#like. the management is desperate enough that hey keep hiring everyone on referal

[when-sanpape-arts]

what's the restaurant in the dunmeshi restaurant au called?

okay, incredibly cheesy and definitely low hanging fruit but it's called The Red Dragon. when I was coming up with the au I initially thought it'd be a ramen shop but like, ultimately I think it'd be funnier if it were a premium casual sorta place that none of them are qualified to work at.

[sidespart]

The Fall of King Romulus Part 6

Summary: Twin Princes Remus and Romulus are cursed at birth with Honesty and Obedience. When Romulus, who cannot disobey any order, is told to kill his brother the next time he lays eyes on him, he changes his name to Roman and runs away. Roman joins up with a misfit group of adventures and plans to never return to his homeland. But the fae have other plans for him...

Warnings (for whole fic not necessarily individual chapters): Violence, mind whammying/memory altering, curse of obedience related consent issues, references to sex, references to war related injuries/PTSD, references to child abuse/neglect (YMMV on that one but just in case), antagonstic-but-not-exactly villian!Janus, Extremly-moraly-dubious-but-not-exacty-unsympathetic-Remus

EXTRA WARNINGS - this chapter is pretty much unrelenting whump and the violence and consent issues (past) tags strongly apply. I have put more detailed (spoiler heavy) warnings at the bottom so if you’re particularly sensitive to that stuff and want to scroll down to check before you read you can do so.

Feedback appreciated.

NOW ON AO3 :D

Prologue     Chapter 1   Chapter 2  Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

In a tavern just outside of Leovan the crowd roars another! And Roman laughs and gamely starts to play another jig. He’s been playing for hours and he drinks in the attention happily, even as the cheers of the crowd become a ringing in his ears. The night is long and his throat is raw and his stomach empty and it’s harder and harder to keep his eyes focused, but his hands are steady on the strings. He sways in place, sweat dripping into his eyes, but it doesn’t matter- the crowd adore him. They sing and dance and laugh along, and after each set they call another, another, another until the room is spinning and his throat is bleeding and the audience’s laughter had turned cruel and high and lilting and-

Roman woke with a gasp and immediately regretted it.

The underground room was still pitch black, the humidity still cloying. At some point during his fitful sleep he had slumped to the floor, Lucius’ ill-attempt at binding having come loose enough to allow him to slide his arms down the length of the pipe. He was awkwardly sprawled at the base with his wrists still pinned above his head and his legs twisted underneath him. He tugged experimentally at his binding and got a sharp spike of pain down his shoulders and spine for his trouble. Whilst he had wasted time sleeping, the silk had become sodden from the moisture of the room and shrunk tight against his wrists, making even Lucius’ knotwork impossible to pull apart.

Not that it would have made much difference if he could get it loose.

Stay here until I come back with your transport.

Grunting with pain, he managed to untangle his legs out from under him and sit up. He pushed himself up on his knees as best he could, trying to relieve some of the pressure on his wrists, but gave it up quickly as the pain lacing down his shoulders intensified.

This was bad.

He chewed on his bottom lip, trying to think, but the heat was making it almost impossible. The black of the room kept swirling back in to crowded tavern, the rush of water into the jeers of a crowd…he could feel the raw burn on his throat and his mind scrambled desperately for another song-

Except it hadn’t happened like that. He shook his head furiously, his hair flicking sweat into the room, trying to banish the tavern from his mind.  He had already started traveling with the others by the time he sang in Leovan and if he’d tried to perform so late into the night Virgil would have come stomping down the stairs to tell him he was being ridiculous and to go and get some sleep.

Or Patton would have sat up listening, playing bodyguard, until he couldn’t keep his own eyes open and sweetly suggested that the crowd might want to be getting home to their own families.

Or Logan would appear, pocket watch in hand, demanding he finish within a set time frame in order to allow for optimal sleeping hours.

Roman could almost hear the lecture, relief at a chance to escape the crowd mingling with exasperation at the scholars ridged scheduling.

In the dark Roman glanced over to where he thought the door should be.

The only sound was the gentle hiss of water.

He tried pulling at the rope again.

***

“Hey! It’s you!”

The man blocking Roman’s path back to the ballroom was clearly drunk. He stumbled towards Roman, half leaning on the hallway wall for support, a big dopy smile on his face.  “I saw you- I saw you back there – wow!”

“Thank you friend.” Roman smiled brightly and took a step backwards, but not quickly enough to prevent the guy from grasping onto his sash.

“You’re so pretty.” The guy breathed, his eyes unfocused but his grip firm, “I saw you lookin’ at me when you were singin’.”

Roman squirmed. He was almost certainly better trained than his admirer, and he had had a lot less ale, but he was also shorter and skinnier. With the man pressed so close in the narrow hallway it was almost impossible to find the leverage he needed to push him off.

And. This was a nice place. And by the quality of the man’s clothing he was an honoured guest not a servant. Roman had been the one to convince his new companions to accompany him to the local lord’s house for the ball, he had wanted to give them to a chance to relax whilst he performed. He didn’t want to get himself, and them, kicked out by causing a scene- not when he was half hoping they would allow him to continue to travel with them even though the job he’d been hired for was done.

“I look at everyone-” he said, smile fixed and polite ”– engaging the audience is actually very important for-“

“Shush.” The man whispered.

Roman shushed. Grinding his teeth in frustration.

His assailant brought one hand up to paw at his face in a clumsy attempt at seduction, thick rings knocking against Romans jaw. His other hand released the bard’s sash to grip his wrist instead.

“Kiss me,” the man breathed, the stink of ale on his breath making Roman gag.

Face burning with mounting frustration and embarrassment, Roman attempted to plant a quick kiss on his cheek, but the man twisted his head at the last moment to meet his lips with his own.  Pressing Roman back against the wall with a slobbering assault as he attempted to pry Roman’s lips open with his tongue.

Panic flickered in Roman’s belly and then just as quickly dulled. It was generally easier to let these things run their course.

And then, suddenly, the pressure on his mouth – and wrist and chest - was gone.

Roman blinked open eyes he didn’t remember squeezing shut to see Patton with an expression so furious Roman had to fight the instinct to cower.

“What.” Patton snarled “Do you think you’re doing?”

“I di-didn’t mean to-“ Roman started.

“Well?!” Patton roared and Roman realised he wasn’t speaking to him – but rather the rich man who appeared to be rapidly sobering up in Patton’s grip.  The warrior held him by the scuff of his neck, his toes just scraping the floor. When Patton shook him, the plethora of chains around his neck clinked together musically.

“Roman,” Patton asked, his voice still shaking with an anger that made Roman draw his shoulders up instinctively “do you…know this man?”

“Well…no.” Roman glanced at the chains again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as his heart rate started to return to normal “I think he might be the mayor though Pat, put him down!”

“I don’t care if he’s the King of the elves! Did you want to kiss him?”

“Well no, but – but its fine! These things happen!”

“You call yourself a Prince and this is how you carry on?”

Wait. What?

Roman blinked, feeling strangely hot in the cool hallway.

Patton wasn’t supposed to say that. Patton was supposed to ask what he meant. And Roman would backtrack and feed him some lines about people often feeling entitled to performers time off stage – which was not untrue – and Patton would look at him wide eyed and tell him that would never happen again –

“You’ve been told over and over, to keep yourself to yourself.”

- that Patton would stand guard at every performance from now on if that’s what it took.-

“If you insist on putting yourself into these situations, don’t come crying to me when the inevitable happens.”

-And Roman would be so elated at the implication that they were to keep travelling together that he would almost forget to feel embarrassed at the situation.-

Patton’s lips narrowed into a thin disapproving line, “Don’t be naive. You are far better off alone, Romulus.”

“Dad?” Roman whispered.

“He doesn’t look much like the Prince.”

“Oh, like you’ve seen him.”

“Well he’s meant to be handsome right? This guy’s not winning any contests.”

Roman opened his eyes, squinting against the light. Three men stood around him, illuminated by the glow of an oil lamp. For one wild moment elation flooded through him - his friends had found him after all!

And then their conversation registered and he scowled. Disappointment robbing him of a witty comeback to their insults.

Still. Let them travel almost non-stop for three weeks, spend a night standing out in the middle of a field whilst an old woman sang at herbs, march for five days through a forest - including a detour through he thickets brambles known to man- and then follow that up with an entire day wandering around the city, have two panic attacks and be left to sleep tied up in caller. And then see if they looked their best.  

With the gag still in his mouth, Roman’s attempt to covey this sentiment were mercifully muffled.

“I don’t know.” The biggest of the three stepped forward, grabbing a handful of Roman’s hair and yanking his head back painfully, abruptly cutting off his complaints. “I can kinda see it.”

“Be careful Niki,” the one who had first spoken whispered, he was holding the lantern and keeping well back from Roman. “His nibs thinks he’s got devils with him.”

“In here?” Niki cast a glance around at the iron cage of pipework that covered the room. “If he does they’re not coming out.”

“Still.” Lantern-boy whined.

“Well let’s test it.” Niki grinned down and Roman spitefully and released his grip on his hair. In one quick movement he had produced an iron dagger, not unlike Roman’s own, and pressed the flat of it to Roman’s cheek.

Roman stared at him.

“There you see? If was possessed he’d be screaming.” Niki said smugly and pulled his knife back, twisting it slightly as he did so, leaving a shallow cut along Roman’s cheek, making him wince.

“Careful,” lantern-boy said meaningfully “he’s still the Prince’s brother.”

“Oops.” Niki smiled cheerfully down at Roman. “My bad.”

“He needs to drink.” The third man stood far enough back from the lantern that Roman couldn’t see his face, but he saw the way the other two responded to his soft voice, their posture automatically stiffening.

“Here,” lantern-boy stepped forward after a moment, holding out a water skin to Niki  who rolled his eyes but reached down to rip the gag from Roman’s mouth.

Roman coughed, swallowing air greedily. His throat was painfully dry, all moisture sucked out by the silk, but he still hesitated when Niki held the skin up to his mouth.

“Listen to me.” He croaked “you-“

“Just drink it.” Niki snapped and Roman surged forward despite himself, swallowing a few precious mouthfuls before the skin was yanked away again.  

“You’re from Notaleveale.”  he whispered. “Right?”

“Obviously.” Lantern-boy muttered, taking the water skin back from his companion.

“Well then,” he drew himself up as much as he could, ignoring the pain the movement caused “ – as true men of The North I must implore you to assist me. The Marquis has been embroiled in some- some conspiracy of untruths, is perhaps plotting against the very crown itself and-“

“The Marquis de Orenlla couldn’t plot his way out of a paper bag.” Niki snorted contemptuously.

Roman opened and closed his mouth a few times.

“Isn’t he your Lord?” he asked eventually feeling bizarrely offended on the Marquis’ behalf. Niki and lantern-boy were both wearing chest plates embossed with the three peaked mountain range that signified allegiance to Orenlla, the royal kraken of Notaleveale floating above. They were clearly guardsmen brought with Lucius on his journey south.

The third man, who hadn’t spoken since he mentioned Roman needing to drink, wore no identifying uniform.

“It’s not an insult.” Niki shrugged, “personally I prefer an employer too daft to organise a coupe.”  

Lantern-boy nodded in agreement, “It’s a, whatcha call it - a positive working environment, innt?”

“…alright.” Roman decided to change tactics. “I’ll double what he’s paying you.” This time both men laughed.

“With what?”

“Well, I. I’m still a Prince I’ll have you know -  I have many rich and influential friends who would gladly-“

“Oh really. Where are they then?”

There was an unpleasant pause whilst Roman desperately tried to get his brain to think. He was supposed to be more creative than this!

“You’re no Prince of ours anyhow.” Lantern-boy stepped a bit closer to glare into Roman’s eyes. “Traitor.”

Roman flinched back at the pure look of venom on the young man’s face.

Little fae touched traitor.

“Listen to me. Whatever you’ve heard – it’s not true. My father-“

“Don’t you dare speak his name!” Niki surged froward, pulling Roman up by the neck of his tunic. Their faces were close enough that Roman could feel the spittle from the man’s mouth land on his cheek as he shouted: “After your despicable actions you would dare to-“

“Nicolas. Don’t upset yourself.”

The third man was barely visible to Roman over Niki- Nicholas’- shoulder, but as soon as he spoke the large man stilled, lowering Roman slowly back to the ground.

“Marcus. Some more light if you will.”

Lantern-boy -presumably Marcus– quickly produced a box of long matchsticks, almost tripping over himself in his haste to light more lanterns around the room. By the time he was done the room was brightly lit, the glow from each lamp bouncing off the metal pipes until it filled every corner.

The third man did not look especially Notalevealean, with skin almost as white as Virgil’s and pale white blond hair.  He was dressed plainly, with pale grey robes and soft shoes, and carried only a thin walking stick. If he hadn’t spoken, he could have quite easily faded into the background - camouflaged against the dull back drop of pipes.

“Nicholas. Marcus. Go and guard the passages.”

“But we already have a dozen men out there-“

“And I’m sure they’re in need of leadership. Go now.”

The two men glanced at each other. Roman thought for a moment that they would stand their ground, but then Marcus snatched up his original lantern and headed for the door, Niki following after one last reluctant glance back.

“W-wait.” Roman called. “Is my Father alive?”

They disappeared into the gloom of the next room.

Left alone with only the quiet grey man, Roman found himself wishing they’d stayed.

The grey man smiled at him as he shuffled towards the kneeling prince. His smile was an awful thing that did not touch his eyes.

“The young Marquis de Orenlla is a rather silly boy.” He told Roman in his soft papery voice. “Much like yourself.”

Despite himself Roman let out an offended squeak, but the grey man continued unhindered. “He has very little idea how to survive alone, can barely function without his servants.”

Roman caught himself staring at the floor and snapped his gaze back to the grey man’s face. He didn’t want to miss any information he might let slip but looking at him was-

It was difficult.

When he tried to look at the details of his face they seemed to slip away. Was he young or old? What colour were his eyes?

The whole time he had been talking, had his mouth actually moved?

“What are you?” Roman whispered.

The grey man smiled again, Roman shuddered.

“But also like you, he is not wholly stupid. He has started asking some inconvenient questions.”

Within the blink of an eye, the grey man was next to him a knife in his hand. Before Roman had a chance to do more than flinch, he had cut the ties biding his hands, and was back across the room.

Dazed, Roman rubbed his wrists, trying not to wretch.

Up close, the grey man smelt of death.

“Now. Sit there, and listen to me until I finish.”

Romulus whimpered.

“Your father is dead.” The grey man told him bluntly. “You killed him.”

“No.” Romulus- Roman shook his head. Used his newly freed hands to cover his ears. “He was sick.”

“You poisoned him over many weeks.” the grey man whispered. “Disguised it as a common sickness. You tried the same on your brother but he was too strong to succumb.”

Roman lowered his hands. They were pointless anyway- the grey man’s voice seemed to be inside his head.

“That’s not how his strength works!”

“And so instead, you allied yourself with a traitor to the fae court and placed a curse of madness on the crown prince, rendering him unable to rule. You hoped to take over in his place, but luckily your father’s advisors found you out. You were forced to flea with your fae companion.”

Roman stared at him, eyes wide. “That’s insane!”

“That’s the truth.” The grey man insisted. “When The Marquis asks you for the truth, that’s what you’ll say.”

“No.” Roman shook his head. “No, no, no.”

The grey man reached forward, resting his hand gently against Roman’s cheek. Romulus stared up into his eyes.

“Julius?” he whispered.

“In a way.” The grey man’s face seemed to twist. For a single moment, it was Julius’ face that looked disdainful down at him, rendering Romulus mute with terror. And then with another twist to reality it was gone, back to the grey man’s blank visage.

“I’ve had eyes all over looking for you Romulus. I was so sure you must have died in the mountains and yet –“ His fingers tightened on Roman’s face, nails digging cruelly into his skin. “Here you are. Like a little cockroach.”

With a shove he released Roman’s face and walked swiftly to the centre of the room, where the largest pipes rose out of the floor. “Stay on your knees and come here.” he ordered. Face burning, Roman shuffled after him, knees bruising on the stone floor.

“Put your hands here.” He gestured to one of the larger pipes. Even before his hands touched the surface, Roman could feel the heat radiating from it. It was far hotter than the one he had been tied to and although he braced himself he couldn’t hold back a yelp of pain when his hands made contact.

He snatched them back quickly, his palms an alarming shade of red. And without pausing, sprang to his feet, aiming a punch directly at the grey man’s immobile face.

“Stop moving.”

Roman felt his muscles lock, momentum sending him crashing to the ground as the grey man easily sidestepped his swing.

“Don’t move until I tell you too.” The grey man added, leaving Roman frozen on the ground where he landed.

Slowey the grey man stepped around him, crouching down by his head. “Look at me, Romulus.” Roman did so, only moving his eyes to stare at the flickering mirage of the grey man’s face.

Up close, the smell was so bad Roman felt the remains of his pastry threatening to make a reappearance.

“I am going to ask you some questions. You are going to tell me the truth. Nod if you understand.”

Slowly, Roman nodded. The grey man – Julius – whatever it was, had already told him what it wanted him to consider the truth. But even so, ‘tell the truth’ was an easy enough order to get around. Truth being in the eye of the beholder and all.

“And if you don’t, I am going to tell you to hold onto that pipe again, and I am going to tell you to keep holding it until I am satisfied with your answers. Do you understand?”

Roman swallowed.  He nodded again.

“Did you kill your father? Tell the truth now.”

“No.” he said quickly and then bit his tongue, cursing. Franticly he looked up at the grey man  “You, you said that was a truth for The Marquis, not for everyone I can’t just –“

“Raise your left hand.” the grey man said mildly. “Bring it here.”

Romulus felt tears of frustration and fear spring to his eyes. He was stupid for thinking he had a chance at this. Julius’ tests were never designed for him to pass.

***

Roman wasn’t sure how many hours passed before the grey man seemed satisfied.

Fortunately, he had methods of persuasion beyond just the pipe. When Romans’ left palm had become completely coated in blisters the grey man had handed him walking stick and instructed him to bring it down hard on his own back instead. And then his shoulders. The side of his face. His left palm.

The grey man never touched him himself.

He didn’t have any need to.

Whenever there was a pause between punishments he ordered Roman to stillness. Time which Roman happily spent fantasising, first of smashing the stick down across the grey man’s head, then of pressing his own eyes to the hot pipe.

Even if they took him home – he could not allow himself to lay eyes on Remus. That was the one thing he could not fail on.

“Did you kill your father?” asked the grey man.

“Yes.”

The stress of raising Romulus, of hiding the curse; there was no doubt he’d contributed to his fathers early death. It was true, at least to him.

“Did you curse your brother?”

“Yes.”

When he was a little boy there had been a phase where he tried to put a curse on Remus daily, and Remus him. The kind of curses they dreamed up were for itchy feet and stinky farts, and none of them had worked, but it was still technically true.  

“Why?”

“I was jealous of my brother.”

If Roman had only been born a half hour earlier he could have avoided a lifetime of being second best. He could have avoided his curse. Grown up with his Father instead of Julius. Not that he would wish any of that on Remus but. It was natural, surely, to be a little jealous of his brothers freedom.

“Good.”

Julius’ face smiled down at him. He reached out with the grey mans hands to stroke Romulus’ hair, like he sometimes did when he was a child. “You see Romulus, there is always a way to work within the confines of your curse, so long as you are willing to look for it. I taught you that.”

“Where are you?” Romulus whispered.

“I am waiting for you.” he smiled. “I have no sons Romulus, no one to pass the Stewardship to. And we must think about the future of our kingdom. When you are back, we can write a new story.”

“You…you’re ruler?”

Romulus frowned. There was a missing piece here but he couldn’t find it. The heat and pain were making his brain slosh against the inside of his skull. He found himself leaning in to the hand in his hair, even as revulsion rippled through him. “If you’re ruler then where’s –“

“Where’s the serpent?”

Roman blinked. Looking up, he found that Julius was gone again, the grey mans expressionless face staring back at him.

“What?”

“The serpent. Where is he?”

“I don’t – I don’t know what you mean.” Romulus held his injured arm close to his chest, curling over it protectively.

He heard the disappointed sigh and flinched even before the grey man brought his other hand to Romans’ bruised shoulder, squeezing hard.

“Look at me.”

Romulus did, eyes bright.

“I know he has left his prison. I know he was with you at that inn. I sent that stupid boy to get him and he found you.”

“I don’t know what you mean!” Romulus wailed, hating the childish wobble in his voice. “There wasn’t anyone else at the inn.”

“No?”

Julius eyes were peering out of the grey man again, a cruel glint to them. ”You were alone?”

“Yes.” Roman told him. Voice steady.

He’d entered the inn alone. He’d sat in the room alone. Climbed out of the window alone. Anything else was none of Julius’ business.

Before the grey man could speak again, a clatter from the next room made them both jump.

“Hmph. He’s early.” the grey man murmured.  “Get back to your place.” He gestured to the pipe Roman had originally been tied to and, haltingly, Roman crawled towards it, sprawling at the base.

“If The Marquis asks, tell him nothing about your injuries.” the grey man added lazily, taking up his position in the centre of the room, fading back into the background.

Roman grunted. It wasn’t a bad plan: his most visible injuries – the burns on his hand which he couldn’t stand to look at – could be explained away as being caused by the very pipe Lucius had tied him to. As usual, nothing could ever be pinned on Julius.

They waited. But neither the Marquis or his men appeared.

The grey man stood across from him, gazing out into the darkness of the next room. Roman wasn’t even worth looking at.

He slumped further against the pipe and tried to focus on breathing. There wasn’t a single place on his body that didn’t hurt, though the worst by far was his hand. He shivered from cold, which, given the heat of the room, couldn’t be a good sign. He let his eyes slip closed. Exhaustion threatening to take him again.

And then he felt a soft pressure on his lap.

“Mrrp.”

Roman opened his eyes. Then he closed them again.

He opened one eye. It was still there.

“Mister Mittens?” he asked, slightly hysterically.

Romulus and Remus had grown up with dogs. He wasn’t sure if cats were supposed to be able to feel smugness, but this once clearly did. It butted it’s head against Roman’s chin with another self-satisfied “Mrrp.”

“What?“ The grey man was staring at the pair of them, looking as confused as his expressionless face could manage. “Where did that thing come from?”

Roman was saved from having to answer by a crossbow bolt. One that came through the open door, burying itself in the grey man’s skull.

Chapter 7

Extra warnings

Consent stuff – Roman relives a memory of being sexually assaulted (he doesn’t necessarily think of it in those terms). A drunk man kisses him and pushes him against a wall. The man tells Roman to ‘kiss me’ without knowing anything about Romans curse. They are interrupted before it goes beyond kissing. (whether anything else would have happened, or whether the man would have stopped if he had known about the curse, is not shown in the text). It is implied that this sort of situation has happened to Roman before, and that it has gone further, but this is not explicit.

Violence stuff – Roman is tortured in this chapter. This includes cutting, burning and beating with a stick. The majority of this is not described in explicit detail but it’s certainly going on. Due to the nature of his curse, most of this takes place due to another character ordering him to hurt himself. Roman briefly contemplates burning his own eyes (for ‘trying to get around my curse’ reasons rather than ‘self harm’ reasons) . Someone also gets shot in the head with a crossbow. Roman also spends most of this chapter dehydrated and suffering from heat stroke .

I’m not totally sure what this falls under but its grim stuff – a character from romans past spends a lot of this chapter tyring to gas light him/ manipulate him into believing a set of false memories. Roman retains his correct memories but gets hurt a lot in the process. Meeting said character causes Roman to dissociate (I think this is the correct term but please correct me if I’m wrong), he continuously switches between his name and his childhood name during the chapter and at some points reacts as if he was a child.

[snorlaxlovesme]

Walk Me Home

So I guess I wrote this fic for a SoMa week prompt last year and then didn’t post it??? I found it in my drafts and was really confused what a fully completed one-shot was doing staring back at me lmao

So. Here’s a fic for I think the “2am” prompt. Title a reference to the P!nk song, since I’m pretty sure I spammed it while writing this.

                             ____________________

“Hey. Hey!”

Maka hears Soul’s voice call out from behind her, but she doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t want to talk right now; she wants to leave.

“Jesus, why are you walking so fast? Slow down, fuck’s sake.”

The grit of the sidewalk digs painfully into the heels of her bare feet. It doesn’t slow her down, nor does it stop her. In fact, when she hears Soul’s panting from behind her, she petulantly picks up her speed until his hand is landing on her shoulder and pulling her to a stop. He tugs her around despite her best efforts to keep walking.

“Hey, you wanna tell me what the problem is? Why did you leave the party?” He doesn’t even look mad at her, just concerned, which somehow makes her just feel worse. Soul continues, “I went to go talk to Kid for a few minutes and when I came back everyone said you left. Did something happen?”

Clearly something must have happened. She knows he can see it all over her expression, in the way she bolted away from him. Hell, he can probably feel waves of it coming directly from her soul.  

But she doesn’t want to talk, so she pulls her shoulder away from his grasp and keeps walking, marching towards the direction of home, probably. She’s still a little tipsy, even though she only had a couple drinks at the party. But whoever Kid hires to bartend at the Gallows Mansion has a heavy hand when it comes to mixing drinks. Either her cocktails were stronger than normal or Maka really is the lightweight every assumes she is. She keeps walking despite her protesting feet and the way the world is swaying around her.

“So you’re just not gonna talk to me?” Soul asks, still trailing behind her. She can feel his hand come to rest on her shoulders every now and again, steadying her when she tips a bit too far in one direction, but pulling away once she’s righted herself. Protecting her while also respecting her boundaries. It’s infuriating.

Soul keeps talking to her back. “Was it something it something Black Star said? You know how Star gets when he’s drunk. He’s got no fucking boundaries.”

It’s not Black Star. It’s not anyone specifically. It’s just everyone. It’s everything. It’s nothing. She doesn’t want to explain it, because that would just be another weakness to add to the ever-growing pile.

“I can kick his ass if you want,” Soul keeps trying, knowing full-well that he could never take Black Star in a fight. The pathetic offer almost makes her smile, but she gulps it down and tries not to cry.

Soul circles around in front of her. “Look, you don’t have to tell me, but could you please stop for a sec? You’re not wearing any shoes and your feet are gonna get all fucked up. There could be glass or something.” Maka, being Maka, doesn’t give a damn about potential dangers to herself, and continues marching forward, leaving Soul to roll his eyes and pick up his pace to catch up with her again. She’s trying not to look at him, but she can see the way his eyes widen in his ‘I have an idea’ face, and two seconds later he’s transformed into a scythe in front of her, hovering a few feet off the ground beside her. His wings flap quickly and silently to keep steady beside her.

“Please?” His voice comes his weapon form, tinny and desperate.

Now Maka is the one rolling her eyes. His winged-form only rubs salt in her emotional wounds, but her feet are admittedly in a lot of pain after almost a half mile of walking on cracked concrete. She concedes and throws a leg over his handle. She grabs onto him with both hands, expecting him to whisk her away to their apartment above the buildings of Death City. Soul surprises her by hovering another foot in the air, so her feet don’t drag on the cement, but flying at the same pace she was walking.

The quiet extends before them into the night. The farther they get from the Gallows, the harder it is to hear the booming bass of the music. Soul lets Maka direct them with her soul through the residential neighborhoods and away from crowded streets. She started this walk with the intention of being alone.

But, ten times out of ten she’d rather be with Soul.

She swallows. “Do you care what people think about you?”

On a normal day he’d snark at her for finally deeming him worthy of conversation, but today he’s quiet as he thinks of what response she might be looking for. She can feel he’s trying to pick apart the meaning of this starting question, but eventually just decides to answer honestly.

“Yeah. All the time.”

It’s the truth, Maka can feel in his soul that it is, but she still doesn’t believe it. In the time that Maka has known Soul, he’s grown so much. She’s always admired the way he just lets things roll off his shoulders, not giving a shit what others think about him. Maybe he’s just been faking it, but he does a damn good job playing the Cool Guy he’s always wanted to be as a kid. He makes Maka’s version of the same kind of make-believe feel like child’s play. No one believes in her flimsy brand of confidence.  

“Do you care what people think about us?” she asks.

There’s always been something in the way people talk about the two of them. Soul, the powerful, confident demon weapon that took down Arachne and helped save the world from madness on the moon. Maka, the meister who just managed to hold on for the ride. Maybe that’s not exactly what they say, but it’s implied. In the way other students will look at him with admiration, with appreciation, and then how they look at her, like they’re surprised it was little unstable Maka Albarn who managed to produce a Death Scythe. She knows she’s weak, but do people have to throw it in her face all the time? Like she was the last person they expected to be helpful in the apocalypse?  

Even at a freaking party there are people coming up to Soul and asking him for autographs while Maka stands right next to him. Like somehow they know the exact imbalance of strength between Soul and Maka and they’re disappointed in Maka the same way she is with herself.

Just thinking about it has her unconsciously pulling Soul forward down the street a little faster. She breathes deeply. Just a few more minutes and she’ll be home.

Soul finally speaks, breaking her out of her own internal pity party.  

“No.”

Maka blinks.

No?

“Our partnership is no one’s business but ours. If people have something to say about it, whatever. I only care about one person’s opinion when it comes to our partnership. And that’s you.”

God, it’s such a simple yet complete answer. And he’s totally right, like always. She doesn’t know why she gives a shit what other people think about her and Soul. None of it matters in the end, but God, does Maka wish for once that when she thought of the word “strength” she could picture herself embodying that word instead of never measuring up. Instead of feeling guilty for somehow always thinking she’s holding Soul back.

“You know there’s nothing wrong with you, right?”

Maka’s soul spikes so suddenly in surprise that Soul comes to a halt in the middle of the street.

“I’m serious. I know you wanna be the best meister you can be, but you’re too stuck in your own head to realize how fucked I would be without you as my partner.” He quiets in a way that means he’s gathering his words, and Maka listens with bated breath.  

“You’re the smartest and bravest person I know, okay? And you’re also a reckless moron who pulls some of the craziest shit in battle that I’ve ever seen in my life. It sucks that I have to keep saying this to you, but I’ll keep reminding you until you believe it. The only reason I ever had a prayer of becoming of a Death Scythe was because you’ve been my meister. Stop thinking that you’re not good enough, because you’re better than every asshole at the party. You did something they never could and now never will be able to do.”

Maka closes her eyes for a few heartbeats, allowing this to sink in. Even now, at 2am with the sky pitch dark because of the blackened moon, it’s hard to imagine that she was involved in that fight. She helped save the world and she’s still convinced that she’s somehow not good enough. Maybe Soul’s right, and what they have could only be accomplished with the two of them together. Maybe no one else matters but her and Soul.

“Soul? Transform for me, will you?”

Without hesitation, Soul morphs back into human form, holding her now on piggyback instead of on his weapon form. The shift from being supported by his handle to hanging off his backside is so natural that Maka doesn’t even have to think about it, just adjusts her arms so they’re tighter across his shoulders. She presses her face into the side of his neck in gratitude.

“You always know what to say, you know that?”

Soul snorts and hops a little to scoot her higher up his back. “It’s easy when your soul is practically screaming at me what you’re upset about.” He starts walking again, refusing to put her down because of his stubborn insistence that she’ll hurt her feet. “So. Party sucked for you too, then?”

Now it’s Maka’s turn to snort. All of a sudden the night’s whole emo conclusion feels very overstated. She feels foolish for being so dramatic but remembers that Soul thinks she’s strong even when she’s a drama queen. Depends on her even when she gets caught up in her own head. The reminder calms her soul down considerably.

“Think I drank too much,” she says, nestling closer to his back and laying her arms heavily over his shoulders to remain balanced. “Ox said some dumb shit about me being the weaker partner and it made me sad.”

“Alcohol is a depressant,” Soul says, kind of snooty. He’s repeating what she’s told him on his Moody Drinking nights.  

“Wait a minute,” Soul says. “Did you say Ox? Who the fuck is he to talk about being a weak partner?”

“I thought you said you don’t care what anyone thinks about us.”

“Yeah, but that was before I found out it was fucking Ox Ford who was talking down to you. I could totally take his ass in fight.”

Maka laughs for the first time all night. Soul continues ranting all the way home about how he’s going to beat Ox’s face in the next time he saw him (he won’t) and Maka thinks that maybe real strength is remembering that you always have someone on your side.

[thecassadilla]

Change of Pace - Chapter 1

Pairing: Kristanna

Chapter 1 on AO3

Word Count: 3,292

Summary: With her sister’s blessing, Anna takes a step back from her royal duties and finds herself working for a ski resort nestled in the mountains. A chance encounter with the resort’s maintenance technician leads them down an unexpected path, as they must work together to plan the resort’s annual ball - and maybe fall in love in the process.

Author’s Note: Hi everyone! I’m trying something new here - I’m not really into writing multi-chap fics because I feel like my brain betrays me and I put it to the side and never look back. However, I’ve already managed to plan out the first 20ish chapters (and have written a ton of it), so I’m giving it a shot. This idea came to me back in September, when I was flipping through the television channels, and came across the summary for a Hallmark movie. Just from the description, I decided I wanted to write a fic based off of it. I did watch the first half of the movie and got some inspiration from that, too, though the ideas are mostly original. (If anyone’s interested the movie is called A Winter Princess). Rated T for the foreseeable future, but will eventually be M-rated. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

In the two months since she had arrived at Valley Ski Resort, Princess Anna of Arendelle hadn’t stopped smiling. She greeted each day with a smile, worked with a smile, and whenever she thought about how thrilled she was to be experiencing life away from the castle and Arendelle, she smiled.

If she were being honest, she hadn’t stopped smiling since her older sister - and Queen of Arendelle - had approved her proposal of a sabbatical. She remembered the day she’d asked very clearly, as she was certain that her sister would reject her idea and she’d be stuck in Arendelle for the foreseeable future.  

“Soooo,” she’d started.

“Yes?” Elsa had raised a questioning eyebrow. 

“How would you say your mood is today?”

“My mood?” 

“There’s something that I want to ask you, and I’m not sure how you’re going to react, so I’m trying to gauge if now is a good time or a bad time.”

Elsa had chuckled. “Anna, you can ask me whatever it is that you have to ask me.”

“Okay,” she’d breathed. “I wanted to know how you’d feel if I...went away for a while.”

“Went away? To where?”

“I was thinking of taking a sabbatical and finding work in another country - temporarily, of course. Just a few months where I could do something other than mope around the castle. I think it would be good to have some work experience under my belt, especially because your coronation is next year. I want to be able to do more than what I’ve been doing.”

Elsa had nodded. “I see. That makes...sense. Did you have something specific in mind?”

“Not yet,” she’d confessed. “I wanted to know what you thought about it before I committed to anything specific and got my hopes up.”

“There are a lot of factors to take into consideration. Your identity and your security are the first things that come to mind. But...as long as you’re back before the coronation, I really don’t see the harm in you -”

Before she could finish her sentence, Anna was throwing her arms around her sisters neck. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! You’re the best big sister, ever!”

It was some of the best news she’d received in her life. Not that her life had been dismal prior to her arrival at Valley Ski Resort, but it was rather...boring. Not boring in the traditional sense, as she had plenty of things to do. Horseback riding in the gardens, reading every romance book she could get her hands on in the library, and practicing piano at twilight. Regardless, her days felt empty, as if something was missing. She selfishly wished for more - travel, new friends, love. 

So with her sister’s approval, the arrangements were made. With the exception of the general manager of the resort, her colleagues would remain unaware of her royal status, and would refer to her by her first name rather than by any titles or formalities. She’d stay on site, in one of the luxury “cabins” that the hotel rented to guests who wanted a more home-y experience, and set off to Valley in September, vastly unprepared for a life so different from the one she was accustomed to, but ready for anything. She had to learn how to do everything on her own; from cooking to cleaning to laundry, but she adapted fairly quickly to her new, “normal” routine and fell in love with her job as the assistant event planner for the resort. Two months in, and she was happier than she’d ever been in her entire life.

This particular morning had started the same as any other. In fact, when she woke up, she had a great feeling about how the day would go. She woke up feeling well rested before her alarm went off, had extra time to put on a little makeup, and was able to stop by the café on the first floor before making it to work with plenty of time to spare.

“Good morning,” she called, upon entering her office. She dropped her bag on the floor before shimmying out of her coat and hanging it on the rack by the door.

“Hey! Morning, Anna,” Holly, the administrative assistant, called back. 

She glanced around and noticed that Holly was the only person there, which was rather unusual. Her boss always made it in before she did. “Jenny’s not here yet?”

“No,” Holly answered, running a hand through her chin length, raven-colored hair. “And it’s not like her to be late.”

She scooped her purse off the floor and walked over to her desk. “I know. Maybe she called out today?”

“She hasn’t been answering my calls or texts and I didn’t get an email from her.” 

“Do you think Bonnie will know?”

“I’m sure she does, but she has more important things to worry about than one person calling out sick.”

“I’ll try texting her, too. I hope everything’s okay.”

“In the meantime,” Holly started, opening the top drawer of her desk and pulling out a box, “Look at what came in today!”

“Are those the invitations for the ball?”

“They are! Come look!”

Though she’d just sat down, she immediately hopped back up and ran over to Holly’s desk. She peered over her shoulder, at the silver and royal blue invitations. “Wow, those are gorgeous.”

“‘Valley Ski Resort cordially invites you to the twenty-fourth annual ball. Join us on Saturday, February sixth at seven in the evening for dinner, drinks, and dancing,’” Holly read. “Followed by the address to the hotel, of course, your extension and email for the RSVP, and the prices per head.”

“They’re perfect.”

“All you have to do now is finalize the guest list, print the name and address stickers, stick ‘em on and drop ‘em in the mailbox.”

“That’s it?” Anna teased.

“At least you don’t have to worry about hand-writing every name and address on five hundred envelopes.”

“It would give me an excuse to practice my penmanship,” Anna laughed. “My teachers always said my handwriting could go from neat to illegible in the same paper.”

“I know for a fact that your hand will be tired after sticking that many stickers to the envelopes, so don’t get too far ahead of yourself. At least the return address and stamp are already on there.”

“Less work for me,” Anna smiled, picking up the box and carrying it to her desk. “And I already have my work cut out for me.”

“Jenny is keeping you on your toes, huh?”

She sat down again, finally kicking off her snow boots and switching them for the flats she kept in her bag. “Just a little. I enjoy it though. I like keeping busy.”

“I know you haven’t been here very long, but you’re doing great,” Holly said. “Way better than any other assistant Jenny’s ever had.”

“Thank you, Holly. I really appreciate that.”

They kept up the small talk as they began their work for the day. As usual, Anna had plenty of emails to respond to and the talking helped to pass the time. A few hours into the day, the office door opened and they both turned around to see if Jenny had finally arrived for her shift. Instead, it was Bonnie, the general manager of the resort. “Good morning, ladies.”

“Good morning, Bonnie,” they responded in unison.

“How’s the planning for the ball coming along?”

“Excellent,” Anna spoke up. “We received the invitations this morning. The guest list will be finalized by early next week and the invitations will be sent out by the end of next week.”

“That’s wonderful,” Bonnie smiled. “Now, I’m afraid that I have good news and bad news for you both.”

“Oh,” Holly murmured, exchanging a worrisome look with Anna.

“I’m afraid that Jenny has resigned, effective immediately,” Bonnie stated matter-of-factly. “That’s part of the bad news. The good news is for Anna - congratulations, you’ve been promoted!”

Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. “I have?” 

“Of course! Sure, you’ve only been here for two months, but you’ve been shadowing Jenny the entire time, you show excellent potential, you’ve never been late...I can go on and on, but it was one of the easiest hiring decisions that I’ve had to make in my entire career.”

Anna couldn’t help but wonder if she was being promoted out of sheer desperation, or if it was because Bonnie was the only person aware of her royal status and was trying to kiss up to her. “Thank you, Bonnie. I hope that I can exceed your expectations.”

“I don’t think you’ll have any trouble fitting into your new role. Now for the second part of the bad news - unfortunately, there won’t be enough time to hire a new event planning assistant in time for all of the upcoming events, between the Christmas season starting in three weeks, and then the ball the first week of February. I’m so sorry.”

Anna nodded slowly, trying to process everything that Bonnie had just told her. Not only had she been promoted, but now she’d have to take on the workload of two people by herself. “I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all I ask,” she remarked. “I know that you’re going to do great. Enjoy the rest of your day, ladies.”

Bonnie swiftly exited the office, and as soon as she was gone, Anna turned to face Holly. “What am I going to do?”

Holly stared for a moment, her mouth agape. “I...don’t know. This has never happened before.”

“I don’t think that I can do this alone! How am I supposed to do this alone?”

“Anna, I genuinely don’t know. I’m as stunned as you are. I mean, I’ll do my best to help you in any way that I can, but I only took this job because it came with a set, part-time schedule. I have a baby at home - I can’t be here for all of the events on the calendar.”

“Of course not,” Anna agreed. “That’s not fair to you or your husband or son.”

“Yeah, but this situation isn’t fair to you. Bonnie has plenty of time to find a new assistant, I bet she’s just being lazy.”

“I wonder why Jenny quit so abruptly.”

“I know! Jenny isn’t the type of person to do anything abruptly. I hope that she’s not sick or something.”

A wave of anxiety rolled through Anna’s body and she buried her face in her hands. “What am I gonna do?”

“Oh sweetie,” Holly cooed. “It’ll be alright. You’ll figure it out, I promise.”

Anna exhaled heavily and nodded. 

“How about we go over everything we have to do for the rest of the season?” Holly suggested. “I know Jenny normally goes over the events on a week-by-week basis, but it may make you feel better to recall everything you’re dealing with in advance. Kind of like a quiz.”

“Okay,” she agreed. She got up from her desk and paced back and forth across the office; she often did her best thinking as she paced. The office was modest; the three desks were all lined up against the right wall, and the other walls were lined with filing cabinets, a bulletin board, and plants. Lots and lots of plants. Luckily, the plants were Holly’s responsibility, so Anna didn’t have to worry about keeping them alive - something she was sure that she’d fail at.

“So the cookie decorating is on the twenty-fourth. Do you remember the game plan for that?”

“Yes. We...I have to pick up the cookies at the bakery, bring them to the conference room - which I’ll try to set up in advance - and then sell the cookies until the event is over.”

“Do you remember how much each cookie costs?”

“Three dollars.”

Deciding to distract herself as she and Holly talked, she started to reorganize the bulletin board. A couple of the fliers were outdated, and they could use the extra room for the upcoming events.

“Take down the pictures with Jenny in them while you’re at it,” Holly replied. “Alright, what’s next?”

She began to collect the many photos of Jenny that had been posted onto the board. A few of them included her, from the events that they had worked on together. It was almost bittersweet to take them down; Jenny was her boss and mentor. They spent forty hours a week together for two months straight, and Jenny had taught her everything that she knew. “Um, that’s the last event that this office has planned for the month and December is maxed out.”

“Well, what events do we have in December?”

“So many,” Anna sighed, stacking the photos neatly into a pile. “Santa will be here every night in the lobby. A reindeer petting zoo will be set up outside. A few movie nights and Christmas caroling. On weekends there will be sleigh rides through the woods and hot beverage stands outside. Am I forgetting something?”

“There’s also going to be a story time and cookie decorating with Santa event on Christmas Eve,” Holly pointed out. “All of the kids will be wearing their pajamas.”

“Okay.”

“But other than that, that’s it.”

“Thank god,” Anna breathed, finally collapsing in her office chair and tossing the pile of pictures onto her desk.

“I’m actually really excited for the story time with Santa.”

“Are you bringing your son to that one?”

Holly nodded. “He’ll only be eight months old, but why not? It’ll be adorable.”

“I can’t wait to actually see him in person,” Anna smiled. “Now, is there anything that we have to do on Christmas Day or New Years Eve or Day?”

“No, not us. Culinary is going to have buffets - like the one they’re having for Thanksgiving - and then the hotel puts out extra televisions and passes out champagne for New Years. We actually have off on those days.”

“Really? I mean, Christmas Day makes sense, but New Years? That’s a little unexpected.”

“Well, we have put most of our energy into planning the ball, and there wouldn’t be enough time to throw three huge parties in a month. So, the holidays are ours.”

“I’m so thankful for the person who made that decision,” Anna laughed. “I may wind up here on those days, anyway, though.”

Holly clicked her tongue. “Don’t do that - enjoy your extra days off.”

“It’s not like I have anywhere better to be,” she shrugged.

“I’d offer for you to come over on Christmas, but I’ll be with my in-laws in the morning, and my parents at night. Baby’s first Christmas, and all.”

“Oh, no I wasn’t trying to invite myself or get you to pity me.”

“I know,” Holly nodded. “I just feel bad that you’ll be all alone.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll call my sister, like I always do when I have time off, and then I’ll come here and see what’s going on.”

“Maybe by then you’ll have a boyfriend and he’ll invite you to spend Christmas with him,” Holly teased, wiggling her eyebrows.

Anna felt her cheeks warm up at the thought. “Christmas is six weeks from today and I think we both know that that’s not going to happen. I’ve been here for two months and the dates I’ve been on haven’t been great.”

“I don’t think you’ve been looking in the right places.”

She rolled her eyes. “To be fair, I came here to work.”

“And now you have enough work for two people,” Holly reminded her. “You should try to have some fun in your free time.”

“I do have fun,” she remarked defensively.

“Oh yeah? Tell me what you do for fun.”

“I just got a Netflix account, so I’ve been trying to catch up on all of the shows that I’ve missed over the years.”

Holly cocked her head. “That’s not fun, that’s pathetic. Also - watch Grey’s Anatomy.”

“I’ll add it to my list. And I don’t think that you should judge what I do in my free time when you spend your free time tending to your infant.”

“Exactly! I don’t have any free time. I’m trying to live vicariously through you.”

“Don’t do that,” Anna laughed. “You’re only setting yourself up for disappointment.”

“What if we set you up on Tinder? Or Bumble?”

“Holly -”

“Ooh, I could set you up on a blind date! My husband works in the high school and he has a ton of young, single coworkers.”

“How about we stop talking about my dating life and finish talking about the rest of the events that are coming up?”

“Fine,” Holly groaned, looking down at the calendar. “January is pretty empty. A few movie nights scattered around, and two make-your-own hot chocolate nights.”

“Hot chocolate?”

“Yeah, the kids get a kick of being able to choose their own toppings and stuff.”

“Gotcha,” Anna nodded.

“And then the rest of our energy goes to the ball. January is crunch time. Making sure that everyone RSVP’d, making sure the menu is finalized, reaching out to the DJ, et cetera. It’s going to be a lot.”

“I’ll consider myself warned.”

“That’s the right attitude! Now for February - obviously, the ball is the first thing that month. There’s going to be a few events for Valentine’s Day - card and cookie decorating and a carnation sale.”

“Carnations? Why not roses?”

“Carnations are the flower of love,” Holly answered. “And they’re cheaper than roses.”

“Yeah, but roses are way more popular,” Anna pointed out. “Maybe we should consider ordering roses this year.”

“I’ll look into it,” Holly said, writing it down on her notepad. “Now for March. Easter is the first weekend in April, so the Easter Bunny will be in the lobby for the month. There will be egg hunts and egg decorating - basically, we’ll have eggs coming out of our ears - in the week leading up to the holiday.”

“Is that it?”

“Well, we hadn’t got that far for this upcoming year, but usually we throw in some cookie decorating, too.”

“Okay, that’s manageable,” Anna commented.

Holly frowned. “And then I believe we’re losing you, after that.”

“Yeah, I’m going home in April,” Anna sighed. “We can plan a few more events for that month, though. I won’t be leaving until late April.”

Holly smiled. “So I get a little more time with you than I thought.”

“Hopefully Bonnie will find her replacements by then. Or else you’ll be doing the work of three people.”

“Don’t remind me,” Holly groaned. “I don’t want to think of that as being a possibility.”

She wiggled the mouse of her computer and it turned back on. She signed onto her email, hoping to see an explanation from Jenny. Instead, she found an email from the manager of the bakery. She spun around to face her coworker. “Liz just emailed me and said that they were able to specially order the cookie kits that Jenny requested.”

“Finally, some good news today,” Holly remarked. “Not that the news of you being promoted was bad. But it was...a lot.”

“Tell me about it,” Anna laughed.

Holly’s phone rang, then, interrupting their conversation. “Hold on just a sec,” she started, before picking it up. “Hello, you’ve reached the event planning office, this is Holly speaking.”

Anna turned back to her computer and scrolled through her inbox, trying not to eavesdrop on Holly’s conversation.

“Oh, hi Bonnie! How can I help you?”

Bonnie? She glanced back at her coworker, who had a puzzled look on her face.

“I’m sorry...what? Are you kidding?...Okay, we’ll be right down,” Holly said, slamming the receiver down and standing up. “Come on, Anna, we have to go.”

“Wait, what happened? Where are we going?”

[arigatouiris]

you // bakugou katsuki

Author’s Note: Bakugou Katsuki is someone I can write about anytime anyday. 

Ehh so this is my first time writing anything yandere and this is happening because guess who binged all of season 1 of You in one day? Me. Yes. And while I haven’t been posting as much, it’s been a very very hectic year for me, mental health-wise and professionally, so using tumblr is a luxury. There’s a twist here because it’s more of a reader being yandere than Bakugou.

Word count: 3254

Pairing: Yandere! Reader x Bakugou (there’s a twist)

Warnings: yandere elements, sexual references

❝

It had been a rather long day. 

Not that you were complaining. With rising levels of anxiety, a long day was a refreshing break from all things related to your mind. Honestly, you like being busy because it somehow takes a large load off of you, giving you a chance to breathe, move around in your own space and think of things that are actually worth thinking about.

And you’re really trying here; to make a difference to yourself. You’re really trying to not let the growing anxiety creep under your skin, to tell you about things that don’t actually matter and despite how much you want to listen to the voice that says ‘if it bothers you, then it matters’, you want to do the right thing and focus on yourself for a change. You’re going to do better, you’re going to stop fixating on things that will only damage you, you’re going to move past what can only hurt you and think of better things, healthier things—

     “Hey,” You spun around and blinked, before your eyes slightly widened at the person you grabbed your attention, “You dropped this.”

Oh.

Oh no.

His eyes were on you, not to say it in a creepy way, but there they were—glowing red and power-hungry, falling on you like satin on the floor. Your hands nearly trembled when he handed you the scarf you had ‘dropped’, and your fingers were inches away from touching one another, not that you wanted to touch how his skin felt like, but it wasn’t something you would have minded. Not one bit. You smile at him, shyly, because you don’t want him thinking you were happy about dropping the scarf. 

His hair was all over the place and you wondered how it would feel like in between your fingers when you grasp at them as he’s holding you, breathing down on your neck, caressing your skin and you could finally know what he smelt like—

     “Thank you, I’m sorry.”

You’re glad your voice wasn’t shaky, and your smile sat firmly in place. You didn’t want to creep him out on the first time you met him.

Oh, but you know, deep down, that it isn’t the first time. You remember the first time like you remember falling in love for the first time. There are things you don’t forget, and there are things that you cannot forget—like the time you had your first drink or the first time you have sex or the first kiss you share with a boy you harbored a crush on for the longest time. 

And meeting Bakugou Katsuki was one such thing you simply cannot forget.

     “Don’t worry about it.” 

He sounded gruff like he didn’t even want to be there, but he didn’t mind helping people. You could see through his cold exterior rather well, almost as well as you could understand yourself. And you knew yourself quite well if you could say so.

Bakugou Katsuki was no rude or intimidating person. He, like you, only wanted to be loved the right way. Bakugou Katsuki was rough around the edges, but it was something you were willing to work with. He wasn’t too complicated, but sometimes, he’d like to think he was because then he could hide his insecurities of being terrible with people away deep inside his mind, and not let it show to just anyone who walks by. 

But you’re not just anyone. 

He’ll soon realize that. You were sure to make him see that this time, unlike the several times you’ve been wrong in the past, you were right. You were right about looking for love in Bakugou Katsuki because he was looking for it too.

The first time you met Bakugou Katsuki was not the first time he met you. Yes, it sounds strange when you read it like that, but that was how your story began. A week ago, you were trying to pick the best book from the one bookstore you knew that actually sold books from time to time, and there it was. A loud explosion that almost sent everything outside the store scattering—cars, people, name it. But, the source wasn’t a villain or anything that would normally cause such a scene, it was Bakugou Katsuki.

He ensured no one was hurt, which was remarkable in its own way, but the fiery nature he carried with himself sent your heart to the skies; there was nothing he was hiding. He wasn’t like those other heroes who smiled and was nice to every pedestrian out there. He was doing his job, and he didn’t need to be nice about it. And from the looks of it, he was doing a good job too. It took him roughly 4 minutes to catch the villain, despite the explosion, and that was the time you noticed him. 

Hi, there, your mind spoke to him as you watched him speak to the authorities. You took in his appearance, the way his hero costume sat on his shoulders; the aggression wasn’t passive, he knew what he had to do and that was attractive too because you liked men who knew exactly what they wanted. You knew of him until then but it was the first time you were seeing him in flesh. People gathered around him but kept a distance because of his reputation and you knew he liked that because, despite the loudness, Bakugou Katsuki was a private person. 

You promised yourself you were going to stay in the clear. You weren’t going to involve yourself in someone else because it isn’t good for you. Any sort of obsession is bad, you knew this to be true, but Bakugou Katsuki was inviting especially with the air he had around him. Not anyone can get through it, but you were not anyone. 

So when Bakugou Katsuki was being Bakugou Katsuki, what more could you do but love?

*

It didn’t take you long to find him on social media. He had a private account for everything, but since he was a hero he had a public hero account that he had no choice but to leave public. Despite his arrogance and nonchalance to the rules, he was a pro-hero at the end of the day, and that meant doing things like this from time to time.

You nodded to yourself a bit, swallowing the need to smile and browsed through the ten pictures he had in that account. It was all of him with children and you realized that despite being gruff he was someone who could be soft to kids if he tried. Maybe, he wasn’t in the past but he was now. Now, you jumped to Facebook and it didn’t take you long to find him there but then again, there were several fan accounts and just one public account of his hero page again. You hummed before noticing the various other public figures in his profile—the hero Deku and Shoto, who seemed close but there was one more person.

The hero Red Riot.

You knew from the media that Ground Zero and Red Riot were best friends from their school days, so now you had another lead. You used Red Riot’s public profile to look at Ground Zero; and no, this isn’t stalking, you were just harmlessly checking out the person you knew you were going to spend the rest of your life with. 

And viola. 

There was just so much to see! Red Riot was a social media whore—and there was just so much he wanted to share. Bakugou Katsuki didn’t look too pleased in these pictures, but you could tell from the bottom of your heart that he loves feeling belonged and he loves his friends and the tough guy act was to initially keep unwanted people away but if you were a certain way for a very long time then it becomes who you are now. 

     “I know how that feels,” You muttered because you did know how that felt.

So, you waited. You didn’t want to rush, because you knew the best things came with a slow pace and a calm heart. Though you knew your heart was anything but calm, teaching it calmness is a gift. 

The next morning, you walked into the cafe and eyed the manager there. Your right hand was holding the flier for a new waitress and you were in need of a new job. Things were perfect. Smiling, you walked over to the manager and greeted him once.

     “You’re (l/n)?” He asked, blinking at you.

He was an old man, but he wasn’t weary. He seemed like the most active old man you’d ever laid your eyes on, but no matter. You were going to get this job, and you knew you were hired the second you walked in. All of this was just an unnecessary procedure.

     “Yes. Hello. It’s very nice to meet you!”

You were enthusiastic and didn’t push it. Things were going to go well.

     “Preppy! I like that. When can you start?”

     “I can start right away, haha!”

Oh no, too enthusiastic. You could see doubt cloud in the manager’s eye. You need to play this smart. You need to do something to get yourself out of this mess—

     “Perks of not having a job right now.” You cleared the air, and you finally could breathe again.

The manager laughed once before suggesting, “Today at 5 sound good?”

     “Five sounds great.” 

Five o clock didn’t come soon enough. You were tired of waiting outside the cafe like a stalker, which you weren’t, because you weren’t weird. You were just freshly in love and the enthusiasm was too much for your small heart to bear. If you were being a completely open book, you knew you had a glass heart. You gave too much and expected too little but even that little bit that you expected sometimes never came through. And that hurt. 

You get hurt easily not because you have such little faith in people, but merely because people intended to hurt these days. 

As soon as the clock struck 4:57, you entered the cafe. The manager noticed you, coming in early but not desperate early, and smiled to himself. It was just the first day, everyone comes early on the first day. You tossed him your best smile before getting to work. 

If your calculations were right, then in just 17 minutes, the rest of your life was going to begin.

*

Bakugou Katsuki walked into the cafe being Bakugou Katsuki and not Ground Zero. 

This was a lesser-known fact about him that most people didn’t know, except for his close friends. Red Riot, or Kirishima, and himself were at this cafe calling it “Bakugou’s second home”, which meant he came here a lot.

It was a risk you were willing to take. Who isn’t willing to take risks for love? It’s thrilling, really.

So you made your move, slowly. You were making a fresh start. You were given a clean slate and there was nothing that could hinder this progression or movement. It was going to be Bakugou Katsuki and you, in your love story, reaching a point both of you would be forever happy in. You were so elated you barely noticed someone else walk into the cafe, someone else who could be just as elated as you.

     “Katsuki-kun!”

Now, who the fuck is this?

Your eyes turned to spot the brown-haired, round-faced individual walk in and sit opposite to Bakugou, who didn’t even look irritated, to say the least. You knew who she was, but who was she to Bakugou Katsuki? You blinked a couple of times before feeling the rage build in your system. 

What the fuck was Uravity doing here? 

Wasn’t she with Deku?

Wasn’t she not interested in Bakugou Katsuki?

What the fuck was she doing here addressing your Bakugou Katsuki as “Katsuki”?

You hadn’t even reached Bakugou-kun yet!

You walked over there, carefully, a soft smile on your face—knowing exactly what to say and what to do.

     “Hi, may I take your order?”

Bakugou Katsuki’s eyes shot at you before a small hint of recognition struck his features. He wasn’t going to act on it, of course, he could be wrong, but perhaps it was the entire timing—Uravity, him not recognizing you, everything made it crash down hard.

     “An Americano for him, right Katsuki-kun?”

She even knew his order? What the fuck was going on here?

     “Stop doing that, round face. Jesus,” You felt ease at him insulting her, but it wasn’t enough, “She’s not going to have anything, she was just leaving.”

     “Oh? But we have a very good—”

     “She was leaving.” Bakugou Katsuki interrupted you, and you stopped talking right away.

You weren’t going to let anyone know how elated you really were on the inside. Uravity sighed before grumbling and stopping midway as she was leaving.

     “You know,” She turned around to give him a serious look, “I really someone figures you out.”

What the fuck was that supposed to mean? You gulped before turning to look at Bakugou Katsuki, wondering what had just happened and why you were so confused.

     “You,” You jumped on your spot, “Americano.”

You nodded once before rushing to get him the best Americano he had ever tasted. While you were returning with your drink, you placed it there with a small savory biscuit and that got his attention.

     “I don’t think you remember, but you saved our lives a week ago. Just a small token of my gratitude.” 

You didn’t need him to know this. He was a pro hero, there was no need for him to know.

     “Book store girl.”

You froze. Your wide eyes didn’t go unnoticed. 

     “You didn’t even come out because of the whole hassle. Yeah, I saw you.”

He’s a hero. He had to be alert and aware of who was around. That was the only reason he knew about you. 

Six days went by, and you were slowly trying to piece together who Bakugou Katsuki was little by little. You’d leave him little savory snacks randomly and you could spot a soft change in his glum expression and notice how he’d linger longer than he would usually stay. You had more eye-contact than before and you swore you even saw him smile at you once.

When he wasn’t being a hero, he was being Bakugou Katsuki and wow, you were thrilled that he was choosing to be himself with you.

So, you decided to take it a step further. Six days was enough before you could ask him something personal right? You didn’t want to rush, but you were trying very hard to be anything but fast because you couldn’t wait to see how he felt in your hands and how his skin and hair smelled like and how it would overall feel to have love in your hands.

So, on giving him his third Americano for the evening, you plopped yourself opposite to him and smiled at him.

     “Don’t tell me you want an autograph.”

     “I’m sorry, who are you?”

Bakugou Katsuki chuckled at what you said and you swore to all the heavens you had learned language for this particular reason.

     “Just wanted to get to know you a little.”

Bakugou looked at you. Yes, he was starting to become Bakugou now, it was slowly adjusting itself in your head.

     “You sure you want that?”

You felt a bit hurt at his sentence but couldn’t help but admire how mysterious he sounded as he said it.

     “I don’t go do things I’m not sure of.”

     “Like work in a coffee shop?”

You chuckled, “This was all I’ve ever wanted.”

Bakugou rolled his eyes, “Sure.”

     “No, but really. Who are you, Bakugou Katsuki?”

He gave you another look, a softer one this time, a look you could barely discern but could spend the rest of your life trying to understand. He leaned forward and your faces were merely inches away.

     “I’m no hero, (l/n) (y/n).”

You swore you could feel your heart rate increase with the way he said it.

     “And I’m no damsel that needs saving.”

Bakugou smirked at what you said before what you knew as something very darkly sexual began between the two of you. The second you entered the cafe, you were left to wonder what Bakugou Katsuki would want to do to you later that night. The way he touched you, the way you touched him, the way he smelled and the way his skin felt when it slapped against yours, it was driving you closer and closer to insanity. 

He didn’t even have to do anything. All Bakugou had to do was sit there and be himself and you could swallow yourself wholly into whoever he was and whatever he was—it was just that easy. Bakugou Katsuki was a man who knew how to please and how to be pleasured from that pleasure and you felt no remorse for even being selfish with him.

Not that you were.

But, you couldn’t help but notice something strange. Every touch, every word that you uttered, it felt as if Bakugou knew where it was coming from and if this wasn’t a sign that it was meant to be, you didn’t know what was. 

It was one night that changed everything, however. Not that you’d know.

You and Bakugou were done for the night. Tired, but happy—wounded but whole, you were cradled into his muscular arms, naked to the very bone, but you were satisfied.

     “Baku—”

     “Katsuki.” He whispered, kissing the tip of your forehead.

You smiled to yourself, “Katsuki,” you repeated, wanting the taste of it, “I think I like you,”

What you didn’t know was he knew. 

He knew you liked him. He thought back to the time when he started heading over to the cafe you were working at, that one time with Kirishima—who obviously exaggerates everything he writes about. He thought about the fact that he told his red-headed friend that he liked the cafe, thus rendering it Bakugou’s home. He remembered that it hadn’t even been a week since Kirishima had posted that picture and yet, there you were.

There you were, now, suddenly working there.

After having seen him just once. 

Oh, if you think Bakugou Katsuki’s first time meeting you was when he handed you the scarf, then you were wrong. The first time Bakugou Katsuki met you was when you didn’t even know it. 

You had a strange habit of smelling old books right in the middle—there was something about the way the pages smelled that gave you a high. You’d smile just a bit after that, enjoying yourself a little bit publically, allowing yourself just that one gesture to please yourself. 

You licked your lips after and Bakugou wondered if they tasted just as scrumptious as they looked.

They did.

You slid some strands of your hair behind your ear and he wondered if they felt as soft if he’d pull on them as he pounds into you.

They did.

He noticed how supple your skin looked from under the light in the bookstore and wondered if they’d smell just as divine if he had you under him, begging for him to take you.

It did.

So, he knew you liked him. See, the one thing you liked about Bakugou Katsuki was that he was a man who knew exactly what he wanted.

And this time, he wanted you.

[finn-ray-nal-beads]

Ok, but tell me about the first night with your three AU assholes. How do they hit on you? Do they have a pick up line? How do they convince you that they’re the shit? Then, how do they keep you coming back for more?

@safarigirlsp , OF COURSE, YOU COME IN WITH THIS HOT ASS GARBAGE RN AND I LOVE EVERY BIT OF IT BITCH!

OUR FIRST NIGHT WITH CAPTAIN BLOWHOLE AND HIS BAND OF BUCCANEERS: 

of course, finds our slutty asses at some backwoods brothel, and our tits are hiked up to high heaven and we look like we’re askin’ for a good time from anyone we can get our hands-on. He’s not as forward as you’d think he would be, staring us down with his iron-clad gaze from across the bar, taking our movements as our tits struggle in that corset he so badly wants to tear off us in front of God and everyone watching. He finally gets the courage after the 6th man has been turned down by you and their advances, gulps down his liquid courage, adjusts his cap, and stands to his full height to waltz over to you. 

“Hey there sailor,” you notice out of the corner of your eye, “lookin’ for a good time?” 

“Depends on what you can offer lil’ lady,” he smirks at your forwardness. 

“What I can offer huh?” you chuckle at the thought, “last time I checked, you were the one who approached me, sir. So, I should be asking you what your plans are with a lil’ fragile thing like myself.” 

He smacked his lips together, bringing a hand to your synched waist and lowering his face to your ear, “careful there honey, you know you’re speaking to a captain.” 

You shudder at the deep richness in his tone, but gathered yourself to comment back, “you’re not the first captain to storm my shores. What makes you so damn special?” 

He lifted his head to loom over you like a child being scolded by their parents, bringing his hand up to your throat, clasping the delicate skin just enough to make you moan out, “oh little whore,” he marveled at your mewls, “once I’ve run aground through you, you’ll never want your lil’ hole pillaged by any other sailor. Swear to Davey Jones himself,” letting the grip go as you gasped, clutching your tits as if he’d already ravished you. 

“What do ya say, lil’ lady... you wanna right my main mast or settle for deck swabbers the rest of your miserable life?” extending a hand out waiting for yours to land in it. 

Of course, you’d take it and never look back. And of course, he had the biggest and best dick on the entire ocean to which you begged for every second of the day and he gave you on cue whenever you damn well wanted it. 

NOW ONTO OUR FIRST NIGHT WITH THIS IS SPARTA AND HIS SEXY ASS BULLSHIT: 

Since this is ancient Roman times, our first night together was our wedding night. You and he were betrothed by your parents and offered to the most powerful warrior in the village as a prize. You weren’t courted by him due to the fact that he was busy fighting in wars as well as he really didn’t have to win your ass over for any reason. You were his no matter what and your purpose to him was merely a vessel for his seed. 

But when he caught a glimpse of the beauty, the regality, and the poise you emanated, he fell head over fuckin’ heels. The second the marriage was sealed, he decided he was going to try. Try to make you love him, to pine for him, to beg for his cock like he desperately wanted. The reception was full of fine food and drink, coupled with tons of conversation amongst the warriors and the senators present for the nuptials. Flip noticed your uncomfortable behaviors towards a certain member of the senate when he was advancing himself onto you. He barreled over in an instant, barring the man from getting any further with his new wife, warning him of the consequences if he did lay a finger on you. Upon his departure, Flip turned to you, putting both hands on your cheeks, “are you alright my dove?” he cooed as if you’d both been together for centuries. 

“Y-yes,” you froze in shock at his tenderness, “thank you,” bringing your hands slowly up to caress his calloused ones. 

“Good,” he mused, smiling and bringing you into his body by your waist, “I will never leave your side, my love. I will always protect you.” 

You nodded, slightly embarrassed about your damsel in distress behavior, but secretly thanking the gods for picking a man who seemed to care about you. 

The rest of the night was full of love and laughter, and of course, Flip never leaving your side no matter what was happening. 

“Would you accompany me to our quarters?” he whispered in your ear as you gazed at the dancers performing a ritual before the both of you.

You looked to him, and nodded, kissing his cheek as he lifted you in a bridal carry towards your marital home and bed. From that moment on, you fell head over heels for your warrior, only wanting to please him in the best ways possible and provide him with everything you could. 

AND LASTLY OUR FIRST NIGHT WITH HUCKLEBERRY AND HIS BULLSHIT: 

Cowboy Flip wasn’t one to really be into the women-folk. He stuck to his guns, working as a ranch hand and putting in a good day from sun up to sun down no matter what. So, finding him at a bar or brothel was few and far between. He recently answered an ad from a local farmer looking for a reputable rancher who could deal with wild horses being tamed as well as had ranch hand experience. Flip of course jumped at the opportunity to break a Philly or two and rode out to the old man’s farm. 

He was put to back-breaking work, hauling hay, feedin’ hogs, harvesting crops, bringin’ round the cows, takin’ care of the horses, and stock. The labor was grunt work to which he didn’t appreciate, and he was thinkin’ about quittin’ it all together... but then, he caught a glimpse of the farmer’s daughter... which happened to be you. 

You’d just come home from a journey with your mother, lookin’ all kinds of cowgirl pretty. Flip was speechless, removing his hat and nodding with his mouth gaping open like a codfish. 

“H-howdy there ma’am,” he managed to put together as you approached the stable he’d was leanin’ on. 

“Well howdy there to you too, cowboy,” you smiled at him, picking up a saddle from the ground to take to your horse inside, “name’s Y/N. Daddy told me he’d hired a new ranch hand.” 

“Y-yeah,” he said, following you like a lost puppy. 

“Well you ain’t too bad lookin’ either,” you chuckled, takin’ in the bulge becoming ever more present in his Wranglers. 

“Ya like what ya see cowgirl?” he noticed your wanderin’ eyes, regaining control after his gawking. 

“Well, I can’t say I hate lookin’,” you smile back up at him, biting your lips as you drop the saddle on the hay. 

“What’s a man got to offer a lil’ lady like myself huh?” crossing your arms to stand your ground. 

“Oh darlin’,” he smirked, moving closer to you, hats touching each other, “I’m your fuckin’ Huckleberry,” grabbing your belt buckle to pull you into a searing kiss. 

And we all know how kinky this man gets in the good ol’ Wild West... if not, then refer back to the threads from the last few weeks... they’re interesting to say the least.... 👀🤤😂

I FUCKIN HATE HOW BADLY THESE MEN LIVE IN MY MIND AND ITS ALL YOUR FAULT BITCH!😂🖤

[i-write-sometimes-blog]

The Blobfish (Rey x Reader)

Request: Kind of a lame request but maybe one where the reader and Rey live together on Jakku and after a long day of scavenging when they go to get their rations Unkar rips them off and then they put him in his place? By anon.

Words: 1,338

A/N: this was a bit tricky tbh. Hope y'all doing fine and well, hope you like it. Also, thanks for the incredible request you've been sending, I love them and I hope to post them soon.

Every inch of your body ached from the long day of work yet you felt satisfied with all the pieces you collected, you couldn’t have done it without Rey. Since you two teamed to scavenging life was easier, funnier, worthy. You couldn’t just imagined a proper life without her in it.

You looked at her waiting in front of you, her features looked as tired as yours must look, her clothes were dusty like everyone else here and still she managed to look incredibly gorgeous with those little buns in the back of her head. She was distracted contemplating the metal pieces on her hands, you decided to wrap your hands around her waist resting your chin softly over her shoulder.

“That’s a nice repulsor” you murmured her with a smile referring to the device on her hands, she gave you a small laugh.

“How many rations do you think he will pay us for it?” she said as one of her hands left the device and moved to hold your hand that was still around her.

“Enough, I hope.” you giggled “ ‘cause that shit was really hard to get.”

“True.” she said smiling.

The line moved when a scavenger left with a few rations on her hands, she looked so upset but that was how it worked. The Blobfish, as you called him behind his back, decided how much were the parts worthy, not questions, no bargaining, it was take the food or leave it and die, that was the way life was in the cruel desert.

“Hopefully more than he paid her.” you murmured to Rey with pity on your voice.

“Hey, keep moving you two.” said a man covered completely in dark cloth, one of Unkar’s thugs. Giving him an angry stare you obeyed, letting go of Rey’s waist as she moved closer to the window.

When your turn came the sun was threatening to hide in the distance.

“What you bring me today?” the big fat man asked sharply as soon as you were in front of his bars, immediately you and Rey placed your pieces for him to see, everything except the repulsor, that was a different deal.

Unkar Plutt, the junk boss of Jakku examined carefully all the thing you provided him, muttering thing for himself, Rey and you exchanged gazes as you waited in silence for his response.

“I’ll give you… hmm.” He said playing with the pieces on his very fat hands. "One and a half"

"Why not two?" You said raising a brow, you knew those pieces were worthy.

"This one's a bit rusty" he pointed at a small one. "Take it or leave it."

"Fine, that will do for today" you said taking the food rations.

"We have another thing" said Rey showing the artefact, Unkar took it and analyzed it closely then what seemed to be a smile appeared on his face, now he really looked like a blobfish.

Rarely someone made this man smile, he had a rather angry face all the time, that was a good sign. You took Rey's hand and gave her a bright smile as you saw she was kinda nervous, but she didn't have to be, that repulsor was worth a ton of food for sure, enough for a while, to take a break from the hard work. You thought of some numbers, fifty maybe even sixty portions.

"Five, just because you girls always bring me good stuff." He announced placing the bags for you to take it.

"Five!?" Rey and you asked at the same time.

"Wait, that's too low, Unkar!" Rey said raising her voice a bit so some of the other scavengers looked at her.

"Careful, sweetheart" he warned as a couple of his thugs came closer, weapons in hand. Rey glanced at them for a moment, they would be easy to take down but she didn't want trouble, not after all those years working for Unkar.

"Okay" she sighed.

"Good girl" said Plutt with an ever bigger grin over his face.

Rey seemed so upset, this was not right, sure he always paid you less than he should but this was ridiculous and after all you and Rey passed through to get that metal thing you were not willing to accept that.

"No." You said firm and Rey gave you a questioning stare. "This piece cost sixty portions, not less."

"Y/N, don't…"

"He's robbing us, Rey, you know it." You told her when she tried to calm you down.

"But we have enough food for some days." She added with a pleading gaze.

"No, he has to pay us what's worthy" you said and then you stepped closer to Unkar's window protected with bars. "So, sixty rations or nothing, it's your choice " you hissed taking the repulsor from his hand. Immediately the thugs behind you got ready to attack, just waiting for a word from their boss.

"We are not afraid of your thugs." You heard Rey firm voice as you saw her holding her quarterstaff in her hands, her gaze met yours and she nodded.

Before the Blobfish could even give an order Rey took down two of the men with ease, long used to defending lves.herself.

A new man approached to you from the back, quickly you hitted his nose with your elbow making him back off in pain.

“See, the thing is, we know you, Unkar.” you told him “We know you don’t care about other than yourself, you don’t have respect for anybody. Alway acting so tough and mean, but you’re just so afraid of us.” with every word you got closer to the window, Rey beside you holding her weapon up in case someone decided to attack again. “That’s why you hire those thugs, to make sure none of us stand against you, isn’t it?”

You observed Unkar, his yucky features clenching in both fear and anger. Then finally Rey said something to him, in all Jakku she would be the last person that would stand against him, and maybe the one that had more reasons to actually do it.

“You hide behind those bars because you know we outnumber you, Unkar!” Rey growled pointing her weapon at his wobbly neck. “You want the repulsor, you hear my girl. Sixty portions.” she said.

“You really think imma give you that much food?” The blobfish hissed.

“I suggest you do it.” you added “You don’t want to lose two of your best scavengers, do you, Blobfish?” you said making sure he heard clearly.

Around you the rest of the scavengers had stopped their usual routine to watch the show, unable to believe finally someone had confronted the junk boss. Some of them gasped as others laughed at his face looking so desperately for help, Unkar Plutt was speechless for the first time.

“Deal.” he said swaloging hard. Rey lowered her quarterstaff smiling satisfied. The big man moved inside his stand and came back with the sixty portions, your hands moved to the food as you couldn’t believe your eyes.

After taking the food you let the repulsor on his hand, enjoying the power you had over this man.

“A pleasure to do business with you.” you mocked one last time.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have what you wanted now move, you’re stopping the row.” his said with his disrespectful tone back on his voice.

When you left the outpost the night had almost fallen completely over the dessert, creating a colorful painting over the sky with the last rays of sun.

“That was awesome, Y/N!” Rey told you all excited as you arrived to the speeder waiting outside the outpost, making sure there was enough distance between you and the rest of the scavengers so they wouldn’t heard her. “I never thought I’d see that many food in my life!”

“You were amazing back there” you told her as you placed an arm around her waist and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Now let’s go home, Rey.”

Tagging: @1-800-depressedlesbian

(In case you want to be tagged for specific things or everything I write, just let me know)

[uncannyvalley-fic]

Last One Standing, Chapter 1

Chapter One

Jo surveys the event grounds with a barely-disguised expression of disgust on her face.  She’s not a horrible person, she just hates the annual Beckett Battle of the Bands (and Pancake Breakfast).  Tourists - mostly hipster millennials - show up in Beckett, camp in the forest, take up space in Ace of Cups and the Hyperion Diner, throw garbage all over the giant field where the concerts are held, and generally make a nuisance of themselves.  Normally she requests the weekend of the event off, giving the job of security to Levi and one of the junior officers, but somehow all of them - except for Levi - managed to get their time off requests in earlier.  (Or, in the case of O’Malley, went into labor.)

For the most part, her partner in preventing crime, Levi Levenson, looks perfectly happy to be patrolling a giant open field in the middle of the forest.  He’s holding two to-go cups from Ace of Cups in his hands as he strides towards her, his fluorescent green “Security” vest looking dapper and sharp over a navy henley and a button-down flannel shirt (unlike Jo’s own vest, which looks patently ridiculous over her white dress and pale pink fleece jacket).  He hands her one of the cups; Jo notices it has her name written on it in Penelope’s delicate hand. “Morning.”

“Hi, Levi.  Thanks for the pick-me-up.” Jo takes a sip.  Her usual, made perfectly.  Heaven.

“Thought I’d better get in there before all the out-of-towners show up,” Levi responds.

Jo checks her rose-gold watch.  It’s almost nine-thirty, the time when the first bands will be arriving.  She and Levi will match faces to badges and then go over their equipment - scanning it all with the police department’s brand-new explosives-detection wands (which Levi, completely unironically, has taken to referring to as “danger sticks”) - before letting them into the event grounds.  After that, they’ll start their patrols (and listen to the bands rehearse, which Jo isn’t precisely thrilled about, since the groups that show up to the Beckett Battle of the Bands [and Pancake Breakfast] tend towards the hipster, folk, and “quirky”).  They’ll eat a quick lunch, hopefully catered from the diner rather than the Denny’s (which hasn’t been the same since the changelings found out how good the grilled cheese is), then proceed to patrol and offer support until the evening, when the night guards, hired by the city council, come on.

It could be worse, Jo reflects.  Last year it rained the entire time.

She and Levi make their way back to the main gates as the first of many trucks, RVs, buses, and campers start coming up the dirt road from town.  There are also some people on foot, which surprises Jo, until she realizes it’s the Scatter family, who own the event grounds; they’re armed with yellow ponchos and bright orange plastic rods and seem to be ready to direct traffic.  They live on a small organic farm just south of the large open space.  During the rest of the year, they rent it out for other events, including the monthly Farmers’ Market, the Shakespeare Festival in the summer, and the Winter Carnival.

Levi opens the gates and begins checking parking passes, Jo scans each vehicle, and the Scatter family directs each vehicle where to park.  It’s easy enough to get caught up in the monotony of it all, and when Jo checks the time again, she’s not surprised to see that it’s nearly noon.

She looks over at Levi, who seems to be in the middle of a heated discussion with a Jeep full of blue-haired punk rockers, and sighs.  Then she hears a voice right next to her, and nearly leaps out of her skin.

“Jo-Jo Baby, this new shopping mall is lame.”

Jo tries to calm her racing heart and turns to face GaaP, who somehow snuck up behind her without her notice. “That’s because this isn’t the new shopping mall, GaaP.  It’s the Battle of the Bands.”

And Pancake Breakfast, her mind automatically finishes.

GaaP frowns. “I thought that was last weekend.  Y’know, with all the silvery vehicles and the flashing lights and the weird chanting.”

“No… what did you see out here last weekend?”

“Uhhh…”

Before GaaP can answer, Levi strides over to them. “Ladies,” he says, giving GaaP a grin. “That was the last of the bands, so we’re free to eat lunch in the VIP tent.”

“Ooh!  I’ve never been in a VIP tent before,” GaaP says. “At least, not of my own free will.”

She takes Levi’s arm and they walk off together, leaving Jo to puzzle out what the hell that meant.

It’s a slow day at Ace of Cups, mostly because everyone in town seems to be heading out to the Battle of the Bands (and Pancake Breakfast).  Clementine’s been bored since… well, since she got here.  There were a few orders early on, but now it’s just Ethel, who’s been nursing the same cup of Sanka in the corner while she writes erotica, and Ember and Mr. Zephyr, who are being disgustingly adorable over their lattes.

That’s why Clementine’s standing at the window, trying to pretend she isn’t blatantly looking over Ethel’s shoulder as she writes.  Ethel is ninety-five if she’s a day, but she is the most incredibly raunchy author Clementine’s ever read.  And Clementine has to admit, she’s never ever going to think about androids and their potential… well, abilities… in the same way.

There’s not much happening in town.  Mostly there’s just people streaming towards the event grounds, even though the Battle of the Bands (and Pancake Breakfast) doesn’t really start until the evening.

Then Clementine sees the trees at the edge of the park move, as though there’s a strong breeze blowing through.  Nothing else seems to be caught in the wind, though, which is puzzling, but not necessarily the kind of puzzling Clementine’s really going to think about…

… mostly because the person who steps through the moving trees is more puzzling than a localized breeze.

It’s a woman - a young lady, as Ethel would no doubt say - and as she leaves the cover of the trees she suddenly looks intensely worried, as though the forest was providing some sort of safety cloaking and now she’s naked.  But she’s not naked, although if Clementine had to judge her outfit, she’d say it might be more preferable to be naked.

“Ethel,” Clementine says, as the woman looks around frantically, “what do you think of her?”

Ethel looks up from her computer, lowers her reading glasses, brings up her trifocals, and looks out to see what Clementine’s indicated. “Looks like she fell face-first into the burlap sack section of Ace’s Hardware.”

Clementine has to hand it to Ethel - she’s basically Beckett’s own Joan Rivers.

The woman’s eyes light on Ace of Cups, and though making up her mind has invigorated her, she bolts across the town square and towards the cafe.

“Ooh, boy, she’s coming this way,” Ethel says with a low whistle. “Looks like she’s going to pole vault her way in here.”

It’s true, Clementine realizes; the stranger is carrying a long staff.

“Uh, hey, not to be alarmist,” Clementine says, turning on the table where Ember and Mr. Zephyr are still casually sipping, “but I’m pretty sure -”

Whatever she was about to say is suddenly cut off by the loud opening of Ace of Cups’ front door, and the silence of the shop gets swept up into a cloud of noise as six men dressed in tweed and plaid flannel shove their way in.  One of them, a bowler hat perched on his head, seems to be talking louder than the others. “Enos, I told you I was sorry!  I didn’t mean for them to get offended and leave!”

The tallest man of the bunch, the one wearing purple suspenders, rolls his eyes.  “You told our roadies they were, and I quote” - here he lifts his phone dramatically - “like rats scurrying out of a sinking ship.”

“I just meant they were -”

Another of the men, this one short with silver hair and little round gold-rimmed spectacles, holds up a hand. “Save it, Keegan.  Our roadies are gone, our truck’s halfway down some dirt road, and there’s simply no way we’ll be able to participate in the Battle of the Bands.”

“And Pancake Breakfast,” everyone in Ace of Cups says.

For the first time it’s as though the tweed intruders realize they have an audience.

“Look, Enos, it’s not a big deal,” Bowler Hat says. “You could literally pluck anyone off the street and they could be a good roadie.”

As though desperate to prove his point, he looks around the shop, taking in Ethel, Clementine, Ember, Mr. Zephyr, and Penelope, who’s just emerged from the men’s bathroom with a mop and bucket.

“Hell, no,” Penelope says, and goes into the supply closet.

Ethel shakes her head. “Sorry, dears.  I have a date with an android.  Well, several of them.  And less like a date and more like… an orgy.”

That throws Bowler Hat, and he gives her a confused face.  Clementine can’t blame him.

“Look, look - these two!” Bowler Hat says, and darts across the cafe to Ember and Mr. Zephyr.

The tall one, the one they’d called Enos, frowns. “A fuckboy and Blazer Face?”

Ember grins.  Mr. Zephyr has the dignity to look a little put out at the comment on his apparel.

“You can drive a truck, right?” Bowler Hat says.

“I mean, I guess so,” Ember says.

“And you can lift things?”

“Well, of course,” Mr. Zephyr says, somehow sounding insulted.

“Great!  You’re in!  Look, Enos, I found us two roadies!”

Enos points at Clementine. “What about her?”

“Don’t even think about it, dude,” Clementine says, and she goes back into the small locker room behind the counter.

She’s barely made it five feet into the room when the door slams behind her.  She starts to turn around, but receives a sharp jab in her back.

“Hey!” Clementine snaps, irritated. “I said wasn’t going to be your roadie!”

There’s a pause, and then a completely unfamiliar voice - this one female, with a British accent, asks confusedly, “What’s a roadie?”

“I’m not coming out.”

“Baby, we have to be there in ten minutes.”

“I look ridiculous.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“You signed me up to be in an ABBA tribute band!  What the hell kind of white nonsense is that?”

“You sing ABBA all the time around the house.”

“And I keep it in the house for a reason!”

Mary sighs. “Fine.  I’m leaving in two minutes.  If you’re not in the car, you’re walking to the Battle of the Bands...”

“And Pancake Breakfast.”

“... by yourself.”

There’s a sigh. “Just be glad I love you, woman.”

“Every day,” Mary says, and she goes back to the kitchen to get the car keys.

[deltaengineering]

Spring Anime 2017 Part 1: woke up late

This time I prepared so I could get to the procrastinating right with the first post! Yay! Let’s get this show on the road.

See also:

• spring anime 2017 part 2: girlfriendship is magic

• spring anime 2017 part 3: comfy and easy to wear

• spring anime 2017 bonus round: things you already knew were good

Alice to Zouroku

So get this, a pretty girl with psychic superweapon powers escapes from a lab she’s been in her whole life and now has to adapt to the real world with the help of a guy she stumbles upon, all while being chased by her superweapon former friends. But in a shocking twist, this is actually better than Elfen Lied! Not being written by someone as brutally incompetent as Lynn Okamoto is a start, but the real change here is that our heroine is less murder machine and more genuinely cute, and more importantly the guy she ends up with is not a harem ringleader dorklord, but a grumpy elderly florist. Yeah, we’re skipping the recent trend of dadfeel anime and diving headfirst into granddad feels (I don’t know if aging otaku are quite old enough to fully self-insert yet, but the same principle applies). It’s a low hanging fruit, but that’s what makes it work; a deliberate, contemplative pace and delightfully whimsical music by TO-MAS also help. So far, so good, were it not for the fact that this is only one aspect of the show. Of course a show like this would have an action half as well, and that one’s pretty garbage. Not only is it directed with zero impact or excitement, it also relies on horrible CG a lot - I really don’t want to be reminded of Hand Shakers this quickly again, thank you very much. Plus, it runs with a Alice in Wonderland metaphor, which is baby’s first literary reference and doesn’t bode well about the intellectual ambitions of the project. So we have one half that’s admittedly effective, but also very predictable and which desperately needs to go somewhere to pay off. The other half just plain sucks and has little chance to improve. I think I’ll give this one a few more chances to sort out its priorities, but it’s definitely not a sure thing.

Busou Shoujo Machiavellianism

A cocky guy walks into a school full of pretty girls with weapons who have managed to sissify all the dudes by forcing them to crossdress. He then proceeds to troll them with his rugged charm. You know, it’s really not that easy to offend me but damn this show is trying. Apart from bottom-tier harem crap setup, this show also looks like ass and is tremendously boring; a few well done action cuts do not in fact excuse “fights” that mostly consist of exposition about special attacks, or terminally uninspired direction. Macchiavellism is the worst of shounen fightmens crossed with the worst of harem LNs, plus some of the worst jokes bad anime comedy can come up with. It’s not even audacious enough in its badness to boggle the mind; I could watch this if I was interested in adding another 1/10 to my MAL, but that’s about all I can appreciate about it.

Frame Arms Girl

Speaking of unholy combinations, here’s Gundam Build Fighters x Rozen Maiden x Strike Witches: A girl stumbles into a sentient mecha musume model kit that spends its time explaining the technical details of model building to her and attracts other model kits that want to fight. It’s an ad for model kits, what do you expect. There’s no characters, the plot is utterly uninteresting, the action’s bad, it looks subpar to bad, and the only high point is how brazenly it reads to you from the manual.

Gin no Guardian

Here’s your latest Chinese webcomic adaptation from your friends at Haoliners Animation League (Shanghai) Inc., whose output has been asymptotically approaching the quality level of a bad Japanese cartoon for years now: Closer than ever, but still not quite there. Maybe they should stop picking bad webcomics with incomprehensible nonsense plots as source material, just sayin’. So this is about a dude who beats up CG zombies in the spirit world but the actual story is how he got there? Or something? It manages to look barely alright and even has some visually striking design work, but its half-length run time prevents it from forming any semblance of coherence and I’m not about to ask for further clarification.

Oushitsu Kyoushi Haine

In a vaguely 18th century Germanic kingdom, a grown ass man with the body of a ten year old and a snarky disposition is hired to become the tutor of an instaharem of fabulous princes. I really don’t get who this is for; obviously the harem is straight out of a PSP otome dating sim, but it’s lacking the obvious self-insert dimwitted main girl, and no, it isn’t gay romance either. Even though it’s a comedy, that aspect does not seem to be played for outright parody. The source material is running in GFantasy, a shounen title (but not one as specifically elementary schooler-focused as Jump, it also carries fujo favorites such as Black Butler). Dubious provenance aside, Haine is moderately funny if nothing else, mainly due to the deadpan reactions of the main character to these ridiculous dreamboats. It just also drags more than a little, with long conversations that aren’t very entertaining all the time. It’s watchable compared to a lot of the stuff out this season, but I remain unconvinced.

Rokudenashi Majutsu Koushi to Akashic Records

After Macchiavellism already obliterated the battle harem bingo, here’s our next winner. The setup’s more or less the same and in some respects it’s even more formulaic (the school is actually a magic school for magic people, princesses, duels, &c), but Akashic Record is not quite as odious simply by focusing on being a comedy first and foremost and pulling that off at least on a technical level - it has good visual execution and comedic timing. The question is just how much credit you want to give it for that when the jokes themselves still suck, and that’s of course ignoring the entire setup being Light Novel as all fuck. Kinda seems familiar actually, because this is not entirely unlike to what KonoSuba did to the isekai genre, and people keep trying to tell me that that was totally great. Well, go watch this one then, motherfuckers.

Sagrada Reset

But there’s always the other kind of light novel, the one where high schoolers talk about life, people and the world. Think Bakemonogatari or OreGairu. Sagrada Reset wants a slice of that pie and starts by stealing the magical realism conceit from classic™ visual novel Wind ~A Breath of Heart~: There’s a remote town in Japan where everyone has superpowers, but if they leave the town they instantly forget about it. Oops, i guess I just spoiled Wind’s midgame, but I have to since Sagrada Reset puts this stuff right upfront because it has to discuss technicalities (at length) to make its plot work. Yeah, that’s how I like my magical realism, thoroughly explained and conceived by people who should write wikis, not fiction. There’s a girl who can reset time, but only once per arbitrary period of time and also including herself, which means she only finds out she already did it once it doesn’t work again. So that’s pretty useless, except there’s a guy whose superpower is having his memory unaffected by this. They have to work together to solve... some problems, I suppose. This whole idea seems to have potential in a JoJo subplot sort of way, but it’s completely sunk by the way the thing is written, since apparently the writer has never met a human being in his life. It’s entirely made of these pseudo-deep highschool stoner philosophy conversations presented in a lifeless inflection by people who stand around like robots on battery saver mode. This seems to be intentional (at least the term “robot” is thrown around a couple of times, which is certainly ominous), but it also makes for an excruciating and interminable watching experience.

Sakura Quest

Since Sakura Quest was announced, I have been gleefully throwing water on the hype of people who expected this to be the next Shirobako. After all, how likely is it for lightning to strike twice, especially considering Mizushima is not in the director’s seat? Surely it was all just wishful thinking, I want a S2 of Shirobako as much as everyone but I just don’t trust anime. Well consider me fucking told, since apparently among the parties wishing for more Shirobako is P.A. Works, and unlike the anitwitterati they can make it happen. The actual brand name seems to be reserved for a Mizushima project, but I would have no trouble believing that Sakura Quest is a spinoff about Aoi’s sister in the boonies; Shirobako Sunshine, if you will. The initial setup is mirrored here; Yoshino is not a young professional starting her dream job, but a young professional unable to score a dream job (or any job) so she settles for a random one she’s very skeptical of, but will undoubtedly learn to love. Apart from that, well, it’s Shirobako: The positive tone, the large cast of likeable oddballs, the relatable writing about post-highschool problems, and it even looks completely identical. I’ll still be realistic about it: Shirobako isn’t great for what its ideas were, but for how thoroughly it delivered in the long run, and this is by no means guaranteed to also happen with Sakura Reset Quest. For an episode 1 though, it’s like a dream come true, and P.A. are setting themselves up for seasonal double domination with this and Uchouten Kazoku S2.

Souryo to Majiwaru Shikiyoku no Yoru ni

Enough gushing, here’s 5 minutes of porn. Okay, it’s josei porn so there may still be gushing involved if you know what I mean, nyuk nyuk. Er, sorry about that. Sooooo there’s a sexually frustrated woman who meets her school crush who’s now a priest, and then they fuck. With a staff made up mostly of (non-josei, but hey) hentai OVA veterans, there is really only one way this could go. I appreciate the brazenness as usual, but I really don’t know how much steamy harlequin romance tailored to TV broadcast standards I want to watch.

Tsugumomo

I’ve seen some warnings about Tsugumomo based on its source material which is a manga with 1. a very high level of art quality and 2. content that has been described as “makes To-Love Ru Darkness look family friendly”. This may explain why it has not been licensed. It doesn’t explain why this first episode is fairly tame though; sure, it’s very much an ecchi comedy, but you get those from time to time and Tsugumomo is not any more raunchy than what I’m used to seeing (and it accomplishes this even without obvious BD-advert censoring). That incidentally also removes any reason to watch it: The plot is as basic “guy gets magical girlfriend for purposes of fights and/or walking in on her naked in the bath” from 15 years ago as they come, and it’s suspiciously well animated, but not well enough for that to be a selling point. Maybe it will get real skeevy eventually, I won’t be around to find out.

Warau Salesman NEW

Warau Salesman starts strong with ultra cool, Saul Bass-inspired opening credits, but that’s about all it has to offer. It’s based on a “black comedy” manga from the 60s by one of the Doraemon authors, and oh boy can you tell. Not only are the character designs 60s-tastic (so at least the Osomatsu-san fujos can schlick to something while they wait for the S2 of that), but so are the sensibilities: The titular salesman goes around tempting frustrated office workers with doing something moderately irresponsible, such as drinking in your lunch break or spending above your means, and then ruins their life when they actually do it. It’s like Twilight Zone written by your HR department. In the 60s. This stuff would have been outdated even in 1989, when it was animated for the first time – hence the “NEW”. I don’t know, it just seems mean-spirited, obvious and pointless, and most importantly I put the “black comedy” in quotes because in addition to not being very black, it’s not funny in any way, and unlike regular anime comedy I can’t even see what’s supposed to be funny. 

[coramatus]

Ohhhh I see those tags. Firefly AU? Bro I'm all ears.

Oh boy~! I hope you like Mob angst, because man did I create a lot of Mob angst! >8D

Mob Psycho 100/Firefly Crossover AU

(This is just a brainstorming thing, not meant to be taken as a finished piece. Even if it is 3.6K words...)

Everyone is five years older than in canon. So Mob’s 19, Ritsu is 18, and Reigen is 33.

Arataka Reigen is the captain of the transport spaceship S&S, or the Spirits and Such. He prefers keeping a low profile after a shady past that he’s since tried to clean up. Has an entire crew under his command, none of whom take him that seriously. He still dads them relentlessly. Teruki is first mate, came on board after Reigen helped him out of a tight spot, is surprisingly good at ordering people to do stuff, isn’t a dick about his powers after the new pilot kicked his ass. Shou is pilot, Serizawa is the medic/cook; both are powerful espers that came on board after Shou convinced Seri to run away with him and hijacked the ship to escape, Reigen subsequently hiring them after finding out Shou was a damn good pilot and that Seri needed like so much therapy. Tome is on communications, who took the job on the condition that she be allowed to attempt making contact with aliens (Reigen doesn’t ask). Mezato is a traveling journalist that pays Reigen to let her stay on board and hunt for news stories, but he suspects she’s just a nosy busybody. Onigawara is a mercenary Reigen hired after one too many scuffles, but now has even more to deal with thanks to the guy’s temper. Musashi is a mechanic with experience in fixing up farm equipment, but can pretty easily extrapolate it to an entire spaceship (Reigen isn’t sure that’s how that works, but hey the ship hasn’t exploded yet). Dimple’s a questionable preacher they picked up after he got run out of town, claims to be a priest but acts like he’s got a god-complex or something (might be an alien brain slug). They’re kind of a disaster, but with Reigen’s people skills, he’s able to avert the worst of it.

They’re given a relatively easy job when they take a young man on board, named Ritsu Kageyama. Also with him is an unusually large suitcase, which he says contains “his entire life”. He just asks to be taken as far from the planet as possible but doesn’t elaborate. Reigen can tell something’s up, but doesn’t have the heart to bother the guy, who is clearly going through some bad shit.

Not a day or two into their voyage, the crew finds out that the government has put out a bounty on Ritsu for stealing their property. Ritsu denies doing anything wrong and they decide to search his luggage for whatever he stole. He flips out at this and tries to stop them, but it’s too late. The large suitcase opens to reveal it holds a stasis chamber containing a sleeping young man. They’re horrified and free the guy, thinking that Ritsu is some kind of human trafficker until he yells at them that he’s trying to save his brother. The sleeping man wakes up then, but something’s clearly wrong with him in how he holds himself like a terrified animal. He seems to realize he’s somewhere unfamiliar and curls up, screaming and crying. Ritsu comes in, covering his brother with his coat and trying to soothe the crying man, now clinging to him desperately. The crew is polite enough to back off and give the two some space.

Soon after, Ritsu and his brother are given a chance to explain what’s going on. Ritsu’s brother is silent this entire time, curled up clutching at Ritsu’s side, staring off into space with glassy eyes, like he’s not there at all. Ritsu starts by telling them that everything he’s done was to save his older brother, Shigeo. All of this has to do with the fact that he is an esper and a particularly powerful one at that. Despite the powers, the two grew up pretty normally until his brother was invited to study at a special Academy for espers. Shigeo took them up on it and left home. At first things seemed normal, the brothers messaging each other regularly. But after a while, Shigeo’s messages started to taper off. The few he did manage to get out were short and often about his exhaustion and the trials he was being put through. Then for a long stretch, Ritsu didn’t hear anything from him. Until he receives a bizarre message from Shigeo’s email, claiming that his brother is dead. For some reason, it’s signed by a “Mob”. It takes Ritsu a while to do some digging, turning up results that made him more and more fearful for Shigeo’s life. So Ritsu left to rescue him, dropping everything to break into the facility and get Shigeo out. By the time he got there, he found his brother already in the stasis chamber. He only had enough time to grab the entire thing before hiding it in the suitcase and fleeing to the spaceport.

Which leads to now. Ritsu knows he doesn’t stand a chance against the S&S crew if they decide to turn them in and has resigned himself to that fate. To everyone’s surprise, Reigen declares that they’ll do no such thing. In fact, everyone’s under orders that they’re to do everything they can to protect the brothers. They’re both victims and Reigen can’t possibly give the abused back to their abusers. They can stay.

The crew is less than pleased at this and start yelling at Reigen until he makes them settle down. Ritsu is distrustful of course, but a quiet whimper from Shigeo gets him to back down. Reigen orders Seri to take the two to larger quarters, while he discusses things with the others. Teru is pretty against the whole thing, knowing they can’t hide the brothers forever. It’s only a matter of time before one of them slips and all of them land in hot water for harboring fugitives. Reigen points out that Ritsu is a fugitive for rescuing his brother from said law, which referred to Shigeo as their “property”. Reigen may be greedy at times, but he’s not heartless. He also doesn’t want to admit that the sight of poor Shigeo struck a nerve in him.

As the Kageyama brothers get settled, there comes the question of what they plan on doing. Ritsu’s plan was to flee to the outer reaches and maybe start a new life there. But with the bounty on him, he’s not sure that’s a workable plan anymore. So Reigen offers them a place on the ship. Any skill set they have would definitely be put to use. Ritsu hesitantly says he’d been studying medicine before upending his life. “Medic,” Reigen declares, “Which would be great, because oh my god Seri just can’t deal with blood.” With a lot of reservation, Ritsu accepts and the job is sealed. As for Shigeo… Reigen decides that he’s infirm and can’t be expected to work yet, much to Ritsu’s relief and zero response from Shigeo.

Things settle down in their own weird way. There’s shenanigans on various planets, Reigen scraping through bad situations through his sweaty charisma, things get shot at, lots of running, like how most of Firefly went.

As time goes on, the crew observes a lot about the two. Ritsu is normal enough, maybe a bit naive in some regards and a bit too aggressive in others. By contrast, Shigeo doesn’t speak at all, doesn’t make eye contact, and is quiet and submissive. He’s a bit perplexing. He always looks haggard, bags under his eyes, hair set in an overgrown bowl-cut pattern. He generally goes around barefoot, preferring oversized knitted turtlenecks and sweaters to hide himself in. He wanders the halls aimlessly, often reaching out to touch the walls. Sometimes he’ll stare at a spot for hours without moving. Other times, he seems to be listening for something only he can hear, sometimes even humming along to some strange tune. They tend to find him curled up in odd places, sometimes observing the others as they go about their duties, sometimes blankly staring into space. The more… interesting times are when Shigeo gets flashbacks of some kind, triggering his powers spiraling out of control. These episodes leave him screaming in the eye of a hurricane of objects until Ritsu can get to him and calm him down. Because of this, Ritsu spends most of his time at his brother’s side, trying to coax him into talking, eating, or calmness. He often glares at anyone who dares approach them. The few times the two are separate, Reigen finds himself gravitating to Shigeo. He talks to the guy, just sharing stories or offering words of encouragement. Shigeo never responds, but Reigen can sense something in him paying attention and keeps it up. Then Shigeo has an episode without Ritsu, leaving Reigen to dive in and calm him down. Something about it works and he’s able to comfort Shigeo until his brother arrives.

Not long after, Reigen finds a lone Shigeo huddled in his bunk of all places. A baffled Reigen asks what he’s doing there, not thinking he’ll actually get a response. “It smells safe,” Shigeo quietly answers. Reigen realizes it’s because of the incense and candles he kept from his old job and goes on to explain when the fact that Shigeo just spoke to him finally hits him. He has no idea what to make of this, but if his bunk smells safe then, sure, Shigeo can stay if he likes. Before dozing off, Shigeo corrects him. “My name is Mob. Shigeo is dead.”

With that bizarre proclamation, Reigen confronts Ritsu about it. However, Ritsu gets mad that Shigeo actually spoke to Reigen of all people. Reigen doesn’t see what the big deal is, but Ritsu tells him that his brother hadn’t said a thing since he was let out. Reigen is left even more confused, as he thought they had been talking. With some more prodding, Ritsu admits that he has no idea how to really take care of his brother, able to tend to physical needs but not mental or emotional ones. Nor does he know just what the Academy did to make Shigeo this way. He knew his brother was autistic, always having trouble socializing and interacting, but it was never like this. Neither did he claim he was dead nor refer to himself as Mob (which is what Reigen refers to him as from then on). (how do i conclude this section i have no idea 0_0;;;)

To Reigen’s surprise, Mob keeps turning up in Reigen’s quarters no matter how well it’s locked. Mob is often found sleeping or blankly staring at the walls. Reigen doesn’t have the heart to kick him out. Though Mob doesn’t say anything, Reigen gets the sense that the young man keeps coming to Reigen’s room to get away from his brother, whose overbearing side has been coming up more often.

Afterwards, the others begin finding Mob in their personal spaces. He seems to particularly resonate with the other espers: Teru finds something grating about his presence, Shou is more fascinated with him and tends to poke and prod at Mob more, while Seri appreciates his quiet, non-judgmental presence.

However the thing that breaks Mob out of his silence is when Claw rears its ugly head. During one of his more lucid moments, Ritsu manages to coax Mob out to explore the spaceport the ship has docked at. Things seem to be going fine until Mob freaks out at the sight of a weird triangle symbol painted on a door. He runs like his life depends on it, quickly losing Ritsu and getting lost in the crowd. Ritsu freaks out of course and enlists the help of the crew to find his brother. It’s Teru who comes across Mob huddled in an alleyway. Mob is shaking, muttering something about Claw searching and finding him. Teru doesn’t have time for this and hauls Mob up to leave, but are stopped by a hooded figure. The figure tells them to come quietly or else things will get ugly fast. Teru has no intention of listening to some thug, but realizes something might be wrong when Mob desperately begs him not go with the figure. It’s because Teru’s guard is up that he’s able to fend off the figure’s sudden very psychically charged attack. The figure turns out to be Koyama, who intends to bring the two psychics in. A fight breaks out with Teru on the offense and Mob on the defense. The fight eventually gets out of hand enough that Shou and Serizawa come in to help. Their arrival is enough to freak Koyama out into fleeing, recognizing the two as powerful espers. (chase down and capture Koyama? give them time to dump him in a jail and leave Claw wondering what’s going on. otherwise he gives their location to base, meaning they get chased) No one’s entirely sure what’s going on until Reigen drags everyone out into a group meeting, deciding it’s finally time for Shou and Serizawa to spill their backstory (he didn’t ask before to be polite).

Like in canon, Shou is fighting back against his father, still Claw’s leader. Only this time, his father knows about it because Shou ran off with his second-in-command, Serizawa, who reluctantly went with Shou because he thought the kid needed protection. Since joining the S&S crew, they’ve been laying low, waiting for a good chance to start making battle preparations. In that time, Serizawa’s realized the error of his ways and is trying to do right by Reigen and Shou. Both of them go on to explain Claw.

In this universe, Claw is sneakier, running in smaller proxy operations but has roots in places like the government already. Their other major asset is the Psychic Academy that Shigeo attended. In the front, the Academy trains and hones a psychic’s abilities. Most people have super weak powers but do genuinely get a lot out of it. Mitsuura enthusiastically runs that part of the operation but honestly has no idea what the darker side of the Academy is up to. The stronger psychics get a completely different story. These are the ones who are made into pawns for Claw to use in their plot to come into power. Otherwise they’re experimented on in a bid to strengthen their abilities to a dangerous degree.

Teru perks up at this, stating he was invited to the Academy once as well, but opted not to. (why? wanted to stay somewhere familiar? wanted to keep hold on his little gang?) Mob just comments that he was smart not to go.

“They do bad things to you.”

With a little prodding, Mob finds the words to explain himself.

Mob insists that he isn’t Shigeo and that the real Shigeo died. That Mob is just a thing inhabiting Shigeo’s body, nothing more. Why he calls himself Mob is because he’s “just a face in a mob, [he’s] no one, a nothing.” He knows a lot about Shigeo, who he was and what he was like. He knew that he was an esper prodigy and the Academy took advantage of that. But they went too far. They put something in him, something that was never meant to be. It killed Shigeo and Mob was born from his shattered remains. Now it’s just the two of them in there, Mob and the Thing. Mob’s been doing his best to keep his distance from the Thing, but it’s hard to do when he’s barely functional. Mob can’t quite explain the Thing either, describing it as a black hole with its own mind trapped in his head.

This is all a bit much to swallow at once, so Reigen breaks them up for now and promises to come back to think of a plan.

Ritsu hasn’t been taking this well, hurt and confused by what his brother is saying. While his brother is obviously not dead, Ritsu’s not sure he can handle losing the person he was. He insists on calling his brother by his real name. Mob can only sigh.

Though their relationship is strained, Ritsu resolves to do everything he can for his brother. Mob tends to shrink away from this. He insists that he’s not Shigeo, therefore: not Ritsu’s brother. But Ritsu is able to get through to him by reasoning that if Mob was formed out of pieces of Shigeo, it means that Shigeo can’t entirely be gone. But this isn’t about that, Ritsu admits. This is about who Mob is. If Mob formed in Shigeo’s body, then that makes it Mob’s body too. And Mob’s body is blood brothers with Ritsu. As far as Ritsu is concerned, Mob IS his brother, whether he likes it or not. Mob isn’t sure how to feel about this until Ritsu hugs him, telling Mob that he isn’t “a nobody, a nothing”, Mob has family and that means he IS something, someONE. Though he tries not to, Mob breaks down crying.

(Presumably, they go in to take care of the Claw problem, possibly first with 7th Div. cell before thwarting the World Domination arc. Blow open giant government secret like in Firefly/Serenity canon? Would probably have to break into Academy again to figure out what they did to Mob, learns about the Thing in detail here. No idea where other elements would go, like Mogami arc. How would space ghosts work? Maybe Mogami arc could be a haunted spaceship story, replace Reavers with evil spirits. Broccoli arc???? HOW DO EITHER STORY END? HOW WOULD THIS END??)

Stuff that would probably only be hinted at in-story, but can be fully explained here:

Mob is either Shigeo gone insane or a new personality entirely. Both are plausible.

The Thing is ???%. While it’s still a mystery in canon apparently just Mob’s powers set to survival mode (something to do with a Japanese idiom?), here ???% is a tiny scrap of what can only be described as a cosmic entity. It’s a small, inky black, strange free-flowing blob, lit up with intermittent glowing white spots. When its discoverers noticed it reacted strongly to espers, it was taken to the Academy to see what it would do. They thought it could be used to give a massive boost to psychic powers. It was implanted in Shigeo to test it out, but his powers went haywire and leveled the building.  When they found him at the epicenter, Shigeo was a shivering, crying wreck. It would be the only thing he could do for a while.

The implantation of the Thing shattered Shigeo’s mind as it forcibly made room for itself in him. The Thing did not originally have a mind of its own. But when Shigeo broke, it absorbed enough pieces of him that it gained self-awareness, changing it from a blob into a shadowy copy of Shigeo. With pieces of humanity in it, the Thing understood human thoughts and emotions. While the Thing could simply have taken over Shigeo’s body completely, it didn’t out of regret for the consciousness that originally was there. Instead, it nudged the bits of Shigeo that were left into a new entity entirely. Sadly not enough was there to create a functioning person, instead the new consciousness was marred with fear and pain. It would come to name itself Mob.

To the Academy scientists, the procedure damaged Shigeo’s cognitive abilities, leaving him unable to recognize his own name or even understand human speech. Instead, he acted almost like a terrified animal half the time. The worst came in the form of screaming episodes, where he seemed to see something terrifying no one else could (it was the Thing manifesting in its vessel’s mind, curious about the entity it shared a body with; it didn’t know what to make of the screaming and crying, so it kept its distance). Only twice did lucidity briefly return: once to ask for pants; the other was to beg them to stop hurting him. The Academy tried many different unsuccessful treatments on him, steadily getting less and less humane until it became more of an exercise in torture than anything else. Ultimately, the Academy deemed Shigeo too unstable to continue making use of, opting to put him in stasis until they could figure out what happened. However, both minds overhear this and in a rare moment of joint lucidity, they secretly send out a message to their brother for help. Afterward, the doctors have to physically fight Shigeo to get him sedated. Shigeo is put into a small stasis chamber and set aside, where he was supposed to sleep indefinitely. It takes a while, but Ritsu is able to break in and is horrified that his brother is in a freaking box. And things go from there.

Mob hates being alive. He doesn’t want to be here. He’s convinced his existence is a mistake, one that he constantly regrets. Most of this pain comes from simple self-hatred, that he’s alive in a body that doesn’t belong to him and never did, that he unfairly stole Shigeo’s life. It’s made worse when Ritsu expects Mob to act like Shigeo but he never can, feeling like he’s incapable of being a real person. There’s a lot of crying on his part, driven by intense despair. It takes time, but Mob slowly stabilizes as he comes to terms with his existence, characterized by increasing moments of speech and lucidity.

[tact-and-impulse]

At Arm’s Length Chapter 4

The funny thing is, during one of my tests since the last update, there was a question that said “How would you theoretically rebuild an entire arm?” and in my head, I almost heard Koshijiro say “Yes, how would you?”. He desperately would have liked to know, for the events in this chapter. This is a gift, because it’s my birthday, and I’ve got new followers! Also, @animaniacal and @tinklefish have their birthdays this week and I know how much they like Koshijiro.

Chapter 4: An Indigo Ribbon

When Koshijiro was a boy in Chiba, there had been a stray dog in the neighborhood. It was especially good at wheedling for scraps, pestering the poor target’s legs until it got what it wanted. Zanza, or rather Sagara now that he had given up fighting for hire, was like that dog. For almost every day now, he lingered around the dojo and sat down with them at lunch.

“Terrible.” He said, in between loud chews. “This is just terrible. Jou-chan, you should work at your cooking instead of teaching.”

Kaoru had grilled fish today, to give Himura a break. She had done her best, and that was enough for Koshijiro to eat. His cooking was worse, anyway. He quietly picked through the white flesh with his chopsticks, and Yahiko gnawed at his portion. But Kaoru was grinding her teeth in irritation.

“Hey, Kenshin.” Sagara looked for support. “How can you stand this?”

“It is not that bad. It tastes differently every time.”

“Well, if you don’t like it, then don’t eat!” Kaoru snapped, throwing a large radish in their direction. “Freeloaders shouldn’t complain anyway!”

Sagara ducked. “I quit fighting, so I’m not making money. Have a heart, Jou-chan.”

Meanwhile, the vegetable had glanced off Himura’s head, and the man groaned. “Oro…”

But before the argument could go any further, they were interrupted, as a familiar figure stepped past the gate. “Forgive the intrusion during your meal, but this is urgent.”

“It’s fine, Chief.” Koshijiro set down his bowl and stood, ignoring everyone’s wide eyes. “Is it about that case?”

The man grimly nodded. “I’m afraid it is, and we require Himura-san’s assistance.”

***

Shortly after the Hiruma brothers were transported to prison, the police chief had summoned Koshijiro. “I did think on what you said, so I’ve been editing the current rules. I’m going to be more active in overseeing the men, and I changed the patrol routes to increase efficiency. And if it’s no trouble, I’d like you to train the less experienced officers. You can keep them in line, give them tasks they can’t refuse, and deliver consequences as you see fit.” He handed over a roster of fifteen names. “You can take time to think it over.”

“I won’t need it; I accept. I’m grateful to be more involved.”

“No, thank you, Kamiya-san. I’ll adjust your pay, of course. Especially since…” He cleared his throat. “I heard that the Ishin Shishi soldier, Himura Kenshin, is living with you and your daughter.”

Koshijiro blinked in surprise. “That’s true, he is boarding with us. Who did you hear this from?”

“During that incident with the Satsuma policemen, Yamagata-san visited and spoke to Himura-san. It was not long after you returned to Tokyo.”

“Yamagata…Aritomo?” The general of the Kiheitai, the Emperor’s army? Suddenly, Koshijiro recalled the mustached man, walking into the police station when he rejoined the department. “I suppose he knew Himura-san from the Bakumatsu.”

The chief nodded. “Yes, it seemed that way. Are you aware of Himura-san’s work?”

“…yes.”

“Then, you may understand why I’m interested.” He slid over a folder, opening the contents. “There’s a man who poses a great danger to our officials. Internally, we’ve been referring to him as Kurogasa.”

Koshijiro skimmed through the papers. The number of casualties was strikingly high, and the targets appeared to be politicians who were formerly Ishin Shishi. The most recent case was in Shizuoka, almost two months prior. Even the infantry were unable to stand a chance. “And you think Himura-san can defeat this killer?”

“I am seriously considering it. If we need him, I will let you know.”

***

Now, the police chief sat opposite Himura and informed him of the case. Koshijiro was aware of the details, of how grown men were paralyzed before this serial killer. It seemed unbelievable to read, but the many interviews of the wounded could not be ignored. Koshijiro had wondered if it was some sort of chemical gas, but Himura thought differently.

“That sounds like the Shin no Ippou, of the Nikaidou Heihou style.” He mused. “After the war, someone could have easily lost his way and became drawn to bloodshed. But to remain so, after ten long years…” He trailed off, choosing to drink his tea.

“Kenshin?” Kaoru gently asked. “Are you alright?”

He lifted his head slowly, as if he had just woken up, and he gave her a smile. “Yes, this one is fine.” He then turned to the police chief. “What would you have this one do?”

“If you are able, I would like you to take him down.”

“This one has taken a vow to not kill his opponents.” Himura informed him.

“Even if you cannot, getting him into custody will be enough.” The chief drew a piece of paper from his pocket, and hurriedly scribbled. “Tonight, Tani Juusanrou of the War Ministry will be in Tokyo. He’s already received a death threat from Kurogasa, so we need more people to protect him. Even if you are an outsider, this would be a good opportunity to face this killer, once and for all. Here are the details. I hope to see you tonight, and Kamiya-san, we’ll meet again at work.” The chief handed over the note, bowed deeply, and departed.

The mood was decidedly somber for the rest of the day. Sagara left to wherever his latest whim took him, while Kaoru continued to teach Yahiko. With his work finished, Koshijiro sat against the wall of the dojo and watched them practice one of the basic kata. The boy was progressing rapidly; if he was in a class, he would easily rank among the top five students.

“By the way, where’s Kenshin?” Yahiko asked.

Kaoru noted that he should mind his steps, before replying. “He mentioned that he was taking a walk. He’ll be back before dinner.”

“I hope so. We’ll probably die, if you cook again, ugly…ow!”

She had tapped his shoulder with her shinai, and she sweetly admonished him. “You have to concentrate, Yahiko-chan.”

“And demonstrate proper respect for your teacher. I heard you insult her once before, but twice is more than enough.” Koshijiro was irked, and he struggled to stand to his full height. Last time, he had entered the conversation too late, and Yahiko was injured. Now, there were no excuses left.

Yahiko did have some remaining self-preservation, because he gulped. “Er, I’m sorry?”

“I’m not the one you should apologize to.”

He pivoted to Kaoru and managed to sound contrite. “I’m sorry.”

“Geez, you listen to Otou-san, but not to me.” She ruffled his hair, ignoring how he grumbled. “Well, he’s better at disciplining, but we’re stuck with each other. Let’s practice the kata one more time, okay?”

About halfway through the kata, Himura returned. He was quieter than usual, and Koshijiro had intended to leave him alone. However, the man suddenly spoke, his gaze on the wall. “The sword that protects life. What made you think of the idea, Kamiya-dono?”

“It took some time to develop the concept.” He admitted. “Strength has value, but only when there is a reason for it. Take Kurogasa, for example. He may have been skilled once, but now, he is irrational and cruel. As for me, I grew tired of fighting, just to hold on to what I held dear. But this world is still violent, so I cannot lay down my sword. And yet, I have faith in this era, which promises peace without bloodshed. So, Kamiya Kasshin is a compromise, to channel necessary strength and remember why we fight. ‘The sword that protects life’ is a motto for the present and a wish for the future. But you would have heard Kaoru’s interpretation, so why do you ask?”

“This one is only curious.” He innocently blinked, but his tone grew serious. “Then, if a person had to kill to protect others, what is Kamiya Kasshin’s solution?”

“That is the flaw in my logic.” Koshijiro grimaced. “As a soldier and as a police officer, I had to think of the greater good. I cannot give you an answer, and for that, I am sorry.”

“No, it’s alright.” Himura paused. “This one has idled long enough, so this one will prepare dinner.”

After the sun dipped just below the horizon, they ate their meal in silence. At length, Yahiko asked. “Are you going, Kenshin?”

“Yes, it is best to help out the police. And this one is acquainted with Tani-dono. With luck, he may remember this one.”

Kaoru’s forehead creased with worry, and then out of irritation when they heard Sagara’s holler from the gate. She stood with a scowl. “Geez, he might as well live here.”

However, the former fighter’s rowdy presence lightened the atmosphere. He shared stories about the friends he played dice with, and although they bordered on inappropriate, the distraction was welcome. At last, the police carriage arrived and they saw Himura off.

“If it truly is the Shin no Ippou, this may prove to be difficult.”

“You mentioned that earlier. Do you know who this Kurogasa is?” Koshijiro inquired.

“Perhaps, but that was only a rumor.” He answered. “Regardless, this one will find out tonight.”

“Me too.” Sagara stepped forward, clapping Himura’s back. “This is too interesting to miss, so I’m tagging along.”

“Good night.” Yahiko yawned; it was about his bedtime.

Kaoru stepped forward. “I’ll have the bath ready, when you return.”

“Thank you, Kaoru-dono.” Himura looked to her, before smiling at everyone. “We’ll see you all in the morning.” Then, he and Sagara walked into the darkness.

***

Koshijiro woke, in a cold sweat. It took him a few seconds, to realize that he only had a dream. A nightmare. In Satsuma, his feverish mind had conjured scenes of how his life could have ended. A grenade landing at his feet. A sword running through his flesh. A gun barrel pressed to his temple. And the aftermath of bleeding into the ground and thinking that he did not want to die. This time, it was of the explosion, if he had been standing more to the left. As he forced his breathing to slow down, silence rang in his ears.

Since he had returned home, his sleep had been empty of any memories of the battlefield. It seemed that was only temporary. He slid out of his futon, intending to walk off the agitation. He used to practice in the dojo, but with only one arm, he could not properly hold a shinai. Instead, he settled in his usual spot on the porch. The wind was cold, but that meant it was real.

“Otou-san? You’re awake?” Kaoru’s voice floated over, and he looked behind him, to see her rubbing her eyes.

He decided not to tell her about his nightmare; she would only be concerned. “If there’s a killer on the loose, someone has to protect the house.”

“We’re not that important to be targeted by a serial killer.” She countered, moving to sit beside him. “But I couldn’t sleep either. I don’t know why, I shouldn’t be worried. Kenshin can handle himself, and Sanosuke is with him.”

“Yes, that is true.”

For a while, there was only the sound of the wind.

“The moon’s full.” She commented. “Once, I saw Okaa-san sitting out here with you, on a night like this.”

“Ah, that was when she wanted to see the cherry blossoms in the moonlight. You remember something like that?”

“Mm-hmm. Because Okaa-san’s face was so happy.”

“Your mother always was, over little things like buying ribbons for you.”

“And she liked tying them for me. She liked indigo best; it’s why that one’s my favorite.” She yawned again.

“You should go back to sleep.” He gruffly said.

“Yeah, I will. I have to get up early, so I can fill the bathtub. Good night.”

After some time, he returned to his room. He did fall asleep again, but this time, he envisioned Kyoko, smiling over a cradle and saying how an indigo ribbon was so charming.

***

The next morning, Koshijiro noticed that Himura and Sagara had not returned. Breakfast was on the table, most likely because of his daughter. She wasn’t there though, and he glanced outside. Kaoru had dozed off on the porch, her mouth slack. With a fond smile, Koshijiro fetched a blanket to cover her.

He ate breakfast with Yahiko, who had noticed his sleeping instructor. “I should wake her up with cold water.”

“Leave her be. You can practice on your own for the morning.”

The boy perked up. “Okay!”

Then, Koshijiro started on his paperwork. He was a quarter of the way through, when he heard voices.

“I don’t think she slept at all, last night.” Yahiko was saying.

“Oh, yeah? Hey, Jou-chan, wake up. Wake up!”

Koshijiro walked out to see his daughter whacking the two boys with her shinai. She was not amused and ground out. “Welcome back. Huh? Where’s Kenshin?”

“He’s not coming back.” Sagara said. “This time, Kurogasa, or rather Jin-e, is after him. He didn’t want to put everyone else in danger, so he’s not coming back for a while. He wants me to look out for you.”

“But where did he go?” Kaoru pleaded.

“The riverbank, I guess. Hey, where are you going?”

She was headed for the gate. “I’m looking for Kenshin!”

“Well, that’s dumb. Look, I got injured because of Jin-e!” He pointed to his right arm, which was in a sling. “If you just wait here, it’ll be better that way.”

Kaoru spun around, tears welling in her gaze. “So after he fights Jin-e, is he going to wander again? And we’ll never see him again, just like that?” Her fists clenched, and she swallowed. “Okaa-san is dead, and Otou-san was almost taken from me too. Most of the students quit, and Kihei turned out to be a traitor. If that’s how it is, I’d rather meet the danger face to face!”

“Kaoru, you should stay here.” Koshijiro spoke up, feeling alarmed. “You’re behaving recklessly.” And if Himura wanted to leave for good, no one had the right to stop him. But he refrained from saying that; it would only make his daughter angrier and the best option was to calm her down.

Sagara’s interjection shattered that plan. “You’ll only get in Kenshin’s way.”

She crossed her arms. “I won’t be there for long. It’s not as if he’ll be busy, he’s definitely not fishing at the river.”

“What does fishing have to do with any of this?” Yahiko complained, but Koshijiro stiffened. That jab was meant for him.

Unfortunately, Sagara also noticed. “Oh, I get it. You have a story to tell us, old man?”

“Otou-san, you can tell them. I’ll be back!” And with that, she ran past the gate, her indigo ribbon flying.

“There’s nothing to say about that.” Koshijiro evaded. Well, if his daughter tired herself out, she would come home.

“Aw, come on, it’s obviously juicy.” Sagara was reluctant to let it go, but he jerked his head in the direction of the gate. “Jou-chan’s selfish, she can’t stand being separated from Kenshin. Oh, well, that’s how love is, so there’s nothing you can do.”

“You should not draw conclusions, particularly when it comes to matters of the heart.” Still, Koshijiro was disgruntled. He grudgingly knew that Kaoru was infatuated with Himura, ever since that attempted punch during the first meeting. But hearing someone else call it love didn’t settle right with him. Kaoru was still young, after all.

“Sure, old man.” He scoffed and turned to Yahiko. “You don’t mind being left alone?”

“No, Kenshin’s the strongest in Japan, so why worry?”

“Good point. Well, Jou-chan will probably bring him back. I’ll take that bath and then a nap.” He gave a jaunty wave with his good hand. “Wake me up for lunch.”

Yahiko did so, when the hour came. Koshijiro sat with them, eyeing the clock. Kaoru had not returned yet. What if she was still looking for Himura? Or worse, what if she had found him and they were alone?

Himura had better behave. Koshijiro’s chopsticks clicked together in his irritation, and he ate faster. Maybe, I’ll go to the riverbank myself.

However, that proved to be unnecessary. After the dishes were cleared, Himura shuffled past the gate, his bangs hiding his eyes.

“Kenshin!” Yahiko called out, running to greet him. Sagara followed suit, with Koshijiro behind.

“Aren’t you supposed to be waiting at the river, for Jin-e?” Sagara raised his eyebrows.

“Jin-e has kidnapped Kaoru-dono.”

“What?!” There was an echo, and then silence. Koshijiro had raised his voice. Sagara and Yahiko had flinched, but Himura didn’t react, his head lowered in submission. Koshijiro counted to three, before quietly ordering. “Himura-san, explain what happened this instant.”

“Kaoru-dono met this one at the river. She gave this one her ribbon, and then…” He clenched the indigo cloth in his hand, and Koshijiro’s eyes were helplessly drawn to his daughter’s possession. Then, Himura looked up. His expression was intimidating, as it had been before fighting Sagara, but this was more severe. It was as if cold fire burned in his gaze. “It was my fault. Jin-e wants to meet at midnight. I’m going to the forest, do not follow me. In return, I promise that I will bring her back.”

“You must bring her back.” Koshijiro corrected, and he forced himself to add. “Then, I have no choice but to count on you.”

Himura nodded.

***

I’m sorry, I should have stopped her. Koshijiro thought, as if that made any difference. He sat before Kyoko’s portrait, gripping his knee. As the day passed, he had only grown more anxious. Even though Himura would battle Jin-e at midnight, that caused more agony for the ones who were waiting.

Yahiko had repeated. “Kenshin’s the strongest, so he’ll save her.” Sagara had paced back and forth, before taking off somewhere.

And Koshijiro knelt at the altar, praying that his daughter was safe. Kyoko would not have forgiven him for putting their daughter in danger. He didn’t expect to forgive himself either. Jin-e was a serial killer who paralyzed his enemies to death. What if he decided Kaoru was no longer useful as a hostage? If only he had both of his arms, he could have gone with Himura. But he didn’t, and he had to trust that Himura would win. He would most likely kill Jin-e, yet Koshijiro could not bring himself to protest the idea.

If it is a last resort, it is justifiable. Is that a betrayal of Kamiya Kasshin? It would be, but Kaoru’s life is more important than the school. I suppose, I truly was not fit to answer Himura’s question of killing to protect people.

His thoughts were interrupted by Sagara’s return. He was slightly out of breath; he must have ran. “Still waiting, huh. I’m curious, who’s that picture of?”

“Kaoru’s mother.”

“Jou-chan takes after her, huh?”

“Yes, she does.”

“…Kenshin will get her back. Don’t worry, old man.” He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. “So long as Jin-e doesn’t use his mind trick again.”

“And what is that, exactly?” He tightly asked.

Sagara stepped back. “Uh, it’s not that big of a deal. Just felt like I couldn’t breathe for a second, but I snapped out of it. A strong will is enough, apparently.”

“I see.” That was probably the Shin no Ippou, that Himura had mentioned. Koshijiro furrowed his brow. “Are you implying Kaoru does not have a strong will?”

“Whoa, hang on, old man.” He suddenly looked sweaty. “It’s just that, well, out of all the people last night, only Kenshin and I broke out of the Shin no Ippou. Even the policemen couldn’t manage it.”

“I believe you. But she had the will to stay here, while I was gone. She didn’t complain, no matter how lonely she must have been.” Ah. He wanted to groan. Over and over, his daughter had been left behind, to be alone. And for once, she had declared that she could no longer stand it. “And so, she went after Himura.”

“There you go.” Sagara said. “Anyway, I’m beat, so I’m taking the spare room.”

Then, it was quiet until Yahiko popped his head in. “I can’t stay up until midnight. Tell me when they get back, Kamiya-san.”

“You should rest. You’ve had a long day.”

“Yeah, so should you. Kenshin’s strong enough to defeat Jin-e. And Kaoru isn’t much of a girl, but she’s stubborn so that’s something.”

“She might not appreciate hearing that.”

“Whatever.” The boy shrugged. “Good night.”

The remaining hours were a blur. Koshijiro could not sleep, and restlessness took him to the porch again. He dozed in fits, waking frequently. Before he knew it, the sun was rising, and with it, two silhouettes passed the gate.

“Otou-san, we’re home!”

He exhaled, and his joints protested as he stood. “Welcome home.” Himura’s shoulder was bloody, but Kaoru was unharmed. “Thank you, Himura-san.”

He smiled. “This one only kept his promise.” They entered the house, and Sagara and Yahiko were barely awake. They were attempting to make breakfast, and the fish was burning.

“Geez, you two are making trouble per usual.” Kaoru rolled up her sleeves. “Look, here’s how it’s done.”

“Oh, you’re back.” Yahiko muttered, but there was a note of relief in his voice.

Sagara gave a lopsided grin. “Glad you’re back.”

“Yeah, I’m glad. But you two got some sleep, so keep cooking.” She instructed them, as if she had only been away at a friend’s and not kidnapped.

“She doesn’t seem troubled by what happened.” Koshijiro noticed. “What became of Jin-e?”

“He killed himself.” Himura quietly said.

“Then, you didn’t.”

“No. This one’s question from yesterday was answered by Kaoru-dono.”

If a person had to kill to protect others, what is Kamiya Kasshin’s solution?

“I see. And what is that answer?”

“It is not to give in to killing, even when it is tempting to. It is to remember that life should be protected.”

It was an ambitious and innocent answer, and only his daughter could have come up with it. It was just as fitting, for the ambitious and innocent era to which she belonged. “It is a good answer, as expected of the master.”

Kaoru had been listening, and she beamed. “Thank you, Otou-san.”

Sagara stepped over, throwing an arm over Himura. “By the way, you didn’t come back until now, huh? Nice, did you do it with her?”

Koshijiro made an excruciating turn towards them.

“We didn’t do anything!” Kaoru lunged at Sagara, and he dodged her. Meanwhile, Koshijiro left, heading down the hallway. He emerged with Himura’s bedding, and the man tilted his head.

“Oro? Is there a problem with this one’s futon?”

“No, you’re sleeping in the shed tonight.”

“Oro!”

Sagara and Yahiko howled with laughter, and Kaoru’s face was red. “Otou-san!”

“After he sees Dr. Gensai for his wound.” It was the least he could do, for the man who had brought his daughter home.

[adambstingus]

24 HILARIOUS Times People Rage Quit Their Job The Way Everyone’s Wanted To

1. Does His Best By Quitting

17, hole in the wall popular non-chain fast food place. Worked 3 to 11.

A Friday. We needed a MINIMUM of 4 people to run the place. And that’s with everything getting totally trashed. 6-7 people was really what was needed.

Nobody showed up but me. Previous shift went home.Called the manager. No answer. Called the owner. ‘Just do the best you can’.

Turned off the lights, locked the door, put a sticky note on it that said ‘I quit’. And went home.

I did the best I could.

theawesomethatis

2. Quitting By Proxy

I knew a guy in high school who hated working at a movie theater. Called his boss and told him he wasn’t feeling well because he went hiking, got swarmed by bats, and got bit by one. Shows up later that evening to watch a movie with a cape and fake fangs in his mouth. Fired on the spot.

RIPmyFartbox

3. Last Day Making Pizzas

I used to work at a place that rhymes with “Pizza Hut” and the managers there were real cheapskates.

There was this nice old man that would come in every Sunday and order a triple extra cheese pizza and while they charged him for the 3x cheese, they would forbid us from ever actually putting that much cheese on a pizza because apparently cheese in the pizza selling world is akin to gold.

So instead of 3x extra cheese he would really be getting what the instructions would qualify as barely enough for a regular cheese pizza.

On the day my 2 weeks notice ended the old guy just happened to be my last order so I went into the walk-in and grabbed an entire box of cheese, proceeded to dump the entire thing onto his pizza and tossed it into oven. It was stacked so high that it couldn’t even fit into it and half of it was scraped off.

Anyways, the look on the old guy’s face when he saw me do this made it all worth it (imagine pure excitement). Needless to say I didn’t put the correct phone number down for future job references.

Not_A_Doctor_Venture

4. Popcorn And VHS

There was a UPS strike in the 90s and I was employed by them in high school as a sorter. Blockbuster Video at the time had this mail order deal where you’d get a VHS tape and bags of popcorn. Like a proto-Netflix thing I guess. Anyway, all these boxes full of microwave popcorn and VHS tapes would slide down the belt and about half of the popcorn bags would explode or break. After about an hour there was popcorn dust all over. I asked my boss for a mask, and he said that they didn’t have any. Some of the drivers walked by wearing masks, and I followed them and found a full cabinet full of masks. I confronted my boss, and he was like “the masks are for drivers, only”.

So I went back to the sorting area and just stopped working. I just stood there. The belts were backing up with these boxes of popcorn and they would burst and clouds of powdered popcorn butter would fill the air. I waited about 45 minutes before the belt shut off.

I walked out through a haze of popcorn dust, with alarms blaring, people running everywhere trying to figure out what was going on. A lot of people didn’t get their VHS tapes that week.

rikers_evil_twin

5.A “Certain” Coffee Chain

My wife worked for a certain chain coffee shop a few years back. She got another job, so requested reduced hours. This didn’t happen for 3 straight weeks.

During that third week, she had a soccer mom from hell try to get her attention, by throwing fucking snowballs at her through the drive-thru window. My wife then stopped what she was doing and tossed this soccer mom’s iced tea at her (which exploded everywhere) and slammed the window.

5 minutes later she had written her letter of resignation, with the only things she could find: a purple crayon and a sticky note.

The_MonBear

6. A Race To Quit First

Worked as a teller at a bank for a few years, GM and supervisor were both kind of crappy in their own ways. My buddy there was also a teller who felt similarly and wanted to get out. We started applying to places and both got interviews at the same company. As luck would have it, we both got hired and got phone calls about 10 minutes apart.

There was only one other teller aside from us and when it got busy, supervisor usually had to jump in as well (and usually hated it). It felt like we were constantly short staffed and days when 1 person would call out sick or be on vacation would suck. Being down 2 people was the worst.

Naturally when we both got hired, it became a race to see who could turn in their two weeks notice first. He printed his off and raced into GM’s office, walking out with a big smile. GM calls me in and offers me full time hours (after I had been requesting them for months).

I jumped in saying “Let me stop you right there, I’m also turning in my two weeks notice.”

Remembering that look of disbelief will make me smile every time. A solid professional Eff You is just as enjoyable to me as going out with a bang.

spikey182

7. Middle Management At Its Dumbest

Wrote a normal letter of resignation before I got in the shower one morning. No big deal. Got into the office and was straight ignored by management. Oh well, told you when my last day was.

Fast forward 3 days they pull me into a conference room to ask what it would take to keep me. I say nothing but don’t want to ruin them (sole IT manager for a staff of 70) and would be willing to consult part time. They liked that idea and said they’d be willing to pay me my current hourly as a consultant. I was prepared for this and told them that wasn’t what I said. I said that i would consult and my consulting rate was $200/hr. They were flabbergasted and insulted (I was making about $18/hr salary).

They thought it was insane even though they’d pay a consulting firm $600/hr when I was on vacation. Needless to say, having planned to quit it was no skin off my back and laughed about it. They didn’t take kindly to me laughing about their anger and told me to pack my shit. I did so, got an extra 10 days vacation paid out of it.

Cypher1710

8. AM Country Gold

1992: I was 19 and working at the most pissant radio station imaginable, “AM Country Gold”. The notoriously cheap, abusive and dishonest owner, a fella named “Wes,” had just screwed me out of a promised bonus. It was the latest in a long line of dishonest acts and I had had enough.

The rest of the sales team was afraid to stand up to Wes and he screamed abuse at them constantly (except the lone woman, who he sexually harassed). They were all in their 30’s & 40’s, working the same garbage job I was, but desperately needed it. I did not. So I engaged in a very public shouting match with Wes in the lobby, saying all the things everyone there had always wanted to say. Then I swept the contents of the front desk onto the floor and stormed out.

Instead of leaving, I went around the side of the building to a pay phone and called the radio station request line. In a fake Southern accent, I said, “Hey y’all, I just told my cheap, no good, lying piece of human garbage boss to go to hell. Play me out with, “Take this Job and Shove It,” and dedicate it to my former boss, Wes!”

The disc jockey had no idea what had just happened in the lobby, or that my Wes was “the” Wes, so he enthusiastically played my recorded dedication and added, “This one is for you Wes, choke on it you sack of crap!”

The building had speakers inside and out constantly playing the radio feed, so I got to hear Wes get clowned by his own radio station before driving off into the sunset.

LAND0KARDASHIAN

9. Over The P.A. System

Someone at my previous workplace (a huge grocery store in a large mall) went to the PA system we use to issue messages to the whole mall, and said something along the lines of “dear customers, managers and co-workers. I fucking quit”, and then proceeded to leave.

Focie

10. The Family Business

I used to work for my Father. It was probably the worst time of my life. He treated me like absolute shit, paid me very poorly, and made me work 70+ hours a week. I was young, just out of high school, and I complained about my predicament quite a lot. His response was always “if you don’t like it, there’s the door.”

6 months before I quit, he made me run his night shift, which meant 6PM -6:30AM Monday through Saturday. I was very unhappy about this, so I applied for another job. I got it, and went to my Father’s office with a list of demands, he responded with his usual reply, so I said, “Alright, I’ve gotten a job offer somewhere else, fuck you, I quit.”

The look on his face was priceless. He truly believed that because I had amazing job security that I’d be willing to put up with anything and that I’d stay there for my entire career. In one short, sweet instant, I proved to him that this was not the case, and he lost his most valuable employee.

The icing on the cake was the fact that the job that I left him for is at the company that manufactures the very machinery and software he relies on in business. So any time something goes wrong in his factory, he has to call me to fix it for him.

Your_Lower_Back

11. Using A Hidden Code

I wrote a respectful letter thanking them for the opportunity and all they’ve taught me.

The first letter of every sentence spelled out “Fuck <boss>”.

Nobody noticed.

InternetSpaceship

12. The Price You Have To Pay

I went up to HR to give my two weeks’ notice GTFO but before I could even get a word out, the HR lady flapped her hand at me and told me to come back in an hour because she was going on lunch. So I wrote “I QUIT!” on a piece of paper, signed and dated it, and left it on her desk.

She called me later to let me know that since I didn’t give two weeks’ notice, I would never be eligible to work for Kaufmann’s or Macy’s ever again. I told her I’d just have to live with that.

thebloodofthematador

13. “I Can’t Do This Anymore”

Worked in a video store when there was such a thing. My co-worker showed up very, very high. He was also about 6’3″ and 140 pounds, so he stood out in a crowd to begin with. Anyway, he came in for a 4 hour shift, stood in the middle of our bank of checkout registers…and just ate chips. Like, 6 bags of chips back to back, and he ate them SLOW, and savored the shit out of each bite. The whole time he had zero facial expression, think of the dull stare of a chewing dairy cow.

After about 3 hours he calmly turns to me and says “I can’t do this anymore”…gently sets down his bag of chips, and walks out the door. We never saw him in the store again.

Leumas_

14. A Total Mutiny

First job when i was 15 for a discount clothing brand store. Head manager was the aunt of our store manager who was 19. Our store manager did nothing most of the time and used to chat to her boyfriend and friends loudly on the store phone…much to the annoyance of everybody.

One night its come closing, we are grabbing our coats and getting ready to leave after a really busy day and the store manager storms in, telling us how she’s lowered the shutters and wont let us leave until we have helped her finish the one job she had all day to do cos her aunt is doing a “surprise” inspection in the morning. Everyone is pissed, especially the people who have had to watch her do literally nothing all day. She turns spiteful, threatening to delay our pays, dock our wages etc etc. All bullshit. For one woman it was the last straw (she had a kid to pick up from a club) so she waited till she left us alone to work, walked up to the shutters and pulled them up manually by hand. All of us crawled out to freedom.

We left her a note saying “Good luck explaining to your aunt why four people just quit.”

Cactusface987

15. Held Hostage

I was working for Argos as a Christmas job while studying. After a while it was becoming too much as I had to stay in work until deliveries were unpacked; this meant that some days I was leaving for college at 8.30am and not getting home until 1am that night.

One night it was a particularly large delivery and it was getting very late with no end in sight. I decided I’d had enough and told the supervisor I was finished, didn’t want to do the job anymore and wanted to go home. He rejected this and said that I was going nowhere until the delivery was unpacked. I stood in front of him and repeated that I quit therefore I don’t care about the delivery, completing my studies was more important to me than earning a bit of extra cash. He still said I was going nowhere and refused to unlock the door to let me out.

Despite feeling I had a case for false imprisonment I decided to take matters in to my own hands; I ran out the fire escape door and down the street never to return. I’ll always remember the sound of the fire escape door making a big DOOONG as it hit the metal railings and I made my escape to freedom.

StreakyMcMeeky

16. Burning Bridges With Jet Fuel

I worked for a law firm doing research and analysis. I wrote a custom program, on my own time, that would automate editing down these huge lists we’d get from an outside vendor, boiling it down to only what we wanted. First, only my team used the code. By the time I left, over 150 people were using it. Sounds minimal but it was actual a huge time saver. The program would boil down a list ~100 pages long down to about ~10 pages; a process we used to do manually a couple times a day.

A layoff was announced, I was part of the outplacement, but the firm wanted to continue using my program. I asked if there would be compensation as it was coded on my own time, never paid for it, etc. I was told no and “besides, there’s really nothing keeping us from still using it when you’re gone.”

For the remainder of my time (2 years), I would create patches whenever the format of the data changed. With my last patch, I put in code that would disable the program and erase key parts of the program one month after my last day. From what I understand from people still with the firm, on day X everyone came in, booted their machines, and the program was simply gone. Efficiency fell through the floor, delaying opening cases, billing clients, etc. I wanted 10k, they lost more than that in the first week without the program.

Photog1981

17. A Parting Gift To Her Co-Workers

During my exit interview I told HR the real reason I was leaving was due to the quality of the office chairs. I said they were an eyesore, uncomfortable and made me ashamed to come to work and resulted in sub-par job satisfaction.

Two weeks later I was told by previous co-workers everyone got brand new, top of the line office chairs.

jphiz

18. Don’t Piss Off Your Only Cook

At 16 I worked at a Dairy Queen Brazier in Texas. My Manager, was a jerk. One night, I sliced a good chunk of my thumb off because they did not have the proper safety equipment. After being out of work for 3 weeks, I returned to work. My thumb was still pretty screwed up, but I was trying. My Manager kept riding my ass, telling me I had to move faster (I was the only short order cook). When I saw three GreyHound buses pull up, I knew I was in trouble. She came back into the kitchen and said if I didn’t move fast for these buses she’d find someone who would. That was the last straw – I knew no one in the entire restaurant could cook. So I took her up on her threat and simply walked out the back door. She flipped me off as I drove away. My friends told me they hardly got any orders out and the buses left since they couldn’t get the food out. I felt bad for the people on the buses, but was sick of being berated by management.

sunrein

19. Out The Window

I got this.

Worked as a teen for McDonald’s for a month or two during the winter in the 90’s. We were understaffed and they usually had me working the deep sink and taking money at the drive thru. One day I come in at 4pm and the breakfast stuff is pilled to the ceiling at the sink because the day shift rolled out without taking care of it, as per usual.

There was a snowstorm this particular day and with the amount of dishes to do and the increasing frequency of running over and taking money from the window during the dinner rush my hands were beginning to hurt, then going completely numb. I let the manager know this wasn’t working out today and get blown off.

Fuck it, I crawl straight the fuck out of the money window without anyone noticing, at least no one on the staff. I get in my car and drive to the parking lot across the street and watch that dinner rush drive thru line back up out of the lot and down the street.

Seadgs

20. “I Don’t Want To Hear This”

I used to work for a telecommunications company.

My mom was very sick over the last 3 months of her life, so I had to go home most weekends to see her, it’s a 6 hour journey to get from where I worked to the town where I’m from. When her birthday came around, I requested a couple of days off that I had saved for this specific occasion. Yet, the days off were denied because we were approaching a busy time of year for sales. At this point, I hadn’t mentioned what was happening at home, because well, I was always taught that you keep your work and personal lives separate. But I said it to my boss, who, at the time, I saw as a pretty compassionate person. She never took any issue when I got sick or was late for whatever reason. But when I told her, she just looked at me point blank and said “I don’t want to hear this”.

After that meeting, I went back to my desk and sat there for about 20 minutes, thinking of a solution. That solution was to get my things, and just leave. I said goodbye to my friends on my way out, flipped my boss off and just walked out. I went straight to my car and drove back to my home town that night. It was the best decision I ever made.

I got to spend all my time with my mom before she went. We even got to go on a vacation and spend one last week away together because I had the time to do so. I’ll never, ever regret walking out that day.

Not exactly “hilarious”, but I had a good chuckle to myself on that drive home. The look on my boss’s face will never leave me. It was sweet.

IThinkIAmASofa

21. Work Night Turns Into Movie And A Beer

Worked in the cinema as a teenager. Came in late for work after they changed my schedule during my days off and didn’t think to mention it to me. Boss lost it and started shouting at me, as far as I’m concerned if you need to shout I ain’t listening. So let her rant away for a good 15 mins while I was at my locker clearing it out. When it finally clicked that I wasn’t listening or getting ready to work she stopped and asked what I’m doing I said ”going to see Lord of the Rings with the lads who’ve just finished as I’m doing nothing else with my evening. May go for a pint after. What’s your plans?”

definitelynotme_

22. Best Sales Day On His Last Day

I managed to find a telemarketing job as one of my first jobs. It sucked and we were treated like animals, but it was close enough that I could walk there from home. I only intended to stay long enough to afford a car.

One day, I realized that I had reached my set dollar amount for a car purchase. As a joke, I strayed as far from the sales pitch as possible. I changed my greeting to things like “Hey.” or “‘Sup?” I impersonated celebrity voices. People stopped working around me. They just listened in shock.

But it completely backfired.

It was my highest day of sales ever. I sold 10 times my average. The pit boss was bewildered, which is why I wasn’t fired right away (he listened in on all my calls that day). He begged me to stay, but I was out.

ShrugCorporation

23. Fighting The System By Using The System

My boss was a cunt, had me on a disciplinary for something that wasn’t my fault, and had my bonus taken off me. So i found a new job, threw out 2,500 worth of stock as technically the food hadn’t been stored away correctly, went above my boss and got head offices backing, then handed my notice in, knowing that id fucked his bonus up to. FUCK. THAT. GUY.

ssuperhanzz

24. This One Will Renew Your Faith In Humanity

My job at Chick-Fil-A had a tradition of pieing people in the face on their last day. Now I was the manager and didn’t trust the kids not to pie me when taking a complaint or during a rush or something, so I promised them if they’d wait until close in the parking lot, and if they got done cleaning on time, we’d do something special.

So I present to you: The Pie Gauntlet

I love my Chick-Fil-A family. Thanks for a great last closing. After 4 years of giving out my fair share of “Last Day Surprise Pies” we hosted THE GAUNTLET. Love and miss you guys.

A video posted by Alex Bennett (@spideybennett) on Jul 9, 2015 at 7:42pm PDT

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/11/30/24-hilarious-times-people-rage-quit-their-job-the-way-everyones-wanted-to/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/168027990232

[samanthasroberts]

24 HILARIOUS Times People Rage Quit Their Job The Way Everyone’s Wanted To

1. Does His Best By Quitting

17, hole in the wall popular non-chain fast food place. Worked 3 to 11.

A Friday. We needed a MINIMUM of 4 people to run the place. And that’s with everything getting totally trashed. 6-7 people was really what was needed.

Nobody showed up but me. Previous shift went home.Called the manager. No answer. Called the owner. ‘Just do the best you can’.

Turned off the lights, locked the door, put a sticky note on it that said ‘I quit’. And went home.

I did the best I could.

theawesomethatis

2. Quitting By Proxy

I knew a guy in high school who hated working at a movie theater. Called his boss and told him he wasn’t feeling well because he went hiking, got swarmed by bats, and got bit by one. Shows up later that evening to watch a movie with a cape and fake fangs in his mouth. Fired on the spot.

RIPmyFartbox

3. Last Day Making Pizzas

I used to work at a place that rhymes with “Pizza Hut” and the managers there were real cheapskates.

There was this nice old man that would come in every Sunday and order a triple extra cheese pizza and while they charged him for the 3x cheese, they would forbid us from ever actually putting that much cheese on a pizza because apparently cheese in the pizza selling world is akin to gold.

So instead of 3x extra cheese he would really be getting what the instructions would qualify as barely enough for a regular cheese pizza.

On the day my 2 weeks notice ended the old guy just happened to be my last order so I went into the walk-in and grabbed an entire box of cheese, proceeded to dump the entire thing onto his pizza and tossed it into oven. It was stacked so high that it couldn’t even fit into it and half of it was scraped off.

Anyways, the look on the old guy’s face when he saw me do this made it all worth it (imagine pure excitement). Needless to say I didn’t put the correct phone number down for future job references.

Not_A_Doctor_Venture

4. Popcorn And VHS

There was a UPS strike in the 90s and I was employed by them in high school as a sorter. Blockbuster Video at the time had this mail order deal where you’d get a VHS tape and bags of popcorn. Like a proto-Netflix thing I guess. Anyway, all these boxes full of microwave popcorn and VHS tapes would slide down the belt and about half of the popcorn bags would explode or break. After about an hour there was popcorn dust all over. I asked my boss for a mask, and he said that they didn’t have any. Some of the drivers walked by wearing masks, and I followed them and found a full cabinet full of masks. I confronted my boss, and he was like “the masks are for drivers, only”.

So I went back to the sorting area and just stopped working. I just stood there. The belts were backing up with these boxes of popcorn and they would burst and clouds of powdered popcorn butter would fill the air. I waited about 45 minutes before the belt shut off.

I walked out through a haze of popcorn dust, with alarms blaring, people running everywhere trying to figure out what was going on. A lot of people didn’t get their VHS tapes that week.

rikers_evil_twin

5.A “Certain” Coffee Chain

My wife worked for a certain chain coffee shop a few years back. She got another job, so requested reduced hours. This didn’t happen for 3 straight weeks.

During that third week, she had a soccer mom from hell try to get her attention, by throwing fucking snowballs at her through the drive-thru window. My wife then stopped what she was doing and tossed this soccer mom’s iced tea at her (which exploded everywhere) and slammed the window.

5 minutes later she had written her letter of resignation, with the only things she could find: a purple crayon and a sticky note.

The_MonBear

6. A Race To Quit First

Worked as a teller at a bank for a few years, GM and supervisor were both kind of crappy in their own ways. My buddy there was also a teller who felt similarly and wanted to get out. We started applying to places and both got interviews at the same company. As luck would have it, we both got hired and got phone calls about 10 minutes apart.

There was only one other teller aside from us and when it got busy, supervisor usually had to jump in as well (and usually hated it). It felt like we were constantly short staffed and days when 1 person would call out sick or be on vacation would suck. Being down 2 people was the worst.

Naturally when we both got hired, it became a race to see who could turn in their two weeks notice first. He printed his off and raced into GM’s office, walking out with a big smile. GM calls me in and offers me full time hours (after I had been requesting them for months).

I jumped in saying “Let me stop you right there, I’m also turning in my two weeks notice.”

Remembering that look of disbelief will make me smile every time. A solid professional Eff You is just as enjoyable to me as going out with a bang.

spikey182

7. Middle Management At Its Dumbest

Wrote a normal letter of resignation before I got in the shower one morning. No big deal. Got into the office and was straight ignored by management. Oh well, told you when my last day was.

Fast forward 3 days they pull me into a conference room to ask what it would take to keep me. I say nothing but don’t want to ruin them (sole IT manager for a staff of 70) and would be willing to consult part time. They liked that idea and said they’d be willing to pay me my current hourly as a consultant. I was prepared for this and told them that wasn’t what I said. I said that i would consult and my consulting rate was $200/hr. They were flabbergasted and insulted (I was making about $18/hr salary).

They thought it was insane even though they’d pay a consulting firm $600/hr when I was on vacation. Needless to say, having planned to quit it was no skin off my back and laughed about it. They didn’t take kindly to me laughing about their anger and told me to pack my shit. I did so, got an extra 10 days vacation paid out of it.

Cypher1710

8. AM Country Gold

1992: I was 19 and working at the most pissant radio station imaginable, “AM Country Gold”. The notoriously cheap, abusive and dishonest owner, a fella named “Wes,” had just screwed me out of a promised bonus. It was the latest in a long line of dishonest acts and I had had enough.

The rest of the sales team was afraid to stand up to Wes and he screamed abuse at them constantly (except the lone woman, who he sexually harassed). They were all in their 30’s & 40’s, working the same garbage job I was, but desperately needed it. I did not. So I engaged in a very public shouting match with Wes in the lobby, saying all the things everyone there had always wanted to say. Then I swept the contents of the front desk onto the floor and stormed out.

Instead of leaving, I went around the side of the building to a pay phone and called the radio station request line. In a fake Southern accent, I said, “Hey y’all, I just told my cheap, no good, lying piece of human garbage boss to go to hell. Play me out with, “Take this Job and Shove It,” and dedicate it to my former boss, Wes!”

The disc jockey had no idea what had just happened in the lobby, or that my Wes was “the” Wes, so he enthusiastically played my recorded dedication and added, “This one is for you Wes, choke on it you sack of crap!”

The building had speakers inside and out constantly playing the radio feed, so I got to hear Wes get clowned by his own radio station before driving off into the sunset.

LAND0KARDASHIAN

9. Over The P.A. System

Someone at my previous workplace (a huge grocery store in a large mall) went to the PA system we use to issue messages to the whole mall, and said something along the lines of “dear customers, managers and co-workers. I fucking quit”, and then proceeded to leave.

Focie

10. The Family Business

I used to work for my Father. It was probably the worst time of my life. He treated me like absolute shit, paid me very poorly, and made me work 70+ hours a week. I was young, just out of high school, and I complained about my predicament quite a lot. His response was always “if you don’t like it, there’s the door.”

6 months before I quit, he made me run his night shift, which meant 6PM -6:30AM Monday through Saturday. I was very unhappy about this, so I applied for another job. I got it, and went to my Father’s office with a list of demands, he responded with his usual reply, so I said, “Alright, I’ve gotten a job offer somewhere else, fuck you, I quit.”

The look on his face was priceless. He truly believed that because I had amazing job security that I’d be willing to put up with anything and that I’d stay there for my entire career. In one short, sweet instant, I proved to him that this was not the case, and he lost his most valuable employee.

The icing on the cake was the fact that the job that I left him for is at the company that manufactures the very machinery and software he relies on in business. So any time something goes wrong in his factory, he has to call me to fix it for him.

Your_Lower_Back

11. Using A Hidden Code

I wrote a respectful letter thanking them for the opportunity and all they’ve taught me.

The first letter of every sentence spelled out “Fuck <boss>”.

Nobody noticed.

InternetSpaceship

12. The Price You Have To Pay

I went up to HR to give my two weeks’ notice GTFO but before I could even get a word out, the HR lady flapped her hand at me and told me to come back in an hour because she was going on lunch. So I wrote “I QUIT!” on a piece of paper, signed and dated it, and left it on her desk.

She called me later to let me know that since I didn’t give two weeks’ notice, I would never be eligible to work for Kaufmann’s or Macy’s ever again. I told her I’d just have to live with that.

thebloodofthematador

13. “I Can’t Do This Anymore”

Worked in a video store when there was such a thing. My co-worker showed up very, very high. He was also about 6’3″ and 140 pounds, so he stood out in a crowd to begin with. Anyway, he came in for a 4 hour shift, stood in the middle of our bank of checkout registers…and just ate chips. Like, 6 bags of chips back to back, and he ate them SLOW, and savored the shit out of each bite. The whole time he had zero facial expression, think of the dull stare of a chewing dairy cow.

After about 3 hours he calmly turns to me and says “I can’t do this anymore”…gently sets down his bag of chips, and walks out the door. We never saw him in the store again.

Leumas_

14. A Total Mutiny

First job when i was 15 for a discount clothing brand store. Head manager was the aunt of our store manager who was 19. Our store manager did nothing most of the time and used to chat to her boyfriend and friends loudly on the store phone…much to the annoyance of everybody.

One night its come closing, we are grabbing our coats and getting ready to leave after a really busy day and the store manager storms in, telling us how she’s lowered the shutters and wont let us leave until we have helped her finish the one job she had all day to do cos her aunt is doing a “surprise” inspection in the morning. Everyone is pissed, especially the people who have had to watch her do literally nothing all day. She turns spiteful, threatening to delay our pays, dock our wages etc etc. All bullshit. For one woman it was the last straw (she had a kid to pick up from a club) so she waited till she left us alone to work, walked up to the shutters and pulled them up manually by hand. All of us crawled out to freedom.

We left her a note saying “Good luck explaining to your aunt why four people just quit.”

Cactusface987

15. Held Hostage

I was working for Argos as a Christmas job while studying. After a while it was becoming too much as I had to stay in work until deliveries were unpacked; this meant that some days I was leaving for college at 8.30am and not getting home until 1am that night.

One night it was a particularly large delivery and it was getting very late with no end in sight. I decided I’d had enough and told the supervisor I was finished, didn’t want to do the job anymore and wanted to go home. He rejected this and said that I was going nowhere until the delivery was unpacked. I stood in front of him and repeated that I quit therefore I don’t care about the delivery, completing my studies was more important to me than earning a bit of extra cash. He still said I was going nowhere and refused to unlock the door to let me out.

Despite feeling I had a case for false imprisonment I decided to take matters in to my own hands; I ran out the fire escape door and down the street never to return. I’ll always remember the sound of the fire escape door making a big DOOONG as it hit the metal railings and I made my escape to freedom.

StreakyMcMeeky

16. Burning Bridges With Jet Fuel

I worked for a law firm doing research and analysis. I wrote a custom program, on my own time, that would automate editing down these huge lists we’d get from an outside vendor, boiling it down to only what we wanted. First, only my team used the code. By the time I left, over 150 people were using it. Sounds minimal but it was actual a huge time saver. The program would boil down a list ~100 pages long down to about ~10 pages; a process we used to do manually a couple times a day.

A layoff was announced, I was part of the outplacement, but the firm wanted to continue using my program. I asked if there would be compensation as it was coded on my own time, never paid for it, etc. I was told no and “besides, there’s really nothing keeping us from still using it when you’re gone.”

For the remainder of my time (2 years), I would create patches whenever the format of the data changed. With my last patch, I put in code that would disable the program and erase key parts of the program one month after my last day. From what I understand from people still with the firm, on day X everyone came in, booted their machines, and the program was simply gone. Efficiency fell through the floor, delaying opening cases, billing clients, etc. I wanted 10k, they lost more than that in the first week without the program.

Photog1981

17. A Parting Gift To Her Co-Workers

During my exit interview I told HR the real reason I was leaving was due to the quality of the office chairs. I said they were an eyesore, uncomfortable and made me ashamed to come to work and resulted in sub-par job satisfaction.

Two weeks later I was told by previous co-workers everyone got brand new, top of the line office chairs.

jphiz

18. Don’t Piss Off Your Only Cook

At 16 I worked at a Dairy Queen Brazier in Texas. My Manager, was a jerk. One night, I sliced a good chunk of my thumb off because they did not have the proper safety equipment. After being out of work for 3 weeks, I returned to work. My thumb was still pretty screwed up, but I was trying. My Manager kept riding my ass, telling me I had to move faster (I was the only short order cook). When I saw three GreyHound buses pull up, I knew I was in trouble. She came back into the kitchen and said if I didn’t move fast for these buses she’d find someone who would. That was the last straw – I knew no one in the entire restaurant could cook. So I took her up on her threat and simply walked out the back door. She flipped me off as I drove away. My friends told me they hardly got any orders out and the buses left since they couldn’t get the food out. I felt bad for the people on the buses, but was sick of being berated by management.

sunrein

19. Out The Window

I got this.

Worked as a teen for McDonald’s for a month or two during the winter in the 90’s. We were understaffed and they usually had me working the deep sink and taking money at the drive thru. One day I come in at 4pm and the breakfast stuff is pilled to the ceiling at the sink because the day shift rolled out without taking care of it, as per usual.

There was a snowstorm this particular day and with the amount of dishes to do and the increasing frequency of running over and taking money from the window during the dinner rush my hands were beginning to hurt, then going completely numb. I let the manager know this wasn’t working out today and get blown off.

Fuck it, I crawl straight the fuck out of the money window without anyone noticing, at least no one on the staff. I get in my car and drive to the parking lot across the street and watch that dinner rush drive thru line back up out of the lot and down the street.

Seadgs

20. “I Don’t Want To Hear This”

I used to work for a telecommunications company.

My mom was very sick over the last 3 months of her life, so I had to go home most weekends to see her, it’s a 6 hour journey to get from where I worked to the town where I’m from. When her birthday came around, I requested a couple of days off that I had saved for this specific occasion. Yet, the days off were denied because we were approaching a busy time of year for sales. At this point, I hadn’t mentioned what was happening at home, because well, I was always taught that you keep your work and personal lives separate. But I said it to my boss, who, at the time, I saw as a pretty compassionate person. She never took any issue when I got sick or was late for whatever reason. But when I told her, she just looked at me point blank and said “I don’t want to hear this”.

After that meeting, I went back to my desk and sat there for about 20 minutes, thinking of a solution. That solution was to get my things, and just leave. I said goodbye to my friends on my way out, flipped my boss off and just walked out. I went straight to my car and drove back to my home town that night. It was the best decision I ever made.

I got to spend all my time with my mom before she went. We even got to go on a vacation and spend one last week away together because I had the time to do so. I’ll never, ever regret walking out that day.

Not exactly “hilarious”, but I had a good chuckle to myself on that drive home. The look on my boss’s face will never leave me. It was sweet.

IThinkIAmASofa

21. Work Night Turns Into Movie And A Beer

Worked in the cinema as a teenager. Came in late for work after they changed my schedule during my days off and didn’t think to mention it to me. Boss lost it and started shouting at me, as far as I’m concerned if you need to shout I ain’t listening. So let her rant away for a good 15 mins while I was at my locker clearing it out. When it finally clicked that I wasn’t listening or getting ready to work she stopped and asked what I’m doing I said ”going to see Lord of the Rings with the lads who’ve just finished as I’m doing nothing else with my evening. May go for a pint after. What’s your plans?”

definitelynotme_

22. Best Sales Day On His Last Day

I managed to find a telemarketing job as one of my first jobs. It sucked and we were treated like animals, but it was close enough that I could walk there from home. I only intended to stay long enough to afford a car.

One day, I realized that I had reached my set dollar amount for a car purchase. As a joke, I strayed as far from the sales pitch as possible. I changed my greeting to things like “Hey.” or “‘Sup?” I impersonated celebrity voices. People stopped working around me. They just listened in shock.

But it completely backfired.

It was my highest day of sales ever. I sold 10 times my average. The pit boss was bewildered, which is why I wasn’t fired right away (he listened in on all my calls that day). He begged me to stay, but I was out.

ShrugCorporation

23. Fighting The System By Using The System

My boss was a cunt, had me on a disciplinary for something that wasn’t my fault, and had my bonus taken off me. So i found a new job, threw out 2,500 worth of stock as technically the food hadn’t been stored away correctly, went above my boss and got head offices backing, then handed my notice in, knowing that id fucked his bonus up to. FUCK. THAT. GUY.

ssuperhanzz

24. This One Will Renew Your Faith In Humanity

My job at Chick-Fil-A had a tradition of pieing people in the face on their last day. Now I was the manager and didn’t trust the kids not to pie me when taking a complaint or during a rush or something, so I promised them if they’d wait until close in the parking lot, and if they got done cleaning on time, we’d do something special.

So I present to you: The Pie Gauntlet

I love my Chick-Fil-A family. Thanks for a great last closing. After 4 years of giving out my fair share of "Last Day Surprise Pies" we hosted THE GAUNTLET. Love and miss you guys.

A video posted by Alex Bennett (@spideybennett) on Jul 9, 2015 at 7:42pm PDT

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/11/30/24-hilarious-times-people-rage-quit-their-job-the-way-everyones-wanted-to/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/11/30/24-hilarious-times-people-rage-quit-their-job-the-way-everyones-wanted-to/

[allofbeercom]

24 HILARIOUS Times People Rage Quit Their Job The Way Everyone’s Wanted To

1. Does His Best By Quitting

17, hole in the wall popular non-chain fast food place. Worked 3 to 11.

A Friday. We needed a MINIMUM of 4 people to run the place. And that’s with everything getting totally trashed. 6-7 people was really what was needed.

Nobody showed up but me. Previous shift went home.Called the manager. No answer. Called the owner. ‘Just do the best you can’.

Turned off the lights, locked the door, put a sticky note on it that said ‘I quit’. And went home.

I did the best I could.

theawesomethatis

2. Quitting By Proxy

I knew a guy in high school who hated working at a movie theater. Called his boss and told him he wasn’t feeling well because he went hiking, got swarmed by bats, and got bit by one. Shows up later that evening to watch a movie with a cape and fake fangs in his mouth. Fired on the spot.

RIPmyFartbox

3. Last Day Making Pizzas

I used to work at a place that rhymes with “Pizza Hut” and the managers there were real cheapskates.

There was this nice old man that would come in every Sunday and order a triple extra cheese pizza and while they charged him for the 3x cheese, they would forbid us from ever actually putting that much cheese on a pizza because apparently cheese in the pizza selling world is akin to gold.

So instead of 3x extra cheese he would really be getting what the instructions would qualify as barely enough for a regular cheese pizza.

On the day my 2 weeks notice ended the old guy just happened to be my last order so I went into the walk-in and grabbed an entire box of cheese, proceeded to dump the entire thing onto his pizza and tossed it into oven. It was stacked so high that it couldn’t even fit into it and half of it was scraped off.

Anyways, the look on the old guy’s face when he saw me do this made it all worth it (imagine pure excitement). Needless to say I didn’t put the correct phone number down for future job references.

Not_A_Doctor_Venture

4. Popcorn And VHS

There was a UPS strike in the 90s and I was employed by them in high school as a sorter. Blockbuster Video at the time had this mail order deal where you’d get a VHS tape and bags of popcorn. Like a proto-Netflix thing I guess. Anyway, all these boxes full of microwave popcorn and VHS tapes would slide down the belt and about half of the popcorn bags would explode or break. After about an hour there was popcorn dust all over. I asked my boss for a mask, and he said that they didn’t have any. Some of the drivers walked by wearing masks, and I followed them and found a full cabinet full of masks. I confronted my boss, and he was like “the masks are for drivers, only”.

So I went back to the sorting area and just stopped working. I just stood there. The belts were backing up with these boxes of popcorn and they would burst and clouds of powdered popcorn butter would fill the air. I waited about 45 minutes before the belt shut off.

I walked out through a haze of popcorn dust, with alarms blaring, people running everywhere trying to figure out what was going on. A lot of people didn’t get their VHS tapes that week.

rikers_evil_twin

5.A “Certain” Coffee Chain

My wife worked for a certain chain coffee shop a few years back. She got another job, so requested reduced hours. This didn’t happen for 3 straight weeks.

During that third week, she had a soccer mom from hell try to get her attention, by throwing fucking snowballs at her through the drive-thru window. My wife then stopped what she was doing and tossed this soccer mom’s iced tea at her (which exploded everywhere) and slammed the window.

5 minutes later she had written her letter of resignation, with the only things she could find: a purple crayon and a sticky note.

The_MonBear

6. A Race To Quit First

Worked as a teller at a bank for a few years, GM and supervisor were both kind of crappy in their own ways. My buddy there was also a teller who felt similarly and wanted to get out. We started applying to places and both got interviews at the same company. As luck would have it, we both got hired and got phone calls about 10 minutes apart.

There was only one other teller aside from us and when it got busy, supervisor usually had to jump in as well (and usually hated it). It felt like we were constantly short staffed and days when 1 person would call out sick or be on vacation would suck. Being down 2 people was the worst.

Naturally when we both got hired, it became a race to see who could turn in their two weeks notice first. He printed his off and raced into GM’s office, walking out with a big smile. GM calls me in and offers me full time hours (after I had been requesting them for months).

I jumped in saying “Let me stop you right there, I’m also turning in my two weeks notice.”

Remembering that look of disbelief will make me smile every time. A solid professional Eff You is just as enjoyable to me as going out with a bang.

spikey182

7. Middle Management At Its Dumbest

Wrote a normal letter of resignation before I got in the shower one morning. No big deal. Got into the office and was straight ignored by management. Oh well, told you when my last day was.

Fast forward 3 days they pull me into a conference room to ask what it would take to keep me. I say nothing but don’t want to ruin them (sole IT manager for a staff of 70) and would be willing to consult part time. They liked that idea and said they’d be willing to pay me my current hourly as a consultant. I was prepared for this and told them that wasn’t what I said. I said that i would consult and my consulting rate was $200/hr. They were flabbergasted and insulted (I was making about $18/hr salary).

They thought it was insane even though they’d pay a consulting firm $600/hr when I was on vacation. Needless to say, having planned to quit it was no skin off my back and laughed about it. They didn’t take kindly to me laughing about their anger and told me to pack my shit. I did so, got an extra 10 days vacation paid out of it.

Cypher1710

8. AM Country Gold

1992: I was 19 and working at the most pissant radio station imaginable, “AM Country Gold”. The notoriously cheap, abusive and dishonest owner, a fella named “Wes,” had just screwed me out of a promised bonus. It was the latest in a long line of dishonest acts and I had had enough.

The rest of the sales team was afraid to stand up to Wes and he screamed abuse at them constantly (except the lone woman, who he sexually harassed). They were all in their 30’s & 40’s, working the same garbage job I was, but desperately needed it. I did not. So I engaged in a very public shouting match with Wes in the lobby, saying all the things everyone there had always wanted to say. Then I swept the contents of the front desk onto the floor and stormed out.

Instead of leaving, I went around the side of the building to a pay phone and called the radio station request line. In a fake Southern accent, I said, “Hey y’all, I just told my cheap, no good, lying piece of human garbage boss to go to hell. Play me out with, “Take this Job and Shove It,” and dedicate it to my former boss, Wes!”

The disc jockey had no idea what had just happened in the lobby, or that my Wes was “the” Wes, so he enthusiastically played my recorded dedication and added, “This one is for you Wes, choke on it you sack of crap!”

The building had speakers inside and out constantly playing the radio feed, so I got to hear Wes get clowned by his own radio station before driving off into the sunset.

LAND0KARDASHIAN

9. Over The P.A. System

Someone at my previous workplace (a huge grocery store in a large mall) went to the PA system we use to issue messages to the whole mall, and said something along the lines of “dear customers, managers and co-workers. I fucking quit”, and then proceeded to leave.

Focie

10. The Family Business

I used to work for my Father. It was probably the worst time of my life. He treated me like absolute shit, paid me very poorly, and made me work 70+ hours a week. I was young, just out of high school, and I complained about my predicament quite a lot. His response was always “if you don’t like it, there’s the door.”

6 months before I quit, he made me run his night shift, which meant 6PM -6:30AM Monday through Saturday. I was very unhappy about this, so I applied for another job. I got it, and went to my Father’s office with a list of demands, he responded with his usual reply, so I said, “Alright, I’ve gotten a job offer somewhere else, fuck you, I quit.”

The look on his face was priceless. He truly believed that because I had amazing job security that I’d be willing to put up with anything and that I’d stay there for my entire career. In one short, sweet instant, I proved to him that this was not the case, and he lost his most valuable employee.

The icing on the cake was the fact that the job that I left him for is at the company that manufactures the very machinery and software he relies on in business. So any time something goes wrong in his factory, he has to call me to fix it for him.

Your_Lower_Back

11. Using A Hidden Code

I wrote a respectful letter thanking them for the opportunity and all they’ve taught me.

The first letter of every sentence spelled out “Fuck <boss>”.

Nobody noticed.

InternetSpaceship

12. The Price You Have To Pay

I went up to HR to give my two weeks’ notice GTFO but before I could even get a word out, the HR lady flapped her hand at me and told me to come back in an hour because she was going on lunch. So I wrote “I QUIT!” on a piece of paper, signed and dated it, and left it on her desk.

She called me later to let me know that since I didn’t give two weeks’ notice, I would never be eligible to work for Kaufmann’s or Macy’s ever again. I told her I’d just have to live with that.

thebloodofthematador

13. “I Can’t Do This Anymore”

Worked in a video store when there was such a thing. My co-worker showed up very, very high. He was also about 6’3″ and 140 pounds, so he stood out in a crowd to begin with. Anyway, he came in for a 4 hour shift, stood in the middle of our bank of checkout registers…and just ate chips. Like, 6 bags of chips back to back, and he ate them SLOW, and savored the shit out of each bite. The whole time he had zero facial expression, think of the dull stare of a chewing dairy cow.

After about 3 hours he calmly turns to me and says “I can’t do this anymore”…gently sets down his bag of chips, and walks out the door. We never saw him in the store again.

Leumas_

14. A Total Mutiny

First job when i was 15 for a discount clothing brand store. Head manager was the aunt of our store manager who was 19. Our store manager did nothing most of the time and used to chat to her boyfriend and friends loudly on the store phone…much to the annoyance of everybody.

One night its come closing, we are grabbing our coats and getting ready to leave after a really busy day and the store manager storms in, telling us how she’s lowered the shutters and wont let us leave until we have helped her finish the one job she had all day to do cos her aunt is doing a “surprise” inspection in the morning. Everyone is pissed, especially the people who have had to watch her do literally nothing all day. She turns spiteful, threatening to delay our pays, dock our wages etc etc. All bullshit. For one woman it was the last straw (she had a kid to pick up from a club) so she waited till she left us alone to work, walked up to the shutters and pulled them up manually by hand. All of us crawled out to freedom.

We left her a note saying “Good luck explaining to your aunt why four people just quit.”

Cactusface987

15. Held Hostage

I was working for Argos as a Christmas job while studying. After a while it was becoming too much as I had to stay in work until deliveries were unpacked; this meant that some days I was leaving for college at 8.30am and not getting home until 1am that night.

One night it was a particularly large delivery and it was getting very late with no end in sight. I decided I’d had enough and told the supervisor I was finished, didn’t want to do the job anymore and wanted to go home. He rejected this and said that I was going nowhere until the delivery was unpacked. I stood in front of him and repeated that I quit therefore I don’t care about the delivery, completing my studies was more important to me than earning a bit of extra cash. He still said I was going nowhere and refused to unlock the door to let me out.

Despite feeling I had a case for false imprisonment I decided to take matters in to my own hands; I ran out the fire escape door and down the street never to return. I’ll always remember the sound of the fire escape door making a big DOOONG as it hit the metal railings and I made my escape to freedom.

StreakyMcMeeky

16. Burning Bridges With Jet Fuel

I worked for a law firm doing research and analysis. I wrote a custom program, on my own time, that would automate editing down these huge lists we’d get from an outside vendor, boiling it down to only what we wanted. First, only my team used the code. By the time I left, over 150 people were using it. Sounds minimal but it was actual a huge time saver. The program would boil down a list ~100 pages long down to about ~10 pages; a process we used to do manually a couple times a day.

A layoff was announced, I was part of the outplacement, but the firm wanted to continue using my program. I asked if there would be compensation as it was coded on my own time, never paid for it, etc. I was told no and “besides, there’s really nothing keeping us from still using it when you’re gone.”

For the remainder of my time (2 years), I would create patches whenever the format of the data changed. With my last patch, I put in code that would disable the program and erase key parts of the program one month after my last day. From what I understand from people still with the firm, on day X everyone came in, booted their machines, and the program was simply gone. Efficiency fell through the floor, delaying opening cases, billing clients, etc. I wanted 10k, they lost more than that in the first week without the program.

Photog1981

17. A Parting Gift To Her Co-Workers

During my exit interview I told HR the real reason I was leaving was due to the quality of the office chairs. I said they were an eyesore, uncomfortable and made me ashamed to come to work and resulted in sub-par job satisfaction.

Two weeks later I was told by previous co-workers everyone got brand new, top of the line office chairs.

jphiz

18. Don’t Piss Off Your Only Cook

At 16 I worked at a Dairy Queen Brazier in Texas. My Manager, was a jerk. One night, I sliced a good chunk of my thumb off because they did not have the proper safety equipment. After being out of work for 3 weeks, I returned to work. My thumb was still pretty screwed up, but I was trying. My Manager kept riding my ass, telling me I had to move faster (I was the only short order cook). When I saw three GreyHound buses pull up, I knew I was in trouble. She came back into the kitchen and said if I didn’t move fast for these buses she’d find someone who would. That was the last straw – I knew no one in the entire restaurant could cook. So I took her up on her threat and simply walked out the back door. She flipped me off as I drove away. My friends told me they hardly got any orders out and the buses left since they couldn’t get the food out. I felt bad for the people on the buses, but was sick of being berated by management.

sunrein

19. Out The Window

I got this.

Worked as a teen for McDonald’s for a month or two during the winter in the 90’s. We were understaffed and they usually had me working the deep sink and taking money at the drive thru. One day I come in at 4pm and the breakfast stuff is pilled to the ceiling at the sink because the day shift rolled out without taking care of it, as per usual.

There was a snowstorm this particular day and with the amount of dishes to do and the increasing frequency of running over and taking money from the window during the dinner rush my hands were beginning to hurt, then going completely numb. I let the manager know this wasn’t working out today and get blown off.

Fuck it, I crawl straight the fuck out of the money window without anyone noticing, at least no one on the staff. I get in my car and drive to the parking lot across the street and watch that dinner rush drive thru line back up out of the lot and down the street.

Seadgs

20. “I Don’t Want To Hear This”

I used to work for a telecommunications company.

My mom was very sick over the last 3 months of her life, so I had to go home most weekends to see her, it’s a 6 hour journey to get from where I worked to the town where I’m from. When her birthday came around, I requested a couple of days off that I had saved for this specific occasion. Yet, the days off were denied because we were approaching a busy time of year for sales. At this point, I hadn’t mentioned what was happening at home, because well, I was always taught that you keep your work and personal lives separate. But I said it to my boss, who, at the time, I saw as a pretty compassionate person. She never took any issue when I got sick or was late for whatever reason. But when I told her, she just looked at me point blank and said “I don’t want to hear this”.

After that meeting, I went back to my desk and sat there for about 20 minutes, thinking of a solution. That solution was to get my things, and just leave. I said goodbye to my friends on my way out, flipped my boss off and just walked out. I went straight to my car and drove back to my home town that night. It was the best decision I ever made.

I got to spend all my time with my mom before she went. We even got to go on a vacation and spend one last week away together because I had the time to do so. I’ll never, ever regret walking out that day.

Not exactly “hilarious”, but I had a good chuckle to myself on that drive home. The look on my boss’s face will never leave me. It was sweet.

IThinkIAmASofa

21. Work Night Turns Into Movie And A Beer

Worked in the cinema as a teenager. Came in late for work after they changed my schedule during my days off and didn’t think to mention it to me. Boss lost it and started shouting at me, as far as I’m concerned if you need to shout I ain’t listening. So let her rant away for a good 15 mins while I was at my locker clearing it out. When it finally clicked that I wasn’t listening or getting ready to work she stopped and asked what I’m doing I said ”going to see Lord of the Rings with the lads who’ve just finished as I’m doing nothing else with my evening. May go for a pint after. What’s your plans?”

definitelynotme_

22. Best Sales Day On His Last Day

I managed to find a telemarketing job as one of my first jobs. It sucked and we were treated like animals, but it was close enough that I could walk there from home. I only intended to stay long enough to afford a car.

One day, I realized that I had reached my set dollar amount for a car purchase. As a joke, I strayed as far from the sales pitch as possible. I changed my greeting to things like “Hey.” or “‘Sup?” I impersonated celebrity voices. People stopped working around me. They just listened in shock.

But it completely backfired.

It was my highest day of sales ever. I sold 10 times my average. The pit boss was bewildered, which is why I wasn’t fired right away (he listened in on all my calls that day). He begged me to stay, but I was out.

ShrugCorporation

23. Fighting The System By Using The System

My boss was a cunt, had me on a disciplinary for something that wasn’t my fault, and had my bonus taken off me. So i found a new job, threw out 2,500 worth of stock as technically the food hadn’t been stored away correctly, went above my boss and got head offices backing, then handed my notice in, knowing that id fucked his bonus up to. FUCK. THAT. GUY.

ssuperhanzz

24. This One Will Renew Your Faith In Humanity

My job at Chick-Fil-A had a tradition of pieing people in the face on their last day. Now I was the manager and didn’t trust the kids not to pie me when taking a complaint or during a rush or something, so I promised them if they’d wait until close in the parking lot, and if they got done cleaning on time, we’d do something special.

So I present to you: The Pie Gauntlet

I love my Chick-Fil-A family. Thanks for a great last closing. After 4 years of giving out my fair share of "Last Day Surprise Pies" we hosted THE GAUNTLET. Love and miss you guys.

A video posted by Alex Bennett (@spideybennett) on Jul 9, 2015 at 7:42pm PDT

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/11/30/24-hilarious-times-people-rage-quit-their-job-the-way-everyones-wanted-to/

[amazingviralinfo]

1. Does His Best By Quitting

17, hole in the wall popular non-chain fast food place. Worked 3 to 11.

A Friday. We needed a MINIMUM of 4 people to run the place. And that’s with everything getting totally trashed. 6-7 people was really what was needed.

Nobody showed up but me. Previous shift went home.Called the manager. No answer. Called the owner. ‘Just do the best you can’.

Turned off the lights, locked the door, put a sticky note on it that said ‘I quit’. And went home.

I did the best I could.

theawesomethatis

2. Quitting By Proxy

I knew a guy in high school who hated working at a movie theater. Called his boss and told him he wasn’t feeling well because he went hiking, got swarmed by bats, and got bit by one. Shows up later that evening to watch a movie with a cape and fake fangs in his mouth. Fired on the spot.

RIPmyFartbox

3. Last Day Making Pizzas

I used to work at a place that rhymes with “Pizza Hut” and the managers there were real cheapskates.

There was this nice old man that would come in every Sunday and order a triple extra cheese pizza and while they charged him for the 3x cheese, they would forbid us from ever actually putting that much cheese on a pizza because apparently cheese in the pizza selling world is akin to gold.

So instead of 3x extra cheese he would really be getting what the instructions would qualify as barely enough for a regular cheese pizza.

On the day my 2 weeks notice ended the old guy just happened to be my last order so I went into the walk-in and grabbed an entire box of cheese, proceeded to dump the entire thing onto his pizza and tossed it into oven. It was stacked so high that it couldn’t even fit into it and half of it was scraped off.

Anyways, the look on the old guy’s face when he saw me do this made it all worth it (imagine pure excitement). Needless to say I didn’t put the correct phone number down for future job references.

Not_A_Doctor_Venture

4. Popcorn And VHS

There was a UPS strike in the 90s and I was employed by them in high school as a sorter. Blockbuster Video at the time had this mail order deal where you’d get a VHS tape and bags of popcorn. Like a proto-Netflix thing I guess. Anyway, all these boxes full of microwave popcorn and VHS tapes would slide down the belt and about half of the popcorn bags would explode or break. After about an hour there was popcorn dust all over. I asked my boss for a mask, and he said that they didn’t have any. Some of the drivers walked by wearing masks, and I followed them and found a full cabinet full of masks. I confronted my boss, and he was like “the masks are for drivers, only”.

So I went back to the sorting area and just stopped working. I just stood there. The belts were backing up with these boxes of popcorn and they would burst and clouds of powdered popcorn butter would fill the air. I waited about 45 minutes before the belt shut off.

I walked out through a haze of popcorn dust, with alarms blaring, people running everywhere trying to figure out what was going on. A lot of people didn’t get their VHS tapes that week.

rikers_evil_twin

5.A “Certain” Coffee Chain

My wife worked for a certain chain coffee shop a few years back. She got another job, so requested reduced hours. This didn’t happen for 3 straight weeks.

During that third week, she had a soccer mom from hell try to get her attention, by throwing fucking snowballs at her through the drive-thru window. My wife then stopped what she was doing and tossed this soccer mom’s iced tea at her (which exploded everywhere) and slammed the window.

5 minutes later she had written her letter of resignation, with the only things she could find: a purple crayon and a sticky note.

The_MonBear

6. A Race To Quit First

Worked as a teller at a bank for a few years, GM and supervisor were both kind of crappy in their own ways. My buddy there was also a teller who felt similarly and wanted to get out. We started applying to places and both got interviews at the same company. As luck would have it, we both got hired and got phone calls about 10 minutes apart.

There was only one other teller aside from us and when it got busy, supervisor usually had to jump in as well (and usually hated it). It felt like we were constantly short staffed and days when 1 person would call out sick or be on vacation would suck. Being down 2 people was the worst.

Naturally when we both got hired, it became a race to see who could turn in their two weeks notice first. He printed his off and raced into GM’s office, walking out with a big smile. GM calls me in and offers me full time hours (after I had been requesting them for months).

I jumped in saying “Let me stop you right there, I’m also turning in my two weeks notice.”

Remembering that look of disbelief will make me smile every time. A solid professional Eff You is just as enjoyable to me as going out with a bang.

spikey182

7. Middle Management At Its Dumbest

Wrote a normal letter of resignation before I got in the shower one morning. No big deal. Got into the office and was straight ignored by management. Oh well, told you when my last day was.

Fast forward 3 days they pull me into a conference room to ask what it would take to keep me. I say nothing but don’t want to ruin them (sole IT manager for a staff of 70) and would be willing to consult part time. They liked that idea and said they’d be willing to pay me my current hourly as a consultant. I was prepared for this and told them that wasn’t what I said. I said that i would consult and my consulting rate was $200/hr. They were flabbergasted and insulted (I was making about $18/hr salary).

They thought it was insane even though they’d pay a consulting firm $600/hr when I was on vacation. Needless to say, having planned to quit it was no skin off my back and laughed about it. They didn’t take kindly to me laughing about their anger and told me to pack my shit. I did so, got an extra 10 days vacation paid out of it.

Cypher1710

8. AM Country Gold

1992: I was 19 and working at the most pissant radio station imaginable, “AM Country Gold”. The notoriously cheap, abusive and dishonest owner, a fella named “Wes,” had just screwed me out of a promised bonus. It was the latest in a long line of dishonest acts and I had had enough.

The rest of the sales team was afraid to stand up to Wes and he screamed abuse at them constantly (except the lone woman, who he sexually harassed). They were all in their 30’s & 40’s, working the same garbage job I was, but desperately needed it. I did not. So I engaged in a very public shouting match with Wes in the lobby, saying all the things everyone there had always wanted to say. Then I swept the contents of the front desk onto the floor and stormed out.

Instead of leaving, I went around the side of the building to a pay phone and called the radio station request line. In a fake Southern accent, I said, “Hey y’all, I just told my cheap, no good, lying piece of human garbage boss to go to hell. Play me out with, “Take this Job and Shove It,” and dedicate it to my former boss, Wes!”

The disc jockey had no idea what had just happened in the lobby, or that my Wes was “the” Wes, so he enthusiastically played my recorded dedication and added, “This one is for you Wes, choke on it you sack of crap!”

The building had speakers inside and out constantly playing the radio feed, so I got to hear Wes get clowned by his own radio station before driving off into the sunset.

LAND0KARDASHIAN

9. Over The P.A. System

Someone at my previous workplace (a huge grocery store in a large mall) went to the PA system we use to issue messages to the whole mall, and said something along the lines of “dear customers, managers and co-workers. I fucking quit”, and then proceeded to leave.

Focie

10. The Family Business

I used to work for my Father. It was probably the worst time of my life. He treated me like absolute shit, paid me very poorly, and made me work 70+ hours a week. I was young, just out of high school, and I complained about my predicament quite a lot. His response was always “if you don’t like it, there’s the door.”

6 months before I quit, he made me run his night shift, which meant 6PM -6:30AM Monday through Saturday. I was very unhappy about this, so I applied for another job. I got it, and went to my Father’s office with a list of demands, he responded with his usual reply, so I said, “Alright, I’ve gotten a job offer somewhere else, fuck you, I quit.”

The look on his face was priceless. He truly believed that because I had amazing job security that I’d be willing to put up with anything and that I’d stay there for my entire career. In one short, sweet instant, I proved to him that this was not the case, and he lost his most valuable employee.

The icing on the cake was the fact that the job that I left him for is at the company that manufactures the very machinery and software he relies on in business. So any time something goes wrong in his factory, he has to call me to fix it for him.

Your_Lower_Back

11. Using A Hidden Code

I wrote a respectful letter thanking them for the opportunity and all they’ve taught me.

The first letter of every sentence spelled out “Fuck ”.

Nobody noticed.

InternetSpaceship

12. The Price You Have To Pay

I went up to HR to give my two weeks’ notice GTFO but before I could even get a word out, the HR lady flapped her hand at me and told me to come back in an hour because she was going on lunch. So I wrote “I QUIT!” on a piece of paper, signed and dated it, and left it on her desk.

She called me later to let me know that since I didn’t give two weeks’ notice, I would never be eligible to work for Kaufmann’s or Macy’s ever again. I told her I’d just have to live with that.

thebloodofthematador

13. “I Can’t Do This Anymore”

Worked in a video store when there was such a thing. My co-worker showed up very, very high. He was also about 6’3″ and 140 pounds, so he stood out in a crowd to begin with. Anyway, he came in for a 4 hour shift, stood in the middle of our bank of checkout registers…and just ate chips. Like, 6 bags of chips back to back, and he ate them SLOW, and savored the shit out of each bite. The whole time he had zero facial expression, think of the dull stare of a chewing dairy cow.

After about 3 hours he calmly turns to me and says “I can’t do this anymore”…gently sets down his bag of chips, and walks out the door. We never saw him in the store again.

Leumas_

14. A Total Mutiny

First job when i was 15 for a discount clothing brand store. Head manager was the aunt of our store manager who was 19. Our store manager did nothing most of the time and used to chat to her boyfriend and friends loudly on the store phone…much to the annoyance of everybody.

One night its come closing, we are grabbing our coats and getting ready to leave after a really busy day and the store manager storms in, telling us how she’s lowered the shutters and wont let us leave until we have helped her finish the one job she had all day to do cos her aunt is doing a “surprise” inspection in the morning. Everyone is pissed, especially the people who have had to watch her do literally nothing all day. She turns spiteful, threatening to delay our pays, dock our wages etc etc. All bullshit. For one woman it was the last straw (she had a kid to pick up from a club) so she waited till she left us alone to work, walked up to the shutters and pulled them up manually by hand. All of us crawled out to freedom.

We left her a note saying “Good luck explaining to your aunt why four people just quit.”

Cactusface987

15. Held Hostage

I was working for Argos as a Christmas job while studying. After a while it was becoming too much as I had to stay in work until deliveries were unpacked; this meant that some days I was leaving for college at 8.30am and not getting home until 1am that night.

One night it was a particularly large delivery and it was getting very late with no end in sight. I decided I’d had enough and told the supervisor I was finished, didn’t want to do the job anymore and wanted to go home. He rejected this and said that I was going nowhere until the delivery was unpacked. I stood in front of him and repeated that I quit therefore I don’t care about the delivery, completing my studies was more important to me than earning a bit of extra cash. He still said I was going nowhere and refused to unlock the door to let me out.

Despite feeling I had a case for false imprisonment I decided to take matters in to my own hands; I ran out the fire escape door and down the street never to return. I’ll always remember the sound of the fire escape door making a big DOOONG as it hit the metal railings and I made my escape to freedom.

StreakyMcMeeky

16. Burning Bridges With Jet Fuel

I worked for a law firm doing research and analysis. I wrote a custom program, on my own time, that would automate editing down these huge lists we’d get from an outside vendor, boiling it down to only what we wanted. First, only my team used the code. By the time I left, over 150 people were using it. Sounds minimal but it was actual a huge time saver. The program would boil down a list ~100 pages long down to about ~10 pages; a process we used to do manually a couple times a day.

A layoff was announced, I was part of the outplacement, but the firm wanted to continue using my program. I asked if there would be compensation as it was coded on my own time, never paid for it, etc. I was told no and “besides, there’s really nothing keeping us from still using it when you’re gone.”

For the remainder of my time (2 years), I would create patches whenever the format of the data changed. With my last patch, I put in code that would disable the program and erase key parts of the program one month after my last day. From what I understand from people still with the firm, on day X everyone came in, booted their machines, and the program was simply gone. Efficiency fell through the floor, delaying opening cases, billing clients, etc. I wanted 10k, they lost more than that in the first week without the program.

Photog1981

17. A Parting Gift To Her Co-Workers

During my exit interview I told HR the real reason I was leaving was due to the quality of the office chairs. I said they were an eyesore, uncomfortable and made me ashamed to come to work and resulted in sub-par job satisfaction.

Two weeks later I was told by previous co-workers everyone got brand new, top of the line office chairs.

jphiz

18. Don’t Piss Off Your Only Cook

At 16 I worked at a Dairy Queen Brazier in Texas. My Manager, was a jerk. One night, I sliced a good chunk of my thumb off because they did not have the proper safety equipment. After being out of work for 3 weeks, I returned to work. My thumb was still pretty screwed up, but I was trying. My Manager kept riding my ass, telling me I had to move faster (I was the only short order cook). When I saw three GreyHound buses pull up, I knew I was in trouble. She came back into the kitchen and said if I didn’t move fast for these buses she’d find someone who would. That was the last straw – I knew no one in the entire restaurant could cook. So I took her up on her threat and simply walked out the back door. She flipped me off as I drove away. My friends told me they hardly got any orders out and the buses left since they couldn’t get the food out. I felt bad for the people on the buses, but was sick of being berated by management.

sunrein

19. Out The Window

I got this.

Worked as a teen for McDonald’s for a month or two during the winter in the 90’s. We were understaffed and they usually had me working the deep sink and taking money at the drive thru. One day I come in at 4pm and the breakfast stuff is pilled to the ceiling at the sink because the day shift rolled out without taking care of it, as per usual.

There was a snowstorm this particular day and with the amount of dishes to do and the increasing frequency of running over and taking money from the window during the dinner rush my hands were beginning to hurt, then going completely numb. I let the manager know this wasn’t working out today and get blown off.

Fuck it, I crawl straight the fuck out of the money window without anyone noticing, at least no one on the staff. I get in my car and drive to the parking lot across the street and watch that dinner rush drive thru line back up out of the lot and down the street.

Seadgs

20. “I Don’t Want To Hear This”

I used to work for a telecommunications company.

My mom was very sick over the last 3 months of her life, so I had to go home most weekends to see her, it’s a 6 hour journey to get from where I worked to the town where I’m from. When her birthday came around, I requested a couple of days off that I had saved for this specific occasion. Yet, the days off were denied because we were approaching a busy time of year for sales. At this point, I hadn’t mentioned what was happening at home, because well, I was always taught that you keep your work and personal lives separate. But I said it to my boss, who, at the time, I saw as a pretty compassionate person. She never took any issue when I got sick or was late for whatever reason. But when I told her, she just looked at me point blank and said “I don’t want to hear this”.

After that meeting, I went back to my desk and sat there for about 20 minutes, thinking of a solution. That solution was to get my things, and just leave. I said goodbye to my friends on my way out, flipped my boss off and just walked out. I went straight to my car and drove back to my home town that night. It was the best decision I ever made.

I got to spend all my time with my mom before she went. We even got to go on a vacation and spend one last week away together because I had the time to do so. I’ll never, ever regret walking out that day.

Not exactly “hilarious”, but I had a good chuckle to myself on that drive home. The look on my boss’s face will never leave me. It was sweet.

IThinkIAmASofa

21. Work Night Turns Into Movie And A Beer

Worked in the cinema as a teenager. Came in late for work after they changed my schedule during my days off and didn’t think to mention it to me. Boss lost it and started shouting at me, as far as I’m concerned if you need to shout I ain’t listening. So let her rant away for a good 15 mins while I was at my locker clearing it out. When it finally clicked that I wasn’t listening or getting ready to work she stopped and asked what I’m doing I said ”going to see Lord of the Rings with the lads who’ve just finished as I’m doing nothing else with my evening. May go for a pint after. What’s your plans?”

definitelynotme_

22. Best Sales Day On His Last Day

I managed to find a telemarketing job as one of my first jobs. It sucked and we were treated like animals, but it was close enough that I could walk there from home. I only intended to stay long enough to afford a car.

One day, I realized that I had reached my set dollar amount for a car purchase. As a joke, I strayed as far from the sales pitch as possible. I changed my greeting to things like “Hey.” or “‘Sup?” I impersonated celebrity voices. People stopped working around me. They just listened in shock.

But it completely backfired.

It was my highest day of sales ever. I sold 10 times my average. The pit boss was bewildered, which is why I wasn’t fired right away (he listened in on all my calls that day). He begged me to stay, but I was out.

ShrugCorporation

23. Fighting The System By Using The System

My boss was a cunt, had me on a disciplinary for something that wasn’t my fault, and had my bonus taken off me. So i found a new job, threw out 2,500 worth of stock as technically the food hadn’t been stored away correctly, went above my boss and got head offices backing, then handed my notice in, knowing that id fucked his bonus up to. FUCK. THAT. GUY.

ssuperhanzz

24. This One Will Renew Your Faith In Humanity

My job at Chick-Fil-A had a tradition of pieing people in the face on their last day. Now I was the manager and didn’t trust the kids not to pie me when taking a complaint or during a rush or something, so I promised them if they’d wait until close in the parking lot, and if they got done cleaning on time, we’d do something special.

So I present to you: The Pie Gauntlet

I love my Chick-Fil-A family. Thanks for a great last closing. After 4 years of giving out my fair share of "Last Day Surprise Pies" we hosted THE GAUNTLET. Love and miss you guys.

A video posted by Alex Bennett (@spideybennett) on Jul 9, 2015 at 7:42pm PDT