#like??? the blade is tied up in so much significance. is he really so ready to simp for goddess!charname that his filial piety disappears

[sovonight]

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[trilobitepunch]

~~~

As much as Donatello loved his elder brother, there were times where having one as big, strong, and protective as Raphael demanded some significant drawbacks.

"Rescue like a BOSS! "

This moment, limbs bound all the way to his wrists and ankles, ignominiously slung over Raphael's shoulder as blaster bolts peppered the hallway behind them, was one of those times.

"For the last time, this is not a rescue!"

"You're tied up in the middle of a rebellion lair!" Raph exclaimed, shouting to be heard over the sizzle of blaster bolts and the crack of crumbling concrete. "How does this not count?!"

"Firstly, I would hardly deign to call this second-rate hovel a lair. I mean, they barely have a functioning network, and their data scrambler was so pitiful I could have cracked it in my sleep! Secondly, I elected to allow a temporary restriction of my motor faculties to increase the probability our success by seventy percent."

"Ya wha now?"

"Oh my neutrons, I let them tie me up!"

"Well that was stupid! Why'd ya do that?!"

"To lull them into a fake sense of ease in order to illicit greater quantities of quality intelligence of course. Also, three incoming on your six!"

Donnie ducked in close to Raph as blaster bolts sang overhead, wincing as a chunk of rubble slammed into his bound elbows. Raph snarled, the sound echoing menacingly within the restricted confines of the hallway.

"Hang a left. There's a defensible room," Donnie gasped, and Raph followed his direction without further question. Before long the durasteel door was slamming closed behind them, cutting out the chaos as beyond the rebels floundered and failed to coordinate through the virus he'd implanted within their communications array.

"Did you really have ta let them turn you into a sausage?" Raph huffed, gently lowering Donnie to sit against the wall. "You know hand-to-hand Don, I know ya do! I taught ya!"

"It's hard to extract information through a mouthful of broken teeth Raphael," Donnie huffed, fighting back the beginnings of a pout as his big brother pulled out a small vibro blade. "Besides, that would leave no fun for you."

"Awwwww, you thought of me? I'm touched, brainiac."

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled, then hissed as the ropes snapped away, returning blood flow to his limbs in a shower of pins and needles.

"Easy."

Raph's big hands carefully eased his arms down to his sides, surprisingly deft fingers massaging blood back into his palms and fingers until the tingling stopped.

"It's fine Raph, you don't have to-"

"I want ta Dee. I'm your big brother. Looking out for you is my job. So let me do my job, okay?"

"I… you…could help me up? I do not think my equilibrium is yet up to the task," Donnie acquiesced, smiling ever so slightly as Raph's face brightened.

"You got it buddy! Alright, up we go!"

Another hiss squeaked past his lips as Raph carefully set him on his feet. Dull pain flashed across his lower back, throbbing a low threat that more would come should he attempt to move before his body agreed to.

"Ya good?"

"Mmmmm. Just a minute," he sighed, ignoring the growing shouts beyond the door in favor of leaning into his taller brother's embrace. A greedy part of him drank in the feeling of encompassing warmth, reveling in the elusive sense of safety only Raph could provide. For these stolen moments there was not a power in the cosmos that could harm him. Not with Raph around.

"… getting kinda noisy out there," Raph rumbled eventually, reluctance in every line of his body as he slowly pulled back. "You ready, or do ya need a lil longer?"

"No," he replied, stepping back. He ruthlessness clamped down on the small, childish part of him that wailed yes and shoved it deep into the box within his mind. "I'm ready."

Blood red light painted the room in harsh contrast as two blades hummed to life.

"You take out those at the door. I'll tidy up the loose ends."

----------

I apologize for my awful writing... I don't remember how this scenario came up but I've been wanting to draw it for some time now. I also wanted to include @colibrie 's original text for it! How do these nerds go from goofy to scary in 0 seconds?

[sofreddie]

Treacherous

Summary: Dean is spelled, what's Sam's excuse?

Characters: Dean x Reader / OOC!Sam x Reader

Warnings: NON-CON, dub-con, smut, unprotected sex, implied/mentioned mating/breeding, sex spell, light bondage/restraint, rough sex, forced sex, forced orgasm

Word Count: 1,459

Sam burst through the motel room, lugging an unconscious Dean with him. He threw his brother down onto the motel bed and rushed back to slam the motel room door shut.

Y/N jumped from her spot at the small table as soon as the door slammed open. She watched with wide-eyes and a slack jaw.

"What happened, Sam?" she asked. They were on a hunt. Y/N didn't hunt. She was a long-time friend of theirs and she lived in the Bunker, helping them with research. They brought her along on hunts, but she stayed back in the motel rooms. Truth was, none of them could stand to be apart from each other very long. Especially Dean and Y/N. But no one spoke of the elephant in the room, letting sleeping dogs lie.

"We got the witches, but one of them hit him with a spell before we killed her."

"What do you remember of the spell?" she asked, immediately opening her laptop to start looking for a cure.

Sam sighed as he finished stripping his brother down to a t-shirt and boxers, which were drenched in sweat.

"The same as all the other victims," he grumbled.

"Wait…so-"

"Yeah."

"Are you gonna go to a bar or maybe find a hooker or something?" Y/N said after a long silence passed. All the victims had been hit with fatal lust curses. Within hours after being hit, the victims died if they didn't mate someone. It was leading to a lot of violence and death in the small town, which was what caught their attention in the first place.

"No," Sam scoffed, "You really think I'd let my brother mate a hooker?"

"Then how-"

Y/N cut herself off when she caught the look Sam was giving her. She swallowed hard, her eyes darting to the door and wondering if she could escape. She didn't like the direction this was heading at all.

"Sam-"

Her plea turned into a squeak as Sam grabbed for her, lifting her from the chair and dragging her over to the other motel bed.

"Sam! Stop! What are you doing?"

Sam used his significant size and strength to wrestle Y/N, kicking and screaming to the motel bed. He quickly undid his belt one-handed, while holding her wrists together in his other hand. He tied her hands together and secured them to the headboard, before finally releasing her with a huff.

She struggled against her bindings, tears streaking from her eyes, before landing on Sam once more.

"I'm sorry, Y/N," he said without empathy, "But I'm not gonna let my brother die."

Dean began to stir and Sam worked fast, pulling out a small blade and cutting through her shirt and bra, letting them fall open to reveal her bare chest. Pocketing the knife, he undid the button and zipper on her jeans, pulling them and her panties roughly down her wriggling legs.

"Sam?" Dean croaked, coming to and rubbing a hand over his face as he became consciously aware of the effects of the spell, "Shit," he groaned, realizing what was happening. Exactly what happened to the other victims.

"It's okay, Dean," Sam promised, helping his brother to sit up, "Y/N's gonna help."

At the mention of her name, Dean's eyes opened to see her body laid bare. His rational mind drifted into dark recesses as the spell took control, leaving him with only one thought - mate.

"No, no, no. Please-"

Y/N was hushed by Sam's large hand gripping her whole jaw tightly, moving faster than a man his size should be able to.

"You'll let him fuck whatever hole he wants and you'll take his fucking cum, you hear me?" Sam growled low and menacingly in her face as he squeezed her jaw a little too tightly for emphasis. She whined and whimpered and Sam released her, stepping back to allow Dean access.

Her attention turned to the older brother, now naked, his body glistening with sweat, muscles taught, as he breathed heavily. She whimpered as she felt her wetness trickle out of her, her body reacting to the sight of such a man, clearly ready to do with her what he pleased. To be honest, the thought both terrified and thrilled her. But the way everything was happening? And what the hell had gotten into Sam?! Was his brother really so important to him that he'd bend his morals that much?

Her eyes caught sight of his large and thick cock, hard and throbbing with his pulse. She rubbed her thighs together and bit her lip to hold back a moan.

She wasn't supposed to want this.

Her body and mind were treacherous little things.

Dean crawled over her naked form as she struggled against her bindings. It took him little effort to grab and move her to his desire. He spread her legs wide around him before notching himself at her entrance. Without prep or warning he slid inside until he was completely buried in her heat. She moaned, the stretch and depth of him more than anything she'd ever experienced.

He waited barely a beat before he was pounding her hard and fast, chasing his need as the spell urged him forward. She screamed and begged as he pumped harder and harder until he was growling out his release. He thrust slowly as he worked himself through it. Y/N was grateful it seemed to be over quick and without much discomfort. But he didn't stop, his hips instead picking up speed again as he worked himself into another frenzy.

He came inside of her three times, bringing her to the edge but not over every time. After his third roar of completion, his body slumped, his entire weight pressing her into the mattress as she realized he passed out.

She was sobbing as Sam grabbed Dean, removing him from Y/N and tossing him down on the other bed once more, covering him with a blanket to protect his modesty. Sam turned and looked at Y/N then, stalking around the bed as he examined her naked body and her swollen cunt, leaking cum.

He licked his lips, rubbing a hand over his jean-covered erection.

"He didn't let you cum, did he?" Sam asked, voice full of sympathy, "That's too bad," he hummed as he opened his pants and pulled out his leaking cock. Y/N's eyes widened as she looked at Sam, stroking his massive dick and eyeing her hungrily, "You know, I think we can help each other."

She didn't need to question what he meant as he climbed over her, his eyes raking over every inch of her skin. He spread her legs and she whimpered as his eyes locked on her gaping hole.

"Good thing Dean fucked you open," he huffed a laugh, leaning over her as he started sliding inside, "You'll be able to take me easier now," he grunted.

She struggled to take his inches, her body feeling stretched to its limits, but more of him kept coming. He grunted out a sigh and she squeaked as his cock hit her cervix, the pressure intense.

"You're so fucking tight," he groaned, sitting up and wrapping his large hands around her hips, holding her steady and he began to pound into her. She screamed and he increased his pace until her was fucking into her brutally. She felt her walls fluttering around him, her high that was denied coming back to the surface.

"That's it," he crooned, leaning over her and wrapping his arms under her shoulders for added leverage as he pulled her into his every thrust, "Take this cock, Baby."

She couldn't believe how this night turned out. Never in a million years would she had thought something like this would happen. It was like her wildest fantasies became a very real nightmare.

She tried to fight off the impending orgasm, not wanting to give Sam the satisfaction, but he was intent on drawing it out of her. He reached a hand between them, rubbing over her clit as he fucked her hard and deep. Her climax slammed into her with the weight of a train and she screamed out her pleasure in spite of herself. Sam groaned and moaned his approval before coming deep inside of her.

They both panted hard before he removed himself, tucking his cock back into his pants.

"You're welcome," he smirked, before reaching over to untie her hands, "Go take a shower. I'm sure when Dean wakes up he'll want to head out."

Sam went about the room as if nothing had just happened. Without knowing what else she should, or could, do at the moment, she silently obeyed with a nod, wincing as she rolled off the bed and to the bathroom.

[look-ma-im-on-tv]

Crying

Dark Side!Roman

AO3 Link

Warnings: Self-harm by hitting, descriptions of anxiety, yelling, caps, let me know of any I need to add!

Description: Hurt/Comfort. Roman is devastated, and all he seems to do is make things worse, so he takes himself out of the situation. And since his feelings seem to make everything worse, he gets rid of those too.

Pairings: Familial... everyone I don't remember what that's called anymore.

I was possessed to write this I stg.

Crying.

Roman felt tears streaming down his face. Everyone just stared at him, curious expressions, but he couldn’t recognize even a hint of concern on their faces. He was frozen, unmoving, chains pulling every part of him down and tying him to the floor. His feet couldn’t lift, his lips couldn’t form words, his lungs couldn’t take in air. He was waiting for something but he didn’t know what. Permission to leave? For everyone else to leave? He wouldn’t know until it happened, and until that point, he was stuck here watching everyone stare at him.

Someone started to speak. To criticise him, he was sure, though he couldn’t make out their words through the fog in Roman’s head. The only thing he could do was fight at the invisible chains, desperately hoping that he’d leave. He was making a fool of himself, sitting here, crying. Just crying. Over his own damn mistake. The tips of his fingers tingled numbly. His short fast breathing felt as if it threatened to rip him apart.

Roman was shaking. He needed out. He needed free. He ripped at his arms, and finally convinced himself to sink out as fast as he could, knocking the breath out of himself in the process.

Roman’s familiar room carpet felt rough under his palms, scratchy, digging, too much. He yanked his hands up to his chest as fast as he could, kneeling on the floor of his room. A sob escaped him, with a wave of tears following. Roman sneered at himself. He was being such a bad person. He just had to run away. After something that was entirely his fault. How could he do this to them? He only ever made everything worse, he knew it. He felt his hand make a sharp movement, and a harsh thud against his thigh. Roman curled in from the pain. He felt his own eyes gloss over, tears suddenly stopping. He fell down onto his side, the rough carpet digging into his cheek.

He laid there, nearly unmoving, for hours or minutes. He couldn’t tell. Every time he felt stinging in his eyelids, from whatever painful thought came to his mind, a more painful thud followed. Harsh thoughts came by, they really don’t want you anyways; they’re happy you’re gone; they barely put up with you already, why would they come for you?

You’re just a villain.

Roman cried out, curling tighter into himself. The thought felt like a blade plunging into his chest. The world around him darkened in his vision, he was gasping for breath. He could barely feel himself move. It felt like he was dying.

Thud, thud, thud.

His tears kept coming, for so long. He kept crying. Sometimes he would completely fall apart, sobbing and screaming, then just as suddenly as it came on, it would stop. He’d lay there on the floor, silent, limbs throbbing with pain.

Roman felt bruises developing and smiled dryly. Eventually, everything slowed. And everything stopped. He could feel his heart beating and slowing in his chest. His fingers, his hands, felt numb. Felt separate from him. He held his hands out in front of him and noticed absently that a deep black color was bleeding out from the center of his palms and from each of his knuckles. His eyes burned every time he blinked. He shut his eyes tight, thick tears wetting his eyelashes once more. But this time, there was nothing behind them, no feeling, and no thud following.

Roman opened his eyes and from the small amount of his room he could see, he realized he couldn’t stand any of this anymore. His noble decorations, his stark white outfit, the royal red he once so admired; it all made him sick. Without moving a muscle, it all suddenly began to change. The little crowns and stars and hearts cracked in two. A black ink spot began in the middle of his chest, spreading in every direction until it reached the cuffs of his sleeves and the hems of his pants. And the red in his room bled out, disappearing and leaving only a dark grey behind. Roman managed a glance around the room, and was almost pleased with it all. It was far more fitting than the mirage he previously had surrounding him.

At the head of the room was a single chair. It replaced any other furnishing that was previously in the room. A lavish chair, black, and with shining gold decorations. Roman could just spot it out of the corner of his eye. And before he could even blink, he was sitting upright in it, one leg crossed over the other.

And like before, Roman was chained. But it was different this time. He didn’t want to escape. He didn’t feel the panic, the fear, the pain. And he knew what he was waiting for this time. Even if he wasn’t fully sure it was ever going to happen.

He was waiting for them. Whether they would be coming to stop him or save him didn’t matter, though the latter seemed very impossible. Roman was going to stay out of things. He wasn’t going to come and ruin things for everyone. However, if there was any chance they may come for him, he may as well look presentable.

Roman hadn’t come back. Everyone tried their best to give him his space, they weren’t sure what else to do. But usually, if someone needed space, they came back after a day or two. But it had been weeks, and everyone was sick of waiting.

“He can’t just not come back. Thomas needs more than half of his creativity. This is becoming a problem. How selfish does he have to-”

“Virgil, be patient with him.” Logan corrected him. “If he requires time alone, we should let him have it.”

“I know. I’m just…”

“Angry. I understand. But we must give him his time.”

“But-!” Patton shouted, “we can’t just leave him you guys! What if he’s hurt?”

Remus nodded. “Daddy here’s right, I’m not just leaving him with his thoughts. He’s not even letting me get to him through the imagination, it’s like he’s just… vanished.”

“Yeah! I’d want someone to come and try to care for me if I felt bad.” Patton continued.

Logan cocked his head to the side. “Well, that seems to be a tied vote. Janus? Do you have an opinion of your own that you might like to share?”

Janus raised his eyebrows. “Me?” He hummed. “I could get used to this. I suppose we should check on him. I mean, there is no chance he’s actually wanting us to come but is simply too afraid to ask.”

“Three to two. I suppose we can go check on him, so long as we do our best not to intrude.”

“Field trip!” Remus giggled.

Virgil groaned. “Can’t you at least try to take this seriously?”

Remus stopped in his tracks and turned to him with a completely stoic face. “No.” He shook his head. “No.” And as if the conversation never happened, he continued skipping away with a manic smile towards Roman’s room while everyone else sank out.

They all gathered in front of Roman’s room.

Patton gasped. “Is that his door?”

“It’s where it used to be, but…”

“It’s currently black, that’s odd. Why would his door change colors?”

“Well, that explains a lot for me at least! It’s been a pain in the ass to keep re-dying this!” Remus shouted, just approaching. But, suddenly he was different. His outfit adorned the bright white of Roman’s, and the green was slowly trying to fade into red.

Virgil nearly lunged at him. “What? You didn’t think to tell us anything about this? What, did you think it was funny?”

“Well, this is clearly far more significant than I originally assumed. Since you two are connected, this is likely an effect sourcing from Roman himself. We need to get in there immediately.”

Patton started urgently knocking on the door, poorly feigning calmness. “Roman? Kiddo? What’s up in there? Can you let us in?”

Janus rolled his eyes. “Knocking is definitely the best strategy.”

“Well, what else should we do? It’s not like we can just break-”

“Remus, will you please break down the door?”

Before Janus could even finish his sentence, Remus already had his morning star raised and ready to strike. He swung it down, and a huge crack! came from the wood splintering. It wasn’t broken yet. Remus swung again, and again, tears beginning to pool in his eyes with every hit.

“Just! Let! Us! In!” Remus swung again, and the door gave way, making Remus fall through the pieces with the remaining force of his swing. He sat on the floor of his brother’s room, if you could even tell that’s what it was. It looked completely different.

Everyone else spilled in behind Remus, and stopped. The room was all black, with all sorts of the old decorations, papers, crafts, everything torn up and thrown across the floor. It was nearly impossible to see anything it was so dark, if it weren’t for the golden glow coming from across the room. In the center of the glow was a black throne, a dark figure sitting in it.

“Roman?”

His clothes were entirely black, save for some gold trim. And his face had dark black tear streaks that looked like flowing rivers of tar on his cheeks. His hands were pitch black and disconnected at the wrists. And the only trace of emotion on his face was a staged, cold smile.

“I’ve been waiting.”

Remus stood, weapon at the ready. “What have you done with my brother!?” he screeched.

“What are you talking about? I am your brother. The only difference is that I’m not pretending that I’m the hero anymore. That was a stupid idea to begin with, so I’m sure you understand.” His voice was monotone, with no trace of feeling or emotion, just flat and dead.

Patton’s own tears started spilling over. “What are you talking about? You are a hero, Roman! What happened?”

“I realized the truth. I make problems. Impulse decisions that hurt Thomas, because I felt too much. I was too emotional. So I took my feelings, and myself, out of it.”

“Emotions are an important part of Thomas, Roman. You should understand that.”

“No, you should understand, Logan. Thomas’ emotions are important. Not the ones I put into everything.” Roman’s hand waved away the conversation. “Besides, he’s got a different creativity, why would he need two? You seem to be doing so much better with me gone. You’re not fighting as much.”

“Bitch, I can’t be the only creativity! You know we had things the way we did for a reason, asshole! Now give me my brother back!”

“You are an integral part of Thomas as you were, Roman.”

“Roman, please! You know that’s not true!”

The scattered objects surrounding them flew up into the air and started spinning. “QUIET!” Roman shouted. “You’re all WRONG!”

The right hand, completely separate from Roman himself, curled up into a fist and slammed into the side of his face. Remus lunged at him, but was suddenly ripped back and thrown towards the back of the wall. Roman gasped, then returned to a completely stoic expression.

Roman’s eyes had a tinge of concern. “Remus? Are you hurt?”

Remus was already standing again. “No. Not at all, no thanks to you, dickwad!” He started to charge again, barely reaching the same point before he was thrown backward again.

“It’s not exactly… Well, it shouldn’t hurt anyways. But you can’t get too close. I can’t let you.”

“What did you want us here for if you won’t even let us approach?”

“I was just waiting in case you came. I didn’t expect you to. I guess it’s just a chance for you to know where I ended up. If you want, you can leave now.”

Virgil mustered everything he could and took a step forward. “We’re not gonna abandon you, princey. Not like this.”

“And what’s wrong with ‘this?’ I like ‘this’ perfectly fine, you can go.”

Janus stepped forward with Virgil. “We both know that isn’t the truth. This isn’t a solution to feeling bad. This is only hurting you more.”

“Why would you want to help me? Either of you?” Roman shook his head. “And anyway, that’s the thing. I don’t feel bad. I can’t now. It’s perfect. I can’t make those mistakes anymore. I won’t call either of you names, because I have no feelings to make me lash out. It’s perfect.”

“But you can’t feel good either, Roman!” Patton pleaded. “There’s a reason we have emotions, don’t you like feeling happy?”

“I…” Something flickered in his eyes. “Even ‘good’ feelings only caused problems. Those are the ones that made me choose things that would only be bad for Thomas. Like… a chance in a lifetime callback.” He chuckled dryly, his breath catching partway through. His expression changed, a frown and furrowed brows. “I…” The hands curled up and pressed into his eyes. Then, just as suddenly as he had started, he shot back up into the same pose and expression as before. It was almost as if it was a whole other person sitting there. “I promise, I’ve thought this through. It’s the best option for everyone.”

“Well, we didn’t exactly get to vote on it, did we?”

Roman laughed. “Are you kidding me? Why are you all trying to stop this? You have to pick one you know! You can’t just want me there when it’s convenient for you! All I did was make mistakes, so I took myself out of it! And now… That’s a mistake too? No! No, you’re wrong. I know what I’m doing. I’m helping!” A tear spilled out of his eye, and he winced in anticipation. Thud. Thud. Thud.

With every hit, someone ran forward, trying to stop it before just being tossed backward. It wasn’t supposed to hurt them, but Roman couldn’t focus enough to be gentle. Patton, Remus, and Virgil lay at the back of the room, the breath knocked out of their lungs.

Logan and Janus stood still in the middle of the room.

Roman’s head shot up, the hands returning next to his wrists. His face was covered even more in the thick tear streaks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” His voice was cracking with the effort to keep it steady. “You need to leave. All of you. I thought that I was better already, but I’m not. If you ever want to visit you- no. No, you can’t visit. That’ll make things worse. So just… Get out.”

“We aren’t leaving you, Roman.”

“It can be tempting to shut yourself away from the world, and away from feelings and emotions, however, you need to realize that this isn’t healthy.”

He shook his head. “Stop telling me I’m wrong. I don’t care what you think, you just need to leave.”

“Roman, none of us are bad, including you. You just need to-”

“I said STOP! You’re making things worse by being in here. If you won’t leave on your own I’ll make you leave. Why won’t you just listen to me? It’s for your own good!”

Logan started, “Roman, we-” and disappeared.

“What did you do with him?” Janus demanded.

“He’s not hurt! I just... sent him to his room and closed the door.” He paused for a moment. “Goodbye.”

And Janus disappeared too. Remus, Virgil, and Patton sat up against the wall furthest from Roman.

“You have to leave too. I’m sorry. Bye.”

“Wait!” Patton shouted. “Roman?”

He froze. “What? You can’t convince me to stop this.”

“I think I know that. But for what it’s worth… You’re my hero, Roman. I’ll see ya later.” Patton turned to the other two and smiled. “Good luck, I think you got this. You can get through to him I’m sure.” Patton sunk out.

The room got darker, and Roman’s hands clasped over his ears. “No! No, you can’t just-!” He shook his head, his breathing erratic.

Virgil and Remus nodded to each other, and Virgil stood up.

“Roman? Can you hear me?”

“Quiet! You can’t-!”

“I know. It’s scary. Trust me, I get that. But it’s okay! You can feel bad!”

“No!”

“Yes, you can! You’re strong enough.”

Thick tears poured down his face. “I- It just ruins things!”

“I know what that feels like! But even the parts you think are bad are important.”

“You don’t-”

Virgil took a few steps forward. “Yes, I do! Roman, I’ve ducked out! I know what you’re going through! But you’re just as important as everyone else, emotions and all. You do a lot of good for Thomas. For everyone!”

A sob broke through. “I don’t-”

“Yes you do, Roman. You’re so important. And we care about- no, we love you, Roman. You’re part of the family. You know that.”

“I’m… You… No! I can’t-!” The hands raised up, ready to strike, but stopped in their place. Roman blinked, and Virgil disappeared.

Remus stood. “Virgil? Shit!” It was his turn now. He stepped closer. “Shit, shit, shit!”

Roman’s head snapped up, the hands lowering. “Remus? You’re… still here?”

“Of course I am! Now cut this shit out!”

“What… no, no, I’m not going to. I have to keep this.”

“Why? It’s ridiculous!”

“No, it’s not! It’s helping!”

Remus took another step. “How is this supposed to be helping? You just threw me against a wall!”

“That was an accident! I didn’t-”

Remus groaned. “It’s fine. Just stop all this.”

Roman cried, “I can’t!” His head hung down. “I can’t stop any of this!”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s… safe! If I just stay in here and don’t feel anything, and you all stay out, no one can get hurt!”

He just had to get close enough. “Getting hurt is part of life, dumbass! But it’s worth it because so is everything else. You get to be happy, you get to have people who care for you!”

“They don’t really ca-”

“Don’t finish that fucking sentence, you know that’s a goddamn lie! Why else would we come here?” Remus sighed and shook his head, tears stinging his eyes. “Ro-bro, we care about you a lot. No one wants to leave you here to rot.”

“Ro… You haven’t called me that in years.”

He was almost there. “We’ve both fucked up, okay? Just cause we’re different doesn’t mean we should fucking fight about it.”

Roman didn’t respond. Remus stepped closer.

“It’s okay. We’ll figure that out later, when you’re back.”

“I just don’t want to be the bad guy. I’m sorry that I made you take that role.”

“I know you don’t. You’re not the bad guy. Neither of us are.” He was close enough now. “Roman, you can still be the hero.” Remus kneeled in front of the throne, tears spilling down his own face. “You just need to come back, Ro-bro. It’ll be okay.”

Roman smiled sadly and limply collapsed into Remus, his own hands clutched to his chest. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You’re okay now.”

“Please… please don’t leave me alone.”

“I’m not going to, Ro-bro.” Roman closed his eyes.

The door behind them swung open, smacking the wall next to it. Virgil, Patton, Logan, and Janus came running through. The brothers were back to their proper colors.

Virgil hesitated. “Is he… okay?”

Remus wiped his face. “Yeah, I think he will be. Let’s get him out of this shithole though, he’s been here for long enough.”

Remus stood up and carried Roman to the door. Everyone else stood there.

“What… happened?”

“A lot. But he’s better now. Meet you all downstairs at the couch. Don’t come empty-handed, it’s movie night.” And he walked away.

Virgil and Janus brought down as many blankets and pillows as they could find; Logan grabbed the movies and a special weighted blanket for Roman, and Patton supplied the food and hot chocolate.

Roman was situated in the middle of everyone, still sleeping. When he did wake up, a couple of movies in, everyone smiled at him.

“What…” His eyes widened. “Are- are you all okay? I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s okay, Roman. We’re here for you, and we’re all okay.” Patton beamed, “I’m so proud of you for making it through that.”

“But I…”

“That must have been horrific to go through, but you were very brave,” Janus added.

“You’re all okay? I don’t… remember much. But I-” Roman tried to sit up suddenly, and winced. “I- you were flying at the wall and- are you sure you’re okay?” Remus, Virgil, and Patton nodded.

“We’re fine, Princey. We promise.”

“I… I’m so tired.”

“Well, there’s no way we can tell quite how long it’s been since you slept, so that’s not exactly unexpected.”

Janus agreed. “You should rest Roman, it will be good for you.”

“But, you-”

“We’ll all be here when you wake up kiddo, let yourself rest.”

“Re? You…”

“Quiet, I’m taking a nap too.” He smiled, genuinely. “It’s a lot of work saving your ass Ro-bro. We should get back to sleep.” He closed his eyes. “We’re both heroes for getting through all that today. We can talk later.” He paused. “And if I’m not here when you wake up, you can always come get me. We’re there for each other.”

Roman felt his tears on his cheeks, but they were good this time. He felt so warm, and safe, and loved. He let himself breathe, lay his head down, and close his eyes. He was finally relaxed, and happy. Roman fell asleep, surrounded by everyone he cared about, with a smile on his face.

Heroes.

[sunsetcurve]

learn to love without consuming (1/4)

fandom: knight squad relationships: arc / ciara, minor or one-sided arc / oc and ciara / oc word count: 4,603

a/n: eek. it's finally here. if you follow me here you know that i've been working on this for a few weeks (months?), but the idea has been sitting in my drafts for basically forever. almost since i watched the show to begin with. the recent resurgence of the ks fandom prompted me to dig this back up and gave me the motivation to actually try and finish, because fuck it! i love my babes and i want more of them.

so quick note is that this picks up pretty soon after the season 1 finale but disregards basically,,, everything that happens in s2. s1 and the finale proceed the same way except prudy never finds out ciara's secret, so she and warwick don't know at the moment. this chapter was initially gonna have more scenes that drove the plot/romance arc but once i got upwards of 6k with a few major scenes left i decided it would be best if i split the chapter up, so for now it’s just a lot of me trying to work around the convoluted knight squad lore to establish my own. i know that's not exactly what everyone is here for, but i promise things on the romance/action front will pick up soon. i'll place warnings as detailed as i can get without spoiling in the tags and notes as i go, but just anticipate fairly significant violence by chapter 3.

anyway! i have talked enough. the title is from thus always to tyrants by the oh hellos, the rating is t for swearing/violence, there are three more chapters that are in the process of being written, and reviews are like crack as far as i'm concerned. i really hope you like this! thanks for reading <3

dedications: this fic is first and foremost for @ciara-knightly, who is not only my amazing beta but also the whole reason this fic exists. she helped me so so much with the development of the plot and worked through it with me even way before i decided to really start writing it, and i wouldn’t have been able to do this without her. all of the notes she left after beta-reading were so so helpful and really made this whole fic make sense so basically i owe her my entire life. she inspires me to be a better writer all the time and i love her. everyone say thank you shona!!! also tagging my lovely friends and some people who have expressed interest, who are in no way obligated to read this; @juliesdahlias @mistyskiesrambles @dr-rigatoni @willexs @taylorswiftrulestheworld @onplanetmars @neshatriumphs @zackmartin @julies-molinas @soni-dragon @yagorlemmalyn @hopefulbeautifulfool @cactus-con @waterisntreal @onetwothreefarkle @bitchmilsky

summary: “Now that Ryker isn’t a threat anymore, the councils are supposed to resume as planned, and Astoria is set to hold the first one two weeks from now.”

“Okay,” he says slowly. “That sounds exciting.”

Ciara nods. “It is! I finally get to meet some of the other nobility, and actually get to be involved in Astorian politics for once. But my dad won’t let me go without an escort,” she says, and then hesitates. “Which is where you come in.”

read it on ao3

The morning before training that day, Arc is testing his skills against a heavy bronze padlock when Ciara enters the squad room and drops a brown paper bag on the table in front of him. 

“These,” she announces as he raises an eyebrow at her, “are for you.”

He pulls open the package and is instantly greeted with a rush of warmth and the smell of vanilla. “Dragon puffs?” he says, half in awe. It’s a clear bribe, but he can’t help but shove a sugar-coated sweet in his mouth anyway. They’re an Astorian original and possibly the best thing he’s ever tasted; he’d tried them once at a bakery near the castle and hasn’t stopped thinking about them since. 

“Okay, what do you want?” he says then, words muffled around the cream and pastry.

Ciara pulls a face at his manners, but still manages to blink innocently at him. “Can’t I just do something nice for a friend?” she tries, but it’s half-hearted.

He swallows and grins at her. “Nice try, Princess. Your dessert deliveries always come with an ulterior motive.”

Huffing a sigh, she sits down next to him. There’s this subtle air of anticipation lingering around her, one he can only sense based on how in tune they are after so long of being teammates. The two of them have this easy way of reading each other now; they’ve been spending more and more time together, something having shifted in their dynamic after the battle against Ryker. He can’t quite place what it is, but he knows it’s only brought them closer. “Do you know what the Council of the Five Kingdoms is?” she asks finally.

He shrugs. “Sure. Nobles from each kingdom used to have a big ball every year to talk trading and politics and other boring stuff…”

“Except there hasn’t been a council since Ryker’s invasion, because the kingdoms have been isolated and preoccupied with their own safety,” she finishes for him. Her fingers tug at the lacing of her leather gauntlets; she’s nervous, but he still isn’t sure why. “Now that Ryker isn’t a threat anymore, the councils are supposed to resume as planned, and Astoria is set to hold the first one two weeks from now.”

“Okay,” he says slowly. “That sounds exciting.”

Ciara nods. “It is! I finally get to meet some of the other nobility, and actually get to be involved in Astorian politics for once. But my dad won’t let me go without an escort,” she says, and then hesitates. “Which is where you come in.”

Arc chokes on his second dragon puff. “You want me to be your escort,” he says flatly, once he’s finished coughing, “to the Council of the Five Kingdoms?” Normally he’d jump at the chance to spend a night dressing up and eating castle food. But the council is a decidedly different scene; there’s a set of formalities, politics underlying everything, and too many chances for him to expose his lack of knowledge when it comes to Astorian customs. Not to mention that Catalias’ royals will be there. He doesn’t know if he can stomach looking them in the face, knowing what they did to Seagate.  

Ciara grimaces. “Look, I know it’s not exactly your thing, but my dad won’t let me go alone. And this really means a lot to me.” Her eyes are pleading, and Arc feels his resolve chipping away.

“Can’t one of your actual guards go with you?” he tries. “Or, Prudy or Warwick or someone?”

“I’ve already talked to my dad about it,” she explains. “You’re the only Knight School student he’d let protect me, because you already proved you could when Ryker invaded. Besides, if something were to happen…you’re the one person who knows I can handle myself as Ciara.”

There’s this brief stretch of silence where Arc works his bottom lip, and Ciara looks as though she’s debating something. “Also,” she adds finally, with the soft flicker of a hesitant smile, “I thought it might be fun to go with you.”

Arc blinks at her, caught off guard by the admission. There’s this sudden buzz in his chest that he can’t push away; in truth, he doesn’t like the idea of her spending the night with someone else either. Maybe, by some miracle, this will actually be a good thing. “Alright,” he relents. “I’ll be your escort.”

Ciara’s face breaks into a grin. “Yes! Thank you!” She throws her arms around him, and he’s shock-stilled, a rush of warmth flooding through him as he hugs her back. When she pulls away, her eyes are shining with excitement. “Okay, I’ve gotta go tell my dad you said yes, and there’s a million things to do, but I’ll see you at training later. You are the best.”

“I expect dragon puffs for life!” Arc calls after her as she disappears through her passageway. He leans back into the couch, lightheaded, and in that moment, he realizes abruptly that there’s almost nothing he wouldn’t do for her. 

And he is so completely screwed.

*

Two weeks later, Arc is standing outside Ciara’s bedroom, waiting for her to finish getting ready.

It feels odd to be out here in the open. Generally his visits to her chamber are accompanied by an air of secrecy, but tonight, he’s a guest in the castle. He’s dressed like it, too, decked out in the guards’ typical formal wear: pressed brown pants, a white shirt laced up the front, and a navy leather jacket trimmed in gold, with Astoria’s crest on one shoulder. He looks kind of dashing, honestly.

Despite the confidence boost his new look offers him, his hand keeps drifting to the hilt of his sword. It’s sheer force of habit; he only associates this brewing sense of apprehension with battle, and his muscles are responding in kind. He’s glad, at least, that he turned down the other guards’ offer to lend him one of their ceremonial blades and instead has the familiarity of his own. Hopefully he won’t need it, but it’s a steadying presence all the same.

“Almost ready!” Ciara calls from inside, and Arc carefully unclenches his fingers from around the leather grip of his sword. He has to keep it together tonight; she’s made it clear how much this means to her. The last thing he wants to do is embarrass her in front of nobles from all five kingdoms.

Well, four, he reminds himself. Seagate won’t be attending. There isn’t anyone left to represent them. 

The thought makes his stomach twist. 

He’s saved from having to dwell on it by the sound of Ciara’s door unlatching. “Better prepare yourself, Princess,” he teases, leaning against the wall, “I look pretty good, and the last thing we want is for you to get too smitten—”

He breaks off as she emerges from the doorway, all the air in his lungs leaving in a sudden rush. He’s trying hard not to be the cliche of a guy scraping his jaw off the floor at the sight of a pretty girl in a dress, especially not like this, with Ciara—but he can’t help but think that it’s ridiculously unfair of her to come out looking like that. Her dress is a pale blue, falling gently off her shoulders and cinching at her waist, and her tight curls are weaved with strands of gold and tied into a low knot, some of them falling loose to frame her face. There’s a crown of gold leaves and rosebuds settled in her hair. 

“You...um…” Arc searches for his voice, “you look amazing.” His mouth feels dry.

Ciara smirks and reaches up to adjust the collar of his uniform. “You don’t look so bad yourself. I’m definitely smitten,” she jokes, like it’s nothing for them to be flirting openly. It should be nothing. Except his skin burns where her fingers brush against his neck, and he suddenly wonders if she can hear his heart pounding.

He clears his throat. “We should probably get to the ballroom.” 

She nods. “Give me your arm,” she says, looking at him expectantly. When he raises an eyebrow, she continues, “You’re my escort, remember?” 

“Oh, right.” He lifts his arm obligingly, his cheeks warm.

“I really wish we’d had more time to go over Astorian customs,” she breathes as she takes it, more to herself than anything. “Between training and helping with preparations, I’ve been so busy…” His nerves must show on his face, then, because she squeezes his arm gently and amends, “Sorry. You’ll be fine, don’t worry. Just stay close to me, okay?”

“Not a problem,” he grins without missing a beat, and Ciara scoffs and shoves him, the smile tugging at her mouth taking all the bite away from it. 

They can do this, he thinks. The two of them have kept up appearances for each other for months now, have fought and trained and battled Ryker together. They’re Arc and Ciara, unstoppable duo. One little party should be nothing.

As they make their way down the hall towards the ballroom, flanked by guards, Ciara lowers her voice. “When we get there, most of the nobles should be inside already. The herald will announce my father first, then us, and then each of the other three kingdoms. We’ll be beside the thrones as they come in—you’ll stand by me, left side—and once they’ve all been announced, we can leave the thrones and mingle. Bow to each of the rulers as they come by.” 

They had, at least, practiced his bow. Arc swallows back the dread in his throat; all he has to do is stand beside her and greet the other royals, it’s easy enough. For a moment, they linger outside the entrance to the ballroom, until an official-sounding voice announces the King. “We’re next,” Ciara whispers to him, eyes glinting with excitement. “You ready?”

He nods back at her, and the voice calls, “Accompanied by Sir Arc...Princess Angelica of Astoria!” They step into the ballroom, greeted with applause. Arc doesn’t think he’s ever been in a place this lavish; the walls are white, accented in deep gold, and the floors are polished to a gleam. The ceiling looks hand-painted, ornately decorated in constellations and swirling designs, and crystal chandeliers dangle over their heads, casting a golden glow over the whole room. He tries not to look too awe-struck. 

They make their way to the platform on which the thrones rest, Ciara nodding and smiling and waving at the other nobles as they pass. She stands next to her father, and Arc takes his place on her other side, placing his hands behind his back and trying, for all the world, to look like he belongs there. He wonders suddenly if he’s stood too close to her, and if it would make things worse for him to shift over now, and if his indecision is showing on his face—

And then, almost imperceptibly and hidden from the ballroom’s view by the folds of her dress, Ciara reaches over and links her pinky with his. It’s a tiny gesture, a friendly reassurance, but Arc feels a tide of warmth swell in his chest all the same. He lets his gaze flit to her for just a moment, and her lips are graced with a small smile as she tugs his finger gently. 

His breath hitches, and he fights to keep his face a passive neutral as the herald announces the next kingdom and he turns his attention back to the doorway.

“Presenting King Hugo, Queen Luciana, and their son Prince Isaac of Catalias!” 

Arc’s stomach turns as the couple enters, trailed by their son, all three of them swathed in lavish red and gold. Their reputation precedes them; he knows little about the prince, but the king and queen are infamous for their hoarding of wealth, their favorance of the rich nobles and landowners of their kingdom over the common people. Arc knows them best for what they had done to Seagate. 

His hand twitches for his sword, but he fights against the instinct.

True to form, the two have a haughty look about them, all starched clothes and stiff smiles as they bow to Ciara and the King. The two of them return the greeting with Arc following their lead—grudgingly.

“I am so pleased you could join us tonight,” the King smiles, a little tight-lipped. “It is high time that Astoria and Catalias united again.”

King Hugo nods back. “I couldn’t agree more. The honor is ours.” 

Arc detects a veiled sort of tension between the two of them, hidden well underneath the cordial formalities. He glances at Isaac, whose eyes are trained intently on Ciara even as he and his parents move to greet the other guests. Something about it is unsettling.

He’s so focused on Isaac that he almost misses the herald’s announcement of the next kingdom. “Queen Damyanti, and her children Princess Aadhya and Prince Kavan of Khurjan!”

Queen Damyanti is the picture of elegance, draped in silver silk that almost seems to glow against her dark skin. Aadhya looks around fifteen, with the same deep eyes and regal expression, and Kavan must be ten or so. He grins toothily as the three of them approach the thrones and bow.

The King’s expression is much warmer now. “Queen Damyanti. It has been too long. I trust Khurjan is doing well?”

“Not quite as well as Astoria, perhaps,” she replies, and it’s teasing, no sharpness to it. “This ball is absolutely lovely. Princess Angelica, you look so beautiful. Just like your mother. I was so sorry to hear of her passing.”

Ciara’s eyes go soft. “Thank you, Queen Damyanti,” she nods back. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you.”

“You as well. It’s a shame your sister couldn’t make it, but hopefully we’ll all gather again soon.” She gives a small, departing nod and joins the rest of the nobles, Aadhya giving them a bright-eyed smile and Kavan waving enthusiastically as they follow her. Ciara laughs. 

“And finally...King Jesper of Vysalt!”

Arc is confused for a moment; he wonders if he had remembered the name of Vysalt’s king wrong. Then a young man with a head of dark curls and a smattering of freckles against tawny brown skin enters, his crown just slightly crooked. His eyes are wide and dark, and a jagged, white scar cuts across his cheekbone. He can’t be much older than they are.

“He’s the king?” Arc whispers to Ciara under his breath as Jesper makes his way over to them. “How old is he?”

Her expression twists a little in sympathy. “Seventeen. He wasn’t supposed to inherit the throne so soon. His parents were killed when Ryker’s army took over his kingdom.”

Arc isn’t sure what to say to that. He knows what it’s like to lose everything to Ryker—he can picture the flames every time he shuts his eyes. But he hadn’t known about Vysalt or the fate of its royals. They had been close allies with Seagate at one point, one of the only other kingdoms without much wealth, and their king and queen had been known for their generosity. 

Somehow Arc had thought the damage had been done to Seagate alone, but now he wonders how the other kingdoms fared, if they suffered just as much. If any of them came out as unscathed as Astoria did.

“Your Majesties,” Jesper says as he bows, and there’s a note of pity in the King’s expression as he returns the gesture. Arc can only imagine how he feels about someone so close to his daughter’s age having to run a kingdom on his own. 

“King Jesper. How are you doing?” 

It’s a more personal question than he had asked the other royals, Arc notes. Jesper smiles easily; it’s soft, highlights his deep dimples and makes his dark eyes glimmer. “Well, thank you. Vysalt is recovering with time. As am I,” he adds, voice quieting for a moment.

The King nods back. “That’s good to hear. Let us know if there’s anything Astoria can do to help.”

Something flickers in Jesper’s expression, hard to read and gone so quickly that Arc wonders if he imagined it. The young king bows again before moving to join the others, but not before he catches Arc’s eye and smiles warmly. It surprises him—the other royals had hardly given him a second glance—but he returns it with one of his own. Beside him, Ciara lifts an eyebrow, her expression a mixture of amusement and something else he can’t place. 

“What?” he asks quietly, and she shakes her head, glancing away. 

“Nothing.”

He wants to pry, but the King is clearing his throat, getting ready to address the room. The chatter dies down as all eyes turn to him.

“My fellow Astorians,” he says in his deep, booming voice, sounding more formal than Arc has ever heard him, “and my guests from our neighboring kingdoms...I am honored to welcome you to our castle, and so pleased that we could all be in attendance tonight.”

Not all of us, Arc thinks, but no word of Seagate comes up. 

The King continues, “For decades, our kingdoms have been isolated and divided by Ryker’s armies. We have long suffered under his forces, but his threat is gone for good. Thus, tonight is more than a council; it is a symbol of our victory, a symbol of our unity as we move forward and rebuild. So enjoy yourselves! After all, we have so much to celebrate!”

To Arc, the sentiment feels hollow. He got his revenge, and of course he’s glad that Ryker can’t hurt anyone else, but it doesn’t change the fact that Seagate is in ruins. It feels suddenly difficult to celebrate with the weight of his village’s absence lingering in the air around him. The rest of the partygoers don’t seem to share his hesitance, though; the room breaks into applause and cheers, several of the guests raising their goblets jovially. 

Ciara gives him a subtle nudge, jolting him out of his thoughts. “Now we get to mingle,” she grins, leading him off the throne platform and towards the crowd. 

He follows dutifully as she heads toward the table where the other kingdoms’ royals have gathered, Astoria’s king staying behind to greet the other royals. Queen Damyanti is in conversation with King Hugo and Queen Luciana, but she doesn’t seem entirely pleased about it, and Jesper and Kavan are laughing at something Aadhya has said. Isaac hovers next to them, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. He has his father’s golden hair and clear blue eyes, but the frown on his face is entirely his mother’s.

It disappears, though, the moment he sees Ciara approaching them. “Princess Angelica,” he greets her, with a little too much enthusiasm for Arc’s liking, “I’m so honored to finally meet you. You’re even more radiant in person.” Before she can say anything, he takes her hand and kisses it swiftly. Arc narrows his eyes.

Ciara gives a forced-sounding chuckle and curtseys, pulling her hand back. “Thank you, Prince Isaac. I’m glad you could make it. Allow me to introduce Sir Arc, my guard and escort for the night.”

Arc bows—and if he never has to bow to another pompous royal again, he thinks, it’ll be too soon—and Isaac offers him a dismissive sort of half-smile. Any further interaction they would’ve had then is thankfully avoided by the other royals noticing Ciara’s arrival.

“Hi, Princess Angelica!” Aadhya says brightly, with a neat little dip of a curtsey, “I’m Aadhya.” When Ciara and Arc begin to return the gesture, she waves her hand with a tiny scoff. “Oh, you don’t have to do that. Formalities. Just come sit.” She returns to her chair and pats the seat next to her, and Arc decides right there that he likes her.

Ciara takes the offered chair, and Arc takes the only other open spot, in between her and King Jesper. As Ciara launches into conversation with Aadhya, Jesper turns to him. 

“Hi,” he says, a small smile tugging at his lips. “I’m Jesper.”

Arc bites back a laugh at the unnecessary introduction. “I know who you are, Your Highness,” he replies lightly.

“I know. I was just trying to give you an opening to tell me who you are.”

Oh. That’s unexpected. There’s no prerogative behind his words, no assertion; Jesper’s grin is almost bashful, his voice easy and bright. He doesn’t sound like a king, just a seventeen-year-old boy trying to flirt. Arc can’t help but return his smile.

“I’m Arc,” he says. “Normally I’m a student at Knight School, but I’m the princess’s guard and escort for the night.” 

“Wait,” Aadhya pauses her conversation with Ciara to lean over and look at him, “You’re the Arc who defeated Ryker?” 

“I helped,” Arc says with a shrug, and the princess’s eyes go wide. She turns to Ciara.

“Were you there too?”

“I was—” Ciara pauses for a moment, “hiding. I was hiding. Arc got me to safety.” 

He grins a little at her, tongue between his teeth, knowing it must be killing her to hide what she was actually doing. She narrows her eyes and kicks his leg under the table in response, a silent shut up. He lifts his eyebrows, like, I didn’t say anything, and she rolls her eyes in an entirely non-subtle manner. 

Across the table, Queen Damyanti is watching their exchange with a raised eyebrow, Arc notices belatedly. She has a mildly amused look on her face, but doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, she states, “Battling Ryker face-to-face must have been quite the experience.” 

“What was it like?” Prince Kavan asks eagerly from beside his sister.

Aadhya elbows him. “Kavan,” she hisses, but Arc just grins.

“No worries. It was…” he trails, trying to think of what to say and suddenly aware that all the royals’ eyes are on him. He shifts in his seat. “It was scary, obviously. He had the Armor of Astoria, and a whole army with him, and most of the Astorian knights under his spell. But, y’know. We Knight School students are pretty formidable. We all took him on together. Wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise. I wasn’t half as scared as I would’ve been without my squadmates watching my back.”

He glances at Ciara, who smiles softly and nudges his foot, gentler this time. Jesper has that same unreadable look on his face and Aadhya has her chin propped in her hand, her expression amazed, but Queen Luciana gives a snide sort of scoff. 

“It’s a wonder it took so long to defeat him, then, if a group of students cut him down so easily,” she says. “Perhaps Ryker was never as great a threat as we all made him out to be.”

There’s a cut of silence across the table in which Jesper visibly stiffens. “With all due respect, Queen Luciana, Ryker’s attacks were devastating. Or have you forgotten what happened to my parents?” he demands, without any respect at all. His eyes are blazing. 

“I’m merely pointing out that the only real damage done was to the less...fortified kingdoms,” she sniffs. “Ryker only breached Catalias’s walls once, and he was driven out rather quickly.”

“Well, not every kingdom has Catalias’s resources.” Ciara sounds like she’s choosing her words carefully, frustration masked well behind them.

King Hugo gives a huff of a laugh; his blue eyes are cold. “My dear princess, you have no cause for indignation. Astoria lost the least to Ryker, what with your,” he waves a hand, “magic bubble.”

Ciara opens her mouth but falters, brow furrowed, and across the table, Queen Damyanti speaks up. “Nevertheless, Ryker was still a formidable enemy to all of us. We were only prepared for his attacks because he targeted Seagate and Vysalt first. And Seagate’s destruction is a clear example of his power.”

“Oh, even you can’t argue that Seagate was rotting long before Ryker got to it, Damyanti,” Hugo replies swiftly, and Arc’s breath catches in his throat. Queen Damyanti shrugs in agreement, her expression passive; Arc almost stands up, but Ciara’s hand on his leg underneath the table stops him. 

“Don’t,” she hisses, just barely loud enough for him to hear, “Let me handle this.”

Though as it turns out, she doesn’t have to. Before she has a chance to speak, Jesper is already bristling, his voice sharp: “As if Seagate’s corruption justifies the destruction of its people?”

“It’s thieves and criminals, you mean?” Isaac scoffs. “Seagate was a wasteland. The kingdoms are better off.”

The words ring in Arc’s ears, alongside the pounding of his blood. They sound painfully similar to what Ryker had said to him on the mountain—rats and thieves, I did the five kingdoms a favor—and he thinks fleetingly that he’s going to be sick. He’s always known that Seagate was looked down on by the other kingdoms, but hearing them say so casually that what happened, the flames and the destruction and all of the death, was deserved—

“The people were only thieves and criminals because Catalias took advantage of them,” Jesper argues. “I hope I don’t have to remind you that it was your government that poured money into the gangs of Seagate for their own profit and allowed them to stage a coup in the first place.”

The words are deadly and cold, but Arc feels a flash of admiration for Jesper; the king has no obligations towards Seagate, and yet defends it like his own. King Hugo’s gaze hardens. “You’re blaming Catalias for Seagate’s problems?” he says with a derisive laugh. “If anything, Ryker’s attacks only revealed that Seagate was a kingdom full of people that weren’t worth saving.”

“That’s enough,” Ciara says abruptly. Her hand tightens on Arc’s leg, and he can no longer tell if he’s the one trembling or if she is. There’s this burning fire behind her eyes; she looks, Arc thinks briefly, the same way she does in battle. “What happened to Seagate was a devastating tragedy, and I won’t let you treat it as otherwise. Those who disagree aren’t welcome here.”

It’s a weighted statement, one she doesn’t entirely have the formal authority to make, but no one dares to contest it. A heavy silence settles over all of them. Arc doesn’t know how long he can sit there with all the heat under his skin; he doesn’t remember when his hand found the hilt of his sword, only that he’s gripping it tight enough that the leather bites into his palm. He wants to stand up and tell them that none of them would be here if it weren’t for him, a thief from Seagate. In truth, the only thing holding him back is Ciara. In a battle between her steady hand and the storm in his chest, she wins without even trying.

He doesn’t say anything or look at her, but her gaze flits to him for a moment and she just knows, standing up. Before she even opens her mouth, Isaac is on his feet too. “Going so soon?” he asks. “Would you care to dance, Princess?”

She looks at him coolly for a moment. “I would, actually.” And then, she turns to Arc, offering him her hand, “Sir Arc, dance with me?”

Arc blinks up at her and takes it as he stands. “Absolutely, Princess,” he says, letting her lead him away from the table and glancing back only long enough to catch the dumbfounded expression on Isaac’s face.

[cicada-bones]

The Warrior and the Embers

Chapter 35: Blessing

Sorry about the wait (...again lmao) But I hope you enjoy, and let me know what you think! (also - this is the last one before the meeting between Maeve and Aelin! We really are getting close to the ending!)

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For the first time, seemingly in weeks, Rowan awoke with a clear head.

Today, they would leave Mistward. In the week that had passed since his…cadre’s…departure, the fortress had gotten no word from the capital. No summons, no orders. This did not comfort him.

Maeve knew everything, she had to. But instead of choosing to strike, she was biding her time. She knew that he had to return to Doranelle eventually. It was not to her advantage to drag them home early, and against their will.

As Rowan walked about their rooms, gathering various belongings, he couldn’t help but wonder what had happened upon the cadre’s return to the city. Couldn’t help but imagine what they had been forced to endure on his behalf.

Aelin stirred in bed, giving Rowan the chance to shake away those thoughts. He took it gratefully.

The princess sat up, her golden hair rumpled. Cloudy eyes found his. “It’s time to leave. Isn’t it?”

Rowan only nodded.

Within half an hour, they were ready to depart, and found themselves standing at the kitchen door, saying their goodbyes to Emrys, Malakai, and Luca.

Somewhere to his right, Aelin was enduring a torrent of worry and affection from Emrys, all while the old male shoved more food than Rowan thought was in the entire fortress pantry into her rapidly-filling pack. Rowan was facing Malakai, who seemed to be struggling to figure out what exactly to say.

The prince decided to take pity on the male. “It has been an honor, Commander,” he said firmly, with a slight bow of his head.

Malakai’s body jerked, his scent speaking of surprise. “…the very same, Your Highness.” The old commander also bowed his head, respect lining his brow.

A small smile graced Rowan’s lips as he backed away, allowing Aelin to say her final goodbyes without any interference.

The princess was looking at the three males, her brow furrowed with anxiety but her scent warm with affection. “It might take a while,” she was saying, “but if – when, I reclaim my kingdom, the demi-Fae will always have a home there. And you two – and Malakai – will have a place in my household, should you wish it. As my friends.”

Emrys’ eyes were gleaming as he nodded, gripping Luca’s hand. Malakai let the ghost of a smile intrude on his resolute expression. Rowan had to hold in a grin at the sight – the gruff commander really had let this female worm into his heart, whether he had wanted it or not.

Luca was openly staring at Aelin, his eyes filled with wonder. Rowan was not sure whether he had ever truly understood who he had spent all those weeks toiling beside in the kitchens. But there was no doubt in his mind now – this was a future queen standing before them. And no longer could anyone easily forget it.

Pride at everything Aelin had accomplished coursed through him. Pride and fondness. He had known that he loved her, deep in his heart, for days – weeks, really. Ever since he saw her looking back at him through the Valg darkness, and she smiled at him, with that Queen’s smile.

Aelin reached out and ruffled Luca’s hair, a warm smile stretching her cheeks. She made to turn and join Rowan at the edges of the trees, but before she could Emrys spoke up.

“Your mother would be proud,” he said. Aelin put a hand on her heart and bowed her thanks. Rowan knew without even needing to taste her scent that words wouldn’t be capable of communicating the depth of her gratitude.

But the morning was beginning to wane, so he cleared his throat softly. And Aelin gave the three males one last parting smile before she followed him into the trees.

Their feet were light as they padded over the leaf-dusted earth, their speed increasing until they were once again streaks of gold and silver through the misty undergrowth. Only this time, their path headed up the mountains to the east, in the direction of the rising sun. To Maeve, at last.

···

The whipping was no more than he deserved.

Lorcan didn’t have to say it out loud to know that it was true, though he’d found himself repeating it over and over again in his head over the past two days. Days that he had spent tied to a post in the stocks, being whipped by Cairn.

There was no warning before Cairn entered the small, muddy yard. No time for Lorcan to prepare. All of a sudden, he would feel a breath at his back, would hear the slight pull of feet in mud, and then the iron would rent his back.

Cairn worked at him for what felt like hours at a time, his every stroke of the whip coated with gleeful mutterings and shouted taunts. Lorcan knew that the vile male took every possible pleasure in having such power over him, that every sound he made would be played over in Cairn’s mind for weeks or months to come.

So Lorcan kept as silent as he could, each stroke of the whip becoming a vow of revenge.

He knew that he deserved punishment. But this, this was something different. This was personal. And Lorcan would take his vengeance on Cairn even if it took him unto the end of his life.

Mostly, Lorcan slept. And let the pain and rage consume him.

Even so, Lorcan couldn’t find it within himself to really regret the decision. The betrayal. Rowan had not lied – if they hadn’t come, Mistward would have fallen. They had saved him, and that fire-breathing bitch. This was just the price they had to pay.

But Lorcan wasn’t sure he would ever forget the sound of that word on his queen’s lips. Betrayal.

He had betrayed her. The one thing he had sworn never to do, not in his extraordinarily long life. And he had done it. When it came down to it, he had chosen Whitethorn’s life over his devotion to his Queen. Had chosen Rowan over Maeve.

And the truth of that decision shook him.

Maeve had found him in that hovel, those centuries past, had rescued him and nurtured him. Had made him into who he was. And yet he had betrayed her. It would be a long time before he would be able to reconcile that with himself.

He was her Second, her top commander, her most trusted confidant. He was responsible. The one in charge. He was at least as guilty as Whitethorn. He didn’t blame Maeve for her punishment of him, even as he hated Cairn for it. Even though he had betrayed his Queen, he could never hate her.

Ever since he had first beheld her, and felt the curls of her dark power brush his dark soul, he had loved her. There hadn’t been anything he could do about it. It was like they were made for each other, both creatures of darkness. Both Fae who stood alone and apart. Who were both loved, and hated, by those less powerful than they.

But she did not feel the same.

Her every rejection of him cut him to the quick. Lorcan tried not to let her see how much her indifference hurt him, but he knew that she knew. And that she gloried in it, in his suffering. Gloried in the way that they both knew this doomed courtship would never end, that he would never stop loving her, and she would never stop taunting him with that love.

Lorcan knew that she bedded Fenrys partially to spite him. Knowing that choosing him over Lorcan would hurt more than some noble, or courtier. And the fact that it worked infuriated him. But there was nothing he could do about it.

Other than perhaps be grateful that Rowan was her relation, however distant, and therefore could not be the blade of her choice. For it was certain that Maeve choosing Rowan to take to bed would hurt more than even Fenrys.

Rowan was his, not hers.

Or at least he was his. Not anymore.

Lorcan had lost Rowan to the clutches of some foreign whore. A bitch-queen from across the sea. And he had no idea how to get him back.

So Lorcan took his whipping with a curse, and a smile. Cairn was the least of his problems. And soon, Lorcan would ensure that the despicable male got what was coming to him.

Cairn left him there, bleeding on the stones, until day passed into night and then day again. And Gavriel and Fenrys came for him.

A key clicked in a lock, shackles fell into the mud with a thump, and Lorcan sagged to the ground, his limbs sighing in relief even as they wept fresh blood into the earth, red beneath his bloody body.

“Get him up,” Gavriel said softly, and Lorcan felt hands reach around his arms and pull him to his feet. “I’m sorry Lorcan, she ordered us not to heal your wounds with our power.”

Lorcan just grunted, forcing his legs to take his weight. They shook, but held. Fenrys began to guide him back up the path to the area of the palace that held their suites.

Lorcan frowned, but accepted the male’s assistance with as much grace as he could muster. He didn’t really have another choice.

“Anything to report?” Lorcan’s voice strained through gritted teeth. One step after the other, he said to himself, one step after the other.

“Nothing of any significance.” Gavriel shrugged. “We received word yesterday from the sentries that guard the western pass that the wolves spotted Rowan and Aelin making their way through the mountains.”

“So they are on their way to Doranelle.” Lorcan grunted.

“Evidently.”

“And when are they expected – ” he gasped, sucking in a breath through his teeth, “ – to arrive?”

“Within two or three days,” Gavriel said, soberly.

Fenrys, however, seemed to have a very different reaction. His scent filled with anger, and his muscles filled with tension, coiled to spring. He shook his head. “When Rowan gets here, I hope he suffers for what he’s done. I hope she drags him over hot coals for this.”

Gavriel turned in alarm, “Fenrys, you don’t – ”

“I mean it, Gavriel. I can’t wait to tell him what happened because he sent us those damned letters. To tell him that she tied Lorcan up in the yard and let Cairn – ”

“You will do no such thing.” Lorcan forced as much authority as he could into his pained voice. Fenrys frowned at him, confused. “You will not speak of this, not to Rowan, not to anyone.”

“But Lorcan – ”

“No, Fenrys. What’s done is done. There’s no changing it now. And it’s no use harping on about it like some upset child.”

Lorcan could feel Gavriel looking at him inquisitively, but Lorcan kept his eyes ahead, until they reached the familiar halls of the residential part of the castle and he shook off their assistance and told them to go and get some rest.

But before he could escape to his rooms, Fenrys tried to speak up one last time. “Lorcan, Rowan should – ”

“No, Fenrys. And I will not hear any more of this from you. You will not speak to Whitethorn about what happened here, and I’m tired of saying so. And if I find out that you defied a direct order, there will be consequences.” Lorcan stared him down, looking the young male directly in the eyes, until Fenrys nodded and turned away.

Gavriel nodded as well, and the two males left the stone corridor.

Lorcan collapsed facedown into bed, but for long minutes, sleep eluded him. He knew that within a couple of hours, or perhaps a day, his own magic would heal the wounds to his body. But right now, they hurt enough to keep him from sleep.

Rowan would have enough to face when he reached Doranelle, he didn’t need Fenrys attacking him at first opportunity as well. And the knowledge of what Maeve had done because Rowan had called for their aid…he didn’t need that weighing on his soul.

Rowan hadn’t really had another choice. He needed to save the fortress, and the demi-Fae. Needed to save the female he loved.

Lorcan turned over in bed, the sheets rustling as he groaned in pain. If Lorcan knew nothing else, he knew how far one would go for the one they loved.

···

Rowan awoke with the rustling of leaves, and the flicker of a breeze over his cheeks. It whispered of birds chattering, a far-off stream, of the coming dawn, and of the countless dreams of slumbering Fae, hidden just from sight.

He rose slowly, his eyes automatically flicking over to his left side to check on the female who was still slumbering there. Aelin’s eyes flickered beneath her lids, her brow furrowed and her mouth open, letting the occasional bated breath escape. Telltale signs of nightmares haunting her sleep.

Rowan frowned and stood. There was nothing he could do, and she needed all the sleep she could get, even if that sleep was restless. Today, she would meet with the Queen of the Fae, and show her all that she had learnt.

They had camped that night at the top of a hill, at the bottom of which you could see the rivers that would lead them through the rest of the valley and right up to the stone walls of Doranelle. Rowan strode through their small camp, heading east to where the first glints of the rising sun could be gleaned over the ruffled edge of the horizon.

Below him, the river water churned, gray and violent and deep. Surely a promise of what was to come.

Today, he would see Maeve again. For the first time in months. For the first time since he had realized the true depth of what he had given up the day he swore her the blood oath. Rowan wondered how long it would take her before she knew that she had lost him forever. Wondered if she already knew. Surely Lorcan and Gavriel had told her what happened at the ward-gates? Surely she must have guessed?

Either way, all would be decided before nightfall. Relief and panic warred within him, fighting for dominance. Both held fast.

Rowan turned to glance back at the queen – his Queen – shifting on her bed of leaves, close to wakefulness. She was so beautiful. Everything he wanted, and everything he couldn’t have.

But something that he just had to save. Someone he had to save.

Desperation began to overflow within him, breaking through the final barriers of ice surrounding his heart. And then, as he turned back to face the now-rising sun, it happened.

At first, it was just a brush, like a trail of burning fingertips, across his brow and down his cheek. Then the feeling of a Presence. Greater and more terrible than he had ever thought to comprehend. Greater than any he could possibly imagine.

She was the sun and the stars and the hearth and the candleflame, the great and the small, the important and the insignificant. She was more than any would ever know, more than thousands of years of worship could appreciate.

She was Mala Firebringer.

And like a sunbeam though the morning dew, she appeared before Rowan Whitethorn, Prince of Doranelle, Lieutenant and second to Lorcan Salvaterre, and bloodsworn to Maeve, The Queen of All the Fae, a silent question ready on her lips.

What ails you so, Prince of Ice?

Rowan wanted to fall to his knees, to avert his eyes, to fall into some remembered prayer from childhood lessons. Yet he was frozen in place.

She was barely more than an outline, a shaft of light enclosed in the rising sun, but he felt her mighty power and strange gentleness as potently as if she were standing right next to him. And that mighty power felt…familiar. Like something he had already learned to love.

So Rowan breathed in her unknowable scent and offered up his desperate prayer.

Rowan Whitethorn begged the Goddess of Dawn to protect Aelin Galathynius. To keep her safe from Maeve when they entered Doranelle, to give her strength and guidance, and to let her walk out alive.

And yet Mala waited. Her question still unanswered. A hidden truth not yet acknowledged.

So Rowan unlocked that final door, and told Mala what truly weighed on his heart. Not for Aelin to survive, or to leave safely, having secured her armies and her peace. But for them to stay together. For Rowan to remain with Aelin, the woman he loved. Here or in any other world.

And as he admitted that, the deepest truth of his heart, Rowan felt the goddess smile at him, across time and space, through other worlds and bearing the prayers of thousands, as she disappeared into the brightening sun.

Aelin awoke, and moved to stand beside him. She cast him a questioning look, which he left unanswered. He didn’t know if he could explain what had just passed. But he knew that it had been something permanent, unchangeable.

They packed up camp and began to scale the hill, following the rushing river back to its source. To Doranelle they went, for their futures to be decided. To Doranelle, where a dark Queen lay in her spider’s web, waiting to pounce. To Doranelle, with the grace of a goddess bestowed upon them, their blades sharp, their steps light, and their eyes bright with star fire.

To Doranelle.

···

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Underneath the Same Starry Sky

My piece for the @fairytailcharityfanzine 💜 we can now share it, please enjoy!

Nalu Reflective piece that takes place during the one year hiatus, focusing on Natsu’s feeling during his training, and Lucy.

Every single muscle in Natsu’s body ached worse than being electrocuted by one of Laxus’ lightning bolts.  His joints screamed like a banshee if he even thought about moving an inch for the rest of the night and he prayed that come morning’s light he could get up to do it all again.  The training routine he’d carved out for himself was ten times harder than anything he’d ever attempted before, but it’s a necessary evil and one that numbed his mind to the reasons behind its mission.  Tartaros was a wake-up call.  A proverbial slap to the ego that brought the mighty Fairytail guild to its knees.  Sure, they won the battle, but at a substantial cost.

He couldn’t afford to lose like that again.  Not when there were so many things at stake.

But tonight, there’s nothing more he can do except lie on his bedroll staring up at the sky.  If someone attacked him now in such a vulnerable state, they might win.  He doubted it.  Even the locals steered clear of the mountain he’d chosen.  Too afraid of the rumors of a crazy fire wielding man who could shake the very bedrock beneath their feet.  No, tonight it’s just him, Happy, and that sky.  A beautiful expanse of darkened heavens with no clouds to dampen its effects.

Ugh!  Nights like this were the hardest.  Each time he opened his eyes and gazed upon those twinkling stars his partner would drift into his mind and throw it back into chaos.  Lucy…. The golden queen who reigns over the celestial world, adored by her spirits, loved by her friends, and treasured by his truly.  

Everything he did was to protect the ones he loved.  And above all, her.

Just thinking about the attractive blonde sent a strange flutter through his core.  Natsu wasn’t immune to the desires created in any hot-blooded male when seeing such an attractive female.  But she’s different, special, not something treated like arm-candy or tied down by anyone unless of her own choosing.  Besides, he didn’t feel worthy of her attention.  Not yet.  Maybe one day, but not until he could truly safeguard her future, even from his own demons.  Besides, there’s still much to do.  It’s only his second month and already the drain on his mind, body, and soul pushed him to his limits.  But Natsu’s no quitter.  Once he set his heart on something, he would move all of Earthland to see it through.  Things would get easier over time as his body adapts to the training, so until then, no pain, no gain, and a blonde waiting at the end of this goal.

‘I really wish you were here Igneel…. Too many questions I never got the answer to….  Even new ones on things I don’t quite know what to do with.’  Natsu lets out an audible exhale.  ‘I miss you….  It’s like a huge part of me’s gone and I know I’ll never get it back.  Will that empty feeling ever go away?’  His eyes close for a moment as he remembers the pain of watching the fight between Igneel and Acnologia.  He’d held out so much hope that Igneel would win, only to have that faith dashed against the rocks like a ship, wrecking along the shore.  It was at that point, when Natsu felt like the small child again, alone and lost in the forest before Makarov had found and taken him to Fairytail.  He’d promised Igneel to keep growing, to keep looking towards the future, and he will.  He will get stronger!  But such pain and sense of initial loss from his childhood had never fully gone away, just sidetracked once he’d met Lucy.  

Again, with Lucy.  That day in Hargeon was the last time Natsu’d gone off on his own in search of Igneel.  Was that meaningful?  It had to be.  How else could one person, who he’d just met, unconsciously change his course in life if it didn’t have some major significance?  What would Igneel have said about her?  ‘Who am I kidding, he would love Lucy!  I bet he would tease me about her if he were here….  I know she would have liked him too….’  She would never be a replacement for his adoptive dragon father, but… ‘Lucy fills some void.’  A concept he couldn’t deny any longer.  

This training mission was the longest they’d been apart since, well, the day they met.  It’s a little weird, Natsu would admit, and he missed her along with all of his friends.  He wondered what they’re up to.  Are they rebuilding the guild hall right now?  Probably to be even bigger or better than before.  ‘Yeah…. It’s gonna be so nice to see it again!’  He should have stayed to help them rebuild, but this is more important.  ‘So, we don’t lose the next time!’  Did Gray miss their fighting, because he kind of did.  He loved to rile that ice queen up!  ‘I’m sure they’re all doing fine.’

But to take the power left to him by Igneel, he needed to strengthen his reserves and that took time.  He really didn’t understand how long he would be away for.  It could be months or even years; hopefully not the latter.  Mastering this new secret art is his primary focus and he couldn’t go back until he’d attained it.  It was his hidden weapon against his brother and it just needed to be perfect.  

Long blistering days had turned into weeks.  Laborious weeks dragged into months and as each one passed the physical pain had morphed into an emotional toll.  Now five months into his training, Natsu sometimes lost track of time itself, and it was only with Happy’s help that he knew how long he’d been at this.  The cheerleading Exceed made sure they had food or other provisions because the slayer would forget.  Even his hair was now past his shoulder blades, but he tied it back when it got in his way.  

Though it wasn’t all that bad, he’d made a lot of progress and was sure that it wouldn’t be too much longer till he could return home.  So, after another long day and a meal of roasted wild bird, Natsu submerges himself up to his neck in a nearby hot pond.  It was one of the few reasons he’d chosen this semi-isolated location.  The broiling waters were a bit too hot for any normal humans, but for a fire dragon slayer, something perfectly suited to soothe away his aches, and maybe some of his anguish.  Lately a few of Zeref’s parting words, “to kill or let live,” were toying with his mind.  “The one to reach me will be you or END…”  He still didn’t fully understand it.  Igneel also told him not to look at the END book.  But why not?  Who is this END person?!  “And what the hell did Zeref mean by passing to me, an even greater despair?!”  Regardless of not understanding, the message was clear.  Trouble was coming.

The steaming waters were making him sleepy, but he wasn’t ready to let it take him yet.  He just need to hash out these thoughts so he could move on because if he couldn’t, then he wouldn’t be able to focus on his training.  To concentrate the residual power, he needed a clear mind.  A long exhale escapes and Natsu closes his eyes.  Killing wasn’t the Fairytail way, so that wasn’t something Natsu even wanted to consider.  There had to be another solution, but it was difficult to figure out what that could be since he didn’t even know who or what this enemy was.  From the scant information they’d given him, END was the most powerful demon Zeref had ever created, one that not even Igneel could defeat.  That meant END could be his most formidable opponent to date, aside from maybe Acnologia.  

Acnologia…  all the hairs along his arm tingle.  The evil dragon born of a by-gone slayer era, is another problem that needed solving.  How were they supposed to defeat a dragon that other dragons were afraid of?  He remembered the quaking fear that all the slayers and dragons felt when Acnologia showed up.  Everyone’s panic and trembling emotions were palpable.  That vile creature had disappeared once more, but he’ll no doubt, show up at the worst time.  “Argh!”  Another beautiful part of being in the middle of nowhere, Natsu could scream all he wanted to.  He relaxes his eyelids, letting the feeling of the steam envelop his senses.  

Words unspoken passed between them as he hung his head whilst the tears flowed, and snot dripped.  Lucy held on tight, her arms wrapped around his middle, her face buried in the crook of his back like she’d done the night they’d defeated future Rogue.  Despite his promises to Igneel, Natsu’s heart had shattered and needed to fit back together like a jigsaw puzzle.  He was thankful that Lucy didn’t prod, just allowed him to feel, to process, like she just knew he would come out of this.  Her silent support meant so much to him, and she didn’t even know it.  

“Can we just go home?” he whispers under his breath.  “I’m tired.”

Lucy nods and moves to let go, but Natsu places his hand on her arm.  “To your apartment, just for tonight?  I’d… rather not be alone right now.”

“Sure, Natsu.”  

It was one of the rare occasions that Lucy didn’t kick him out of bed.  Maybe she was too tired.  After a shower, Natsu crawls under the covers.  Her calming scent of strawberry cream providing him some satisfaction, a reassurance that he wasn’t alone, and reminded him he still had a lot to live for.  And as his eyes close, the vision of her sleeping form, so peaceful, sends him off into a dreamless, yet fitful slumber.  

When light filtered through his closed lids the following morning, Natsu opens them to a fully awakened mind despite the pitiful amount of sleep he’d gained.  Through the night, Lucy had latched onto his side, keeping him pinned to his back.  She sighs, mumbling at his minute movements, before licking her lips and drifting away again clutched to his arm.  He exhales, turning to his side to gaze upon her better.  ‘Lucy…’ Natsu sweeps away some tendrils that had fallen over her eyes.  ‘How am I to protect her when I couldn’t even save my father?  How can I protect any of my friends from the dangers coming call?’  It wasn’t a matter of if he could, but a must.  He places a kiss upon her slightly furrowed brow.  ‘I promise you Lucy.  I swear on Igneel I will protect you at any cost!’      

Even though he’d decided that morning to leave on a training quest, he just couldn’t tell her, not in person knowing the pain it might stir back up for both of them.  All he could hope for a week later when he clutched the letter in his hand, that she would understand.  “Wait for me,” he whispers as he places the letter on her coffee table…    

Natsu opens his eyes.  Ugh, why was he dreaming about that now?  He twists his body in the steaming waters to rest his head on his arms on the edge.  How long had he fallen asleep for?  Couldn’t have been long since the position of the moon had only shifted slightly.  Maybe he was feeling a little guilty for leaving that letter the way he had.  It was a copout.  ‘Yeah…’ he sighs, ‘she deserved better from me, but I just couldn’t face her.’  Too late now to do anything about it.

It was almost over; he runs his hand over the new tattoo on his arm, reminiscing about the last 8 months.  All the power condensed in his body thrummed like a child excited to play with their new toy.  But it would have to wait and lay dormant for now.  Until the time was right, behind the symbols it shall remain.  This whole journey was one of self-recovery, through down-right struggles of the heart and mind.  So, unleashing the full power of the Fire Dragon King too early would be a waste of all that he’d fought to attain.  And that was okay, for through this self-discovery Natsu had become a lot stronger.  The control over his element was down to pinpoint accuracy, and whether as a stream of fire or as a conflagration, it was all by his manipulation.  He was giddy about showing this off and according to Happy, the perfect opportunity was coming up in just two months.  All the more reason for him to buckle down and finish his training.          

Lucy had hoped some of her friends would attend the games, even just to watch but no one did.  It was sad to think, ‘I’ve been looking this entire year…’ she breaks down against the wall filled with all the information she’d dug up on her ex-guildmates.  She knew where some were, while others…  Sigh, ‘Still nothing on Natsu.’  There’d been wild rumors that could be him.  Nothing concrete and they were always stories passed along from a friend of a friend.  But it was enough to comfort her sometimes, to know they were still under the same starry skies.  Ugh!  Lucy missed them all so much.  “Well, no point in crying about it tonight,” she laments to Plue.  Tomorrow was the finals, and she needed her sleep.  Lucy steals away to her bed and lets happier dreams bring her solace.            

Ten grueling months has passed by, but they’d made it!  The sun had yet to rise, but the pair arrived just in time to see the last day of the Grand Magic Games tournament.  Natsu turns his nose to the wind, scenting from atop a hill overlooking the large city of Crocus. “Happy, I think Lucy is here!”  

“But, why would she be here?” the Exceed queries.  “Could she be here for the games?”

“Probably.  We should look for her as soon as we can!”

“I thought you’re gonna challenge the winners?”

“Oh right,” Natsu smirks, “Imma go kick their asses and you look for her.”

“Aye sir!!”  

Morning’s light came and Lucy already knew it wouldn’t be very exciting.  The games only stirred up more pain from the loss of her friends and Fairytail, so it took a lot of self-motivation just to care.  Sure, there were exciting moments during the tournament but nothing like the year they won.  All the big guilds, their friends, no one took part this year saying it wasn’t worth it without Fairytail to compete against.  Lucy couldn’t blame them.  She takes one last longing glance at her wall and heads out the door.

‘Such a farce…’ Lucy stood there in the press box bored out of her mind.  Sure, Jason was excited after she’d pointed out Scarmiglione’s plan not only to win but to rake it in with the brokers.  Odds of 100 to 1 would pay out handsomely for anyone that bet on their win.  To her it was cheating and a blight on the games.  But no one had even noticed what they were doing.  Sad.  Then again, with none of the more powerful guilds in attendance, she guessed there wasn’t anyone around who could sense their true power levels except for her.  Surprise, surprise, she rolls eyes.  The crowds all jump to their feet when Scarmiglione’s last opponent falls, but Lucy is just happy it’s over.

But what’s this?  A rumbling murmur filters through the crowds.  She and Jason look over and see a heavily cloaked man walking into the arena.  Who is that?  What is this?!  So much power!  The hairs on her neck stand on edge.  “Evacuate the arena….” She cries out, but…  “Eh!”  The power and heat radiating off of the figure is burning her top off!  “Kiyah!”  Her arms frantically wrap around her bust, forgetting all about the danger.  As the smoke clears enough to see, she sees the culprit.  Her eyes widen.  “Natsu?!!!”

Screams of his name bounce around her.  Everyone is excited to see the slayer!

“Long time no see, Lucy!!!”

She turns around to see the flying Exceed.  “Happy?!!  What are you doing here?”

The other participants rush out to challenge Natsu but when his power and heat spikes even higher, they turn tail and run, screaming monster.  How hot does his power get?!  This was a lot stronger than she remembered him to be!  

The Exceed chuckles, “Natsu always tends to overdo things.”

But by then Lucy had stopped paying attention to the chaos going on around her.  The stadium was melting, members of Scarmiglione were out cold on the arena floor.  And all she could do was stare at the man she’d been wanting to see for so long.  It was really him and not a figment of her imagination!  A deluge of emotions floods her mind so quickly that there is no processing any of it.  Happiness, sadness, anger, nothing.  It was simply, in shock.  

With the rest of the challengers running in fear, Natsu finally realizes something.  He looks up and they lock eyes for a moment.  So fired up from his entrance, he’d almost forgotten she was here.  

“Yo!” his grin so wide it covers from ear to ear.  “Been a while, huh?  Lucy!”

Same old Natsu, she sighs, what had she expected?  With a crinkle of her eyes and a softening of her expression.  “How’ve you been?”

[wonjaekook]

Red Ocean, Black Sky

A/N: Is that enough warnings to turn people away who don’t want to read something like this? Hopefully (lol). I haven’t posted a fic for almost two months now, so hopefully this will make up for the drought. I guess you could call this a labor of love because I reaaaally didn’t intend to make it this long. If you have any feedback or feel like I should add a warning or anything like that, my ask box is open! Anyways, enough of that - enjoy :)

21 Tropes: 9. Organized Crime/Gang/Mafia-esque AU + azure w/Yuta

Description: One incident changes your life, pulling you onto a path of blood and death that you don’t understand. You’re afraid of what Yuta has brought you into and, maybe, with time, you’ll stop being afraid for long enough to ask the right questions.

Word Count: 18k Genre: angst, thriller (is that what you call it? adventure?) smut (barely, check the warnings), fluff (kind of? if you really squint?)

Warnings: violence (gets pretty graphic), blood, death/murder, lots of cursing, alcohol, somewhat sexual/suggestive language, relatively undetailed smut that you can skip (it’s obvious enough when it’s about to come up and starts with the line “The danger of him...” and the clean paragraphs start again with “You wait for the regret...” if you don’t want to read it; it’s only about two paragraphs long)

“Did you hear about what happened to that lady?”

“The one who sings at Kim’s Bar? Yeah, it’s awful.”

You try to make a point of not really listening to your coworkers’ gossipings. What they talk about is never good news. The first girl, Haneul, loves to run her mouth nearly as much as the second girl, Jooyeon, does. You’d think they would have learned better by now, with what all of you do, but they still speak much too freely for your taste.

“Heard they weren’t even after her. Was her brother they were after, but she was just in the way,” Haneul continues.

“Do you know whose side they were on?”

Sometimes it’s hard to block out the chitter and chatter.

“My ma said they went after ‘em because they were affiliated with the Neos.”

“Shit, best not be-”

“Shh!” Jinah, one of your more senior coworkers hisses at the other girls to be quiet when the front door swings open with an inappropriately cheerful chime, revealing three men. You keep your eyes down, not daring to look at their faces. From what you can see of their feet, the one in the middle steps forward and appears to represent the group. You can hear the fake smile in Jinah’s voice as she greets him. “Hello, sir. How can we help you?”

“I’m here to make use of your services. My shoulders have been hurting like hell.” You nearly let yourself relax when you hear what he’s here for, but immediately tense up again when he continues. “Keep this on the downlow.”

Jinah freezes before regaining her composure. “Sir, we don’t offer… those kinds of services until later in the evening. If you wish to partake, we-”

“I’m not here for that. Are you listening to what I’m saying? I’m here for exactly what I asked for.” The impatience in his voice has you clasping your hands together tightly to stop them from shaking. You think you would be used to these kinds of men by now, but you aren’t. Each new person that steps through the front door is a new danger. You can only hope-

“Ah, I understand. I’m sorry about the misunderstanding, sir; we’ll get you taken care of right away.” She pauses, turning to you. “Y/N, prepare a room for this gentleman.”

You can only hope you don’t get chosen. But, here you are. Somewhat stiffly, you turn around, stepping out of the reception area and towards an unoccupied room.

“Y/N is one of our best masseuses, sir. She’ll have that pain gone in no time at all. While we’re waiting, we can discuss payment...” You hear Jinah explain to him as you walk away, her voice drafting away as you close the door behind you. You almost wish you’d looked at his face to get a judge on his character, but you also know that you’ve met plenty of deceptive faces before. It’s better that you don’t see him. People can ask less questions that way.

Once you do all of your preparatory work, setting out oils and water, anything else you might need, you steel your nerves, twist the handle of the door open, and step out of the room. You stand in the entryway between the reception area and the back hallway, head bowed. “Everything is ready, sir. Please follow me.”

All you see are the tips of his surprisingly well taken care of shoes, a polished black, before you turn around, hearing his footsteps behind you as you take him to the room. Once the door to the room closes, he makes quick work of taking his upper layers off, handing you his jacket and button down shirt when you stretch out your hands for them. You’re about to instruct him to lie down, but he beats you to it. “I’d prefer to stay sitting upright. I’m sure you understand?”

The words are a threat but not quite a threat, so you simply respond with a quiet, “Yes, sir,” and fix the arrangement of the table. After he sits, his back to you, you finally look up farther than his feet. On his back, his skin illuminated by some of the dim light in the room, is a great work of art.

You pretty quickly recognize the work tattooed across his shoulders as a rendition of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. Except, where there should have been azure tattooed into his back, there’s only red. An entire ocean, dyed red. You’re too afraid to ask what it means. You’re paid to keep your mouth shut, so you do.

But, you’ve heard about him. Of course, he doesn’t tell you who he is, but you know he’s a big name. Still, you try your best to keep steady enough, beginning your work on his shoulders and back. His skin is smooth and muscled under your touch and his sleek, collar-length black hair is tied up, away from his shoulders. Looking at him from behind, in the flickering ambient light of the room, you try to remind yourself that he’s just a man. A dangerous man, but a man nonetheless. He has skin and bone and muscle just like you. Skin and bone and muscle that have probably taken lives far more significant than your own.

“Your hands are shaking,” the man says, not even glancing over at you.

“My apologies,” you say quietly.

“Are you afraid?”

You don’t stop working, your hands moving over his shoulders, though the air between you seems to still for a moment. You try to stop your voice and hands from shaking, pressing a little harder on his muscles as a result. “No.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

You don’t respond. You don’t rush your work, either. You give him exactly what he paid for and, after he’s pulled his shirt and jacket back on, you finally have the courage to look at his face.

You nearly let the shock appear on your face when you find that he’s actually quite handsome. He tips you well, giving you a dangerous, knowing smile, and you think that’s the end of it. Of course, it isn’t.

The gun to your head and the knife pressed to your side seem a bit like overkill to you, but if you die like this, then you suppose it would be fun to have it be an interesting death.

“Tell us what you know.”

“I don’t know anything.” It’s the truth - you really don’t have any idea what this man is talking about, and the weapons pressed against you aren’t bringing any particular memories to mind. Your mind, overloaded with fear, is nearly blank.

“Lying whore, you think I won’t cut the truth out of you?” The man’s breath reeks of cigarettes and general garbage and you nearly gag as he spits his words into your face.

“I’m telling the truth.” You answer through gritted teeth.

“Bitch! Tell me what you know about the Neos now or I’ll start cutting! One,” he pressed the blade deeper, “two,” you can feel the metal begin to dig into your skin, “three-”

He doesn’t get to finish the threat. Gunshots ring through the alleyway as the man threatening you and his backup all go down quickly and easily. You feel the bullet wizz past your head, barely brushing your hair as it nails him in the head. Thankfully, a dead man’s reflexes aren’t good and the gun and blade in his hands fall to the ground with clinks. You know the other men drop with him, but you can barely focus with the adrenaline and pure fear pumping through your veins.

You soon join them, falling to your knees as your shaky legs give out under you. Your breathing is uneven and quick and you don’t look up until a shadow falls over you.

It’s the man from before. The one with the wave tattoo.

He tugs down the black mask covering his mouth. You see his lips move. You don’t comprehend what he tells you but, against everything reasonable, you take his hand when he offers it to you. A familiar face in all of the bodies piled around you. Your body almost moves on its own and you let the man wrap an arm around you, a warm, almost smoky scent surrounding you from his jacket and muting the sharp metallic tang in the air. The other men who came with him are inspecting the bodies, but you don’t want to look at the reality of what just happened. You almost died. That could be you on the ground, your blood soaking into the cracked pavement of the alley. Your heartbeat nearly drowns out what the men are saying, but you catch snippets.

“Blue Veins. Haven’t fucked with them in a while.”

You dully register hearing one of the other men who had come with him curse. “Fuck. This one is a Rusher.”

“Blues and Rushers working together? Not in-”

“We need to get out of here,” you feel the chest of the man holding you rumble as he speaks, the same serious tone that you heard when he had been in your massage parlor, “and figure out what to do with her.” His eyes dart down to you and then towards the other end of the alley. “Shit.” Flashes of light appear at the entrance, the one you had been forced down and the opposite of the way they had come from.

The others seem to see the same thing. “Let’s get out of here.” From what you can see of his face not covered in a mask, he has a scar cutting through one eyebrow and his hair is a deep red. He’s the one who talked about the ‘Rushers’ a moment before.

“Can you run?” Though he directs the question towards you, he doesn’t give you much time to answer, only waiting for a stiff nod before he’s tugging you along behind him. Your legs try to keep up, but the only thing that lets you keep pace with him is his hand in yours. Somehow, the grip is comforting when you had been so afraid of him not even six hours before. Before you know it, you’re shoved into a sleek black car, breathing heavily in the backseat, wedged between the long-haired man and the third who had run with you, a thin brown-haired guy.

“Step on it, John,” the red haired man growls from the passenger seat, glancing out the window. One gunshot, then two sound as the man who had been waiting in the driver seat presses hard on the gas. You don’t hear bullets hit the car, but you instinctually duck against the long-haired man, who puts a comforting hand on you. Though the driver, John, is still going at a fast pace, a sort of silence falls over the car.

“Fuck.” The other man next to you curses loudly, tearing off his mask and revealing an angry expression that doesn’t match his youthful face. “Blues and Rushers? Couldn’t get any better, could it?”

“We’ll discuss it when we get back. Give me a minute to think.” The red-haired man also takes off his mask, sighing. In any other situation, from what you can see of his side profile, you would’ve considered him to be extraordinarily handsome.

The long-haired man turns to you, trying to give you a somewhat reassuring look. “Y/N, right?” You nod. “My name is Yuta. Are you okay? Not hurt?” You shake your head. “That’s good. I know it’s a lot. How do you feel?”

“I want to go home.”

He stays silent for a moment, the sympathy fading from his eyes into a more serious look, before answering. “We can’t let you do that. It’s not safe.”

Tears start to well up in your eyes, the entire experience beginning to hit and overwhelm you as your adrenaline rush dies down. “What’s happening? I swear I’ve never seen any of those men before in my life, and I...”

He doesn’t reach out to try and comfort you this time, his eyes cold. “We’re called the Neos.” Your breath stops in your chest. You had been right when you thought he was a big name. This is Nakamoto Yuta. Nakamoto Yuta who walks away from fights without a scratch on him, who stepped into the city of Seoul one day and instantly made a name for himself - a very blood name. Your eyes shift around the car, trying to place every person as he continues. “When you come face to face with a Neo, it’s a death sentence one way or another.”

“Not a reputation we’re terribly happy about, but it exists.” The man in the passenger seat, with the red hair and scar, speaks and you put the pieces together to identify him as Lee Taeyong, their leader. There’s a rumor that the closest anyone ever got to him put that scar through his eyebrow and put them in the grave. Never in your life did you think you would ever come face to face with the leader of the Neos, but life has been full of surprises as of late.

“Since you met Yuta earlier, you’re as good as dead without us, now,” the brown-haired one says, looking out the window and not at you. If you were to take a guess based on his looks and how fast he worked to take down the men in the alley, you would place him as Mark Lee - young ace of the Neos.

The driver, from what you can see, has a dark and handsome look to him. “Sorry, babe. You’re stuck for now. Might as well enjoy the ride.” The flirting and subtle hint of an American accent - Johnny Seo. Playboy and drag racer before he somehow got involved with the Neos. From what you’ve heard of girls in town complaining, he doesn’t mess around anymore. Too risky.

You’re almost proud you can identify all of them - maybe listening to your coworkers gossip at work had its benefits. “My coworkers? Are they going to be okay?”

“They’re going to be fine. They’re not after them,” Taeyong says.

“Though, one of them is a rat,” Mark mutters under his breath.

“Shut it.” Taeyong and Mark make intense eye contact for a moment before Mark tears his eyes away, looking back out the window. You decide that it’s best if you don’t ask anymore questions.

Before long, the car slows to a stop in an area you don’t recognize and you’re ushered out of the car. You follow Yuta and Mark trails you. Like they’re expecting you to run away. Like you’re some sort of prisoner. The first floor has an open layout and you spot some tables, chairs, and boxes scattered about. One of the handful of men standing around makes eye contact with you, but Mark nudges you, pushing you to keep walking. You break eye contact and lower your head.

Taeyong diverges and gives orders to the few that are loitering. “Meeting, now. Get everyone over here.”

“I can handle her on my own, Mark. Join them,” Yuta says over his shoulder, eyeing you. Mark seems to hesitate for a moment before breaking away. Turning back around, Yuta keeps walking, leading you up to the third floor of the building. He takes you into a long hallway with many doors - mostly shut - before opening one and gesturing for you to enter. “Stay here. You’ll be safe.”

“I-” You try to say something after you step in, but he simply shuts the door. There’s a single click after he shuts it. A lock. He locked you in. A prisoner.

You look around the room. He’s right - you’re safe from the other gangs here. But you’re in danger in a whole different way. It would be stupid to try and escape now, but you can’t help and look at the window. It’s boarded shut. You observe the rest of the room. An old bed, a dresser, a nightstand, and a mirror hanging on the wall. If worse came to worst, you could smash the mirror and use a shard as a weapon. You don’t want to trust the Neos. You can’t trust the Neos. Though they haven’t hurt you yet, they even saved your life, you know their reputation. You know they very well could hurt you. And you don’t want to take any risks getting comfortable.

You groan when you remember that your phone, wallet, and everything else you were carrying had been knocked out of your hands back in that alley. If you had just remembered, then maybe you’d be able to call for help now. Then again, you don’t think the Neos would be stupid enough to let you keep your phone. With a sigh, you walk to the dresser and start opening drawers. When you find them empty, you slam the last drawer shut and move to the nightstand. There, shoved in the back of the single drawer, is a pen. It’s a cheap plastic pen and definitely won’t do much damage if you have to use it as a weapon, but it’ll have to do. You slide it into your sleeve.

After thoroughly searching the room, you settle onto the bed, sitting and staring at the cracked cement floor. With the sparse furnishing and the locked door, the room feels like a cell. You wait and wait, mulling over your circumstance, until, finally, you hear the latch on the door click again and it opens. Yuta stands in the doorframe. “Come with me. We need to talk.”

“Will you let me leave yet?” You don’t hold back the snapiness in our tone - whatever your fate is to these gang members, it’s already been decided. You stand, no longer quite so afraid.

“I already told you it’s not safe.” His eyes follow you calmly as you walk towards him.

“You claim to be protecting me when you’re treating me like a prisoner.”

He scoffs in response. “You’re not a hostage and you’re not a prisoner.”

“Then why did you lock the door?”

“Why were you digging through the drawers? Looking for a weapon?” With a quick step, he moves forward and grabs your wrist, twisting it. A sharp pain runs through your arm and the pen in your sleeve slides out and clatters to the floor. “It’s going to take a lot more than just a pen.” He drops your wrist. “Come on.”

Obediently, you follow him. He takes you back to the first floor where quite a few more men are gathered than before. Looking at them, some are far too young to be called men: they’re much closer to boys. You can’t help but wonder what happened to get them involved in a group like the Neos. All of their eyes on you are sharp, cautious. Like Mark, all of the younger boys look like they’ve seen too much and the light of youth doesn’t shine as brightly in their eyes as it should. Almost like a scene out of a movie, they’re gathered around a table, Taeyong bent over a map that’s spread over its surface. He looks up when Yuta guides you over. “Any trouble?”

Yuta’s eyes flicker over to you before they move back to his leader. “None.”

Taeyong nods. “Alright. Y/N,” he says, looking at you, “you probably never thought you would hear this, but welcome to the base of the Neos.”

“Sorry we didn’t give you the warmest greeting. Strangers and all that.” The man you had first made eye contact with when you entered the building speaks up from next to Taeyong. He has a barely noticeable accent and seems to command nearly as much power as Taeyong - maybe one of the Chinese members of the Neos?

All you can manage is a nod in response. Taeyong continues. “Do you have any family in the city? Someone that can be used against you?”

“...no. I’m not from the city.”

“Easy enough to tell with that accent,” one of the younger looking members says from the side.

“Funny coming from you,” you snap back, almost instantly regretting it. To your surprise, you’re met with some snickers from the group.

“Hey, you think-” “Donghyuck, knock it off.” A sharp order from Taeyong cuts him off, but he continues to glare at you. Taeyong remains focused on you. “No one? No boyfriend, close friends, anything?”

“No,” you answer quietly.

“Best goddamn news I’ve heard all day. That means no one else is at risk. But,” he says, pausing, “we still can’t let you go back to your normal life.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“If we were going to do that, don’t you think we would’ve done it already?” Another guy you don’t recognize. He has a low, even voice and his brown hair suits his well-defined face well. “We’re not here to kill innocents.”

“We’ll help you get out. We just need time,” Taeyong says. “In the meantime, you’ll just have to lie low with us here. Got it?”

“I…” What they’re saying is being processed slowly by your brain. They aren’t going to kill you? They’re going to let you go? “What do you mean get me out?”

“Do you really think it’s safe for you in Seoul anymore? You have a target on your back now. With enough time, we’ll get you away from the city. You’ll have to start over somewhere new, but it’s better than being dead.” Taeyong is firm, but you have more questions.

“Why are you helping me?”

Taeyong’s eyes shift over quickly to meet Yuta’s, just for a moment, before he looks back at you. “Like Jaehyun said, we don’t kill innocent people. We’re here to get rid of the festering that’s happening in the city, not add to it.”

Silence spreads between you. From next to you, Yuta finally speaks. “I know it seems bad, but you’re not a prisoner. We’re doing everything we can, so just work with us.”

“I… okay. Thank you.” The room seems to relax as you say that, many of the boys looking noticeably relieved.

“One wrong step, one thing to show us you’re not innocent, and you’re still dead, though.” Donghyuck, the boy from before, says quickly, all signs of joking gone from his voice and expression.

No one corrects him.

Trying to break the tension, Taeyong gives you a tight smile. “I completely forgot to introduce myself. I’m Taeyong, but I’m sure you figured that out by now.” After you nod, he looks back at Yuta. “Yuta, show her around. She might as well be comfortable while she’s here. Everyone else, you’re dismissed. We’ve said all that we need to tonight.”

You quickly realize, as you’re being led around and shown different areas of the building, that Yuta is essentially your caretaker and there’s no real chance of you escaping. Not that you would want to escape, by the logic they provided. Soon enough, you also realize how tired you are. You left work maybe three hours ago by this point and the exhaustion is catching up to you. Yuta seems to notice as well, but you miss the somewhat fond smile he gives you. “We can continue this tomorrow. Let’s go back to your room.” With a nod, you follow him back up the stairs. As you walk through the long hallway filled with doors again, Yuta explains that they’re all the different members’ rooms. “I’d recommend not trespassing. For multiple reasons, one of which is that some of them couldn’t keep a clean room if their lives depended on it.” You give him a weary smile, appreciating the little attempt at making you more comfortable with him. You don’t know if you’ll ever be able to trust him, but you’re too tired to be afraid at the moment. He leads you back to the room you were in before. “If you need me, I’m in the room right across from you.” He turns around, but looks back at you over his shoulder. “And, Y/N. Don’t be afraid.”

You enter your room and shut the door behind you, hearing his door close a moment later. Making your way to the bed, you sit on the edge, scrubbing at your face with your hands. You’re confused and upset and tired but, somehow, you’re no longer afraid. Though every single person in this building is capable of killing you, you want to believe that they won’t. Perhaps that’s part of the illusion. Perhaps they really are trying to help… somehow. Perhaps-

You’re torn out of your thoughts by a knock on the door. “Come in,” you say quietly.

The door opens and Taeyong is there, a large stack of clothes in his hands. “These are for you.” He crosses the room in a sparse few strides and hands them to you. You accept them graciously, giving a quick bow in thanks.

“Taeyong, thank you… where did you get these? Whose clothes….?”

He gives you a slightly pained smile. “They used to be my sister’s, back when she was here. I’m glad to see them finally get some use again.” He’s out of the room as quickly as he had entered, the door shutting behind him. You know it’s best not to press anyways. It’s strange to see such pain on a gang leader’s face, but you have the impression the Neos are different. While any other gang would have left you to die on the street, they saved you and are offering to help you. You don’t know what to think anymore. With weary bones, you change into some of the clothes that Taeyong brought and tuck yourself in, sleeping quickly and dreamlessly.

You’re awoken by a quiet knock on your door. For a moment, you panic at your surroundings, the cement walls and cold air unfamiliar to you, but you remember pretty quickly where you are and what happened to you. There’s no clock in your room, so you don’t know how long you’ve been asleep for, but sunlight streams through the gaps in the boards over your window, so you assume it’s been awhile. Rubbing the sleep out of your eyes and attempting to smooth back your hair, you call out to the person knocking. “Come in!”

The door opens and a shy face appears, a tall, lanky boy entering your room. His bangs sweep right above his eyes, showing that he’s in need of a fresh haircut, and he seems nervous. You vaguely recognize him from the gathering the night before, one of the boys who has probably seen far too much for how young he is. In the small amount of fresh morning light coming through the boards over your window, he seems much more youthful, thankfully. “This is for you. Yuta-hyung told me to grab some for you, so...”

In his hands is a metal bowl and chopsticks, a lid keeping in the heat of the food and making for easier transportation. He also carries a red apple. You get up, walking over to him to take the food. “What’s your name?”

He shifts uncomfortably on his feet. “Jisung.”

“Well, thank you, Jisung. I’m Y/N.” The tips of his ears turn slightly pink when you smile and thank him and he gives you a quick bow before scurrying off.

The metal bowl contains some rice topped with bits of fish and vegetables that lets off some steam when you remove the lid. Your heart warms a bit at the sight of some normality - a taste of home - and you dig in, not having realized just how hungry you are. After last night, it seemed your body forgot about some of its needs like eating and sleeping until they suddenly struck. With some food and rest in your system, you finally have the mental capacity to consider your situation.

You’re in the Neo’s headquarters, eating their food and sleeping in one of their rooms. They could have left you to die on those streets, hell, you don’t even know how they found you, but you’re alive and they brought you back here and are offering to help you out if you just give them a bit of time. You’re not sure how much you should trust them, but with the way things are going, it seems like you don’t really have a choice. You don’t doubt that they’re right that the other gangs are after you now that you’ve been with them for as long as you have. 

With that conclusion, you get up, grab a change of clothes, and try to find your way back to the bathroom that Yuta had pointed you to the night before. After a successful shower, you set your mind on your next goal: washing the dishes that Jisung had brought to you. It’s the least you could do to acquire some normalcy and make less work for them. Sneaking down the stairs, you think you’re safe from running into any of the members, but when you turn the corner, you nearly lose your balance when a man nearly walks into you. He tries to steady you by grabbing your arm and you quickly regain your balance. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you!”

“I didn’t see you either, no worries.” When you look at him again, you realize he’s one of the ones who had spoken last night, the one you had first made eye contact with and had the slightest accent. He appears far less serious now than he did the night before, which seems to be a running theme, though he still has a strong presence. He gives you a tight-lipped smile. “I never got a chance to introduce myself last night. I’m Qian Kun.”

Notorious boss of the Wei Shens. You’d heard about him, only because a girl you had as a client once complained about how he wouldn’t help her group with something. There were rumors they had joined with the Neos, more of your coworkers’ gossipings, but you didn’t think that had actually happened. It’s safe to say that whisper is confirmed now.

“I’m Y/N,” you say before realizing that he probably very well knows who you are. “It’s… nice to meet you.”

He nods his head in acknowledgement before eyeing the dishes in your hands. “Do you know where you’re going with those?”

“I…”

“Kitchen is the other way.” He jerks his head to the opposite side of the stairs you had turned off of and gives you another small smile. “At least you’re making somewhat of an effort to keep clean. It’s appreciated.”

After making that comment, he continues past you, going up the stairs. You’re slightly bewildered by the interaction, but go in the direction he had indicated, finding yourself in the kitchen. You clean up after yourself and put things into the proper cabinets, which takes a lot of opening things and guessing, before you start to head back to your room. On the way, you spy a small bookshelf and grab the first book with an interesting title that you can see. You might as well amuse yourself doing something. Who knew that gangsters read?

You don’t know how long you spend reading before you look up when your door opens, no knock this time. Yuta leans in the doorframe, his arms crossed. His hair is tied up away from his face and the tank top he’s wearing makes you wonder how he’s not cold in the uninsulated cement building. “You don’t have to stay in here all day, you know.”

You shrug. “Nothing else I can do, really.”

Though he had been the first one you met, you’re wary of him. After all, he had threatened you in almost the exact spot you’re sitting in now. Despite that, something about him draws you to him. Maybe it’s the fact that he saved you. Maybe it’s because you saw his tattoo and helped him relieve the pain in his shoulders. Maybe you’re just fooled too easily by a handsome face. Either way, your mixed feelings about him confuse you.

He steps into the room and walks towards you, plucking the book out of your hand. When he sees the title, he smiles. “This is a good one. One of the first books I read after I got to Korea.” After he says that, he pauses, trying to gauge your reaction. You don’t know what he’s looking for, so you just look at him weirdly in response.

“So, this is yours, then?”

He clearly doesn’t find what he’s looking for, so he tears his eyes away from yours. He sits down next to you anyways “Yeah. Mark gave it to me. I read it more times than he ever did, though. He’s more into music.”

“Who isn’t into music? You don’t listen to any?” You tilt your head, giving him a questioning look.

He scoffs in a way you interpret to be joking. “Of course I listen to music. That kid is crazy about it, though. I think he wanted to be a singer or a rapper or something before he got tangled up in all of this.” Yuta pauses, thinking for a moment before he continues. “He has this old guitar in his room that he plays all the time. I’m surprised you didn’t hear him playing it last night, he does that when he gets stressed. I think it was one of the only things he brought with him here.”

“I guess I was too fast asleep to hear it,” you say quietly, thinking about Mark’s story. You can’t help but wonder how he got here. How Jisung got here. How Kun got here. How any of them got here. “Yuta, why are you here? How did you get involved with the Neos?”

He chuckles, but it’s not a happy chuckle, nothing like the way he had scoffed a minute before. It’s a sad sound, something that makes you want to know more about him. “That’s a story for another time. I’m far too sober to talk about that right now.”

“Will you tell me about the others, then?”

He tilts his head and smiles a little. “I suppose I could. Not too much, though.”

Through Yuta’s stories, you learn a little bit about each of the Neos. With each story, you think you’re learning a little bit about him, too. Finally, after he tells you about Jisung, the youngest of the Neos and the one whom you had met earlier, he stops, turning the question towards you. “I’ve told you about all of us. Tell me about you, Miss Masseuse.” He leans forward, resting an elbow on his leg, supporting his chin. With his position, part of his tattoo peaks out from behind his shirt, showing you a flash of red. You try not to stare at it.

“I’ve only been doing that for two years. I’ve been ‘Miss Pre-Med’ for longer.” He seems slightly surprised at your words, eyes widening slightly, looking for a story. For some reason, you feel comfortable talking to him about three years ago - a time you would sometimes rather forget. “In my third year of undergrad, I had a professor who hated my guts. Maybe because I actually read the textbook and corrected him when he was wrong. Maybe he hated how well I did on his tests. Don’t know, but, one day, he snapped and reported me for cheating, saying he saw me looking at another student’s test. He’d been at the university long enough that there was barely an investigation before it went on my record. That one offense was enough to get my scholarships taken away, so I had to drop out.”

His eyes darken with anger. For a moment, it seems as if he isn’t really speaking to anyone but himself. “Corrupt university. One part of what’s wrong with this city.” The darkness fades slightly and he refocuses on you. “And you stayed here and started working in the seediest part of the city? Didn’t move back with your parents?”

You smile bitterly. “My parents basically disowned me when I said I was going to university in the city. They wanted me to stay back in our town and help them run our store. I have enough siblings that it shouldn’t matter, but they refused to let me leave. But I wanted to be a doctor, so, when the time came, I left. There’s no going back to that.”

You aren’t looking at Yuta anymore, just staring down at the forgotten book lying on the floor. You realize for the first time that on the cover of the book is a beautiful depiction of azure blue waves. Your attention shifts back to Yuta when he begins to speak lowly. “We could get rid of that professor for you, you know. One name and he’s dead.”

You swallow hard. You know he’s serious. They could get it done in one night, it’s not like he’s hard to find. The darkest parts of you want to agree, to give Yuta his name and let him take care of the rest, but you know you shouldn’t. It would go against everything you strived to achieve by wanting to become a doctor. “You don’t need to do that. Revenge won’t fix anything now.”

“It’s not just about revenge,” he growls, more than serious now. He’s almost scary. “It’s about all of the other people he could fuck over with that kind of power. Do you think you’ll be the only one?”

You meet him with equal seriousness. “Yuta, I’m not going to tell you to kill someone.”

“Sometimes it’s the only way.”

“There’s always another way.” The dark look in his eyes shows you something. Something about the reason that he’s here, with the Neos. The difference between you and him and the rest of them. A part of life that you’re not sure you want to see. A desperation that, despite everything, you’ve never reached.

He looks like he’s about to say something back to you when there’s a knock on your doorframe. When he had entered, Yuta had left the door open, and a thin man with jet black hair stands there. “Yuta, it’s time to go. We’re ‘meeting’ with the Rushers.”

“Coming, Doyoung.” He stands, casting one look back at you before he follows Doyoung out. You know enough to figure that more blood will be spilled before the night is over. When you glance at the window, no daylight shines in the cracks between the boards. You spent nearly all of your time awake with Yuta. Just when you had thought you were getting to know him, you find that he’s more of a mystery than ever before. You think that, even after all he told you about them, the others are just as much of an enigma to you as he is. You don’t understand and you’re not sure if you want to.

He and the others that he had gone with aren’t back by the time you decide to go to sleep. You don’t know how much time has passed when you’re awoken by shouting outside of your door. You quickly get up, throwing on some more appropriate clothes and pushing your hair out of your face before you open the door, seeing Yuta’s door thrown open across from you. Leading into the room are small pools of blood. Inside of his room, several of the members are inside, including Doyoung, Mark, Kun, and Taeyong. When you step closer, in the dim light, you see someone’s figure on the bed, blood staining the sheets of his bed. It doesn’t take long for you to realize that it’s Yuta and he’s bleeding from a gushing wound just below his left shoulder. Even over the cloth Mark presses over the wound, blood quickly soaks it and drips onto his arm and chest.

“Put pressure on it, dammit!” Taeyong barks and Yuta groans when Mark puts more of his weight on his wound.

“What happened?” You say, trying to shoulder past Doyoung to get closer and see.

“Shot by the damn Rushers. Dumb bastard made it worse by running after another one,” Kun says, tearing the wrapping off of a roll of bandages.

“Stop talking and help him!” Mark says, glaring at both you and Kun. You put a hand over the bandages Kun is about to start using, stopping him.

“Wait, let me help,” you say firmly, trying to step forward farther.

“Fuck off,” Mark growls, pressing down on the wound harder. More blood spills from the wound, dripping down Yuta’s skin and into the bedsheets.

“I was pre-med for three years and shadowed in hospitals! If you don’t listen to me and let me help him, you’re letting him die!”

“Mark, let her in,” Taeyong commands, making his decision instantly. Mark hesitates for a moment before quickly getting up, letting you in closer to look at Yuta. You see him watch you through hazy eyes, likely not comprehending who you are or what’s happening. You peel back the blood-soaked cloth Mark had been using to staunch the wound and see the ugly place where the bullet had entered and where the skin and tissue had been damaged further by him overexerting. Running through everything you had learned in your time at university and in your shadowing, you assess him the best you can before turning to the boys, rattling off a list of things you need to help him. They quickly turn and run to get the items and you shout after them. “And grab some rubbing alcohol and clean those off if you care about his wound not getting infected!”

The experience of removing the bullet and stitching his wound closed is a blur. The sharp metallic smell and slick warmth of blood fills your every sense and you can barely keep your hands steady enough to sew his wound shut. He eventually passes out from the pain at some point. Though he lost a decent amount of blood, you’re praying it’s not so much that he needs a blood transfer. If they could have brought him to a hospital, you assume they would have.

When you’re finished doing all that you can for him, you get the boys to help you change out the bloody sheets. You nearly collapse into the chair Kun drags over for you, exhaustion filling every bone in your body. Looking one more time at Yuta, you sigh. He’ll live. Hopefully. You want him to live, desperately.

“Thank you, Y/N,” Taeyong says softly, resting a hand on your shoulder. You bob your head up and down in response before reaching up to wipe the sweat off of your forehead. You had never had a direct hand in a procedure like that before, but you think your experience paid off.

The boys take care of the cleanup before leaving you there to sit in the chair by the bed and stare at Yuta. He looks ragged, but slightly better than he did when he was first brought in. His breathing is more even and, though he’s a bit pale, his face is relaxed. You’re startled when someone taps on your shoulder.

When you turn to face them, you see that it’s Mark. He holds a water bottle in his hand, which he offers you. “Sorry,” he mumbles, head hanging low and avoiding your eyes, “for earlier.”

“It’s okay. I know you care a lot about him.” You accept the peace offering from him, taking the bottle.

“Yeah, it’s just… I can’t lose him. He’s one of the first guys who welcomed me when I got here and-” Mark starts to ramble a bit, staring at Yuta’s sleeping figure, but he stops himself. “I’m going to bed. Tell me if anything happens?”

You nod and he leaves, leaving you alone with Yuta once again. At some point, you doze off, slumping over onto the edge of his bed. Soft mumbling wakes you up. From what you can tell by the lack of light coming through Yuta’s window, which is also boarded up, it’s still night. Trying to blink the haze out of your eyes, you sit up, looking at him. He shifts slightly in the bed, his lips moving almost soundlessly. Confused, you lean closer to try to hear him. From what you can decipher, his mumbling is entirely in Japanese, so you don’t understand any of it. The distress in his voice is clear, even at the low volume and with the language barrier, and his face scrunches in what almost seems like pain. You don’t know what else you can do, so you gently take his hand, whispering back.

“It’s okay, Yuta. It’s okay.” Your thumb strokes over the back of his hand and you feel the veins and small scars scattered on his skin. You don’t know what he’s been through, why he came here, but you have to believe that he doesn’t deserve to be going down the path he’s found himself walking on.

When you try to let go of his hand, he grips yours. You watch his eyes open, half-lidded, his gaze unsteady on you. His lips barely move, his words mumbled, but you hear him clearly.

“We’ve met before.”

Of all the things you were expecting to hear from him, that was not one of them. You have to believe he’s delirious, so you just give him a confused smile. “Of course we have, you came to Park’s Massage and-”

“On the train.” His lips barely seem to move, but you hear him loud and clear. The last time you had been on a proper train was five years ago when you first arrived in Seoul. He couldn’t-

It’s a blurry memory, a distant set of circumstances that you had nearly forgotten. It didn’t seem important at the time, but you remember now. Back then, all those years ago, you stepped off of the train into Seoul and the paperwork you needed to turn in to your university flew out of your hands as the train departed. One of the documents, one that could have prevented you from even attending if you didn’t turn it in, had almost flown away, but a man who had stepped off of the train behind you a moment before grabbed it. A man much like Yuta. His hair had been shorter then, his body less worn, a little more innocence in his eyes perhaps. He didn’t say anything to you, just smiled when you thanked him profusely, before he walked off, going who knows where. You think you know where that is now.

“Yuta, I…” You don’t know what to say. By grabbing that paper, he had kept you steady on your course to university, from university to the massage parlor, and from the massage parlor to here. You’ve met him again. He single handedly changed your life two times now.

His eyes droop closed and his grip on your hand loosens. You stay there for a couple minutes longer, feeling the weight of his hand in yours, staring at his face in the dim light of the room. Quietly, you slip your hand away and stand up, hesitantly returning to your own room.

It’s a few hours later when you go to his room to change his bandages and it’s about half a day later when he finally wakes up. He lets you worry over him, making him drink water and eat some light food. What he had told you weighs on you slightly, but you try to push those thoughts away and focus on helping him recover. When you peel back his bandages again, he hisses in pain. “Fuck, that hurts.”

“It would hurt less if you weren’t such an idiot last night,” you say back, changing his dressings. He chuckles slightly at that.

“So, when am I going to be back in action, Doc?”

“When your wound is healed enough and when I say so. You really messed yourself up, Yuta.” You glance up at him before looking back at your work. “Maybe three weeks.”

His eyes widen. “No way I’m staying out for three weeks. I’m staying here one week, max.”

“Not if you want to tear open your wound and make the damage permanent, you won’t.” The wound is still ugly, but it looks significantly better than it did when it was gushing blood and he had a bullet lodged in his flesh. It might actually be a bit less than three weeks, but you’re not taking any chances right now.

You feel his eyes watching your every move and you try to not let it bother you. His voice is soft when he speaks again. “You were really meant to do this kind of thing, weren’t you?”

The edges of your lips raise in a sort of half-smile. “I’d like to believe that. The universe seems to be against it sometimes, though.”

“Maybe you coming here was some sort of sign.” This time, you really look up, meeting his gaze. You think that he’s telling you to stay. You don’t know how to feel about it, but you can’t deny that part of your heart wants to stay. You have so many differences with them, almost irresolvable differences, and you know they won’t change just because of you either, but they saved your life. You feel like you owe them at least something.

Silence falls heavily between the two of you again as you finish up your work. When you’re done, you wipe your hands off and put them in your lap. “Yuta,” you say quietly, “do you remember what you told me last night? About the train?”

He appears confused before realization dawns in his eyes a moment later. “Ah. I wasn’t going to tell you about that yet.” His eyes meet yours and then flicker away. Your eyebrows furrow and you lean closer to him in response.

“Why not? Don’t you think it’s incredible that-”

“That we met again? I guess so. But it makes it seem like we were targeting you this whole time. That’s not the way the Neos work. You…” he trails off, sighing softly. “...you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time this time around.”

There’s regret in his voice, so you reach out for his hand. “I’m glad I met you then. Did you know you saved me that day? I couldn’t have gone to university if you hadn’t grabbed that paper for me. I think that it’s just the way the universe works that we’ve met again so that I can help you. Repaying you, in a way, I suppose.”

He stares at your hand in his and smiles ever so slightly. “That’s a very optimistic view.”

“I suppose it is. But, being in the medical field, I guess I have to keep some of that optimism. It’s what makes it worth it.” You squeeze his hand once before standing up. “I’m going to go tell Mark you’re awake. He nearly murdered me last night because I wanted to help.”

“He’s a pretty sensitive kid, he just doesn’t show it a lot. I owe him a lot.”

“He feels the same way. He opened up a little after you were fixed up last night.” You don’t say it, but you feel like there’s a lot more to the Neos than they’re usually letting on. “I’ll check up on you later.”

Mark is gone from your eyesight and rushing out the door as soon as you tell him Yuta is awake. Through the day, you’re certain that nearly every member of the group goes in and out of his room. Yuta isn’t happy being stuck in his bed, but is wise enough to listen to your advice and stay and rest. You’re changing his wound dressings again at night when he groans, throwing his head back dramatically. “This is going to be the longest three weeks of my life.”

“I’m also stuck here with you, you know.”

“I guess you’ll have to be my entertainment, then.” His tone completely changes and he catches your chin with his hand, tilting your head up. The smolder he meets you with sends a pleasant, anticipatory shiver down your spine. This is certainly not a side of his personality that you’ve seen before. Where did this come from?

“I hardly know you,” you breathe out, “and you’re injured.”

“Most of me is perfectly fine.” His hand shifts from your chin, slipping back to stroke over your hair, but you catch the way he cringes slightly when his wound is disturbed by the motion. A short laugh escapes you at his attempt to be sexy while in pain.

“You’re an idiot, Nakamoto. Maybe another time.” You stand up, stepping backwards towards the door of the room. “Get some rest.”

With not much to do except spend time together, you get to know Yuta well over the next few weeks. You find out especially well that he’s a horrible flirt. Not horrible in the sense that he’s bad at it, he’s actually quite good, but he spends almost as much of his breath flirting with you as he does being serious. In the spaces of time where you get to know each other, he doesn’t tell you much about his past, still insisting that he’s far too sober to speak about it. The two of you keep well enough away from the topics of life and death and morality, but it can’t help but be brought up sometimes. You don’t know how high his body count is, but you’re starting to get an idea.

In the time you’re not with Yuta, you get to know some of the other members more through wandering around the building and tending to minor wounds. Some are friendlier than others, but they’re not nearly as serious around you as they were at first after a little while. You’d like to believe they warmed up to you a bit. You also find that the building has roof access. The door is usually locked and barred shut, but you go outside just to get some fresh air because you can’t leave otherwise and the windows are all boarded up. The Seoul sky is almost perpetually cloudy and dark, so different from where you grew up. Even with that twinge of homesickness, somewhere along those days, you stop waiting to leave and just focus on your time there. Before you know it, the end of three weeks approaches. The final night, you peek into Yuta’s room.

“What are you doing?” He muses, quirking an eyebrow at you. He leans against one of the concrete walls, a book in hand. He had taken to reading more while being confined to the building, you noticed. Ducking into his room, you hold your gift for him behind your back before pulling it out and revealing what it is. His eyebrows raise in surprise. “Sake? I thought you said no drinking while I’m recovering?”

“Well,” you say, “I deem you recovered.” Putting aside the small bottle of alcohol and cups, you carefully unwrap his wound. You had taken out the stitches a few days previous and you’re happy to see that the wound is healing well. Well enough for you to declare him no longer out-of- commission. “Now, let’s go. You’re having your first celebratory drink with me.”

“Where are we going?” You grab a blanket off of his bed before turning back around to face him.

“You’ll see. Come on!”

You take him to the rooftop with you. This time, he’s the one taking your hand.

It’s dark outside, long past sunset. It’s better that way - probably safer, in the case that one of the enemy gangs is trying to spy on you. You should find it strange how your mind has shifted into thinking about those sorts of things now, but you suppose this is part of your life now. No matter how you cut it, the Neos changed you. As you’re laying out the blanket, Yuta questions you, swirling the alcohol in the bottle idly. “Where did you even get this? Did you raid Taeil’s liquor cabinet?”

“I got Chenle to run out and grab it for me. That kid knows way too much about alcohol for someone his age.” After you take the bottle of sake from him and put it down, you pat the space next to you on the blanket. He joins you, settling near you. Cracking open the bottle with a little too much flare, you pour sake into the little cup he holds in his hand first, then your own. “Cheers,” you say, lifting up your cup, “to your recovery.”

You down the cups at the same time, you wincing slightly at the sharp taste of the alcohol. He chuckles at your reaction. “Not used to sake?”

“I’m more of a soju person myself.” That one has him cracking a wider smile.

“We’d better have another, then. To get you accustomed to the taste.” He pours for you this time, tilting his chin towards you in acknowledgement. “This time, cheers to the best doctor in all of the Neos.”

This drink burns a little less than the one before. Slowly, you process what he had just said to you. “The best doctor in all of the Neos, huh? Am I a member now?”

The smile fades slightly on his lips, but the ghost of one remains. “Taeyong and I have been meaning to extend the invitation to you for a while now. We’ve got most of the arrangements for you to leave done, but you’d make a valuable member of our team if you wanted to stay.” He pauses, swallowing heavily. “I know we promised you we would get you out of here. But you can always stay. If you want to.”

He reaches a hand out, his fingertips barely grazing your cheek. A part of you wants him to touch you more, like he means it, like he desperately wants you to stay. Another part of you thinks about your life before all of this. Before you got roped up into all the business with the Neos, before you had to drop out of university, maybe even before you left your family in the country. A life with a little more peace. A life with a lot less Yuta. With his presence recently, you’re not sure you want to remember what a life without him feels like. Despite all the bitterness and blood he’s brought, you’ve connected with him in a way that you never have with anyone else. In a way that feels like the universe planned it, like you were somehow meant to be here all along. He’s so different from you. But, maybe, with a little more time, you can come to terms with that.

“Yuta,” you say, voice so quiet, like you’re afraid to answer. Because you’re afraid to answer. “Give me just a little time. To think about what all this means.”

“You’ll always have a place here, you know. With us.” With me. He doesn’t say that part, but you know with the way that he pushes your hair away from your face ever so gently that that’s what he means. You blink and he’s pulling away, reaching for the bottle of sake again. “Let’s have another drink.”

“To what this time?”

“Do you really have to have a reason to drink?” He smirks, a typical look for him, and pours for you.

“Let’s toast to the future, then,” you say. As you tilt back the alcohol into your mouth and swallow the burning liquid, you throw a wish into the night sky, asking for the right answer to your question. You try your best to see the stars, to find even a single one, but the city is unforgiving and all you can see is the moon, even with the relatively clear sky tonight. After you’re done with your drink, you set aside the cup, leaning back into your hands. “I’m not from the city,” you say, staring up at the inky gray-black sky, “I miss the stars.”

He laughs, a cold sound coming from what you want to believe is a warm heart. “I’m from Osaka. I’ve never really been able to see them.”

“Finally drunk enough to talk about the past?” You glance over at him, tilting your head to the side and smiling. When you tilt your head, the world sways slightly and you can feel warmth on your cheeks and a buzz in your fingers. You’re starting to feel the alcohol well enough now.

“Not quite,” he says, “but maybe if a pretty lady pours me another drink, I will be.”

“I wonder where you’ll find one of those,” you say, giggling. “Maybe if we put Jungwoo in a dress and wig, you could pretend?”

“Or I could ask the one right next to me.” Your giggling grows a little louder and a little more boisterously and you reach forward, picking up the bottle.

“What a charmer. I wonder where you got that from. Johnny influence you?”

“Oh, please. I’m far better at it than he ever was.” The two of you drain your cups quickly, placing them back down.

“Jaemin, then?”

“You’re comparing me to one of the kids? You offend me.”

“Lucas?”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t talk about other men.” Your breath catches in your throat and your giggling stops at the smoldering look in his eyes. The mood suddenly shifts inexplicably into something more somber. He looks away and says a name that you can barely hear. “Hansol. It was Hansol.”

“Who was he?” You’re almost afraid to ask. You’ve never seen that look in Yuta’s eyes before. It’s pain and loneliness and an unbearable sadness that makes your heart ache in response. Despite the way your heart feels so heavy in your chest, you can’t stop staring at him.

“He brought me here. To the Neos. Away from Osaka, where I was rotting away in a gang that was all bloodshed and no purpose. There was a terf war in east Seoul one day that ended with him getting shot three times. It was a lot worse than mine and we didn’t have someone like you then. He died before we even got back to base.” Yuta’s eyes are trained on the sky, looking at nothing in particular yet seeming to see something that you don’t. “We didn’t have as much of a mission then as we do now. Part of it is because of him. Everyone here has more of their own reasons, too. Mark had a dad. Taeyong had a sister. I had Hansol.” He looks back at you. “Is that the story you wanted to hear?”

“I’m sorry…” It’s all you can say. All you can manage when you feel like crying for him.

“It’s okay. That was four years ago, anyways.” Four years. Four years ago, you were a sophomore in undergrad, not a care in the world besides your organic chemistry and biology classes and all sorts of dumb things that seem so small in comparison to what he was going through. On the train that day, five years ago, you had parted ways to go down completely different paths that are now converging again. You blink back the tears and stare back out at the sky. A cool breeze blows on the roof, but it feels good against your warm skin.

“We should go out and look one day, you and I. See the stars.” When you say that, he first responds with a bitter laugh.

“I’m busy.”

“Busy forever?”

“Yeah,” he says before looking over, “but maybe I could make some time for you. No promises.”

“I’ll drink to that.” You pour two more cups, finding that that’s the end of the bottle. It was a small bottle in the first place, but you’re almost disappointed that the two of you went through it so quickly. It was an excuse for him to stay with you for a little longer after you declared him healthy again. An excuse for just a little more time. With Yuta’s offer from earlier, you could get even more time. The thought brings a tugging feeling to your heartstrings. Could you really give up the chance at a new life for the sake of this man?

“A shame,” Yuta says, watching the last few drops fall from the container, “that was some good stuff, too. Looks like we’ll have to savor this last one.”

You raise your cup to him and he raises his to you in return before you both down the last of the sake. The cup leaves your lips and you smile. “Perhaps I’m becoming a sake person after all.”

“Is that so? We’ll have to drink together more often, then.”

“Only if you promise you won’t get hurt anymore.” The words tumble out of your mouth before you can stop them and, even in your tipsy-edging-on-drunk state, you know how foolish what you said is.

He smiles, a sort of sad smile that you wish he didn’t have to give you. “I’ll try my best. You know I can’t make that promise.” He lowers his voice, eyes flickering down to the empty cup in his hand. “There aren’t many promises I can make you that I’m sure I can keep.”

You set your empty cup aside, along with the bottle, and shift closer to him. You lay your hand over his, your fingers falling in the gaps between his. Even with the alcohol, his fingertips still feel slightly cool. “You don’t have to. Being here with you now is enough.”

Quickly, he flips his hand around, catching your hand in his. He brings your knuckles to his lips, pressing a light kiss to them. Your heart nearly stops beating for the second time that night. The unspoken words between you are longing to escape, but neither of you can or want to speak. You feel like his heart is finally opening completely to you. You just have one more question first.

Regrettably, you break the moment, reaching over with your free hand to take the sake cup that he’s still holding on to. “Can I ask you something?” You speak as you set aside the cup behind you. He lets go of your hand and your arm instantly feels heavier. You have to stop yourself from pouting at the loss of contact. He tears his eyes away from yours, opting to gaze out at the rising moon instead. Your eyes never leave him.

“Anything you want.”

“That day, you could have just killed me. Or let me die. Anything like that. Why…?” The night air is still between you.

“Maybe I wanted my own personal masseuse.” He looks over at you again when you sigh softly. He looks breathtakingly handsome in the city lights and moonlight bathing him. The ratty wool blanket under both of you protects you from the cold that threatens to seep into your bones from the cement beneath while the blanket of moonlight from above guards you from a different type of cold that you can’t describe. He reaches over, taking your hand gently in his again. “Your hands,” he says, so quietly, as if you’ll break if he’s too loud, “they’re too gentle for someone like me.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” You implore him to answer your questions with your eyes, maintaining eye contact with him and giving him a pleading look.

“We’re not what you think of when the word gang comes to mind. You know that already. No matter what, every innocent person is worth saving. We’re trying to save this city, not cause more meaningless bloodshed. Before we even really knew you, you were worth saving.” He blinks slowly. “Now, I’m especially glad we did.”

“Yuta,” you whisper, trying to read everything that his eyes are showing you and also say exactly what you’re feeling yourself. “I don’t think it was the wrong place at the wrong time. I think everything turned out the way it was supposed to.”

He still has your hand in his and his grip tightens. His free hand travels to your cheek, his thumb ghosting over your bottom lip. Your breath hitches as he does so and the corners of his lips curl up at your reaction. He leans closer. His breath, slightly sharp with the smell of sake, washes over your lips. “Are you afraid?”

“No.”

The danger of him, of doing this, hums through your body as he kisses you. Your blood is hot with the alcohol and the feeling of him against you. He drags you closer so that you’re straddling his lap and you moan into the kiss. His skin feels even hotter than yours when his hands shift to slip under your shirt, having lost all of the previous coldness, stroking your sides. His lips separate from yours ever so slightly, his words barely even breathed against your lips. “Tell me to stop if you don’t want this.”

“Please don’t stop.”

The blanket, bottle, and cups are forgotten as the two of you stumble back down the stairs inside, barely remembering to lock the door behind you, Yuta’s bedroom close but not close enough. His hands shake with urgency as he practically tears your shirt and pants off. He strips off his shirt and his tattoo, an ocean red with blood, is visible to you once again. You don’t have much time to dwell on it before his pants are also off and he’s pinning you to his bed, his lips trailing down your entire body. You welcome him between your legs, letting him taste you and kiss you and do whatever he wants with your body. When he’s above you again, finally pressing into you, filling you in ways you never would have imagined, your eyes lower to his chest with all of his lean muscle and scars and the almost-healed bullet wound below his left shoulder, but you don’t have much time to think about that. You let him pound into you, let him press a hand to your mouth to muffle your drawn-out moans at his ministrations, at one of his hands dipping lower to bring you closer to the edge, let him kiss you when he isn’t using his hand to muffle your sounds. You yourself let go around him, let him release into the condom he had somehow managed to remember, let him pull you close once it’s all finished.

You wait for the regret to set in, but you don’t find any. Even now, you don’t regret Yuta. His arms feel good around you and his sweaty chest feels good pressed against your back. His lips feel good pressing against your neck, whispering sweet things to you that you’re too tired to really comprehend and commit to memory. You know he waits for you to fall asleep and, despite your best efforts to stay awake, you doze off, feeling warm both inside and out.

You wake up because it’s cold. You immediately realize that Yuta is no longer next to you, so you sit up in his bed. You’re about to say his name when quiet voices outside his door draw your attention. A little bit of orange light leaks through the boards over the windows, showing you that it’s only a little bit past dawn. Peeling away the covers except a blanket that you wrap around your body, you step as quietly as you can towards the door, leaning in to listen. You quickly recognize Taeyong’s voice along with Yuta’s.

“She said she needs time to think about it. I think there’s a good chance she might stay.” Ah. The offer that he had presented to you. You can’t help but smile. He sounds almost hopeful.

“Even if she wants out, I want to use her to talk to the RVs.” Your eyebrows furrow in confusion. Another gang?

“We aren’t going to use her. I don’t want her involved with them. They’re too dangerous.”

“And the Rushers and Blue Veins aren’t? You weren’t so against using her to get the rat out of Park’s. What’s changed now?” Taeyong is short with the way he speaks, but what he says makes you freeze. They used you? Suddenly, it’s painful to swallow and you feel like you’re about to collapse. Everything… everything you’ve built here is fake. You’ve been lied to. They didn’t take you here to protect you. They took you here because they were responsible for the danger in the first place.

Deep pain starts to mix with anger as you listen to Yuta’s response. “I met her back then, you know that. Now, she’s saved my life. She’s more than bait now and she’s more to me.”

“I know you just got your dick wet, but think clearly. She’s the closest woman we have right now and the RVs don’t trust men. We need her to do this.” Silence falls between the two men for a moment before Yuta responds.

“I’ll ask her. Hopefully, she’ll be rational and say no.” He pauses before continuing. “And, don’t talk about her like that.”

When he opens the door and sees you a few feet away from the door, a wide-eyed look on your face with a blanket wrapped around you, he freezes. A moment later, he steps inside, closing the door behind him. “Y/N… how much did you hear?”

“Too much,” you say, your lips feeling numb as you speak, “but also just enough.”

“Y/N…” His expression shifts and he reaches forward to touch your shoulder, saying your name more softly than you’ve ever heard something leave his lips before. A few hours ago, him saying your name like that would’ve made your heart beat faster and a smile grace your lips, but now you just want to punch him. How dare he? You jerk away from his touch and stand up, your blood now boiling in your veins.

“You bastard,” you hiss, “you used me. You used me and then you let me fuck you.” You keep your voice low and your fists clenched despite the urge to scream, to hit him, to make him feel the way you do right now.

His eyebrows furrow. “Y/N… you don’t understand. The whole city-”

“No, Yuta, you don’t understand. I’ve been trying to get my life back on track for two years now and you used me, knowing my life would be fucked up forever after that.” You suddenly feel ridiculous, standing there arguing with the man who had ruined your life even more, the man you had just slept with, with only a blanket draped around your body. You turn, locating your underwear on the floor by the bed. As you slip into it, a headache, a mix of your rage and a coming hangover, starts to pound at your temples.

“We would never do anything with the purpose of hurting you, you know that.” Your bra is next, near where your underwear was.

You scoff, tugging on your own shirt from where it was abandoned in your haste a few hours ago. “Oh, because knowing I would get hurt as a consequence anyways is just so much better, isn’t it?”

“Y/N. Don’t talk like that.” He steps into your path after you pull your pants on and fix them around your hips.

Your gaze, once so timid, is now an intense glare. “Don’t try to intimidate me. I’m not afraid of you anymore, Nakamoto.” You clench your teeth, not breaking eye contact with him. “Am I only now a person worth more than just bait to lure out another gang? Do people not have value before they become useful to you?”

“Of course not. Y/N, you know we’re fighting for everyone. You know how I feel about you. You know I-”

He stops speaking when your hand raises in an attempt to slap him. With lightning fast reflexes, he grabs your arm, twisting it and raising his opposite hand. You try not to flinch, maintaining eye contact with him. “Go on. Hit me back. You couldn’t hurt me any more than you already have.”

At that, he drops your arm and lets you shove past him to exit the room. Suddenly, the building is suffocating and you have to get out. You’ve been here for a month and haven’t left, not once complaining, believing they were protecting you. A part of you logically knows that the other gangs are after you and that, in some ways, they are protecting you, but you’re so angry and hurt that you no longer care. Past all the rooms, down the stairs, to the front, where Jeno is sitting on watch. At first, he just looks at you blearily, but immediately scrambles up and towards you when your hand moves to unlock the door, stopping you.

“Wait, wait, what are you doing? You can’t go out there!” Ordinarily, you wouldn’t yell at the poor kid, as he’s one of the nicest, most innocent members, but right now he’s standing in your way.

“I’m sick of being your prisoner while you say you’re protecting me! Taeyong promised me I could leave, so I’m doing that. I’m so fucking sick of this.”

Speak of the devil and so he shall appear. The stairs creak behind you and you turn to see Taeyong. “Y/N. Go back to your room.”

“You’re not my leader. I don’t have to listen to you.”

“I don’t want to threaten you, Y/N, but I am the one with the gun.” His hand not-so-subtlely shifts to his belt, where his handgun is. Your hand lowers from the locks. “We’ll talk in your room. Come on.”

Obediently, you follow him, your head pounding with each step back into what you feel has become your prison. Once you’re both inside, he turns around. “I understand your frustration. However, we need you one more time. Most of the arrangements have been made. Help us with the RVs and we’ll let you go.”

You scoff. “I don’t get a choice this time?”

“You still want to stay with us?” You don’t respond, so he takes that as confirmation. “We’re going to see them tomorrow. After that, we’ll send you off to Japan with a new identity and a new life. I suggest you take care of all of your business before then.” His eyes flicker to the doorway and you don’t have to turn around to know who’s there.

Not even sparing him a glance, you turn around and walk back out the door, this time in the opposite direction you had come from. You go to the roof, where the door had been locked clumsily last night in your haste to get in each other’s pants. To your relief, he doesn’t follow you. The early morning light is painting the sky in colors that you don’t see too often anymore, soft pinks and yellows that are far too bright and pretty for how mournful and gray you feel. After you shut the door behind you, you see the blanket you had left out, along with the empty sake bottle and cups. In a spike of anger, you walk forward, grab the bottle, and throw it as hard as you can against the concrete of the wall by the door. The bottle shatters, scattering pieces of glass on that part of the roof. A shard flies towards you and you raise your arm, letting it slice into your forearm instead of your face. You just take the pain, listening to the small pieces of glass fall to the ground. You look at the place the glass had sliced into your skin and wince, touching the blood beginning to leak from the wound.

Tears prick your eyes at the pain and, before you know it, you’re sobbing, curling in on yourself, crying into your hands. The anger melts into hurt again. It feels like your heart has been torn from your chest. Without even trying, Yuta had taken everything that you had been willing to give him and you don’t know if you’ll ever get it back. You have to move forward, go to Japan, and start a new life with the pain of the Neos always resting in your heart. There’s only one way forward now. You cry until your headache becomes too painful to handle and there are no more tears left for you to shed.

Inside, you take care of your bleeding arm and drink some water before you sleep. A knock on your door awakens you a few hours later. Taeyong steps inside, a folded pile of clothes in his hands. “Something practical but fashionable to wear tomorrow. The RVs won’t accept anything less.”

He leaves just as quickly as he had come in. While that interaction is quick, the rest of the day is not. The few times you leave your room to eat and use their bathroom, it’s like the first day you were here. You avoid looking at the members and you don’t talk to them. Finally, it’s some time in the evening when there’s another knock on your door. You had been unsuccessfully trying to read for who knows how long, so when the door opens and Yuta is there, it really is like the first day again. He eyes the book open in front of you before looking up, catching your eyes. When you would usually smile at him, you meet him with a blank look this time, waiting for him to say something.

“Y/N,” he starts, voice soft, like it had been earlier. Your heart aches this time. He stays in the doorway. “I never meant for you to get hurt. I’m sorry. You still saved my life. For that, I’ll always owe you.” He pauses, the silence falling heavily between you. “I have feelings for you. I’m not going to lie to you. But I know that won’t keep you here if you don’t want to be here.”

As he starts to turn back around, you call out to him. “Yuta.” He stops, looking back at you, waiting for you to speak. “Why is your tattoo red and not blue?”

He swallows hard. “To remind me that it might take a sea of blood to change the world.”

You nod slowly. “I think… I understand now. We’ll never be the same, you and I. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand you, no matter how hard I try. We might have too many differences to ever reconcile them.”

“I’m sorry. For bringing you into this.” All you do is shake your head. He leaves.

It’s hard to sleep that night.

The meeting with who they call the “RVs” is in the evening the next day. The outfit Taeyong brought you is a pair of black jeans and a flowy black shirt, banded around the waist and with loose sleeves, black ankle boots with a slight heel, and a gray-washed jean jacket. You almost hate to admit it, but it’s the slickest outfit you’ve worn in a while, especially since coming here. With your hair falling loosely, you feel ready for whatever this meeting is.

A quiet knock on your door has you turning around. You open it to see Jisung. He’s the quietest out of the members, so you’re surprised to see him. “Here,” he says, offering you a sheathed knife, complete with some leather straps. You take it from him, your eyes wide. He doesn’t meet your eyes. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but if something goes wrong, it’s good to have a weapon. You can hide it under your shirt. Chenle and I got it for you. Don’t tell the hyungs, they’ll get mad.”

Tears nearly prick at your eyes. “Thank you, Jisung. I won’t tell them. In all luck, I won’t even have to use it.” He bows quickly before hurrying away. With the door shut again, you raise up your shirt, finding that the outline of the sheath isn’t even visible beneath the material once you’ve secured it against your side.

Doyoung collects you from your room a few minutes later and you follow him, Taeyong, and Yuta to a car waiting just outside the front entrance. The last few golden orange rays of the sunset graze the sky. “Do you know how to get to the Bakery?” Taeyong asks Doyoung after he gets into the driver seat.

“I would certainly hope so. I’ve been there enough.”

Yuta leans closer to you and you instinctively lean away. He frowns and you reposition yourself, trying to not be deliberately avoidant. “The Bakery is where the Red Velvets are located. It’s not an actual bakery, just some warehouse they took over.” So, it’s the Red Velvets. You probably should have realized that’s what “RVs” meant, but you were a bit mentally occupied with other things. They’re a notorious female gang, small in members, but particularly dangerous. “They don’t really trust men,” Yuta adds, “that’s why we need you.”

“What do you even want me to do?”

Taeyong speaks up this time. “We’re trying to get them to ally with us. They’re not heartless - they killed their old boss and took off because he was doing despicable things to women. Part of the reason for their distrust. We just need to get them on our side. To cooperate with us. Just do your best to get their confidence in us.”

“Hopefully, Irene isn’t too difficult today. She’s the hardest to convince out of any of them,” Doyoung says. As you talk with them on the way over, things almost feel normal, like the last few days, but your heart feels too heavy for it to feel exactly right. You know Yuta glances over at you periodically and you can’t help looking back at him sometimes.

You don’t know what you were expecting to see when you first meet the Red Velvets, but the image in your mind probably wasn’t this. A stunningly beautiful woman greets you at the door, smiling at only you amongst your group and introducing herself as Yeri. She leads you all down a long, dark hall, into a room. There’s a large circular table with nine chairs, arranged almost like a makeshift conference room. Three of the chairs are occupied by more women, equally as beautiful as Yeri. She sits down next to them. The four of you take your seats across from them. You eye the empty chair curiously and, as you’re doing so, you hear the clicking of heels from behind you. Another woman enters, taking the final seat. All of them are dressed as Taeyong had told you to dress - fashionable, but practical. “I suppose we can begin, then?” One of them says, smiling sweetly. “What is it that the Neos want from us?”

Taeyong glances at the rest of us before looking back at them. “We want to propose an alliance.”

“Oh?” Yeri questions. “And why would we be interested in that?”

“Our organizations aren’t so different. We’re both after something bigger, better than just bullying innocent people into submission. It’s about time that we become allies,” Doyoung says, his voice even and calm.

“Not a bad point,” a third woman says, “what do you have to say, Wendy?”

“Why should we even trust you? What have you done that’s so good and righteous?”

“We don’t abandon people. We save them. Y/N is living proof of that.” Yuta jerks his head towards you after he says his part and you give a shallow nod of acknowledgment.

“Let her speak for herself, then.” The final woman, the one who had walked in last, gets up, walking around the table to your side. She stops in front of you, reaching out a hand and tilting your chin up  with one finger. “Y/N, was it? Tell us why we should trust these men.”

Her gaze is seductive, ruby lips parted, sending an unexpected shiver down your spine. Her eyes make you want to tell the truth, unfiltered. You blink to clear your head, deciding that you’ll speak from your heart, consequences be damned. “They’re not lying. They could have left me on that street, could have let the Rushers or Blue Veins kill me. But, they saved me and took responsibility, even though they had gotten me into that mess in the first place. I…” You break eye contact with her, your eyes almost unconsciously shifting over to Yuta. You look back at her. “For the last while, they’ve treated me almost like a member of their own group. And, despite everything, I don’t regret meeting them. They’ve done some terrible things, but I understand why. I want the bloodshed to stop as much as any of you do. They’ve shed blood on their own, changed lives, but I trust them.”

A quiet hum leaves her. Her thumb brushes over your bottom lip once before she takes her hand away, stepping back to her side of the table. The first woman watches her sit down again, a look of mixed amusement and weariness in her eyes. “Are you done playing your games, Irene?”

“Games? I just got a very honest confession out of our most honored guest, Seulgi.” Her painted red lips curve up into a smile. “I trust her and her story.”

“Joy? Wendy? Yeri?” None of the others speak as Irene calls upon them, only nodding. Irene, who you now figure is the leader, gives your side a wry smile. ���I suppose we’re in agreement, then. We’ll ally with you, Neos. Should you need us or should we need you, we are in this together, now.” She stands and the others follow. The Neos do the same, so you do, as well. She extends a hand across the table. Taeyong meets her halfway, shaking firmly.

Yeri leads all of you out again, Irene joining her to walk besides you. Though the meeting hadn’t been long, the tension was enough to make your legs feel like jelly. As you’re about to exit the building, Irene stops you with a gentle hand on your shoulder, leaning in to whisper in your ear at a low enough volume that none of the boys can hear. “If you ever need a different home, our doors are always open to you.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.” You smile and whisper back, following the Neos out. Yuta’s eyes follow you the entire way, eyes narrowed as Irene whispers to you. As you leave, he reaches out, grabbing your hand. Your eyes widen, but you don’t shake him off. “What are you doing?”

“Showing them that you’re not on the market.” His grip on your hand is nearly crushing, but you accept it for the moment. The way his fingers interlace with yours feels so natural, so nice, that you almost forget the whole incident from the previous day. After you get back into the car, he lets go of your hand, but the feeling remains.

“Fuck,” you hiss, realizing that Yuta’s grip on your hand had caused the cut from the sake bottle to start weeping blood again. Yuta reaches forward when he sees red begin to soak the bandage peeking out from under your sleeve.

“What happened?”

“It’s nothing,” you say through gritted teeth, pulling your arm closer to your body. He frowns, but doesn’t comment on it again. It’s a quiet few minutes between all of you after that, so Yuta takes the opportunity to turn to you. “The offer is still open. You can stay.”

“Yuta, I-” You don’t have time to respond to him before gunshots start firing off around the car. From the noise the car makes and the way Doyoung loses control, one of the tires has been popped. Before you can really think, there’s an explosion from the opposite side of the car and it’s flipping. You think you hear Yuta yell your name, but your ears are ringing from the explosion and you have no room to think as the car makes contact with the ground. The windows shatter, spraying glass all over all of you. The car tumbles once, twice more before coming to rest upside down. Your head is spinning and red and black spots cover your vision. It smells like blood and burning and you think something in the engine on fire. Everywhere hurts. Somehow, you manage to get your seatbelt off and away from your body. Every move you make feels like your skin is being sliced open and you want to throw up. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know you’re getting shards of glass stuck in your skin as you try to crawl out the shattered window, but that’s the least of your concerns. Breathing is a conscious effort and you feel like you could pass out, just go to sleep at any time. Your skin feels hot and sticky with blood. The sheath of Jisung’s knife presses into your side. Finally, with one last pull, your leg is free from the car seat you had hardly realized it was stuck under, and you finish crawling out from the car. After you’re out, you turn to look at the wreckage, seeing the slumped bodies of Taeyong, Doyoung, and Yuta. Yuta. He’s the closest to you, so you reach out for him.

“Yuta…” you can barely choke out his name, your breaths coming shallowly. A line of blood traces down his face and his eyes are closed. Before you can try to get closer and see if he’s still breathing or if any of the parts of the car are impaled in his body, someone drags you backwards. With the little strength you have left, you try to fight back, pulling in the opposite direction. “No… Yuta!”

“Shut up. You think he could survive a crash like that?”

“I survived it! Get the hell off of me!” You try to scramble forward again, but the man holding you back tugs harder. You turn just enough to see the tattoo on his arm. Bright blue veins tattooed artificially into his arm. You want to scream, but you don’t know who would hear you. People you had started to consider your friends are in that car, bleeding to death, soon to burn alive, and you have to save them. “Let me go. Let me go!”

As you scream, the Blue Vein drags you back by your arm, his fingers digging into your bottle cut. That last bit of pain is enough to push you over the edge and the black spots finally overtake your vision.

The sound of crying is what brings you to consciousness. That, and the mind-numbing pain that fills your body. A whimper of pain leaves you as soon as you try to find your voice. “Shh, it’s alright.”

An unfamiliar voice has you peeling open your eyelids, seeing an unfamiliar woman in front of you, using dull tweezers to pull the shards of glass out of your skin. A bowl full of the sharp pieces of the car windows is next to you and a gruff, heavily tattooed man stands behind her. “That’s enough.”

The kind-looking woman moves away quickly and fearfully and the man moves forward. “So, you’re the Neos’ new fleshlight, huh?”

You shakily open your mouth and he smirks, expecting some pitiful comment to escape you. Instead, you grit your teeth and hiss out your next words. “Fuck you.”

By his expression, you can tell he isn’t pleased. However, his face quickly morphs from showing irritation and anger to showing smug pleasure. The smile he’s giving you leaves an unsettling feeling in your gut. “You’re lucky you’re still alive. Or, not so lucky, once we pick out every piece of info about the Neos from you that we can. It will be fun for us, but so much for you. I can promise you that.” He turns to the woman who had stepped back. “Take care of those wounds. I’ll be back later.”

As soon as he leaves and you hear a door open, shut, and lock, you try to get up, but the sharp pain throughout your body brings you to a halt quickly. The woman rushes forward, trying to get you to lie back down. “Please stop, you’ll hurt yourself more.”

You try to analyze her, but your brain feels slow and fuzzy with pain. She has dirt on her face and her hair and simple clothes are dirty, like she hasn’t bathed or changed in a while. All you can tell from her exposed arms is that she doesn’t have the markings of a Blue Vein member. “Who are you?”

“You can call me Sooyoung. But, please, listen to me.” The logical side of your mind wins out against the desperate side and you lie back down, wincing. You recognize that you’re in some sort of bed and the room is dimly lit. From your position, you look out at the rest of the room and see several other people, all huddled near each other, tired, fearful looks on their faces. With a little more observance, they all have cuts, bruises, and dirt covering their skin, similar to Sooyoung.

“Where am I? Who are all you people?”

“You were taken by the Blue Veins. From what they were saying, it sounds like you were in some sort of crash.” The memory of what happened right before you blacked out comes to you and you suddenly feel even sicker. You want to cry, but you don’t have any strength left for that. In all likelihood, Yuta, Doyoung, and Taeyong are dead. You have to pray they’re alive, but with the way the crash was looking, you don’t place any faith in that. You look back at Sooyoung’s face as she speaks again. “We were all taken by them.” Her voice lowers, mostly out of fear. “Girls have come and gone. We think they sell them. Some people are here because they know a member of a different gang. It’s… it’s all just waiting. Waiting for when you’ll be next.”

Suddenly, even in your weak state, you feel like you understand. Why the Neos believe what they do. Why they’re fighting. Why they’re willing to make sacrifices. Who they’re fighting for.

“I…” You say slowly, each word feeling like a promise, “I’ll help you.”

Her eyes widen. “What? There is no way to help. We’ve tried, I promise you we’ve tried, but-”

“The Neos. If they figure out where I am, they’ll come for me,” you take a deep breath, wincing when it hurts to breathe in, “even if they don’t, I’ll find a way.” You become aware of the feeling of Jisung’s knife still pressing into your side. You choose to put your trust in this woman you just met, so you slowly move your body, choking back noises at the pain, reach under your shirt, untie the leather strapping the knife to your side, and pull it out. “Take this,” you say, trying to offer it to her. She doesn’t move, her eyes large with fear. “Hide it for now. I’ll think of something.”

With a little more urging, she takes it. She stows it away between the mattress and the bedsprings of the old, creaky bed you’re lying on before facing you again. “Please, try to recover. They won’t give you long, maybe a few days at best. I don’t know if your friends are coming, but… this is the best chance we’ve got.”

With your promises, you find that the rest of your strength is sapped for the moment and you slip away into sleep.

You don’t know how many days pass. You suspect the Blue Veins are only allowing you to recover now so that it hurts more when they try to get information out of you. With a painfully small amount of food and water being given to you, your body still aches and you want desperately to leave. But, you use the time to think. Wait for the right opportunity. You speak quietly with the others in the room when the gang members aren’t around. Too many of them are innocent men, women, children, weak people. People who have no place being thrown into the violence they have. Every so often, a new person is taken, sometimes crying and screaming, sometimes silent, ready for whatever is to come. Two or three new people arrive, just as afraid as the rest. Some are taken out and come back with gashes and burns and wounds uglier than anything you’d seen while you were shadowing at the hospital. With each person that comes and goes, your resolve strengthens. Slowly, you think of something. You don’t have a very solid plan, but you wait for the right moment anyways. If you have to kill to set yourself and these people free, you will.

One day, you’re woken from your sleep by shouting coming from behind the locked door. Some sort of disturbance. This - this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Moving as quickly as you can manage and trying to signal the others that it’s time, they all get up, ready to help you. You don’t know how you did it, but you motivated some of them to try to help you.  The knife is in your hand. You’re behind the door. Once again, you’re waiting, but only for a little bit longer.

Locks are clicking up and you hear more shouting, but you try to focus. The people in the rest of the room shift nervously and you try to still your shaking hand. It’s now or never. You can’t depend on the Neos to save you, so you have to try for yourself. The shouting becomes more coherent as the door finally flies open, nearly hitting you. Side-stepping it slightly, the man who had entered the room practically growls. A gun is in his hand. Some of the others who aren’t frozen in fear begin to cry out loudly from the other side of the room, the first part of your plan. His attention is drawn to them, his next words a bark of anger. “Where the hell is that Neo bitch?”

Now. You lunge forward, but don’t notice the other shadow emerging from behind him in the doorway. The knife is about to plunge into his neck, but a strong hand stops you. A familiar voice. “There’s no need for that.”

The Blue Vein turns, locking eyes with the man who had stopped you. A moment later, a gunshot deafens you and the Blue Vein is crumpling to the ground, howling in pain. Some of the other captives scream, real fear this time. A bullet wound clean through both his hand and thigh. He drops his own gun and clutches at his wounds.

You can’t believe your eyes. Yuta stands in front of you, a pistol in his hand, pointed at the man on the ground. He’s alive. He’s alive. You want to cry and hug him and thank him all at the same time. You settle for just saying his name. “Yuta…”

He smiles and tilts his head towards you, wincing at what you believe is a head wound, indicated by the bandage wrapped around his forehead. “You should get them out of here. None of you want to see this.”

You swallow hard. “Thank you.”

When you turn towards the door to peer out, you’re face to face with Ten, Kun, and Yangyang, more of the Neos. Managing a quick smile, you usher the people out of the room, moving around the figure of the Blue Vein on the floor in pain and Yuta standing over him, steady hand pointing his gun at the other man’s forehead. Once everyone is out, you stay turned around, watching as the others guide them out. With all your sensibilities, you try not to think about the life leaving the man on the ground as you hear another gunshot from behind you. If you’ve learned one thing while trapped here, it’s that people can be vile. Vile enough that you could possibly forgive Yuta for pulling that trigger.

You feel a hand on your shoulder a few moments later and you’re being spun around, familiar arms embracing you. You breathe him in, a scent so freeing and warm compared to what you’ve been experiencing for the last few days. A sob finally escapes you and his shirt becomes wet with your tears. “I thought you were dead,” you cry, your sounds muffled by his chest, “I really thought you were dead.”

“If I was that easy to kill, I would’ve been dead years ago,” he murmurs, stroking your hair softly. “It did take a hell of a lot of convincing to get Kun to let me come with this time, though. I got lucky compared to Doyoung and Taeyong.”

You pull away slightly, looking up at him through tear-filled eyes. “Are they…?”

“They’re alive, just in bad shape. We could really use you back with us.” He moves to cup your cheek with his hand, frowning at the small cuts and dirt on your face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m alive. You’re alive. I’m okay.” You sniffle, reaching up to try to wipe away your tears. “Yuta, those people… they’ve been here for so long. I’m so glad you came to get us.”

“I’m sorry it took so long.” Despite the dirt on your face and the tears smudging it, he leans down, pressing his lips to yours firmly. He pulls away when more gunshots sound from the opposite direction the others had gone. He takes your hand, pulling you along. “We should go.” You watch the place your hands are connected, feeling like you know him more than ever.

“Why did you stop me?” You ask, trying to keep pace with him. “I could have killed him. I was ready to do it.”

“I know that’s not something you want. You’re different from us. You’re not ready to kill. You don’t want to kill.” His tone shifts into something more mournful. “I’m sorry. For everything. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me.”

“I’m glad I’m here.”

He stops moving, turning to you slowly, eyebrows furrowed and a confused look on his face. “What?”

“I’m glad I’m here. Yuta, I…” you stop, trying to think carefully about what you’re about to say. “I understand now. Those people will be able to live again because you guys are here. Because you came for me, for us. I might not be able to go back to school again, to ever become a full-fledged doctor, but,” you pause, looking him right in the eyes, “I understand now. And I want to help. It wasn’t the wrong place at the wrong time. I want to stay with the Neos. I want to stay with you.”

“This,” he breathes out, “this isn’t something you can take back. You know that, right?”

“I know. I still want to stay.” You nod firmly, looking him in the eyes. To save people like Sooyoung, to use the skills you’ve acquired, to do something to fight the darkness in the city. You’ll do it for that. You’ll do it for all of them, for Mark’s dad, for Taeyong’s mom, for Hansol, whom you’d never met. You’d do it for Yuta, who is now close to your heart.

With that unbreakable promise that you swear to fulfill, you squeeze his hand tight. He gives you a small smile, full of hope at the future he knows you’re gaining and with a slight tinge of sadness at the future he knows you’re losing, and pulls you forward with him.

[hitsuackerman]

A Different Hashira (Giyu x Reader) pt 1

At age 10, (Y/N) (L/N) became one of the first Hashira's along side her mentor Sakonji Urokodaki.

However, despite the honor of becoming a Hashira, she does not see herself fit for the title. Only Urokodaki and Ubuyashiki know about her breathing style.

10 years have passed since that faithful day. Now that the Hashira's have grown into 10, she starts to open up to her fellow demon slayers. One of the newer Hashira's catch her attention. The one with the mismatched haori.

-I do not own Kimetsu no Yaiba. None of the characters nor story do not belong to me. -I will try to incorporate some scenes of the anime ;)

-this is also in ao3/quotev/wattpad :)

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

You slowly sheathed your sword back to it's scabbard.

It was a full moon tonight and you admired the silence the forest had to offer. Each chirp the crickets produced, the sound of a nearby river flowing with nature, and a random owl hooting in the distance effectively calmed you.

Still gripping the handle of your Nichirin blade, you reminded yourself to regain control of your slightly trembling body. It took a considerable amount of effort but you managed to take control and used full focused breathing once more.

Feeling that your senses were now tranquil, you opened your eyes. In front of you were the remains of seven demons. All had their heads severed. Save for one of which you ended up disintegrating. But that was your goal so it was alright. Blood stains were now present in your haori. Your haori had absorbed a decent amount causing it to droop a bit.

Tonight's one on one training was rather... unique. Instead of using nature, Urokodaki decided to take you into the woods to see how far you had developed your breathing style.

"You seem to have trained behind my back, (Y/N)."

You hadn't noticed that he was now beside you. Both of you now staring at the full moon.

"The blade hates being sedentary."

The moon cast a yellowish glow to the rocks and grass. Whatever demon you had slain, they were now non-existent. A gentle breeze embraced the two of you. In your own absurd way, you liked to think that the wind was the way of demons saying thank you for releasing them from the curse given to them. Whether it's true or not, you didn't really care.

"Shall we head back?"

Heading back to the water estate, the comfortable silence between you and your teacher got cut with a messenger raven.

"It still perplexes me how you managed to convince Ubuyashiki-sama to give you a raven and not a crow." Urokodaki commented with a hint of pride in his voice. You were one of his protege's and being given a privilege to care for a different messenger bird was a small accomplishment.

"(Y/N) (L/N) to report to Ubuyashiki-sama."

"Even managed to train it to talk calmly. As expected nonetheless." He gently patted your head. "I will be fine on my own, proceed with utmost caution (Y/N)."

Without waiting for a reply, you watched your teacher walk towards your home. His light blue kimono glistened a silvery hue once the clouds showed the moon's presence once more.

"Leggo, Karasutori."

Nipping on your palm once, Karasutori took flight and lead you to the Ubuyashiki manor.

Though the distance wasn't too great, it took a good 30 minutes of walking (granted you got lost). When you finally arrived, you were greeted with his children. Despite people claiming them to look magical, in your head, you still saw them as creepy. The way their gigantic eyes would stare at you always put you on edge. Thankfully, Ubuyashiki-sama has the Soothing Voice.

Tea was served as you waited for the 97th leader to arrive. Fiddling with the chains at the of your handle, you only noticed that each chain had a red glossy finish.

"Good evening, (Y/N)."

"Ubuyashiki-sama." You gave him a bow. Looking at his face sent pain through your veins. You had made it a personal mission to somehow find a cure to his curse. Though you had no clue as to how, yet.

"I see you have quickly mastered your breathing style."

"Not all ten yet, Ubuyashiki-sama. The 9th and 10th are a bit difficult, but nothing too much to handle."

"Sakonji-kun has taught you well."

Simply nodding, you shifted a bit in your seat. In all honesty, you were tired from the training session. You started from morning and barely took any rest.

"What is my purpose here, Ubuyashiki-sama?"

"I have heard and seen your abilities, (Y/N). You see, my foresight has shown me that you will achieve many in the near future." Taking a sip of his tea, he stared at you through his blank lavender eyes. "It is about time you become a Hashira."

"Huh?" Taken aback by his statement, your jaw hung loosely as you processed what he had just told you.

"Become a Hashira, (Y/N). You have all the skills and mastery to be one. I have already informed Sakonji-kun. It is now up to you to grab the opportunity or reap another future."

"I would love to... But my breathing style, Ubuyashiki-sama. It's not suited to be a pillar."

"Nonsense."

"Can I still live with Urokodaki-sensei?"

"For the time being you may, but in due time, you will have to live in your own estate."

The picture of having your own estate boggled your mind. The estate would probably be dark and empty as hell.

"Alright. If it brings calm to your foresight, then I will agree."

As a token of his appreciation, he instructed Kiriya to get a box from his personal quarters. When Kiriya arrived, he held onto a rectangular box. The box was matte black tied together by a gold ribbon. The tips of the ribbon were raggedly cut and stained with black. You couldn't help but smile at the beauty.

With the box in front you, you carefully pulled on the ribbon and lifted the lid.

Inside was a haori. It had a geometrical pattern consisting of red, white and black. The hems were lined black. Lifting it up, you could feel how soft the material was. It was far better than the haori you had on. This one felt luxurious.

Taking your haori off, you carefully folded it and placed it beside you. It was only now you saw just how battered and blood stained it was due to the light of the room. Embarrassment entered your system till you wore the new haori.

In an instant, you felt calm and collected. Whatever thoughts than ran through your head slowed down. It felt as if a huge burden was taken from your shoulders.

"Ahh, you can feel it."

"Is this supposed to happen?"

"Only to that one. That haori of yours is a special one. I specifically made that for you. It's calming, is it not?"

"What if I outgrow this?"

"Inform Amane. She will make one tailored to your height."

This time, you couldn't contain the smile anymore. You continuously thanked and bowed to the leader till he excused you from his manor.

The journey back to the water estate felt surreal. This morning you were nothing but a 10 year old trainee under Urokodaki. Now, you were a Hashira. Running now, you couldn't wait to feel the happiness of your mentor. He had raised you and taught you everything you had to know despite not being able to use Water breathing techniques.

By the time you reached the estate, you could smell the aroma of soup coming from the building. Opening the doors, you were met with the familiar red mask and a bowl ready for you.

"You make me proud, (Y/N)..."

With a pounding heart, you ran towards your mentor and gave him a gratifying embrace. This was not a shock to the masked man since he knew you saw him as a father figure. Patting your back, he could feel the sense of calm engulfing the two of you. Realizing what their master had done, caused him to hum in content.

Letting go of your teacher and waiting for the soup to be served, you fiddled with your haori. Even your blade felt much lighter and clearer.

After finishing dinner, Urokodaki motioned you to follow him to the patio.

The sound of the river was relaxing as ever. The cool breeze that swept your faces, occasional frogs croaking in the distance, and the sound of the cackling fire made things fall into place.

"(Y/N)."

"Yes, Urokodaki-sensei?"

"I am stepping down as a Hashira."

You weren't surprised. After being with him for a good 4 years, you could somehow read his actions. He wasn't too keen on the Hashira lifestyle. If given the option, he would rather live by the woods and chop trees. He did mention he would still train but only if he sees the person fit. Though you were not going to deny, it caused a bit of sadness on your part.

"I understand. Will you still train me if I ask?"

"Of course. You are the exception."

"Where will you go?"

For a moment, only the sound of the rushing waters could be heard.

"I am not sure yet, but I shall send my crow when I settle."

Nodding your head, you stood up and excused yourself. Leaving your teacher to ponder on his thoughts. Exchanging good nights, you silently closed your door and flopped to your futon. Loneliness slowly taking over you.

Dragging your futon near your window, you took in the moonlight. It usually managed to soothe your insomnia. 

Though you didn't really mind, you decided that it was time for you to better know who the others were.

One main reason why you chose not to was due to the fact that you were too young and they seemed to be coming and going. Ever since you received Karasutori, you had recieved multpile announcements saying that this hashira had perished in a mission. It just grew to you to avoid the unwanted pain of losing someone you know.

Sleep finally took the best of you.

Waking up with the rays of sunlight blessing your face, you exited your room only to find breakfast ready. Along with a note slipped under the bowl of rice.

You were alone once again.

Knowing that sulking wouldn't make a significant change, you ate your food and took a bath right after.

Taking a piece of paper, you scribbled a small note and attached it to Karasutori.

"Send this to Tecchikawahara. If you make it back in 3 days, I'll give you mochi."

"Bribes. Always with bribes." Your raven replied before speeding his way out. "Make it 3!"

Grabbing your haori and blade, you slowly made your way to the common training grounds. It's time you finally acquanited yourself with the others.

[sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-shelby]

Possibly my most epic DnD session yet! (now with sloppy illustrations!)

****Late-game spoilers for Hoard of the Dragon Queen****

I play as Killian Lyle. Level 6 human fighter, eldritch knight, lawful good. +4 str, con. -2 cha. You know the type.

Others in the party are: Rat-Rat, the forest gnome druid. Syrris, the wood-elf rogue. Montagor, the half-elf bard.

So, the last thing Killian did the session before was reenter a tavern our party got kicked out of and try to bribe the tavern keeper to help us get past some baddies. Big tough-looking tavern keeper grabs his weapon. *Roll initiative* End of session.

In Killian’s hands were a shield and a loaf of bread he had recently been served in that tavern. He was alone, the rest of his party discussing plans outside. We all rolled initiative, but only Killian was aware there was going to be combat so far. A couple of the party members got to go first. Basically just wandered town square, taking in surroundings. There are a whole bunch enemy guards nearby, watching, but not picking a fight with the group. 

Killian’s turn. He steps forward and tries to FORCE THE LOAF OF BREAD INTO THE GUYS MOUTH to catch him off-guard and maybe keep him quiet for a second. SMASHING SUCCESS! Guy is unable to stop me from jamming those carbs down his throat and drops his weapon. I bonus action my sword to my hand.

Tavern-keeper’s turn. DM has the guy do a con save to make sure he doesn’t CHOKE TO DEATH AND DIE!  *shit, shit, I didn’t want to kill him!!!* Luckily he saves and is able to clear his airway of bread. He starts swinging fists and misses.

Keep going in initiative order. Guest calls out “HES FIGHTING THE BARTENDER!” Most guests at the tavern flee upstairs, but 2 pull daggers and join in. Montagor the bard hears some commotion and opens the door to see Killian shoving bread down the tavern-keeper’s throat and other people moving in with weapon’s drawn. Tries playing the bagpipes nice and loud for extra diversion, but nat 1′s and pops the bag. Syrris the rogue comes in and starts quietly and *permanently* eliminating anyone attacking with a weapon. Killian tries multiple times to thunk the tavern-keeper on the head with the hilt of his sword well enough to knock him out, but the dude keeps fighting. Poor guy can’t make a single hit though. 

This fight’s going longer than Killian was hoping. He tries a different tactic: INTIMIDATE. Another smashing success. Like a 19 or something, since intimidate is his one charisma-based skill that doesn’t get a negative modifier. BARTENDER GETS A NAT 1! Surrenders. Killian backs off just before the Captain of the group of enemies walks in.

“WHAT”S GOING ON IN HERE!?”

Killian gambles on deception. NAT 20 “Some guys were fighting the tavern-keeper. We helped. They’re dead now.”

Intimidated tavern-keeper nods, says they were going to rob him.

Enemy captain thanks us for protecting his friend and leaves. WOW, DODGED A BULLET THERE!

We head out too, Killian dropping a couple of gold coins for the tavern-keeper as he heads out, and start looking for a good way to get past the guards. We’re trying to get into a GIANT ICE CASTLE that’s about to FLY AWAY. Time’s running out. I’m not sneaky, but we’re about to give it a try, see if our amazing rolls continue. We decide to peek in the giant stable that had HUGE REPTILIAN GROWLS coming from it. This would either be really bad or really good for us. 

Really good! Tied-up wyverns along one wall, riding harnesses on the other. The ice castle begins to take off. Guess we’re doing this! We smell the stink of meat from a nearby building. The rogue is unable to carry a full pig carcass herself. Killian goes to help. NAT 20! Throws a pig over one shoulder, and a sheep over the other and marches off toward the wyverns. Killian has crap animal handling skills, but Rat-Rat the druid doesn’t. Killian keeps the things distracted with bites of meat, Rat-Rat puts the harnesses on them with great success. We climb on, again without incident. And Rat-Rat is apparently a natural-born dragon-rider because he came up with an incredible plan that worked without a hitch. 

Minor-illusion the image of a fat turkey, flying just out of reach of the wyvern. Bard prestidigitation’s the smell of juicy meat coming off the “turkey”. Wyverns were eager to follow. Probably more complicated than it needed to be, but hey, it has pizzazz!

We are able to catch up to the ice castle and land they wyverns near another stable that they seemed trained to fly to. Looking around, ogres and kobolds seem to pay us no mind. Guess randos flying in on the backs of dragon things is a normal sight around here. But as it starts getting dark, creatures seem to hurry their tasks and make their way indoors. We figure we’d better do so as well. Quietly enter the first door we approach. Amazingly, nobody’s there. Not out and about anyway. There’s a comfortably furnished room right when we walk through the door, but we decide to keep exploring. Rat-Rat casts detect magic. The comfortable room has an illusory wall to an outside platform, but nothing else of note. 

We hear a familiar voice arguing with another voice in another room. A wizard we’d rather not exchange blows with if we can help it. Luckily, according to the DM’s dice rolls, they notice nothing.

Then, further down the hall we heard another familiar voice. Rezmir, the dragonborn cult leader we’ve been tracking for MONTHS. Basically in the first spot we look. Wow, really? And none of us are hurt. Most of us have all of our spell slots and other abilities still available to us. Could this be more perfect? Rat-Rat does see a bit of magic in the room in the last moments before his spell times out, but that’s to be expected, right?

There is a lock.“It looks much more complicated than any lock you’ve encountered before”, the DM tells us. But our rogue is pretty skilled in her arts. She decides to give it a try. 

“With my modifier that was a 30.″ Huh. What luck. DM said later that was a DC 25 lock. 

Rezmir was inside, sitting on her bed in her pajamas, just loving on her doggos. I mean attack drakes. Not paying us any mind whatsoever. *roll initiative*

Syrris goes first. Perfect opportunity for an assassination with her poison dagger and all those extra dice rolls she gets in just this sort of situation. She steps into the room and is SNATCHED UP AND HELD DOWN BY A SENTIENT AREA RUG! I should’ve drawn this part too because I can’t help but imagine the magic carpet from Aladdin wrestling the elf.

Anyway, fighting then ensues. Attack drakes come running, keeping the rest of the party besides the rogue out in the hall. Rezmir starts out unarmed, and shoots off a scary-looking spell at our bard. It misses and melts the wall behind him. Thank goodness it missed. Rogue takes 2 turns escaping the rug, Rezmir runs for her sword across the room. Rat-Rat’s moonbeaming Rezmir rather successfully. Killian and the Montagor are mostly in melee with the drakes, but Killian did start with a firebolt to Rezmir’s face. This fight hurts, both sides taking plenty of damage.

The rogue is taking the brunt of the damage trapped inside the bedroom with the dragonborn and that mean magic carpet. She takes it like a champ, but there’s a turn for the worse when she’s ready for healing. The bard’s starts coming to her aid, and she takes more damage, this time from the sword. Healing has no effect from that point.... The sword did something to stop her from regaining hit points, and after the significant damage from its blade, that’s bad news.

Bard and Rogue get caught in a breath attack, and the rogue goes down. Killian and Rat-Rat are still outside of the room, Killian around a corner and can’t actually see Rezmir from where he’s at. Shit. We still have one drake remaining. Killian tries his best with two attacks to eliminate it, but does min damage on both and it remains standing. Fuck it. Time for an Action Surge. Moves past the drake to where he’s in melee with Rezmir herself, stepping out from around the corner. Double attack again. Hits on both. NAT 20 ON THE SECOND! 

“How did it happen?”, the DM asks. I’m floored that I managed to down her in that hit.

“Killian steps around the corner, swinging his sword to where her saw the breath attack originate, slicing through her pajamas into the scales beneath. He then makes eye contact with her and sees the recognition in her face as she looks his way in surprise, even as he’s pulling back his sword for a second strike. Killian lunges full-force, plunging the sword right through her before she has the chance to react.”

“FOOLS!”, she cries out with her final breath as she disintegrates into ash, her sword and a couple of keys clanging to the floor where she had stood. Simultaneously an ornate chest in the far corner of the room violently explodes, destroying anything that might’ve been inside.

We rush to the Syrris, and Rat-Rat stabilizes her. Killian places her on the bed to rest. Then eyes turn toward the items Rezmir left behind. Killian voices that the rogue won’t be pleased to see the chest exploded when she regains consciousness, but doesn’t personally care much that the loot is no more. The party uses one of the keys in the pile of ash that was Rezmir to relock the room so they can use the comfortable chamber for a night of recuperation before continuing venturing back into the castle.

“Killian, I think you’re the only one of us that could wield that sword.”, Rat-Rat squeaks, pointing to the one remaining object on the ground.

The sword is jagged and black with a purple crystal in the hilt. Something about it makes Killian uneasy.

Killian replies, “A greatsword... Doesn’t really suit my fighting style. But it seems a powerful blade. ” Then he picks it up off the floor feeling powerful magic coursing through it, and hears a voice in his head.

“Hello”, the sword whispers, darkly. “You enjoyed that kill, didn’t you.”

Oh man, having my lawful good, magic fanatic, fighter boy weigh the benefits of wielding a legendary magical sword of untold power, against the moral drawback of it being intelligent and EVIL is going to be a wild ride. He has attuned to it, and we’ll see where this takes us. 

I’m still reeling from all the amazing things that happened in this session. What a day for Killian in particular. 

[rekkingcrew]

Campaign Debrief

So for nearly 2 years I ran an Edge of the Empire campaign with 3-4 players, mostly weekly. These last couple of months we’ve been using discord, which has gone great. I want to get down some of my thoughts about what worked and what didn’t. 

This is gonna be a big wall of text and all but two bits are gonna be under the cut: system and play style. 

Fantasy Flight Star Wars game system is legit my favorite system EVER. (Not to dick wave or anything, but that’s including D&Ds 2-5, Gurps, White Wolf, Blades in the Dark, Dungeon World, Deadlands, and a few miscellaneous other short form ones). The system of advantages and disadvantages, and especially triumphs and despairs rather than just straight successes and failures really opens up complex narrative opportunities and gives a chance for wild story beats that just would not have happened otherwise. The fights go fast but feel meaty and there’s a lot of room to pitch advantages to your friends so you’re not just waiting your turn. Character creation is granular enough that your choices always feel meaningful, and points can be spent anywhere, so you can really specialize and shape your character. 

We played very collaboratively and it made things AMAZING. Part of this is that we were all good friends and have played together for a while now. Our taste in what kind of story we want is similar- nuggets of drama scattered throughout, but mostly cutting up. A lot of the best NPCs and story suggestions came from my players rather than from me- our season one boss villain, Imperial spymaster “Uncle” Karston Severax, a pantoran ex-special forces black operative whose current public face was a Mr. Rogers-esque children’s TV presenter, for example, was someone my players started out and all of us collective “yes and” added to around the table, and he was JUST THE BEST. These kind of exchanges also gave us moments like the time our tech tried to blackmail the head of a security corporation with the fact that he was having an affair and he’d written just LOADS of incredibly cringey fanfiction; but the roll was such that the attempt ended with him finally getting the push he needed to quit a job he hated, get out of a marriage that just wasn’t working, and follow his dream of self-publishing. He even dedicated his first book to our slicer. Because it wasn’t a DM vs Players atmosphere, because we were all on the same page, I could ask my players “hey, what do you want for your triumph?” and “all right, so who is the NPC you know?” as well as just “that’s enough to finish this guy, what does this look like?” This campaign was 1000% better for sharing that world building load, and the players were all, I think, more invested. 

more below the cut. 

What Worked

One of the most useful things I ever did was start giving players morality pet NPCs that were their special hench people, and I’m embarrassed that I waited so long to assign one to our droid. 

The zero session was absolutely invaluable in setting the tone of the game and the relationship between characters, and I will bang this drum until I’m fucking blue in the face. Don’t meet in the first session. Sit the players down and say “how do you know each other, why do you stay together, what are some of your past adventures?” It’s just so much better. 

Cameos and ties to our other games, in what we’ve been calling “The Drax Kreiger Expanded Universe” have continued to be welcome pretty much every time. People were delighted to have a moment or two to slip back into old characters. 

I was able to identify what each player wanted and give them that. Brick’s player wanted quiet scenes with big character emotion, like his one on one pit fight the character didn’t want to have, or the letter from his mother telling him how proud she was of him, or the time in training where he tapped into how angry he really was and it spooked the character and everyone on the ship. Nyla’s player wanted a big epic, but also difficult space journey of good vs. evil, and so Nyla got a padawan whose parents she had possibly killed when she fought for the empire, she dug up the grave of her clone teacher’s order 66′d jedi for the crystal for her lightsaber, she got to cleanse a temple that was trapped in a fruitless struggle between light and dark, and a climactic lightsaber battle that was about possibly sacrificing herself for the good of others. TK’s player was deep into star wars trivia and space stuff, so he practically squealed when Verpine shatter weapons showed up, and he seemed to get a kick out of the Evocii, and also that time they put on wing suits and dove the atmosphere of a gas giant. It’s worth noting nobody was actually all that interested in the thing that turns my gears: complex mysteries with a lot of clues and investigation, and once I let that shit drop, things ran a lot smoother. 

Some of our best stuff was non-combat challenges, like climbing the cliffs of Naboo or navigating the deep undercity of Nar Shadaa. The guys reliably failed anything social, but environmental challenges were always appreciated. 

I always tried to make sure there was more than one way to do things. For any given mission, especially early on, I’d try to brainstorm at least three ways something could be accomplished. 

My party split up a LOT, but we found a sort of cinematic cutting back and forth to be really useful. When there was a big crit, or a goal accomplished, or something like that, we’d jump to the other party even if the fight wasn’t over. Sometimes that was only just, like, Brick and the guys doing drunk karaoke and saying to no one in particular “MAN, I hope Nyla’s having as fun a time as we are!” but it kept everyone involved and it wasn’t just people waiting their turn for 20 minutes at a time. Also people chimed in with fun advantages and disadvantages. 

I had everybody write backstories and whenever I could, I incorporated in things from what they’d written. Our second season was basically TK tracking down the guy who’d made him, a Thackwash alien with the same sort of shifting personalities he had. TK’s player hadn’t written much about the guy except that he’d been a salvage mechanic who constructed TK for protection when he got in trouble with the local mafia. Giving that guy complementary personalities for each of TK’s really helped stick the landing on that one, and the player really enjoyed having actually completed his character’s goal. 

It’s worth saying, we took some time at several points during the campaign, either individually or as a group, to talk about what we liked and didn’t, what we wanted more of, where we wanted things to go, possible directions for characters, mechanical issues, how to have a better game, group dynamics, all sorts of stuff. In a way it’s like sex: people have this fucked up expectation that you’ll just be good at it without communicating, and man, fuck that. Talking to my players was ALWAYS worthwhile.

I was always adamant, because it was a thing that bugged me when I was a player, that if a character had spent the points to be good at something, they got to be good at it. That made some things difficult, but I think it was the right decision. It took me a while to tailor fights right, and honestly a lot of times, splitting up the party was the best way to balance fights, but I never said to anyone hey that thing you spent all those points on, could you please not do that?

My players were excellent about encouraging each other to have serious dramatic moments. TK was completely ready to die in a fight, and when he lost a significant chunk of his programming, the way he chose to play it was really heartbreaking. Everyone came inside and had tea with Brick’s mom. No one stepped on anyone else’s fun when it was time to be serious, and everybody was great about cheering each other on, whether they were being funny or being dead serious. 

I FUCKING FINISHED A CAMPAIGN. IT HAD AN END. So much stuff petered out over the years, I was adamant I wasn’t going to do that. 

What Didn’t Work

Boy, my players had pretty much all the trouble trying to remember to use “they/them” pronouns for NPCs with neutral or alien genders. 

No one is interested in falling damage. Sigh. 

I did not keep good track of money or ship fuel or anything. The campaign didn’t end up relying on it too heavily (I was honestly expecting a much more Cowboy Bebop setup than where we drifted), but that was an area I kind of fell down. 

We never really got obligation working correctly and in the end we just ended up abandoning it. We kept doing the force morality because the lone force player was very into it and it was a huge part of that character’s journey, but for the rest having people show up to collect on obligation was sometimes not possible in the story- or if it was possible it was pretty cumbersome. Campaign did obligation by arc, and I think that’s a pretty useful way to do it- roll at the end of the arc for what’s coming next. 

Early on, I made way too many assumptions about what was an adventure hook for my players and what was an annoyance. Honestly, bits of this lasted pretty late. At one point I gave my players a spy for the larger rebellion they could totally talk to- he was even working with their resident bothan spy- but they looked at the senatorial assassination he was doing and literally said at the table “I think it’s best if we just walk away from all this.” And so they did. Which was frustrating, but, you know, it is what it is. They also never much cared about the hutt gang war. 

I let a lot of things drop that I would have liked to bring back before the end, but in all honesty, I think we were all running a bit out of steam. I would have liked to put in Brick’s old mentor, or follow up with the imperial governor that was a falleen in a human skin suit, or see more of the bounty hunter’s guild, or have a nice end thing with our bothan spy, or any of that. But I do think it was time to end it. And we followed the threads people liked. 

I had way too many NPCS.

What sort of worked

I had like 200 npcs and they were not all bangers. In particular, I let the party design their own ship, which I wish had played a bigger role (though it did really set the tone), and I let them design 2 npc crew who would fill in any party roles they didn’t want to play and guard the ship so they could go on adventures without worrying about it. The devaronian scoundrel was with the party to the end though I never really got him to be more than a joke, but the bothan spy kind of fell off, and while she made some appearances, she didn’t really have as big an impact as I would have hoped. She kind of got replaced by Nyla’s padawan, a hench mon calamari called Nezrene, who was a better fit with the party. But, you know, players will do what they like.

Factions. In the first bit of the campaign, my factions were a fucking life saver, because I could design scenarios with a sort of “what is each faction doing/ which faction hurts from this, which benefits?” By the second season we’d kind of abandoned them to go to the core, and by the third my group was solidly rebel, so the hutts and bounty hunters fell a lot by the wayside. I still think having a couple of broad poles of power, and having the players know them and their leaders, is a good call. But they do seem to kind of organically pare down on their own, and it’s easy to get caught up too much in them. Useful sorta?

There was definitely a point where my players just were not challenged by conventional challenges. We ended up doing most of the later fights that involved a lot of minions in montage. I’d have them roll their fight skills unopposed, just to see if they got any interesting advantage/triumph set ups. I still had boss fights that were mostly challenging, but there just was no point in throwing storm troopers or low level gangsters at them. Not when they have soak 8 and autofire, and that one talent that lets you kill every minion in a combat. Designings fight got a bit tricky, and in those big high level combats, despairs and triumphs come up a lot more and really sway the fight, which I like, but also it’s very hard to plan for. 

Mass combat was tricky. I did a lot of it toward the end because my players were generals in a rebellion. I always had them do the rolls and some of the narration, but that wasn’t always enough to make them feel like things weren’t very arbitrary. 

I personally love the rule that if you roll a despair shooting into an engaged combat you shoot your friend. Nyla, who got shot twice this way, does not. 

We started the game with a tech character who dropped out. Toward the end, we picked up another tech character whose player couldn’t do their regular stuff because of covid lock down. Neither of these characters could fight at all, and both were very differently oriented than the rest of the party, and that was tricky to manage. Additionally, the dude coming in at the end had like a year and a half of in jokes he did not get and there were 200 goddamn npcs. I tried to give him the lowdown on what he might have heard about the party, but it was a combination of too much information and not that much player interest. He did get to break a star destroyer though, and I think he liked that. 

I offered players XP to write backstory stuff, and later goodbye notes others could find if they kicked it. Not all of them did. In the end it made a negligible difference, and I still think offering the bounties on this is basically a good idea. 

What I would do different next time.

Three ring binder that opens and closes so I could move fucking NPC stats around. I filled two goddamn school notebooks with notes for this campaign and there were so many goddamn times I was like “I KNOW I wrote this down, but where?!”

Players felt a bit aimless when they didn’t have a specific villain. I’d planted a few in, but they took finding, or they were too easy to avoid. Next time I would have a few more people who were actively on my player’s tails. 

I would keep better campaign notes and/or ask one of the players to do so. I used to do recaps for the games when I played Rek. There’s stuff I KNOW I’ve forgotten, and more I’ll forget as time goes on, which is a shame. It’s a weird, ephemeral medium, but possibly I’m just spoiled by living in an age of easy reproduction and enormous storage where data is concerned. 

Better book keeping in general, really. 

When I did a mystery short, I wrote up a list of all the clues people could find but not where specifically they were, so that I could just jam them anywhere they seemed like they’d make sense whenever a roll called for a player to find something. I think I’d try to do that with player’s personal stories so they could be woven in a little better. I did a lot of flying by the seat of my pants. 

All in all, I’m pretty happy with how it went, and I’m ready to get back to playing for a bit. I loved DMing, and I more or less DMed the game I would have liked to play, but man, doing this all the time, or being the only person who does it? After a while, that’d be a lot, and I’m looking forward to the break. 

[boboricha]

Rating: T

Words: 1.8k

Pairing: Gen

Summary: 5+1; 5 lives Kuwabara lived and 1 time he isn’t alive yet. A reincarnation fic. 

I.

He’s trying to keep his breathing under control. If he doesn’t, he’ll bleed out. Then he won’t be any good to anybody. Especially not these poor kids, these kids who have lost their mother and father to these fucking demons. 

In his chest, his heart aches for them, for everyone who had to suffer in this life. 

It aches for the older sister that never was given the chance to marry, have children, and grow old.

All because of one man’s god complex. 

Inhale, exhale. Concentrate. Find the blood vessels. Stop the bleeding. Can’t die yet. Not until these kids are safe. 

Gripping his katana tighter, he locks eyes with his enemy. 

A man mustn't run from a battle. 

Racing forward, with a blade colored gold, he goes to sever the demon’s neck. 

He hopes, in a future life, for the power to cut through anything.

II.

Kurama blinks as he stares down at the manga that depicts four characters ready for battle on the cover page. 

If he were anybody else, he wouldn’t have thought much of it. Even Yusuke or Hiei would have probably never spared it a second glance. Honestly, for a second, he even thought it was a stretch to think that it could be the four of them together. Maybe he’s getting sentimental after all these years, wishing for the four of them to reunite and take on the evils of the world like the good days.

But no, the nine-tailed fox character with squinting eyes and a sultry smile resonates with him. 

So he picks a copy up and takes it with him to Yusuke’s ramen restaurant.

By the time he’s finished reading it, he’s sure of it.

This is their story.

Of course, it’s a stitched-together tale. The works of editors and other influences are clear. Obviously, there are embellishments. It’s a telephone version of their tale.

But it’s their tale nonetheless.

With trembling hands, Kurama takes a closer look at the authors and can’t help but let out a wet laugh.

Yusuke pops his head out of the kitchen and looks at him curiously. “What’chu laughing about over there Kurama?”

Kurama lifts up the manga and points right at the names of the authors with a bright smile.

Written by Kawahara Kazuko and Kai Yumi. Drawn by Kawahara Kazuko. 

III.

Yusuke is bored as hell. 

To be fair, that’s how he feels most of the time nowadays. 

Fuck demon lifespans.

That’s how he ends up wandering around town aimlessly, trying not to think about how the lack of a need to care about time feels more like a noose than the freedom it’s supposed to be.

He’s passing by the edge of a new park when he hears a vibrant sound from a violin.

Then there’s the strike of the keys on a piano. 

A duet.

Yusuke could care less about music, especially classical shit (that was definitely more up Kurama’s alley and back in the day, especially during a study session). 

But something is pulling him forward. 

He sees them in a little stadium at the center of the park and every fiber of his being knows these two auras. 

Her hair is black this time, but her eyes are a warm brown like the first time he met her. The violin is nestled under her chin and her fingers dance over the strings, her body swaying with the song. She might be taller than him this go around.

His hair is blonde (and though Yusuke misses that vibrant orange, he’s still glad to see his friend’s hair still sticks out like a sore thumb). Unfortunately, it’s not coiffed, but cleanly cut. His jaw is softer but his cheekbones are as sharp as ever. His frame is still as huge as ever, and his long fingers show mastery over the piano keys. 

He knows jack shit about music, but even he can tell they’re no amateurs. The crowd that’s settled around the little stage tells him as much. 

He feels his mouth go dry and his throat threatens to close up. 

Yusuke’s never been so glad to have been bored.

IV.

Hiei’s been trailing him for a couple of days now.

Honestly, he’s disappointed. Back in the day, at his best, Kuwabara would call him out for being a stalker in a matter of minutes, even when he suppressed his energy. It had become a bit of a game, not that Hiei would ever admit that. Obviously, this reincarnation would require a significant amount of training before he could be half the man he used to be. Hiei is both annoyed by the idea and anticipating it.

So far, all Hiei can conclude about this Kuwabara’s life is that it is quite bland. 

The boy goes to school, hangs around with his adolescent friends playing catch or going to the arcade, then goes home to diligently study before going to bed. 

He lingers in the shadows as another day goes by. Orange and pink bleeds into blue as the sun starts to set in the distance. 

In a minute, Kuwabara will make a sharp right and keep... that’s not a right. 

Hiei leaps off his branch to follow. 

When he sees the teen’s destination, the fire demon can’t help but think that really, he shouldn’t have expected anything. 

The human opens the door to a pastry shop, and a bell jingles to welcome his presence. From the large window, Hiei observes as the reincarnation moves behind the counter and puts on an apron before disappearing into the back of the store.

Assuming that it would be a while before this Kuwabara came back from his apparent job, Hiei chooses to take a nap. 

It’s about three hours later that the high school student leaves the pastry shop, waving goodbye to the owners. A bag, no doubt full of extra sweets, hangs off his arm. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he whistles as he heads toward what Hiei knows is his home. 

Right before he crosses the threshold, Kuwabara turns, digging into the pastry bag, pulling out a delicately made cupcake. He bends to place it on the ground before straightening up and looking directly at where Hiei is hidden in the brush of the trees. There’s a smug look coupled with a wide grin and if there was any doubt in his mind before about this being Kuwabara, it’s gone, replaced by the feeling of wanting to murder the buffoon. 

As if feeling his malicious intentions, Kuwabara cackles. 

“You’re not as good as ya’ think, ya’ stalker. I’m a nice guy though. So I’ll let ya’ have this as a consolation gift. It’s handmade by yours truly. See ya’ round.”

With a final smirk and a two-finger salute, the cheeky fucker is gone.

The cupcake is terrible, he tries to tell himself. 

V.

He’s fucking eleven. 

Yusuke, for one heartbreaking moment, wishes he didn’t find him this time around. There are no locks of hair for Kuwabara to even attempt to coif. He’s the smallest he’s ever been in all his lives. His parents have to wheel him around.

When he tells Kurama and Hiei about it, they go seek him out on their own terms. 

Hiei comes back looking shaken and absolutely furious. The fire demon is ready to rip open the heavens to tear Koenma a new one. 

Honestly, Yusuke would be right behind him the moment he tried. 

“He reeks of death,” Hiei mutters.

Kurama goes and comes back with pained eyes. He’s clenching his fists so hard they’re trembling. 

“I visited him while he slept. He… he’s so frail. He only has a couple of months left.”

Yusuke wants to punch something. But how the fuck do you punch cancer?

So Yusuke settles for just… loitering around the hospital. He smokes outside the door and gets yelled at by the nurses. 

Kurama keeps visiting while Kuwabara’s sleeping. He leaves flowers.

The stubborn bastard doesn’t admit it, but Yusuke knows Hiei’s taken up residence at one of the hospital’s tallest trees. 

It’s only three months before his aura flickers away like a candle blown out. It feels like a stab in the gut in a way the other times Kuwabara left them doesn’t.

It’s not even a couple of hours after that, that a cat is nudging Yusuke’s leg, a letter tied to its collar. 

Thanks for keeping me company. I missed you guys. See you next time.

+1

“You ass, took you long enough.”

“Shut up Urameshi. You know how many times I’ve had to go through this shit? You can deal with waiting a couple of years.”

“You look well Hiei.”

Yusuke’s arms are crossed, and he’s tapping his toes against the ground. Kurama’s leaning against a tree, fiddling with a rose petal. Kuwabara is sprawled out on the floor, gazing up at the clouds in the sky. 

“Hmph, I suppose you expect me to apologize for not perishing earlier?”

“Urameshi’s just pissed that he died earlier than you.”

“What was that you piece of shit -” 

“It’s comforting to know that even after all these years, you two still get along like peas in a pod.”

“Enough of this prattle. Isn’t there somewhere we have to be?”

“Oh my god, yes, finally. Let’s go.”

Kuwabara lurches himself up into a sitting position. “You just got here! Don’t you wanna, I dunno, look around or whatever?”

“Smell the roses?” Kurama remarks cheerfully, choosing to ignore the exasperated looks on his teammate’s faces. But then he turns more pensive, before stumbling upon an epiphany of sorts. A self-satisfied, knowing smirk is directed towards the shortest member of the group, causing Hiei to bristle. 

“Ah well, there’s always next time,” Kurama lends a hand to Kuwabara, pulling him up. They start walking together towards the end of this realm. It’s not long before they stand together in front of a blinding light. “Really Hiei, after all these years, you could stand to be more honest with us.”

“Shut it fox, I will cut you.”

“Huh?” Yusuke and Kuwabara both look at Kurama curiously.

Kurama’s face is damn smug at this point. He cups his hand over his mouth to mock whisper to the two former delinquents. “He’s just eager for all of us to be reborn at the same time. He missed us.”

“You’re an absolute fool if you think that’s the case. If I’m eager to do anything then it’s to get away from the lot of you as fast as possible!” 

They’re laughing and wrapping themselves around Hiei as they walk into the light.

[m00nslippers]

It’s All About the All-Caste in RH:O Issue #34!

This issue was kind of filler and recap to be honest, but I’m always down for finding out more ways that Jason is awesome and we did get a little bit of that here, so let’s jump in to the review!

Right off the bat (hur hur) we flashback to Jason’s time with the All-Caste. He quotes Neitzsche, “Whoever battles monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself. And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” This is juxtaposed by Jason literally fighting a bigass monster as a teen in the All-Caste.

Now this is actually a pretty awesome thing because 1) It’s Jason being a literature nerd, which is what sustains my life. 2) It’s actually pretty damn relevant to what is happening in the plot right now, with Jason fighting monsters (Gotham’s rogues) and Jason dipping into that pool of being a monster himself. There is just so much foreshadowing that Jason is setting himself up for a fall, I’m just not sure how it’s going to shake out yet. Honestly unless he does something a lot worse than what he’s been doing, I don’t personally actually fault Jason or think he’s a monster? Like let’s be real here, the guy gets results.

There is some really awesome stuff here. Internally Jason says “When you’ve died once already--stared at the actual gates of hell--and clawed your way back through six feet of dirt? When you stare at a monster? Nine times out of ten...they’ll blink first.” Damn.

And then the monster, who calls himself “The Devourer of Young Souls”, asks Jason why the heck Ducra chose to send some kid after him, to which Jason says, “She didn’t choose me, she didn’t send me, but she knew better than to try to stop me!” Damn.

Apparently Jason is literally a child of prophesy among the All-Caste. I don’t remember if that was something we knew already or something we learn here, but I think it’s interesting that he basically completed the prophecy and moved on. Because Jason did what he was there for, he slew the monster, fought the Untitled, and now everyone expects him to just stop fighting--and he’s just like, “Uh yeah, no.” Jason’s life is an endless war. It always has been, he doesn’t know how to live another life.

One thing I’ll give Lobdell. I think he’s pretty good at dialogue. He has his moments. He’s not as bad as people make him out to be, but I feel like this guy really needs a writing partner. His dialogue is generally good, his ideas are usually pretty interesting, but his plots just need work and his characterization is inconsistent sometimes. It’s the story execution that needs help, also I think he avoids or brushes over emotional stuff a little too much sometimes and that’s a real detriment to his arcs.

After this Jason summons a crap ton of All-Blades and goes MCU Hela on the monster’s ass and I need current Jason to do this, why doesn’t current Jason fight more actual magical monsters, clearly that’s what he’s good at? I need more of this, it’s too cool. It’s super unique among the bat-family, he’s the only one of them with an inherent answer to magic, why is this so underutilized? *Sigh*

The story picks back up in the present with Jason at a restaurant in France, on a date with Isabel. I’m a little annoyed that these two are back together but I think their interaction here actually kind of puts a perspective on it that I approve of. Jason has an extra champagne glass there and is thinking about his adventures in France with Roy when they fought evil mimes back in Red Hood/Arsenal (Yeah, unpack that one). The champagne glass is also a reference to events in RHATO New 52, when Roy orders a glass of alcohol and uses it to test his resolve for sobriety, which happened on the very same plane ride where Jason meets Isabel. Jason is clearly still mourning Roy, not to mention Artemis and Bizarro. I think this kind of shows that while he probably does still like Isabel as a person, he’s not necessarily in this relationship because he loves her and wants to get back together--he’s vulnerable and needs somebody, anybody to lean on and she’s made herself available.

People give Isabel a lot of flak and I don’t really get it? She’s never been mean or lied. She’s never judged Jason for any of the things he does, and she supports him emotionally, she just doesn’t want to be involved in vigilante craziness which is a perfectly sane thing to want. I think she’s really underdeveloped as a character--What’s her past? What does she like? Who is her family? She’s kind of generic--but as a person there isn’t anything to complain about. I still prefer Artemis, but I think Isabel gets too much hate.

Back at the Iceburg Lounge, Miguel is in charge of fixing the place up after the attack by the assassins in the previous issue. Miguel talks a little about this other reality he says he sees or senses, which is maybe a hint to some future event that is hopefully gonna fix every character inconsistency we all hate but probably not (hey I can dream). We get a tease about Miguel possibly figuring out Jason is keeping Cobblepot prisoner, which I think we all know is coming, but it doesn’t actually happen in this scene.

We see Jason walking Isabel to her hotel and it’s pretty cute to see Jason holding a girl’s hand, okay? I do like it. I almost feel like her quip about proving she doens’t love him for his money is Lobdell jabbing at everyone who is saying she’s a gold-digger. He’s just like, “Dude, she’s not, lay off” I never thought she was but the idea definitely floated around, which I think was a bit uncharitable to her character, as I’ve said. She also says the “L-word” that Jason is so allergic to but she manages to keep him from freaking out about it. I think she does actually love him or she wouldn’t be here and I also think the fact that she comes out and says it is A SERIOUS DEATH FLAG. Ya’ll heard it here first, I think Isabel is going to die at the end of this arc.

Also, Jason speaks exactly one word of French but in my mind this is proof that my language-boy speaks French.

Jason leaves her at her hotel to do some Red Hood stuff and calls Suzie Su on the way to check in. She’s fishing for what Jason is doing, she’s suspicious, but he doesn’t give her anything. Jason, you aren’t doing a great job of convincing anyone you aren’t up to no good. Unrelated to the plot, but let me just say, I like the outfit the artist gave Suzie. Artists always seem to give her really hangy dresses and depict her as gross, but she looks cute here! Those leggings are cool!

Then the scene goes to Essence doing some pretty awesome All-Caste magic to contact the guy Jason dusted, and he goes on to say some BS about Jason’s eyes being empty and how he’s not the same person who was their champion as a teen. I think narratively this is supposed to mean something, but it seemed like few of the All-Caste actually approved of Jason to begin with, and this guy didn’t give the impression he was one of them, so why we are trusting his opinion is a question to. The dude is biased, he never approved of Jason.

Essense talks to S’aru, the dude who took Jason’s most cherished memory all the way back in RHATO New 52, and Essence seems to suspect this has something to do with the ‘emptiness’ in his eyes and his actions in the presence. His most cherished memory was a time when he was sick and had to stay home from patrol and Bruce stayed with him. I mean, sure, you can argue this maybe changed how Jason sees Bruce now and is less willing to believe the guy loves him but Bruce’s actions in the presence don’t exactly even jive with that memory so...eh. I don’t know, maybe there is just some magic awfulness that happens when you lose that memory, no matter what it is.

At the end of the scene Ducra floats in to probably tell Essence she can go attack Jason or whatever but we don’t know what she decided for sure because it ends on a cliff-hanger.

Back in France, Jason barges into a perfume shop that is fronting a Kill-Bill style meeting of some criminals calling themselves "The Euro Bloc” who have ties to Cobblepot. They finance the guy in exchange for him laundering their money through his Casino, and I would just like to point out that this is Jason doing exactly what he said he was planning to do--dismantle all of Penguin’s criminal activities. I don’t see anything wrong with what he’s doing, why is Jason ‘empty’ or a ‘bad guy’? He points out later that he didn’t even kill anyone while in Europe, so what is everyone’s beef? I don’t get it.

So Jason basically says, stop your activities in Gotham, also, leave me alone. They do the typical, “OR, why don’t we just kill you now?” but it turns out that Wingman is waiting in a kickass plane ready to murder everyone if they make a move and so they reluctantly back off. The plane seems to belong to Wingman, who we find out is named ‘James’. I still have absolutely no idea who Wingman is supposed to be or what his relationship with Jason is, though. I really hope we get some more of this information soon.

One thing of note though, is that Wingman is THE ONLY ally of Jason’s right now that knows that he is operating as Red Hood still. Suzie doesn’t, Isabel doesn’t, Miguel doesn’t. Wingman holds some kind of significance, and seems to need/want Jason to be operating as Red hood in Gotham for some reason, which was why he was following Jason, to convince him to return to Gotham, but we just don’t know why yet.

And then in the end, Miguel finally finds out Penguin is behind the glass and the title seems to imply Miguel is going to turn on Jason. penguin must convince him he’s the one wronged (I mean he IS the one wronged but he’s not actually a good guy so we know this is bad even if Miguel doesn’t) because i can’t see Penguin overpowering Miguel who has all this Psionic power.

So this issue was interesting. I loved seeing all the All-Caste stuff though on the whole, it’s mostly set up. Next issue, stuff is going down! I can’t wait!

[videobun-gameblog]

Rambling about Sekiro (spoilers below read me):

- Evolution of "i'm scared to block, i like Souls rolling" to "okay i'll block and sort of deflect but only basic attacks i know" to "okay I don't even need to dash except for perilous attacks!"  to "okay now i can actually flip between defense and offense on the fly and this is SUPER fun!!"

- Basically, I've never in my life played a game where offense and defense mesh so well together, where blocking is FUN and viable, and seeing your attacks get deflected is actually GOOD and not just infuriating, because you're making progress in the fight.

- People've said Dark Souls is a little like a hard, combat focused Zelda but really, THIS is what that's like, and I'm in love. From did it.

- The upgrade system is neat and I appreciate it for rewarding exploration but also allowing you to challenge yourself by refusing to use them. Also it just works out really well for speedrun balancing and I can’t wait to see the evolution of speedruns in this game because there’s a good balance between wanting more power, posture, and HP and wanting to go as fast as possible.

SPOILERS UNDER CUT, DON’T DO IT UNLESS YOU ARE ALREADY AT /END/ GAME OR DO NOT EVER INTEND TO BUY SEKIRO

   ---!!!SPOILER ZONE (I'm serious do not read if you intend to play or are still playing)!!!---

 (long space for people who might see this on the blog first as opposed to via the dashboard)

- I absolutely adore the weird scientific/medicinal/supernatural macabre shit in this game. The red lump item gave me chills picking it up the first time. Same thing with seeing the first undying monk thing, I couldn't even burn it (but then I finally did it with THAT ITEM... more below)

- haha hand in a jar! haha that guy that flies at you... haha, monkey :) haha ninja dog...... hell even the headless... I love From's mix of disturbing humor (or just flat out being funny despite the bleak setting). Their version of mimics in Souls sum this up best but there's plenty of things here too that are just flat out hilarious and I love it.

- Oh Christ, speaking of, I did the Doctor questline and oh god it gave me some of that Bloodborne dread.

- "IS THAT A FUCKING DARK SOULS?" also lmao when he falls

- "IS THAT THE FUCKING CHAOS BLADE!??" oooh fuck oh fuck *pushes up glasses* remember the cut content with Shiva in Dark Souls???

- Sekiro/Wolf having the "defy your father, break the code" moment was SO good and I love that whole archetype. Simple but I just... <3 Oh god and When Owl is basically just like "that's my boy" when you kill him... I... u_u

- giving Lord Kuro rice was SO cute and just furthered my love for Wolf because this child is teaching him part of how to be himself and to also enjoy things (basically chill the fuck out you freaking murder machine, you are more than that) through compassion, friendship, and a reminder of his own childhood and I don't really get emotional over stuff like this often but awww..! ;_;

- The sake dialogue moments are so good. A very simple concept but I love the nature of sharing part of one's past through a friendly offering, it felt like a really good balance between clear concise mechanics (sake) fitting neatly with narrative elements. It's basically just a dialogue item but it didn't FEEL that way. I felt genuine excitement upon finding new drinks knowing I'd get a chance to share it.

- OH MY GOD ENFEEBLED IS SUCH A GOOD ASS STATUS EFFECT??? THE ANIMATIONS!!! He just hobbles around like a dude who just suddenly became an old man (’cuz that’s literally what it is) with his sword as a cane??? I LOVE FROMSOFT! That shit is so wonderfully expressive but also fits perfectly with that style of horror humor (and I lied before. Mimics are beaten by THIS status effect. New number one spot for my fave moment like this in a From game)

- Oh also speaking of animation, those fucking boss kills!!! *deep inhale* BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- While not my favorite boss mechanically, SPECIFICALLY that kill animation on the Giant Ape... DUDE HOLY FUUUCK! and then the fake out!?!?!? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! SO good!

- Lady Butterfly was a fun main boss and O'Rin of the Water was a fun mini boss. Plenty of others were fantastic but those stood out. Like, two of my friends so far have expressed the same feelings on Butterfly! Good Fight!

- I even liked the gimmick fights! They did it! Gimmick fights that are actually well designed! They're more about exploring mechanics outside of pure combat without punishing you super fucking hard at a random point just because they can. (Bed of Chaos, Micolash) Strangely a little bit of a breather, which is fitting because it’s a perfect counter balance to the stress of finding yourself in a unique situation. They actually give you time to analyze, think, and breathe it all in!

- I'm currently stuck on an end game "secret"/optional boss with some classic From Lore Implications *ok hand* and it's brutal af. I am excited to learn how to master this.

 --- SLIGHT CRITICISM (basically the “i love it so much i can’t help but see small flaws but I’d still give it a 10/10 anyway” part) ---

- I like that even when they repeat mid bosses they usually put them in a new arena to change things up. I think a FEW were a little overdone though and could have benefited from maybe... I dunno, a couple new ones in their place or at LEAST alternate movesets to change things up a bit more than just location BUT the combat is engaging enough that I don't mind, I just found it a LITTLE weird how despite the rest of the polish there was a tad bit of copy-paste (but far FAR less egregious than DS1)

- Idk how replayable this game is gonna be but I can definitely see myself finishing NG+ and doing two more playthroughs for all endings. It's replayable more in the Metroid or Legend of Zelda sense and less in the Dark Souls character build sense. "I wanna try a new route first and beat bosses more effectively this time. I wanna be as stealthy as possible this run" etc. and not "I wanna make an int build" (less a critique and more an observation on how it differs from Souls replayability)

- Dragonrot is like, the only actual flaw in this game imo. It doesn't have enough depth. I was thinking it would have more end game narrative significance but it's just something tied to the sort of useless unseen aid mechanic which fails to really incentivize risky play. If anything it just encourages you to grind before bosses to cap the current exp bar and save/store/spend sen by spending 10 minutes fucking around elsewhere until you're ready so that you have nothing to lose. I feel like it should have done some world state changes and something more intense, like ACTUALLY having npcs die and having a healthier world state and an unhealthier world state where some enemies get weaker or stronger based on which extreme your world is on etc. etc. basically ANYTHING more than it is now. But this is super minor relative to how good everything else is. It just felt underwhelming considering all it was hyped up to be. It’s one of those things I just ignore as if it wasn’t there and it’s just as good because it has little effect on the parts that I DO like the game for.

 ---FINAL NOTE---

- To end on a positive note though, Sekiro managed to be a game that iterated on the Souls formula by defying part of what it became (dodge heavy, block averse play, slow, parrying primarily for one-shotting) yet still providing the same feelings of starting one of those games fresh. Part of what makes it FEEL Souls-y is precisely what separates it from those games, and it's all too good to really put into words at the moment. Like sure it's got Estus, bonfires, and a kick-your-ass "you're going to get stuck and frustrated and that's how it is" attitude and it's got a similar enough control scheme, but beyond that, there's just so much more combat and movement depth that it's a whole new beast, and I love it so much.

[officialleehadan]

Between Lives

Eislynn tucked herself into a tight ball and rolled as she and her sister were thrown into a metal-lined cell.

They had been exploring an abandoned base. A base of whom, neither of them knew, but Stara swore she could sense magical resonance from somewhere, and Eislynn didn’t doubt her.

Stara was usually right about magic.

Her judgement about how abandoned the base really was left something to be desired, however.

Not that Eislynn could really cast that particular stone. She was supposed to be the one who looked out for them, and she hadn’t noticed the guards until it was too late.

The door slammed behind them before they could scramble out gain, and Eislynn left a significant dent when she hit the metal as hard as she could. Unfortunately, dent or no, the door remained where it was.

She muttered curses, turned to examine their cell, and froze.

Stara fell as silent when she spotted what Eislynn had a moment earlier.

There was a woman, tied to a chair, in the exact center of the room.

Everything about her screamed threat to Eislynn’s senses, and it was clear that their captors felt the same. Tough climbing rope bound the woman hand and foot to the chair, and the chair itself seemed to be bolted to the floor.

There was a thick blindfold over her eyes, her lips were painted a deep red, and she wore a skin-tight suit of something matte black. It looked like it might be sophisticated body armor, or maybe a stealth suit. Straps here and there were clearly designed to secure weapons.

“Don’t worry girls, I don’t bite.”

Eislynn flinched back when the woman spoke, muscles tensing, ready for a fight.

“And if I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it already,” she added, lips twisting into a crooked smile. “But you can relax. Killing children isn’t usually my wheelhouse.”

“What do you mean that you would have hurt us already?” Stara asked, peeping over her older sister’s shoulder. “You’re tied up, and the chair is bolted down."

The woman shrugged one shoulder, somehow casual despite her bonds and their captivity.

“Not exactly an issue. At least, no one I can’t solve easy enough.”

Eislynn gave the woman a closer look and edged nearer. There was a lot of hard muscle under the woman’s suit. She was a fighter, that was for sure. She wasn’t very big though. Probably not more than an inch taller than Eislynn herself, and thin as a rail to boot.

But something deep in Eislynn’s gut told her that this woman was the most deadly thing she and Stara had ever met.

And she couldn’t put her finger on why.

“How is being tied up not an issue? Do you have a knife or something?” Stara wanted to know, and the woman chuckled wryly, still easy in her bonds, and far too comfortable in their situation.

“Well yes,” the woman replied, still smiling. Eislynn tried to spot the knives and tilted her head thoughtfully. There weren’t a lot of places to hide a knife in that skin-tight suit. “Several, although I hardly need one for this. 9.9 climbing rope is crap for tying anyone up, and I’m not anyone.”

Despite the blindfold she managed to convey deep, catlike offense at being so badly underestimated.

“Do you want us to at least take off your blindfold?” Stara offered, clearly having decided that the woman wasn’t a threat to them. “I mean, it can’t be nice to have it on, right?”

Eislynn wasn’t as trusting, and she was careful to stay between the woman and her sister.

“Sure, go for it.” The woman answered Stara, but seemed to be tracking Eislynn by sound, or maybe scent. “Lack of sight doesn’t bother me much, but this rag smells like unwashed soldier.”

Stara nudged to get past Eislynn, and pouted when Eislynn refused to budge. There was danger here, and she wasn’t about to let her little sister walk into it.

She was thirteen, not stupid. She knew a trap when she saw one, and wasn’t stupid enough to mess with someone so quick after meeting them.

The woman laughed like she could hear Eislynn’s thoughts.

Maybe she could.

“Don’t worry, little warrior. I’m not going to hurt your sister.”

Eislynn didn’t believe her, and glared until Stara stayed put before cautiously coming to the woman’s side. The blindfold was tied tightly in place, and it took a minute of frustrated tugging before she was able to pull it away.

The sight of the woman’s eyes brought her up short.

Only Fae had eyes that particular shade of silver-flecked grey. The same shade that Eislynn and Stara shared with their father, and grandfather.

Stara came over to see what had rattled her sister so much, and gasped when she saw the woman’s eyes.

“You’re Fae!” she announced, like it was the answer to a riddle. Maybe to her it was. “I mean, only Fae have that kind of eyes, right?”

“I’m not a pure-blood.” The woman told them, smile still playing around her lips. “I just have enough to make the going a little easier here and there. Faerie blood has some advantages after all.”

“Are we cousins?” Stara was starting to bounce and Eislynn’s bad feeling was getting worse. She preemptively tangled her fingers in the back of Stara’s shirt, ready to pull her away if the woman decided to hurt them after all. “We have a lot of cousins. We keep meeting more of them in the weirdest places.”

“All Fae are related one way or another,” the woman shrugged casually. “There’s not enough of them around to avoid that. We’re not cousins. That I can tell you for certain.”

“What’s your name?” Eislynn demanded, curiosity making her nervous. The woman was hiding something, and she was starting to have an idea, a strange, impossible idea that didn’t make any sense, except that maybe it did, and somehow, she had to figure out how. “Who are you?”

“My name is Ghost.”

“Is that your real name?”

“No, but it will do for the moment.”

Eislynn tensed farther, wary of the way the woman was looking at them.

Stara noticed as well, but spoke up again, hoping to diffuse the situation.

“Have we met you before?” she asked, and Eislynn realized that she’d picked up on the same hints that Eislynn was reading, even if she wasn’t usually as ready for a fight.

“No, little one. We haven’t met before, and we won’t again, I think.” Ghost answered gently. Her smile went soft around the edges as she looked at the twelve-year-old, and sad when her eyes landed on Eislynn’s own. “Calm down, warrior. You’re on the right path. I’m not a threat to you, or her.”

“Maerie Teague then? Our grandmother?” Stara pressed, although her eyes flickered between them curiously. Eislynn kept her thoughts to herself. Either she was right, or she wasn’t, and there was no reason to alarm her sister.

“Yes, I know Maerie.”

There was fondness in her voice as Ghost spoke of their grandmother, and it somehow managed to send a chill down Eislynn’s spine and relax her at the same time.

Stara brightened like her namesake, and Eislynn noticed a tint of sadness come to the woman’s eyes. It unnerved her, and she backed away a step. The woman noticed her retreat but didn’t call attention to it as Stara babbled on, trying to find out more about the woman despite the sparse answers she was receiving in return.

The clues were starting to line up in Eislynn’s mind

When she met the penetrating grey gaze that had settled on her, she knew she was right.

Before she could ask the question that sprang to her lips, Ghost nodded, just barely.

“Yes,” she said, cutting Stara off. “Coming together, huh? Just about got it figured out”

Eislynn sat down hard on the tile floor and stared at the woman. Her hands shook and she curled them into fists so hard that her nails bit into flesh.

“How?”

“How do you think?”

Stara was looking between them, confusion wrinkling her forehead.

“What are you talking about?” she asked softly, trying to figure out whatever it was that Eislynn had seen. “Eisa, what’s going on?”

“Sorry, can’t tell you.” Ghost said apologetically. She looked away from Eislynn and gave Stara a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, little star, you’ll know soon enough.”

“But-” Stara tried to protest and was cut off again by a stern glance.

“Not yet,” Ghost told her firmly. “I meant it. I can’t tell you.”

“What’s your kill-count?” Eislynn asked as something like panic rushed through her veins. Her palms stung, and she ignored them. “How many?”

Stara gasped.

Ghost closed her eyes and sighed.

“Three thousand, five hundred, seventy-one. Four planets. One ‘Verse.”

Stara blanched and reeled away from the woman. Ghost hardly seemed to notice, although bone-deep sadness crept in around the edges of her eyes.

Eislynn couldn’t take her gaze off the woman. The panic she had been feeling was being replaced by horror with every heartbeat.

“How-“ she tried to ask, but realized she didn’t even know what to ask, or how to ask it.

Ghost did though, and she gave a short, abortive shake of her head.

“Most of them had it coming,” she promised darkly. ” The planets are a long story, but believe me when I say that the alternative was worse. The ‘Verse… is complicated.”

That did make it a little better, and Eislynn managed a nod, though Stara had gone pale.

“If you- do I…?” Eisa asked, hoping Sidhe would understand what she was trying to ask. “How-“

She did, and smiled, blood-tinted lips quirking up at the ends.

“You’ll never regret it.” she said, a strange sort of satisfaction in her voice. “Some of the ones who came later, yes, never that first one.”

Stara had regained her nerve, but before she could ask any of the questions that riddled her mind, there came the sound of the old key in the lock of their door.

Ghost’s smile became bladed again and her eyes hardened with murderous resolve.

“Get behind me, both of you,” she ordered shortly. “Stay there, no matter what you see.”

Both girls scampered behind the woman as the heavy door creaked in. The man who had questioned them before stepped into the room, his broad shoulders filling the door.

He looked a lot more nervous now than he had before, and he froze when he saw that Ghost’s blindfold was gone.

“Herk, I am deeply disappointed in you. I may have to kill you for this.” Ghost said lightly before he could speak.

The man, Herk, tensed, but he only moved enough to let four other men into the room. More that Eislynn could take on by herself, even with Stara’s magic backing her.

Of course, they were not the ones these men considered a danger.

“Very ambitious of you, Murderer,” Herk answered, deep voice rumbling. “The price on your head in this world alone will finance my army for centuries.”

Ghost’s smile only grew, and Eislynn saw her hands twist around the ropes that held her.

“Eislynn, cover her eyes,” she murmured to Eislynn, completely steady despite the bad odds. “Time to raise that count by five.”

That was enough warning for Eislynn. She pulled Stara back against the wall and pressed a hand over her eyes. When the younger girl tried to protest, Eislynn hushed her.

“It’s going to be a lot of blood,” she shared. She had no real way to know for sure, but if Ghost was who Eislynn thought she was, she would know about Stara too. “You don’t like blood.”

Before Stara could decide whether she was going to push Eislynn’s hand away, Ghost burst into movement.

The ropes that had been holding her snapped like they were thread. The knives she claimed to have mentioned appeared in her hands and at the tips of her boots like magic.

She was far faster than even Eislynn had expected, and she watched with a strange sort of detached admiration as the woman massacred every man in the room.

There was no other word for it, and Eislynn realized only seconds had passed when the last body, Herk’s she noted absently, hit the floor with a muffled and somewhat wet thud.

There was blood everywhere except on Ghost.

Gruesome business attended to, Ghost walked over and knelt next to them.

“Little star, I need you to close your eyes and keep them closed for a few minutes,” she said, and helped them to their feet. “My work isn’t something you’re ready to see.”

“What d-do you mean, your work?” Stara asked, but she let the other two walk her past the bodies. Eislynn noticed that she kept her eyes closed, and breathed a sigh of relief when they were out of the little room.

The stink of blood burned at her nose, and horror wrapped around her heart and settled there like a vicious parasite, sapping her strength.

There were more bloodstains on the walls, and Eislynn knew without asking that Ghost had caused some, or all, of them.

“I kill people.” Ghost explained to Stara as they made their way down the hallway and into open air. “You’re not ready to see how good at it I am. There we go. We’re clear.”

Eislynn looked around, and suddenly felt the tingle on her skin that announced the Gate was about to grab them again. It was time to discover a new ‘Verse, and whatever new things waited for them. With any luck, they would have a little time to recover before something new tried to kill them.

Ghost felt the Gate too, and sank to her knees before pulling them both in for a tight hug.

“Rely on each other always.” She ordered. “Don’t fight your instincts. They’ll keep you safe.”

Eislynn felt the Gate shiver again and hugged the woman back.

“Will you be okay?” she asked desperately. “We can’t leave you here alone.”

“I’ll be fine, I have help on the way.” Ghost promised, before pulling away reluctantly and pressing a soft kiss to each of their foreheads. “Be careful, be smart, be safe.”

Before they could say anything more, the Gate swirled around them, up-down-everywhere energy that had a grip as inescapable as it was fluid.

Eislynn’s last sight of Ghost was of the woman, one hand raised in farewell and a smile on her lips as a shimmering starship touched down behind her.

And then she was gone, and all that was left was inescapable power, shooting them forward between worlds.

When the Gate finally let them go, Eislynn let herself sit down and just breathe for a minute. Stara leaned against her side, rattled, but taking a moment to collect herself.

“You knew her.” Stara said at last, quietly. “You never trust anyone that quick, so you had to know her. How?”

Eislynn nodded and struggled to her feet. She didn’t know where they were, but it wasn’t home, and the air smelled like magic.

“Yeah, I knew her.” She admitted reluctantly, like saying it out loud would make it real.

Like saying it out loud would make it inevitable

“So who was she?”

“Me.”

 +++

Uncollected Fantasy:

Below the Fog

Glitter Bold

God-Touched Tide

Into the Darkness

Turn Me

Wolf Moon

Blood Moon

Hallowed Halls Memorial

A Kiss to Heal a Broken Heart

Cursebroken

Nothing but Trouble

Build a House of Paper

Unspoken Words

Imagine Reality (Patreon-Only)

+++

Support me on Patreon

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[nomilart]

Final Thoughts on Kingdom Hearts 3

I’m gonna gush and bash this game in great detail in a sort of rant/ organized essay manner

Spoilers… duh

               I’ve been a longtime fan of the Kingdom Hearts series. I’ve played every single damn game. The only two I haven’t finished were CoM (Could never get into the gameplay) and Ux (The story isn’t even finished yet… which I’ll get to). I have lived and breathed KH for most of my life and anticipated the climax to my favorite video game series for so long. Upon finishing Kingdom Hearts 3, I was washed with a tidal wave of emotions. I just finished the game I have been waiting on for 5 years upon confirmation that it even was a thing and anticipating it for even longer. There was so many amazing things about this game. Plot points involving characters I longed to make a return in some form were tied together. Things like the reason for why Xemnas and Ansem have returned were answered or what happened to replica Riku. The triumphant return of Aqua, Terra, and Ven and my personal most favorite the reuniting of Axel, Xion, and my favorite character Roxas! On top of super fun gameplay, graphics that dazzled my eyes even playing on the base ps4, a solid ost as usual thanks to Yoko Shimomura, and Disney worlds that really complemented the flare and grandiose of the rest of the game, this Kingdom Hearts game was shaping up to be my favorite among the entire series. Upon finishing the game, despite trying to overcome my biases of Kingdom Hearts 2, am still unsure of if I think I consider KH3 to be better or worse than KH2.

               Story:

               Whoooo boy what a STORY. The KH series is (understandably) mocked for its ridiculous and often convoluted approach to writing and storytelling, but I have stuck with every cheesy line and dumb plot point until this very day. I like to think of KH’s story telling as some kind of weird Avant-garde experience that is really just something that the series director, Tetsuya Nomura, comes up with as he goes along. The often awkward yet charming writing definitely comes from this.      

               KH3 starts off with Sora trying to regain his lost strength from the events of DDD and he is to search for the “power of waking” in order to rescue the hearts tied to his so he can help assemble 7 guardians of light to hopefully overcome Xehanort and his 13 darknesses. All is good until Sora finds out that Xehanort is very close to completing his 13 and just deciding to avoid waiting for the 7 guardians to assemble so he sends his “real organization” to search for the new seven hearts of light instead (these ultimately have little significance to the plot). Towards the end of the game Sora manages to save Aqua because for some reason Riku and Mickey just were too incompetent to go along with their mission even though Sora was allegedly the one who wasn’t strong enough to join them in saving Aqua. After Aqua is singlehandedly saved by Sora they all travel to Castle Oblivion were Aqua reverts it back to the Land of Departure in a really cool cutscene. They find Vanitas and stop him from preventing Ventus from waking up and get ready for the big fight after Sora dives into his heart. Sora and his friends all seem to die but not really after some weird stuff I’ll talk about later goes on. In short the last parts of the game are Sora stopping the remaining organization members and hearing their reasons for joining. Eventually they reach Xehanort and he merks Kairi and screws off to Scala ad Caleum. To be completely honest I’m still lost as to why this place has as much significance as it does besides the fact the Xehanort states it to be the Nexus of all worlds but upon further research, HOPEFULLY it makes more sense (I was caught in the heat of the moment). Xehanort’s motives are revealed and he reconciles after we defeat him and he *seemingly returns to Kingdom Hearts with Eraqus (This is only my theory). Afterwards Sora uses the x-blade in order to *seemingly free Kairi from death. All is well and everyone saved lives in harmony in a really touching scene but we soon learn that Kairi’s return seemingly costed Sora’s life or ability to be enjoy the peace with his friends because he fades away before the credits roll.

               Oh boy that was a real basic summary but now I’ll talk about things I liked. I loved Sora so much in this game. He has grown on me more than ever because he displays so many more emotions than just being happy go-lucky most of the time. While that I the core of who he is, I know he has experienced pain (hurt is a silly word in KH) in the past but it was never this serious. He lost one of his best friends because he wasn’t strong enough to save her in time, he kind of understandably beats himself up for losing his strength and having to rely on his friends for strength, dealing with the pressure of being the bearer of a lot of people’s hearts while simultaneously being expected to rescue them, and last but certainly not least, seeming to sacrifice himself in order to save a friend/ potential love interest. I thought I’d hate the way Roxas and every other nobody would return based on the trailers seeming they were going to get all the data versions of them and implant their memories into them. While that is still somewhat how it goes down, it’s handled slightly better. Instead of using the bodies of data Roxas or Namine, they only use a “vessel” which I like to think is basically a human shaped husk that can only be a human when a person’s heart and memories are placed into it. It sounds goofy but I can get behind that. While a part of me wishes Roxas, Xion, and Namine stayed the way they were because I think It’d give the series some seriously needed consequences, I’d be a damn liar if I said I wasn’t glad my favorite character gets to be his own person. While the whole “Vessel” program can be seen as a cop out, I think it could have been handled much worse. I loved the interactions Sora and the gang had with the Disney characters and I 100% feel like this is the best integrated Disney worlds in the entire KH series. My definite favorite moments include Woody roasting Young Xehanort, Sulley yeeting Vanitas out of the world, and Sora going ham on Davy Jones. I also really liked the reveal that Ansem’s guardian was Terra, it was so badass. Although I totally called Xehanort being a villan who had good intentions but went about them in the worst way possible, I still liked the way it was explained how he got to where he was. I loved the ending scene where the wayfinder trio pay their respects to Master Eraqus (REAL DEATH CONFIRMED IN MY KH GAME?!) as well as the sea salt trio hanging out with the twilight town trio and SAIX/ISA. Also the secret reports have some super dark implications and it only makes me wish they were actual cutscenes. I haven’t read all of them but my favorite so far is one where Saix writes about how Lea and him snuck into the chamber of repose and heard screams of children being experimented on. They also mention a girl they were friends with (WHiCh ill GeT INto LaTeR).  Pretty content with the story as a whole.

               Now I talk about some things I did NOT like very much or at least still don’t understand at the moment. The main thing that REALLY peeved me off was the amount of KHUX stuff that is not only connected to the story of the XEHANORT SAGA but the fact that a lot of it is infuriatingly still not answered like the damn black box or why Maleficent specifically wants it so bad. On top of that there’s a lot of set up for the next entry in the series or what my personal cynical theory is, more backstory for KHUX that will be revealed in future updates. What I’m referring to is characters like Marluxia/ Lauriam , Larxene/ Elrena, Demyx, and Luxord who are intentionally left with super vague backstories. Lauriam and Elrena were revealed to be important to KhUX so I can only assume Demyx and Luxord will follow suit, especially after being revealed to have connections to the keyblade. What’s worse is that Marluxia and Larxene only seem to remember this after Sora defeats them… again… Luxord also gives Sora some assistance with this mystery card and it lowkey pissed me off. Oh yeah speaking of stuff that pissed me off, the “final world” section was super frustrating to me not because it was inherently bad, but because it was blatant setup for KHUX/ next game in the series especially with Sora seemingly* being transported to this limbo like area where the spirits of people who have died roam. One of these supposed spirits seems to be either a friend of Ephmer, Ventus, or Isa and Lea. It is intentionally vague and there only to spark speculation especially after she tells Sora a secret (Or was it the Chirithy? I don’t remember). I’m all for speculation and theorizing, I AM a KH fan afterall, it’s that this is speculation with a character we have no clue who it could be despite our best efforts and they throw her on us like she’s been part of the series this whole time…ESPECIALLY when Saix and Axel bring her up… I have my theories on who this girl might be but it ultimately doesn’t matter or doesn’t feel like good speculation because their might be multiple “mystery girls”. I personally think this mystery girl could be Strelitzia, Skuld, or some new character because Nomura hates us. The problem with it being either Strelitzia or Skuld is if it really IS one of them who is in this world or friends with Lea and Axel, then it leaves us wondering what happened to the other.  Ugh. Next this is really a gripe but I’m just lost to be honest. I have no idea what happened to Demyx or Vexen. They both defected and while Vexen/ Even helped out with the “real replica” or “vessel” program, I either missed what happened to Demyx after providing the vessel for Roxas or they actually just forgot to write a conclusion for him.  While I liked the interactions between Kairi and Axel I wished they actually showed Axel and Kairi training with their keyblades especially since they don’t do much with them in the final battle anyways… Kairi especially. It’s no secret that Kairi is literally worst girl in the KH series but I had hope that she’d get some much needed character development. My hopes were dashed when I found out she was just as useless and bland as ever and on top of that results in getting our sweet boi Sora sent to the shadow realm or wherever he gets sent to at the end of the game. A lot of annoying ship people really think that Riku and Sora were going to get together at the end of the game, and while I don’t blame them for thinking that way because honestly I would love to see that happen, the setup from KH1 and Com forbids that. I however, DO take issue with Riku taking a back seat in the story and honestly not contributing a whole lot besides motivating Sora do complete his mission. I like that Donald and Goofy were so charming in this game and that they joined us in the fight with Xehanort, but I still really would prefer that Riku also joined us like in KH2. We still have no concrete idea on what Kingdom Hearts itself actually is but as usual, I have my theories. The Kingdom Hearts that Xehanort summons in BBS and KH3 is the heart of all people and I think it’s the KH equivalent of Heaven or the afterlife because that’s where Eraqus and Xehanort go away to. The Kingdom Hearts in KH1 s the heart of all worlds and is apparently “light”. I’m also indifferent to the reveal of Xigbar being Luxu...anything to do with the black box or KHUX honestly bothers me. I know I must sound like I hate the story but I actually think it’s still the best out of all of them, I’m just expressing my concerns because I love the series and take serious issue with some of the choices made.

 Gameplay:

               The gameplay of KH3 is arguably the best of the series depending on who you ask. The general fan who mostly meanders through the game on the easiest difficulties on each entry might not really appreciate the depth of the combat and just stick to the go-to mash x to swing keyblade or triangle to do cool move. I however normally play on the hardest difficulty not only to seek a greater challenge, but to be forced to see how good or bad the game’s combat really is. I never really liked the argument of floaty combat because neither side really understands the real issue/ consequence of floaty combat. It all really comes down to enemy design, behavior, and placement. When a game has floaty combat and bad enemy design, (Enemies that don’t stagger or randomly stagger, shoot projectiles that do a lot of damage, big and un-telegraphed attacks) it cause the player to play the game in a really uncomfortable way. In BBS spamming dodge, surge moves, and shotlocks was essential in order to stand a chance against some of the bs that the game would throw at you. In DDD, flowmotion was far better than normal attacks because they gave you super armor, did better damage, and could be spammed. Balloonra was also OP AF. In KH1 Sora felt like a rock and while I personally enjoyed how it felt to control him, I can understand why someone wouldn’t like a lot of jumping and attacking over and over. Kh2 however, has the best combat in the series to this day in my opinion because of all the options you have. Your basic keyblade attacks are effective on every enemy in the game but at higher difficulties, the game suggests you branch away from mashing x and experiment with magic and summons. Then you realize how good it is. On top of solid enemy design, KH2 is probably my favorite game to play for action rpg gameplay.

               Going into KH3 I set my expectations on the gameplay low based on the 0.2 gameplay and the seemingly super floaty gameplay of the trailers. Although KH3 does have its floaty feeling, I can say that the game is designed to be fun while having the best floaty gameplay in the series. The enemies almost all stagger to your basic keyblade attacks and larger enemies that don’t consistently stagger to finishers and keyblade transformation attacks. Magic feels AMAZING to use and is clearly useful early on. Team attacks, while I feel are still better as limits you can individually choose, are still fun and satisfying to use when provided. Attraction Flow was my least favorite feature not because they are all useless, quite the contrary as the pirate ship and splash run seem pretty good, but because I don’t have the option to turn them off. They fill the situation command slots with too much clutter and I’d like to turn them off since I don’t use them much anyways. As for combo modifiers, it’s pretty subjective what you prefer to run with but personally I only used one air combo plus and no combo pluses for my ground combos, speed slash as my only equipped finisher, and the air launch move to render my enemies useless while I air comboed them Marvel vs Capcom style. Shotlocks while useful, aren’t busted as they were in DDD. I recently found out that the Hero’s origin shotlock, when not fully charged, actually heals you a little which came in handy in the battle gates. Links or Summons, are actually pretty bad except for Simba and Stitch. The reason they are so bad is because they cost a FULL mp bar to use and they all leave you vulnerable to damage, granted you take less damage but doesn’t really matter on harder difficulties or battlegates. Simba and Stitch are good because their damage output makes up for the full mp bar. Links also fully heal you but I think that’s because you don’t have I frames and the devs just hope you wouldn’t notice. All in All pretty solid gameplay. Not better than 2 in my opinion but I wouldn’t laugh at someone for saying KH3 has their favorite combat. Regarding the final bosses they are all designed great but they come in groups which I don’t like and wished there was a way to fight them individually. I know they come in groups because it makes it the endgame drag less but, it result in super short fights that have too much going on in them and abruptly stop when you beat one member one by one. I also wished we fought Ansem and Xemnas in their final forms instead of all 3 in a group (Also they have the best boss theme and it should’ve been the final boss theme but the real final boss theme is still good). Every other boss is SOLID my favorite was definitely the ice wolf and mother gothel’s heartless thing.

               Last but not least, Music

               It’s Godlike. The end.