#looks like three rats stacked on top of each other

[horrorsboyfrie]

Loser!Zandik being crushed on by Popular!Reader

(masc terms on reader+ it's the typical corny social butterfly × weirdo shit, queer edition, honestly + Zandik displays traits of autism + a little murderous♡)

Zandik, as per usual, was spending the night's time in the library. It was quiet, for the most part. While a lot of his fellow peers were focused on finding answers for their own satisfaction, even those who viewed their values and research to be above everyone else's had someone to keep them company; for that reason, they often chose to borrow the necessary books and study in their respective dorms, or the dorms of their friends. Some did indeed prefer the setup of the library's sections and desks, but even so, the peaceful atmosphere was not interrupted by them.

Zandik sat on a table at the very ends of the room. He had a pile of books to his right; some half opened, and others neatly stack on top of each other. He had his notebook and pens nearby, taking notes of anything he deemed crucial knowledge for his personal projects.

Not long had he been entangled in his theories when a specific group of students decided to make an appearance. They could be heard from miles away— and it just so happened that they chose to sit on a table to his right. Malicious intent, no doubt. These people tended to act as if Zandik was some foreign species to be studied; as if he was a sort of a subject that needed constant supervision.

Of any day to endure the constant speculations and disgusted or concerned expressions towards him, today was not the right one. Nothing too horrific had happened to him, not something that would matter to an average person, at least. It's just that he slept wrong, causing him to wake up with slight neck pain, which played a role in worsening his already short temper, which in turn made his sensory issues towards his clothes, especially his socks, far more insufferable than they had to be. He was one unexpected move away from having a meltdown.

Yet again, he managed to ignore the obnoxiously loud 《whispers》 that sprouted out of those filthy rat-filled mouths of theirs, as Zandik's already-overwhelmed mind decided to call them.

Unfortunately for him, the multiple different voices started chanting even more nonsense as you walked towards the table— he could see that you were dreading it. Was everyone so damn bothered by his existence? You were known to be such a sweetheart— contrast to majority of boys there— by those who've interacted with you, but to be fair, none had a reputation quite like Zandik's, so it's no wonder you resented him, as everyone else did.

"Why'd we have to sit here?" he heard you emphasize. He looked your way; he could see the grins on the faces of your friends, the way they seemed to be picking on someone, hushed whispers, mentioning his name time after time, as if he wasn't barely three chairs away. Gods, his patience was running thin.

"Can we just switch seats?" He listened as you practically begged your friend, who was sitting on the complete opposite end of the table. As much as he may have claimed (to himself, seeing as he had none to actually confide in) not be a man driven by emotion, his worse sensory days were tempt to be a catastrophe in every way possible. He left soon after he heard those mumbles; he was too sensitive for his own good, even if he dismissed that fragile soul of his with walls of anger and apathy.

Your friends seemed to notice before you, the fact that he was no longer in the room. All you got was endless teasing about how you've missed your chance or about the fact that you probably 《intimidated》 him. Bullshit, no? You sighed as the group split up again, each going ahead to do their own thing. The only true reason they decided to meet up here was to force you into talking to him. That did not quite work out, it seems.

You hurried to leave as well, when you noticed a small pen on the ground. That must be his; you always see him writing with that specific shade of blue. It's not like nobody else in the whole Akademiya owned the same one, but he was sitting on the table you found it under. You decided to hold on to it. Perhaps it would be an opportunity to finally have a conversation with the guy!

On your way back to the dorms, you noticed him nearing his own room. Maybe now's the time to return him his belongings— especially considering how he seemed to be searching his pockets. His face was indifferent when he realized he didn't have the pen on him, but his hands were trermbling; a hint of anxiety perhaps? One could only speculate. You decided to leave him on his own. He probably wasn't up for company or conversation anyway.

The following few days weren't quite like you expected. Usually, you'd manage to get at least a glance your way by him; laughing at stupid jokes, bumping into people or objects that you could have easily avoided, accidentally saying things a bit too loud. Nothing worked this time. It's as if he purposefully was avoiding you; a fact that got confirmed after you tried walking towards him. He saw you—he made sure you saw his look, he held it for a couple of seconds— and then he walked away. Fuck, there's no way this guy wants anything to do with you.

Weeks later, you had grown to forget ever owning that pen of his; actually, you started using it for yourself. If you can't give it back, then why not use it for yourself?

Zandik, despite trying his hardest to keep his stares away from you and your friends (and pretty much everyone else in that damned building), couldn't help but notice that his long-gone favorite pen is under your possession.

After the very last class of the day, he decided to give you a visit; your fate had been decided by him already. He's done what he's done in the Eleazar hospital and got away with it. It wouldn't be hard to add another body into the endless pile of disappearances; he knew how to keep suspicion off his shoulders.

Perhaps it was a bit too far. He was letting his rage get the better of him; but gods, he really hadn't felt at ease writing with anything else. "His death would make no logical sense to my goals," he sighed as he reminded himself. "What sort of researcher puts his emotions above his values?" He groaned— frustrated both at himself for considering such a solution to his problems, and at the situation itself.

Times like these, he'd go to his special place to sit and think; it was a big tree, near a lake. Children would often talk about their encounters with the Aranara there. At first, he only ever visited that place so he could find one creature and take it for himself, but he grew quite comfortable being there.

He grabbed the opportunity by its hand once he spotted you all alone; sitting with your back against that very same tree that he favored. As if you had a seventh sense, you turned around to see him. He wasn't quite prepared to be greeted with a smile. It caught him off guard; why were you, of all people, showing any form of sympathy for him?

"I was hoping you'd be here" you said, handing him the pen that he has been desperately trying to get a hold of again.

[fizzyfizu]

Accursed in the Lake’s Depths

Chapter 5 : Trouble with the Caretaker

Harry J. Potter / reader

MASTERLIST : The Archives.. ⊲ previous ༄.˚₊ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 ₊˚.༄ next ⊳

      After quietly shutting the door to Dumbledore’s office, you were now freshly reminded of just how boring meetings were; especially when it talks about academics.  But with that out of the way, everything is now sorted..–well..mostly!  For now you just want to familiarise yourself once more with Hogwarts.  Maybe starting with where the classes are would be a good idea—wait, no.  You need to start with freshening up, that's what!  You reek of the Black Lake, and needless to say that wasn't exactly the best thing in the world.  Far from desirable actually.  

      There has never been a mention of a house’s common room being relocated from what you remember, and they would never do that..yeah they wouldn't–else that would be dumb.  Very, very dumb..hey nobody knows this but you are actually pleading very passionately right now with whatever higher power there was–that nothing had changed, regarding the common rooms in the past few years.  They couldn't forsake you like this.  Surely Not.

      A wooden, circle shaped door stood in front of you, oddly resembling the top of a barrel somewhat.  This was the door that you had greeted every morning and every night back then, and now you would return to that routine.  You missed it, and it was calling your name.  To the side were stacks of wooden barrels, all containing vinegar–probably.  ‘Ok!  Right then so..the correct barrel would be the middle barrel, second from the bottom.  If I recall correctly that is..here's to hoping.’ The barrel in front of you looked oddly menacing as of now, for good reason though.  You’d rather not smell of dirty water and vinegar right now.  Thump, thump—thump thump thump (Hel-ga, Huf-fle-puff).  Your eyes were shut tightly as you stood there expecting either the sound of triumph (the sound of wood shuffling around) or the sound of defeat (vinegar straight into your face).  Ok..so..great news, nothing smells of vinegar just yet!  Taking a small peek at the door, you watched as it did absolutely nothing.

      Until it did.  And the sound of wood sliding against each other mixed with the creaking of the old wooden boards has never sounded better.  Quite the loud sigh you let out there huh.  Walking up to the now open door, you were greeted by woody and earthy scents.  You could feel a dumb smile form on your face, because of relief or nostalgia you weren't sure.  You were finally back to the place you fondly called home.  Nothing could beat the cosy atmosphere of the Hufflepuff common room, and you would bet your life savings on that.  

      Right, you were still filthy.  And so your eyes make a sudden beeline for the corridor that leads to the girls dormitories.  And we are off to the showers!  The elves work quick right?  Surely fitting another student into a dorm wouldn't be all too hard.  And right you were, after finding the 4th year dorms you searched the plaques beside each door for your name, quietly mumbling the names listed.  ‘Banks…Pittman…May…Fawley–Fawley!  Finally..thank Helga.’ 

      Slowly pushing open the door, sunlight spilled right out of the room–it was a strong golden colour, it must be mid afternoon then, around three to four maybe.  The dorm was very clearly lived in; two of the four beds had messy blankets and misplaced pillows.  The third bed looked clean and well kept, clearly whoever slept in it made their bed with care–evident by the complete lack of creases on the sheets.  Lastly, the fourth bed–your bed.  It was clean, but not in the same way as the third bed, more of the ‘unused’ way.  Other than the standard yellow blanket, and white sheets and pillows—it was very much bare.  And you were glad to change that.  But you can't dive head first into the clean sheets, not right now, no.  Not when you were akin to a rat in terms of hygiene.  You had no belongings with you anyways, so you could go straight to the showers!  Perks of losing absolutely everything you owned due to imprisonment.

      After a long and thorough shower:

      You felt..great.  The smell of strawberries flooded the bathroom that you just exited.  You felt like the cleanest person in the world.  Like you had just showered after the world’s most intense quidditch game.  Like showering after digging a whole burrow by hand.  The thought of a freshly bathed dog hit you and it was a perfect description.  Your hair felt so bouncy and full of life, your skin felt the smoothest its ever felt, the new uniform you had on felt and smelt so amazing (the elves do indeed work quick).

      The previous paragraph may have been a gross overstatement, an unreachable fantasy, but it felt like the truth okay–and that was all that mattered right now.  Straightening your tie, you got ready to tick off the next item in your mental bucket list: exploring Hogwarts.

      The great hall was your choice for the starting point, mostly because it’s the only place you strongly remember, but hush about that yeah?  You thought that to decide on a way to properly cover all locations without skipping over one would be fruitless considering the sheer side of Hogwarts, so you settled for wandering around aimlessly instead.  

      For Merlin's sake.  Who even is this guy?  Hasn’t even been that long and you're already in trouble, well done!  You couldn't even find the words to try and defend yourself due to this..you don't even know what his job is, actually.  Whatever the case is, this guy keeps raving on about how students nowadays are such great ‘headache inducers’, or whatnot.  Regardless, it entered one ear and out the other, and even if you did manage a word, you would probably still end up in this musty old room he calls an office anyways.  

      “Hufflepuff eh?  Pomona would be glad to hear about one of her students running amok..”

      Dear Helga..“Uh..excuse me sir but–”

      “Zip it!  No excuses can get you out of this one girl!”

      He didn't need to utter a word for you to know that he was mentally begging Merlin to work his magic or something. Work his magic so that you get a heavy punishment that is.  You could hear quiet mutterings from the man, who was currently hunched over his table writing a letter to Helga knows who.  You watched as a cat jumped to his side and grabbed the letter in its mouth, presumably to deliver it.  Oh dear..

A/N: I got writers block this early on pray for me

[twilightdomain]

ID: two panels of a sketched comic. the first shows the silhouette of park chul-moo in the arched doorway of a room that is much darker than outside. dialogue from him reads, "I was wondering if you'd turn up." the second panel looks over his shoulder from behind, showing a hooded figure seated cross-legged on the floor in front of him, lit by the doorway but with their head bowed and hands bound in front of them. dialogue from chul-moo reads, "Again." end ID

this got. so long. it's under the cut. an ode to my favorite plot-relevant renown heart.

ID: a sketched, dialogue-heavy comic of guild wars 2 characters in two long vertical pages. the first two panels are the same as those above the cut.

The next shows the lower half of the hooded person's face, which is pale with faint scratches and bruises, and grinning nastily under a thin mustache. A loose bandana is pulled down below the chin so it hangs around his neck and he wears the shoulder guards of medium jade tech armor. Dialogue from him reads, "Like a bad penny."

The panels begin to overlap with each other. The next shows Chul-moo's face and shoulders from the front, looking unamused with slightly gritted teeth. Two merging dialogue bubbles from him read, "And what do the Kestrels think they stand to gain by wasting my time? We're the only reason Tetra hasn't already blown this whole forest to smithereens."

In the next panel, the hooded man (it is Ratthew the Vile) tilts his head up, revealing a truly scummy smile framed by strands of loose hair and topped off by several worse scratches and bruises. His dialogue is in two bubbles connected to him both here and in the next panel. It reads, "Oh, don't worry. There's another outsider doing the same in the Speakers' camp right now. And I guarantee they're not being as friendly about it as me." He says the last part in a large panel with a solid dark background that extends vertically behind the two above it. Both figures are shown from the side, facing each other and starkly lit by the doorway. Chul-moo's arms are crossed, and Rat looks up at him, still smiling, with his bound wrists held in front of his chest.

The second page starts with two panels side by side, simpler than the previous one. Chul-moo is doodled with raised eyebrows and wide eyes, gesturing loosely and saying "Great!!" Then with lowered eyebrows and holding his hands emphatically, saying "Why don't you go help with that then."

The next panel shows him again, drawn with the original level of detail, slightly backlit by the doorway. He has lifted one hand from crossed arms to wave it in the air, eyes closed with an irritated smirk, saying "I can even give you some pointers," and in smaller text outside of a bubble, "Please get our bread oven guy out of there."

The next panel shows most of Rat's seated form from the front and the edge of Chul-Moo's crossed arms from behind. Rat's smile has become more unassuming and friendly, his one blackened eye shut and head tilted slightly. His hands are still tied so he gestures slightly with his thumbs, saying "Well... The company here is so much nicer..."

The next three panels are the same size and shape, stacked vertically to the right of the previous one. The first two are close ups of Chul-Moo's eyes, first glaring down with one raised eyebrow, with no dialogue, then looking to the right with an unreadable expression, saying, "Is that right?" The third is a blank dark box with white text that says "Maybe we've been too forgiving then."

The next two panels are close-ups of hands; The first is Chul-Moo's armored fingers over the opposite elbow of his crossed arms, the pinky finger tapping slightly. The second is Ratthew the Vile's bound hands, seen from the side, with all the fingers comfortably folded besides the pinkies which are sticking out slightly. Dialogue extending across both panels says "Or if you mean it... Why not join us for real?"

A jagged tail leads from the last dialogue bubble to an even more loosely-drawn final panel with no frame or shading. It is being emitted by a boxy radio on a large table, surrounded by Kestrel Ayumi, Detective Rama, and Gorrik, who are all wearing varying concerned or weirded-out expressions. Ayumi is saying, "The little Krytan got caught again. I thought you said he'd be good at this?" Gorrik replies, "He should be! The Marshal said he did this stuff all the time! Maybe he's sick?" Another bubble from the radio says "—What a generous offer—." Rama says "I'm gonna be sick if I have to keep listening to this." end ID

something something first conversations. phew! this was a pain in the ass. thanks for making it this far.

[whiskeyswifty]

looking back on folklore in it's historical context, another aspect of it that i think made it so special and hit so profoundly is how airy it's production style is. that is in contrast to when it was made and released, which was during the height of the strictest pandemic lockdown, in america at least. we were all confined to small rooms like rats in a cage, running up against the same four claustrophobic walls for months and months. along comes this album that has just the most open and breezy production. when that first piano note hits, it's allowed to echo and reverberate. her voice in caridgan and mtr and mirrorball and august echoes to the point where it harmonizes with itself, as if she was wailing into fifty foot ceilings of a cathedral or down the then vacant thoroughfares of new york. instrumentation is soft and spaced out, allowed to breathe, never crowding each other or stacking on top and collapsing in on each other. you can feel the space between the instruments, the air flowing freely and carrying the notes all around them. where typically you can hear the cushion of the recording booth muffling and absorbing the voices and notes, clipping them short. the whole album is full of airy reverb and spacious echo, creating a feeling of a boundless space, especially on headphones. but also, crucially, it's muddy and unpolished. you can hear all the squeaks of keys and the soft white noise that comes with every sound recording, typically "cleaned up" before finishing a song. it sounds unfiltered. and all together the atmosphere it creates in your ears feels like you're standing across the clearing from her as she's singing out into the very woods she's pictured in and hearing the rustling leaves and trees echo her desperate cries back to her for the vast songs. and for the intimate songs, her voice and the instrumentation is still open and three dimensional, but is brought closer until it feels like she's regaling you with these tales right beside you on that dock on the lake. some of this was created thanks to that great long pond studio of course, but a lot of it as we know was done in bedrooms and was then artificially treated with reverb and echo filters, layering her voice and delaying it for effect. that stylistic choice was so crucial to it's success and why it has such an organic, free flowing sound. how for those of us on day 105 trapped in those four walls, to close our eyes and be transported somewhere wide open like that, it was incredibly refreshing and cathartic and liberating in a way we perhaps didn't realize we needed, and one of the many reasons why, i think, it was such a profoundly impactful reprieve at that exact moment in time.

[renoxvated]

His S.P.E.C.I.A.L starts are as follows;

S 10 Hercules' Bigger Cousin

P 6 Alert Coyote

E 7 Tough-as-nails

C 1 Misanthrope

I 4 Knuckle Head

A 7 Knife Thrower

L 6 Stacked Deck

Roy’s worst stat is his charisma, he’s loud, brash, rude and messy, most of the time. He’s really only going to seem sort of charming, if you like dog brained men and loyalty is the biggest quality you look for in a person. His perception is one point lower before the events of lonesome road.

Roy’s best stat is his strength, he’s stupidly strong, mostly from years of picking fights as he got older and his fathers heavy hand. The Mojave elements played a factor as well. His endurance and agility are also high for the same reasons. Gotta be strong, hardy and quick if he wanted to survive the bad hand dealt to him.

His luck comes from being Courier Six, the deck is stacked in his favor, he might always come out on top but it’s not so high he won’t come out unscathed.

• Roy has this little quirk of biting at his lip and biting on his tongue sometimes, when he’s nervous or excited. He also tends to bounce on his feet and rock on his heels if he’s really antsy or amped up to fight. He’ll wriggle around his fingers and crack at his knuckles, just a really animated sort of guy.

• He likes the smell of oil and gasoline, makes him think of how he’d used to fix things up and take things apart around the abandoned motel where he grew up. He doesn’t like the smell of perfume, it’s too strong and hurts his nose, especially since getting shot in the head.

• There was a scrapyard and a Red Rocket nearby his home. He’d play with the wild mongrels there. He was lucky he never got seriously attacked (probably because he shared what little food he had with them, sometimes they’d just take it though). He often had dog bites and scratches on him regardless.

• Roy has frequent headaches and forgets things more often since getting shot in the head. He’s easily irritable when he gets in his moods from the pain. He has a pretty gnarly and sizable scar that’s covered up where his hair grows back to cover over it. He doesn’t like being touched there. He really doesn’t like being touched at all unless he’s the one initiating it.

• Roy hates mole rats and will kill them on sight. Snuffles has, to this day, been the only Mole Rat he hasn’t killed and it’s honestly a pretty uneasy alliance. He would have killed her like the rest but the way she looked at him upon meeting each other was the most…human look about her, it was unsettling to the courier. Reminded him of his niece, he doesn’t know how to explain that without sounding dumb.

• The reason Roy hates mole rats is because they killed his niece. His brother dropped her off with him and their mother one day, said it’d just be for a little while, he just had to figure out what he was going to do for work. His girlfriend, the girls mother had just recently died after all, what else could he do? Who else could he turn to?

Well that little while turned into a long while; three years. Roy was still just a teenager, one that had no business caring for a child. His mother was always too strung out, or not there at all to take care of the kid though, so Roy did his best to.

His best wasn’t good enough and his life path had started him on a downward spiral much like his parents. While he had his father’s rage, he didn’t have his heavy hand, choosing to take out his anger on himself and becoming more like his mother. Drowning his woes in a bottle or chemicals; sometimes both.

One day when he was too strung out on chems to realize his mother wasn’t there to watch the young girl, that’s when it happened; when those god forsaken rats killed her. In reality he bears the weight and pain knowing it was his negligence, his weakness that got her killed. Not the drugs, not his mother, not even the mole rats. It was him.

• Roy hated his father, the man was a mean, heavy handed— religious fanatic, obsessed with old biblical texts and scriptures from a bible he’d found in a dresser drawer of the abandoned motel they lived in (where Roy was born).

It’s part of why he doesn’t like religion now, why he thinks it’s a bunch of mumbo jumbo, if there had been a god, then the bombs wouldn’t have went off, right? If god wanted the bombs to go off, well then Roy thought he was a bigger jerk than his father. Even not accounting for the bombs back then, why did bad things happen to good people, like his niece, like him when he was a just a child he didn’t deserve the kind of punishment his father doled out in fits of fanatical rage.

• His mother killed his father sometime after his older brother left them. The abuse was fairly bad after that, since he was the only one left, it’s also why his mother delved worse into alcoholism.

Roy doesn’t know this. He just thinks his dad left them to go find god. His mother would tell him he found god alright, don’t worry. He wasn’t.

His mother would often talk to herself out in the Mojave desert late at night, drunk off her ass all those times that Roy couldn’t find her. He never knew that that little spot of grass in the sand was where his mother had buried his father all those years ago. He found here there dead from alcohol poisoning one day. Buried her near that spot, so close but never close enough to know.

• He has bad night terrors after the events of dead money.

• If he was a companion his quest would be to help him find out what happened to his brother, who just never showed back up after dropping off his daughter and to come to terms with the death of his niece.

• Roy’s best friend is Rex and while he’s usually leery of Robots, Ed-E is also someone he’s very close with. He trusts his life to the two of them more than almost anyone else. He traveled with Boone a lot, getting along over their mutual hatred for the legion. Roy just doesn’t like them because he hates the notion of slavery. He thinks everyone deserves freedom, this is a belief only furthered after dead money. Roy also gets along with The King pretty well, bonding together over Rex.

• He thinks Primm Slim is hilarious because he’s never seen such a dumb robot in cowboy boots and a tiny hat, he helped make him sheriff, also because that makes him laugh. It’s like the equivalent of making a dog mayor to him, which honestly he’d probably laugh less about the dog and take it more seriously.

[rikasfundingassociates]

[Found Chatlog] The Hacker.

This interview originally took place on January 28th, 2023.

⊹₊┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ୨୧ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈₊⊹

The phone screen whirs to life to reveal… quite a peculiar place. Darkness creeps at the corners of your vision, and everything in the room is tinted slightly green with the night vision feature of the camera. One by one, some notable features become clear as the camera slowly adjusts to the dim light.

One- a stack of takeout boxes and bags that teeters ever so slightly to the side, but balanced with enough precision to remain standing for… who knows how long.

Two- a cat tree with various tattered felt rats and strings with bells on the end hanging from the ballasts of the fortress, obviously well used.

Three- an electric keyboard in the corner of the room, dusty with manila folders propped up where sheet music should be.

Four- a desk with two monitors and a high-backed swivel chair (what’s on the monitors is unclear, as they’re too blindingly bright to be picked up by the camera.) It’s facing away from the computer. It’s also occupied! She has picked up on the camera recording her a while ago, curiously following the lens with a catlike quirk to her lips.

⊹₊┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ୨୧ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈₊⊹

[HACKER]: what's this all about? gonna interview me or something ? :3

peepee

Cat tree…… cats

CATS !!! i luvluvluv cats

ok first of all what your pronouns

oh!!! haven't had to give them out in a while

she/her

i'm going to assume YOUR pronouns are pee/pee

I have question….. is green your favourite colour by chance

oh noooooo how could you tellllll

(yes)

hrmmmmm what was the last piece of media you watched/read/consumed

last not fav? i replayed kirby and the forgotten land recently

. . .

L L L

ur pee pee now

i said so

Favourite kirby character go!!

AHHHH IM ON A TIMER KING DEEDEE

well what is your fav media? i like. old animated movies

just any old movie ??? i have a penchant for those cringy scifi ones with special effects that you can tell aged horribly

as for the question, video game music is my jam :3

what kind of music do you listen to anon

OSTs and a bit of vocaloid mostly

. . .

i can't bear to lose the respect of someone whos pronouns are peepee....

if the world could hear you say one thing, what would you say

deez NUTSSSS

When do we get to see ur assumably there cat hMMMMM :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

i wish i could show you, but a friend is watching over him for me !!!

caught me at a bad time ... 3:

OMG I HAVE A RLLY GOOD ONE ok you remmeber that jesus guy and how he had a body and blood which were bread and wine

omg like the tibble

what would your body and blood be?

my brain hurts.... uhhhhh

ig my headphones and cat??,,

IW ANT TO SEE THE CAT

IM SORRY IM SORRRRYYYY

hold on hold on wait

i can show you a gif that he looks like

What kind of cat is it ….): at least

tabby :3

what do you do for work?

hmmmmm currently ???? im a bit between jobs

i was working at this chinese takeout place, but i had to drop that to work on the app !!! call it a passion project

part time now im delivering pizzas for this parlor down the street

. . .

AHA !!! I FOUND HIM!!!

he’s a bit bigger and more gremliny but that’s the best one i have !!!

what’s the app you’re talking about?

oh !!!! i don’t get to talk about this often yippee

i, the GREAT AND BENEVOLENT PERSON I AM, coded a whole new app for my friends and i to talk to each other !!!

a little debugging here and there, but for the most part it works pretty smoothly and i get to establish my dominion :33

What would you ………sing at Karaoke night?

CA LI FOR NIA GIRLS WE'RE UNFORGETTABLE

DAISY DUKES BIKINIS ON TOP

[ There’s a bit of pounding on the floor, which quiets her down quickly enough. ]

[ Distantly ]

sorryy...

https://tenor.com/view/maxwell-maxwell-spin-spinning-cat-maxwell-spinning-gif-27234188 Opinions on maxwell

i like the cut of his jib

he's committed many crimes

Dumb floor banger party pooper :AUGH:

i don't know what the proble, was !!! im SUCH a good singer

... i won't do it again tho

do you think anyone else will get to use it?

as much as i’d like to open it up to the public, we have a strict closed circle !! only people we trust can join :3

BEEE WHOOO YOUUU AREEEE FOR YOUR PRIIIIIDE

what are you...

one of those gay people ????

Am i

you tell me ...

who was that floor banger party pooper!!

my landlady 3:

apparently there’s ‘nighttime restrictions’ or something

sounds boring to me !!!

ALSO IF THE PUBLIC ISNT ALLOWED TO USE THE APP WHO IS.. who is this inner circle you have

i WISH we were the illuminati

just me and a couple'a buds! childhood friends

do you ever worry that someone could possibly infiltrate what you’ve made? like a leak or something?

someone breaking through MY security system? HA!

i'm a master programmer, so i'd never let that happen on my watch !!

Is that pizza place secretly a government hangout????

... id prefer not to answer this one

agent papa john? someone's caught on

take the shot

DOMINOS ALL THE WAY :rage:

... nobody tell them

i hate to break it to you

they're all in on it...

….even pizza express ): ?

nah

they're cool

Pizzas vs burgers

i’m contractually obligated to give one answer

if i don’t, i’ll be fired on the spot and blacklisted from every pizza place ever :(

… except pizza express

Im gonna go eat a burger out of spite now

TRAITOR

YOU'RE GONNA LEAVE ME HERE, A RANDOM FACELESS PERSON YOU'VE BARELY MET ????

Detective work is real tiring!!

i guess you deserve a break, after busting my super secret pizza agent cover…

… IS WHAT I WOULD SAY IF I WAS ACTUALLY A SUPER SECRET PIZZA AGENT

AHA!!! YOU’VE BEEN PRANKED!! BY THE NEFARIOUS -

[ There’s banging from the floor below again, along with a muffled female voice yelling back up at the hacker. ]

.... oh

guess i gotta go :(

she doesn't like all the yelling... heh

⊹₊┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ୨୧ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈₊⊹

[HACKER]: i should be getting back to my work anyways !! was nice to have some company for a bit, tho

⊹₊┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ୨୧ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈₊⊹

The hacker turns back around in her chair, and the rhythmic clicking of keys fills the room once more. With that, the phone screen shuts off.

⊹₊┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ୨୧ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈₊⊹

Transcript provided by [UNKNOWN].

[all-things-succumb-to-decay]

Pangolin grass type starter

Roots for ears and underside of tail

Baby is Oblossum. Final evo is grass steel

The baby sticks it’s tail in the ground to like. Regain energy or heal. The middle form is that awkward teenage form where it’s got some over sized petal scales that cover its eyes like an over sized helm

Wooly bear caterpillar that turns into a cat moth cause Virgin tiger moth is what wooly bears turn into

Rhino beetle hyena big dark maybe?

It’s baby is a grub puppy

Water starter goes from like a leopard gecko to a ribbon eel dragon. Coral horns and bits. It’s sleepy and likes to put others to sleep

Final type is water psychic the baby form’s tail is like. Bubbles that are stacked on top of each other to mimic the fatty shape of gecko tails. The middle stage is kinda monitor lizard shaped with just ridiculous coral eyebrows

Fire ferret into fire couatamundi or what ever or like. Civet something long with a big tail that’s fire rock with lava and rock making the tail stripes baby fire ferret tail is a sparkler and the more excited it is the faster the sparkler burns down and when it burns all the way down the ferret just passes the fuck out and sleeps for 18 hours like a real ferret.

Spider with a grass knot or a tumble weed for a butt

Psychic beluga

A vaguely dragon flavored Whaleshark that is dark electric, a type I’ve always wanted to mess with. Basically it’s a whaleshark w a black hole inside of its mouth. I have a lot of fish and sharks I know so maybe I’ll do something else but definitely like the typing and the general concept.

Water grass type loch ness shape based on lotus flowers growing up above the muck

It’s baby form is just a little messy leafy plesiosaur or something

Fighting type babirusa 2 stage

Catnip cat

Shadow thing under blanket/coins/etc like has a mimic vibe it’s like mimikyu like u never see it’s true form it’s just little grabby hands that reach out from under the piles.

Thylacine fossil? Solo fossil like Aerodactl

Rock dark type. Has a long tail that it keeps curled up that looks kinda like an ammonite but it can unfurl so it can hang from things. Like I know possums don’t even really hand from their tails but it’s a marsupial like. Trope? Idk but it’s just to keep it from being an animal in design and more of a Pokémon

Coffee bean that is either grass psychic or grass dark

Grass fire incense Pokémon. Named Intsints kinda shaped like a porcupine, it’s tail is long and on fire like charmander and it lights it’s spines that are fragrant wood.

Rat king three stage. More rat? More rats. This one is gonna be pretty weird like it starts as a little rat with a ruffle around the neck then it becomes two rats connected at the tail like it’s almost a girafarig situation. Then the last one is a Cerberus style three headed rat that’s bipedal. Has three tails as well and the middle head probably has little horns that look like a crown or something. I feel like this is the least fucked up way I can do this tbh. The LEAST body horror.

Grackle to dragon pipeline final evo looks like it fucked a bedazzler. Very bird faced and feathered but also kinda wyvern shaped.

Honey pot ants that r like eevee so I’ve figured out how it works. The first evo or the ‘eevee’ is just a little normal bug type ant that is sort of fluffy and honestly has p good stats. It’s based on a velvet ant that. Yeah I know they’re not ants they’re wasps but it’s Pokémon please don’t @ me about this. Anyway in the ‘game’ there’s new fruits that are vaguely themed as fire water and electric like maybe the water one is a pun off watermelon. Anyway like u just have to feed ur little ant 5 of any one type of the fruit and it evos into a honeypot ant with that type.

Anubit solid ground type little bipedal little puppy that looks like it’s made of sand. Anubold is QUAD haha take that furry bait I bet you all thought this would be a fucken palette swap Lucario but NO it’s all fours and it’s ground rock and it’s very fast because rock types are usually slow but this one is gonna be like greyhound jackal shaped so zoomies.

Tenneric poison electric pikachu clone super cute but has the personality of the tv show pikachu. Like. Will be a problem.

Psychic olm pseudo legendary dragon

Starts as a little axolotl. Very fat an slow and honestly hard to train because they have rly bad stats. The middle form is vaguely cocoon shaped like lots of the earlier pseudo legendary dragons like tyranitar. It has a vague butterfly wing thing going on. The final form is. Slow. It has admittedly bad speed for a PL but it’s special attack is absolutely kooky. It’s very long and serpentine and has no eyes. Vaguely skeletal patterns along its body.

Mythic trope like celebi or victini that is a cuttlefish that changed type depending on the environment or the weather effects so like it would completely wreck a team built around sandstorm it’s a kittlefish like it’s tails are like the tentacles of cuttlefish and it’s eyes are OwO eyes it’s a cute baby cat. Like it’s kitten shaped and around it’s body length there’s a little drill like uh the fin around the mantle of the cuttlefish and then the kitten’s tail is actually the tentacles of the cuttlefish.

Fairy flying golden heron 2 stage maybe ghost fairy because like. They’re said to carry souls to the after life. The first form is kinda like an ibis, small and cute. Known to sing very beautiful but melancholy songs. It’s second form is tall and golden and almost raptor like to keep it from just being a bird. But anyway it’s songs are less somber than it’s previous forms and have a lilting hopefulness to them.

Grass whale. It’s like a hump back cause they’re my fave two stage. The first form is almost dog shaped because lmao u kno. Real life evolution. Pure grass or maybe grass water. Idk I think we need more pure types but grass water is neat. The final form is big

Two headed fawn that turns into the two headed unicorn like that one taxidermy

I want it to split apart and be connected by a spine and like ectoplasm and the girls get little ectoplasm unicorn horns and the boys get ectoplasm antlers

Lamb of tartary Pokémon 3 stage grass wife the 1st is like a little radish or cabbage like oddish middle stage is still mostly grassy but with little goat horns. The final is the furry bait I subverted with the Anubis Pokémon. It’s an anthro lamb with like cotton and wheat for the wool and it has little horns and a fat ass

There should be a water fighting type based off of a betta and the adult evo can have different color patterns assigned at random like Spinda yes I know another gimmick pokemon I’m sorry. The first stage a a liddol guppy with big big angry eyebrows

Fairy rock konpeito

Water steel hippocampus the baby form is just a little pony but with a dolphin tail the full stage is just like. A hippocampus or a Capricorn? I know somewhere on this list I say Capricorn but that’s basically just this but a goat instead unless I do something new which I might. Anyway it’s more dolphin or orca than fish so kinda thick tailed

Poison steel based on mercury. What body types don’t we have. I have a lot of serpentine and insect and like. General mammals. It’s basically like ditto so it’s amorphous but I can do something with it more creative than a blob. Ohhhh my gosh it’s a snail and it’s shell can mimic like a test tube or a thermometer vaguely.

Pure steel type that’s just a mailbox. They’re delivery Pokémon. The little red flags are on both sides and are like. Puppy ears.

Scarab beetle that imitates luxury balls when baby form. Adult form is opulent very fancy black and gold bug rock type

Solid dark type Minotaur two stage. The baby is just a liddol calf very cute and normal type. The full Minotaur is almost ghostly and shies away from light. It’s not quite upright almost a like. Werewolf shaped. Long bent forward neck and a shaggy mane.

Dark poison type two stage based on the shaggy inkcap mushroom. I want to avoid the human shape they did with uhhh what ever that one pokemon was but still have a fairy feeling. So maybe something like cradily. Like it’s mushroom shaped but maybe the top of the mushroom can open up into a mouth? Ok hear me out. Giraffe shaped. Shorter legs thoooooOkapi. It’s a mushroom okapi. The small form is like a baby giraffe tho like it’s neck can’t hold up it’s head and it’s always a little wobbly.

Also I want a fairy type that’s pure fairy because monotypes are actually p important to cannon Pokémon games anyway. Fairy type two or three stage. I can’t do the deer idea I had because now that’s the legendary basically. So like. Shooting star/sea angel. They’re like a little bit like willowisps in the first stage, and then they become like ethereal sea Angel or sea butterfly shaped fairies. Almost human but. Clearly not.

Split evo spider one is bug fairy one is bug dark both jumpers just the fairy is a peacock spider the dark is a bold jumper

Fire steel red river hog two or three stage. The final evo has huge steel tusks and steel hooves and maybe like. Steel bristles down back. Very beefy and cool.

I want a Pokémon that evolves differently if it’s in the wild vs if it’s caught and trained

And now that I’ve decided to make Pokémon based off my cats there we go like the base is normal and it’s a kitten like it’s a very small baby super baby tiny and if it’s caught as this baby and raised by someone it turns into a big soft normal flying but if it’s left to the wilds it becomes a normal fighting and it’s like. A Bamf

Hummingbird mouse griffin that’s flying fighting because grasshopper mice and hummingbirds are both so Aggro it’s a single stage, high speed and high attack but total glass cannon.

Gold orb weaver that can use a move like pay day that gets you money it’s baby form is often mistaken for gold nuggets it’s adult is gonna kinda look like a gold skulltula from Zelda, but like I want it to have long delicate legs and be kinda pretty.

Normal type that is a like. A harp like idk deer with harp antlers or something with strings between spines on its back idk idk

I kno I have a couple mushroom Pokémon already I think but like what about a lion with a lions mane mushroom for a mane tho

Like the region is already kinda apocalyptic feels so maybe it makes sense there’s a lot of mons that are kinda fungal. Idk. …

Make a quest beast that isn’t a giraffe

Mahoganbee. It’s not a bee it’s a mahogany wasp it’s a solo Pokémon and it’s bug and grass and it’s a friend

Water fairy solo Pokémon that’s a manta ray with like rainbow elements so like when it breaches the water it leaves like. The wrainbows in the air and idk I’m sleeping

An object Pokémon that’s a snake Made outta horse shoes. Solid metal but then the evo is steel dragon and you add spurs as spikes on the back to make it bulky and sharp

Also maybe a Capricorn cause like. Fish goat. Oh maybe a foil to the hippocampus

The difference is it’s water fire and it’s got big Ram horns that have steam vents and it has some inspiration from deep sea thermal vents and the weird worms that live around them like. The white and red ones.

Grass type that is a lion with a mane made of peacock feathers. Actually I can’t do this one the legendary is a lion now so I think this could be one of the fossils like. A frilled lizard with peacock feathers? Idk this one is on thin ice tbh

Shrimp horse. Water normal type. It’s a shrimp but it has hooves so. A little ugly and a little cute.

I already have Anubis so like I kinda wanna do set or like a typhonic beast so like the baby is pure dark and then the evo is dark electric or dark dragon but these also stay quad. Take some giant ant eater insp. As a secret shout out to Kingdom Hospital.

I Dont think there are any rock ghost Pokémon so like a ghost that is fused with a tombstone? Ough maybe a stego that has headstones as it’s back fins and it can have like a Celtic cross for its tail this isn’t a fossil Pokémon tho I don’t vibe with a fossil being revived just to be a ghost maYBE it’s Jersey Devil shaped. Like idk idk idk but I’m scheming this feels close

Regional variant one is a deaths head hawk moth and one is a Luna moth yeah like. I know another bug pair and another region exclusive thing. It’s my region I love bugs I’m sORRY

Ok but a fire type that is a lava lamp like maybe a giraffe with lava lamp neck or a Fox with a lava lamp tail

Baby bat that is normal type that just has a big honking nose like big v shaped nose it can’t fly yet it’s head is like the size of the rest of the body it’s all shnoz and all ears the grown up form has like frilly wings like a parasol

European starling that is flying steel because the gold on the wings the end form is steel fairy or psychic? Something what ever it’s gonna be spacey

Wait another shark that is water ghost and it’s a shark with ghost fins because of shark fin soup and let it be thresher shark shaped cause it will make it a little more unique

Psychic poison scorpion. The baby is bug poison. There’s eyes inside the claws and like the lore is that people use it as a psychedelic. Is that too much for a Pokémon game? Oh well I guess.

Rock water type that’s like. The baby is a grotesque and it’s just rock but the gargoyle is rock water because. Architecture. Idk.

The regional rodent is raccoon based and it gets more rabid looking as u go. It starts normal but it ends up electric type because l bet everyone is gonna guess it’s dark type but nope it’s electric

A pair of pokes that’s like. One is a wolf in sheeps clothing one is a sheep in wolfs clothing. The wolf in sheeps is dark fire and the sheep in wolfs is grass fairy so they’re both effective to each other somehow

Pure water type that is a brittle star sea star that like. Walks around like u used to walk ur hand around U kno? Like it is just a little creachur

Legendaries maybe growth and decay themed so the decay legendary is mushroomy and the growth is flowery ofc But like what animals the third legendary is based on like the pure core of life and I want it to have a crazy god particle feel it’s got like a double helix tail and maybe horns oh maybe it’s a kirin. The decay Pokémon is maybe named Endrophy

Manticore Pokémon but instead of a human face it has a baboon face because I don’t like human mons and also baboons are cool as fuck. I feel like I have a lot of single stage so maybe this one has a baby form that’s just like a little normal type lemur

I want a shark Pokémon that’s fairy and very sweet because everyone loves dolphins and they’re shitty and sharks are good

Bug dragon that’s like. The frills of the face are the moth wings with like the eye spots like it’s. Complicated but it’s good it’s very cool ok I swear. The other bug influence is it has six legs otherwise it’s like. Very western dragon shaped.

Ghost that is a chameleon that is like. Glow in the dark skeleton idk maybe it’s body and shape is like made of smoke like the gengar line

Normal grass type that’s a terrarium. Maybe a turtle shape. I don’t want it to be too similar to torterra tho. So maybe a like. Bearded dragon because they’re kinda pancake shaped in the middle.

Ice type that’s like a wooly mammoth but no. It moose. Wooly moose.

It’s probably got a first evo that is like some sorta little baby yak that’s just a shuffling carpet of fur with yak horns that are low enough to be ground level. Like. They are little snow plows or something.

I want a white rabbit with red eyes that looks at first glance very fairy type but it’s actually dark/fighting type and it’s not a rabbit it’s a hare so it’s inherently rly fucked up the baby form of it is like a little puff ball dust bunny or mochi bunny or something that’s strict normal

Firefly shooting star Pokémon it’s bug lightning the baby is just a little sparkle star the middle is a uhhh it’s a rock like it’s a meteor u kno and yeah shooting star firefly

There is a sheep Pokémon that is the like. Poster child for Delta Pokémon it’s a normal type but at any point u can take it to a Modico station and change its type and form. Like froufrou or what ever it was called. It’s a sheep because of dolly the cloned sheep

I need a fire type that has spikes like maybe a stego? But basically the spikes are made of fire and like high intensity torch style flames so they look sharp

Abrice the ice psychic abra and koldabra there isn’t a third evo because the psychic power is dampened

Fairy fighting or flying fighting swan that is based on like. Swan lake and also the fact that swans are so fucken scary

Rock water type that idk what animal shape but it’s got like drippy fur that’s actually strings of crystals that are shaped like water drops it’s. A complicated concept but it’s fine. It’s fine it’s ok I’ll work it out. Maybe it’s like a kelpie but with a croc face.

The evil corp is called Modico Corporation

They front as a company of good will and change progress etc etc I feel like because I know how people are and I know that if I had a chance I would absolutely give myself a tail or like cat ears like. Yeah I feel like there’s a trend of people getting modded to have like eevee ears and pikachu tails. So like now that Pokémon games have character customization I could see you going to Modico buildings in different cities to get different Pokémon parts. Like I’m not gonna add this to the region probably because I feel like people would shit themselves about it especially a certain YT channel but what ever it’s fine. I’m just saying it would be very much a thing people would do.

The evil _team_ like the grunts and the shady gang that is connected to Modico but like secretly is called Team ChimeRNA

Cause like. DNA and rna like. And they’re doing gene splicing. Anyway team Chimerna are notorious for causing a lot of damage when ever they go on a rampage and often steal Pokémon so people assume they’re just a less organized team rocket but turns out the truth is team chimerna are literally just there to cover up when ever a Modico experiment escapes or goes crazy. Like they just destroy everything to destroy evidence that would leak back to Modico. Most of team chimerna are a lot more capable than they let on so people don’t get wise to the methods behind their madness

Some of the original canon pokes u can catch you can also take to a Modico station ‘modicubes’ that are like in Pokémon centers and stuff anyway u can take them and some you can change to like Entolian Forms and some you can just change their types. Not all can be changed like there will only be like 20 or so and the company says it’s because cracking the Genome of different Pokémon takes time because Pokémon vary so widely.

U can see delta Pokémon in the wild as well tho it’s not common. When a Pokémon is delta variant it has a different color or pattern so it’s like easy to see. It’s kinda like finding a shiny but it’s not that rare. They also don’t sparkle when u find them just different colors. If u breed a delta there’s a percentage that u can breed a delta. Some Pokémon can only get one delta type but some have like idk maybe three options. It’s not like. U can take any Pokémon and add any element. That’s what Modico wants but they’re not there yet.

The region is a series of islands. Not like Hawaii more like. Iceland and Greenland and like. A third idk. Anyway most travel is don’t by bird like that’s the fast travel mechanic and it’s by a giant condor themed bird that also takes flavor from bearded vultures. The babies are a sit stupid cute but useless. They’re dodos. Like I almost want to make the islands connected by crazy wild ‘roots’ that turn out to be mycelium but you walk across them to get from one to the next but then like the surfing Pokémon mechanic would be useless? Idk idk idk.

I need a thistle Pokémon. It’s my fave flower? Why don’t I? Like a little nondescript mammal with a lot of thistle spikes and a big fluff butt like a thistle flower. Maybe a capybara?

Dumbo octopus rock type it’s like a bat it flies with its flaps it’s so good and cute

So I have a few redundancies like several sheep adjacent and sharks and so many bugs and like this is a valid issue I’m admitting I have, it’s clear I have preferences but like if I don’t end up diversifying I can just say that it’s because right after a mass extinction there’s often less diversity as like. Existing species start to fill now empty niches. Like a weak excuse but like it’s a fakemon region that’s like FOR ME so.

So three islands that are the main path the gym challenge takes, there’s a handful of islands that only appear at certain times when the waters recede. This is where you can find nuggets pearls etc as well as some rare Pokémon. Not the legendaries cause that would suck having to wait wait. It’s a cluster of small islands that have a lot of mangrove trees and ancient ruins scattered around as a little story hook showing how grand the world used to be. I want it to be kinda solemn and quiet in tone like it’s still a Pokémon game but my fave parts of early Pokémon games were lavender town and the burnt tower like these. Stark and quiet places. Something bad happened. But it’s important to remember. I think it was a like natural disaster cause it prolly wouldn’t be cool to have Pokémon go through nuclear winter. Tho. It would explain why there’s like so many weird ass Pokémon … maybe It was something like. A Pokémon that absorbed infinity Energy at such an advanced rate that it became unstable and it like. Fractured and the energy released was like a nuclear fall out and it warped a lot of the Pokémon in the region. Like eevee is said to have weird dna so maybe the unleashed energy altered Pokémon dna around the region and made it less stable

Unrelated to anything but since my self insert is the big type elite four. Page gets a self insert that is the dark elite four

Nine can be steel type and holl can be psychic. She’s blind and has a seeing eye psychic Pokémon because that’s cute. Hell can be the last gym leader that’s dragon type

Town and island names

Whole region: Ento Region

First Island: Ourasph island (named for Ourasphaira. The oldest known fungi)

Towns:

Willowbark Town: first town. Named for willow tree bark that has medicinal properties. Ties in theme of healing and recovery. Small and fairly rural town that is right next to a marsh with lots of willows and a river. The marsh is kinda like a viridian forest. A place to catch some different Pokémon than u would see just on route 1’s tall grass. The town has a small community, a Pokémon rehab clinic which is actually where you get your starter. The region’s Pokémon professor works here and lives right next door. Her name is Prof. Maple and her wife is Prof. Laurel who is the more tech savvy prof who gives you a Pokédex.

There’s a person who will plant berries for you in their garden here and this is a way to get the berries that evolve the ants.

Echinacea city:

Barely a city but it’s got it’s pride. This is the first gym, fighting type. There’s a Pokémon center here and also an arena that is being built. After u ‘beat the game’ you can come back and challenge harder versions of npcs that u have already fought.

Amaranthe:

Staghorn:

Second island: Pleuro Island (named for Pleurotus aka oyster mushrooms. The fastest growing mushrooms.

Nova Sotis: a play off of Myosotis which is the name for Forget Me Nots. I almost just named this town forget me not but maybe that’s on the nose idk. Anyway. This is the first city you come to on the second island and this is where you first see how much damage was really caused In the Event. While the first island is slightly overgrown and there’s a lot of Buildings that are seen abandoned and ruined, this island is desolate. This island wasn’t hit with overgrowth it was drained of life by the unicorn. Nova Sotis is a port and more of a city than a town or village. There’s kind of a lot happening here as it’s a turning point in the tone of the ‘game’. There is a memorial shrine here and it’s sort of like Pokémon tower in lavender town, it’s a place of reverence and remembrance. This city also has a library where u can read up on the lore and get some details on the legendaries and the Event. Either in the library or as a building all it’s own there’s a small museum like there was In pewter town. This is where u revive fossils and buy ‘souvenir replicas’ of some of the items for Pokémon like the griseous orb or the ancient sword. Idk if Like any of these pokes are gonna be in the region but I’ve always liked the idea of finding a real relic in a kitchy souvenir shop.

Coriolis Valley-

Third Island: Clados Island (named for Cladosporium, a radiotrophic fungi found in Chernobyl.)

The elite four is here there is ofc the victory road. Idk what else there might be.

Lore

There were two eggs. One black one white. One produced tons of infinity energy to you know. Help the world thrive. One absorbs infinity energy to keep things from. Idk exploding like keep things from going too off the rails.

Somehow the absorption egg (black one) is cracked. Damaged. It starts pulling in more and more and more. It hatches. It’s beautiful and looks like a regal lion that’s primarily pink and gold and white but it is actually, despite its pure look, the destructive Pokémon. It’s covered in black thorns and spikes like briars that haven’t been pruned.

When it hatches so does the white egg. It’s a deer like unicorn that is delicate and fragile looking. It’s covered in mushrooms and looks like absolutely rotten. The lion egg took too much and while once it was the source of infinity energy and grown it’s now been used up and is just a shell of itself.

At first glance people look at the lion and assume it’s like a protector etc but it’s corrupted, too full of infinity energy that everything it does is fueled by its anguish. Like how mega evo is said to hurt and make Pokémon aggro. Same same but different. The lion isn’t a killer it doesn’t hate people it’s just too beefed up. The unicorn tries to sequester itself away because where ever it goes it seems to wither grass and cause rot as it’s body tries to like. Stay alive after what was taken.

The eight badges also come with shell fragments. The gym leaders all kinda mention like. Idk these have been passed down or this came to me to keep but for some reason I feel like I need to give it to u etc. the 9th fragment comes from like. Maybe the prof or a rival. Anyway you put the bits all together and make a special pokeball to catch the lion to let it rest and become uncorrupted or you catch the unicorn and like let it regain its former strength and then u fight the other and can like use the master ball on it or what ever.

I’m debating on them having ‘pure’ forms after you heal the one you catch in the egg like the lion becomes it’s true form where it’s all ghostly and dark but still like. Regal and now it’s in balance so it doesn’t sap life like the corrupted unicorn does. And ofc the unicorn becomes floral and soft and it emits like gentle light because it’s no longer corrupted and now it’s back in its proper role. But people might like the forms as they are so maybe it’s like with the griseous orb for giratina and the Pokémon only changes appearance when holding it. Like that way u can still get the story plots but people can choose if they want the rot unicorn or the flower unicorn for their team.

The theme of the region is like.

Building after disaster. It can probably be seen as an allegory for healing after trauma or disaster. Like it’s been some 150-200 years since the egg cracked and there was like the explosion of infinity energy where the lion basically. Took every last bit the unicorn had which like. It should have been limitless but the lion just stole it all so fast it like snuffed out the flame of growth or what ever. And in that instant when both Pokémon became corrupted it like. Destroyed 3/4 of the region. Now in the present the two Pokémon have gone into hiding and people are rebuilding and like the towns are bustling and the world is starting to heal but there’s scars. There are still places that the unicorn lingered too long in that are basically like Chernobyl. Dead zones. Wastelands. Some barren some full of fungus and warped trees. The places the lion razed are too overgrown with too much energy buzzing within. Like homes covered in kudzu and trees bursting up through the hearts of sky scrappers. So like you get to see both sides of disaster u kno but mostly. People are just trying to rebuild. The Pokémon league remains mostly as an echo of tradition but it’s purpose is also to train Pokémon trainers who are strong enough to protect the people if the lion or unicorn (depending on which version ur playing) ever wake up.

There’s the evil company or what ever tho that, like it says up there, wants to fuse people and Pokémon so the people themselves can defend against what ever and also because it’s a Pokémon game; for money and to take over the world.

[duawheat]

ok watching 2012 tmnt now .

[yourdeepestfathoms]

tooth and nail

ask and you shall receive ;) @denpine14 @strawberrygem21

in which the Dimitrescu daughters exhibit cat-like traits

---------

“Dear Mother Miranda,

The girls have grown well, though there are some complications. Bela seems to have some form of anxiety and very low self-esteem, Cassandra has anger issues, and Daniela, I believe, has some type of hyperactivity disorder. Despite all of this, I love all of them dearly.

However…more strangely…they have…feline-like habits. I expected the hissing and growling, but the other things… Well, I’m not too sure how this has happened, as they were born from insects, but they weirdly act like little kittens in the most absurd ways. These mannerisms include, but are not limited to…”

“…headbutting…”

“Oof--” Alcina blinked in surprise and looked down as Bela headbutted her leg. “Yes, my darling?”

Bela giggled and headbutted her again. Alcina rubbed her head, which triggered a strange sound to fill the air.

“…and purring…”

Purring. Her daughter seemed to be purring.

Alcina’s heart swelled with love. She couldn’t help the smile that came to her lips.

Later that day, Cassandra and Daniela did the headbutting thing, too, both of them bonking her in the legs while giggling adorably. When she scratched along their scalps, they purred, just like their big sister had.

--- --- ---

“…staring when they want something…”

“Yes?” Alcina asked, raising an eyebrow at the trio of girls staring at her. If it weren’t for their different hair colors, it would have been difficult to discern them from each other with their matching black gowns and hoods. She made the mental note to give something to them to help make them out better.

Her daughters continued to stare.

“Is everything alright?”

Still nothing.

“Darlings?”

Cassandra reached out, swatted at her dress, and then they all took off running in different directions, their sock-clad feet making them run in place for a few seconds before they gained traction and streaked away in blurs of black.

--- --- ---

“…and also staring at nothing at all, as though they are seeing ghosts…”

Alcina blinked. Her daughters were staring intently at the wall, their eyes wide and shiny, like they had just witnessed the secrets of the universe. She tried to see what they were looking at but could spot nothing at all.

“What in the…?”

--- --- ---

“…pushing random things off of surfaces for seemingly no reason other than the fact that they like to…”

A loud clatter echoed down the hallway, and Alcina was quick to hurry to the source of the noise: the parlor, where Daniela was perched on one of the tables inside, staring down at a fallen candelabra. Luckily, none of the wax sticks were lit, as they would have sent the red-and-gold carpet over the floor up in flames. Daniela looked up at her, her eyes awestruck and shiny.

“Did you knock that over?” Alcina asked.

Daniela stared back. Then, slowly, reached out her hand and swatted over a cup.

--- --- ---

“…causing utter destruction…”

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Alcina snapped, shooing Cassandra away from the blinds. Her daughter leaped back, her claws ripping out of the fabric she had been sharpening her talons on. “No. Do not scratch things up, Cassandra.”

Cassandra inspected her claws. “Then what am I supposed to sharpen them on? Look at how blunt they are!” They showed them to Alcina.

They were sharp enough to gut a human in one swipe.

In amusement, Alcina said, “How about tree bark? It’s rough enough to hone them.”

Cassandra considered it, then nodded. “Alright!” She bounded away to go destroy one of the trees in the garden.

That same day, Alcina found Daniela chewing on a branch in her bedroom, creating a small pile of woodchips beneath her jaw. She seemed to be doing the same thing as her older sister: sharpening her natural weapons. Alcina left her be.

--- --- ---

“…sudden hyperactivity…”

The loud sound of footsteps suddenly burst throughout the hallways, rebounding like thunder. They would stop at random, then begin again, seemingly in a sporadic pattern. When Alcina finally stepped out of her bedroom to investigate, she barely caught a blur of black as one of her daughters, she couldn’t tell who, whizzed past her like lightning. She spun around, blinking.

“What--”

At the same moment, one of the others came from a different direction and skidded to a stop in front of her. She whirled to them and saw that it was Bela.

“What are you three doing?” Alcina asked.

“Playing,” Bela answered blithely. She stepped forward, headbutted Alcina lovingly, then zoomed off again, slipping on her socks as she went.

--- --- ---

“…getting startled at the most mundane things…”

The parlor had been peaceful at one moment; Alcina was drinking her tea, while Cassandra and Daniela played chess and Bela multitasked reading and watching the game. It was then that Bela’s thread bookmark fell out and she swiped at it to pick it up. However, when the string seemed to catch on her claws, she got frightened, leaping at least five feet up into the air. Seeing their older sister so unsettled, Cassandra and Daniela did the same, nearly jumping out of their skin and scattering the game of chess as they scampered away in terror. Alcina laughed loudly as her daughters huddled against her sides, shaking.

--- --- ---

“…bringing me dead animals as gifts…”

Alcina was cleaning up for bed when there was a knock that filled her bedroom. She walked to the door and opened it, only to see no one. When she turned around, she saw Daniela clinging to her window sill, a mass of fur caught between her teeth.

“Daniela!”

Alcina quickly opened the window, and Daniela hopped inside. She presented the thing in her mouth to her with great pride: a rat.

“For you, Mother.”

“Ah-- thank you, my dove.”

Daniela purred as her head was rubbed affectionately.

The next day, Cassandra padded up to her, her chest puffed in pride, a large snake pierced by her fangs.

“A gift, Mother.”

“Thank you, my sweet.”

And then, that evening, Bela came to her door with a bird in her mouth.

“Here, Mother.”

“Thank you, my darling.”

And then the bird jerked away when Bela set it down and flew off down the hall in terror. They both watched it go.

“It was too pretty to kill.”

Alcina chuckled. “I see.”

--- --- ---

“…laying on my things when I need them…”

Alcina stared tiredly at the stack of girls laying on the folded clothes on her bed. All that space on her giant mattress that was made specifically for her size and they chose that exact spot. On her clothes.

Well. They were much too cute to wake up.

--- --- ---

“…laying on me and keeping me from getting up…”

“Maiden,” Alcina whispered.

The maid passing by stopped and turned to her instantly.

“Get me a glass of blood. I can’t get up and I am thirsty.”

The maid eyed the form of her youngest daughter stretched out on her lap, asleep, and then nodded, whisking away.

She hadn’t moved for three hours.

--- --- ---

“…they have no concept of personal space…”

Alcina was awake that night, her girls piled on top of her to the point where they were practically smothering her, Daniela and Cassandra under arms and Bela on her chest. Every time she twitched, they would move closer, snuggling in deeper to her heat. She wouldn’t be sleeping very comfortably, but at least her daughters were warm.

--- --- ---

“…sitting in strange places…”

“Are you comfortable?” Alcina asked, laughing.

Bela looked up from where she was reading and wedged inside a basket that was meant for quilts. Despite her small, wiry frame, it technically wasn’t her size, but she managed to curl herself inside, piled by the blankets and indulging herself in a good book.

“Yes,” Bela said, smiling.

Alcina would also go on to find Cassandra napping haphazardly on the banister of the upper hallway balcony, which she picked her up from and placed her back into her bed in fear of her falling off, and Daniela hiding in one of the cupboards in the kitchen.

However, none of these things beat when she found all three of her daughters crammed in a box, murmuring and giggling to each other over something.

--- --- ---

“…did I mention the purring? Because the purring is absolutely endearing. I do believe it has healing properties…”

Alcina wasn’t quite sure what she had come down with that day, but she woke up feeling exhausted and achy all over. She didn’t even think to get up and alert her girls to her condition, choosing to rather wallow in her bed, so it wasn’t a surprise when her room was soon filled by three worried bug-spawn creatures.

“Mother?” Daniela’s small hands were set on her shoulders.

Alcina stirred.

“Mother?” That was Bela, now.

She rolled over and blinked tired eyes at the worried-looking faces of her daughters.

“Hello, my darlings,” she croaked.

“Mother,” Bela said again, her voice thick with concern. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, yes,” Alcina nodded, though her mind was wavering, shrouded in a heavy fog. “I am fine. Just a little unwell.”

“Can we help you?” Cassandra asked, her hands twitching.

“Don’t worry,” Alcina answered. “I’ll be fine.”

Her daughters exchanged looks. A moment later, they were climbing onto the bed, curling up around her.

“We’re helping,” Daniela said.

Alcina had no idea how cuddling was supposed to help her, but then she heard the soft churring that filled the air. The purring in itself did little to actually heal her sickness, but something about the soft sound and the presence of her precious daughters soothed her. Bela, with her head on her chest, filled her heart with a gentle rumbling. Daniela, curled up right next to her, chirred gingerly in her ear. Cassandra, stretched out over her stomach, resonated a soothing burr throughout her body.

She chuckled tiredly. “Thank you, my loves…”

--- --- ---

“…and, at least when they were newly reborn, absolutely hating when I go into a room without them…”

She was just taking a shower. That was all. And yet, she could hear her young, one-week-old daughters on the other side of the door, yowling and screaming and scratching their claws into the wood.

“I’m just bathing!” she snapped.

They wailed louder.

--- --- ---

“…to wrap the letter up, it is certainly a strange phenomenon to the experiment, but I am not complaining at all. They are much more entertaining and endearing this way. I wouldn’t have them any other way. I would like to thank you again, Mother Miranda, for letting me have such sweet daughters.

That will be all for now. I will follow up in another letter if anything new comes up.

-Alcina Dimitrescu”

[fruitcoops]

Could you maybe do that part 5 of truth or drink you alluded to?? :) with Jules and the lupins and basically Jules spilling ALLL of re’s secrets & Marley loving it 🥰

Oh, Jules, how I missed you. The truth or drink referenced in this ask is here (it's been an age since I did one, wow!) and SW credit of course goes to @lumosinlove!

“Please can we have alcohol?” Jules swung his legs under the table with wide, pleading eyes.

Marlene barked a laugh. “Over my dead body, baby Loops.”

“It would be,” Remus agreed with a teasing grin.

“Welcome back to Lion Pride, both of you,” she said, ruffling their hair. Both scrunched their faces up in identical expressions of displeasure. “There are fifteen cards in your deck, and if you don’t want to answer the question, you have to take a drink of apple juice. Not alcohol.”

“You used to be cool,” Jules sulked. Marlene rolled her eyes and Remus reached over to flick his ear. “Hey, that hurt!”

“No, it did not.”

“I’m gonna tell mom you hit me.”

Remus turned to Marlene with a long-suffering look. “Can I have alcohol?”

“Get crackin’, boys, the world wants to know your secrets.” She tapped the deck of cards with a wink and wandered behind the cameras again.

“Alright, here we go.” Remus sighed. “My name is Remus Lupin, I’m the Lions’ right wing, and I’m here with my baby brother to answer some questions. Take it away, Jules.”

“I’m not a baby,” Jules clarified to the camera. “I’m twelve. Who’s the most attractive sibling?”

Remus frowned. “Me? Just ‘cause I’m older.”

“As if.”

“Oh my god,” he muttered, reaching for his own card. “Oh, this should be fun. Name your favorite parent.”

“Dad,” Jules answered without hesitating. Remus’ eyebrows shot up. “What?”

“First, you’re not supposed to answer that fast, and second, what?”

“Dad’s cool!”

“Dad is not cool!” Remus laughed. “I don’t have a favorite parent—”

“Liar.”

“—but mom is the cool one. Dad’s a dork, and we love him for it.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe this. Mom would literally do anything for you. She learned to skate for you.”

“It’s not like I don’t love mom!” Jules protested as he took a new card. “I love her so much! And I know mom is your favorite, so it’s only fair. Which of us is the most successful, and which is the screwup?”

“I don’t have a favorite parent,” Remus insisted, leaning back in his seat. “And neither of us are screwups.”

“You’re more successful.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re a screwup. It means you’re twelve. Who’s the overachiever?”

“You,” Jules snorted. “You’re such a nerd. It’s embarrassing. What’s the meanest thing I did to you when we were kids?”

Remus rested his chin on his hand and thought for a moment, then turned to look behind the camera. “Since we were only kids together for, like, three years, can I say something from a little later?”

“Anything before age 25,” Marlene called.

He nodded decisively. “Sweet. In that case, it’s the time this little monster let a rat into the house, freaked out when he didn’t know what to do, then locked it in my bedroom and didn’t tell anyone until I went to bed and something ran across my sheets.”

Jules shrugged. “You survived.”

“Yeah, and you almost didn’t.”

“So dramatic,” he muttered.

Remus whacked him over the head with the next card before reading it. “Oh, god. Share the most mortifying memory you have of me. If you drink that apple juice and don’t answer, I’ll get you ice cream on the way home.”

Jules leaned back with a hum, already grinning. “Let’s see…”

“No,” Remus groaned.

“Probably—” Jules broke off to giggle. “Probably when you took me into the locker room to meet the team and the whole time I was talking to Sirius, you looked like you were about to melt into the floor. You had this stupid grin on your face—”

“Shut up.”

“—and almost tripped over your own feet, like, four times. This was before you guys were dating, too.”

“You are the worst,” Remus said, though his voice was muffled by his forearms. “Next question?”

“I can keep going. There was the time you gave yourself a black eye hanging Christmas lights, and when you bounced off an enforcer when you tried to check him, and when mom asked you to defrost the chicken for dinner and you forgot so you put it in the microwave and almost set the house on fire, and—“

“Marlene.” Remus raised his head with a pitiful look. “Please make him stop. Please.”

“Okay,” Marlene laughed, a little breathless. “Alright, one sec. Jules, your turn.”

“Ugh, fine. Do you let me win at things?”

“When you were five, sure.” Remus tilted his head to the side. “Otherwise, no. Do you want me to let you win?”

“I’d be so upset if you did. I only get better because I want to kick your ass one day.”

“Language. Am I a good brother?”

“Well, yeah,” Jules said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He blinked at Remus, clearly confused. “Duh. You’re weird and annoying, but you’re one of my top three favorite people?”

“Before or after dad?” Remus teased, but it was soft with fondness.

Jules narrowed his eyes and leaned his elbows on the table. “Wouldn’t you like to know. Have I ever disappointed you?”

“Never. I don’t think you could if you tried. Who’s smarter?”

“Me.” Remus gave the camera a disbelieving look as Jules took a new card. “Ha! I like this one. Which of us was a mistake?”

“Oh, that is a good one. Honestly, I don’t think either of us were planned. Mom and dad definitely weren’t expecting a kid at 21 and 25, and absolutely weren’t planning on another one fifteen years later.”

Jules cast the camera a bright smile. “Oops!”

“But we’re their best mistakes,” Remus said solemnly with the ghost of a smile, as if he was repeating a sentiment that had been said many times before. “Okay, I need to have a talk with whoever set up these questions. Do an impersonation of me, or drink to—”

“Oh, look at me, I’ve got a fancy degree,” Jules mimicked, dropping his voice comically low. “I’m so cool, I’ve got a secret boyfriend and I’m not gonna tell anyone about it for three whole months even though I suck at keeping secrets. I’m tall, so I’m gonna grab my awesome little brother by the ankles and shake him around—”

“You asked me to—”

“Shh! I’m not done!”

Remus gave him an incredulous look. “They get the point!”

Jules stuck his tongue out, but grabbed a new card from the stack. “What are your best and worst memories of mom and dad?”

“Aw, man.” Remus tapped his short stack of cards on the table and bit his lip. “Best and worst…best would probably be Christmas two or three years ago, when we all went skating on the lake.”

“That’s a good one,” Jules mused.

“It’s hard to think of my worst memory of them. Um, maybe after I stopped playing hockey in college? There was a lot of walking on eggshells and it was really uncomfortable.”

Remus read the next card and his frown dissolved into laughter; he reached for the apple juice and filled both glasses to the brim, then pushed them across the table to Jules without a word. “What are these for? You have to read the card, dummy.”

“The most spoiled sibling has to drink,” Remus said with a wide grin.

“It’s not me!” Jules protested, though it was weak. “You were an only child for fifteen years!”

“Yeah, and?” His amusement only grew as Jules struggled to make a comeback. “See, you can’t even deny it! You’re the baby of the family and everybody loves you. How many times have you been to Gryffindor?”

Jules opened and closed his mouth a few times, going red with indignance.

“How many?” Remus’ expression was pure glee. “Buddy, I didn’t leave Wisconsin for anything other than roadies until you were old enough to travel, and then mom and dad had to show you off to everyone.”

“They love you, too!”

“I know they do,” Remus laughed. “They’re great parents and we both had amazing childhoods. You’re still the more spoiled one.”

“I don’t like this game,” he muttered as he drank one of the glasses. “And I’m not drinking that other one. Okay, last question. Should we see more of each other?”

“Of course,” Remus said. “I wish we lived closer to each other all the time. Do you think so?”

Jules reached for the glass, then burst out laughing when Remus’ jaw dropped. “Oh, I got you so good! But yeah, I miss you a ton during the school year.”

“You little…” Remus bit back his threat and ruffled Jules’ hair despite his protests, cheeks turning pink with embarrassment. “Keep that up and you’re gonna get flipped again.”

“You wouldn’t. Not on camera.”

“Try me.”

Jules bolted from his seat and tried to make a run for it, but Remus was faster—he caught him around the waist, hefted him under one arm, and turned him around until he could get ahold of his skinny ankles. “No!” Jules shrieked through his giggling as Remus started swinging him lightly back and forth. “No, no, put me down!”

“Just making sure you really don’t want to see more of me,” Remus said, alight with happiness. Jules’ fingers nearly touched the ground. “You’re almost too big for this.”

“Good,” Jules wheezed. “Are we done yet?”

Remus looked back to the camera. “Thanks for tuning into Lion Pride, everyone. Make sure to like and subscribe if you want a slow-motion tutorial on how to transform your little brother into an emergency pendulum.”

“No!”

“Can you get down by yourself?”

Jules stretched his arms toward the floor, but Remus pulled him up an inch just as his fingertips brushed the tile. “Hey! Stop it!”

“Stop what?”

“Pulling me up!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Remus said, adding another inch.

[whump-a-la-mode]

Ok so I had a prompt idea? We’re all familiar with the “villain is sent to a ‘rehabilitation center’ that turns out to be secretly torturing the villains there” trope, but consider this: scared villain is captured by a kind hero and sent to a villain rehabilitation center, and villain has never experienced such warmth and kindness! Not to mention frequent visits from hero to check up/see how they’re doing. Maybe it’s no good but just a thought I had; I love your writing so much!! 💛🌼

(No pressure though, I know you’re probably busy!)

Oh, I absolutely love this prompt! Evil rehab centers are all well and good, but I’d never thought of one as being a source of comfort. I hope you like this! I was going to do some more with it, but it was already running a little long ^^

Thanks so much for the prompt!

CW//Arson, burning buildings, smoke inhalation, fear of death, gross food, mentions of torture, animal disease

As though singed by smoke, Villain’s lungs burned.

Even as they gasped, they felt as though they could not inhale a single breath. Yet, somehow, they had enough air to keep going.

It wasn’t as though they had a choice.

They were unsure, at that point, if their legs were truly moving at all. They had lost feeling in them far too long ago to be able to verify such a thing. Somehow, though, they were moving forward. Even if they wanted to, they didn’t know if they could stop, with momentum pushing them as it was.

Everything was riding on this. Days of keeping ahead, of leading the chase. If they stopped moving for just a moment, it would all be wasted.

And their life would be over. If they stopped running now, there would be no Villain left.

In that instant, they understood what it was to be a rabbit. When there was a fox on your tail, there were no do overs. No second chances. It was run or die.

As long as they could, they were going to run.

Villain couldn’t remember the name of the building in which they had managed to find the briefest of respites. Despite its sprawling size, there was nothing truly remarkable about it. Perhaps it did not have a name in the first place. At some point, it had been some sort of industrial complex-- the home of half a dozen separate companies, each clashing and butting up against one another.

Yet, the structure had long since been left to rot. They had a feeling that mold clinging to every corner had something to do with that.

Just a week ago, they would never have dreamed of so much as going someplace like this. The air smelled rotten, and breathing it left a sour taste sticking to their tongue. Not to mention the fact that several animals of varying size and danger had already claimed the rotten complex as their home.

But, they weren’t the same Villain they had been a week ago. Stumbling upon the building had felt like a gift from above, and, the night prior, they’d managed to get some honest-to-god rest among its sodden carpeting.

It was the most rest they’d gotten in days, despite the fact that, halfway through it, they’d awoken to a diseased rat with its teeth buried in their forearm. They’d had worse awakenings.

After shooing away the animal, they’d managed to sleep an hour or so more. Then came the worse of their two awakenings, that night.

The shouting voices of heroes.

Villain didn’t know how they’d found them. There was no trace, no trail. They had no vehicle-- instead moving through the woods on foot. ‘On foot’ was quite literal in that instance, considering the fact that they’d lost their shoes three days ago to a patch of quickmud.

But, still, they’d been found.

They didn’t no how long ago it was, that they’d been awakened by those voices. With the darkened building’s clocks hanging stubbornly on the wrong minute and hour, there was no way to tell how long it had been.

How long they’d been running...

Villain skidded around a corner, hissing as their foot caught on an uprooted carpet tack. Had they been this way before? It was impossible to tell-- all the halls looked the same.

The halls repeated, just as the heroes’ footsteps did.

How were they not tired?

Maybe because they’d eaten. And slept. And had water.

Villain had found that stream the other day, though...

Everything about them seemed to be repeating. The walls. The footsteps.

The lies of the heroes.

“Just stop running! We don’t want to hurt you!”

They couldn’t count just how many times they’d heard those words. Lies. Of course they were lies! Or, perhaps, it was their own sick attempt at a joke. We don’t want to hurt you, we just want to kill you!

Villain wasn’t ready to die. Not just yet.

Another corner was taken with haste, and their nostrils were overwhelmed with the scents of rust and oil.

The garage was massive-- reaching further upwards than the shreds of sunlight filtering through dusty windows could reach with their furthest rays. Its concrete floor stretched out, seemingly, all the way to the horizon-- dotted only by support beams, and whatever scattered machinery and supplies the company had not deemed valuable enough to bring along.

The source of the scent of gasoline was quite rapidly made apart. Stacked haphazardly in the corner, red gas containers stood. Their reek alone made it well known that they were far from empty.

But the gas was far from Villain’s main concern regarding the garage.

In the past few days, they had become awfully good at finding exits. It was with a ruthless instinct that they scanned the room for one.

But, in the end, they reached a terrifying conclusion.

There was one exit. It was the same door as the entrance. The garage doors on the other side of the chamber had long since been chained shut, and there was no time for lockpicking.

The heroes flooded in.

It was with an exhausted hopelessness and steadfast stubbornness that they kept running forth. Of course, with their terrible luck, they did not make it very far. A rebar pipe caught their toes, sending them sprawling onto the concrete, pain shrieking from a thousand different, tiny wounds.

For a few seconds, Villain let themself breathe. They figured that, at the very least, they should let themself enjoy their last moments alive.

Their relaxation did not last long. They refused to die laying down. Trembling from exhaustion, pain, starvation, dehydration, and terror, all at once, they staggered to their feet. For a moment, their vision blurred, before solidifying once more.

Half a dozen heroes fanned out before the entrance, guarding it ruthlessly. Faux looks of concern painted their countenances.

From the array of aches and pains swarming Villain, a single one, all at once, made itself known. Something pressing up against their leg.

Their lighter.

Their trembling gaze flicked to the pile of glimmering red gas cans. It was behind them-- only a few steps back. If they could just...

“Villain!” The person in the front of the group called out-- Hero. “There’s nowhere else to go. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. You just need to come with us. You can’t survive like this much longer, you know that!”

No. What they couldn’t survive was the heroes.

But, they didn’t have to.

Villain took a step back, inching towards the pile.

“Come on, buddy!” Another hero called. “What are you so afraid of?”

It was the heroes who should be afraid. Another step back.

“There’s nowhere to run, Villain.” Hero spoke once more. “Just come with us. No harm will come to you, I swear to it.”

No.

Villain wasn’t ready to die. Not today.

They took the final step, until they were mere inches from the pile. With a well-placed kick, and a horrible clattering, the cans toppled from their precarious pyramid. The reek of gas grew tenfold as brown liquid spilled out, onto the concrete below.

Stepping back from the gasoline-- they were ready to go, not just yet-- they reached into their pocket. The heroes had no time to identify the object they pulled out. By the time they realized what had happened, the lighter had already been thrown.

The flame leapt into the air with such force that Villain was thrown back, tossed to the concrete like a ragdoll.

The faux compassion on the heroes faces turned to an emotion that was very, very real.

Fear.

Spreading so fast that its growth could be heard, the inferno pounced, grabbing onto the base of a wooden support beam and licking its way upwards.

“Everyone!” Hero shouted-- terror in their voice overpowered by sheer determination. “Get out! This building’s not stable.”

“W-what about you?”

“If I’m not out within five minutes, send someone in after me.”

“Are you certain?”

“We’re heroes. And, sometimes, that means saving villains, too.”

Despite their clear reluctance, the other heroes, one by one, nodded, allowing their terror to spur them to flee.

When the last of them was gone, only two remained in the garage. The villain and the hero.

Villain looked upwards, watching as the flame reached the top of the support beam and rippled onto the ceiling.

There were only two ways this could end. They knew that.

Either Hero lost their nerve and fled, allowing their prey to escape, or they both perished in the flames.

No matter which came to pass, there was only one thing that mattered:

They would not die by the hands of a hero.

“You’re scared.” Hero began. Another stupid speech. “I know. I know you’re scared. This last week has been hell for you, I know that. But it doesn’t have to go down like this. You can still make the right choice. 

Please. Come with me. I don’t want to hurt you. Believe it or not, I don’t want you to die!”

“You’re a bad liar, you know.” They croaked.

Villain’s lungs were already torn from gasping. The slowly-rising smoke only served to salt their wounds.

Before them, a flaming ceiling tile fell, spraying them with embers.

“You don’t want this! I know you don’t! You don’t want to die!”

“Why do you think I’m doing this?! Of course I don’t want to die, you fucking idiot!”

“Then come with me!”

“It’s like you don’t even hear yourself.”

The building shuddered as a support beam splintered and collapsed. The force of it sent Villain, once again, to the concrete, bathing their face in smoke. As they scrambled to their hands and knees, they could not help but let out a shuddering cough.

“Villain! Watch out!”

“Wh-”

The ceiling tile struck their head, burying them under its accompanying rubble.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

Warmth... and music.

They awoke to warmth, and music.

The first of the two came in the form of something soft, heavy, enveloping them, making them feel as though they were buried within a cloud. The music, too, seemed to surround them-- there were no words to it, just the soft, lulling tone of a piano, accompanied by the occasional splash of waves.

It was confusion that first whispered to Villain, when their leaden eyelids at last agreed to open. Above them sat an off-white sky, stretching out to meet with a light blue wall. They blinked once more.

Where...

The chase the heroes the running the building the gas the fire the rubble the-

Villain jolted upright, tossing off of themself a heavy, fleece blanket. Trembling fingers gripped the mattress below them as they scanned the world around, instincts kicking in, searching frantically for an exit.

The room was small, walls colored a soft, baby blue, and lit by a pair of lamps with warm, orange bulbs. The few items of furniture were made of a light brown wood-- three small nightstands, two in corners, and one next to the bed in which Villain lay.

Next to one of the stands was placed a small writing desk and chair, while the other was accompanied by a potted plant, petals just starting to emerge from its buds. Embedded in one wall, a window stood, a small radio perched upon its sill.

The door was at the room’s far end, next to their bed. A wooden door with brass handle-- easy to break down.

But guarded.

Before the door, a figure stood-- a person dressed in a bright flannel, from the breast pocket of which stuck an overabundance of pens.

They did not look particularly strong, but, then again, neither did Villain. At the sound of their movement, the figure turned to face them, a smile growing upon their round face.

“I didn’t even notice you waking up.” They hummed. “Good morning.”

There were two options for escape: The door or the window. Neither was particularly desirable, but they had to choose one...

“Hey, buddy.” The stranger’s voice felt almost as warm as the fleece blanket. “You’re looking a bit like a deer in the headlights, there. I’m sure this is all a bit overwhelming, and I’m sure you’re pretty confused. I’d be confused too, trust me.”

No. There was no confusion in Villain’s mind. They were focused on one thing, the only thing that mattered: Getting out of here!

The flannel-wearing figure took a few steps towards the bed. In instinctual panic, the villain scrambled to their hands and knees, shuffling backwards until their spine was flush with the headboard.

“Hey, hey, shhh.” They hushed. “I’m sorry I scared you. I’ll stay right back here, okay?”

“L-Let me out of here!”

The figure frowned.

“Bud, I’m not sure that you’d last another day out there. Not in the state Hero found you in.”

Hero. Of course they were working for Hero.

“I’ll explain everything, alright bud? But let’s just start here. My name’s Doctor. What’s yours?”

Villain only then noticed that they were shaking like a leaf. Whatever this method of torture or interrogation or whatever it is was, they wanted no part in it. They just wanted to go home! To get out! Warm bed or not, this was a prison. They were sure of it.

But, the bed was comfortable, and there wasn’t a single rat in sight...

“How about this...” Doctor coaxed. “You tell me your name, and I’ll tell you what’s going on, okay?”

A trade. Information for information.

Was it worth it? They supposed there was little use in lying.

“V-Villain. My name’s Villain.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Villain.”

“Now, wh-what is this p-place?”

Doctor nodded.

“This is the Supervillain Memorial Villainous Recovery Center. We’re in the city, right by the river. Next to the botanical gardens, if you know where that is.”

They were really telling them the location of their prison? Surely it would have been better to keep such a thing secret. That is, assuming they were telling the truth.

“I believe you’ve been asleep for about... seventeen hours.” Doctor glanced to their watch. “Yep, just about. You’ve been here for maybe half that time. After you got caught in the fire, Hero brought you to the hospital. They bandaged your wounds and brought you here. I hope you slept well.”

Villain almost laughed at that, before a realization struck them. They had slept well. Sure, remnants of the specter of fatigue still haunted them, but for the first time in days, they felt awake enough to think clearly.

But, this was still a prison.

Right?

Prisons didn’t usually have soft beds and fleece blankets, but...

No. It was a trick. This was a prison, and they were a prisoner.

“Let me go.” Villain insisted, though it was halfhearted. “Y-You can’t keep me here! I’m leaving. I need to leave!”

Doctor frowned again, biting their lower lip.

“I’m sorry, Villain, but for now, you’re going to have to stay here. But, I promise, you’ll like it here.” They sighed. “I know you’re scared, and confused, and a thousand other things. But, here, you’re safe. There’s other people here-- quite a few of them, in fact. And, at one point, they were all like you. But ask any one of them. This is the best place for you to be.”

Other people?

“Where are they? W-What are you doing to them?!”

Doctor smiled.

“They’re in our main wing, right now. I believe everyone is eating lunch right about now. I don’t know about you, but where I come from, lunch isn’t a form of torture.”

Villain pursed their lips.

“Then, where am I?”

“This is our arrivals wing. You’re going to stay here, for a few days. Until you’re comfortable, and we can make sure all that smoke is out of your lungs. Then you can join in with everyone else. I’m gonna move over to the side of the bed now, okay? I won’t touch you.”

Even with the warning, Villain couldn’t help but flinch as Doctor approached. They moved to the nightstand at the bed’s side, plucking a small, red box from its surface.

“Hero told me to give this to you, when you got up. It’s not exactly the most nutritious thing to start your day off with, but I think you deserve something tasty.”

They offered the box. After a moment of hesitance, Villain snapped it from their hands, drawing it close to their chest. Was it a threat? Some kind of warning? Morbid curiosity took hold of them, prompting them to open the box’s lid.

Chocolates.

A dozen chocolates, laid out in the design of a star.

“I can eat these?”

“Go ahead.”

Without hesitance, this time, they popped one of the candy pieces into their mouth. Its flavor overwhelmed them, strong enough to nearly knock them over. It’d been days since they’d eaten anything that didn’t come off a bush or from the dumpster.

“Um...” Villain looked back up, closing the box. “So, when are you going to kill me?”

Doctor laughed.

“Hero will be visiting tomorrow. With how long they can talk for, I think you’re only in danger of dying of boredom.”

This was a prison. Of course it was.

Yet, as they glanced down at the box of chocolates, they could not help but forget all thought of panic and escape.

[confused-bi-queer]

You know what breaks me about AWTWB?? How much Simon talked about the Mage.

I don’t remember if he does as well on WS, but it was something that was always ringing in my head while reading AWTWB. Even at the begging with Dr. Wellbelove or when Baz heard that Simon used the Mage’s money to pay for their flat. Simon’s head was going back to the Mage at certain moments.

And, in reality, Simon was always attached to the Mage. So, I do understand him.

Picture this first. I had a boyfriend who broke my heart and stepped on me and I let him. I always let him back and break my down to dust and I liked that he hurted me because I least I felt something. For me and for Baz, pain was better than nothing. And this guy entered to my life for short periods of time for the past three years and then left with no words. It wrecked me. But, I talk about him all the time. For a lot of things. But mostly because he was decent with me and I glorified him for it. And my friends always told me to stop talking about him or to let him go or get over him. He’s had two girlfriends since we broke up and I’m still recovering from the heartbreak.

What does my breakup assemble to Simon?

Because he doesn’t stop thinking or talking about the guy that hurt him the most!

Sure, the magic, the care homs, even Baz’s antagonism. But it’s the Mage that sticks with him.

Look at this:

“I know I’ll never love anyone like I love Baz. I know he’s the love of my life. Of all my lives. The Mage believed in reincarnation. Of a thousand lives stacked on top of each other. “Some lives we squander,” he said. “Some lives we seize.” This was my life to find love. The truest one. The biggest.”

AWTWB, Rainbow Rowell.

See????? We get this huge declaration that Simon doesn’t only love Baz, he believes he’s the love of his life. That’s a huge deal!! But he manages to put the Mage into it. Because what he has suffered due to the Mage has given him trauma. In reality, the Mage is what keep Simon from having intimacy with Baz, so, for me, it’s obvious that Simon brings him up in those cases.

The Mage has been an influence in Simon in every way. But he made Simon, Simon.

I would like Simon to be mentally healthy and to be happy and have his family and a happy life, but sadly, those traumas or in spite of them, Simon is the canon one. The bravery. The Chosen One, saviour complex. The “don’t like whisper on me”. The killer. I wish Simon didn’t have that big body count, but he does.

Still.

Bare with me.

I remember one thing in WS.

Remember when they got into a death spot on the US and Baz got groped? The “i’d be dammed if I let this weird thing feel up my boyfriend in front of me” thing? Chapter 28.

Simon constantly brings up the Mage. The Mage this, the Mage that. In the whole book, honestly. I believe he brings up the Mage all the time, in all three books, idk.

Well, on chapter 28, we see how much rough and a killer or a fighter Simon is. He’s waiting for a fight, for gunshots. He’s waiting for things out of his comfort place to be danger. He didn’t trust Lamb and he was right. This or that. Simon talks about the things the Mage taught him and how it has helped me. And the worst is that the bastard was kind of right. But isn’t it sad that Simon has those knwoledge since he was a kid?? Maximum, he learned all of that at 17. MAX.

Imagine 11 yo Simon holding the Sword of Mages. Imagine the Mage not only telling him that he’s the WoM savior, but also learning how to kill, how to injured, how to break a neck (when he tells Baz that maybe he has to show him how to do it in WS) or how to cut someone’s throat (when they go haunting rats on AWTWB and Simon asks Baz how he cuts their necks).

YES, the Mage is a dick and no fucking kid or person should have those knowledges, that’s what it hurts me. Imagine Simon that young. Simon who likes sour cherry scones. Simon whose roommate was also a dick. Simon who probably was -is- neurodivergent. That poor kid.

So, I get why Simon brings up the Mage and his learnings all the time.

Because even though the Mage hurt him, it was one of Simon’s constant. Baz says he used to copy his manners. We know Simon cares because imagine you’re on your own your whole life. No parents. No one that cares. And one day, someone comes and put your out of your pain. And shows you magic. And tells you you’re magic!!! And kind of adopts you so you can go to a magic school!! Gives you a sword!! And a wand!!! And turns out that you’re important!!!!

So, yeah, that’s sad.

I despise the Mage and I hope he suffers in all those lives he talked about, but yeah.

Let Simon talk about whoever he wants whenever he wants. He deserves it.

[fuck-goes-on]

Honour

pairing/s: past din djarin x gn! reader because you’re dead

summary: din visits you after a long, long time and bringing grogu along to introduce him to you

warning/s: DECEASED READER (you’re dead, you’re gone, you’re nada), grief, mourning, angst, crying, big hurt but also big comfort, bittersweet, helmet removal, and you’re dead

note/s: somewhat a continuation and sequel to Creed!! this idea was on the whim, like i just thought WHAT IF- and now we’re here LOL this is uh third person omnipresent because i wanted to include what grogu was thinking and feeling KEK

masterlist

Why he came back, he didn't know. Or maybe he didn't want to know. Maybe he already knew but refused to acknowledge it.

As the Razor Crest descended from the sky and landed in a forest, there was a coo coming from behind him. He turned around to see Grogu tilting his head like he did whenever he was confused or questioning something. The kid was silently asking him why they were there with his big eyes, when his distress and upset was obvious.

Din sighed and stood up from the pilot's seat, reaching to carry Grogu up in his arms. His steps were heavier than usual with heart ache as they walked out of the ship. His ad'ika perked up and looked around in wonder, admiring the tall, green trees and the sunlight filtering through the leaves. It was beautiful to the child.

But not to Din.

Din brought him and his child back at the planet where he lost everything. The planet where he lost his life. The planet where he lost his soul. The planet where he lost his love. The planet where he lost his heart. The planet where he lost you.

Flashes of your smile went through his head each time he stepped on twigs and leaves. Flashes of those three fucking knives went through his head each time the light hit his eyes. Flashes of his arms holding your dead body went through his head as he slowly walked to your grave.

Grogu's ears drooped down as he felt his buir's hurt. He knew that his buir had dark memories on the pretty planet, knew that being there caused him to retreat into his self-loathing thoughts; He just didn't understand why. Why were they there? Why does his buir always put himself through pain and agony?

It all came to light as Din stopped in front of a mound of dirt covered in grass and wildflowers. Rocks stacked on rocks surrounded the mound and were weathered and aged with moss and cracks. Your name was still visible where it was carved into the largest rock at the top of the grave.

Din fell on his knees, clutching at Grogu so tightly that he squeaks loudly in surprise. His mind was racing with the days when you were the one who was beside him during his travels across the galaxy. When you were the one who made him smile so much the clan would think you were a sorcerer. When you were the one who soothed his nightmares and cries. When you were the one he took care of and the one who took care of him.

Not that he didn't love Grogu, maker above he loved his kid so much that he brought the womp rat with him to see you after so many years. Or, what he left of you.

Placing the kid down on the ground beside him, Din took a moment to just wallow in his hurt, to just let himself be overwhelmed with the negative emotions he pushed away and ignored ever since you passed. Back then, he would've surely lost his mind if he let your death suffocate him into his own demise, but now— Now he has his kid with him. His ad'ika that could have had another buir if you were still alive.

Grogu clawed at Din's cuisse, trying to get his attention as he climbed up on his lap. His buir didn't react, however, and that made him worried. He frantically scraped his claws on the shiny surface of buir's armour, the beskar strong enough that it didn't leave a single mark. When all he could feel was pain and heartbreak in the midst of emptiness, Grogu opened his mouth and wailed as loudly as he could.

Din snapped out of his spiralling thoughts and craddled Grogu back on his chest. His ad'ika whimpered sadly and scratched at his helmet, wanting to see his face. Removing his helmet was still a challenge to do, only having taken it off once and that was when— But he's slowly getting used to removing it for Grogu, for his clan of two.

As his buir bared his face for him to see, Grogu felt his usual smile of seeing his handsome father fall at the sight of his tears streaming down his cheeks. He raised his clawed hand to try and wipe the offending liquid away, and hopefully it would wipe away his buir's sadness too.

Din smiled weakly at his son's attempts at comforting him, at the touch of his son's hand. You would've loved him, he thinks to himself. You would've been a better parent than him, a hardened mandalorian bounty hunter, with your teasing and caring nature.

You would've.

Grogu complained out loud when he was placed down once more but quietened when Din looked at him. He pouted and fell on his butt, sitting with his back to his buir. A large, gloved hand rested on his head and stroked him lightly.

"Grogu..." Din said at last, smiling once more when his ad'ika swiveled his head towards him in response. Holding back his sniffles, he points to the rock that carried your name. "I'd like you to meet your other buir. My riduur."

The kid made a noise of confusion, turning to look at the mound and scrutinising it in his gaze. Blowing a raspberry, Grogu looked back at his buir unimpressed. He doesn't get it; How can he have another buir when he already has one?

"My ka'rta, my lover," The mandalorian gently explained, "They are clan even if they are gone." Din grimaced as his mind kindly reminded him of that fateful day you fell. He could see Grogu work it out in his little toddler brain, trying to understand what he said, if he could understand Din at all. But, soon, his son's eyes brightened and stared at the mound with a renewed light.

Din watched as Grogu shakily stood up on his little feet and walked closer to your grave. The womp rat tilted his head left and right, flexing his tiny hands before flopping face down on the ground. He sat up in concern for his child, almost picking the kid up to see if he was alright, but before he could, the kid wiggled his whole body vigorously. It didn't occur to him what Grogu was doing, and when it did, he almost goddamn broke down.

Grogu was hugging the mound of dirt, letting his face get buried in the patches of grass and wildflowers. His claws were flapping and hitting the ground like how he would hit Din when he's happy in his arms. He wiggled around for a moment until he found a comfortable place and curled up, cooing loudly.

The sight made Din crumble down and cry. Tears were uncontrollable as they cascaded down from his eyes. Feelings of happiness and sadness filled his whole being; Happy because Grogu accepted you as his buir so quickly after knowing who you were for a minute, but sad because you would never know his child— your child.

Laying down beside the grave, Din turned his body to face Grogu who was slowly drifting off into sleep. He wondered if his ad'ika could see his memories of you, if his ad'ika could somehow feel you. As he reached out to caress Grogu's back, it was almost easy to imagine you laying there on the grass with them, smiling brightly at both him and the kid and humming softly under your breath. It was almost easy to imagine you holding Grogu in your arms as you curled into Din's.

It was almost easy to imagine.

BONUS:

You murmured stories of your adventures with Din to the sleeping child on top of you, hovering your hands over his little body comfortingly. It surprised you when the child saw you, and more so when the child understood who you were. You turned your head to look at your husband, drinking in his aged but still handsome face. Reaching out to cradle his cheek in the palm of your hand, your soul hurting when you remembered you couldn't touch him.

You settled with just watching your lover fall asleep next to your son, next to you.

It was easy to imagine.

general taglist: @stillshelbs @pedroepascal @pedrocentric (oomf and kitty im tagging u because i want u to cry with me)

[shipping-kitchen]

Sweet Burning Pleasure

Kinktober, Day One: Sex Pollen/Aphrodisiacs

Fandom: Resident Evil VIII

Pairing: Lady Dimitrescu/Female Reader

Words: 4,500

Warnings: body horror, really dubious consent/non-consensual, aphrodisiacs, the reader definitely thinks she’s going to die for most of the fic, lots of blood and blood drinking and vampire things, explicit sex, graphic descriptions of cuts and blood

Summary:  You are a maid in the Dimitrescu Castle, doing your best to keep your head down and survive. You eventually catch the attention of the Lady of the castle.

Important Note: I’m posting my Kinktober one-shots daily on tumblr, unedited! Eventually I’ll edit them and post them on AO3, but for now this is the first draft, and I hope you enjoy it ^-^

You were well aware that working at the Dimitrescu Castle was tantamount to a death sentence, but when Mother Miranda asked for new women to volunteer… it was an honour to be recognized by her. It would guarantee that your parents would eat well for the coming winter. The years in the village had stretched on, and you knew that your chances of staying on the farm were slim. Too many of your childhood friends had already been ushered away, to experiments and servitude to the Lords that surrounded the town.

You could become a wife in the town, produce more children to continue the cycle, but you couldn’t stomach the idea of marrying one of the men that you had grown up beside. Better to step forward, volunteer as a maid, accept the new dress that was sent your way, pack your scant belongings, and hug your parents goodbye as you began the walk towards the castle that loomed above your village.

You were wearing the dress that had been given to you when you were chosen: a grey dress that gathered at the waist and then flared out around your legs, falling to just below your knees. Paired with the apron that rested overtop, it was more elegant than the clothes you grew up with, but still clearly the clothes of a servant.

Your bag bumped against your shoulder blades as you walked through the gates, leaving your village behind. It was early Spring, and the vineyards were beginning to fill with greenery. The lattices surrounded you, the scent of fresh soil and new growth almost covering the decay of the scarecrows that hung around the path.

It was easier to look at the slowly growing vines than to face forward and the castle doors becoming larger as you drew towards it. Your heart was pounding, anxiety prickling on the back of your neck and the tips of your fingers. No one ever came back from the castle, and you had no idea what was waiting for you inside.

All too soon, your feet were climbing the stone steps towards the main doors. You paused in front of them, fixing the folds of your dress and pressing your hair back into place. Then you took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

It was long seconds before the door opened, revealing another woman in a similar grey dress. It wasn’t someone from the village, which didn’t surprise you. All of the Lords hired foreigners, the village not enough to staff their needs. She was an older woman, her hair beginning to grey.

You curtseyed, a small bobbing movement.

“I’m the new maid, ma’am. Sent from the village.”

“Well, come inside.” The woman stepped back and you obediently stepped inside, trying not to flinch as the huge door was shut behind you. “What’s your name, girl?”

The main hall of the castle was resplendent and golden. A large painting of three women was illuminated across the hall. There were delicate vases and intricate designs everywhere you looked. You told the woman your name, occupied with gazing around the hall in awe. You had never seen such splendor, and it filled you with both fear and anticipation.

“Hmm. Well, I’m the housekeeper, Ms. Matheski. You’ll take your orders from me. Welcome to Castle Dimitrescu.”

--

You had expected life at the castle to be something out of a horror movie, abstract ideas of dark hallways and boarded up rooms. The truth was much different: life at the castle was hard work.

There were dozens of rooms, and you had to prepare each one on a rotating schedule. There were sheets to wash in the river, fireplaces to clean out, mantels to polish, floors to mop. Every day, you worked hard and collapsed into bed for a deep sleep.

You rarely saw the mistresses of the castle, dressed all in black and cackling as they walked down the halls together. All of the servants knew to get out of the way when their voices came down the hallway. No one discussed the red crusted around the mistresses’ mouths, but everyone knew. The servants cleaned out the goblets, after all.

Sometimes, you encountered Lady Dimitrescu. While her daughters announced themselves with their raucous conversation, the lady of the house moved with an unpredictable silence. Many times, you were on your knees in front of a fireplace, covered in ashes, when you looked up to see Lady Dimitrescu behind you, watching your work.

The first time it had happened, you had scrambled to your feet, dropping to your lowest curtsey. Your eyes on the ground, you waited. Her presence was all-encompassing: she was so large, and in her white dress, unlike anything else in the castle.

Lady Dimistrecu had laughed and told you to continue working. On her way out of the room, she had touched her fingers to the top of your head, and your knees had gone weak from fear. And then she was gone, and you collapsed back in front of the fireplace.

Since then, you had gotten used to the Lady’s presence, and the way she came and went, overseeing everyone’s work. Those who made mistakes were the ones to disappear: you made sure that you listened carefully and double-checked your work.

And so you survived, into the winter.

--

Winter in the castle was different: the fires were kept blazing, more wood being ordered from the village almost daily. The windows were boarded up, to keep out the cold. Before, the Dimitrescu daughters had come and gone from the castle, but now they remained in their rooms, more sullen and more likely to lash out.

You kept working, you kept your head down. You did your best to avoid the daughters and please the Lady. Ms. Matheski was never displeased with your work, but she wasn’t warm with any of the girls who worked in the castle. You didn’t blame her.

One day, you had been assigned to the main hall. The main hall had to be cleaned daily, unlike the other rooms, and it was a dangerous assignment. Lady Dimitrescu was picky about the banister, and the daughters often came through the main hall on their way from their rooms. The winter was dragging on, and the mistresses were restless. Daniella, especially, had taken to tormenting the maids: tearing their clothes, throwing rats at them while they worked, and occasionally dragging them off to the lower levels, where you had never been asked to work.

You made your way into the main hall cautiously, entering through the servant door. It was empty, and you got down to work. The fireplace was first, cleaned out and then refilled with new wood and lit again. The castle was kept at a warmth that was almost stifling in winter, but you knew better than to complain.

Once the fire was lit, you turned your attention to the dishes that had been left on the table in the hall. The daughters liked to dine here, and often left a mess. It would take you several trips across the castle to the kitchen to clear the table, so it was best to get started.

You gathered up the first stack of dishes and made off, your dress swirling around your legs as you made your way down the familiar hallways. You tried not to let them rattle, cautious of drawing attention to yourself, and breathed a sigh of relief when you reached the kitchen without incident.

“Dishes from the main hall,” you told the maid washing dishes. “More to come.”

She nodded in acknowledgement and you headed back out the door, your soft leather shoes making no noise on the carpeted hallway as you went back to the main hall.

When you entered the hall, you froze. Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters were all in the hall, warming themselves in front of the fire you had recently lit. Bela was reclining against her mother’s chest, her sisters’ heads resting on their mother’s legs. It was a relaxed tableau, and not something you felt that you should be present for.

But Lady Dimistrecu was already looking towards the door as you stepped in, so you dropped into a hasty curtsy and reached behind yourself for the door.

“Please, continue,” the Lady commanded, waving her hand towards you. “The table needs clearing.”

“Yes, my Lady,” you said, hearing your voice come out quiet and hesitant. You clenched your jaw against your own hesitation, and walked towards the table. You could feel the eyes of the daughters upon you. You only hoped that their closeness with their mother would be enough to keep them content.

You gathered the plates and the goblets, trying to keep your hands from shaking. You could do this, despite the eyes on you. You could do this.

Distracted by your fear and the prickling awareness of your watchers, you picked up one of the knives the wrong way, and felt hot pain shoot through your palm.

You inhaled, but made no sound of pain, and forced yourself not to jerk back. Instead, you calmly placed the knife on the stack of plates with the others, and picked up the stack.

When you turned, Cassandra was standing directly in front of you. You had never seen one of the daughters this close, and it was immediately apparent that there was something wrong with her eyes. It looked like there was something moving inside the darkness of her pupils.

You refused to flinch backwards. Fear crawled up your spine, but you stood still. You held the plates steady. Your palm was burning where you had cut it.

Cassandra’s hand shot out and wrapped around your wrist.

Despair grew around you. This was sure to be the end, no matter how careful you had been.

She pulled your hand forward, and there was no resisting her grip. The plates slipped from your grasp and shattered on the floor at your feet.

Your palm was splayed upwards, and you could see how shallow the cut had been. Only a few beads of blood were brought to the surface, tiny droplets along a jagged line where the knife had dug into your skin.

An unnatural whine came from Cassandra’s chest, more like a cicada’s song than a human voice. She leaned towards your palm, and you closed your eyes, unwilling to watch.

There was a growl and then a harsh tug as Cassandra’s hand was pulled off your wrist. You pulled your hand back to your chest, opening your eyes to see Bela tussling with Cassandra on the floor, both of them making a strange growling-whining noise.

“Mine,” Cassandra hissed.

“Mine,” Bela growled back, and slammed her hand through her sister’s head. Insects exploded around her arm, twining up towards Bela’s face, and both of them dissolved into a swarm of struggling insects. As they fought, you took two steps back, and then pelted towards one of the further doors.

You didn’t expect to make it, but somehow, the door was closing behind you and you were still running, following the winding hallways back to your room. You slammed the door to your room and leaned against it, panting.

You could feel your heartbeat drumming against your ribs and your temples, your hand clenched in a fist around the cut that had started the fight. You knew, logically, that you aren’t safe here. This room was just another part of their castle, it would be easy enough to find you.

But you were in your own space. No one had ever come into this room while you’d been here. It was your safety in the castle. A place where you had never felt afraid. The fear was already beginning to fade, even as you struggled to hold onto it. Should you run? Would they forget? Would their mother blame you for their fight?

You unclenched your hand and looked at the cut again. The blood was already beginning to dry. You knew you should clean it, your hands still ashy from the fireplace. There was a washbasin in your room and you moved towards it, dipping your hands into the cold water. It came from the well outside the castle, and while it was boiled for the Lady’s baths and morning toilette, it was still cold for your own basin. It grounded you, washed away the last of the adrenaline. You watched the ashes swirl into the water. There wasn’t enough blood to turn the water pink. Such a small cut.  

Surely it would be easily forgotten.

As you dried your hands, there was a knock on your door. One, two, three raps, and then silence.

The fear returned, a lump in your throat as you moved towards the door. There were no windows in your room, no escape from whatever waited on the other side. A disappointed housekeeper, a curious maid, a murderous mistress…

You put your hand on the doorknob, inhaled, and opened the door.

White fabric greeted you, falling in elegant ripples to the ground.

“Hello, my pet,” said Lady Dimitrescu. “May I come in?”

You stumbled back, unable to deny her. She bent to enter your room, her hat brushing the edges of the doorway. Like her daughters, she was pale as moonlight. When she straightened, she was very close to the ceiling. The servant’s quarters lacked the high ceilings of the rest of the house, not made with the Lady of the house in mind.

“I’m sorry, my Lady,” you managed. “I didn’t mean to drop the plates.”

“Mmm. My daughters are impatient. I don’t blame you for the accident.” Lady Dimitrescu reached towards you, and you allowed it. Her hand wrapped around your wrist, just as Cassandra had held you earlier, but the scale was different. Her palm cupped your entire wrist, her fingers wrapping up your arm to the elbow. You had never felt so small, so helpless, so delicate. “I’ve spoken with them.”

“I… thank you.” Your body was thrumming with a mixture of fear, hope, and contact. Her fingertips rested delicately on the inside of your arm, against the veins.

“You are a rare delight,” Lady Dimitrescu murmured. “You caught my daughters off-guard.” Gently, she turned your palm upwards to show the faint line where the knife had cut. Her thumb traced the mark, expression going hazy for a moment. “You surprised me as well.”

“My Lady?” you asked, unsure what to make of her attention. You tried pulling your hand back, and her grip tightened on your arm, sudden enough to make you gasp. Her eyes snapped upwards to meet your gaze, and she looked hungry.

“It’s been a long winter, my dear,” Lady Dimitrescu said, as if it were a confession, as if this were a conversation, as if she were not holding you in place. “The wine is sweet, but you… are almost certainly sweeter.”

That was enough for you to know where this was going. You pushed yourself backwards, trying to wrench your arm from Lady Dimitrescu’s grasp, but it was no use. Her fingers were like marble on your wrist, solid and unbreaking.

“Hush, my pet.”

Her other hand wrapped around the back of your neck, and you heard yourself make a short sound of fear. Instinct made you freeze in place, your nape cradled in her palm. Her fingers rested on your collarbones. She was leaning down above you, and her eyes were so dark and hungry.

“It will not hurt,” Lady Dimitrescu whispered.

And then her lips were on your neck, and she was lying, it hurt, soft lips and sharp teeth and then searing pain up and down your spine. You could hear yourself crying out, you could hear the sound of her licking the blood from the bite mark. It was wet and wrong and you couldn’t free yourself from her grasp, no matter how you squirmed in her arms.

It seemed like forever before the pain began to dull, still radiating along your shoulder and back. The ache drew inwards and became almost unimportant. Lady Dimitrescu’s arms were strong around you. You could let your body relax, and still she held you close to her. Your blood had stained the white satin of the arm she held behind your head, keeping your neck steady as she fed. You could feel her lips and tongue, teasing the ragged holes made by her teeth, keeping the blood flowing. But somehow, it just didn’t hurt. You found yourself eased by her closeness, the certainty of her hold on your body.

Between one breath and the next, Lady Dimitrescu drew back with one last kiss to your wounds. She looked like her daughters now, crimson all around her lips and dripping down her chin, messy and dark. She groaned as she looked down at you, her gaze flickering from your neck to your eyes and back again.

You still felt like unable to move. Lady Dimitrescu was holding you, and there was no need to go anywhere. Your limbs were too heavy, even if you had wanted to. You blinked up at her, dazed by the hunger that still burned in her eyes after her meal.

Gently, Lady Dimitrescu lifted you into her arms like a child, cradling your head and hips. She laid you down on the bed, traced a finger through the ruined skin where she had bit you.

“As sweet as any fruit before Mother’s gift,” the Lady whispered, kneeling beside the bed. “You are exquisite.”

You wanted to touch the blood on her lips, but your hand only lifted slightly when you tried to move it.

She smiled at the movement, took your hand in hers. Again, you felt like a doll between her palms, so all-encompassing.

“Let me give you a gift of my own, my sweet.” You watched Lady Dimitrescu reach up and take off her hat, tossing it carelessly to the other side of the room. Her hair was held in a low coil behind her head, and she pulled the elastics from it, letting the waves fall over her shoulders. From the centre of the coil, she extracted a narrow blade. It was silver, delicate carvings on the blade flashing in the low lights of your room.

The Lady of the castle always wore gloves, but now she took them off and put them on your bedside table. Beneath the leather gloves, her hands were grey and white lines like marble spread beneath her skin. She rolled up one blood-soaked sleeve of her dress, and you saw that the white and grey lines went all the way up her body. Glancing at her face, from so close to her, it was clear that she was wearing some kind of makeup to make her appear pale like her daughters.

Lady Dimitrescu brought the blade down on her own arm, and you watched it cut through her skin. You half-expected the blood to be grey, but it was as red as your own.

She held her arm over your mouth, and you felt the warm droplets drip onto your lips. Soon your lips would look just as scarlet as hers.

“Open up, my pet,” Lady Dimitrescu told you, a smile in her voice.

Obediently, you parted your lips, and the blood met your tongue. It didn’t taste like metal and copper, as it did when you bit your lip. This was rich and full and thick, burning in your throat like whiskey when you swallowed it.

“Good.”

She watched you drink, your blood on her lips and hers on your own. The burning in your throat spread to your stomach and then out to the tips of your toes and your fingers, even your scalp prickling with sudden warmth. The dull ache of your neck went away, and when Lady Dimitrescu passed her fingers over the bitemark again, you felt that the holes are gone, your skin whole and healed. Her fingers still came back red with blood, though, which she licked from her fingertips with clear enjoyment.

Too soon, her arm healed and the blood stopped. You opened your mouth, silently asking for more, and she laughed at you, a low chuckle that made the burning even worse.

Then she leaned down and pressed her lips to yours.

There was the familiar taste of your own blood, thin and metallic. There was the unfamiliar feeling of lips against yours, prompting and playing. Her teeth nipped at your lip, and you returned the favour. She hummed approval, and you brought your hands up to run your fingers through her hair. You hadn’t noticed when the heaviness had left your body, but now every atom of you was screaming that you want to be closer to her.

Your Lady pressed into the kiss, overwhelming you for a moment. There was so much to think about, tongue and teeth and lips and the silken feeling of her hair. Her fingers were cupping your chin, changing the angle of the kiss, trailing down your neck to caress your collarbones.

The light touches were setting your body on fire, pressing up to get more contact. Lady Dimitrescu obliged, curling herself over you. Her knees rested low on the bed, her arms wrapped around you, the bed complaining under your combined weight. She was a solid wall of fabric brushing against your chest, your hips, and you wanted to be closer.

Lady Dimitrescu broke from the kiss and you moved on instinct, pressing your lips to the corner of her jaw. She tilted her head, giving you access, and you kissed down the elegant curve of her neck. When the need for more pressed at you again, you bit down on her neck. She moaned, and it was the most human sound you’d heard from her all night. You kissed and bit down to her shoulder, pushing the fabric of her dress out of the way.

You felt like you were out of your mind with this strange burning that flared through your body, needing something from her, needing everything from her. You tore satin in your quest for her skin, some still-rational part of your brain shocked at your audacity.

Grey skin stretched down her shoulders, marked with those same pale lines. She was warm under your lips, and you scraped her skin with your teeth. Lady Dimitrescu shifted against you, holding you closer, and you could hear her breathing unevenly.

At least you weren’t alone in this wild need. She was hungry for you, and you could taste it when she brought your lips back to hers, with new urgency.

“Please, my Lady,” you managed when she drew back. You didn’t know what you were begging for, and she was a work of art with her dress torn, hanging off one shoulder, blood and lipstick smeared across her chin.

“Yes,” Lady Dimistrescu said, her voice low. She leaned back and you whined at the loss of her warm presence, but then her hands were lifting your dress, effortlessly freeing you from its layers. The rush of air on your bare skin did nothing to cool the fire, and you grabbed for her wrists as she threw your dress carelessly across the room.

Only when Lady Dimitrescu’s hands were back on your bare skin did you relax, arching into the sensation. Her fingers are a little sharp, and she traced them delicately across the lines of your ribs, the soft rolls of your stomach, and then, teasing, across the curve of your breasts. You could feel your breath catch, helpless to stop yourself from pressing into the touch.

She practically purrs at that, leaning down to lick the remaining blood from your neck. Stopping to nibble your collarbone, she mouths down to the top of your breasts, cupping them and tracing their outline. It is a sublime torture as Lady Dimitrescu puts her mouth to you and you feel her tongue tracing around your swiftly hardening nipple.

You hear your voice crying out, hear your Lady humming her pleasure, feel her hands pinning down your hips. The air is cold: the sheets are soft: there is so much sensation racing through your body.

“Please,” you whisper, shuddering against her. “Please, please.”

And her hands run down from your hips, along the line of your outer thighs, and then delicately up the delicate inner thigh, making you squirm. She is close to where you’re soaking through your undergarments, so close and so far.

You’re panting, burning, moaning, and then her hands are finally on you, certain through the fabric. Her tongue, her fingers, you rock between them, overwhelmed.

Lady Dimitrescu slides your undergarments down without lifting her mouth from your breast and then you are bare to her, entirely. You can feel how wet you are when she runs her fingers across you. It’s too much and not enough.

Her touch leaves you for a moment, and you gasp for breath. When she touches you, it feels like the whole world narrows to her fingers and mouth. Without her, there is too much. The room is cold and you are still burning.

Lady Dimitrescu doesn’t make you wait long: she slides back on top of you, her knees caging your legs as she bends down to kiss you. She is too large for the bed, nearly bent in half to reach your mouth, a nightmare of grey skin and streaked blood, and she is everything you desire. She kisses with a demanding pace, and you return it.

Her fingers creep back up your inner thighs and you spread your legs as best you can. Your Lady is quick to return to your centre, starting slowly with her exploration. It brings the fire down for a moment, calm strokes along your folds, teasing brushes across your clit. Then the light touches begin to be too little, and you squirm under her. She draws back from the kiss to laugh again, and strokes you in earnest. Pleasure blooms from her fingers, and you lose track of your body. Your edges are dissolving into something greater, the only concrete part of you the place where her fingers are taking you apart.

She bites down again, this time just above your collarbone, and everything comes apart.

There are waves of awareness and pleasure, Lady Dimitrescu guiding you through them with leisurely movements of her fingers.

Once the shaking has passed, you collapse onto your pillow. Everything feels very distant, echoes of a real world that has stopped existing.

Lady Dimitrescu presses a kiss to the bloody mark that she left on your shoulder, and shifts you closer to her. When she bends her legs, she barely fits onto the bed, and your legs are draped over her thighs, your head pillowed on her arm.

“Sleep, my sweet,” your Lady whispers, running her thumb over the curve of your hip. “Rest and heal. I will be here when you wake.”

You have no choice but to obey, darkness dragging you downwards. The last thing you are aware of is the warmth of her embrace.

[thenextchapter22]

Mail Order... Kitten Girl

Part 8: Aw Rats

Description: Satan accidentally orders a special type of ‘cat’ online after having a few too many drinks…

Tags: Pet Play, Cat Hybrids, Fluff, Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, Tail Fucking

Pairing(s): Reader/Everyone (but Luke)

Link to my AO3: Click Here

In this chapter: Kitten and Barbatos spend time together!

Part One  Part Two  Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six Part Seven

Authors Note: HAPPY BIRTHDAY BARBATOS!! This one is for you :))

+++++ MINORS DNI +++++

It was an early morning on a weekday. You woke up slowly, snuggling into the demon body beside you in bed. Sleeping in Belphie’s room was always your top favorite spots to get a great nights sleep. Surrounded in his bed with all his blankets and pillows he stacked up plus his warm arms around you, that was the best.

You were shaken out of the slumber by Beel shaking his twin’s arm, saying, “Belphie, Kitten, get up and eat.”

Belphie groaned, squeezing your body to him, nuzzling the back of your neck with his heated breath caressing you. “Mmmm... ‘s early, Beel. Later...”  

The temptation to stay was strong, but your stomach gurgled and you decided to get up.  

Wiggling in Belphie’s strong hold until you faced him instead of the wall, he opened one eye just enough to stare at you questionably. “Cuddle me later?” you said through a yawn.  

Your youngest demon Master sighed, but gave you one final squeeze around your waist, lingering just above your bottom with his fingers, and kissed you gently. “Fine... Go on,” he said, and opened his arms to free you.  

Beel helped you climb over him. As soon as you were out of the bed, Belphie went right back to sleep.  

With a smiling sigh, Beel shook his head. “C’mon, Kitten. I’ve made one of your favorites for breakfast so let’s get you dressed.”  

You picked at the thin silk short set you had worn to bed. Sleeping with any of them, you liked to wear little to almost nothing. Firstly, because a lot of them ran hot, and secondly so that you could feel their bodies closer to you. That extra touch made your body feel good.

You sat on Beel’s bed, waiting for him to pick out an outfit for you. Almost all of your Master’s liked to dress you. And because you usually stayed in one of their rooms, sometimes a different demon each night so it was fair—they liked to fight a lot about that—they had clothes ready for the next day.

The redheaded demon chose a soft pair of leggings and a short-sleeved scoop neck shirt, also soft,  probably fleece . You smiled at the plain underwear he helped you slip on.  Asmo , Lucifer, and Satan all liked to give you lace undies and bras, but the others preferred comfort for you. Either way you  didn’t  mind, they were your owners after all and you liked them dressing you up. The fun of it was seeing the  different styles.  

After you were clothed, Beel took your hand and smiled. “Let’s go eat.”

You smiled right back and nodded, “Mmhm! ‘m hungry, Master.”

“Me too. I haven't eaten in minutes.”

Giggling, the both of you left Belphie to the room and went to eat.

Breakfast for you was perfect. Waffles soaked in syrup, piled high with berries and whipped cream. Sausages and eggs, too.  The table was full, aside from Belphie. Your Masters all ate their weird demon foods. The day was looking to be a great one!

Once your belly was full, that was when your morning turned from sweet to just plain sour.

The worst news was given to you, and in anger you lashed out.

Which was why now, you sat dejectedly on the couch, arms crossed and tail swishing across your lap, the tip fuzzed out. You poked at your collar that was almost forced on you, a black leather collar that wasn’t uncomfortable but not your favorite, thick and ugly. A long leash was attached to it, and on the other end was Lucifer holding it. Usually you liked the leash, but not when it was a punishment.

Everyone was in the common room now, even Belphie who had gotten up after hearing the news. They either stood around you or sat on the furniture, but they all were looking at you with small smiles or smirks.

You were  not  amused. If you were an actual cat, your fur would be stuck up like the tip of your tail was.

The bad news that caused this problem... your Masters were leaving for the whole day to a RAD Student Council member only meeting that Lord Diavolo was holding.  

You hated being alone. But because Barbatos was staying behind to make a feast for when they came back, he had volunteered to watch you.  

When Lucifer went on and explained he was going to take you to Lord Diavolo’s castle for the hand  off of  yourself to the demon butler, you obviously did not want to go or for them to go and as such you had clawed at him, and thus the leash.  

You didn’t draw blood, Lucifer was too fast for that, but the reaction was enough to be punished.

Huffing in your seat, you refused to not look angry. They were leaving you... again!

Lucifer sighed, and patted the top of your head a few times. “Bad kitty’s get punished, my dear,” he said matter of fact.

Your nose twitched. “I know...”

“You promise to behave for Barbatos?” Satan asked.

You nodded. “Yes, Master...”

“Don’t look so upset, it will only be for a few hours...”

“Why can’t I just be at home alone?” you asked, glancing at them all with wide eyes.

Asmo cooed. “Last time Simeon took too long, kitty cat, and you were upset with us. We’re just looking after you.”

You pouted.

Beel smiled. “Barbatos is excited to see you. And he said he wants you to taste test some of his bakes today. I’m jealous.” He drooled.

Your ears perked up. “R-really?” You licked your lips. Barbatos was the best baker you knew. His cakes and pies and basically everything he made was yummy.

“Kitten looks happy now!” Mammon said with a grin.

Satan agreed, “She looks like the cat who got the cream.”

Asmo giggled. “She probably will, too, and I mean to say Barbatos’~”

The others groaned or chuckled. You didn’t know what that meant, but you did love cream.

“We’re having a big feast later at Lord Diavolo’s castle, so be sure not to eat too much,” Lucifer said, and then announced it was time to go.

You stood as Lucifer started for the front door, the leash taught. Your Masters all said their respective goodbyes and ‘I love you’s’ and it made you very happy inside. You would miss them so much.  

Maybe it was better to not be alone, so you wouldn’t be so sad and think about them until they came home.

Turning on your heel before the front door, you smiled. “I love you, too, my Masters.” And you meant that, truly.

They all cooed, or grinned, and you waved goodbye.  

It was only for the day, right?

_+_

The walk to Lord Diavolo’s wasn't too long. Barbatos let you inside the main entrance where you waited to be handed off like a true pet.

“Welcome, Lucifer, Kitten. We are going to have a good time together today, hm?” the demon butler smiled at you kindly.

You peeked at him from behind Lucifer and nodded once. Still, something inside of you was a little peeved.

“I trust you will be good?” Lucifer asked you, a stern look in his red eyes.

“Yes, Master, I'll be good,” you said.

Lucifer handed the leash to Barbatos, who took it without a single question. You wondered if Lucifer told him what happened and why you had the leash at all.

“She will be well looked after, Lucifer.”

Lucifer nodded. He gave you a single kiss on your forehead. “Behave, Kitten,” he said, and then he was gone out the door. You watched as he transformed into his demon form and flew off, majestic and sexy. You did love his wings; they were so soft.

“Kitten? Let’s go.” Barbatos smiled at you again, and gestured with his hand for you to go ahead and step further in the Castle.

You frowned, but did, and you found yourself in the kitchen after a little bit of walking.  

The room was a far cry from the House of Lamentation’s kitchen. First it was much larger, higher ceilings, and had several ovens and even more cooking equipment. There were tons of cabinets and a large black table off to the side. The floors were nicer on your shoes, less chance of tripping on wood floors than badly lain cement blocks.

While you glanced around, you felt a tug on your leash and a click, and Barbatos was hanging your leash on a hook on the wall before you knew what happened.

“Wha-?”

“It will be easier for the both of us. I won’t say anything if you won’t?”

You giggled. The collar was still on, but that was fine by you. “Okay!”

“Perfect. Over this way please.” He led you to a counter, and there was a ton of ingredients out. They smelled sweet, salty, bitter. Some of them looked good, others odd colored or shaped, but still had a good aroma. “Today you can help me prepare the meal for their return.”

Your ears fell. “I can’t cook...”

"That's not a problem. You have two hands, and so you can mix. And taste test for me as well.”

Now  that  you could do with great pleasure. “Yes, I want to help!”

He chuckled. “I assumed so. We are only preparing desserts now; I will finish the rest of the meal later so it's fresh. Let’s begin, shall we?”

Baking with Barbatos was fun. You got to eat so many tasty things. He let you lick the spoon with the frosting, and gave you little chocolate chips. Mixing dry ingredients for him was harder than it looked and you got some flour on yourself, but that was why you had the apron on.  

Although, it was strange that he already had the perfect one for you. It certainly was not for one of the demon brothers or Diavolo (right?).

After cooking for a long time, eating and mixing and opening and closing the ovens, setting all the pretty treats under domes on counters or in the fridge, you were totally exhausted. All the hard work and eating had really wore you out.  

You yawned a few times, and rubbed at your eyes.

“Is it time for a cat nap?” he teased.

“Barb, I’m tired.” You yawned again.

He softly laughed. “All right. Come with me, Kitten.” He put the palm of his hand on your lower back to lead you out of the kitchen. You were taken around a few doors and small hallways to a wide window with a bed seat cushion, and it faced a garden full of flowers and wildlife.

“So pretty...” you were in awe.

“I thought you might like the view. Rest for a while and I will wake you up once you’ve gotten the proper sleep.”

You curled up on the warm bedding and purred. The sun was shining in the spot, and you could fit yourself perfectly in a ball. “Thank you~”

Barbatos smiled down at you, and pet your head, his hand lingering on your neck to squeeze once. It gave you the shivers. “You’re very welcome, Kitten. Sweet dreams.”

You fell asleep watching the birds flutter around and chirp.  

When you woke up it was still sunny, but not directly on you. And you watched the garden for a while, and then you saw it.

A rat, scurrying across the field.

You made a sound and bared your teeth at it.

The window had a latch, and you undid it and crawled out to step into the garden. You were quiet, stealthy, your prey was right there. You caught it in your claws and squeezed until it was dead.

This was the perfect present to say thank you!

Barbatos had not come for you yet, so you set the dead rat on the floor of the room, waiting for Barbatos to come fetch you.  

And when he came inside, he froze up, and stared at your gift. “Kitten.”

“Barb~ I got you a gift, it’s right there.” Your tail flickered in happiness, and you grinned a fanged smile at him, proud and excited.

He tensed as he walked around it, but did not pick it up. “Did you touch that thing?” he asked instead.

“Yes, with my claws. I killed it for you!”

“I see...” He held out his arms, and frowned. “Let’s go wash your hands,” he said.

You pouted. “Are you not going to take my present?”

Barbatos’ brows furrowed. “Kitten, I appreciate the gift, however...”

Now you understood, and your eyes watered. “Y-you hate it, don’t you?”

“Not at all, kitty, not at all. I just want to take care of you first.” He grabbed you under your arms and you were taken back to the kitchen, legs wrapped around his waist. You felt like a toddler but the warmth of his body was nice. “You need to clean up before you touch anything else.”

He directed you to stand before the sink and place your hands inside. The water was hot on your hands and you cried out. He apologized, and quickly turned it down, and then poured soap on your hands, helping wash them, getting between your fingers and under your claws.

“Rats carry diseases, and Devildom rats even more. I want you to be more careful.”

You nodded. “Okay, I’m sorry.”

Barbatos gave you a soft smile. “It’s fine. There now, let’s dry them and then we can get back to baking together.”

You dried your hands and frowned down at the tiles. “I just wanted to thank you...”

He cupped your cheek and had you look at him. “I know, but you don’t need to thank me with that,” he said, not unkindly.

Oh, so that’s what he was getting at. Well, your Master’s did not say you couldn’t please Barbatos, and he did take care of you. This was the only other way you knew how to say you were grateful for him feeding you delicious snacks and letting you sleep in the cozy sun spot.

“I can thank you like this,” you said, and knelt down on the floor right in front of him, your face at his crotch.

There was one quick inhaled from the demon butler. His gloved finger lifted your head up for him to stare down at you with his pretty green eyes. There was a slight hue on his cheeks. “You don’t have to thank me at all.”

You licked your lips. “I want to. Please? Can I see your cock and suck it?”

He began thumbing your bottom lip. “If that’s what you want, I wouldn’t say no.” Then he made a concerned face. “Do you want something for your knees?”

You nodded, glad Barbatos was such a kind demon. “Please...” and he somehow had a throw pillow in his hands, and you lifted one knee at a time to get situated. “Thank you.”

“It’s no trouble.”

Quickly you helped him out of his pants, slipping them to the floor. As you did his hand caressed the top of your head, and you felt his dark gaze on you, watching every move you made. As his pants dropped to the floor, he stepped out of them, kicking them away. The mess was so unlike the butler from what you had seen.

Now he was just in his underwear, a silk dark green pair that outlined his cock and balls. You nuzzled his clothed dick. “Smells good, Barby.”  

“Mmm, you like the smell of cock, Kitten?”

You nodded. “Yesss-”  

His hand went to your hair at the back of your head to lightly tug. The pain mixed with his scent urged you on, and you had his boxers pulled down, and he was quicker in stepping out of those. His cock out inches from your mouth, half hard. Before you sucked it, you grabbed it to stroke it to life. You licked the tip once, he gasped. Then you swallowed him down and peeked up at him with a certain look, unmoving. Waiting for him to do something.

He got the idea and smiled. “Do you want me to use your mouth?”  

You hummed, hopeful he understood it meant yes. And he understood because he began using your mouth. Filling it with his slicked head, hitting your tongue and roof of your mouth. Your lips were swelling up, and you suckled and slurped at his cock.

Clawed hands went to his waist, holding him steady as his fingers clutched your hair to do the same. The pain and scent surrounding you had your pussy wetting up, soaking your undies. But this was for him, about Barbatos’ pleasure. And a Kitten could please their Master, or their Master’s friends, and you would do a good job of it, too.

Breathing through your nose, you kept a firm hold on his hips, and your tail helped by wrapping around his thigh once to squeeze. His legs were bare, strong looking. You looked up at him, and met his dark eyes, flecks of black creeping in to those slate green iris’. It was sexy and you moaned.

“Ahh, Kitten,” he moaned. His hand not at your hair went to touch your tail, wrapped around a part of it and stroked like you had done to his dick. “Such a soft tail."

You moaned louder, vibrating around his cock, tonguing the underside with your flattened muscle, flexing. He tasted tangy and filled your mouth perfectly, and a little precum trickled onto your taste buds.

The demon butler tensed and grunted out a warning before he came in your mouth, and only then did you let him go. You held his spent cum in your mouth on your tongue, and showed it to him before swallowing. It was bitter, but you had worse.

“Such a naughty thing,” he commented, and pet your hair from your cheeks.  

He smiled, and in his eyes was something new you hadn’t seen. He put his clothes back to right, and before you could react, he had you in his arms and then deposited you on the long kitchen table. The throw pillow was shoved under your body to lift you up at your lower half, and it helped keep your tail from being squished. But you were confused.

“Barb-”

“Hush now.” He stood at your feet, a demonic grin truly. “I shall return the favor,” he whispered. Barbatos’ appearance shifted, and he was in his demon form, his twin-tipped tails flickering behind him, his bat-like horns gleaming in the kitchen light.

His hands torn down your pants to your ankles, and you let him, him taking off your shoes next to leave you in socks and your top. Then you were spread open, panties glistening, socked feet flat on the table. He had you bend your legs so he could grasp your knees to keep you like that, but your pants hugged at your ankles like restraints.

Those eyes of his were basically neon green they were glowing, and he stared at your clothed core, and you tightened in response. Could he see the flex of your pussy?  

“You got wet from sucking me, hm... How delightful.” His finger went to your waist, tugging under the band, and it snapped apart. He tore your underwear from you and exposed your vagina to the air, the coolness hitting your burning heat, wetness growing.

“Ahh, B-barb-"

His tails were hovering your vagina, twitching, and you leaned your head down to watch. You couldn’t see much past your belly as he lifted you up, but you knew what his intentions were.

You begged for it, “please, inside...”

He did not hesitate. His tail slowly went inside your pussy, thick, slimy, softly scaled. It was bigger than you figured, and you tightened down and wiggled your hips.

He tore his glove off with his teeth, and his bare finger circled your clit, the sparks of pleasure helping the stretch. “It’s okay, you can take it. Be a good kitty.”

You clenched down on him again and he winced for a second, but then his tail slithered deeper and flicked at the tip to hit that spot inside and you saw stars, clutching the table at each end with clawed hands.

“You’re damaging the wood,” he said with a bit of humor, but did nothing to stop you. His finger circled your clit faster and harder, and you were close but still felt like it wasn’t enough.

That was when his second tail spread your cheeks apart to press to your anus, slimy from the wetness leaking from your pussy. You were not ready for that, not now.

You cried, “nnngg, not there, please.” Your own tail swooshed in the air, a nervous twitch, and a warning that you did not like that.

Barbatos kissed your inner thigh, holding your knee wider with one hand as his tail fucked you, sloppy sounds echoing in the room along with your heavy panting. “I know, beautiful thing, I won’t.” He left the tail tip there, slipping over your hole to join the other at your pussy, pressing against its twin. “You can take two, can you not?”

You tensed and sobbed. “P-please,” you desperately wanted to be torn open.

He grinned, sharp teeth, and shoved his second tail in along with the other. You arched your back and tossed your head to the side and sobbed, burning and intense pleasure/pain encompassing you. “Ahhhgg~”

The pace he set was fast and rough, the double tails slipping in and out and scrapping at the best parts of you, no time to adjust. “You’re so sweet, yet so naughty. I want to feel your pussy on my cock someday.”

“Uhh, yes, yes, want that-”

“Hm, I know you do.”

He was so himself like this. Barbatos was commanding and sure in his movements, and it was perfection. His head went between your legs and his mouth found your clit and licked and kissed wet and sloppily. You wished you could watch as he did, but your position only let you see his head bobbing, and his tail motioning in and out between your thighs.

He kept his mouth on your clit, swishing his tongue back and forth. “Purr for me, kitty,” he pulled back to say, and then with insane speed he fucked you with his serpent tails and licked you, like a vibrator toy for your clit.

The heat was reaching your belly in a boiling point now. Your body was hot, tense, and your toes curled, and then with an arched back, your belly tightened up and you were finished. “Cumming, Barb, cummiinnnnggg~” you exclaimed, spurting all over.  

It lasted a few moments, but felt like longer. You kept your eyes shut and felt the excess amount of your own juices dripping out. The sparks went with the beat of your heart as you calmed down, almost like an exposed wire feeling every single thing. Your shirt was sweaty. Your throat sore, from both screaming your pleasure and holding some back. There was a little bit of tears drying on your cheeks.

When you did open your eyes, Barbatos was hovering over your head, smiling that gentle smile, this time it reached his kind eyes. “So pretty for me,” Barbatos murmured, kissing your cheek. “I need to clean you up now.”

You hummed, shutting your eyes as fireworks popped up in your vision. “Mmm, clean up,” you copied.

He chuckled, and lifted you up in his arms, and you whined but allowed it. “Come on kitty, you can have another nap after.”

You sighed. “Love naps.”

“I gathered that. You may be a second Belphegor and we just don’t know it.”

You giggled. “Mmmm.” What a silly thing to say.

_+_

“She looks exhausted,” Lucifer commented. He had a slight smirk in his eyes and on his lips, but not enough for the average person to see.

Barbatos shared a similar look. “Oh yes, we had an eventful evening, didn’t we?” You flushed red, ignoring the question, and he went on, holding out a few containers. “Here. To take home with you. The feast will begin in a few hours, but I know Beel will like to have some extras.” Barbatos handed you the boxes. “Thank you for all your help today, Kitten. Anytime you want to stop by, feel free.” The green of his eyes shone, mischievous.

You held in the whine, because you  did  want to visit again. But the teasing was too much and you were exhausted mentally and physically. You didn’t even want to be standing right then.

You looked at Lucifer and asked, “Master, can we go home now?”

“Yes, we can.” He took the leash from Barbatos and you both left Lord Diavolo’s castle for the House of Lamentation.

And if Lucifer noticed the limp in your walk, he said nothing on it.  

Thankfully you were not in trouble. Your Masters, it seemed, did not care if you shared yourself. But you had to wonder the limitations of that... you’d ask another time.

So, you went home to rest before the feast, but in the end you did not go. You actually stayed behind with Levi who had plans to be online that night (Diavolo played video games, you heard, so he excused the Envy demon).

Snuggled up with him on the beanbag you lazily watched him play, occasionally getting soft pets between battles. It was boring to just watch, but you had enough excitement. This was a perfect way to end a sweet day.

[beerecordings]

Marvin's Cage

Story One l Story Two l Story Three l l Story Four l Story Five

This is part 1 of the sixth story, where Marvin's secret comes to light. Tws for extreme distress, imprisonment, Anti's general creepiness, and mentions of human trafficking.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you love to hate it. I'll hopefully have the next part fairly soon. But also this is quite long, as a heads up

Okay, here we go...

They stack cards in terse silence, racing through decks, climbing up to Jacks, Queens, Kings. They both grab at a black seven of hearts at the same time and end up slapping at each other's hands, JJ yanking the card back just before his opponent. Anti cackles and keeps flipping cards, waiting for the next one to snatch.

“Peanuts,” signs JJ suddenly, and Anti swears and laughs and starts picking the cards up to re-deal, doling them out in piles, and they're playing again, without a word, stacking decks, up and up and up.

After a few rounds, JJ reaches for a bottle of water at his side, sucking it down and brushing at his sweaty hair. Anti rocks on his thighs, chewing at his nails. “Where's your sweet Big Brother today, child?” he asks.

“Comes and goes,” signs JJ, setting his bottle down and getting a granola bar out of its box for lunch. “Birthday week. Celebrate, family. But he will come see me soon. He loves me because I've been very good.”

He stacks up a fresh set for another game, yawning.

“He ought to let you come play with me in the real world,” purrs Anti, stroking his thumb across JJ's chin. Jameson shivers, but he does not protest. “He's so mean to keep you from me. Now all I get to do is come visit you and play silly games. My warm flesh... don't you know I miss you?”

JJ sorts his cards quietly, avoiding his eye. Anti reaches forward and grips his neck, squeezing gently.

“My warm flesh,” he repeats softly, licking his lips.

Jameson breathes through his mouth as Anti begins to strangle him, keeping calm. The easiest thing is just to get through it. If he talks back or makes Anti angry, then he'll really get hurt, and there will be nothing he can do to stop it. Anti gets up on his knees and crawls into JJ's space, pushing him down onto the floor of his cage. He straddles his waist and increases the pressure on his throat. JJ gazes up at him, still.

“We had such a good time together,” hums Anti, feeling his thready human heartbeat beneath his hands. “Didn't we?”

JJ doesn't remember much good about his time with Anti. He knows the taste of a human heart in his mouth. He was once chained against a wall so tightly he couldn't protest when the rats began to gnaw at him. At one point, he was so delirious and hurt that he believed he was dead for two weeks straight.

That's the good thing about his Brother. Not being allowed to leave this box doesn't matter, and neither do the occasional beatings or possessions Anti causes him, because Brother would never let anything half as horrible as the things Anti used to do to him happen anymore. Brother protects him from Anti – and protects everyone else in the world from Anti using his body.

He shudders at the memory of his teeth clamping down around the beating muscle his hands pulled from a stranger's chest. Blood leaking onto his tongue, warm as it filled his mouth. He was laughing. His fingers dug into soft, squishy organs, the filth filling up his broken nails, and his heart beat like the wing of a hummingbird beneath his ribs, making him dizzy with Anti's sick delight.

Yes. Brother protects him. Brother protects everyone. That's why he's here.

He's just beginning to lose consciousness from the cut-off of his oxygen when something stops Anti.

His head tilts and his ears perk up as he stills, paying attention to something JJ has not sensed yet. His mismatched eyes flicker back and forth as he thinks – and then a wide smile grows on his face.

“Please let go,” signs JJ, squirming.

“Someone... other than Marvin,” Anti mumbles. “Oh, this will be really good.”

JJ stills, blinking. Anti creeps to his feet, gazing through the front of JJ's box from the corner, trying to look without being seen. His eyes light up with a venomous light. He turns his smile towards JJ, eyes gleaming.

He crawls back into JJ's space, tucking a strand of his brother's hair behind his ear. JJ holds still as Anti leans close to him, whispering against his ear:

“Things are going to change for you now, my darling. But I'll see you again soon. I promise. So don't forget about me, child – not even for a moment.”

A cold kiss presses against the side of JJ's head.

Then Anti is gone, leaving only a faint and fading trail of glitching colors behind him.

JJ waits for a few moments, but he's so used to Anti's mannerisms he can't even be unnerved. He sighs, scattering the cards across the floor. Well, if Anti is gone, he'll have to find something else to do.

He reaches for his violin, getting to his feet and stretching a little before setting the bow down. Still, he can't shake a feeling that something in the air has changed for good.

.

Jackie treads on the solid floor of the endless mirror, his head tilted as he listens to the music.

“What the hell is this?” he whispers, creeping forward.

It's certainly not a portal to anywhere, not like it used to be, or at least this isn't the door. Instead there's some kind of box, a shed or a tiny house like on TV or maybe just a really weird puppet theater. The words “JJ's Jolly Jaunts” is spread across the top of the inside layer, behind bars, and it makes Jackie's stomach do a weird, foreboding turn that he doesn't understand.

Something about this is fucked up, that's all he knows. But if it has something to do with his missing brother – well, why wouldn't Marvin tell him? Has he been trying to find him? Is this some freaky memorial to him? Does Marvin think he's dead?

His next footstep lands heavily, echoing a little in the expanse. The music that he thought must have played from a speaker cuts off with a timid release of the violin bow from its strings, and he stops dead in his tracks.

Something is in here.

Someone is in here.

Being alarmed and weirded out, however, is only a catalyst for Jackie's curiosity, and the not-knowing becomes almost unbearable. He races towards the box, setting his tense fingers on the side of the barred window as he looks in.

There are decorations like fairy nights and pinned-up drawings of animals overhead a big red rug and a mattress with blankets and pillows disarrayed on top. A small curtain covers a corner in the back, stuffed animals stack against the wall opposite, and there are tupperware containers and cardboard boxes full of granola bars, dried fruits, cookies, and more. Art supplies scatter across the floor – paper and charcoal and bits of fabric and buttons. Jackie leans a little farther over the sill, his face nearly pressing against the bars around the outside, and he sees homemade puppets among the felt and sewing materials.

“This is fucked,” he mutters, turning to the left. Pressed closer, he can see some cleaning supplies. He turns to the right and –

Jackie rears back with a shout, his heart leaping into a double-time march.

Silence in the mirror realm. Nothing moves.

Deep breaths, Jackie. Deep breaths.

“Jameson?” he whispers, stepping cautiously back towards the cage. “I... is that you?”

It looked like him, for the moment where Jackie's eyes landed on him, a figured pressed against the closest corner of the box, clutching a violin like a shield and staring back at Jackie with wide eyes. But it couldn't be. Why would he be here? None of this makes sense, but the idea that comes closest – of course.

“Not Jameson,” he realizes, face darkening. “Anti. Right? Marvin caught you, didn't he? And he's... trying to get you out of Jameson's skin. Trying to make you let him go. You fucking parasite.”

There's a slight scraping of cloth on wood. Jackie tenses, licking his mouth, and waits for Anti to start laughing and step out to see him.

But nothing moves.

“If you're trying to get me to come closer, you missed your opportunity,” snarls Jackie. “Fuck, I can't believe – why wouldn't he tell me about this? It must have been just the last couple weeks that he caught you, since we fought just before. You've been possessing him this whole time, then, bastard? You're a creep. When I figure this out with Marvin, you'll never touch him again.”

And Jackie waits again, but... nothing.

This isn't like Anti. Not taunting? Not snarling and snapping or teasing Jackie over every failure he's ever been haunted by?

Why the pictures on the wall? Why all the stuffed animals? What the hell is going on?

“Forget you, then,” Jackie scowls. “I need to go talk to Marvin.”

He turns to walk away, back towards the portal, mind racing. He needs to talk to him before he gets more confused.

He touches the portal to leave.

Why the pictures? Turtles and bears and butterflies?

That's not Anti.

It must be.

Why the stuffed animals? A well-loved puppy, ratty with hugs and petting?

Anti wouldn't do that.

It only looks like Jameson because it's Anti. It has to be Anti.

Why any of this? The obvious time that's been spent in that box even though he saw Anti not a month past? The scared look on Anti's face as he hid from Jackie, something he's never done before? The violin music? Does Anti play violin now?

That is not Anti.

But it has to be, so –

“I need to talk to Marvin,” he repeats to himself, heart racing again. “I need...”

Marvin lied to me.

Marvin didn't tell me about this. Hid this. On purpose. Denied all of it a hundred times.

No. That's my little brother. I can trust him.

He lied.

And that –

It's Anti.

It's not Anti.

It has to be.

It isn't.

Looking back at this moment, Jackie will wonder what would have happened if he went through that portal and asked Marvin what was going. What he would have said. If he would have lied, if he would have made excuses. If he would have just been silent.

It doesn't matter now.

He knows that something is not right, and he can't trust Marvin – shit, he's never had that thought before, not once in his life – so he has to figure this out on his own.

He walks back towards that cage in the middle of the endless reflections of himself. In the mirrors, he can see himself walk towards the box from behind – steady, tentative steps, tense shoulders beneath a red jacket, hands in black gloves squeezed into fists. He can see himself from the side, with his mouth parted and his eyes fixed ahead. He can see his own face, looking into his own eyes, looking into the face he shares with his younger brother, the first younger brother he had, the one who made everything else worth having.

As he comes back towards the box, he realizes that whoever is in there must have thought he left like he said he would, because now he hears soft sobbing coming from inside. He hears the moment the violin is set aside with a slight thud, and cloth slides against the wood as the prisoner sits down on the floor. Jackie stands outside, listening, his eyes beginning to burn.

Not Anti. Not Anti. He knows. In his heart, yes – in his heart he already knows.

“Hello?” he calls.

The crying cuts off. Jackie closes his eyes. Deep breaths. Deep breaths, Jackie, even if this can't be true.

“Look, Anti,” he says. “If that's you, well. I hate your guts, but I still don't think you should be trapped in a box like this. Nobody should be. Come out and tell me what's going on and we'll figure this out.”

The prisoner doesn't bite.

“Okay,” sighs Jackie. “Um. Listen, I... I'm sorry I yelled. If you're not Anti, please let me know. I'm not going to hurt you. I was just surprised. And scared, I think. I don't know what's going on.”

A soft, shaky breath moves through the air.

“I'm going to come closer now,” says Jackie, straightening up. “I'm going to look at you again. Please don't scratch my eyes out or anything. Okay.”

He leans in for a second time, bringing his head close to the bars.

There he is. The prisoner in the corner. He's sitting down now, arms wrapped around himself. His face is mostly hidden in the knees drawn to his chest, but his eyes –

Big blue eyes look up at Jackie from beneath overgrown, mousy brown curls.

Jackie has never claimed to be good at reading others. He actually tends to miss plenty that other people seem to find obvious in mere expressions and gestures. But this...

No. He could never forget this exact look, these exact eyes. The eyes of the little brother that stared up at him for hours that night so many months ago when he lost him. The eyes that were looking at him when he lost consciousness and woke up to an empty bed and a missing piece of his heart. The fear and the confusion and the hope and the love all at once.

His Jameson.

Jackie bows his head and cries.

For long minutes he's bent over the side of that ledge by the box, one hand clinging to the bars behind which his youngest brother has been kept as a prisoner, and he can't seem to stop no matter how hard he tries. There is no noise from Jameson. Jackie can't look at him again. Can't bear it.

And then the soft brush of something against his hand startles Jackie from his breakdown, and he looks up to find a tissue pressed against his fingers.

JJ has brought him a tissue.

Jackie stares at him and Jameson looks back, ducking his head shyly now, even as he pulls Jackie's fingers around the Kleenex, plucking gently at his hand. Jackie takes the tissue. JJ backs away again, still holding that battered violin to his chest like a shield.

“Thank you,” croaks Jackie.

Jameson nods just a little, eyes fixed on him.

“Do you... remember me?” asks Jackie. “We were... it was so short. Just that night. And you were sick and confused. He'd been possessing you a long time and I just – do you remember at all or...?”

Jameson scoots a little closer, chewing at his nails for a second.

His fingers reach out to touch Jackie's again. Curl around the back of his hand and settle there. Soft.

He nods just a little a second time.

Yeah. He remembers.

“Jameson,” breathes Jackie.

He reaches for his hand in return. Their fingers lock together through the bars.

Laughter bubbles up in the empty coldness of the mirror realm, and after a moment Jackie realizes he is the one he's laughing.

“Yes,” he laughs, squeezing his hands, and JJ looks back at him in awe, letting his violin fall to the side. “Yeah, Jameson, my little brother. You remember me. You're alive! You're here! JJ, JJ... how do I get you out?”

He wants to be holding him. Now. Wants to wrap him up like the kittens Marvin used to sneak into the house and take him back to the world and never let him the fuck out of his sight again.

Jameson glances to the right of his box and Jackie goes racing around the side to find the opening. There's nothing but a half-door carved into the side and this is locked by a padlock with no keyhole. Jackie grabs the chunk of metal, frowning, and there – carved into the back of the metal are sigils that burn with heat even untouched in the coldness.

Magic.

He returns to JJ, taking his hand again.

“I'm going to get you out of here,” he says, and it's so true and so important in his chest that it hurts somehow to get the words out. “I'm here now and I will not let anything more happen to you.”

He wishes JJ would smile or nod or anything like that. But he just stares at Jackie with that big, starry awe in his blue eyes, and squeezes his hand softly, shuffling closer to him, staring. Jackie holds his breath as Jameson leans his head against the bars of his prison so his forehead almost touches Jackie's. He picks up the discarded tissue and presses it against Jackie's reddened cheeks, mouth parting.

Jackie clings to his hands and closes his eyes, letting his little brother brush his tears away.

“Jameson,” he says, just soft, though everything seems loud in the silence, in the emptiness, in the endless cold. “Tell me who did this to you.”

JJ draws away. There is a pause where he looks down at his toys and his animals and his art. His hands wrap around each other. He shrugs his shoulders weakly.

“Tell me,” says Jackie, reaching for him again. “Jamie, my Jamie. Tell me.”

His head already knows, but in his chest –

No.

Jameson chews at his nails for a second, big eyes flashing up to Jackie, and then he turns and points at the picture pinned to the wall above his mattress.

In JJ's charcoals, Marvin is thin and tired, but whoever drew the curve of his sorrowful mouth and detailed the light in his eyes loves him.

Jackie's heart stays steady. His eyes do not burn. His lets out just one more shaking breath.

Very well, then.

“Jameson,” he says. “I will be right back.”

.

“No! No, not even like that.”

“There's no scenario in which this works, Chase.”

“Guys, hear me out!” Chase cries, re-adjusting on the couch between them and snagging popcorn from Marvin's bowl. “Okay, so the earth is round – ”

“Well, he's got that much right,” says Marvin.

“Already better than I was expecting, to be fair,” agrees Henrik.

“The earth is ROUND,” re-iterates Chase, shoving them both. “So theoretically, if I got enough momentum, and there was a path that went all the way around... I could Heely the whole way round the earth.”

“No,” groan his siblings, throwing popcorn at him. “No, that still doesn't – ”

“Haters! Haters, the both of you!”

Marvin's laughing and antagonizing Chase by pushing him with his socked feet, trying to throw him off the couch while Henrik shields the cat from the fighting on the other side of the cushions. They've been talking about stupid shit for so long he's completely lost track of the plot of the movie they're watching, but it doesn't matter.

Nothing matters but them. And you know what, he feels good today, feels light and painless for the first time in a long time. For them to actually set aside the time for his birthday... well, that's the only thing he could have asked for. That and some earrings. And food. And a couple other things he wanted. But really the time together is the important stuff.

And here comes Jackie to complete them.

“Good afternoon, my darling, and will you be joining us?” he crows, letting his feet fall into Chase's lap instead of continuing to try and shove him off the couch. “Sit down with us and let's – um, Jackie?”

Why is he standing like that? Too still on the stairs. Wild, bouncy Jackie frozen stiff with his palm spread out against the wall, steadying him like a statue with a weak foundation. In his other hand: his fighting staff, extended and clenched so hard in his fingers that they have gone red with blood.

“Jackie?” asks Chase. All three of them are staring up at him by now, the TV playing loudly in front of them. “Everything okay?”

Jackie blinks at him a couple times, his face blank.

Henrik and Chase look at each other, eyebrows raising. Marvin's eyes are just fixed on their oldest brother. He realizes that his body has gone just as tense as Jackie's, his legs swinging off Chase's lap and setting firmly against the carpeted floor, a hand pressed against the cushion beside him.

Jackie starts shaking his head. Head low, eyes haunted.

“What's the matter?” asks Marvin.

Jackie shakes his head at him. His mouth is taut and his eyes narrow, angry like a wounded dog.

Marvin's throat is dry.

“What's the matter?” he repeats.

“Chase, Henrik,” says Jackie. “Go to Stacy's and stay there til I say you can come home.”

Chase pauses the movie, gaping at Jackie. Beyond the bizarre suddenness of the request, he never calls Schneep 'Henrik.' After a second, he moves to rise, but Henrik reaches across them to grab his arm and pull him back down.

“I don't think we're going anywhere, my friend,” says Henrik softly. “What's going on?”

“'Maybe Marvin can tell you,” Jackie answers.

Marvin can almost feel his own neurons firing. In a second, he has made the decision to lie through his teeth.

Because this isn't happening. He won't let this be happening. Jackie does not know – you've been scared that he does a million times before and they've all been false alarms, don't overreact, this is just some kind of misunderstanding – and he will never know. He will never, never know.

“Jackie, I don't know what's going on,” says Marvin sadly. “Tell us, please.”

“Yeah, Jackie, shit, you're freaking me out,” Chase agrees. “You want me to turn the lights off? You can lie down and – ”

“I'm fine,” says Jackie. “Marvin, you know, you – ”

“I don't know what's going on.”

“I went in your room.”

He laughs. Doesn't know why. “Okay?”

Henrik and Chase just look between him and Jackie. Jackie starts coming down the stairs. Heavy footsteps on the wood.

“Let's go look together.”

Marvin's smiling at his brother, his lip snarling a little.

He nightmared over this moment so many times. Is it really here? He always thought it would make him scared.

It just makes him angry.

Jackie doesn't know shit and it will stay that way. Stupid, naive Jackie. Marvin will lie his way out of this if he has to gaslight Jackie til Chase and Henrik call him crazy.

“There's nothing in there,” he says.

Jackie grabs him by the arm.

“Jackie!” calls Henrik, getting to his feet and setting his hands indignantly on his hips. Marvin wants to laugh again. Schneep is using his big, bad doctor voice, just like he would with any other argument in their house. Like they're fighting over who flooded the sink or whether to keep the kittens Queenie's pregnant with. Like it's just any other day.

There's no inkling in either him or Chase that this is Marvin's apocalypse. Somehow, it makes him feel powerful. Even if Jackie does have some idea of what's going on, only Marvin knows how deep this really goes.

“Don't grab him like that,” Henrik is scolding. “Now tell us what's going on or – ”

“Don't bother, Schneep,” says Marvin, staring right at Jackie. “He's angry. And you know Jackie when he's angry. He doesn't listen to anyone.”

Jackie's ears draw back and his mouth clamps tighter. He's gazing right back at Marvin. Heat like a geyser in his blue eyes.

“Let him drag me, whatever,” Marvin continues. “He'll realize he was wrong with whatever he's talking about later and come sobbing to me for forgiveness. 'Oh, Marvel, I was so mean, I'm sorry, I'm really sorry...'”

Jackie yanks him hard towards the stairs, ignoring Chase and Henrik shouting at them. Marvin lets him march him towards his room, but it's becoming less funny. His eyes burn and it seems difficult to breathe. His heart pounds against his ribs hard enough that Jackie might be able to feel it from his grip on him.

He can see Anti under Jameson's skin in days gone by, signing slowly at him, promising him that he'll regret what he's done. He laughs weakly as Jackie tears open the door of his room and shoves him inside.

“Jackie, don't push him!” shouts Chase, tugging on the back of Jackie's sweatshirt. “Hey, look at me!”

“Tell them what's in the mirror, Marvin.” Jackie advances on him. Marvin tries to move past him, but he won't let him. Pushing him back towards Jamie's mirror. “Tell them.”

“You've lost it, Jackie,” snaps Marvin.

“Jackie, what's gotten into you?” cries Chase. “Leave him alone! Marvin?”

Marvin wants to call to him – baby, it's okay, amata, don't worry – but how is he supposed to say that now, with Jackie pushing him towards that prison he created? In his heart, he wishes Chase would save him.

“Tell them what's in the mirror!” screams Jackie, and he lunges forward as his composure breaks, slamming Marvin into the wall beside the mirror. Marvin shrieks as his brother's hands wrap around his throat and pin him hard to the plaster. One of the cats is yowling in the doorway and Chase and Henrik are both yowling too, grabbing at them and trying to pull Jackie off, but he will not be moved.

“Tell me you're Anti!” Jackie howls. “You're possessing Marvin! Or he's blackmailing you! Tell me, tell me! My little brother! Tell me you didn't do this to him!”

Marvin does not know if he laughs or sobs in that moment.

Jackie throws him hard to the ground when he does not answer, his staff striking the ground beside his head. “You let him out of that cage, Anti! Now!”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” chokes Marvin.

“Jameson's in that mirror,” shouts Jackie, whirling on their younger brothers. “He's locked up like a fucking dog! Like an animal! This isn't Marvin, it's Anti!”

Marvin stares at the ceiling, writhing beneath Jackie's hands as Chase and Henrik back off, asking questions and exclaiming at Jackie as their oldest brother starts to relate what he saw. Marvin can't breathe.

A little box. A box with bars on the front and a magical lock on it. Him just lying all small inside, with his toys and violin and drawings and snacks. Jameson. Jameson.

Jackie knows.

Jackie knows!

A nightmare – it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare!

“Get off!” he screeches, and when Jackie doesn't budge Marvin opens his mouth and sinks his teeth into the hand holding his chin down.

Jackie yelps and draws back. Henrik jerks forward to keep Marvin down, now, clinging to his clothes.

“Marv, Marv,” chants Henrik, holding him carefully. “Hey. If you're in trouble, we'll figure this out. Just let's be calm. And if you're Anti – there's no point to running.”

“But Anti can't get in here,” Chase puts in, frustrated. “You guys know that. Marvin warded the place to hell and he doesn't know where the mirror that comes to our house is.”

“Chase, go check the warding,” orders Jackie. “Anti might have compromised him instead of possessing him. He must have been at it for months. That's why he's been acting so weird. Blackmail or something. I didn't think it was Anti because I thought you would have come to me if he were hurting you!”

No, no, no! Marvin grips at his head, giggling again. This is just a half-truth and their disapproval and fear and distrust is already too much to bear. If they find out the truth – if they know –

He was right, though! He had to do it!

“Come, my brother, up we get,” says Henrik, wrapping an arm gently around his waist. Jackie still looks like he wants to beat the demons out of him, but he lets Henrik handle him. Marvin slinks to his feet with his brother's arm around him and Henrik sits him down on his bed.

“Okay, now, tell us what's been going on,” he murmurs, brushing a few strands of hair from his eyes.

Marvin grips his wrist, dizzied. He doesn't want him to step back. He wants Henrik to stop this from happening.

“Has Anti been talking to you?” Henrik asks in a hush. “What has he done, my dear? You can tell us now. Is Jameson really there?”

His Schneep. He's as feral as a rabid squirrel most of the time, but then, when he needs him, his brother melts into soft touches and a quiet, even voice. Unflappable, reliable, steady Henrik. Marvin cups his chin, staring up at him.

“Don't touch him,” says Jackie darkly, standing posed like a toy boxer behind Henrik. “Don't put a hand on him.”

“The warding is fine,” calls Chase, coming back into the room. “Nothing smudged or anything.”

“Anti may be manipulating him from a distance,” says Henrik. “Threatening and holding things over him. Jameson... did he threaten to hurt him? Marvin, you were trying to protect him, yes?”

Jackie's stance slackens, his fingers loosening around the staff, and Marvin sees the moment where his eyes soften for him. Chase comes close too and stands beside Henrik, rubbing a hand along Marvin's shoulder.

“Breathe, amata,” he says. Sunny, starry Chase. His Chase. “It's gonna be okay, Marv. I promise. What did Anti do? He hurt you, huh?”

Marvin stares up at him, mouth parted. His eyes flicker towards his own figure in the mirror.

He knows JJ is back there. At this time of day, he's probably napping or playing his violin. Anti could even be in there with him now. He can see him now, black eyes and a wicked smile twisting up Jameson's mouth. He'd bite his teeth at Marvin behind the bars of the cage or coo threats and dark promises. He'd leave Jamie bleeding and ill and laugh about it.

He can see Jameson helpless in the middle of everything. Months and months of Jameson's helplessness. Curled up around himself, silent and dead-eyed in the corner, begging for Marvin's attention, scared and crying, playing with his puppets and toys like a two-year-old, writing music for Marvin, praying devout rosaries on his mattress, sleeping the day away. Hollow eyes. A big smile and then nothing on his face. Eating noodles with his hands and looking over new llama-patterned socks like they're a gift from God. Nosebleeds and fevers and coughs, enough to shake his whole chest.

And on the other side of that mirror, on the other side of the helpless intruder and the mad spirit that wears his flesh like an outfit: Marvin's family.

Chase. Jackie. Henrik.

Yes. Yes. He did what he had to do.

For months it has tormented him. Now Jackie knows. Lies won't help. Even this one, this tempting lie being offered to him by his hopeful brothers – the lie that Anti made him do it. They're looking so gently at him, but it's just another web to tangle him up and choke him for months. In the end, it won't protect him.

He did what he had to do.

He will make them see that.

.

JJ sits in his box, chewing his nails down to the bit. He takes a hangnail between his teeth and pulls it til the blood runs down his thumb.

He doesn't know what's going on.

He decides to pick up his violin again, setting the bow down and trying to breathe in and out, in and out, in and out, steady. Marvin always makes him take three deep breaths when he was beginning to freak out. Marvin hates it when he freaks out. So he will be calm. He will breathe – one, two, three – and play his music.

He feels that he can hear Marvin in the movement of his improv. M-Brother. The only person other than Anti he's ever really known.

His voice started out stern and hot and distant. His eyes would flash and he would stand at a distance as though afraid of Jameson biting him. He stayed with him very little and never touched him.

Marvin became scared, later. Jameson remembers the first part of his illness, when he was so sick he could barely stand on his own, but the second half, when he stopped being coherent, is lost to him. The only thing he recalls is the frantic rise of Marvin's voice, thinner and louder as the days went on.

Scared Marvin. Screaming Marvin. Cold Marvin. Comforting Marvin.

Flashes and glimpses. He rarely stays more than an hour.

Jameson plays long, sweet notes across the violin.

My brother protects me. Because I'm dangerous. Because I'm bad. If I'm good, maybe someone will hold me for just a few minutes.

Long, sorrowful notes.

He realizes he has transitioned from improv to the tune he wrote for Marvin's birthday. He lets the long notes pull across the violin. He will play it til it's perfect, so that, when Marvin is finally ready to hear it, it will be so excellent he will have to like it.

He misses a note and re-starts. He draws a rest out too long and restarts. He plays it too lifelessly and restarts. Restart again, again, again, one, two, three. It must be perfect. For Marvin. For his brother. His brother who protects him, and the only person in the whole world whom JJ loves.

He cannot see or hear anything beyond the mirror realm, but a part of him hears when Marvin starts to cry.

.

“I locked Jameson up to keep you safe,” says Marvin. “That's all.”

Large eyes looking back at him. Chase and Henrik exchange looks again, passing thoughts between gazes. Jackie's just staring at him.

Marvin raises his chin and stares back.

The tears are running down his face, but he doesn't sob and he doesn't wheeze and he does not let his expression break.

He did what he had to.

“Keep us safe?” Chase repeats.

“It's not his fault,” says Marvin. “I know that. But Anti uses him as a weapon and there are few few things we can do about that. The two of them are connected – Anti can find him anywhere and Jameson has no defense against that kind of power. He's just a mortal kid. I've been looking for a way to protect him from Anti's interference, or at least stop Anti from being able to locate him, but it's complex magic. In the meantime, I had to keep him away from you. That day he stabbed you...”

Marvin's eyes flicker to Chase's chest. He remembers the dark wound in his shoulder and the ache in his brother's movements for weeks. The fear as the blood poured out and Jackie dragged the thrashing monster off Chase's body and choked him til he passed out.

“I couldn't let that happen again.”

They still don't say anything. A part of him screams at them to speak, begging for anything in reply, but the other half of him is desperate for the quiet. If they tell him how they feel it could break him in half.

“I didn't tell you,” he continues. “And I lied to you about it many times. I'm sorry. I don't know how to express to you how much it has hurt me over the time it's gone on. I know that doesn't make it right, but I want you to know I have always wanted to tell you. But I knew that if I did... you wouldn't agree.”

A faint, thin laugh from Chase. “This is a joke, yeah? Of course we wouldn't agree. How could you think that – ?”

“Because none of you have the guts to make this call,” replies Marvin before he can even finish, voice raising. “Don't you see? You all wanted him to just live here with us, hoping we'd be able to restrain him if Anti came! But that's not realistic. He would have fucking killed you! Jackie, you're too empathetic, Chase can't even kill a spider, and Henrik – ”

Henrik is staring at him, face unreadable. Marvin deflates, shaking his head.

“Henrik didn't deserve to have to make that call, even if he could. I'm older. I was the one with the means to hide him away. I – ”

“This is a lie,” Jackie interrupts him, sudden and loud. “This is a lie.”

Marvin says nothing. Meets his eyes and waits.

“Marvin?” asks Chase. “This isn't true, right?”

Chase – well, his eyes Marvin can't meet.

Chase looks to Henrik and Jackie, mouth open, bewildered.

“My little brother?” he asks in a small voice.

“Boys,” says Henrik, sighing. “Okay, deep breaths. Let's not get worked up. Of course it is not true. Anti is... he still has something over him. Marvin cannot speak freely. He is protecting us I would guess. Anti has made threats, perhaps cast spells or things like this. Forced Marvin to cast spells. Or he has a way to possess him. We must find Anti and deal with him before we can get anywhere.”

Henrik's voice is sure and cool, but Chase and Jackie don't respond to his call to action. Henrik turns firmly back to Marvin and cups his chin, stroking his thumb across his beard. “We will make this right, my brother,” he says. “I promise.”

“You said Anti didn't have Jameson, though,” says Chase, pushing forward. “Anti told you that, the last time you fought.”

“The second to last time we fought,” Jackie corrects. “Yes, he said that he didn't have Jameson. Then I saw him not a month ago. He didn't say anything about Marvin. But... right after that was when Marvin had that encounter with him.”

“Guys,” Marvin offers wearily. “It's not – ”

“Marvin wouldn't do this to our younger brother,” scoffs Henrik. “Locking him away! It's terrible.”

“I've taken care of him,” cries Marvin. “I have, he – ”

“Can I see him?” Chase's voice seems to be fainter with every sentence he speaks. “I never got to meet him, just Anti. We've talked about him for so long.”

“You – you used to help me go out looking for him.” Jackie whirls on Marvin again, eyes burning. “No, tell me this isn't true.”

“He would have killed you,” hisses Marvin, his eyes watering again.

“So that means you caged him like an animal?”

“Marvin can't have done this,” Henrik insists. “Marvin can't have.”

“I don't know what's going on,” says Chase, starting to cry. “Can I please see Jameson?”

“Maybe Jackie's the one possessed,” says Henrik, backing suddenly away from his oldest brother and putting a hand on Marvin's shoulder. “Maybe that's why Marvin is acting this way. Anti will blame him for what he's done to Jameson.”

“He's in a cage in there! When was the last time he's been out of there? How long has it been?”

Jackie's question seems to quiet everyone again. All eyes turn back to Marvin.

“How long what?”

“How long has it been since you let him out of there?” asks Jackie, voice dangerous again. Stance dangerous.

Jackie has never looked dangerous to Marvin before this moment.

Marvin breathes in through his nose, trying to find an answer. He wants to come clean – wants to show how justified he was – but it sounds so cruel when it's said out loud.

“He's been missing for seven months,” says Jackie, voice trembling. “If this is true, what you're saying, then he's been your prisoner for seven months. Right?”

“Yes,” says Marvin softly.

“Marvin. Has he been inside that box this whole time?”

Silence. Silence. Silence.

Jackie turns away from him, breathing thinning out. Chase is just shaking his head. Henrik's still at Marvin's side.

Jackie looks back to them, poised like he's about to pounce.

“Jackie,” warns Henrik, holding a hand out. “It's not true, it – ”

“Just let him out of the box,” whispers Jackie.

Marvin licks his mouth.

Draws a breath.

Shakes his head.

Jackie cocks his head at him, frowning. “What? What was that? Are you saying no?”

The disbelief in the air seems heavy on his shoulders.

Helpless Jameson. Snarling Anti.

Chase. Jackie. Henrik.

Chase. Jackie. Henrik.

Chase. Jackie. Henrik.

Had to.

Has to.

“Yes,” says Marvin. “I said no. Jameson is a threat to you. I won't let him out of the box.”.

Jackie has a grip on Marvin's shirt collar in a flash, shoving him down onto the bed. Henrik yelps and tries to pull him away again, and now Chase is sobbing openly somewhere in the background, and the cat starts to mewl again. Jackie's screaming. Jackie's screaming at him. Jackie's screaming everything Marvin was ever afraid that he would say.

“Like an animal, you locked him up like an animal! You knew I loved him and you took him away from me! You – you knocked me out that night! Fucking traitor! Marvin, Marvin! How could you do this to me?”

Marvin cries against the bed. Jackie slams him back, once, twice.

“Jackie,” Henrik wails, and honest to God Marvin has never heard him that scared.

“How could you do this to him?” Jackie screeches, squeezing his shirt til the buttons below pop. “He didn't deserve it. He was just a victim! You lied to me so many times! I wanted him, you knew how badly I needed him back! You let me think that Anti had him, and then that he was missing from everybody! Do you know how many sex trafficking rings I busted looking for him? How many times I spent my nights under bridges or in drug dens looking for him, trying to make sure everyone was safe?”

“Jackie,” sobs Marvin. “Love, you do all that anyway.”

“But I didn't use to wonder if it would be my baby brother when I found homeless men dead in the streets,” Jackie answers, and it's now that Marvin realizes he's sobbing too. “I didn't use to carry teenagers to the emergency room after they'd overdosed because they just got mixed up with the wrong people, people who should have looked after them, and then spend the rest of the week wondering if anybody would carry my baby brother like that if the same thing was happening to him. I didn't used to clean up trafficking victims and see every one of those bruises and cuts and markings and diseases on his skin too.”

Marvin's crying too hard to breathe. He takes hold of Jackie's sweatshirt and cries, shaking his head up at him.

“I love you,” he manages, choking and sobbing. “I love you, I love you.”

“I searched for him! Cried over him, nightmared about his little body washing up on the beach! That one night I had him, he looked up at me like I made the world spin, just because I showed him a few minutes of kindness. He had just finally in his life gotten some kindness. Why did he deserve this?”

“I love you,” Marvin chants, because what else can he say? Jameson never deserved it. He always knew that. It's just that his brothers also deserved better – deserved to be safe from Anti – and that was all that mattered.

That is still all that matters.

“Let him out of there,” wails Jackie. “Now, now, fucking traitor, let him out!”

But Marvin keeps shaking his head. No. No!

Jackie screams in frustration and draws his arm back. Marvin flinches and jerks his head away.

And in the middle of all the chaos and all the turmoil inside his chest, he thinks that that moment is clear as day to both of them, because they realize at the exact same time that Jackie almost hit him.

Marvin gapes up at him. Jackie still has his fist drawn back.

His big brother almost hit him.

Marvin lies there, breathing thick, wet breaths. Jackie holds that fist up, shocked.

Then his hand lowers, and for just one second, his fingers stroke down Marvin's cheek.

It's bizarre, later, that Marvin knows exactly what Jackie is seeing in that moment – his little brother. His only little brother, back before any of this. Bright green hair and a silly Game Grumps cape. A cat mask and a blue shirt. They go racing through the city causing trouble together and come home laughing like wild. They make Old Fashioneds and drink while they watch comedy specials on Netflix til the sun comes up. Marvin brings his first cat home and they both spoil her rotten, spending hours playing with her or just watching her run on her wheel, til their phones are both full with pictures of her. They cook together, setting the fire on kitchen more than once, and they catch bad guys like real life superheroes, cackling with triumph as they review their victories over sweet wine and take-out. When they get sick, they look after each other, even if they do make fun the whole time. Marvin runs away once and then comes home again, and Jackie squeezes him so tight it actually leaves a couple bruises on him, and Marvin allows himself, for the first time in his life, to be loved.

He promises Jackie he will never run away again when his hair is still bright green, and Jackie hugs him again, and the world is right there – the world is that place where their hands wrap around each other. The world is the syncing of their heartbeats and the vibration of Jackie murmuring his thousandth “I love you” into Marvin's ear, and Marvin giving his first one back.

There was nothing else that mattered.

A young man with green hair and a blue cape. His baby brother, smiling.

Marvin.

Jackie's fingers pull away. The spell breaks.

“Get out of my fucking house,” Jackie whispers, releasing him with shaking fingers.

Marvin shakes his head, letting out a long breath. “What?”

“I said get out,” says Jackie.

His voice is tight, and it trembles just a little, taut with stress, but he forces it calm.

“You've lost it,” says Marvin. “It's... Jackie, it's me. I'm not going anywhere.”

Jackie doesn't look at him anymore. He straightens up, wiping his hand down his face.

“Jackie,” Marvin repeats. “I'm not going anywhere.”

“If you stay here,” says Jackie, voice very low. “I'm going to lock you in the garage with a box of granola bars and a pile of stuffed animals. Then we'll see how 'justified' you were.”

Marvin stares, a faint laugh coughing its way up his throat. He looks to Chase and Henrik, but Henrik seems to have gone numb, just listing between the three of them with his hands held out like he's not sure what to do, and Chase is turned towards the door. His face is scrunched up and furious, and there are hot, swift tears running down his face.

Marvin's heart aches. “My little brother, amata,” he says. “Look, I'll make this right. Just tell Jackie – ”

“I,” says Chase, very clearly. “Am not your brother.”

Even Jackie winces a little. Henrik stares blankly at Chase, unable to register the words.

And Marvin –

Oh, he's been punched in the stomach. He can't get any air in.

“And I think you should get the fuck out,” spits Chase. “Cause I never want to see you again.”

He leans down, scoops up Queenie, and vanishes through the door of Marvin's room.

Marvin might honestly collapse. He's taken back to every time he's gotten so stressed over holding JJ captive that it made him sick, and suddenly, all of those moments seem like a cakewalk, and he knows that he could more easily have lived with the guilt and the crushing weight of what he did for a hundred years more rather than hear Chase say that to him even once.

It leaves him so hollow that he can't seem to think of anything else, and the pain of everything else fades too, like he's reached the max of some limit he didn't know he had and now he'll just be a confused zombie for the rest of his life. Before he knows what he's doing, he's packing a few of his things into a bag. Henrik is gone somewhere, he doesn't know. And Jackie is standing there like a prison guard, in silence.

Marvin's in the entryway of their house in what seems to be a half-second, staring at the mirror that will take him back to the realm of the world. He manages to regain just enough awareness to turn back to Jackie behind him, dizzy.

“Call me in a couple days,” he manages. “Let me know where we're at. I'll find someone to stay with for a little while. But once you talk to JJ and see that I've treated him well, that I loved him – and once you have time to think about why I did what I did – you'll understand.”

Jackie doesn't say anything. He's staring at the wall.

“Promise me,” Marvin chokes. “Promise me you'll call.”

“Fine,” says Jackie quietly.

Marvin turns to the mirror, and then looks back again.

Jackie walks away from him without another word.

Marvin steps through the mirror. He's taken the portal that's closest to Henrik's hospital without thinking, and now he's practically in the middle of the city, standing in an alleyway with a single bag over his shoulder and a crushing weight in his chest. The people are rushing by around him. Everything is loud and bright and bursting, but he can't seem to take any of it in.

“Marvin.”

Just... just this terrible combination of dissociation and debilitating pain.

“Marvin, Marvin.”

Hands cup his face. He blinks and looks up.

Henrik. His Henrik. He followed him through the mirror.

“It's okay, I'll go with you,” promises Henrik, pressing their heads together, a bag of his own packed up on his back. “We'll figure this out. I know it wasn't you, Marvin. I know you wouldn't really do that. We're going to be okay, my poor brother. Here I am, Marvin. Here I am.”

Marvin collapses into his arms and weeps.