’s performance.

I soon find myself drawn to the piano in the living room.

My fingertips touch the keys as if they have a mind of their own.

When the first notes of the piano resound, the sound of the cello stops briefly, and then at once begins to play again.

And so, neither I nor Senpai exchange a word, but just match our music as though it were only natural.

Blending perfectly, as though it were melting, the two sounds become one.

My fingers tremble as they tap against the keys with this strange sensation, feeling as though my outstretched hand has touched deep within Senpai’s heart if only for a moment.

I wonder how long I’ve been doing that. If I am to stop for even a fraction of a second, this moment will likely be over—

I just let the sound flow through me.

The next thing I know, the performance finishes and the lights in the bedroom go out.

I couldn't move myself from the piano for a long time.

The next morning...

When I meet Senpai at the breakfast table, nothing changes and everything continues on as normal.

Camus: … Today is my day off. I will be spending my time in the living room to check on some TV programs. Make sure to finish cleaning as soon as possible.

Haruka Nanami: Yes, sir. Understood.

His conversation with me is normal too. He uses a cold, authoritative tone.

It’s as though that connection we shared for a brief moment last night was just an illusion, and I unknowingly stare at him.

His fingers, elegantly holding a knife as he butters his bread—those very same fingers played the cello yesterday.

Camus: What are you doing? You shouldn’t stare at people.

Haruka Nanami: Y-yes, sir. M-my apologies.

Flustered, I bow my head and walk toward the kitchen to make some coffee.

When I look back, I see Senpai, brows furrowed as usual, putting honey on his salad.

His attitude and his sugar intake remained the same, but….

I feel as if something has changed, even if just a little.

That afternoon….

Senpai is reading on the sofa and I look over some sheet music next to him when the doorbell rings.

Haruka Nanami: Ah… a visitor.

It's the first time anyone has paid a visit to Senpai’s home since I started living here with him.

Haruka Nanami: What should I do? Would you like me to go?

Camus: I’m not expecting anybody today. Leave it alone.

Haruka Nanami: But….

The doorbell rings again and again. It’s probably someone with an urgent matter.

In my confusion, I hear a carefree voice from outside.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Hmm, doesn’t look like he’s coming out. Is he really not home?

That voice… Tsukimiya-sensei? And that’s….

Cecil Aijima: Non. I definitely saw it. Haruka…. My Muse, disappearing into the forest. I am certain she is imprisoned inside of this tower.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Ha…? Locked up… Seriously? Thinkin’ about it though, I really wouldn’t put it past him.

Camus-senpai approaches the window and, upon glancing outside, closes the book in a sullen manner and returns to the couch.

Camus: Hmph. Aijima and Kurosaki? … A troublesome bunch has arrived.

Haruka Nanami: Um…. What should we do?

Camus: Ignore them. They will give up eventually.

After he speaks, I hear the sound of a dull thud somewhere.

Haruka Nanami: … Ah!

W-what…?

The vibrations reach us all the way to the third floor and I hastily covere my mouth to muffle the cry I utter out.

The sounds and shaking continue, and I hear Kurosaki-senpai’s irritated voice.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: O-oi. Cecil, what are you trying to do?! Tsukimiya-san, what is he—

Cecil Aijima: … I am breaking down the door. I have to save my Muse.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Aijima…. You idiot...!

The entire tower fills with tremors that bring even Camus-senpai quickly to his feet.

Camus: Great…. We don’t have a choice. Go open the door.

Haruka Nanami: Y-yes, sir.

We rush down the stairs and open the door to find Cecil-san in tears, with Tsukimiya-sensei and Kurosaki-senpai standing nearby.

[break]

Cecil Aijima: Haruka! You are safe after all! I have come to rescue you!

Cecil-san embraces me with all of his might.

Haruka Nanami: Ah. U-uh, Cecil-san….

Cecil Aijima: What a relief. I am so happy to see you are safe. Are you hurt anywhere? Have you been treated badly?

Haruka Nanami: N-No… I-I’m….

Around me, Tsukimiya-sensei and my other senpais look at each other in awkward silence.

Camus: You lot…. What do you want?

Ranmaru Kurosaki: What the hell do you think? I was brought here against my will. More importantly, are you seriously living with this woman?!

Ringo Tsukimiya: I came along with Cecil-chan because he’d kept saying he was worried. I didn’t really think she’d be here, though. And her outfit….

Haruka Nanami: Eh….

A-ah. I came out in my usual uniform and apron, so it probably comes as a bit of a surprise to them.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Hey, Camus-chan. Haru-chan. What is the meaning of this?

Haruka Nanami: U-uh, well, y-you see….

What do I do? I can’t admit the reason as to why I’m living with Senpai….

In the middle of me panicking, Camus-senpai walks up beside me and responds with a very nonchalant expression.

Camus: What is there to explain? We’re very simply happily living together.

Cecil Aijima: That can’t…! Please stop lying! You villian! Tyrant! Swindler!

Cecil-san raises his voice in protest as he holds me close.

Camus-senpai huffs and pulls me away from him.

He spins me around and holds me tightly.

Haruka Nanami: Ah….

Camus: You’d get it if you simply look. We’re lovers.

He looks my way and smiles.

Camus: Right, Haruka?

Haruka Nanami: Eh… I…?

What is he doing...?

He pulls me close to his chest and his face is closer than it has ever been before.

My heart nearly jumps out of my chest and I freeze.

After being held in that hug, he slightly squeezes my shoulder as though to ask what I was doing, and I finally come to my senses.

I-I see. It’s a lie to trick them about us being together.

Haruka Nanami: Y-yes. Y-you’re… right.

Camus: That is the case. I don’t wish to be apart for a moment and would rather be together with the person I love. Isn’t this a reasonable reaction to have?

Ringo Tsukimiya: “Reasonable”...? It’s pretty dangerous for an idol to live with someone as a couple. You know this, don’t you, Camus-chan?

Camus: Of course. That is why I’m very careful of my surroundings to ensure that nothing gets leaked. You also know better than to say something about it.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: I don’t plan to go and talk out of my ass but it's still kind of suspect, isn't it? Woman, is what he’s saying really true?

Haruka Nanami: W-well, I….

As I stand there perplexed, Camus-senpai’s face draws close to my ear, and he laughs with a huff.

Camus: What’s wrong? There’s no need to be shy. Just be honest and share your true feelings.

Now, tell them. Haruka. That this is something you wished for.

Haruka Nanami: Um….

Indeed, it’s originally due to my eavesdropping that I now happen to live together with him, but this is also something I chose for myself.

Haruka Nanami: Y-yes. I asked him to be with me.

Cecil Aijima: That is a lie! Please tell us the truth!

Haruka Nanami: T-that is the truth. This is something I wished for.

Cecil-san abruptly turns to look at Senpai with unshed tears in his eyes.

Cecil Aijima: Camus! What kind of curse did you place on her?

Camus: Hmph. A cat with no sense of propriety towards his seniors. A curse? How rude.

Cecil Aijima: Please stop playing dumb! Break the curse right now!

Cecil-san roughly moves Senpai’s hand away and pulls on my arm.

Haruka Nanami: Ah….

Cecil Aijima: Somewhere in the back of my mind, I believed you wouldn't do anything horrible to her, no matter how bad you are!

Camus: What exactly is so horrible? This is quite rather a happy occasion.

He gracefully removes Cecil-san’s hand and draws me towards himself once more.

Haruka Nanami: E-excuse me….

Cecil Aijima: Camus! If that hand does not let go of her immediately, I will give you a piece of my mind!

Camus: Oh? I’m looking forward to it then.

The atmosphere between the two of them grows tense beyond belief. Kurosaki-senpai opens his mouth to try and break the ice.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: So…. How much longer are we gonna have to stay out here in the cold?

Camus: What…?

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Let us in if you’re gonna drag this on. Might as well have a cup of tea, yeah?

This surprises Camus-senpai, and he watches with a sidelong glance as Kurosaki-senpai tries to barge his way into the tower.

Camus: … Kurosaki, what are you talking about?

Ranmaru Kurosaki: You got something to hide? If not, then there shouldn’t be a problem going inside.

Ah… Kurosaki-senpai is suspicious of Camus-senpai.

Ringo Tsukimiya: That’s true! My body’s also growing cold. Isn't it okay for us to come inside for just a little while?

Camus: Hng… I get it. Drink some tea and then go straight home.

Camus-senpai reluctantly obliges as Tsukimiya-sensei also makes a comment.

A white fireplace. Red carpet. A sparkling chandelier. A leather sofa. Gold candlesticks.

And… a simmering hot pot.

Ringo Tsukimiya: This is… a pretty surreal sight.

Since then….

It’s pretty clear that Cecil-san utterly disapproves, and that both Tsukimiya-sensei and Kurosaki-senpai still didn’t seem convinced…. They showed no indication of going home anytime soon after finishing their tea, and we went on to eat dinner together.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Honestly, I’m surprised to see that Camus-chan’s home came with a portable gas stove.

Camus: Hmph. It’s only natural for nobility to be able to deal with any kind of situation.

There was a bit of a disagreement over the menu, but eventually we settled on hot pot as it was something easy that everybody could eat.

I set up the portable gas stove in the living room and, while the situation still appears peaceful, we begin our dinner a little early.

Haruka Nanami: I’m aware there are some people who don’t handle fish well, so I made chicken ball hot pot.

The increasingly cold weather these days makes the hot pot look that much more delicious.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Chicken? … Not bad. I’m warning you now, I’m not holding back on this.

Camus: Hmph. We’ve prepared a plentiful amount of food so there is no need to. Eat and be grateful.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Hehe. Then, let’s all get along and dig in.

Alexander: Woof!

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Nom! Omnomnom. Delicious…. The touch of chopped lotus roots works great.

Cecil Aijima: The hot pot... is a bit… hot. Fwoo, fwoo. Slowly… Hm!! … Still hot. Fwoo, fwoo, fwoo.

Kurosaki-senpai stuffs himself with three pieces of meat for every one piece of vegetable from the hot pot.

Cecil-san, who has a tongue as sensitive as a cat’s, tries his best to cool the broth.

Alexander seems to be content with just about anything people are willing to share with him.

Once tea is over, the three of them appear to want to know more about Camus-senpai and I; things get awkward but….

I feel relieved once I notice the steaming hot pot we surrounded helped gradually warm the atmosphere.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Om, nom. Mmm! Yum~. Delicious. Haru-chan, your cooking is amazing. I’m quite jealous of Camus-chan.

Camus: … Hmph. I suppose I’d give her cooking and cleaning abilities some credit.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: What’s up with you? How do you even get that attitude? ... Oi, you got ponzu or not?

Camus: I believe you’re the one acting out. And on whether we have some or not, we always have commoner’s condiments on hand. I understand why that might surprise you.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Are you playing with me? Having ponzu should be common sense if you live in Japan.

Cecil Aijima: Ponzu is common sense…? I see, I am learning a lot.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Cecil-chan, Cecil-chan. Kurorin is just being a little biased, so don’t take it so seriously.

As I add more vegetables, I hope the meal will end with no further issues….

Haruka Nanami: Camus-senpai, what would you like to have next?

As I ask, holding the ladle, Senpai smiles sweetly and pokes my forehead with his finger.

Camus: Hey. There’s no need to address me so formally. I’ve told you to just call me Camus.

Haruka Nanami: Huh…?

Camus: What? Are you feeling shy from being in front of everyone? You’re such a handful, but I find that incredibly adorable.

The moment Camus-senpai smiles again, Kurosaki-senpai spits out his nabe in shock and Cecil-san drops his chopsticks.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: W-what’s wrong with you? Did you eat something bad?

Ringo Tsukimiya: Oh my, Camus-chan is quite in love, isn’t he~?

Cecil Aijima: … I believe I saw something horrible just now…. Ah, am I... hallucinating...?

All three of them look at me, but I’m too confused to understand what’s going on.

E-eh? Eh? Camus-senpai, what in….

Camus: Don’t make me say it again. Call me Camus… Haruka.

With a tender smile, he speaks once more.

The tone in his voice remains calm, but I also didn’t miss the way his eyes flashed cold for a split second.

Ah…. Yes. I finally got it.

It would be pretty suspicious to keep calling him “Senpai” despite our claim that we live together as lovers.

Haruka Nanami: A-alright… Camus.

Camus: Hmph. That’s better. Now then, give me some vegetables.

Haruka Nanami: H-h-here you go.

Camus: However, this hot pot doesn’t seem to be sweet enough. Haruka, bring the honey.

Haruka Nanami: Okay. Um, but….

I feel a little lost.

Camus loves his sweets, but if I were to bring out the honey in front of everyone, they would probably end up losing their appetites….

Camus: Hm? Ah. If I alone make it sweeter, would it ruin the mood?

Haruka Nanami: Y-yes. And also…. I don’t think it’s good for your health for it to be so sweet….

I probably sound too forward, but I was encouraged by the comfortable atmosphere and shared something I’d always wanted to say.

I thought Senpai would be angry, but he laughs instead.

Camus: I’d like to say that it’s none of your concern, but seeing as thi is your opinion... I’ll try to bear with it. It doesn’t mean I can’t eat it if it isn’t sweetened.

Instead, would you make a sweet dish next time? One just for me.

Haruka Nanami: A-alright.

Something… sweet? Sweet, sweet….

Haruka Nanami: Then, how does chocolate fondue sound?

Camus: Huh? What is that? Tell me everything you know.

His eyes sparkle and shine at the mention of chocolate. He truly loved his sweets, didn’t he?

Haruka Nanami: You melt chocolate in a pot and eat many different things with it—like fruit, or marshmallows.

Camus: Marshmallows…. That’s incredibly interesting. The idea of melted chocolate isn’t bad either.

Haruka Nanami: It’s very delicious. It’s easy to make if we have the tools, so I’ll prepare it for you on your next day off.

He chuckles again at my suggestion.

His smile is very noticeably different from usual, which makes me feel quite uneasy.

Camus: By all means. But, it would be a bore to simply make….

Alright. I’ll tell you what. How about you reward me if the Christmas live is a success?

Haruka Nanami: A-alright. That’s perfectly okay.

Camus: Hm, then I look forward to it. Chocolate fondue to celebrate… just the two of us.

With a gentle smile he proceeds to touch my lip with his finger.

Camus: A promise between you and me. Don’t forget it.

Haruka Nanami: Ah… O-of course, I promise.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Oh my! Well aren’t you both hotter than this hot pot!

Cecil Aijima: I do not believe it…. Truly…. Is this Camus a fake? No… but….

Ranmaru Kurosaki: I… I really want to go home now.

I could hear everyone's baffled voices all around me.

Well… I could understand their surprise. All of this is Camus-senpai’s lie….

Of course, I can never say this, feeling very helpless.

Senpai nonchalantly brings a piece of cabbage up to his mouth.

He glances in my direction and tilts his head.

Camus: What's the matter, won't you eat? I wouldn't want you to eat so little.

Haruka Nanami: O-of course. Thank you.

I-I mean… the comfortable mood hasn’t changed so I suppose it’s fine….

Everyone’s so distracted by the changes in Camus-senpai’s personality that they didn't even seem to want to ask him any more questions.

I wonder… if it went just as planned.

I decide not to think too much about it and focus on the hot pot instead.

When dinner ends, Tsukimiya-sensei opens his mouth as though he remembered something.

Ringo Tsukimiya: That’s right! I bought some pears when I last went out shopping. How does peeling them and having them for dessert sound?

Haruka Nanami: Alright, I’ll go and help you.

Once Tsukimiya-sensei and I return from the kitchen with plates and knives, we begin to peel the pears next to the pot.

We had many pears to go through, so everybody manages to finish their food before we were able to finish peeling.

It seems like Kurosaki-senpai and Cecil-san had nothing to do and gazed around the room instead.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: This house’s sketch. I wouldn’t be able to live here comfortably.

Cecil Aijima: You can see nothing but trees from the window… it is depressing.

Camus: You are both discourteous fools. I’ll have you know the view from the upper floor is incredible.

He goes on to argue that it’s best to read a book while looking out at the view from the bedroom window on a nice day.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Huh. I mean, it’s not that big of a deal but if you’re gonna make it one then show me.

Camus-senpai sits up and responds with, "Fine," while Kurosaki-senpai joins him, drink in hand.

Cecil-san follows, and the three of them go up the stairs.

Ringo Tsukimiya: My, this is quite nice. I’d like to see more of the house too.

Haruka Nanami: Ah, in that case, I’ll do the rest. Please feel free to join them.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Fufu. That’s alright. How about you tell me more about Camus-chan instead?

Haruka Nanami: Eh…?

Ringo Tsukimiya: How did you two start dating? Was it while collaborating on the unit song?

Haruka Nanami: Um…. Yeah… let’s go with that….

I feel quite guilty about the fact it appears he’s started to fall for our lie.

Ringo Tsukimiya: It really surprises me that someone so uptight like Camus-chan has a girlfriend. Oh, who confessed first? How did you decide to start living together?

Haruka Nanami: Um…. Well…. He’d said he wouldn’t let me return back to the dorms….

Ringo Tsukimiya: Oh dear. Even though he looks so proper, he sure is the possessive type. However…. As I said, I'm not too thrilled with the fact that you two are living together.

Haruka Nanami: I-I’m sorry.

Ringo Tsukimiya: I understand always wanting to be with the person you love, but do you truly love Camus-chan?

Haruka Nanami: I….

Select the phrase!

The truth is… (+15 Love)

Haruka Nanami: The truth is….

I’m lost for words. What should I say? Should I just come out and tell him everything?

My own actions brought me here, after all. It may be difficult, but it wasn’t always bad — though I knew this isn’t normal.

Should I confess it all now and end this life here?

… When that thought comes to mind, I suddenly remember our time playing together the night prior and I shake my head.

Haruka Nanami: It’s... not that I’m in love with him. I would just like to remain by his side for a while.

Ringo Tsukimiya: I see…. If that’s how you feel, then I won’t say anything about it. You do what you want to do.

Sensei smiles sweetly and pumps his fist to cheer me on.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Though, I have to say I’m amazed. I would never have imagined Camus-chan, who insists at having people at arm's length, would offer to live together with somebody else. No matter the circumstance.

Haruka Nanami: Is... that so?

But he and I live together as warden and maid….

Ringo Tsukimiya: Yeah. He had looked pretty miserable during his time in the Master Course. I’m seriously surprised.

Well, this is the last one.

Tsukimiya-sensei neatly arranges the peeled pears on the plate.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Mmm, it looks delicious. Although…. There’s no sign of anyone coming back anytime soon.

There... definitely didn’t seem to be anyone coming down the stairs.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Here, let’s go get them.

Tsukimiya-sensei and I go up the four flights of stairs to the bedroom.

Haruka Nanami: Everyone, dessert’s….

When we reach the top of the stairs, I notice that everyone is acting strange.

I should say that out of everyone, Kurosaki-senpai appears to be acting particularly odd.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: ….

What was going on? Kurosaki-senpai stands right by the stairwell, looking at something in the room in a daze.

That thing happens to be the teddy bear Camus-senpai previously described as an antique.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Camus. You bastard…. Where did you get that?

Camus-senpai inquisitively turns to look at Kurosaki-senpai, and smirks when he realizes he’d been looking at the bear.

Camus: What? Do you have a hobby of loving such things?

Ranmaru Kurosaki: No! It’s just—why is that here….

He wanders closer to the teddy bear as he speaks.

Distracted by the bear, Kurosaki-senpai happens to forget about the cup he’s holding, and the glass slips from his hand.

Haruka Nanami: Ah…!!

Before anyone could react, the cup falls to the floor; glass shards scatter about and oolong tea spills everywhere.

Haruka Nanami: Oh no! Are you alright?!

Ranmaru Kurosaki: A-ah….

Ringo Tsukimiya: Cecil-chan! Don’t get too close! There’s glass everywhere!

Cecil Aijima: O-okay. Sorry.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Camus-chan, where’s the broom?!

Camus: I’ve already prepared it here.

Everyone’s quick to begin tidying up.

What should I do….

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Ugh. Cold—. What is going on? I….

Turning to look toward the dumbfounded voice, I notice how the oolong tea has spilled onto Kurosaki-senpai’s jacket as well.

Haruka Nanami: Oh no… Kurosaki-senpai, would you like me to wash your jacket?

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Wash it? No need. I’ll just leave it alone to dry...

Haruka Nanami: But it won’t stain as badly if you at least wipe it off…. Please stay still.

I take a clean rag and lightly pat his stained clothes.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: O-oh. Thanks.

Haruka Nanami: No, no, don’t worry. By doing this, it’ll soon be as good as new….

Camus: Haruka. These pieces….

Haruka Nanami: Kurosaki-senpai, how is that? You can barely see the stain.

Camus: … Haruka. There’s no need to look after such a peasant. Stop it.

I look up in surprise at Camus-senpai’s harsh tone.

He looks incredibly upset for whatever reason.

… What happened?

Haruka Nanami: B-but….

Camus: I have told you to stop. Leave him alone. Kurosaki is not a child. He can at least do this much himself.

Haruka Nanami: A-alright….

As I step away from Kurosaki-senpai, Camus-senpai turns his glare toward the others.

Camus: How much longer do you all intend to stay? Dinner is over, go home quickly.

Why is he so angry?

We had no choice but to listen to the homeowner and head back to the living room.

Ringo Tsukimiya: Alright then, we’ll be going home now. Thank you. The meal was delicious.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Well… thanks for the food.

Cecil Aijima: I have realized that Camus cares a lot for her. But, if it turns out to be a lie… I will never forgive him.

Then, with an air of uncertainty, the three of them head home shortly after finishing dessert.

Ringo Tsukimiya: I’ll keep it from Shiny for a bit that the two of you are living together, but don’t forget that I’m not okay with any of this, Camus-chan.

Camus: … Thank you for your concern.

Ranmaru Kurosaki: Tch. Somethin’ sketchy’s going on here.

Cecil Aijima: My Muse, I will come see you again.

Alexander, Camus-senpai and I watch as the three of them go.

Their figures disappear into the depths of the forest, and the front door closes.

Haruka Nanami: U-um….

Camus: What are you doing? Do not speak to me so casually, woman.

The second I attempt to say something, he lashes out with a stern voice and I instinctively tense.

Camus: Just so we’re clear, when I told you to call me by my name—it was only to pull the wool over their eyes; now, you will continue to address me as “Senpai”.

Haruka Nanami: U-understood.

Camus: It was spur of the moment… and a stupid lie all the same…. It’s inconceivable to see myself being in love with a pathetic little girl like you.

Senpai then curtly informs me to finish cleaning up as he’s going to rest.

He’s about to return to the bedroom when, for just a moment, our eyes meet.

Camus: There is absolutely… no way.

He turns his back to me.

Everything goes back to normal the very next day.

I continue to live in Senpai’s house while working hard on the unit's song-writing and other projects, and he’s busy being a successful idol.

The president of the company is also working as energetically as ever, and it's quite hard to believe that an attempt on his life even happened.

Everything is just as it had been, as if the sounds of the cello I heard late at night and the way everyone had gathered around the hot pot had all been but a dream.

However…. While Camus-senpai typically has a packed schedule….

Lately, he seems to only be getting busier and busier.

He’s been going out a lot for things outside of work and getting back late….

Although he tries his best not to let me see, the exhaustion sometimes shows itself when he’s alone.

And despite my concern, Senpai still holds himself at a distance from others.

Time passes by without being able to ask.

Then one day—

That day, I abruptly awoke late at night. Having trouble falling back asleep, I went up to the living room to read a book—

The light is still on in Senpai’s room.

Haruka Nanami: Is he still working at this hour…?

As I quietly approach the stairs, trying not to wake him up should he be asleep, I hear someone moving on the floor above me.

Haruka Nanami: I knew it... he's still awake.

I remember Camus-senpai’s condition earlier that afternoon.

—Flashback

Haruka Nanami: Senpai, what would you like for dinner tonight?

Camus: ….

Haruka Nanami: Senpai...?

Camus: Hmm…? A-ah, I’ll leave that to you. Do what you think is best.

Haruka Nanami: Alright. U-Um….

Camus: No, there's no need to have any for me. I don't have time to eat. I will just pick something up when I do.

—Flashback End

Today, Camus-senpai looked the most tired he'd ever been.

He behaved with the same graceful demeanor at work, and once he got home, he was his usual proud and confident self.

However, the shadow of fatigue lurked at the edge of his actions throughout the day.

It’s so subtle that I was certain I wouldn't have noticed if I didn’t live with him every day.

But Senpai would normally never reveal even a hint of exhaustion, so it made me worry.

Haruka Nanami: I'm not sure what to do about it..

He’s someone who refuses to let anyone see his weaknesses. Even if you talk to him out of genuine concern, he would continue to vehemently deny that he was even a little bit tired.

Haruka Nanami: I could at least take some hot cocoa with me….

Sweets are energizing, and Senpai has a huge sweet tooth, so drinking it might make him happy. Alright, let's do that.

Haruka Nanami: I’ll make rich cocoa, and put plenty of his beloved marshmallows on top….

Wanting to give it to him while it’s still hot, I rush up to his bedroom.

But I notice something as I walk up the stairs. A dazzling white light emanates from Senpai’s bedroom, independent of the electric light.

Haruka Nanami: This is….

This is the same strange light I had seen at the agency that day, from neither a candle nor a flashlight.

Camus: A foreign prince? All right... I understand. No, do not tell Her Majesty. I don't want to cause her any unnecessary distress.

From outside the room, I can hear him talking to someone just like back then. What should I do…?

Select the phrase!

Walk away for now (+15 Love)

I wonder what this light was exactly.

It’s suspicious and makes me curious, but his voice sounds serious and I had a feeling I shouldn't interrupt him.

Besides, I’d already gotten into a lot of trouble for eavesdropping once. It was better not to listen anyway, right?

I decide to leave and start back down the stairs.

Camus: Don't worry about it. She's very important to Her Majesty, and I will protect her. Well then... I will keep you informed.

Then, his voice trails off and suddenly the light disappears.

Haruka Nanami: Oh, is it over...?

Relieved, I turn around and climb the stairs to deliver the hot cocoa.

Camus: What in the world... are they doing in Japan?

Haruka Nanami: Um, Camus-senpai. I have some hot....

Camus: Huh? You!

Haruka Nanami: Ah!

I let go of the tray in surprise and hot cocoa splatters all around me.

Haruka Nanami: Hot….

I yelp as heat flares up on the back of my hand where the spray had flown, and Senpai quickly sits up in his own surprise.

Camus: Oi!

Haruka Nanami: I-I’m sorry. I saw you were working and thought maybe you could use some cocoa….

The spilled hot cocoa spreads all over the floor. I find myself squatting down to check it, only to realize Senpai has rushed over to me as if in a panic.

Haruka Nanami: Oh no... it's spreading fast….

Camus: You don't have time for that, you fool. Give me your hand.

Before I can respond, he gently grabs a hold of my hand.

Haruka Nanami: U-um….

The serious look in his eyes as he stares at my hand causes my heart to skip a beat and I’m unable to move.

The first time I touch Senpai's hands, they are big, cool, and icy.

I’m also suddenly made aware of the obvious, that he is a man.

Camus: Stay still… I'll cool it down.

Huh?

The moment I question his words, something softly flickers in my field of vision.

Eh…. Was that... snow?

Are my eyes deceiving me? No, they’re not. Snow silently flutters only around our hands.

This should not be possible, but it’s such a beautiful sight.

With a pleasant coolness, I just watch the snow dance in and out of the air.

Haruka Nanami: Um… I-I'm not in pain anymore. I'll be okay.

The moment I open my mouth, it’s as if the magic had been broken, and the cold along with the snow all disappear.

Haruka Nanami: Senpai, just now….

Camus-senpai stands up swiftly and remains silent. Somewhat stiffly, he briefly averts his gaze.

Camus: Go to the kitchen…. Put it under running water for a bit.

Haruka Nanami: A-alright... But it was only a few drops, so it’s fine, really.

I yelped in surprise earlier, but it didn't turn red and it didn't hurt.

But more importantly, the snow just now...?

I rub my eyes but I can't see anything. I figured...I guess I was just looking at it wrong.

Camus: I'm just ensuring it doesn't hurt too much right now. I'll deal with the cocoa.

Haruka Nanami: G-got it.

I cool my hands in the kitchen, intending to return and help clean up the cocoa, but by the time I make my way back to Senpai’s bedroom, the floor is already nearly clean.

I join in to help him finish up, and soon the stain is completely gone.

Haruka Nanami: Thank goodness. It looks better now.

Camus: … Then go to bed. Do you know what time it is? In fact, what in the world were you doing up so late at night?

He sits down in his favorite chair and looks at me with a very displeased expression.

I was hoping to help him relax even if only a little, but I feel bad thinking about how I just ended up bothering him instead.

Haruka Nanami: I'm sorry. I just happened to wake up and....

Camus: Hmph. For one thing, you neglect your food and sleep. You think you can write a decent song like this? What a great composer you are.

Huh...?

Despite his harsh manner of speaking… I-is he worried about me?

Haruka Nanami: I-I know. I'm going to bed soon. But, are you doing okay? You look a bit unwell….

Camus: Hm. I don't have "sick" in my dictionary but I do have important work to do. This isn't something that will wear me out.

As always, the answer comes back to me with confidence.

However... there’s a shadow on his face as I thought there would be.

Excessively disregarding food and sleep was something that applied to him as well….

Haruka Nanami: Well, if there's anything I can do to help….

Camus: Ha. You belittle me. There is absolutely nothing you can do for me.

Haruka Nanami: But….

Select the phrase!

Would you like something to drink? (+30 Love)

Haruka Nanami: Would you like something to drink?

I spilled the hot cocoa earlier, so I ask if he’d like a replacement.

Haruka Nanami: If you're still working, maybe coffee. Or tea or hot milk if you're going to rest….

I’m so worried about him that I just want to do something useful, so I offer the best things I could think of.

He looks dumbfounded.

Camus: I said it was fine, but—you're unbelievable.

Haruka Nanami: I'm sorry….

Camus: However, it looks like you have a lot of time on your hands. Then, why don't you stop fooling around and play the unit song?

Haruka Nanami: You're asking to listen to me?!

It makes me very happy to hear, but I’m more worried about Senpai's well-being….

Camus: Hmph. I'm not interested in your music, but I do have a responsibility as your partner. What are you doing? Hurry up, or I'll change my mind.

I’m not entirely certain, but he quickly stands up and starts down the stairs.

Haruka Nanami: Y-yes! Right away!

I rush to the piano in the living room.

SONG: "QUARTET NIGHT" (S RANK)

Camus: Oh… I see. I suppose it was worth my precious time.

Haruka Nanami: R-really!?

Camus: Don't get cocky. There's still plenty of room for improvement.

I should reduce the tempo at the beginning of the song to raise the listener's expectation. Then I should build up to the last part of the song and end it with a bang. Using Camus-senpai's advice, I modify the song and play it again.

Haruka Nanami: Amazing! It sounds so much better!

W-what did you think, Camus-senpai?

Camus: ….

Haruka Nanami: Senpai...?

When I raise my head to look at him, he appears to have asleep on the sofa at some point. I stand and approach him, but he didn't seem to be getting up at all.

Haruka Nanami: I called it. You were really tired, weren't you?

I smile a little when I see his peaceful sleeping face.

Senpai’s long, flowing hair drapes over his cheeks. Only when he was asleep did he have such a tender expression and no wrinkles between his eyebrows.

His face is so unbelievably beautiful that I couldn't believe these lips could spit out such cruel words.

Haruka Nanami: Not good. You'll catch a cold like this.

I glance up quickly. It’s still cold despite the fireplace being lit.

Haruka Nanami: Uh, is there anything I can lay on him…? That's right. If I remember correctly, there was a blanket by his desk.

I rush to Senpai's bedroom.

Haruka Nanami: Hm, I think it's... here. Here it is.

The blanket he often drapes over his lap while he works at night is folded over his chair.

I hold it in my arms and turn around to hurry back.

As I did so, the edge of the blanket got caught in a desk drawer.

Haruka Nanami: Ah!

When I tug on the blanket, the papers that had been piled on the desk flutter to the floor.

Haruka Nanami: Oh no, what did I do…?

As I hurry to pick them up off the floor, I’m suddenly drawn to a document.

The document is written in an unfamiliar language, but I saw a single Japanese name: Kotomi Aijima.

Haruka Nanami: Aijima...?

Aijima is Cecil's last name. But, Kotomi? Kotomi....

I think I had heard that Cecil-san's mother, the Queen of Agna Palace, had a name like that….

Haruka Nanami: But why is Senpai looking into Cecil-san's mother...?

What is the meaning of this?

As I unintentionally peek at the document, I notice another name on it.

It is... President Saotome's name.

(Chapter End)

[mainstoryarchive]

Tumultuous Times - 60: Exception

Translator: Peace & 310mc

Proofreader: moricchiichan & Spoonbutt

Leo: UGHHHH! UUUUUUGH! UUUAAARRGGHH!

[Read on my blog for the best viewing experience with Oi~ssu ♪]

Location: ES Lobby

Leo: UGHHHH! UUUUUUGH! UUUAAARRGGHH!

It's fine! I'm a genius, so I'll work it out!

The best thing to do at times like this is to go back to the basics and think simply—just take all those jumbly, totally unrelated things and toss 'em right out the door!

It's like riding a bike! As long as I keep moving my hands, my body'll remember what to do and pick it right back up!

As long as I keep moving, I can do it! I'll create a new song — not just any old song, but this century's next masterpiece! I just know it! Wahaha!

Aira: Umm—

Leo: AAAAARGH! This is why I said not to talk to me, you! Just when I was on the verge of getting back that precious spark—now I've lost it completely!

I was waiting for this moment, y’know! All this screaming, lowering my oxygen level so I could lose consciousness as a human and devolve into an animal! Grrrrrr!

Aira: (W-What a strange person—We’d look sooo cringey if us losers acted weird, but it’s completely natural for Tsukinaga Leo of all people to do it.)

(He makes it seem like he’s reacting exactly how you’d expect him to— like a true genius.)

(I did hear that he’s very eccentric, but I thought they were just making up random rumors about him— But no, he— he really is that weird, huh?)

(I thought the people here like Kanzaki-senpai and Fushimi-senpai were just the type of people who put on a character, but— Is it just me, or is that actually more of a minority?)

(It’s like the abnormal is normal here— I dunno how long I could last in a place like this—)

Leo: —Uh, you're—Who're you? Do you need something?

Or are you one of Knights' newbies?

Sooorry, there's been a real upswing in new members, and you guys all look the same, so I can't remember a single name!

What's with all of you acting the same and making the same kinda faces? Is this some new way of tormenting me, since I'm so bad at remembering names and faces!?

Mayoi: Uuu, I'm sorry, I'm not particularly good with people—

But, ahh—You're even more adorable than I've heard—♪

Leo: Uh, don’t look at me like that, it’s weird—I dunno what it is and I dunno why either, but sometimes our fans'll give me the same look!

Ahhh, wait! That's it! Thanks to that, I can feel a new masterpiece coming on!

Wahaha! I think I've got it! The vague idea I could barely grasp is turning into a new song! Thanks a lot, you guys! I love you!

Now, whatever you guys wanted from me can wait! I gotta finish at least one song first! I gotta finish at least one song first! Ahhh, the notes are just flowing out of my fingertips, I really am a genius—☆

Hiiro: Hmm, I wanted to give back your sheet music, but if you want me to keep waiting, then I shall.

Leo: Yeah, you're a good kid! Even though I dunno who the heck you are, either!

Hiiro: My name is Amagi Hiiro. It’s nice to meet you. There’s something we must do soon, so I don’t think we can wait for that long. Instead, I’ll place your sheet music over here.

Leo: Oh, thanks! Suo~ and the others always get super mad when I make a mess of the sheet music! I dunno why, though! Even without it, I still have all the music in my head!

Hiiro: Hmm, does that mean— You’re composing music by any chance? You see, there was someone in my hometown who specialized in that job—

Leo: Oooh, sounds interesting! Tell me more! Normally I hate people trying to talk to me while I’m composing, but recently I noticed it can actually help a lot with new ideas!

Aira: H-hold up, Hiro-kun—! I think Leo-san’s busy right now, so don’t bother him!

Hiiro: Huh? I don’t mean to be a bother, though.

Leo: Yup, you're not bothering me! It's always noisy around me these days, so I got better at dealing with it! A little more noise won’t hurt!

Wahahaaa, I feel like I'm really using every part of my brain when I compose! I feel grrrreat!

Hiiro: Ahh, I know what you mean. Although what you’re saying differs a little from how it goes for me, Leo—senpai.

For example, the very moment I use up all the energy in my body and collapse, I—

Aira: H-Hiro-kun, did you not hear what I just said!? Don’t get in his wa—

W-woah, eep!?

Hiiro: ? What’s wrong, Aira?

Leo: Watsron Aira! I see, so that’s your name!

You've got a pretty face and a voice to match, wahaha! I'm Tsukinaga Leo!

Aira: Um, yes, I’m aware. But nevermind that right now—

S-Since when has the producer been here—?

Leo: Producer..?

Wahaha, it really is her! Anzu, Anzu Anzu Anzuuu~!

It's been so long—I think? It feels like I haven't seen you around much lately, or maybe I have? Which is it? I dunno!

—Mm? Anzuuu, what's up? What's with that "ehhhh" look you're giving me? Did I do something wrong?

Oh, is it because I'm supposed to call you "Producer" now? Are you mad 'cause I broke the rules?

Sorry, sorry! But Suo~ kept pestering me to call him by his first name, so—

I thought you'd like being called by your name, too! But maybe it's different for girls?

Mmm~, I don't get it! Human emotions really are a whole new level of confusing!

Don't you think so too, Anzu? Mm? Heeey, what're you doing all the way over there? What gives? C'mon, come back here, aren't we friends~?

— She ran away. What was up with that? Hey, uh. Aira? And— Hiro? D'you guys know what’s going on?

Aira: Um, how should we know—?

Hiiro: Hmm. For some reason, Anzu-san—Or rather, Producer-san has been avoiding us recently.

Previously, she would perform miniscule tasks to improve our wellbeing, and chat with us during those moments, but—

Lately, she runs away the moment she sees us, even when we pass by one another. —I wonder what’s wrong? I find it a little suspicious.

Aira: Mm~—Maybe she doesn’t wanna be around us underachievers— Wait, no, she wasn’t that kind of elitist, though!

If anything, she talks to even good-for-nothings like me despite the fact she’s a super higher-up in ES.

But huh—Now that you mention it, we haven’t really seen her around, I think?

Tatsumi: Hmm—But she does lend us practice uniforms, as well as help us out, even if it’s a small gesture—

But it feels like she’s avoiding being associated with us. We haven’t even had the chance to express our gratitude for everything she’s done.

Leo: Huh—Oh, so that's how it is.

Hiiro: ? What do you mean, Leo-senpai?

Leo: I'm not the one she's avoiding, it's you guys!

Whew, that's a relief~ I would've been really sad if Anzu hated me. Well, I guess "hate" isn't really the right word for it?

Honestly, it must be tough working in administration, huh? It’s too bad, 'cause it's people like you guys who need Anzu the most.

Hiiro: —?

[ ☆ ]

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[dreamdepot]

Dreams of the Kingdom - Chapter 14: The Tainted Earth

Previous < First > Next

Onward to Death Mountain! While your dreams may give you a reprieve for now, Ganondorf's plots and echoes of the past still stand in your way.

AO3 Wattpad or below!

My apologies for there being a lack of a dream in this chapter. The next scene wasn’t quite ready to be included in this chapter (thanks to a rather unusual work schedule this past week). It worked out for the best though, as I think the sequence would’ve thrown off the pacing. Either way, promise to make up for it in the next one!

…

Okay yes, the original title of the chapter was The Tainted Meat. I couldn’t keep it that way without laughing.

“By the Goddesses,” Impa gasped as you finished recounting your dreams.

“I need a drink,” Purah muttered.

You groaned. “How do you think I feel? So, Impa, do you know anything that might help us with this Dragon Priest? He’s gotta be trying to help us.”

“I’m sure he is, but I’m afraid I don’t have anything useful to share. For generations, our people thought he betrayed us, but it’s good to know that he was acting in the shadows to ensure the safety of Hyrule, much like our other ancestors.”

Purah drummed her fingers on her notebook. “Still, between finding pieces of the Triforce and these dreams… like you said before we don’t know who or why you’re getting these visions of the Dragon Priest’s life. Might be too much to hope for a quick way to stop Ganondorf.” She sighed. “Princey, it’d nice if you made things easier for once.”

“Believe me, I wish I could,” you laughed hollowly. “Maybe these tears are the missing piece of the puzzle though.”

“We can certainly hope.” Impa handed you a small notebook. “This is all we’ve been able to decipher from the tears. If you could, we’d greatly appreciate it if you could stop by the last one on your way back from Death Mountain.”

“Gladly,” you said. “If we have a way of getting Zelda out of the past and back to our time, then we need every clue we can get.”

“In the meantime, we’ll return to Lookout Landing,” Purah said. “Once the last sage is awakened, I’m sure Ganondorf will make a move. You’ll need to be careful, backing him up into a corner like this may make him desperate.”

“We’ll worry about that once we’ve helped the Gorons.” You coughed, the gloom still dissipating.

Impa patted your hand. “Are you sure you shouldn’t rest a bit more?”

“We aren’t leaving today, that’s for sure,” Link said firmly. “In the morning.”

You nodded with a soft smile. “Promise I’ll rest tonight. I have a good doctor looking out for me.”

“And the doctor says it’s time for you to get more rest.” With that Link ushered the others out, giving you a chance to recover.

==============================

The next morning you did feel better, by leaps and bounds. “It’s scary how much these memories line up with the dreams,” you told Link, as you looked over Impa’s notes for the umpteenth time. “The Molduga attack, Ganon’s visit to the castle… this one about Queen Sonia’s death… it seems it is a bit hazy when the Dragon Priest shows up.”

“Seeing the other side’s at least a bit helpful though, right?”

You shut the book and groaned. “Not really. It still doesn’t explain why, or more importantly, what we’re supposed to do with this.”

Link took the book from you and kissed your forehead. “How about you finish packing while I get some extra medicine ready for you. Might clear your head.”

“I’ll try,” you said. “Though I’m really not-” Link gave you a glare. “…gonna talk you out of getting more medicine, huh?”

“That’s right,” he said with a smile before heading down to the kitchen.

As you turned to packing, you felt a presence. The corpse of Ganondorf stared back at you in the window’s reflection. “I should’ve known you’d be bothering me again.”

“And here I thought you would be getting lonely without me, little prince.” The corpse said with a smirk – an impressive feat considering he had no lips.

“One sage to go, we’ve stopped each of your generals at every turn.”

“Perhaps. And yet, you do not walk with confidence, but rather anxiety.”

You scoffed. “Don’t pat yourself too hard on the back, your arm might fall off.” The image of the Demon King glared. “Once we save the Gorons from your influence, you’ll be next. You’ll fall just like every other aspect of evil that has threatened my home.”

Much to your surprise, he laughed. “Ah yes, my former puppets. Do you really think a prince and his swordsman are enough? I do not lie when I say your swordsman is hardly the strongest of his ilk to face me. And without the princess too… what are you to do? You don’t have the power of Hylia. Do you intend to seal me some other way, like Rauru failed to do so?”

“Rauru didn’t fail,” you snapped back. However, as well as you masked it from him, doubt entered your mind. Were you and Link strong enough yet? You weren’t sure whether to call it a bluff or a threat, so instead you changed the subject. “You know, I still don’t understand something. You had everything you could want, and yet that wasn’t enough for you, was it? You were consumed by greed when you could have been happy all those years ago. Rauru meant you no harm! Imagine if you had made peace with him, he may have even willingly shared a secret stone with you!”

Ganondorf snorted. “I suppose your bleeding heart didn’t change, even in a different life.”

“Is that a bad thing?”  

He studied you, his malice-filled eyes surprisingly inquisitive. “That remains to be seen.” For a moment he seemed to hesitate. “No matter, we will see each other soon enough. I would hate for you to miss my rebirth.” With that, he disappeared and the vision with it.

You slumped back onto the bed, releasing a breath you didn’t know you held.

==============================

Lucky for you, Link had already taken a side trip to Death Mountain when he was attempting to enter the Korok Woods, so he already had established some waypoints. The two of you warped to Timawak Shrine, not far from the Bedrock Bistro. As Link stepped aside for a moment to use the facilities, you marveled at how much Death Mountain had changed. It was hard to believe that five years ago it was too hot to climb without elixirs or specialized armor, but now most of the mountain had cooled. In peaceful times, the hot springs had become quite the tourist destination, even if your sister insisted Sturnida was the better stop. The nearby bistro, despite its unusual cuisine, had also become a bit of a landmark of its own for weary travelers.

There was no sign of any attacks on travelers as Scorpis’ reports mentioned, but the Gorons were acting strangely. They were addicted to a purple kind of rock roast, and it seemed those that ate it became lethargic. Yet, when their hunger returned, they often grew aggressive. “Excuse me!” You said, running up to a rather dapper looking Goron. “Could you explain what’s going on here?”

“Ah yes, are you here to try some marbled rock roast?”

“I assume that’s the strange rock?”

“Yes, quite. I am Gomo, the goromand, a connoisseur of the finest mineral cuisine. When I heard about the marbled rock roast, I had to try it. The flavor is said to be truly addictive… though now I’m having second thoughts.”

You looked at some of the other Gorons, with their eyes glazed over as they endlessly consumed the roast. “I can see why. It seems more like a drug than a food.”

“Yes, precisely. As much as I would like to try it for the culinary experience, I’m a bit concerned. I’ve decided to stay here to try and warn off any others.”

“Do you know the source of these rock roasts?”

Gomo thought for a moment. “There’s some in the caves here, but it seems the most come from YunoboCo up the mountain.”

“I see… thank you.” You walked back, looking up the mountain. “Yunobo… please tell me you don’t have something to do with this?”

As you pondered, you felt the air tense. “Oh no, now? Really?” It was too late, your headaches returned, and in a flash, this Death Mountain disappeared, replaced with another, equally calm volcano. For a moment, you could have sworn you heard the Song of Time. The bistro and hot springs were gone, replaced by a rugged path. Loose boulders rumbled down the mountainside. To your surprise, long extinct Tektites hopped about, their glittering carapace shining in the sun. You could even hear the skittering of a Skulltula somewhere in the distance.

“Who are you?” The voice was young, but full of bravery. Poking out behind a rock was a little boy in a green tunic.

“You can see me?”

He cocked his head. “Why wouldn’t I be able to see you?” He stepped out from the boulder, sword and shield at the ready – though calling a glorified dagger and a cute scrap of wood a sword and shield was generous. This boy was another Link, but this one was just a little kid. His hair was blonder and his eyes a deeper blue than your Link was at that age, but he held the same courage and determination. You had to smile. After all the Links you had seen through your dreams, that courage was always present, the one constant familiarity.

“It’s a long story,” you said. “I’m [Y/n] and you, I assume, are Link?”

“How’d you know?” He narrowed his eyes, holding his tiny shield a bit higher. “Do you work for Ganondorf?”

“No, definitely not. You could say I work for the Royal Family.”

“Oh, like Impa? Wait, how do I know you’re not lying?”

“Fair,” you said, surprised the kid would be so skeptical. “Hmmm what’s good proof… oh, I know!” Softly, you sang the song of the royal family.

The little Link smiled brightly. “Okay, I’m sorry, but Princess Zelda told me I should be extra careful.”

You laughed. “That’s alright, with Ganondorf around I can’t blame you. But, why are you climbing Death Mountain all alone? It’s a rugged path, even for adults.” You chose not to add that the sentiment was especially true in this different time.

He grinned, puffing out his chest. “It’s because I’m doing an important mission for Princess Zelda, and she said I need to see the leader of the Gorons.”

“Then, maybe I should join you for a bit,” you said. Letting a kid run off on his own like this seemed pretty harsh.

“Okay!” The two of you started your way up. The Tektites watched from a distance, not keen to fight two humans at once. Little Link’s eyes traveled to your back. “That’s a really cool sword you have, are you a knight?”

You drew your sword and knelt so he could see it. The Sword of the Six Sages seemed to shine brighter than ever in this time. “Not exactly, but I do a lot of fighting for the Princess.” Not a lie, but not the full truth either. Then again, trying to explain time travel to a kid might be a bit awkward – not to mention explaining how you were a prince. “My boyfriend’s a knight though.”

He seemed confused. “Boyfriend? What’s that? A friend who’s a boy?”

“It’s the person you love, silly. Like the person you get married to,” a new voice joined in. A blue fairy popped out of his collar and floated onto the edge of his hat. “Sorry, he’s a bit sheltered.”

“That’s alright,” you said, a bit surprised. Small fairies were rarely chatty in your time. Great Fairies on the other hand…

“Navi, go back to sleep,” Little Link muttered. The fairy simply blew a raspberry at him and remained on his hat. “So, what’s your boyfriend like?”

“Oh, he’s a knight, the best knight in the kingdom. He’s very brave and has saved my life many times. We go on adventures all the time together. Actually, we were on one today before I ended up here.”

Link nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe he’s already at Goron City?”

“Maybe,” you said. “We’re supposed to go find the Fire Temple and-”

“And get a magic rock?” Link asked excitedly.

“How did you know?”

“I’m trying to find one too! Zelda said I need to get the Goron Ruby so that we can keep Ganondorf from getting to the Sacred Realm.”

“Our rock is a little different, but I hope you find it.” You smiled for a moment, before you stopped mid-step. Everything fell into place. “Wait – a little Link, Navi, the Goron Ruby – that means, you’re-”

It was too late, the ground dropped out from under you, and like a rubber band, you snapped back to your time and your Death Mountain.

“Hey, were you going to ditch me?” Link asked.

You studied your surroundings, realizing you had moved quite a fair bit up the mountain, about as far as you had walked with the other Link. “How long was I gone?”

“You were gone? I just caught up to you. What happened?”

You looked around. It was as if no time had passed at all. Checking your pack, the blue stone was completely inert. “I… I’m not sure.”

After explaining, Link frowned. “So, your visions are now getting strong enough to teleport you?”

“I’m not sure if it’s teleporting.” You turned the blue stone over in your hand. “I think it might be more like a door I got stuck in, half of me in our time and half in the past. It looks like moving in that time made me move in this one.”

“Just please be careful, I don’t want to lose my prince in the past.”

“Believe me, I’m not planning on spending more time in the past than I need to.” You laughed.

The two of you made your way up the mountain path, stopping and checking with any Gorons who weren’t acting strangely, along with the Hylian mine workers. “I don’t have to worry about you ogling all of those buff shirtless workers, do I?” Link teased.

“Why look at them when I’ve got my own beefcake all to myself?” You replied, patting his chest. Link suddenly looked a little warmer, and not from the heat of the mountain.

It wasn’t long until you reached the gates of Goron City. Yet, instead of the sounds of industry and people in the marketplace, you came to a quiet scene. Gorons sat around, all hypnotically eating the rock roast.

“Bludo!” Link called to the elder.

“Brother! It’s good to see you, and you too, your majesty!” The elder stomped over, two Goron children in tow. “Not sure if this is a good time or a bad time for you to be visitin’. We’ve got problems, and I hope you can fix ‘em. I’ve been warnin’ these pumice-heads about the marbled rock roast being dangerous, and they’re still pigging out on them!”

“Everyone’s been acting funny ‘cause they keep eating it,” one of the Goron kids said, who you recognized as Offrak. The other was Slergo. Together, the two followed Yunobo around like puppies, hoping to be as cool as their hero.

“President Yunobo keeps minin’ the stuff,” Slergo added.

“What’re you mumblin’ about over there?!” Stomping and swaggering up to you was Yunobo, wearing a rather unique outfit that looked more like it belonged in Bolson’s closet, topped off with a golden mask. “You all talkin’ about marbled rock roast, are ya? There’s nothing to worry about, in my opinion. Now stop flapping yer rock chompers, and get over here, goro!” Offrak and Slergo scurried over to his side. He then appraised you and Link. “What could you two want?”

“We’re here to investigate some reports of attacks on travelers,” you said, trying to keep your voice even. Yunobo used to be such a kind boy, and he used to be so responsible with helping you rebuild Hyrule. His YunoboCo was the source of most minerals in the kingdom.

Yunobo sneered. “Well, maybe if you actually sent some soldiers up to patrol you wouldn’t have that problem. We’re dealing with enough monsters as it is right now.”

The response felt like a slap in the face, but then you remembered that you and Link had barely seen any monsters on the path to Goron City, compared to everywhere else in the kingdom. “Wait-”

“If you ask me,” Yunobo interrupted, “we’ve got better things to do than worry about some useless royal and his pet. I’ve got work to do getting all this marbled rock roast out my people, since I take care of them, unlike someone. So buzz off or pick up a pickaxe and do some real work.” He turned to the other Gorons. “That goes for all of you too. Get back to work, goro!”

As Yunobo started to walk away, you felt your eye twitch. Link put his arm around you. While it looked casual, his firm grip held you in place. “Babe, please don’t beat up our friend.”

“I just want to talk to him.”

“You’re reaching for your sword.”

“I just want to talk to him.”

“Last time you said that, I think you almost killed a man.”

“In all fairness, that guy was pretending that he defeated the Calamity and called you a liar.” Link leveled his most judgmental stare at you. You sighed. “I’m not gonna hurt him. Just struck a nerve. I can take people saying stupid stuff about me, but, I hate it when people act like you’re not the greatest swordsman in the kingdom.”  

Link spun you around and held you by the shoulders. “Listen, as nice as it is of you to defend my honor, there’s no way that’s our Yunobo.”

The Goron elder walked up next to you, leaning a little harder on his hammer than usual. “I’m sorry you had to see all that. Yunobo’s been actin’ strange for a while now. Ever since he said he supposedly saw Princess Zelda, but that can’t be right. She’s been missin’, hasn’t she?”

“Told ya,” Link said simply.

You sighed. “Right, fine. I swear I’m gonna enjoy beating the crap out of Ganondorf for this.”

==============================

The two of you rode on the minecarts from Goron City to YunoboCo, which now took over much of the former northern mines. “Glad to see the Igneo Talus have been more or less cleared out from here,” Link said, as he helped you hop down from the minecart.

“Over here!” Slergo and Offrak called from the main mine entrance.

“Yunobo is in there?” Link asked.

“Yeah, and he’s trying to get more marbled rock roast,” Slergo said.

“He also keeps talking to himself, something about Princess Zelda?” Offrak added.

That was enough for the two of you. Downing some fireproof elixirs, you both ran inside. Sure enough, Yunobo was muttering to himself. “Princess Zelda… more rock roast… makes Gorons strong…”

He quickly snapped out of it when he noticed you enter. “Hey, I thought I told you to beat it!”

���Not a chance,” you said. “Something’s up Yunobo, and we’re here to fix it.”

“Fine, if you can’t take a hint, I’ll toss you out myself!” He snarled, stomping towards you. He smashed his hands together before diving into a lightning-fast roll that nearly flattened you. He hopped back up and glared at you.

“[Y/n], look there!” The lines on the mask glowed with a malice-filled light, reflected in his eyes.

“It’s the mask,” you said. “I should’ve known!”

“What do you think? Arrow?” Link asked, diving out of the way of Yunobo’s roll.

“Not sure if it’ll be strong enough to break it, but we don’t want to hurt him too badly. Maybe…” You looked down at your hand. It was the Triforce of Power, right? “Got it. Get ready, I need you to jump on him!”

“What?!”

“Trust me, I’ve got an idea.” You took a deep breath and stood in the center of the room, power flowing up your arm. You pressed your hands together, a golden light spreading between the two.

“Oh you wanna go, shrimp prince?” The twisted Yunobo shouted.

You took a wide stance. “Give it your best shot!” Yunobu charged, rolling full speed towards you, and you threw your hands forward. The ground shook, but Yunobu stopped still. The golden light formed into golden gauntlets over your hands, holding the massive Goron in place.

Link wasted no time, leaping onto Yunobu’s back, and ripped the mask off his head. The mask seemed to writhe in his hand before melting into a gloom mist as your Goron friend fell to the ground.

Yunobo groaned. “What happened?” He blinked and looked up at the rest of you. “Oh man, Link, [Y/n]. When did you guys get here?”

“A little while ago,” Link said, as you each took one side of the large Goron, helping him to his feet. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Yunobo rubbed his head. “Uh… gosh. I went up to the top of Death Mountain… and Princess Zelda was up there. She gave me a mask and said it was very special…”

You sighed. “It wasn’t Princess Zelda I’m afraid. The Demon King was trying to manipulate you, but I’m glad we have you back.”

“Oh, I didn’t say or do anything bad did I, goro?”

Link snorted. “[Y/n] almost beat you up for calling me his boytoy.”

“Oh no!” Yunobo said, nearly in tears as he grabbed you. “I’m so sorry!”

“It’s alright, we now know it wasn’t really you talking.”

“At least we do now,” Link whispered. You elbowed him.

After catching him up, Yunobo scratched his head. “Wow, you guys have been busy, but it sounds like you’re pretty close to fixing everything. That’s great, goro!”

“Now we just have to find a way to get rid of all these marbled rock roasts, which probably means first finding the Fire Temple,” Link said.

Yunobo laughed. “Yeah, I could try breaking all these rocks, but that’d take forever! But where would the Fire Temple be? We really don’t have anything like that here, and not a whole lot of ruins from back in the day. Van Rudania was kinda the last super-ancient thing we had around. Not a lot of stuff stays together in a volcano, y’know?”

“True,” you said. “That said, the other temples were in places that you’d least expect. Any ideas?”

“Well…” Yunobo thought. “It sounds pretty dumb, but there are legends of the Ancient City of Gorondia, deep in the caldera of Death Mountain, but no one’s ever found it before and- why are you looking at me like that?”

“Gorondia… I think my dream mentioned that,” you said. “Link, wasn’t it something about the Goron Dance Hall?”

“Exactly, so we definitely need to go check that place out. Besides, place of legend that existed in the time of the Zonai, long thought to be lost to history, right Yunobo?” Link asked.

“Yeah, I guess?”

Link crossed his arms. “My rupees are on Gorondia then. We’re three for four so far.”

“To be fair,” you added, “this is the least active Death Mountain has been in centuries. The city is probably lost to time, because there was no safe way down there until now.”

Yunobo nervously tapped his fingers together. “Um, what is the safe way down there?”

The three of you looked up to the top of the volcano, where vapors of Ganondorf’s gloom rose like steam. “Well,” you said, “there’s one way.”

[mysmistree]

The Thorns Of Paradise (Written Fiction)

(It can be found here if you do not wish to read this on tumblr. But do please give me your thoughts, compliments and critiques, if you do choose to read it.)

            I thought it was paradise. I really did. When I first wandered towards the strange scene, it looked to me to be lush with fruits, trees, and homes I could stay in. And to the credit of the place, that visage never broke, not even once I saw what was underneath.

            I had come to stay there because of a handful of creatures which had chosen to become my friends. A peculier grasshopper that was as tall as I was. A dyrad with pink-and-white patterns all down their body, like a cherry blossom tree. Even the forest itself was run by a timid and affectionate, if a bit invasive, spirit of a troll that endeavored to behave like a human child.

            But the real caretaker, and also the source of my trouble, was the old man who had dug himself out a residence in these hundred-acre woods. He welcomed me, as the others did, and he seemed nice. But even walking around the little space, the signs were there. The little things I should’ve seen. When he complimented roses on the prickling of their thorns. When he cursed the troll, Rohci, for their complacency in keeping to the place. When he glared towards the outside, and said it was not a place worth going.

            While there, I did make earnest friends of the others I found there. The dryad woman, One. The Grasshopper, Kenneth. More, later on. I spent a great deal of time with them, pretending to be a detective, learning their ways, learning more about language and people. I have many regrets tied to my mistakes in coming there in the first place, but there is also a lot of good I retrieved by just having the chance to make that mistake.

            Still, I spent most of my time with him, Ostiar. And a long time it was. We’d spend hours into the night chatting about the wider world and its properties. What it means to be human. What identity meant. I’d expressed to him my desires for my identity, and he gave me a potion which allowed me to be the woman I desired to be, but with a couple unfortunate curses. I couldn’t leave his side, not in the broader sense, and I was to never leave the wood or it would be revoked violently. I didn’t particularly care, of course. I was eager to get my chance at these things. I didn’t read the fine print, and I didn’t know they were unnecessary caveats.

            As time wore on, I gradually became convinced that I was in love with him. I.. I honestly cannot tell you if this was a curse as part of what he gave me, or if this came forth from my own emotions. Which ever way it was, it lead to me confessing love to him, on a moonlit night atop one of the many platforms among the trees. He accepted my feelings, and we attempted to be romantic. I- I shudder to think of it now, admittedly. Not only was the difference in our personalities greater than that of the highest mountain to the deepest trench, but I’ve also learned it’s not something I really enjoy, something he took as an insult at the time. If I’d only known, maybe I’d have realized sooner what a mistake I’d made.

            Ostiar came up with more games that we could play, as a forest community. He generally made ceremony of asking Rohci, the forest keeper, for permission to do this, and acted with great success like a politician winning a round of campaigning over his opponent. It was always strange, but by far not the worst of signals I failed to see.

            As time wore on, more members joined the little forest community. A bear with a fierce snarl but an almost puppy-like plea for attention. A monsterous snake that craved anything it could get its hands on. An undead woman who prowled like a cat.

            They were pleasant, by and large. I had my qualms with some, my arguments with others. As things moved on, I found myself unsurprised that a couple of the forest dwellers very much saw the world the way Ostiar did: Cold, brutal, and antagonistic.

            At times, I took trips away.

            At first, I gave decent warning. I came to the old man, and I told him of my intentions. I had planned to take a venture out to another civilization, one based around entertainment, and see what they might provide. He seemed understanding, but he asked a peculier question:

            “Was it something I did?”

            I was confused, because no, obviously not. I loved this man, right? I just wanted to do something on my own. I wanted time, on my own. To be my own person, and see more of the world.

            And so I would go. And then I received a pidgeon. And the pidgeon bore a note, which read:

            “If it’s something I did, you’d tell me, right?”

            Of course I would. It’s nothing at all. I loved this man, right? I just wanted to do something on my own. So I sent as much back, and went about my business.

            And then the next day, a cat with a bottle upon its back, with a note and a drink.

            “This is for you, so you don’t have any bad feelings.”

            I found this confusing all the moreso, as I actually felt quite pleasant. But I thought little of it.

            And again, something else.

            And another.

            And yet another.

            Each time, getting worse, and worse, each time, not a day, sometimes not even a sunset between messages.

            And then he sent a raven, also carrying a note. And I had found myself irritated.

            “I’m sorry I’m not a good partner.”

            And I was furious. I wrote, in a hurry, a reponse.

            I can’t remember what it said.

            He certainly convinced me it was awful.

            He didn’t send anything else, while I was away.

            Eventually, I returned to the woods. I found a strange, hand-posted sign outside.

“NO GOOD HONEST WOMAN HAS A REASON TO LEAVE”

…That stung to come back to, if I’m honest.

I found cold shoulders, inside. Around every corner. Rohci, One, the Bear named Entai, the works. Ostair, of course, gave me that. And he gave me much more.

He made sure I knew he hated me.

He cut into me the moment I came back. Called me terrible for abandoning my friends, for abandoning the forest. He called me a wretch. He called me a thousand other nasty things.

But I tried.

I tried to reconnect. I tried affections, I tried admittences.

I apologized.

Over, and over, and over, and over, I apologized.

I wanted things to be okay again, I didn’t want to be alone.

And eventually, he forgave me.

And so that happened.

And then, it happened again.

And again.

And again.

And eternity seemed too short a time to ever be absent though I only left for a few weeks before returning out of loneliness. And at times, I regretted ever giving an inch.

It was painful. And I hated it.

I hated me.

After some time, a few friends of mine had started to catch on to what was affecting my mood, both within the forest and without. These people spoke plainly to me, and insisted I change things. Insisted I get out. Somehow. But all I knew was all I had, and all I had was, I felt, all there was to have. And that poisoned me.

I spent so much time struggling against those emotions.

Inferiority.

Unworthiness.

Loneliness.

Fury.

Despair.

And yet I had no idea what to do.

Until one day, a very silly person came to me in town, with a bundle of roses, and said, quite simply:

“You’re a startlingly beautiful person. Would you go out with me?”

            I was… astonished. Startled, even. Me? Why, I’m a monster, a critic of life, a mess, a downer. I am a mistress of hell, a devil incarnate.

            I am an abandoner.

            I am faithless.

            I am a -

            I am a-             I- I am-

            “In some rather unfortunate circumstances, from what you’ve told me.”

            I started. “I’m sorry?”

            He held out the flowers, “You seem lovely, genuinely. You’re curious, and thoughtful. You’re strange and cheery. You’re bright, even if you don’t believe it. And I rather think you’re pretty.”

            I didn’t know how to respond.

            If this had happened nowadays, when I have my emotions available to me, I probably would’ve cried.

            But instead, I was simply… awoken.

            Like a golem having rested beneath the tides of earth for a hundred thousand years, I felt myself stir. But nothing was quite over yet.

            I went back to the forest.

            I had things to discuss.

            And Ostair confronted me, plainly, about what I’d been out doing. I answered honestly: I’d been meeting and chatting with friends.

            He demanded to know the details, and I initially refused.

            And this pissed him off, as it always did.

            And he wrung it out of me, as he always knew how to do.

            So I told him plainly.

            Someone had expressed an interest in me, and it was giving me pause.

            “And what do you think of them?”

            “I think they’re rather nice.”

            “NO, you know what I MEAN!”

            “…I really don’t.” I lied, buying time. “Speak plainly.”

            “Do you have romantic feelings for that… that… outsider?!”

            I took a moment to respond.

            “I don’t know.”

            At which point he dragged me outside to the sign upon the perimiter.

            Apparently, in my absence, he’d prepped another for just this occasion.

            Tearing the old one down, he instated the new one in its place.

“NO WHORE IS WELCOME, NO WHORE IS WORTH IT.”

            And the message was clear.

            He turned, broke up with me, and went back into his small, shabby, unwelcoming hut, slamming the door shut.

            I was surprised to find that I did not feel sad.

            I was surprised to find that I did not feel lonely.

            No, rather:

            I. Felt. Bored.

            It felt so normal, these arguments, these fights. It felt so painfully common that I had no basis to react to it outside of blithe acceptance. But, I felt the chains, the limits, the weight, sliding off. I was not beholden to my agreement anymore.

            Simple freedom.

            I left, rather permanently. Some folks who had come to care about me, the Undead Woman, the Grasshopper, left too, upon hearing of things. Apparently I was worth something to them, too, and the place worth much less if it drove me off.

            It was.. startling, to feel of any importance.

            And as my first day free, and my first celebration,

            I joined that charming man for dinner.

            He was not perfect, and he did not pretend he was.

            But he took his time to know me, and gave me time to know him.

            It was nice. I could leave and do what I wanted. I could stay and talk about anything. It was new, it was unusual, it was strange.

            But, it was quite nice.

(Sorry the formatting got a little rough in transposing it.)

[randomvongenerico]

HELLO!

It's me, randomvongenerico. I'm finally getting around to replying to you again. 😅 Sorry about this incredibly belated response. Like, ridiculously late 😓.

I had started writing down my reply to you, and had made good progress (there were a lot of things I wanted to say, add and ask), but I was writing late at night and had to go to sleep, so I noticed I could save my comment as a draft and thought "oh, cool! I'll do that and continue later".

Except I don't know where it got saved. So I lost what I had already written down which made lose the incentive to continue because I'd have to start again. It took me this long to finally sit down again and give it another go. So once again, sorry for this super late reply that you probably don't even want to see anymore.

But anyway, I'll get on with going over the points of interest of your last reply to me and what I have to say about them. Btw, as a heads up, at some points I'm going to go on some rambles here, and at points I'm just going to start venting about some things that I've been wanting to get off my chest for some time. I just want to clarify that none of my ranting is directed at you, it's just me shouting (or I guess angrily typing) at the wind. So don't think I'm getting angry at you or anything, okay? Good? Good.

Anyway without further ado:

Sure, he still presents a huge threat to lots of people, but given that we’d just seen proof that AFO did not know about Shinsou’s power,[2] they could also have used Machia to, for example, rapidly transport the heroes to some place they could set up a second ambush to trick AFO into responding to Shinsou.  I mean, good god, AFO’s the chattiest villain in the comic; Hawks lured him into at least two extended conversations even after he’d resolved that he needed to leave.  He’s a Demon Lord and thus categorically incapable of shutting up.  And that would have been that, really.  Take control and let the clock run out; end of problem.

While that sounds like a good use of Shinso's Quirk, I can't help but feel like it'd end up being useless because then Horikoshi would just be like "oh, AfO has a Quirk that makes him immune to brainwashing or something", or simply say that AfO is THAT strong that he can break out of it. AfO, Midoriya and Shigaraki are the three characters that completely bend around any rule that they need to when they need to. The only time they don't, is coincidentally when they're facing eachother (although the plot still has them pull out curve balls anyways).

I’ve observed this problem in a few different areas, that Horikoshi sometimes writes the heroes, particularly Hawks, as not taking actions or drawing conclusions that, from their perspective, should seem sensible, well-reasoned, and with solid chances of success; instead, they simply disregard possibilities they should logically be considering but which the reader knows are dead ends, or they benefit from things they could not have known at the time they acted.  That hurts immersion because it gives the heroes victories, both tactical and moral, that they simply haven’t earned.  Shinsou’s control of Machia is a particularly egregious example.

Okay, so I'm having a bit of trouble following the first half of what you just typed there (english is not my main language, so that doesn't help), but I think I got it(?): You're saying that when a choice is going to lead to a dead end, the heroes conveniently don't follow it, even though it would've been a logically sound decision and no one from the readership would've faulted them from making said choice, even though we the readers already know it's a waste of time (well, a lot of readers would give them shit about it, actually). Did I get it right?

To be brief about it (because I’ve talked about this at length elsewhere), I don’t think the heroes should have known where all the PLF bases were, I don’t think they should have been as effective in disordered mass combat as the PLF, I think the advisors should have put up a better fight in all cases, and I think there should have been enough members of the PLF in significant positions of influence or power that the HPSC couldn’t uncover them all, leading to complications when those members realized their organization was under attack.

On one hand, yeah, things didn't get as bad as they could've. In retrospect too many things went smoothly (well, except for the massive property damage, countless dead or injured, and the whole system crumbling, but the story doesn't focus enough on that, so to the readers it feels like things didn't get bad enough).

On the other hand, I remember at the time those chapters where coming out, just how schizophrenic everyone was being. As far as the fandom was predicting, it was going to be revealed that the PLF had actually known that Hawks was spying on them the whole time, so they had been prepared for the heroes attack. But Hawks actually knew that the PLF knew that he was spying on them, so he had infromed the heroes of all the counter measures the PLF had prepared to resist the attack. But in another twist, it would be revealed that the PLF knew that Hawks knew that they knew that he was spying on them, so they fed him false information. But then things get even CRAZIER when it's revealed that Hawks knew that the PLF knew that he knew that they knew that he...

You get where I'm going?

I'm kinda glad things didn't get THAT complicated in terms of both sides one upping eachother.

That has repercussions going forward, as well: heroes clearing the board of all the (named) PLF members save Skeptic leaves the bulk of villain forces in the subsequent arcs to be prison escapees, and man, if the PLF’s moral nuance has been squandered, the depiction of the prison escapees is even worse.

I don't know how controversial this is going to be for you, but imo, the MLA already lost it's moral nuance from the moment they got absorved into the LoV. I firmly believe the MLA should've remained a completely separate faction that the heroes had to deal with on top with having to deal with the LoV and AfO.

Because a lot of things get muddled with having the MLA and LoV becoming a single group. For example, I would see a lot of villain enthusiasts being discontent with how Horikoshi wasn't devoting any time in the story to have Shigaraki, Dabi and Toga "spread their message/agenda". But the thing is, the LoV doesn't have a "message". Shigaraki, Dabi and Toga are all mentally and emotionally unwell individuals lashing out at the world for the pain they've been through. They don't have some agenda or plan for a "brighter future".

The MLA are the ones with a concept for what they want the future to be. What society they dream of. Sure, the fact that it's based around Social Darwinism is off putting (and it has some little touches of fascism), but at least it's a conceived idea and plan for a different societal structure.

I don't believe any of the original LoV members are in a mental state where they could, or would even be interested in envisioning some "new society". Maybe Spinner, but his whole character is him jumping into causes that only sound good on paper without actually understanding them or fully believing in them, so I don't think he'd be able to (or want to) either.

I have significantly more issues with the second one, but most of that boils down to the fact that the divide and conquer/Tempt and Trap plan feels crueler, meaner, and much more openly aimed at extrajudicial murder.

Mmmh. Interesting. What exactly is "crueler" about divide and conquer? I'm assuming that you're referring to specific beats in the story and not the strategy in itself. Because it is a sound strategic move. And had the story been better at making the heroes feel outnumbered it would even be the only logical course to take, and the one that would give them a fighting chance.

And like, that would all be fine and in-character for Hero Society in general and Hawks, the main planner, specifically, but with Deku, Shouto and Uraraka all starting to think Save Villains thoughts, and fresh off the traitor reveal, the kids should never have been as collectively okay with the second war’s tactics as the story has presented them as being.

Once more, this is probably something I'm missing. But why should the kids have been opposed to the plan? Again, I'm guessing you're referring to specific parts in the plan, I just can't figure what it is you're referring to.

To echo an older complaint, good god, what universe is Horikoshi living in that he thinks the people that converted a place of learning into an arena they call a “coffin in the sky” are the heroes?

Maybe he didn't make the connection? It wasn't supposed to be taken literally? It's just a name to sound cool and dramatic? I don't know. There's many things that sound wrong to us that to the japanese probably don't sound wrong due to the language barrier, or because they don't have the same perception as us.

Like, remember we're talking about the man that introduced the kickass hero name "Alien Queen" for one of the female characters just as a little movie reference, and then instead he gave her the less respectable name "Pinky". And I'm still mad about that, btw.

I’m not sure from this if you’re explaining how you read Hose Face’s attack on Midnight at the time, or if you’re maintaining that that’s an accurate read

I'm explaining that's how I had read it. That's why I asked you for clarification. I wasn't trying to claim that was fact.

Also, in the thematic/meta sense, I expect the heroes to either conduct themselves as heroes—admirable, upright, heroic—or face the narrative consequences when they fail to live up to that ideal.

And what is that "hero" ideal, for you? Are we talking Superman levels of altruism, with complete lack of self preservation, or nothing that extreme? I already know that's not the case, but I just wanted to pose the question anyway to get your thoughts. Cause even though the story sells Midoriya's behaviour as "truly heroic", that level of self destruction just for the sake of others is deeply concerning.

It reminds me how Stain's ideology is just plain wrong.

I kinda wish the story had focused on that. It would've been interesting being simultaneously presented how while the system dehumanizes "villains", fanatical and extreme ideologies such as Stain's also dehumanize heroes. The angle of both heroes and villains being victims feels like something that should've been followed more.

But I don't know. Anyway.

The hyper-encapsulated version of this conundrum is the recurring idea that attacking Shigaraki never actually prevents Shigaraki from coming back worse and more dangerous next time; the heroes are never going to achieve a different result by attacking him again but harder this time, and that’s why Deku is set up to finally try something different.[3]  I would just like it if what’s true on the micro-level could even be attempted on the macro-level.  Or, in other words, if the narrative is going to tell us that saving villains is the correct path, it can’t only demonstrate that for the villains with known-to-the-heroes sympathetic backstories.

That's actually a thing I don't get at all (or at least didn't, until the most recent chapters. Oof. Although, honestly can't say I'm surprised). The whole concept of "saving villains". What does that mean, actually? I'm interested in hearing what your take might be, since you have a nuanced take on the story and characters, even if you lean more towards the villains, you still take into account that they're criminals and their actions are not okay. Almost everyone else has too biased of an opinion, everyone leans in too heavily to one side or the other, and that's just not realistic or goes completely against what the themes of the story are. What does "saving the villains" mean to you?

The reason why I can't wrap my head around the whole thing is because there are some questions that I just can't decipher. Does it mean they all get to go free and face no consequence for their crimes, and people act as if nothing happened? That doesn't sound sensible. And if they do face consequences. Doesn't that directly undo and oppose the whole "saving villains" thing? Or is it fine? Are you still saving them if they face justice, or is granting them complete amnesty required?

I just can't understand it. So that's why I would like to know what "saving the villains" entails, in your view.

I would just like it if what’s true on the micro-level could even be attempted on the macro-level.  Or, in other words, if the narrative is going to tell us that saving villains is the correct path, it can’t only demonstrate that for the villains with known-to-the-heroes sympathetic backstories.

Yeah, but how do you achieve that, narratively? And how do you reach someone if you don't know them?

How could a high school student reach a fanatical member of a shadowy cult hell-bent on establishing a new world order?

As we saw in chapter 383, the Skull Mask villain completely ignored Mina's words. And I don't think there's anything she could've said that would've swayed him to surrender peacefully.

I just don't know if it's feasible to get every single criminal to stop with only words and diplomacy. Rehabilitation should be possible (for those that are willing to be rehabilitated at least), but you're still gonna run into criminals that simply will refuse to surrender and will require to be incapacitated.

If I had to take a guess as to why Horikoshi’s so staunchly avoided letting Mina cut loose—other than regressive gender politics—I’d say it’s that acid simply feels nastier or more morally dubious than fire.  Fire has positive as well as negative connotations; acid’s a lot more, shall we say, unilateral in the collective imagination, especially given what’s going to turn up if you run a web search for “acid attacks.”

Yes, that's exactly what I was trying to say. That's what I meant when I said that it's harder to dowmplay. I was referring to the moral implications.

Perhaps, then, because readers are somewhat conditioned to think of acid as particularly dangerous and nasty compared to fire, and because there’s a limit to how morally dubious Horikoshi is willing to (consciously) write the students, especially the girls, Mina’s sharply limited in how she’s allowed to use her acid.

Well, can't say I fault him for doing that. I would imagine the majority of the readers, if not all of them, would give Mina a lot of shit if Horikoshi wrote her using her acid more freely. It makes me sad. I imagine everyone would be wishing for her to suffer a horrible and gruesome demise, and actively rooting against her at every opportunity.

And in case you think I'm talking crazy, let me remind you that a considerable portion of the fandom gave Mina shit for "torturing Mineta". So if people hated on her for what was essentially just a silly slapstick gag that you're not meant to take seriously, then I can imagine the fandom would really be calling for her head if she used her acid to attack in fights.

That honestly made me so fricking mad. In case you're wondering what I'm talking about, people were giving Mina hate for rightfully punishing Mineta after he pulled one of his usual pervy schemes and deliverately took advantage of her in a moment of vulnerability. When Mineta harrases the girls and is a total pig they go like "it's just a joke, don't take it so seriously", but then the ridiculous slapstick moment that is the obvious punchline to the whole joke of Mineta being a pervert, THAT they decide to take seriously.

It honestly feels like there's some sort of conspiracy against Mina. Seriously, all of the other girls in the class have physically punished Mineta whenever he was being a total pig, and no one batted an eye but then when Mina does it everyone suddenly calls her a vicious monster for getting angry at him over a "little accident" and that she's being ungrateful to Mineta after he "selflessly" saved her. Did they actually miss the part where Mineta openly states that he PLANNED to smash into Mina's breasts?

I swear, this fandom makes me so fucking mad. 😤

That’s a big oof, all right.  I know about the Midnight non-connection and the issue of Mina’s anti-vengeance words having first been delivered by Shouji and relayed to the audience by Koda (it being his flashback, rather than Shouji’s), but I didn’t know there was no indication of Kiri-Mina connection until after his flashback.  Wowzers.

The only connection between Mina and Kirishima prior to his flashback was that both of their character infos mentioned that they went to the same pre school. That's literally it.

I will have to disagree with Reddit User That Guy that Shinsou’s quirk should be viewed as less villainous than Bakugou’s.  It sounds like he was conflating heteromorphobia with the bias against villains/"villainous" quirks, and while there is overlap, they’re still distinct categories.  Shinsou’s quirk inherently subordinates one’s physical body, allowing him to force his targets to act against their will, or potentially take the fall for things they didn’t willingly do.  Of course people are nervous about it or think it’s more villainous than heroic!

The guy wasn't correlating "villainy" to heteromorphia, actually. He just simply couldn't get it into his head that mind controlling someone is a morally questionable thing to do. He was saying that Bakugo, Tokoyami and Mina should receive prejudice instead because their Quirks are destructive. He was even suggesting that Shinso's Quirk would be super valuable to be used during interrogations. I'm no lawyer, but mind controling someone during an interrogation doesn't sound like something that would fly in a court of law.

Even Dabi’s fire is that ethereal blue, like spirit fires, instead of everyday orange-red!

Dabi's fire is actually blue because it burns hotter 🤓. Like the fire from the stove in an oven. I know you know that already, I'm just being silly.

Ahaha, very fair.  Honestly, Class A would have benefited tremendously from more kids with bite to them.  A Mina whose competitiveness had some real fervor to it, or a Mina who had some heaviness in her backstory she was faking her way through dealing with, would have been a good contribution to that.

That I'm not so sure of. Like, a lot of people complain that the heroes are too boring, and say that the villains are more interesting and that's why the readers tend to root for the villains more.

But I honestly just don't get how having the heroes be more flawed would make the readers like them more and root for them more.

Like, in my mind, if people already don't care for them when they're perfect goody two shoes, then I don't see why if they had actual flaws or shitty personality traits people wouldn't be actively rooting against them. You get what I'm saying?

Like if Momo was your typical cold hearted, rich mean girl, or Mina was an annoying and disrespectful gossip that invades people's privacy and spreads nasty rumors, or if Todoroki was racist towards heteromorphs, I don't see how the fandom would like them more. I think they would despise them. Would you like them more? Would you actually find yourself rooting for them like that when they're facing adversity?

I just can't see it.

Like sure, Bakugo and Endeavor are some of the most popular characters and they're heroes with serious flaws. But they're also the two most hated characters in the story. Even though Bakugo's bullying of Midoriya hasn't really been relevant in the story since ages, people still won't let that go.

That none of the students other than Shouji have ever even imagined that heteromorphs can still be victimized in this way represents an over-the-top ignorance that I have to read as either a bleak condemnation of the shallow focuses of heroes or reflective of Horikoshi’s own beliefs about discrimination and the understanding of it possessed by those who aren’t immediately threatened by it.

Or maybe Horikoshi doesn't know how to write a plot about discrimination. It could also be that the japanese perspective is so different from the western perspective that we were never going to get a story that completely aligned with our beliefs.

But I'm no expert, so I don't know.

Well, I'd still say that, feeling as strongly as I do about how morally dubious this whole second war has been, even if I were telling this scene with the same components, I probably wouldn’t be writing towards a hero success because I don’t think the heroes have earned it.

Oh, interesting. So you would write the villains winning here? I have so many questions about that.

Like, what would happen then? Would Midoriya and the other kids flee the country and train for years and return to free Japan after a time skip? I remember that was a popular theory and prediction that many readers had back when the first part of the war was happening.

If that's what you would do. What would happen to Japan then? Like, what would the villains do with the country? If you actaully have something thought up, I'd actually be interested in hearing it, since I've seen you have pretty nuanced takes.

Although, there are a couple of other things in the story that you'd have to change to allow for a time skip, because as the villains are in the actual story, if they win I don't see how there would be a Japan left to save years later. You'd completely have to rewrite Shigaraki, since his main and only goal is to destroy everything.

Also, if the PLF does create some new form of "society", I imagine it wouldn't be some perfect utopia where everything is good and fine. I actually picture them turning into a worse HPSC.

The latter would offer a less awful read on Hose Face’s personality: He’s not bringing up the death out of pure sadism, but as a psychological tactic.  The former would give him some real characterization and motives while also giving the kids something to argue against, rather than the easiest possible reaction of, “Hay did u kno Might Makes Right iz bad?”

Mocking someone's death in front of their loved ones as a psychological tactic is less awful how? 🤔 Just wondering.

So, in a scenario where Machia is up and not falling prey to Shinsou, but rather prioritizing getting to New Master Shigaraki, and the PLF is likewise loyal to Shigaraki and not AFO, I’d just let it work, because I’d be slanting this whole combat towards an overall heroic loss.  Give Mina a face to obsess over until next time but also let Kirishima get a good eyeful of it so he at least knows there’s a serious problem with his best friend and one of his hero inspirations.

"A face to obsess over until next time"? So she'd get to try again further on and kick his butt later?

Also, and this is likely just me having come to resent Kirishima for how Mina was used as a tool to further his character development at the expense of hers, but I don't like that last part much. To my cynical mind, it sounds like another "let's make Mina look bad so Kirishima can look good" situation. I know that's not what you meant, and it's all on me and my pessimism, but I can't help it.

Mineta would have a chance to weigh in, too, as he's a good middle ground: he's got his own anger about Midnight, who he adored, but he's also worried about how that anger looks on Mina. Mineta always worries about his classmates, but he's shared a pretty fair amount of incidental screentime with Mina specifically over the course of the series, ranging from her sweetly offering to put a harem moment into the band performance just for him to stuff like the Clockwork Orange gag, as well as more serious stuff like Mineta being the first one to ask aloud if Midnight's dead, with Mina warmly, and with a confidence it turns out she doesn't truly feel, reassuring him that Midnight's fine.

Can't say I like the sound of that either. Sorry, but because of how the story has always sidelined the girls in favor of the boys, this again to me sounds like "let's give Mineta development by using Mina as a tool to further his character", as well as also sounding like it makes her look bad so he can look good. Just like with Kirishima, I've come to lowkey resent Mineta, specifically for the Clockwork Orange gag that you mentioned. As you could probably tell by my previous venting, I was really annoyed at people giving Mina hate for it. So I'd rather not see her interacting with him either. Sorry. 😓

I've said before that Mineta should have had more to do in the confrontation with Midnight's killer, but that's not just about his fondness for her. It's also about him being the first to question if the heroes didn't just make the whole situation worse, and, if Mina really took Midnight's death so hard it had her thinking about revenge, it should also have been about Mina and Mineta's shared experience surrounding that death.

Since I'm not sold on the idea of Mina and Mineta interacting, how about instead we see Mina and Aoyama interacting? That could be interesting, huh?

His relationship with Mina—the ways he’s trying to live up to her example, as well as his desire to support her when she falters—is a profound motivator for him, something we see much more explicitly and from his own perspective than we do Mina's feelings about him.

Please don't remind about how Mina is used as a mere tool for Kirishima's character progress. I used to love their relationship, but now I actually resent it. It's even worse because Horikoshi gives Kirishima all the attention and all the cool moments, and then still tries to present him as the underdog when compared to her, which only makes Mina look even worse. SHE SHOULD'VE BEEN THE UNDERDOG! 😤 Every time I see Kirishima praising her I get upset. Feels like the most pàtronicing thing ever, even though I know it's not meant in that way.

That being the case, if anyone were going to be able to make an impression on Hose Face via appealing to his sense of camaraderie and desire for strength, it seems to me that Kirishima has the better groundwork in place to sell the moment, regardless of whether he could successfully “reach” Hose Face in the way that’s being attempted with Shigaraki/Toga/Dabi.

I'd put my money on "not manage to reach him". Not everyone can be talk no jutsu'd

Assuming we’re stuck dealing with him, I’d probably let the Class B kids do it.   Have Mount Lady—who was there for the Sludge Villain’s rampage using Bakugou, and therefore knows what Sludgey looks like and that he can possess people—yell for people to stay away from him.  Let there be a moment of panic and confusion, where it looks for a moment like a repeat of the mess in Chapter 1 where no one had the exact right answer to deal with him, so no one’s willing to step up.

Then, in a 1-2-3 combo move that reminds everyone why Class B is said to have advanced more quickly than Class A, and just as Sludgey lunges for someone, have Yamagi use Poltergeist to manipulate him into a steel drum barrel being held by Yui, let her shrink it down to a good tight fit before dropping it, then have Juuzo soften the ground to half-sink it, top down, then resolidify the earth, trapping Sludgey for later removal.  Ta da, a neat demonstration of the next generation outperforming the old generation when it comes to on-the-fly teamwork and decisive action even when no one individual has the perfect quirk for solving a problem.

So you think class B is better than class A?

Btw, that thing you mentioned with the teamwork actually answers one question I had. I remember, back when Death Arms returned and helped after he had quit, you stated that you loved the premise, but that you were left disappointed that he solved a problem that he was suited for solving.

Now, I gotta be honest. I thought what you wanted was for the heroes to solve problems that they were 100% not the right person to be dealing with. Like someone with a fire Quirk having to put off a fire, or something like that.

I was actaully going to question how that would be possible, since MHA has set up it's power sytem in a very "rock, paper, scissors" sort of way. The only exceptions to this are Deku and Shigaraki, who just do whatever they want. But what you were talking about turned out to not be as extreme as I thought. 😅

Although, I'm gonna play devil's advocate here for a second. Wouldn't the 1-B students trapping the Sludge villain through teamwork still count as the right people with the right Quirks solving the problem they were meant to solve?

Wouldn't it need to be a success from people whose Quirks aren't suited for the job at all, and don't even synergize well when put together?

Then again, that's asking for the impossible. Or just straight up plot armor.

So that just leaves Machia, Mina, and Shinsou.  And honestly, rather than having to power through it, I’d rather see Mina, in particular, talk her way out of it.

Me: Asks how they would write Mina's moment better.

Stillness-in-green: Tells me how he would write better moments for everyone except Mina.

Me:

I'm merely joking.

Although it is a little disappointing. This is essentially just Mina doing what she already did once before. There's nothing noteworthy, admirable or impressive about it. I would even dare to say there's no character growth.

I obviously don’t expect her and Machia to wind up breakdancing together when the stakes are as high as they are, but Mina would have at least a bit of an opening—her encounter with Machia in middle school wherein she lied to him about where the Springer Agency is.  I don’t for a moment think that Machia’s forgotten her smell—I doubt he forgets anyone’s, though he may or may not care about them otherwise.

For this version of the scene, I’d probably play Machia as more ambivalent—tired of being abandoned over and over again by the people he’s tried so hard to be loyal for, so not immediately inclined to run off after them, open to a bit more dialogue.  He doesn’t fall for Shinsou for the same reasons I outlined above, so Shinsou and Mina have to talk Machia into acting—or at least stop him from just rumbling off to bury himself under a mountain for the next decade or two.

I don’t know how they’d go about making that argument.  Honestly, I don’t really think there’s anything in the story for Mina or Shinsou to fall back on (by which I mean earlier panels Horikoshi’s assistants can look up and copy/paste into the storyboard to accent a dramatic speech).  Maybe they could ask him why he’s so loyal to All For One and find some commonality, either through heteromorph discrimination or bias against villains.

Maybe Machia is torn on his loyalty, betrayed by AFO one too many times to want to help him but not sure where that leaves him on supporting Shigaraki.  Hearing this, Mina brings up that AFO is threatening Shigaraki right now, but also that a friend of Mina’s is trying to stop AFO/help Shigaraki,[12] so maybe Machia could help them with that and then decide?  Machia doesn’t trust her due to the Springer Agency thing, but that same experience does lead him to believe her when she says she just wants to help people, not hurt them.

That last bit has the benefit of providing an explicit reason for why Mina uses her quirk nigh-exclusively as a watery defense barrier or to take out inanimate objects: She long ago made an active choice not to use her acid against sentient people.  This would give her some room for a little motivation-establishing flashback of her own—maybe canonize that theory about her chipperness being at least in part a front!—and provide a nice alternative to the current state of Mina’s narrative, which has spent nearly 400 chapters refusing to allow her the same free hand people like Bakugou and Kaminari take with their quirks for no established reason.

Yeah, I don't know. Doesn't sound like what I would've liked either.

One major problem I immediately see, is that letting Machia go would make her look really bad. I can already imagine the fandom making memes dunking on her, calling her useless and making fun or her for failing everyone and possibly getting multiple people killed by letting Machia traverse across the city.

It wouldn't be the first time it's happened.

Remember in Kirishima's flashback, when she gave Machia random directions? In the anime they actually changed the line. Instead, she gave him directions to a police station. Why did they change it? Idk, maybe Bones and Horikoshi thought it was more responsible of her to send him to the police instead of giving him random directions. Whatever the case, "being responsible" was not what people took out of that.

People begun shitting on her and making jokes about how she got an entire police station killed.

I was so mad. I remember I was looking forward to the anime getting to that part. Finally, one of the only praise worthy things she's gotten to do in the series getting adapted. I couldn't wait to see what people had to say about her, to see them gushing over how she was so brave protecting her friends... and then the fandom reminded me why I fricking hate it here. 😤

This doesn’t give Shinsou much to do, but that’s okay: his moment comes against AFO instead.

Oh, of course. Mina only gets to talk and do nothing heroic. But Shinso gets to face off against the story's Big Bad. Sounds just like something that would happen in the manga.

Don't mind me. I'm just gonna be here, sad.

Just kidding, btw. Well, maybe I'll cry a little.

I realize that Mina's fans want her to have a big badass moment, and simply talking down a confrontation is not the kind of thing that tends to get viewed as "badass" in a shounen battle manga. Sorry about that.

Yeah, that was kind of what I was hoping for, unfortunately. 😔

Eh, it doesn't matter. It's only natural that you would have difficulty thinking of something for a character that you're not particularly interested in. Thanks anyways. Even though it's not what I would've done for Mina, it was fun reading your ideas.

She can still jump around and dodge a lot while giving her pitch? Maybe she could get a big badass moment later on?

Well, if this had happened in the story, I would've been left expecting for her to still get her badass moment. Cause that wouldn't have looked like one to me. Not after how they did her dirty with chapter 280.

What were you thoughts on that chapter, btw? And has your opinion on it changed with time? What did you think of the color page of chapter 280? I thought it was unintentionally (at least I assume it was unintentional) mocking and patronizing.

Anyway. Now, regarding the whole thing about Midnight's killer and what you said about how you feel about him getting arrested. It's completely understandable that you'd feel that way if you have a bias towards the villains. It makes complete sense. I'm the same way with the characters that I care about (as you've probably noticed from my deranged ramblings 😳. Sorry about those).

Me? I'm glad he's arrested. I just want to have every single plot thread tied up in a neat bow. Leaving Midnight's murder unresolved would be just as disrespectful as her funeral not being addressed, imo. And the way she got killed was already plenty disrespectful. Especially since Torino survived getting turned into a donut.

Disclaimer: I obviously don’t spend much time in the hero-fan circles of the fandom, so this is just my perception.  I’d be curious to get your perspective of Kaminari’s relative popularity, rvg!)

Eh, I don't pay much attention to Kaminari, he's alright, but not one of the characters I gravitate towards. But he's one of those characters that you see people calling underrated, and at the same time they have a decent amount of popularity. So I'd say Kaminari is in the middle. He's liked well enough by the fandom, but he's not crazy popular. Probably very popular with fujoshis though.

Then, when the actual traitor reveals landed (first the fake-out and then the real one), fandom deemed Hagakure an ungrateful bitch and Aoyama a whining coward.

Saddly, that would've happened to anyone that ended up being the traitor. The fandom is sucky like that. It's why I used to be so worried Mina would turn out to be the traitor, because I knew it would just get her even more flack.

Mineta is, by any measure, more problematic, and it's even worse that U.A./Aizawa are so blasé about him, but, at least from where I’m standing, he’s still more layered, more compelling, more dynamic, and speaks in more interesting ways to the world around him than Kaminari ever comes close to matching.

Well, you do you. Personally, I still don't like him much (I have my reasons, as I've already told you. They're petty, I know, but they're my reasons).

Having you tell me how you would've written Mina's part differently makes me want to do the same.

Would you be interested in that? I was actually planning on doing it all on this one post, but I've been writing for a while now (the whole day 😱), and I'm getting tired. I kinda feel like I should leave it for another post. Only if you would be interested in such a thing, of course.

There are a couple of things that I would change from the story. Unfortunately I'm not as drawn to the villains as you are, so I don't really have much to say regarding them, so I probably won't have much to say that interest you. Although one big change to the story I would make involves Chitose Kizuki, aka "Curious".

You have seen SalvagesMHA posts about their attempts to give each of the students a nemesis, right? He pits Mina against Curious, which coincidentally is something I was thinking of.

What did you think about that matchup, btw? I thought it sounded very interesting. And I liked the parallels that he drew between the two.

Would it be racist to pit the two characters of color against one another though? 😲. Silly joke. Ignore me, I'm dumb like that.

Anyways, thanks for reading again through my dumb ramblings if you did, and sorry once more for taking several months to reply.

Do let me know your thoughts. Or don't. If you're busy and there's other things you'd rather do, please tell me, so at least I know I shouldn't expect another lengthy reply.

Anyway, Bye. Have a good day, afternoon or night, whichever it is when you're reading this.

More and More on Mina, Machia and the MLA

For my readers other than @randomvongenerico, please have this peremptory list of this very lengthy post's contents to help gauge your interest:

Some more discussion on what is or isn’t, would or wouldn’t be blameworthy about various characters’ actions (or hypothetical actions) during the war arcs.   

More discussion about Mina, chiefly about how (and why) her acid powers are handled compared to all the male characters with fire powers, and the way her plot points are poorly set up by the narrative, with the result of shortchanging her development.   

Yet More Complaining About How The Story Is Handling Heteromorphobia, this time featuring a compare and contrast on quirk-based bias as it might affect Mina, Bakugou and Tokoyami, as well as a dissection of Shouji’s contention that the only possible way to know about the violent bigotry in the rural areas of the country is to be from them.   

Some fairly extensive spitballing in response to questions about how I would have handled the scene at Machia’s prison compound if I were writing it, as well as why I have trouble conceiving of anything Hero Society could do to Hose Face for killing Midnight that would actually feel like justice.   

A little bit of basic talk about Tumblr, its functionality and some relevant slang.   

Buried at the very bottom, I stand up in front of God and everyone and explain in brief why Kaminari is a worse character than Mineta, with some particular focus on Kaminari as emblematic of the conflict between what the series tells us versus what it shows us about the legality of quirk use in careers other than heroism.

Hi again, rvg.  Because it's been forever since our last post exchange, let me say again that I appreciate the apology and want to thank you for being such a good sport about it.  Last time I had something like your initial response, that person told me straight out that they’d been condescending and antagonistic on purpose, though they regretted having done so after my reply.  I appreciated the regret, but would have preferred they take a day or two to cool off in the first place!  That’s the experience I was bringing to your comments, but I’ll keep in mind what you said about lack of experience with initiating chats and Tumblr in general.

For what it’s worth, yeah, there is a character limit on both asks and replies, so that’s the trouble you were running into there!  You might also consider using a cut next time before a really long post, though if you’re on mobile, I recall that being a difficult-if-not-impossible feature to find, and it’s not as important as it used to be ever since Tumblr’s started adding default Expand drop-downs on long posts.  That aside, welcome (belatedly) to Tumblr!  I hope you find some good people to chat fandom with; I’m always open to some back and forth about things I know well enough to talk about, though I’m, er, decidedly unprompt with replies.  And, as noted, definitely more of a villain fan, so probably not the most fun person for discussions on the kids.

That said, to your replies!  Other readers should note that, while I wrote all this roughly in response-order to rvg’s points, I reorganized everything after the fact to group together the broad topics.  I’ve tried to provide some bare minimum context for anything that would otherwise be too much of a zero-context non-sequitur, but if anyone wants to see rvg’s comments in their intended order and context, their reblog can be found here.  Otherwise, hit the jump!

  

Would You Have Held It Against ___?

But would you hold it against Mina if she had actually done more substancial damage to Machia? Let’s say, not the face, but Machia’s fingers instead of his claws. Machia still doens’t feel any pain. Would you chastise Mina for it? Even though she’s actively saving Mt Lady by doing that?

It’s hard to say for sure, since I imagine that if Mina’s acid had hit Machia’s fingers instead of his claws, we probably would just have seen them abraded and singed, like how Dabi’s fire damage was drawn on Hawks, not with chunks of skin melting off and exposing naked bone.  Physical damage in BNHA just doesn’t work like that, at least not against named characters.  If Mina were doing realistic damage, I imagine everyone else would be too, and then I’d be criticizing all of them, because, holy shit, that is not okay to do to people, any people, and especially not when you’re acting as an agent of the state.

But hypothetically, no, I think I would be more lenient even if she did do concrete and permanent damage to Machia’s hands, and it’s because she’d be doing it to save Mount Lady.  Shinsou could have taken control of Machia and then just had him lie still while whoever was in charge of this facility redrugged him,[1] and that would have been fine by me—disappointing, sure, but only because Machia’s interesting and I’d like to get more on him than we do, not because I’d be critiquing Shinsou’s actions.

It’s specifically Shinsou and the rest choosing to weaponize Machia against AFO that I object to.  Mina harming Machia would be taking that action herself, to protect someone that’s right in front of her, risking no one’s life but her own in doing so.  Shinsou throwing Machia up against AFO—which he’d made the decision to do before hearing Machia’s angry grumbling—is risking Machia’s life, without Machia’s consent.  And it’s not even for the sake of saving anyone, at least not anyone that’s right there in that moment—AFO is fleeing.

Sure, he still presents a huge threat to lots of people, but given that we’d just seen proof that AFO did not know about Shinsou’s power,[2] they could also have used Machia to, for example, rapidly transport the heroes to some place they could set up a second ambush to trick AFO into responding to Shinsou.  I mean, good god, AFO’s the chattiest villain in the comic; Hawks lured him into at least two extended conversations even after he’d resolved that he needed to leave.  He’s a Demon Lord and thus categorically incapable of shutting up.  And that would have been that, really.  Take control and let the clock run out; end of problem.

It would have been anticlimactic as hell, so obviously that was never going to happen, but there’s no reason the heroes couldn’t try for it, you know?  Instead of the bone-headed decision to just hand AFO his most loyal soldier on a silver platter on the thin chances that they could either prevent the brainwashing from being broken at all or that Machia’s upset would translate to both the capability and willingness to attack his master.

I’ve observed this problem in a few different areas, that Horikoshi sometimes writes the heroes, particularly Hawks, as not taking actions or drawing conclusions that, from their perspective, should seem sensible, well-reasoned, and with solid chances of success; instead, they simply disregard possibilities they should logically be considering but which the reader knows are dead ends, or they benefit from things they could not have known at the time they acted.  That hurts immersion because it gives the heroes victories, both tactical and moral, that they simply haven’t earned.  Shinsou’s control of Machia is a particularly egregious example.

  

Speaking of Monoma. Since we were talking about the morality of Shinso’s Quirk. Would you say Monoma using his Quirk to copy a villain’s Quirk and use it on him and his allies, would also qualify as something that should be criticized? I’m curious.

Nah, I don’t think so.  Taking an opponent’s weapon and using it to subdue him is a perfectly valid tactic, especially since Monoma’s method doesn’t actually deprive his opponent of their weapon, just replicates it for his own use.  It really all does boil down to Shinsou’s method forcing people to fight and hurt their own allies.  Mina causing Machia physical harm, Monoma using a villain’s own weapon against them, even the heroes’ surprise attack: none of those are remotely on the same “holy shit that is a literal war crime” level as what the heroes planned in advance to have Shinsou do to Machia, and what he willingly agreed to do well before he found out that Machia was not as opposed as the heroes thought.

  

I mean, I get what you’re getting at. I’m just wondering. If the heroes hadn’t launched a suprise attack, and had left the villains do the first move and come to them, would you then be criticizing them for being irresponsible and incompetent instead? Sorry for going on a tangent, it’s just something I’ve noticed when it comes to readers criticizing the heroes. It’s either people complaining that the heroes are too ruthless, or that they’re too nice, naive or not pragmatic enough.

(This is in response to some discussion of the heroes' actions in the first war arc's raid on the villa+hospital lab, not the second war's divide and conquer plan.)

I actually don’t really have a huge problem with the surprise attack in principle—I might criticize Cementoss ripping the building in half when there could well have been people on those upper floors, but otherwise, it’s hard to imagine what else the heroes could generally have done to deal with the numbers they were dealing with.  I mean, it’s basically just a scaled-up version of the attack on the Hassaikai base, and I don’t have any moral quibbles with the way the heroes and police handled that.

Rather, my problem with the raid is that I thought the heroes were too effective given the way their forces and those of the PLF had been set up.  It’s not the tactic itself that’s the problem (though individual acts of worse violence within the attack, like Hawks killing Twice or the attempts to outright murder Shigaraki in the tube, are still an issue), it’s the finality, the totality, of how effective the attack was.

To be brief about it (because I’ve talked about this at length elsewhere), I don’t think the heroes should have known where all the PLF bases were, I don’t think they should have been as effective in disordered mass combat as the PLF, I think the advisors should have put up a better fight in all cases, and I think there should have been enough members of the PLF in significant positions of influence or power that the HPSC couldn’t uncover them all, leading to complications when those members realized their organization was under attack.

As it is, the heroes handily win every fight they have with the sole exception of Gigantomachia and Shigaraki.  The PLF is neatly swept off the table save for a few “remnants,” with no attention given to the practical difficulties of detaining tens of thousands of combatants with no motivation to let themselves be quietly arrested, much less how the justice system is going to handle trying and sentencing them all.  That has repercussions going forward, as well: heroes clearing the board of all the (named) PLF members save Skeptic leaves the bulk of villain forces in the subsequent arcs to be prison escapees, and man, if the PLF’s moral nuance has been squandered, the depiction of the prison escapees is even worse.

The raid is, of course, only the first of two big surprise attacks the heroes manage.  I have significantly more issues with the second one, but most of that boils down to the fact that the divide and conquer/Tempt and Trap plan feels crueler, meaner, and much more openly aimed at extrajudicial murder.  And like, that would all be fine and in-character for Hero Society in general and Hawks, the main planner, specifically, but with Deku, Shouto and Uraraka all starting to think Save Villains thoughts, and fresh off the traitor reveal, the kids should never have been as collectively okay with the second war’s tactics as the story has presented them as being.  To echo an older complaint, good god, what universe is Horikoshi living in that he thinks the people that converted a place of learning into an arena they call a “coffin in the sky” are the heroes?

  

I was under the impression Midnight was off to the side from where the MLA minions were passing by, and the Skull Mask guy took a detour to kill her.

I’m not sure from this if you’re explaining how you read Hose Face’s attack on Midnight at the time, or if you’re maintaining that that’s an accurate read, so just to clarify, here are the panels in question:

As you can see, the PLF guys’ path through the woods has them coming in from directly behind Midnight.  Hose Face calls out that he’ll take care of her once they get close enough for the reader to make out who they are, at which point he gets out in front of Scarecrow and hits Midnight from the same direction as their initial approach: directly behind.  He most certainly doesn’t take a detour of any kind, but rather chooses the action that is going to get his group through the obstacle with the least amount of time and effort possible—entirely his prerogative as the highest-ranked member of the Guerilla Warfare regiment on-scene.

  

But if we classify this entire conflict as a war, wouldn’t that mean that both sides are free to use whatever tacticts and methods they feel like as long as it’s not a war crime?

If we classify it as war is irrelevant if the side aligned with the current ruling authority hasn’t done so themselves.  I imagine the Japanese government is in no hurry to validate the terrorists on an international stage by acknowledging that they’re numerous and dangerous enough to declare actual, formal war against!  Calling it a war drags in a whole pile of wartime conventions Japan has signed numerous treaties about; it grants the opposing side some legitimacy as a cohesive, organized force that will need to be negotiated with down the line.  As long as you’re calling it a police action, you don’t have to negotiate shit until you get to the plea deals!  Team Hero never declared war here, so yeah, I still expect them to carry out their plans and actions accordingly.

Also, in the thematic/meta sense, I expect the heroes to either conduct themselves as heroes—admirable, upright, heroic—or face the narrative consequences when they fail to live up to that ideal.  The hyper-encapsulated version of this conundrum is the recurring idea that attacking Shigaraki never actually prevents Shigaraki from coming back worse and more dangerous next time; the heroes are never going to achieve a different result by attacking him again but harder this time, and that’s why Deku is set up to finally try something different.[3]  I would just like it if what’s true on the micro-level could even be attempted on the macro-level.  Or, in other words, if the narrative is going to tell us that saving villains is the correct path, it can’t only demonstrate that for the villains with known-to-the-heroes sympathetic backstories.

  

General Mina Points

Regarding your analysis about Mina’s acid being underpowered because it’s harder/less believable to downplay the effects of acid than fire/explosions/etc. in Shounen Damage Logic, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree.  I don’t see anything wrong with just showing the Nebulous Abrasion Damage that’s the ubiquitous, default mode of illustrating nonspecific injury in this comic for Mina’s acid the same way we get it for the boys.

I can see your argument, but like, just for example, when Endeavor first encounters a Noumu, he bathes it in fire under the assumption that it’s a normal villain and then says he’s surprised it’s still up because he’s never seen anyone stay conscious after that attack.  Bathing someone in flames in real life is not a “knock them out” kind of attack; it’s a “severe burn ward for months” kind of attack.  If Endeavor’s been throwing that around at random criminals for thirty years, we are plainly very far away from realistic damage, and I’d be perfectly satisfied with treating Mina’s acid the same way.

If I had to take a guess as to why Horikoshi’s so staunchly avoided letting Mina cut loose—other than regressive gender politics—I’d say it’s that acid simply feels nastier or more morally dubious than fire.  Fire has positive as well as negative connotations; acid’s a lot more, shall we say, unilateral in the collective imagination, especially given what’s going to turn up if you run a web search for “acid attacks.”

To look at it in JRPG logic (and I don’t care if AFO’s admiration stems from a comic; that comic was clearly playing with Dragon Quest tropes), acid is pretty much the same thing as poison, and poison effects are chiefly the realm of enemy characters.  It smacks of underhandedness or cowardice in anything more cognizant than roving toxic plants or venomous beasts.  Certainly you see the occasional party member specialized for status effects who can inflict poison damage on enemies, but I can’t readily think of a main character that does.[4]

Perhaps, then, because readers are somewhat conditioned to think of acid as particularly dangerous and nasty compared to fire, and because there’s a limit to how morally dubious Horikoshi is willing to (consciously) write the students, especially the girls, Mina’s sharply limited in how she’s allowed to use her acid.

That said, I got a very hearty laugh from, “Just look at Dabi.  He can’t even kill himself with fire,” so thank you very much for that.

  

It’s as if Horikoshi only ever figures out what to do with Mina retroactively instead of in the moment (e.g. there were no interactions between Kirishima and Mina until AFTER Kirishima’s backstory, we never got any hint that would connect Mina’s and Midnight’s characters until AFTER Midnight died, when Mina speaks about not giving in to vengeance she references SHOJI’S WORDS which happened in HIS FLASHBACK, and then this whole chapter is technically a flashback too when you think about it).

That’s a big oof, all right.  I know about the Midnight non-connection and the issue of Mina’s anti-vengeance words having first been delivered by Shouji and relayed to the audience by Koda (it being his flashback, rather than Shouji’s), but I didn’t know there was no indication of Kiri-Mina connection until after his flashback.  Wowzers.

  

But also, in one of my comments I had left a link to a post analizing Kirishima’s and Mina’s characters and their dynamic. I don’t know if you checked it out or not, but it was a pretty interesting read. If you did read it, let me know your thoughts on it.

Apologies for not responding to that; I hadn't clicked it because I just wasn't terribly interested in the topic. Having checked it now, I can say that I'm unlikely to read it because I've encountered this person's meta before and, even at a glance, found it to be flawed for reasons I am not comfortable gabbing about in a public space. I'm sure they make some valid points, but I will have to respectfully bow out of reading and commenting on it here.

  

But what about Mina telling Kirishima that “now they’re even” though?

(This is re: my contention that Mina saves Shinsou, not Kirishima, from the Sludge Villain, and that Kirishima was never in any danger from the Sludge Villain.)

I mean, she can say it, but that doesn’t mean I have to believe that she/Horikoshi are accurately portraying the stakes involved.

  

Just for the record, you’re not saying that Mina not giving in to revenge isn’t noble in and of itself. What she does is indeed good.  You’re saying it doesn’t have any emotional weight because Mina has always been a morally good character, so you never thought she would ever give in to revenge in the first place. Correct?

Correct!  As I’ve said, Mina has perfectly healthy emotional regulation: when she experiences negative emotions like anger, guilt, or grief, she doesn’t dwell on them; she vents them to friends and finds healthy ways to channel them into bettering herself and the world and people around her.  She’s got a great head on her shoulders!  But all of that means that her giving into anger about Midnight’s death was never a remotely convincing threat to me.  Of course she wouldn’t; there’s never been a moment that foreshadowed that she was in the slightest danger of harboring that kind of obsessive, vindictive grudge.

That being the case, it feels unfair of Horikoshi to pin a big dramatic monologue on a desire for revenge which Mina was never shown to possess to any greater degree than any of her classmates.  She’s one of the last hero-aligned characters I’d have guessed if you’d asked me who was going to get a beat like that in the endgame.

(To anticipate the obvious question, Aizawa would have been my first guess; he’s even been written for it properly in the way he and Mic have responded to Shigaraki—clearly holding a grudge for something that would have happened to their classmate when Shigaraki was all of six years old.  Conversely, while plenty of the 1-A kids could have believably carried a “struggling with vengefulness” plot if they’d been written with it from earlier on, I don’t think there’s a single one of them who feels like a good match for it in their current incarnations.  Iida’s moved on from his Stain days too smoothly to buy it from him, Bakugou’s only real obsession is Deku, and Deku already had a whole arc of being obsessively negative and driven by dark desires to find and deal with a villain.  If any student was going to show up to the fight with bloody-minded revenge on the brain, it should have been Shishikura.)

  

But What About the Heteromorphobia, Tho’?

(Warning: Incoming off-topic harping about Shouji and the inane resolution of the hospital attack.)

I have even seen someone make a post on Reddit arguing that Shinso being discriminated for his Quirk makes no sense because it’s not villanous, and that it makes more sense for characters like Bakugo, Mina and Tokoyami to be discriminated because they have more villanous looking Quirks. I don’t really agree with everything that guy said. But he did bring up a good point. How come Mina doesn’t get side eyes from people due to her Quirk like Shinso does?

I will have to disagree with Reddit User That Guy that Shinsou’s quirk should be viewed as less villainous than Bakugou’s.  It sounds like he was conflating heteromorphobia with the bias against villains/"villainous" quirks, and while there is overlap, they’re still distinct categories.  Shinsou’s quirk inherently subordinates one’s physical body, allowing him to force his targets to act against their will, or potentially take the fall for things they didn’t willingly do.  Of course people are nervous about it or think it’s more villainous than heroic!

Conversely, the Number 2 Hero has been attacking criminals with fire for decades now, so I think the BNHA general public is more than ready to accept a hero whose quirk lets him fire off explosions.  The commonly accepted idea in the fandom is that “flashy and offensive quirks” are the ones most valued in heroes.  I think that’s a bit oversimplified—Crust was the Number 6 Hero and his quirk was neither—but it’s certainly true that purely elemental quirks (fire, lightning, wind, earth-shaping), no matter how damage-dealing they are, don’t tend to get treated as villainous in nature.  The real “villainous quirks” in the series tend to be the ones that are more creepy, dark, invasive, or impure.  Even Dabi’s fire is that ethereal blue, like spirit fires, instead of everyday orange-red!

Bakugou’s quirk is much closer to the “pure elemental” category than anything very villainous and, indeed, when he got kidnapped from the training camp and that one journalist was suggesting that he might have turned to villainy already, he based that suggestion on Bakugou’s behavior, his conduct during the Sports Festival.  Nothing was said about his quirk at all, but rather his recent public demonstrations of violence and “mental instability.”  That’s perfectly consistent, I think, with the biases we see elsewhere.[5]

Tokoyami has the potential to get hit by both the villainous quirk bias and the heteromorphobia, but I think Japan seeing ravens as emblematic of wisdom rather than death and rot would mean his bird head is less ill-seen there than it would be in the West.  I don’t think it would take much more than the proverbial One Bad Day to get him to a very bad place indeed, though—there’s a reason Mr. Compress judged him a good potential recruit!  Tokoyami was rescued before it became an issue, but if he hadn’t been, I’m sure we would have seen the same journalist mentioned above making similar statements about Tokoyami and his dark quirk/mien.

Mina’s an interesting case study in not experiencing a lot of the same sorts of discrimination others in similar situations do.  She has three distinct heteromorphic traits—her skin, her eyes, her horns—as well as having a potentially extremely deadly quirk which, as I discussed above, could easily attract judgmental side-eye because of the cultural view of acid.  So why doesn’t she seem to face discrimination?

As I said in the post you’re replying to—and as you mentioned is a common headcanon—I think a lot of it boils down to her relentlessly chipper attitude.  If she had, for example, Mustard’s personality, or Muscular’s drive to violence, would people be quicker to say that her Acid is a “villain quirk”?  If she glared more, would people be more creeped out by her eyes?  It’s possible, I think, that we would actually see her facing some of this if we spent more time with her, but the narrative doesn’t make that time, at least not anywhere Kirishima can see it.

  

Well, if I had to guess, I’m sure you would say that would make her a more interesting character. You might get to be interested in her character, which then would probably mean you would be even more upset and disappointed with this chapter.

Ahaha, very fair.  Honestly, Class A would have benefited tremendously from more kids with bite to them.  A Mina whose competitiveness had some real fervor to it, or a Mina who had some heaviness in her backstory she was faking her way through dealing with, would have been a good contribution to that.

  

It really sucks that Horikoshi had to justify Shoji being the only one to experience prejudice by clarifying that heteromorph discrimination is only still prevalent in small villages. I feel like it robbed characters like Tsuyu, Mina, Tokoyami and Koda of being part of an actual narrative and get more depth and development.

Before I talk about this, let me clarify something: Shouji’s line about what his classmates know about heteromorphic discrimination is an example of very crucial nuance being wildly different between translations.

The fan scanlation suggested that Tokoyami and Koda, who grew up in cities, must feel like such violent heteromorphobia resembles something out of a textbook, with the implication that the textbook in question is a history book.  They’re presumed to think that blood-cleansing rituals and children with scars like Shouji are artifacts of a terrible past, not a modern-day concern.

The official Via release suggested that Tokoyami and Koda could know that stuff like this still happens in rural areas because they might have read about it in textbooks.  They’re presumed to know that such rituals and scarred children do exist as modern concerns, but only out in the boonies.

Those are completely different propositions!  Which one was accurate was far beyond my capability to judge, but the official translation did feel a little off to me, so, as I usually do in such situations, I brought it to my trusty Translator Sis.  For possibly the first time ever,[6] she told me that Viz had this one wrong—that Shouji’s implication, to her eye, was indeed that T&K would think such violence was limited to the past, not that it was limited to rural areas.

That established, I was actually talking about that line from Shouji with a friend the other day!  I was aggravated that the writing would portray city-born heteromorphs as so oblivious to the problems facing them in other parts of the country when that seems so counter to my (American) perception of the ways members of threatened groups communicate danger to one another.

My friend reminded me that silence is a much more common Japanese way of addressing (or attempting to address) minority discrimination: trying to make a problem go away by starving it of conversational oxygen, treating oppression like an infection that needs to be quarantined until it dies out on its own.  In that light, it’s entirely possible that Tokoyami and Koda might not know this stuff because no one around them thinks it would be helpful to tell them if it’s not a problem they’re directly dealing with.  A lot of people propose the same approach to burakumin issues in real life, for example.

Also, technically Shouji doesn’t say that Koda and Tokoyami don’t experience heteromorphobia at all, just that the idea of fear and hatred that extreme, that violent, must seem like something out of a textbook, rather than something that happens here and now in certain parts of the country.  Also too, Tokoyami and Koda are teenagers; I can forgive them not having much understanding of life outside their own circle of experience.

That all said, it still feels more than a little telling that Horikoshi thinks everyone in Shouji’s whole class, including and especially all the other heteromorphs, could never have heard in their entire lives about acts of bigotry-driven violence against heteromorphs being carried out in the here and now.

While it’s true that silence is a widely accepted way to address these sorts of issues in Japan, they’re hardly universal!  Activist groups are out there trying to raise awareness, trying to get their issues on the floor of the Diet in hopes of getting laws passed about them.  There’s not some kind of media blackout on talking about it, and, indeed, I’ve read any number of articles from Japanese publications online covering such topics.

In BNHA, however, silence does seem to be universal.[7]

No one but Shouji is from a remote enough place that they knew about violent heteromorphobia.  No one recognized it as a thing that e.g. disadvantages heteromorphic heroes in the public approval ratings.  No one tripped over a magazine article about it and got curious enough to look the topic up online.  No one’s heroic mentors or family members have talked to them about it (particularly egregious with Koda, given the fairly strong implication that his own mother suffered it).  No one had a patch of morbid interests (Tokoyami) that led them to dabble in reading about real-life horror stories of human hatred, or an interest in how their society came to be that might have led them to reading about the CRC and realizing it still exists in the modern day.

They attend a hero school, and yet Shouji seems to be the only one with an inkling that there are heteromorphs out there who need, and have been needing, heroes.

That’s all a lot to ask of the reader, but what really pushes it past plausibility to me is what happened with the Ordinary Woman.  How close to the surface must violent heteromorphobia be even in the cities if the current state of Japan brings it all right back into the open in a matter of weeks?  That none of the students other than Shouji have ever even imagined that heteromorphs can still be victimized in this way represents an over-the-top ignorance that I have to read as either a bleak condemnation of the shallow focuses of heroes or reflective of Horikoshi’s own beliefs about discrimination and the understanding of it possessed by those who aren’t immediately threatened by it.

Whichever is the case, and with Spinner’s higher brain functions out of commission, it leaves Shouji carrying the whole plot on his back and he just can’t do it, both because the audience hasn’t had enough time with him to buy it and because the answers the series uses him as a vehicle to deliver are facile, victim-blaming nonsense.

...And here’s where I admit that even if the hospital attack had climaxed with a whole bunch of heteromorphs from Class A and B and the Pro Hero ranks acknowledging the mob’s feelings while pleading with them to not give into hatred and to stand down, I would still have issues if the resolution didn’t involve concrete suggestions and promises about how the heroes would address the mob’s grievances going forward.  Which canon very much did not, and just adding more voices to Shouji’s wouldn’t have changed that.  But my whole rant about that can be found in the relevant chapter posts, so I’ll not repeat it further here.

  

How Would I Have Done It Instead?

Let’s be real here for a second. Even if Mina had been the one to stop Machia. How would she even do that? I remember back when people were talking about when Mina would get her moment to shine, and that it would involve Machia again, I had serious doubts about that idea ever becoming true because I couldn’t think of a single thing she could do against him. I thought for sure Mina’s moment was going to be relegated to fighting Midnight’s killer, since that seemed more within her capabilities. In the end her shinning moment did indeed involve Machia, and no one really had a confrontation with Midnight’s killer. I actually want to hear your thoughts, if you happen have a thing in mind that you think Mina could’ve done to be the one to stop Machia. I’d love to hear it.+ Btw, since you brought it up, in what way could she have defeated the Sludge villain that would’ve been witty, or skillful? If you don’t have any ideas you don’t need to answer. It’s not that important. I’m just curious of the posibility.

Okay, so, this is the part that hung me up for the longest, because there are a few wildly different possible answers here.

The real truth is, if I had been writing this whole shebang from the start, this confrontation would never have happened this way at all.  Just off the top of my head, I think there’s no compelling reason AFO couldn’t have sent Toga into the hospital to activate and retrieve Kurogiri weeks ago, and with Kurogiri back in play, getting Machia would obviously have gone differently.  I would also never have disposed of the MLA as comprehensively as Horikoshi did; I would have had at least one or two instances where an MLA member who didn’t get uncovered by the HPSC in time was in a position to shift the balance in the villains’ favor—maybe one would have been with the police somewhere.

Barring a top-to-bottom rewrite of the whole arc, however? Well, I'd still say that, feeling as strongly as I do about how morally dubious this whole second war has been, even if I were telling this scene with the same components, I probably wouldn’t be writing towards a hero success because I don’t think the heroes have earned it.  The baby steps the kids have taken towards Saving Villains don’t go far enough for me to want to see the villains defeated here.  The biggest changes there would have been twofold:

1) Shinsou’s voice changer play shouldn’t have worked on Machia.

Machia has a sense of smell so incredibly acute that, if I were trying to logically explain how it worked, I’d make it a psychic ability that just happened to manifest as scent-based.  We’re talking about a guy who could track down Shigaraki after a teleport of over 270 miles, who could smell AFO’s vestige stirring from almost fifty miles away.  There’s absolutely no reason he should think for even a second that AFO is standing right outside his prison.

Now, we do know replications of AFO’s voice has an effect on Machia—we saw as much as the beginning of MVA!  But I would contend that back then, he didn’t have a big loud response to the recording, just curled up around his radio and started loudly purring.  In the scene with Shinsou, he actually responds as though he thinks AFO is there, but again, I don’t buy that Machia should have fallen for that, especially since he was woken by Hose Face’s device emulating AFO’s voice, which would have given his unbelievably keen senses enough time to register that it’s only the voice, not the man, that he's hearing.

But, with Machia up and not immediately prey to Shinsou’s ploy, the other big change I’d make with him becomes apparent.  The series has proved willing and eager to shitcan everything Shigaraki gained in MVA, but not me.  Shigaraki won Machia’s loyalty at the end of MVA, and if Machia’s cranky with AFO for leaving him behind again,[8] that doesn’t mean he couldn’t still have loyalty to AFO’s successor.

Given that his loyalty to Shigs is predicated on his loyalty to AFO, it might seem logical that AFO squandering the latter would free Machia of obligation to the former.  That’s a fair take.  But if it were me, I’d capitalize on Machia’s keen senses and what he was present for in MVA—Shigaraki saying that his followers should do whatever they want.  Hell, if the endgame likes flashbacks so much, let’s have a flashback of Shigaraki and Machia actually talking in ways that would let Machia distinguish Shigaraki and AFO.

In other words, I think Machia’s loyalty should supersede his anger.  If he gets free, his first reaction should be to go to Shigaraki, not to focus on his anger.  That way, it’s not a hero win rewarding their gross sky coffin tactics, but AFO doesn’t get quite what he wanted out of it, either.  This would be one part of focusing the narrative back on Shigaraki and his allies, rather than ruining Shigaraki’s hard work by letting AFO take over and piss it all away.

Incidentally, I will concede that, just because Machia shouldn’t have responded like a dupe to Shinsou mimicking AFO’s voice, that doesn’t mean Machia might not have responded at all—he could have rebuked Shinsou for trying to emulate Master, and that would have worked for Shinsou’s purposes just as well!  So to avoid that, I would add one more element to a flashback showcasing Shigaraki and Machia’s relationship post-Deika: have Shigaraki showing Machia a picture of Shinsou and warning him to be on the lookout for this kid, and to not respond to anything he says.

Horikoshi loves to tie back plot beats to pre-established elements, and one such element is, as I footnoted earlier, that AFO and Shigaraki watched the U.A. Sports Festival together, so they should both know good and well who Shinsou is and what he can do.  Knowing Shinsou’s SF-era capabilities doesn’t predict the voice changer, of course, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, if the heroes are pushed to a point of desperation and they have access to a brainwasher, even a non-licensed one, they will try to use that brainwasher on whoever they think is their highest priority target.  Quite frankly, all of the higher-ups and key players should have known about Shinsou.

2) The kids shouldn’t have been tipped off that they were facing Midnight’s killer, or it should have come up in a different context.

Nothing interesting comes of the way the canon deploys it, thanks to Mina’s vengeful feelings having no grounding in the story, and the blunt way it’s brought up serves only to make Hose Face easy for the reader to write off.  As I said in the chapter post where he brought up “that U.A. teacher,” there’s no real reason for him to be focusing on Midnight specifically unless he has a personal reason to think she’s emblematic of the things about Hero Society he hates, or unless he was tuned in enough to U.A. personalities (knew who was teaching there, watched the Sports Festival to get a handle on its students, etc.) to realize that he was facing students he could potentially rattle by bringing up their teacher’s death.

The latter would offer a less awful read on Hose Face’s personality: He’s not bringing up the death out of pure sadism, but as a psychological tactic.  The former would give him some real characterization and motives while also giving the kids something to argue against, rather than the easiest possible reaction of, “Hay did u kno Might Makes Right iz bad?”

Alternatively, if Hose Face has nothing personal against Midnight at all, and doesn’t have an encyclopedic memory of hero wannabe high schoolers, he has no reason to specifically mention Midnight.  Even if the narrative must see her death “answered” in some fashion, it still doesn’t follow that the kids must get emotional closure for someone they lost to the undeclared war they were drafted into.  The audience can take some solace in perceived karma, but lacking a naturalistic way for Mina and the rest to connect those dots, the kids should just have to deal with him as they would any other opponent they come up against, because, surprise surprise, when you’re fighting in a war, you’re not guaranteed to see and know who’s on the opposite side of the gun that just shot down your best friend.

As another alternative, if we go with the idea that Mina was struggling with dark desires for revenge, maybe she should have brought it up!  Not as an accusation—again, she has no way of knowing she’s facing Midnight’s killer without him saying it—but just out of generalized fury with her opponents as a group, the same way Aizawa and Gran Torino hold the pain of their loved ones against Shigaraki when Shigaraki is not the one responsible for causing that pain.[9]  Maybe a more openly vengeful Mina could just freely state that her aim is to take down the PLF to avenge Midnight, only for the enemy in front of her to answer, “Midnight?  You mean that woman I killed in the woods on the day of Liberation?  Here’s your chance, then, girl.”  (Or whatever.)

Of course, Shonen Jump is not in the habit of validating heroes craving revenge, so Mina in that scenario would fail because rage would make her sloppy, same as with Deku, Iida, and so on.

So, in a scenario where Machia is up and not falling prey to Shinsou, but rather prioritizing getting to New Master Shigaraki, and the PLF is likewise loyal to Shigaraki and not AFO, I’d just let it work, because I’d be slanting this whole combat towards an overall heroic loss.  Give Mina a face to obsess over until next time but also let Kirishima get a good eyeful of it so he at least knows there’s a serious problem with his best friend and one of his hero inspirations.

Mineta would have a chance to weigh in, too, as he's a good middle ground: he's got his own anger about Midnight, who he adored, but he's also worried about how that anger looks on Mina. Mineta always worries about his classmates, but he's shared a pretty fair amount of incidental screentime with Mina specifically over the course of the series, ranging from her sweetly offering to put a harem moment into the band performance just for him to stuff like the Clockwork Orange gag, as well as more serious stuff like Mineta being the first one to ask aloud if Midnight's dead, with Mina warmly, and with a confidence it turns out she doesn't truly feel, reassuring him that Midnight's fine.

(I've said before that Mineta should have had more to do in the confrontation with Midnight's killer, but that's not just about his fondness for her. It's also about him being the first to question if the heroes didn't just make the whole situation worse, and, if Mina really took Midnight's death so hard it had her thinking about revenge, it should also have been about Mina and Mineta's shared experience surrounding that death.)

That all said, I suspect that what you really meant is, how would I have handled this scene if I had to use all the same pieces and be writing towards a heroic victory?  So let me at least touch on that.

As far as Hose Face goes, I actually think Kirishima might have been better suited to talking to him?  Like, Mina’s been friendly with people, sure, but I don’t really buy her most pivotal, “shining moment” scene being a bunch of talk about the strength of the weak coming together.  As best I recall—though do correct me if I’m wrong—it's never been shown that Mina regularly struggles with feelings of weakness or inadequacy.  It would be perfectly natural for her to do so after flubbing against Gigantomachia, to be sure, but the series doesn’t make the time to show it, so her lines about forming packs with others does not feel like a natural evolution for her arc.

Likewise, while she’s obviously been depicted as friendly and sociable from the beginning, her lines in 383 suggest that her sociableness has, and always has had, an ulterior motive: covering for her perceived weakness.  The lack of focus on her relationships from her own perspective makes that impossible to verify or even predict, so it just feels like it comes out of thin air, grabbed almost at random by the author in his attempt to find something, anything, Mina could say that would give Hose Face even a moment's pause.

Kirishima, on the other hand, has had a focus on his relationships, places where they’ve been pivotal to his own arc and the greater plot.  (I’m sure I don’t need to harp on this to you, rvg, but I’ll go over it to lay out my perception of these things.)  His relationship with Mina—the ways he’s trying to live up to her example, as well as his desire to support her when she falters—is a profound motivator for him, something we see much more explicitly and from his own perspective than we do Mina's feelings about him.  Meanwhile, while his relationship with Bakugou isn’t given that level of psychological exploration, it’s a critical factor in Bakugou’s rescue at Kamino, and we also get that bit of Bakugou specifically giving Kirishima some advice that leads to the latter’s Unbreakable mode.[10]

So like, we do get an angle on Kirishima and his sense of his own relationships with others.  That awareness allows him to demonstrate what is, I believe, the first unabashed moment of empathy for villains that a hero demonstrates in the entire series!  Specifically, I’m talking about that low-level gang mook he comes up against during his internship with Fat Gum.  That guy does a bunch of yelling about things that speak to Kirishima—fears of weakness, desire to be stronger, a need to help his “bros”—and Kirishima tries multiple times, even after being attacked, to express his understanding and sympathy for the man.

That being the case, if anyone were going to be able to make an impression on Hose Face via appealing to his sense of camaraderie and desire for strength, it seems to me that Kirishima has the better groundwork in place to sell the moment, regardless of whether he could successfully “reach” Hose Face in the way that’s being attempted with Shigaraki/Toga/Dabi.

As to the Sludge Villain, I’d probably either not have him there at all, given how much he claims he just wants to pretend to fight for a minute before getting the hell out of there.  He very much seems like he didn’t want to be here to begin with, so I can only assume that, despite AFO claiming the jailbreakers didn’t need to do anything for him but rampage, he very much did summon a bunch of them back anyway[11] for his final dramatic attack on Deku and Hero Society.

Assuming we’re stuck dealing with him, I’d probably let the Class B kids do it.   Have Mount Lady—who was there for the Sludge Villain’s rampage using Bakugou, and therefore knows what Sludgey looks like and that he can possess people—yell for people to stay away from him.  Let there be a moment of panic and confusion, where it looks for a moment like a repeat of the mess in Chapter 1 where no one had the exact right answer to deal with him, so no one’s willing to step up.

Then, in a 1-2-3 combo move that reminds everyone why Class B is said to have advanced more quickly than Class A, and just as Sludgey lunges for someone, have Yamagi use Poltergeist to manipulate him into a steel drum barrel being held by Yui, let her shrink it down to a good tight fit before dropping it, then have Juuzo soften the ground to half-sink it, top down, then resolidify the earth, trapping Sludgey for later removal.  Ta da, a neat demonstration of the next generation outperforming the old generation when it comes to on-the-fly teamwork and decisive action even when no one individual has the perfect quirk for solving a problem.

…This, of course, is assuming there’s no good way to actually get the Sludge Villain to talk in more depth about why he didn’t want to be here from the beginning and had to be threatened into doing it at all.  It would be nice if someone could broach that topic!  Maybe a quick not-too-serious handful of lines from Mineta, who has his own history of running in terror from fights he doesn’t think he can win.  But even with some sympathy, I imagine Sludge Villain would try to run away regardless, on the (well-grounded) suspicion that heroes are going to want him to go back to prison and finish his sentence, and that’s when B-tachi could step in.

So that just leaves Machia, Mina, and Shinsou.  And honestly, rather than having to power through it, I’d rather see Mina, in particular, talk her way out of it.  This draws on two things.  First, there’s the fact that she’s one of the kids who failed her Final Exams, with her and Kaminari being unable to figure out how to utilize their strengths to get out of Nedzu’s rat maze.   I’d love to see her demonstrate that she’s grown from having no plans but to brute force her way through obstacles!  Second, there’s this sequence:

This is a bit exaggerated, obviously, but the quick demonstration of how quickly and smoothly Mina is able to approach, scold, bond with, then deescalate people in tense situations is rightly portrayed as remarkable.  But where is that facility in real confrontations with villains?  Nowhere, really, save that airless stab at remarking on common ground with Hose Face and the PLF.

I obviously don’t expect her and Machia to wind up breakdancing together when the stakes are as high as they are, but Mina would have at least a bit of an opening—her encounter with Machia in middle school wherein she lied to him about where the Springer Agency is.  I don’t for a moment think that Machia’s forgotten her smell—I doubt he forgets anyone’s, though he may or may not care about them otherwise.

For this version of the scene, I’d probably play Machia as more ambivalent—tired of being abandoned over and over again by the people he’s tried so hard to be loyal for, so not immediately inclined to run off after them, open to a bit more dialogue.  He doesn’t fall for Shinsou for the same reasons I outlined above, so Shinsou and Mina have to talk Machia into acting—or at least stop him from just rumbling off to bury himself under a mountain for the next decade or two.

I don’t know how they’d go about making that argument.  Honestly, I don’t really think there’s anything in the story for Mina or Shinsou to fall back on (by which I mean earlier panels Horikoshi’s assistants can look up and copy/paste into the storyboard to accent a dramatic speech).  Maybe they could ask him why he’s so loyal to All For One and find some commonality, either through heteromorph discrimination or bias against villains.

Maybe Machia is torn on his loyalty, betrayed by AFO one too many times to want to help him but not sure where that leaves him on supporting Shigaraki.  Hearing this, Mina brings up that AFO is threatening Shigaraki right now, but also that a friend of Mina’s is trying to stop AFO/help Shigaraki,[12] so maybe Machia could help them with that and then decide?  Machia doesn’t trust her due to the Springer Agency thing, but that same experience does lead him to believe her when she says she just wants to help people, not hurt them.

That last bit has the benefit of providing an explicit reason for why Mina uses her quirk nigh-exclusively as a watery defense barrier or to take out inanimate objects: She long ago made an active choice not to use her acid against sentient people.  This would give her some room for a little motivation-establishing flashback of her own—maybe canonize that theory about her chipperness being at least in part a front!—and provide a nice alternative to the current state of Mina’s narrative, which has spent nearly 400 chapters refusing to allow her the same free hand people like Bakugou and Kaminari take with their quirks for no established reason.

This doesn’t give Shinsou much to do, but that’s okay: his moment comes against AFO instead.

I realize that Mina's fans want her to have a big badass moment, and simply talking down a confrontation is not the kind of thing that tends to get viewed as "badass" in a shounen battle manga. Sorry about that. She can still jump around and dodge a lot while giving her pitch? Maybe she could get a big badass moment later on? I dunno; that's just what I would do, and obviously my priorities for what it would be cool for the kids to do are not the same as the broader readership's.

I'm also not sure where that leaves the confrontation with Midnight's killer; I suppose that depends on how things go between him and Kirishima in this scenario. Maybe they leave without him when he tries to protest Machia accepting the temporary alliance, or maybe he's soldier enough to take the help where he can get it and worry about later conflict later. Obviously, at any rate, this is happening in a scenario where he hasn't immediately blabbed that he killed Midnight; that can come up as a nasty surprise later on.

  

But does that mean you think Midnight’s killer should totally get away with it scott free and suffer no consequences?

Hnnnngghh that’s a tricky one because I am an unabashed MLA stan and villain supporter and therefore deeply biased about this.  Like, I don’t think soldiers should be put on trial for killing enemy soldiers, no, even high-ranking officer-types.  Obviously it’s different if they attack civilians or are otherwise breaking the codes surrounding conduct during warfare, but I do think Hose Face killing Midnight was basically a soldier killing someone he perceived as another soldier, with no undue cruelty or misconduct.

However, obviously the series itself—and the state authority the PLF is openly trying to tear down in-universe—would disagree with me!  In that context, I can’t even really call the guy “a high-ranking officer” because that would, as mentioned earlier, convey more authenticity to his position than his government wants to grant him.  As far as they’re concerned, he’s probably more like “a key figure in the recent anti-government actions carried out by the terrorist group calling themselves The Paranormal Liberation Front.”  People like that tend to get executed in prison a few years after their short, perfunctory trials.

I suppose the problem for me is that the series wants me to believe that the MLA is Very Bad and they all deserve to be Locked Up Forever, whereas I want more nuance from them than that?  Even setting aside the probable cult upbringing, I have significant trouble unabashedly blaming the PLF for their actions because the series has done nothing to convince me that less drastic avenues for change are available or even survivable for them.

This was a huge issue with the hospital attack sequence, but it applies to all sorts of the setting’s problems: Other than, “Insist that victims of oppression should focus on providing a good example to future generations,” what methods for addressing inequality does Hero Society have?  I want to know what the villains should have done, what they could have done, about systemic inequalities and repression that would have been effective against a government that employs agents like Lady Nagant and Hawks.

The picture Nagant paints is of a society waging a war against anyone who sought to change the Hero System, a war that many people who sought change never even knew they were already in.  The examples she provides of her targets are, of course, corrupt heroes and would-be terrorists, but what her HPSC President said was even farther reaching: that the purpose of her killing was to “preserve hope and faith” in heroes.

The HPSC legitimately does not seem to believe that any system other than the current one is feasible for maintaining stability, and that any attempt to shake or besmirch that system is no different than throwing the country back into the chaos of the advent of quirks.  What’s a few missing activists or tragic accidents compared to that?

Horikoshi seems desperate to have us pretend he never told us that the government his protagonists are defending actively grooms assassins to enforce the status quo, but that’s not a genie he can put back in the bottle.  I see the current events of the series as, in some form or another, basically inevitable because of Hero Society’s active, even violent resistance to change.  Midnight’s death for that cause is thus something I have tremendous difficulty thinking of as a crime that needs to be punished.

Does that mean I think Hose Face should get off scot-free?  Eeehhhhhhhhnnnngh I hate to say it this plainly, but…

Maybe it does?

The thing is, I know that Hose Face is, canonically, a quirk supremacist trying to violently overthrow the rule of law.  In real life, I have no sympathy for people trying to institute fascism, regardless of whether they’re using legal mechanisms or armed force.  But in the fictional world of BNHA, I have nothing but disdain for the way the MLA has been turned into a caricature of themselves in this final arc.  In that sense, my dissatisfaction with Hose Face’s treatment is really based on the ideal version of him and all the rest of the MLA I have in my head—the MLA that’s allowed to have nuance behind their extremism, the one overflowing with members motivated by their lived experience with the flaws in Hero Society, with a generous helping of radicalization from the fact that they’re a cult as much as they are an army.

BNHA has scrapped all that potential and left us with nothing but naked quirk supremacy to fill the void.  In an endgame that’s trying so, so hard to sell the readers on Saving Villains, that’s just poison to the story’s themes, and my villain stanning comes directly from that issue: demanding consistent treatment for the characters whose tragic backstories we haven’t been permitted to see.

Hose Face is clearly a bad person—heck, I was headcanoning him as a hard-edged, ruthless killer even when all we had to go on was him killing Midnight, long before he showed up to espouse open quirk supremacy and gloat about killing a schoolteacher, so it’s not like I ever thought he was a super nice dude or anything!  But I guess I just have trouble with the idea that the current system deserves to be the one to decide his fate, when it has, to all appearances, gone to extreme lengths to stamp out any perceived threats to itself, to the point that the narrative itself is now openly delegitimizing everyone who might otherwise offer cogent critique.

It would be different if we had never seen the dark side of the status quo and the villains really were all just shallow, two-dimensional monsters.  It would be different if the narrative had shown us legal, nonviolent and effective avenues for protest and change.[13]  It would be different if Hose Face had killed some rando uninvolved civilian.

As it is, though, Midnight was a combatant for a terrible, terrible status quo.  She might not have been using lethal means herself, but she was defending a demonstrably lethal, openly acknowledged as repressive, system.  I just can’t find it in myself to demand justice for the fact that she died for it.

But with all that being said, I also don’t think Midnight is a bad person.  She never knew about the government assassins, after all; she’s a member of the system she grew up in, the same way the kids are.  She presumably never saw the extent of the system’s flaws because she was never victimized by them.  At the end of the day, she still deserved to be properly mourned and remembered and it is a crock and a crime that we never got to see her funeral.

If anything, I think Midnight’s funeral would have been an excellent setting for a scene where the protagonists start asking questions about how things came to this, what went wrong and where, that their teacher had to die.  What is it about Hero Society that’s led to tens of thousands of dissidents, and why haven’t they ever heard of this discontent before now That would have given us considerably better set-up for a nuanced PLF, an opening to talk about Shouji’s experience of heteromorphobia, foreshadowing for Lady Nagant, and, to bring this back on-topic, the opportunity to really show Mina struggling with everything that happened as set-up for her later confrontation with Midnight’s killer.

  

Tumblr, How Does That Work?

Honestly I was expecting some sort of notification about your answers if and when you replied to me. Is that not a thing?

Making my reply a fresh post, or just posting replies in the comments section of the post you originally commented on, would not have notified you without me specifically tagging you, which at the time Tumblr wasn’t letting me do.  This problem seems to have cleared up, so you should have gotten a notification about this post going up because of your name being tagged at the very beginning!

What you see for people answering asks depends on a few things. If you send asks anonymously, you won't get a notification if/when the person answers them; you'll just have to keep an eye on their blog. If you send them with your name attached, as you did originally for me, I could choose to answer those asks privately, sending my replies back to your Inbox, or answer publically, posting my replies to my blog. Either way, you'd be notified!

For this round of responses, if I'd just replied to your reblog in comments as you did with my original post, or reblogged your reply with a reply of own instead of staring a new post, you’d have gotten notifications about either!  But I don’t want to put this much wall ‘o text on my followers’ dashboards without a cut, so I haven’t been responding directly, for which I apologize.

(Disclaimer: Notifications can be configured in your Settings menu; you can toggle them on and off for loads of stuff! You might wish to check what you currently have them set for rather than just taking my word for it.)

On the topic of cuts, I mentioned at the beginning that the cut option is hard to find on mobile, but just for reference, it looks like this in the post editor on desktop:

It's the same icon on the mobile post editor, it's just on the far right of the bar of icons along the bottom of the app. My screen cuts it off, so I have to scroll the bar over to find it.

Like I said, the Expand dropdown button Tumblr instituted a little while back has reduced the need for this somewhat, and you can certainly do whatever you prefer, but as I believe having the Expand dropdown automatically clip long posts is still an optional configuration in Settings, I'd feel better about reblogging from you directly if you put the bulk of your reply under a cut.

  

Don’t know what “blorbo” means. Kinda sounds like a demeaning term, but I’m going to assume it’s not.

Sorry, it’s not intended to be demeaning!  It’s just a slangy affectionate term for “character you really like.”  In my experience, I’d say it also has a connotation of protectiveness or self-identification, though I can’t speak for the whole of the internet.  I like plenty of characters, but I wouldn’t call them all my blorbos, just the ones that I really and truly love and want to explore/share/defend their honor to the death.

  

Thanks...? Is, is that a compliment?

(Re: my telling rvg that we seemed to have similar issues with the way Mina was being handled, but they were more willing to do the mental legwork on her than me.)

It’s mostly just an observation, but not a critical one!  As someone who’s very ready to read into the canon every little drip of information the canon will give me And So Much More, I have a tremendous amount of fellow-feeling for people of like minds, even if our taste in characters is different.

    

Buried At The Bottom, Why Kaminari Is A Worse Character Than Mineta, Yes I Said It And I’ll Say It Again

>>I have observably positive feelings for about a third of Class 1-A and only particularly negative feelings about Deku and Kaminari. What’s up with Kaminari?

My irritation with Kaminari boils down to two main things—and forgive me, I know you didn’t ask about Mineta, but Mineta’s pretty important to my feelings on Kaminari being what they are, so he’s a part of this answer.  This is all going to be pretty openly dismissive of Kaminari, as a fair warning, on top of being based on not-exactly-rigorous familiarity with the student material, so apologies to anyone who likes him and finds him an enriching, valuable character. But man alive, that is not me.  And but so:

1) Kaminari is a watered-down Mineta, with watered-down versions of all of Mineta’s flaws, but because he’s watered down, the growth he experiences stands out less than Mineta’s.  More on this in a second.

2) Despite Kaminari being a redundant character who brings virtually nothing to the table that other characters don’t do better—with the only things that are unique to him going underdeveloped in canon—fandom loves Kaminari.  (Disclaimer: I obviously don’t spend much time in the hero-fan circles of the fandom, so this is just my perception.  I’d be curious to get your perspective of Kaminari’s relative popularity, rvg!)

To hit the second point first, Kaminari has a more conventionally attractive cute anime boy face than Mineta, so Kaminari’s pushing of his female classmates’ boundaries gets mostly ignored, while Mineta gets so many fics written about him dying that there’s a dedicated Dead Mineta Minoru tag on AO3 with almost 350 hits. 

Fandom built a whole tottering edifice of fanon about Traitor Kaminari despite the howling absence of compelling evidence in the manga[14] for, so far as I can tell, the sole reason that people wanted the cute anime boy to have crunchy angst.  Then, when the actual traitor reveals landed (first the fake-out and then the real one), fandom deemed Hagakure an ungrateful bitch and Aoyama a whining coward.

So like, the fandom discrepancy is what pushes me over the edge from the bottom end of neutral into active dislike.  But I would be awfully close to it anyway for the whole “redundant-ass character who contributes nothing to this story we couldn’t get better from someone else” thing.

Kaminari being kind of leery and unpleasant about his female classmates would be a lot more glaring if it weren’t stacked up against Mineta’s actual sexual harassment, even though Kaminari is a frequent co-conspirator!   

Kaminari has a brief tussle with fear at the beginning of the war arc, but it’s neither as sustained nor as convincing as Mineta’s frequent wrestling with cowardice, present from USJ all the way up through his terrified confrontation with All For One.   

Mineta is frequently, openly envious of his classmates, a whole extra flaw that Kaminari never demonstrates in more than fleeting glimpses.   

Kaminari’s quirk is redundant next to the other high offense types in the class.   

Kaminari’s personality is not distinct enough to add anything irreplaceable to the classroom dynamic.  That’s not to say he brings nothing to the web of relationships amongst the students or the ways the class as a whole reacts to the events of the series, just that what comes to mind for me is mostly extra layering to existing dynamics, not anything truly original and unique to him.  Which would be fine—I love extra layers!—if he were contributing more as a character on literally any other fronts.

I can think of only two things that Kaminari uniquely brings to the table, but both of them are mentioned once and then never come up again.  Firstly, he’s the only one in the class to voice open admiration for Stain, a willingness to admire cool traits in Villains that never leads him to any interesting conflicts with people (classmates or otherwise) who hew to the more standard flat refusal to consider that a Villain might have or express positive aspects.

The other thing is less about Kaminari himself and more about how he’s one of three places where the story brings up the idea of people using their quirks for non-hero jobs and then refuses to develop that premise.[15]  It’s interesting worldbuilding, but as far as I’m aware, it’s never directly shown—everyone we see using their quirks (legally) in the series is doing it as a hero.  We never get much sense of what other options there are for quirk use because heroism and villainy are the only contexts we ever see it in!  This would be a little annoying on its own, but I also find it undermines a lot of other established facts and characterizations.

(Bear with me and I promise I’ll loop this back around to Kaminari.)

My interests being where they are, the biggest problem for me with the fuzziness about the legality of quirk use is that it leaves Destro and the MLA with no coherent cause.  They want free quirk use, but are they really so incredibly averse to just getting a license that they’re willing to become terrorists over it??

You could argue that naked quirk supremacy is what the MLA is currently after, and that’s obviously incompatible with the laws as they stand, but Destro Classic is never really framed as a quirk supremacist, so why did he so virulently despise the quirk use prohibitions if all they really did was require people to get a license to use quirks in public, no different than a driver’s license or a permit to serve alcohol?  Sure, you get small clutches of people sometimes with that kind of “any government oversight is bad government oversight” black-and-white thinking, but the original MLA was a powerful enough force to stand against the government for years, which doesn’t exactly scream “a handful of malcontents” to me.

Rendering the MLA’s cause mindbogglingly asinine is my biggest problem with the “other jobs can get quirk-use licenses too” tidbit, but there are also things like how totally invisible the entertainment or sports industry is.  That would make perfect sense if quirk use is illegal in those fields—people want to see cool superpowers getting used, so industries that bank on public attention dollars but can’t have their celebrities use their quirks are going to decline when they can’t compete with industries/celebrities that can.

If quirk licenses can be gotten for all sorts of jobs, though, then why have sports and entertainment become so invisible?  If “frivolous” fields like those are not aren’t seen as “contributing to society” enough for quirk use permits, then which fields do?  Why does HeroAca!Japan still mostly look and behave like IRL!Japan if quirks are in use in “all manner” of industries?  And if it isn’t the case that heroism—a dangerous job which sometimes gets people killed and which generally requires cultivating a socially demanding public brand/identity—is the only path to being able to use the special power you were born with to earn a livelihood, why does every single middle-schooler in Deku’s class and countless other classes across the country want to become a hero?

I just feel like the way the world looks and operates, the kinds of repressiveness described by even the heroes, the structures that drive people into heroism and villainy alike—the former because they don’t see any other viable way to achieve the happiness they’re looking for, the latter because they can’t become heroes but still have desires that their quirks could help them achieve—all of that makes much more sense in a world that has super powers but has tightly restricted their use to a single job class of person.

So, tying back, obviously that’s not a fault of Kaminari’s, but he is the character where that gap is most apparent.  If there aren’t many lightning heroes because lightning is in high demand in other industries, it would shed significant light on who Kaminari is as a person if the manga would tell us what those other industries are. 

What other paths could Kaminari have chosen?  What’s so much better about those other industries that people with quirks tailor-made for heroism,[16] in a society that worships popular and powerful heroes, are so willing to choose those other industries instead?  Why did Kaminari not make that same decision?  What does heroism mean to him personally that he chose it when so many others in his situation did not?

Kaminari could present a huge in on that angle of the worldbuilding, but instead he’s a complete dead-end.  Mineta’s motivations are base as hell, but at least we know what they are!  Further, it tells us interesting (uncomplimentary, but interesting!) things that people like Recovery Girl and Deku hear said motivations from Mineta’s own mouth, and shrug and accept them as perfectly valid.

And that’s just his professed motivations!  His final exam scene actually drops an early hint about the admiration for Deku he’ll later wholeheartedly declare in the 1-A vs Deku fight!  I don’t remember Kaminari ever getting anything a fraction so revealing; he just coasts through the story contributing nothing unique or meaningful.  He’s hardly the only 1-A character with that particular lack of depth—Sato, Sero, Hagakure and Ojiro are all similar blank slates in terms of their motivations or histories—but then, none of them are a fraction as popular as Kaminari is in the fandom as I experience it, either.

So to sum up, I dislike Kaminari because he’s a wishy-washy nothing of a character, a generically Inoffensive Anime Cutie Boy adored out of all reasonable proportion compared to more compelling and equally underdeveloped classmates alike.  Mineta is, by any measure, more problematic, and it's even worse that U.A./Aizawa are so blasé about him, but, at least from where I’m standing, he’s still more layered, more compelling, more dynamic, and speaks in more interesting ways to the world around him than Kaminari ever comes close to matching.

(…Kaminari’s thing with Jirou is fine.  Perfectly reasonable character relationship building material.  I just don’t count it one way or the other because it’s a self-contained relationship dynamic that has no bearing on the way either character engages with the broader world/system the series’ overarching narrative is challenging.  They motivate each other in small ways, but that motivation doesn’t lead them to truly grow or change as people, only to overcome modest internal confidence hurdles blocking them from things they already wanted to do anyway.)

--

And that's it! Thanks for forging through, good lord, over twenty pages of this, rvg and anyone else who did! I hope you were at least moderately entertained, give or take my blatant Kaminari slander. See you next time, and enjoy the Footnotes.

---------------- FOOTNOTES ----------------

[1] We’re not shown any personnel or drugs or anything, but I assume they’ve been keeping Machia drugged since Jakku, same as Kurogiri in between interviews.  It’s the only thing that worked on Machia before, so why wouldn’t they have more on-hand?

[2] Despite watching the Sports Festival with Shigaraki, natch.

[3] I would like it if he would do that with a lot less insufferable power scaling bullshit, you understand, but I’m spotting the comic its plot arc here.

[4] Outside of, say, the Persona games, where the MCs can change ability sets by swapping out what companion spirit they’re packing, but even that doesn’t make them specialized for status effects, merely capable of using them.

[5] Interestingly, while Bakugou fought off the villainous sales pitch with as much verve as he brings to all his fights, if he had fallen off the righteous path there, we might have observed that his pridefulness was explicitly fostered by the people around him giving him excessive praise for his powerful quirk and ignoring his resulting violent arrogance.  That is to say, Bakugou would have fallen under the same, “Villains are created by the failures in their society,” pattern that BNHA applies to all of its sympathetic villains.

[6] There was one other instance, but iirc it was an error in the translation C.Cook had done for the BNHA databook.  It would not surprise me that he was being less careful or was more pressed for time when translating the reams upon reams of text in one of those.

[7] At least until the fifteen-thousand-strong mob shows up.

[8] Which frankly should be all he’s sore about.  As others have pointed out, Machia’s anger about being abandoned is kind of incoherent.  Yes, AFO left him on the battlefield, but he didn’t exactly leave him to rot in prison forever.  The moment AFO made his big push, he sent people to spring Machia, so in what sense exactly does Machia think AFO abandoned him?  If it was just the last straw after a string of abandonments from both AFO and Shigaraki, the manga could have stood to make that much clearer.

[9] AFO and Ujiko created Kurogiri out of Shirakumo—as a babysitter for Tomura, yes, but Tomura didn’t choose that.  And as to Shigaraki’s very existence trampling on Nana’s memory and causing All Might pain, well, Shigaraki didn’t ask to be brought into the world, abused by his father, neglected by his family, and then raised by a supervillain, did he?

[10] And speaking of Unbreakable, compare how explicitly we’re shown Kirishima’s growth and the foundations of it with how the inspirations for Mina’s attacks are relegated to passing mentions, not direct depictions.  She just casually tells Kirishima that his Unbreakable inspired her Acidman, and likewise only internally reflects on asking Bakugou and Todoroki to teach her their training method, which let her develop her Max Power Acidman Alma move, without so much as a single scrubbed in doodle depicting said training assistance.

[11] Somehow.  The story is unclear on whether he disseminated threats, contacted them directly, or just used the combination of Search+Warping to drag them all back into his presence, and that last option in particular runs into complications given the limitations of both quirks.

[12] In this AU, we would have gotten to see the class have an actual discussion about Saving Villains, prompted by the way the reveal about Aoyama solidified Deku, Shouto and Uraraka’s desires to help their respective villain foils.  The class would carry that resolve forward not only for those three villains alone, but also Shouji for Spinner, Kirishima when talking to Hose Face, Mina, here, with Gigantomachia, etc.

[13] None of the things I can think of that might be considered evidence of protest meet all the criteria.  The original MLA became violent, Harima Oji was a lawbreaker and also ineffective in the long term, the small group that yells at Endeavor and the rest in Chapter 311 is not portrayed as linked to any broader efforts to unseat “fake heroes,” and the group that “condemned” the newscaster Miyagi Daikaku was ineffective and didn’t even seem to rise to the level of open protest.

[14] "His grades are poor but he namedrops a Hemingway novel! He must be concealing the fact that he's actually super-smart!" "He's doing a Liberation salute! He must be the traitor, even though the Liberation salute uses the other hand, and Kaminari has been using finger-gun gestures to fire off his lightning attacks since at least the License Exam if not earlier, and the League had no connection to the MLA at the time when the traitor was most active!"

[15] A blurb about Kaminari in, iirc, one of the volume extras, Suneater’s flashback to a teacher telling his class that they can “make fine use of their quirks at any number of jobs,” and Uraraka’s early mention that she’d considered “getting permission” to use her quirk to help with her parents’ construction business.

[16] See the previous discussion about the kinds of quirks that are popularly accepted as “good hero quirks.”

[child-of-the-cataclysm]

Chapter Eighteen: Through Gerevor's Eyes

I couldn’t stand for it. As much as Khem’s little double-cross had hurt, and as much as the ongoing war dragged on us all, what we had done to Metka had been… Disgusting. She had left our effort and joined Khem’s, sure, but… She had been one of us. Nileas- no. Emperor Morati. Right. The ‘Emperor’s’ obsession with his ambition had warped him. Warped us, too. 

Just a few months ago, the idea of torturing someone who had been our friend - still was our friend, deep down - like we had Metka would have been inconceivable. Now, with the war pulling us all down into the depths of ourselves, somehow it had almost felt like the right thing to do, simply because she was working with our ‘enemy.’ 

For me, though, as soon as I’d thought about it for even a moment, I argued against it. The idea of it alone… Every day it felt as if we’d become more and more truly this… ‘Bloody Hand’ that Morati had branded us. And every time he ignored my advice and went forward with his sickening strategies anyways, I began to understand more and more why Riota had left - and why Metka had followed her. 

At first, it had been baffling. Khem had betrayed us, thrown our troops - and Riota herself - from the Cliffs, prevented our best chance at an assault on the capital by thwarting a plan which had required us to recruit an enemy to attempt. How could they join her? Slowly, though, it began to sink in. For all that Nileas had been the man to bring us together, for all his charisma, for all that I would once have trusted him with my life, each little act of cruelty, each declaration, and each new horror wrought on the battlefield told me why they had left. 

War was a strange thing. All of us had been willing to join in the assault on the capital, even knowing the casualties it would wreak, when considering it in the moment. We thought our friend was being held within, perhaps tortured, likely with her life threatened. What were the lives of a few strangers compared to getting her to safety and cutting ourselves a foothold to take the stronghold of the enemy? Even Riota, who would have been responsible for the worst of the initial damage, hadn’t really thought too much of it. 

As time went on, though, it began to seem more and more obvious that the plan we had operated on had been… Wrong. Riota in particular began to grow dour about it, especially when Morati brought it up again, saying that he had found a way to bypass the new securities the Crown had put in place to prevent it. And then, finally, she had left, with Metka following after her. 

Strangely, even as I had come to understand them, and even agree, I stayed with Morati - or more precisely, Lek - for the same reason Metka had left. Loyalty and love.

I tried to keep a smile on my face, a joke on my lips, all the cheer and frivolity that would be expected from me. It was hard. Harder still when some of the worst of the Crown defected to our movement and Morati accepted them with minimal consideration. Even Leamin had joined his Bloody Hand, apparently driven by some hatred that the Crown’s ruler refused to let him pursue. 

It was strange to think about. A few months ago, Leamin and Ponitri both had been wanted names. Thinking of how Lek and I had played with captured nobles in the back of a cart, seeking their locations so that we could seek our vengeance on them for the damage they had done to our number… It seemed splintering bizarre that now those they had hurt had left us, and they had joined our number instead. 

Lek. It almost felt like that time back in the cart had been the last time I had laughed with him - not so much laughter on his end, but that tiny, almost invisible smile that he thought I couldn’t pick out was just as good, for me. These days, it seemed as if his humour was even more absent than usual; mine wasn’t much better, honestly. 

I tried, where I could. Little jokes, quips at the expense of those we fought… At least when they hadn’t been our friends just a few months prior. Ribbing and nudges around the dinner fires, exaggerated stories of better times… But they came slower, and fewer people smiled. Part of it was the war itself. Things dragged on, and all of us had lost much. 

Almost worse than that was the company itself. Apart from Lek, the good humoured soldiers inspired by our glorious leader and our old friends had steadily given way to evil-natured rogues, closer in nature to old Titus than anyone I would have wanted as a friend. Even if none of us had suffered losses, the air itself was suffused with the ill humour of our new band, and few seemed willing to laugh. 

Of course, after we had taken Ketwin and Morati had named it the temporary capital of his Kadien Empire (a name I was torn on - while his brother was a man I remembered fondly from back in the day, it seemed as if Morati did so less out of genuine desire to memorialise and more out of obligation), there had been a few townsfolk around with the good nature that made performing worthwhile. Those few good folk were quickly squashed down by Morati’s Bloody Hand. 

Relatively few of them actually died, rea- wait. No. I wouldn’t make excuses here. I couldn’t. I was done doing that. Several of our number, soldiers whose allegiance I shared, had in fact directly caused the deaths of some of the civilians supposedly under our watch. They had burned down the home of the head of Ketwin’s trade market after she had voiced a complaint about the taxes Morati’s Empire had levied. She and several members of her family - including a child - had died. 

Even those who hadn’t been killed had been tamped down rapidly. The soldiers of the Bloody Hand had, after the Battle of Ketwin, looted many of their homes, and in some cases done… worse things. Even if we hadn’t stepped in, claimed the town, and begun taking taxes from them ourselves, having the soldiers who had done that around would have been tough on their spirits. 

So I did what I could, hosting small banquets whenever I had the supplies and singing in the tavern to try to keep spirits up. It helped for a little bit, but before too long I found myself alone at the banquets and unwanted at the tavern. No amount of joviality and good spirits could change the fact that I was a part of the group creating their misery, it seemed. 

In truth, by now I wanted to leave quite badly myself. I don’t know if I would have joined Khem’s Silver Hand - as much as I wanted to see my old friends again, to be with them again after it all, I mostly wanted this whole war to be over. Despite how much I wanted to leave, though… I couldn’t leave without Lek. 

Unfortunately, his loyalty had been with Morati since the beginning. He certainly loved me in return, at least in the fashion that he experienced the emotion, but he didn’t seem to be able to fathom not following Nileas, even now that he had embraced the mantle of Emperor Morati. It made me wonder what exactly Nileas had done to win Lek over. 

You would think I would know that, as a founding member of the old Hand myself, but Lek had sort of come from nowhere. Nileas had been at market in Chester, selling off some of our ill-gotten gains to a contact he had there, and when he returned, Lek was with him. 

It had been strange, seeing a wyldling for the first time all those years ago. They were ever-so-slightly shorter than us, with thick hair across most of their bodies. Small retractable claws and pronounced canines completed the appearance that made many within the Crownlands think of them as beasts, even if they had never heard the Crown propaganda machine spinning tales about the wyldlands and their bestial ways. 

Of course, Lek was very much not a beast - nor were his people. From the few times he spoke of his home, it seemed as if the wyldlands might actually play home to a civilization well beyond our own. The truth of things rarely played into prejudice, unfortunately. 

As time had moved on, Lek had begun to seem less strange and more oddly beautiful. His quiet demeanour and the calm, careful way in which he thought and spoke set him apart. He had a kind of grace about him - not in the way that Nileas was graceful, but in his directness and refusal to go through the unnecessary motions of life. He cut straight to the chase in all things, performing only what he needed to, and every time he did I found myself drawn to him more and more. 

It wasn’t until recently that I realized that what I felt was more than loyalty and friendship, though. Only even more recently did I work up the courage to actually tell him. It had been strange in a whole new way to lay next to him after our first night together. After all, I had fallen for him in part because he never did anything he didn’t need to. The thought that I might be one of those things was wonderful. 

Things were more complicated now. Lek could tell that something was wrong - not necessarily between us, but in our situation - as soon as I began to feel it. When I voiced my worries about Morati, Lek had grown even quieter than normal, and told me that he understood my feelings, but could not leave Morati’s side. I didn’t want to make too much of an issue of it, then. I was reconsidering that, after seeing Morati take a Child of the Cataclysm - so much like Khem when she had first come to us - who had been being moved to the capital and forcibly leash her to a spirit, using her as a tool to inflict a horrible torture on someone I counted as my friend - as well as every other prisoner in our prison. 

When I heard that Metka had been broken out, managed to escape our grip, I couldn’t help but be relieved. When Morati used that as an excuse to slip a few of the guards on duty into our prison in her place, demanding that they spend a realtime week there to learn their lesson, my relief and reconsideration turned to horror and determination. I had to find a way to get Lek and I out of here. If I couldn’t… I would need to make a stand against the Emperor. 

(~)

The Kadien Hall was a new construction. Before we had taken it, Ketwin had only been a town - one of the larger towns in our slice of the Crownlands, to be certain, but not large enough to be considered a city by essentially any measurement. Our portion didn’t really have any cities, other than the capital itself at the centre of it all. Ketwin and Chester were the closest, but nevertheless needed significant construction and immigration to support becoming the fulcrum of the Empire. 

First among those had been the construction of the hall. Morati had insisted on it, saying that if he were to build an Empire, he would need a hall in which to see supplicants and hold strategy meetings with his commanders. At the time it had seemed sensible, but as the workers brought to Ketwin from other towns to build up the Empire’s new capital began to work, building up a hall over the course of weeks before even procuring housing, it rapidly became clear that it was needlessly cruel - even if it was technically logical. 

It had been completed for roughly two months by now, and as the new arrivals had built their homes on the other side of it from those which had originally made up Ketwin, it was actually closer to the lakeshore on which Ketwin had been founded than most of the buildings in the newer breadth of the city. The fishing industry which sustained old Ketwin was now being run through the hall, with a small side building where Morati’s officers took a tax from the fishermen’s catch in order to divide among those in the Empire’s employ. Whispers said that the officers in charge of the trade lines more often than not took more than they were due, but the poor fishermen of the city could no more afford to complain than they could to outright rebel. 

Despite it all, the Kadien Hall was beautiful. It had been built after something found in an old-war book, described as a “longhouse” from a people who were apparently long-gone even in the time of the book’s writing. A central pillar held up a raised portion of the roof, allowing smoke from the fires built around it - made both for cooking and warmth - to escape outside, rather than build up on the interior. The pillar, lit on all sides by those fires, danced with carefully carved patterns depicting the ‘grand works of the Emperor.’ Most of them were embellished, to say the least (one section showed Morati commanding a dragon to attack the capital; all he had actually done was hide us from the dragon while it moved on its way), but it was nevertheless a masterful work of art, and undeniably gorgeous. 

Morati’s throne was less artful. He had apparently made the thing himself, using magic to blast a chunk out of a boulder and having his new royal guard lug the thing inside, placing a cushion in the new divot and declaring it his throne. In the months since its placement there, some of those with his ear had convinced him to put some embellishment onto it, leading to several attempts at making the thing look more like a proper throne, but it still looked about as brutish and rough as Morati himself seemed to have become these days. 

Standing before him, the change in the man I had once called one of my closest friends seemed reflected physically, just as it now was in his seat of power. His face was harder, his hair cropped short and slicked back. He still had the air of beauty and grace that made him so entrancing, but where once it had been as the point of a rapier, it was now as graceless as a handsaw, albeit one masterfully crafted. 

His eyes had always been dark - so brown as to approach black. These days, though, they seemed to shimmer red, as if the blood spilled on his behalf had rubbed off on him somehow. Where once I had felt as comfortable with Morati as I would with anyone in the world, if not more, simply standing in front of him felt intimidating now. 

Morati’s lips were set into a thin line, as if he knew what I was here to say and was already unwilling to hear me out. Lek stood behind me and to my right, strong and silent as ever, and I could see the Emperor’s eyes move between the two of us, taking in the fact that we were fully geared, I carrying my crescent spear and Lek carrying his crossbow, despite the fact that we had no active deployment at the moment. 

Lek had told me why he could not leave. All those years ago, Nileas had saved his life. My beloved’s loyalty came from obligation, an oath to protect in turn the one who had protected him. If we were to leave, Lek would have to be released from that oath, or by his people’s beliefs, the spirits would be displeased. 

I couldn’t say for certain if there was genuine weight to the oath in that manner, but it mattered little. If Lek believed it, I needed to resolve it in his fashion. So, here we were. After a moment or two, I knelt. In the old days, it would have been unnecessary. Now, Morati refused to hear anyone who would not bend the knee, even his oldest friends. 

“Milord, I… Am here to request that you release Lek from his oath to you, so that we might exit the war and find peace for ourselves - under your rule, of course.” I grinned weakly, attempting to put on the facade of the cheery man I had been. 

Morati’s eyes slid past me to Lek, who had kneeled just behind me, though his kneeling had been far more awkward. Lazily, the Emperor’s eyes rolled back around to fix on my own. “Has the war so harmed you both that you can no longer see my vision?” Standing, he stepped down from the dais with a single graceful step, placing his greaved foot directly before me. “Or are you seeking your release with false pretences, that you might go join the Silver Insurrection like your… Friends.” 

His lip curled with disdain, and he spat on the floor. Before it had even hit the ground, a ragged-looking servant branded with the sign of the Crown had darted forward to wipe it up. Internally, I grimaced. Externally, I shook my head, looking up and putting on as earnest an expression as I could. “Nile- my Emperor. Lek and I have served you faithfully for many years. I tell you only the truth when I say we wish to retire and find a place to work peacefully, unbothered by matters of war.” With another grin, slightly less false this time, I tacked on a bit of humour, hoping it would sell my truthfulness. “Much as I hate the smell of fish, we would even settle for finding a home here in your capital and bringing in fish with the others.”

The Emperor’s eyes slid from me to Lek, who gave a small nod - though for him it was truly massive, an active attempt to express our sincerity in a fashion which those of us unable to detect the subtleties of wylding expression could still comprehend. Shaking his head, Morati turned and reclaimed his seat on the throne. “Very well. You have served your oath faithfully for many years, Lek. For your service, and your… loyalty, it seems only fair to release you.” 

Breathing a sigh of relief, I came to my feet, bowing deeply. Instinctively, I began to swing one arm out to the side in a mockery of the fashion of the pompous nobility of the Crown, but I quickly curtailed the instinct. Morati’s temper was… uneven, of late, and such a play at the bound of formality could be seen as provocation. Lek, fortunately, was far from prone to such overblown falsity in his movements. 

As we turned to leave, I heard the unsheathing of two blades and stopped, stock-still in my tracks. Glacially, I turned back to face my old friend, only to see that Nileas’ guards had their blades readied and strode towards us. Flowing instinctively, I pulled the crescent spear from my back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lek draw his crossbow at precisely the same time. 

Morati’s own blade, still as fine and elegant as ever, its gems gleaming in the handle, slipped out of its sheath as he stepped forward between his guards. Raising it, he spoke, his voice melodic and beautiful even stained with a dark, possessive anger. “Thus, my friends, you are released.” Just as the five of us tensed to fight, a horn sounded from the wall at the edge of Ketwin, high and clear, followed by two smaller horns. An emissary of the Crown approached. 

[childofthecataclysm]

Chapter Eighteen: Through Gerevor's Eyes

I couldn’t stand for it. As much as Khem’s little double-cross had hurt, and as much as the ongoing war dragged on us all, what we had done to Metka had been… Disgusting. She had left our effort and joined Khem’s, sure, but… She had been one of us. Nileas- no. Emperor Morati. Right. The ‘Emperor’s’ obsession with his ambition had warped him. Warped us, too. 

Just a few months ago, the idea of torturing someone who had been our friend - still was our friend, deep down - like we had Metka would have been inconceivable. Now, with the war pulling us all down into the depths of ourselves, somehow it had almost felt like the right thing to do, simply because she was working with our ‘enemy.’ 

For me, though, as soon as I’d thought about it for even a moment, I argued against it. The idea of it alone… Every day it felt as if we’d become more and more truly this… ‘Bloody Hand’ that Morati had branded us. And every time he ignored my advice and went forward with his sickening strategies anyways, I began to understand more and more why Riota had left - and why Metka had followed her. 

At first, it had been baffling. Khem had betrayed us, thrown our troops - and Riota herself from the Cliffs, prevented our best chance at an assault on the capital by thwarting a plan which had required us to recruit an enemy to attempt. How could they join her? Slowly, though, it began to sink in. For all that Nileas had been the man to bring us together, for all his charisma, for all that I would once have trusted him with my life, each little act of cruelty, each declaration, and each new horror wrought on the battlefield told me why they had left. 

War was a strange thing. All of us had been willing to join in the assault on the capital, even knowing the casualties it would wreak, when considering it in the moment. We thought our friend was being held within, perhaps tortured, likely with her life threatened. What were the lives of a few strangers compared to getting her to safety and cutting ourselves a foothold to take the stronghold of the enemy? Even Riota, who would have been responsible for the worst of the initial damage, hadn’t really thought too much of it. 

As time went on, though, it began to seem more and more obvious that the plan we had operated on had been… Wrong. Riota in particular began to grow dour about it, especially when Morati brought it up again, saying that he had found a way to bypass the new securities the Crown had put in place to prevent it. And then, finally, she had left, with Metka following after her. 

Strangely, even as I had come to understand them, and even agree, I stayed with Morati - or more precisely, Lek - for the same reason Metka had left. Loyalty and love.

I tried to keep a smile on my face, a joke on my lips, all the cheer and frivolity that would be expected from me. It was hard. Harder still when some of the worst of the Crown defected to our movement and Morati accepted them with minimal consideration. Even Leamin had joined his Bloody Hand, apparently driven by some hatred that the Crown’s ruler refused to let him pursue. 

It was strange to think about. A few months ago, Leamin and Ponitri both had been wanted names. Thinking of how Lek and I had played with captured nobles in the back of a cart, seeking their locations so that we could seek our vengeance on them for the damage they had done to our number… It seemed splintering bizarre that now those they had hurt had left us, and they had joined our number instead. 

Lek. It almost felt like that time back in the cart had been the last time I had laughed with him - not so much laughter on his end, but that tiny, almost invisible smile that he thought I couldn’t pick out was just as good, for me. These days, it seemed as if his humour was even more absent than usual; mine wasn’t much better, honestly. 

I tried, where I could. Little jokes, quips at the expense of those we fought… At least when they hadn’t been our friends just a few months prior. Ribbing and nudges around the dinner fires, exaggerated stories of better times… But they came slower, and fewer people smiled. Part of it was the war itself. Things dragged on, and all of us had lost much. 

Almost worse than that was the company itself. Apart from Lek, the good humoured soldiers inspired by our glorious leader and our old friends had steadily given way to evil-natured rogues, closer in nature to old Titus than anyone I would have wanted as a friend. Even if none of us had suffered losses, the air itself was suffused with the ill humour of our new band, and few seemed willing to laugh. 

Of course, after we had taken Ketwin and Morati had named it the temporary capital of his Kadien Empire (a name I was torn on - while his brother was a man I remembered fondly from back in the day, it seemed as if Morati did so less out of genuine desire to memorialise and more out of obligation), there had been a few townsfolk around with the good nature that made performing worthwhile. Those few good folk were quickly squashed down by Morati’s Bloody Hand. 

Relatively few of them actually died, rea- wait. No. I wouldn’t make excuses here. I couldn’t. I was done doing that. Several of our number, soldiers whose allegiance I shared, had in fact directly caused the deaths of some of the civilians supposedly under our watch. They had burned down the home of the head of Ketwin’s trade market after she had voiced a complaint about the taxes Morati’s Empire had levied. She and several members of her family - including a child - had died. 

Even those who hadn’t been killed had been tamped down rapidly. The soldiers of the Bloody Hand had, after the Battle of Ketwin, looted many of their homes, and in some cases done… worse things. Even if we hadn’t stepped in, claimed the town, and begun taking taxes from them ourselves, having the soldiers who had done that around would have been tough on their spirits. 

So I did what I could, hosting small banquets whenever I had the supplies and singing in the tavern to try to keep spirits up. It helped for a little bit, but before too long I found myself alone at the banquets and unwanted at the tavern. No amount of joviality and good spirits could change the fact that I was a part of the group creating their misery, it seemed. 

In truth, by now I wanted to leave quite badly myself. I don’t know if I would have joined Khem’s Silver Hand - as much as I wanted to see my old friends again, to be with them again after it all, I mostly wanted this whole war to be over. Despite how much I wanted to leave, though… I couldn’t leave without Lek. 

Unfortunately, his loyalty had been with Morati since the beginning. He certainly loved me in return, at least in the fashion that he experienced the emotion, but he didn’t seem to be able to fathom not following Nileas, even now that he had embraced the mantle of Emperor Morati. It made me wonder what exactly Nileas had done to win Lek over. 

You would think I would know that, as a founding member of the old Hand myself, but Lek had sort of come from nowhere. Nileas had been at market in Chester, selling off some of our ill-gotten gains to a contact he had there, and when he returned, Lek was with him. 

It had been strange, seeing a wyldling for the first time all those years ago. They were ever-so-slightly shorter than us, with thick hair across most of their bodies. Small retractable claws and pronounced canines completed the appearance that made many within the Crownlands think of them as beasts, even if they had never heard the Crown propaganda machine spinning tales about the wyldlands and their bestial ways. 

Of course, Lek was very much not a beast - nor were his people. From the few times he spoke of his home, it seemed as if the wyldlands might actually play home to a civilization well beyond our own. The truth of things rarely played into prejudice, unfortunately. 

As time had moved on, Lek had begun to seem less strange and more oddly beautiful. His quiet demeanour and the calm, careful way in which he thought and spoke set him apart. He had a kind of grace about him - not in the way that Nileas was graceful, but in his directness and refusal to go through the unnecessary motions of life. He cut straight to the chase in all things, performing only what he needed to, and every time he did I found myself drawn to him more and more. 

It wasn’t until recently that I realized that what I felt was more than loyalty and friendship, though. Only even more recently did I work up the courage to actually tell him. It had been strange in a whole new way to lay next to him after our first night together. After all, I had fallen for him in part because he never did anything he didn’t need to. The thought that I might be one of those things was wonderful. 

Things were more complicated now. Lek could tell that something was wrong - not necessarily between us, but in our situation - as soon as I began to feel it. When I voiced my worries about Morati, Lek had grown even quieter than normal, and told me that he understood my feelings, but could not leave Morati’s side. I didn’t want to make too much of an issue of it, then. I was reconsidering that, after seeing Morati take a Child of the Cataclysm - so much like Khem when she had first come to us - who had been being moved to the capital and forcibly leash her to a spirit, using her as a tool to inflict a horrible torture on someone I counted as my friend - as well as every other prisoner in our prison. 

When I heard that Metka had been broken out, managed to escape our grip, I couldn’t help but be relieved. When Morati used that as an excuse to slip a few of the guards on duty into our prison in her place, demanding that they spend a realtime week there to learn their lesson, my relief and reconsideration turned to horror and determination. I had to find a way to get Lek and I out of here. If I couldn’t… I would need to make a stand against the Emperor. 

(~)

The Kadien Hall was a new construction. Before we had taken it, Ketwin had only been a town - one of the larger towns in our slice of the Crownlands, to be certain, but not large enough to be considered a city by essentially any measurement. Our portion didn’t really have any cities, other than the capital itself at the centre of it all. Ketwin and Chester were the closest, but nevertheless needed significant construction and immigration to support becoming the fulcrum of the Empire. 

First among those had been the construction of the hall. Morati had insisted on it, saying that if he were to build an Empire, he would need a hall in which to see supplicants and hold strategy meetings with his commanders. At the time it had seemed sensible, but as the workers brought to Ketwin from other towns to build up the Empire’s new capital began to work, building up a hall over the course of weeks before even procuring housing, it rapidly became clear that it was needlessly cruel - even if it was technically logical. 

It had been completed for roughly two months by now, and as the new arrivals had built their homes on the other side of it from those which had originally made up Ketwin, it was actually closer to the lakeshore on which Ketwin had been founded than most of the buildings in the newer breadth of the city. The fishing industry which sustained old Ketwin was now being run through the hall, with a small side building where Morati’s officers took a tax from the fishermen’s catch in order to divide among those in the Empire’s employ. Whispers said that the officers in charge of the trade lines more often than not took more than they were due, but the poor fishermen of the city could no more afford to complain than they could to outright rebel. 

Despite it all, the Kadien Hall was beautiful. It had been built after something found in an old-war book, described as a “longhouse” from a people who were apparently long-gone even in the time of the book’s writing. A central pillar held up a raised portion of the roof, allowing smoke from the fires built around it - made both for cooking and warmth - to escape outside, rather than build up on the interior. The pillar, lit on all sides by those fires, danced with carefully carved patterns depicting the ‘grand works of the Emperor.’ Most of them were embellished, to say the least (one section showed Morati commanding a dragon to attack the capital; all he had actually done was hide us from the dragon while it moved on its way), but it was nevertheless a masterful work of art, and undeniably gorgeous. 

Morati’s throne was less artful. He had apparently made the thing himself, using magic to blast a chunk out of a boulder and having his new royal guard lug the thing inside, placing a cushion in the new divot and declaring it his throne. In the months since its placement there, some of those with his ear had convinced him to put some embellishment onto it, leading to several attempts at making the thing look more like a proper throne, but it still looked about as brutish and rough as Morati himself seemed to have become these days. 

Standing before him, the change in the man I had once called one of my closest friends seemed reflected physically, just as it now was in his seat of power. His face was harder, his hair cropped short and slicked back. He still had the air of beauty and grace that made him so entrancing, but where once it had been as the point of a rapier, it was now as graceless as a handsaw, albeit one masterfully crafted. 

His eyes had always been dark - so brown as to approach black. These days, though, they seemed to shimmer red, as if the blood spilled on his behalf had rubbed off on him somehow. Where once I had felt as comfortable with Morati as I would with anyone in the world, if not more, simply standing in front of him felt intimidating now. 

Morati’s lips were set into a thin line, as if he knew what I was here to say and was already unwilling to hear me out. Lek stood behind me and to my right, strong and silent as ever, and I could see the Emperor’s eyes move between the two of us, taking in the fact that we were fully geared, I carrying my crescent spear and Lek carrying his crossbow, despite the fact that we had no active deployment at the moment. 

Lek had told me why he could not leave. All those years ago, Nileas had saved his life. My beloved’s loyalty came from obligation, an oath to protect in turn the one who had protected him. If we were to leave, Lek would have to be released from that oath, or by his people’s beliefs, the spirits would be displeased. 

I couldn’t say for certain if there was genuine weight to the oath in that manner, but it mattered little. If Lek believed it, I needed to resolve it in his fashion. So, here we were. After a moment or two, I knelt. In the old days, it would have been unnecessary. Now, Morati refused to hear anyone who would not bend the knee, even his oldest friends. 

“Milord, I… Am here to request that you release Lek from his oath to you, so that we might exit the war and find peace for ourselves - under your rule, of course.” I grinned weakly, attempting to put on the facade of the cheery man I had been. 

Morati’s eyes slid past me to Lek, who had kneeled just behind me, though his kneeling had been far more awkward. Lazily, the Emperor’s eyes rolled back around to fix on my own. “Has the war so harmed you both that you can no longer see my vision?” Standing, he stepped down from the dais with a single graceful step, placing his greaved foot directly before me. “Or are you seeking your release with false pretences, that you might go join the Silver Insurrection like your… Friends.” 

His lip curled with disdain, and he spat on the floor. Before it had even hit the ground, a ragged-looking servant branded with the sign of the Crown had darted forward to wipe it up. Internally, I grimaced. Externally, I shook my head, looking up and putting on as earnest an expression as I could. “Nile- my Emperor. Lek and I have served you faithfully for many years. I tell you only the truth when I say we wish to retire and find a place to work peacefully, unbothered by matters of war.” With another grin, slightly less false this time, I tacked on a bit of humour, hoping it would sell my truthfulness. “Much as I hate the smell of fish, we would even settle for finding a home here in your capital and bringing in fish with the others.”

The Emperor’s eyes slid from me to Lek, who gave a small nod - though for him it was truly massive, an active attempt to express our sincerity in a fashion which those of us unable to detect the subtleties of wylding expression could still comprehend. Shaking his head, Morati turned and reclaimed his seat on the throne. “Very well. You have served your oath faithfully for many years, Lek. For your service, and your… loyalty, it seems only fair to release you.” 

Breathing a sigh of relief, I came to my feet, bowing deeply. Instinctively, I began to swing one arm out to the side in a mockery of the fashion of the pompous nobility of the Crown, but I quickly curtailed the instinct. Morati’s temper was… uneven, of late, and such a play at the bound of formality could be seen as provocation. Lek, fortunately, was far from prone to such overblown falsity in his movements. 

As we turned to leave, I heard the unsheathing of two blades and stopped, stock-still in my tracks. Glacially, I turned back to face my old friend, only to see that Nileas’ guards had their blades readied and strode towards us. Flowing instinctively, I pulled the crescent spear from my back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lek draw his crossbow at precisely the same time.  Morati’s own blade, still as fine and elegant as ever, its gems gleaming in the handle, slipped out of its sheath as he stepped forward between his guards. Raising it, he spoke, his voice melodic and beautiful even stained with a dark, possessive anger. “Thus, my friends, you are released.”

Just as the five of us tensed to fight, a horn sounded from the wall at the edge of Ketwin, high and clear, followed by two smaller horns. An emissary of the Crown approached.

[asordinaryppl]

A3! Main Story: Part 4 - Act 13: Budding Spring - Episode 25: I'm Home

Izumi: Can you see me, everyone? Is the sound coming through?

Citron: “It’s A-Okay~!”

Sakuya: “It’s good!”

Tsuzuru: “Where are you right now, Sakuya?”

Chikage: “Why does this look like the Edo Era?”

Citron: “Did you use a tie man slip!?”

Tsuzuru: “Time machine.”

Sakuya: “Ahaha. When I told the director about having remote rehearsals, they graciously let me use the theater’s stage.”

Izumi: I’m glad you all look healthy. It’s good to see your faces.

Tsuzuru: “As for us, it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long since we last saw each other because we’ve been talking in BlooCha.”

Izumi: Oh, you did say you’d try using that. Is it different from LIME?

Sakuya: “The timing of our messages was weird because of our time differences, but it’s like a message board or an exchange diary, so it’s fun.”

Tsuzuru: “When we all get the timing right, it really feels like we’re together in the same room.”

Masumi: “You’re as loud as always while I’m trying to study.”

Tsuzuru: “Oh, yeah. Masumi, when are you getting your learner’s permit?”

Izumi: Eh, you’re getting a license?

Masumi: “I’m attending driving school. I’m getting a learner’s permit soon. I want to put you on the passenger’s seat as soon as possible.”

Citron: “I will be in charge of the backseat!”

Sakuya: “Masumi-kun seems like he’d be good at driving.”

Chikage: “We’ll leave the role of the Spring Troupe’s chauffeur to Masumi from now on.”

Masumi: “I’ll get a two-seater.”

Tsuzuru: “You really don’t want anyone other than the Director on board.”

Izumi: Itaru-san will be a little late, didn’t he. Let’s try adjusting without him first.

Izumi: Today’s purpose is to prepare for when you all return next week, so you can take it easy.

Izumi: If you can move, please do so. But if there’s no space, just saying the lines is fine.

Izumi: I’ll let you know about any changes to the production as we get to those points.

-

Izumi: — Okay, let’s stop here for now. It’s been a while, but you all remember everything well.

Sakuya: “This was our first time practicing remotely, so it was all kind of new.”

Masumi: “We’re not as close as we’d be in real life, so I feel like I’m relying on my memory of everyone’s acting.”

Chikage: “There’s some lagging, so we’ve got a few communication issues.”

Citron: “I want to practice pace to pace with you all again as soon as possible~!”

Masumi: “Face to face.”

Tsuzuru: By the way, Sakuya, your sword fighting’s gotten a lot better.

Sakuya: “Eh, you really think so!?”

Sakuya: “To be honest, I’ve been focusing on practicing the sword fights in my current performance, so I can put the knowledge I gain to good use for Romeo too.”

Izumi: Your progress is showing.

Tsuzuru: “Ah, then, in that case–”

Itaru: “Sorry, I’m late.”

Izumi: Good work today.

Sakuya: “Good work!”

Citron: “It’s time!”

Izumi: Please start from the scene with Mercutio, Tybalt and Father Lawrence.

Itaru: “Got it.”

-

Izumi: You were all a little stiff at first, but that faded when you got used to remote practicing.

Izumi: I’m glad the Spring Troupe’s atmosphere hasn’t changed.

Sakuya: “We can act even when we’re apart.”

Tsuzuru: “We may be in different places, but it’s nice how it feels like we’re all connected on top of the same stage.”

Izumi: Okay, I’ve relayed all production-related changes to you, so we can end practice here. 

Masumi: “If we’re done, do you have a moment?”

Izumi: Hm? What is it?

Masumi: “I sent you a proposal on LIME just now. Take a look.”

Izumi: … A plan proposal? Eh!? Did you write this?

Izumi: (Amazing, the contents are so detailed that it looks like a corporate proposal.)

Masumi: “I’ve been learning a lot of things in the promotion department I’ve been interning in.”

Izumi: I see… I think it’s really well put together. I’ll bring it up to Sakyo-san.

Masumi: “Was I of help?”

Izumi: Of course! Gathering all of these by yourself must’ve been difficult. Thank you!

Masumi: “Not at all. I’m glad I got a chance to realize how difficult what you do is.”

Masumi: “I’ll help you too from now on.”

Izumi: If you say so, I’ll be counting on you.

-

Sakuya: I’m home!

Izumi: Welcome home. You’re the first one.

Sakuya: The plan was for me to leave tomorrow, but the organizer scheduled an off day for me today…

Sakuya: I wanted to be the first one here so I can say “Welcome back” to everyone else.

Sakuya: Because I was really happy when I went off by myself and everyone welcomed me back…

Izumi: I see. I’m sure you’re looking forward to everyone coming back.

Sakuya: I am. I want to practice with everyone as soon as possible. I thought a lot about my acting plan while I was away.

Sakuya: I was inspired by the performances of other companies, and I learned a lot, so I’ve got all kinds of ideas…

Sakuya: There are so many things I want to talk about and try out.

Sakuya: Speaking of which– I’m going to the practice room for a bit!

Izumi: What? Already?

Sakuya: I feel like moving my body all of a sudden!

Izumi: Hehe, take it easy and make sure you don’t exhaust yourself.

-

Sakuya: 1, 2, 3, 4…

Sakuya: (There’s really no other place that calms me like this… It feels like I came back home.)

Sakuya: (Now that I think about it, I wonder where everyone is? It’s about time Citron-san and the others who went abroad would be departing for their journey back home…)

tsuzuru has entered the chat tsuzuru: good morning tsuzuru: i’m packing my things right now, i’m having some trouble because I’ve got too many souvenirs tsuzuru: i’m not sure if the souvenirs i bought for everyone in the company /and/ the souvenirs for my brothers will fit in here tsuzuru: oh, right, i have to remember to pack my computer. i’ll be working til last minute, so i might forget. Curry has entered the chat Curry: i’ll remind you about your pc tomorrow tsuzuru: you’re like a man with many talents To Rorr has entered the chat To Rorr: i am on the verge of eating breakfast! i will head to the airport in the afternoon. i can’t wait to be surrounded by everyone! UC has entered the chat UC: I have a connecting flight, so I’m about to board the plane for Narita Airport. I’ll probably arrive at the dorm tomorrow afternoon. Saku has entered the chat Saku: I returned a day earlier. Stay safe on your way back, everyone!

Sakuya: (Itaru-san is rarely online. He must be really busy…)

Tsumugi: Welcome back, Sakuya-kun.

Banri: Welcome back.

Sakuya: I’m back!

Tenma: Practicing already? I’ll help out.

Sakuya: Thanks! Can I ask you to be my opponent in a sword fight?

Sakuya: I was thinking of taking it easy, but I’ve been restless ever since I stepped into the practice room.

Tsumugi: I think I understand the feeling.

Tenma: I’ll tag along till you’re satisfied.

Banri: Let’s confirm the production-related matters while we’re at it, then.

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NOTES:

(1) an acting plan is, quite literally, a plan an actor makes for how they will use their expressions and actions, in order to prevent focusing on only one part of their performance and/or to prevent stiffness. i could not for the life of me find information on this in english, so i'm not sure if it's called something entirely different.

[lured-into-wonderland]

Nunnally laughed. She didn’t understand why Dae made her so relaxed. By then she was certain she could easily pretend to be his girlfriend. She wouldn’t even need a drink to feel more comfortable (which was good because she didn’t like feeling tipsy).

“Everyone would be so surprised… Of me having a personal gym trainer. I have always avoided that as in the past they were all hitting on me. Thinking I would simply fall in love with them. But I have always felt that I was simply a walking and talking wallet for them. No-one had any interest in the real me.” – a moment of pause – “You are really different, Dae, I feel. You make me relaxed. And you’re still a gentleman. An old type of a gentleman who are now so hard to find.” – well, Nunnally wasn’t sure if he’d appreciate the compliment. But she truly thought so. Perhaps she regretted being so open with him. She didn’t need to say that. But there was a chance he'd understand it just right. As he did before.

“I am sorry…Such a confession was not needed. And was completely out of place. You’re not here…not here to hear how much my life is messed up.” – again the wrong choice of words; she felt embarrassed – “Although I probably should not complain. There are many more people with more difficult life than my own.” – she was just a spoiled girl that wanted something else; she was sure there were many that would happily swap places with her. Although, she believed, they would probably get disappointed. Yes, she got money. Her family had power. She would call ‘uncles’ some of the most important people in the country, but all in all it was worth less than it might have seemed. Especially if you consider all rules and prohibitions that were involved.

Oh, love was the lighter subject. She was happy their conversation took such a turn, although…it again led her into blushing. Sex on the first date? Nunnally would never think about that…

“We…we…we…” – she stuttered – “We don’t do it yet…if anyone dares…dares to pry…my father…he…I…” – she was making an idiot out of herself. Nunnally knew it. She was inexperienced. She knew that. She had clear rules to follow concerning romances, and apart from the short affair in high school (that ended up with her spending three years in Europe), she never dated anyone.

“I apologize. Probably no-one would ask, but some of these people like gossips…and you’d be…we’d be gossiped about. Some of women…might…might hit on you…it’s okay…okay if you let them, but then our romance would…would have to end…though I will not probably be the best…” – she wanted to say "client", but it felt so unfair – “Anyway, I am just trying to say that…I am fine with whatever works best for you.” 

And then she went for a kiss. Just to finish this awkward situation. She liked how he lifted her and kissed her back. Nunnally felt unique and desired; although she knew she shouldn’t have these feelings. (“It is his job. And you are his client.”) – she tried to remind herself, but her body didn’t want to listen to herself – (“Sex on the first date is possible.”) – no! Not for you Nunnally.

“It was nice.” – she said smiling; even more when he gave her another kiss. Nunnally felt sorry when they reached the entrance to the party. She didn’t want to go. She wanted to keep Dae for herself; not to show him to everyone over there. She sighed deeply.

“Would you mind kissing me one more time before we go there?” – she wanted a deep kiss, but was she to voice that? She was greedy. She was acting so wrong.

jongdae tilted his head lightly. nunnally didn't seem all that happy, but he didn't want to take a wild guess. not like he could understand her life, the high society or any of that business stuff. while he had a few dates with rich girls, 70% of his clients were of very "normal" standing: high school girls, college graduates, the simple worker class he also belonged to. jongdae supposed even if he understood how her life worked, he shouldn't put his nose where it just doesn't belong.

"that is my job, nunnally. making up stories especially. so... let's say i was so bold to take you out to make up for the ball almost hitting you." jongdae was fit enough to give off the impression that he was some sort of jockey, although he didn't play basketball for quite a few years now. he had been an active basketball player at college and high school though. it was just not enough to ever go pro.

"let me be a personal gym trainer. i am at the gym very often anyways." he chuckled softly, gently sneaking an arm around her waist to pull her closer. "i do not believe in love at first sight, what i believe in is mutual attraction which could result in sex on the first date, but love... love blooms, it blossoms, it grows from mutual trust and sympathy." love at first sight? shouldn't it have finally hit him by now? jongdae wasn't going to turn any younger...

while he was actually still in thoughts, she suddenly went in for the kiss and well, it was perhaps slightly clumsy, but her effort was kind of adorable. it made him want to deepen the kiss, but she was clearly lacking the experience, so he only returned the favor, arms wrapping around her tiny frame, slightly lifting her up from the ground, so he didn't have to be so uncomfortable.

"light as a feather," he murmured against her lips, slowly putting her down again. "and you worry too much. i've had lots of awkward make out sessions already and this was not one of them." and sometimes that sort of awkwardness never wanted to end----but it was his job and what he was paid for.

"thank you. i am sure you will find someone eventually, that will love and cherish you properly, for the person you are and the things you want to achieve in life." he pressed another kiss to her cheek before spotting the entrance to the party. time to put on his best performance, he guessed.