#lost silver head cannons

[unspeakable-imagination]

Not just a One Night Stand || Logan Howlett

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18+ below the cut MDNI

Cw:takes place between origins and xmen 1, porn with little to no plot,nipple peircings, primal kinks, breeding kinks, choking and other breath play, probably a little blood his claws cound as knifeplay?, p in v, cunnilingus/(F receiving oral),he talks you through it🤌, use of alcohol and tabacco, cannon-typical violence, obviously curse words

First time writing smut, tell me how I did

Logan, or as the tags around his neck say, Wolverine, had been living without memories of his past for two years. All he had was a truck, a trailer, and a bike, all of which he won some way through the cage fighting that made him good money.

He knew what he was. He learned it rather quickly, in a world where mutants were cursed apon. That's why he didn't tell a single damn soul, and if they found out, he'd either leave the city or kill the problem that made him loose his patience in the first place.

That was one thing about Logan. He was shockingly patient. Unless it came to the dumb fucks constantly trying to take back the money they'd lost. This night was like any of the rest, fight, drink, find a girl and fuck, then start over again the next night. Or atleast it would have been.

He'd just finished his final cage fight of the night, and gripped the thick envelope filled to the seem with bills of all sorts. he thumbed through and took out some of the lesser bills, ones and fives, then stuffed the envelope inside of his inner coat pocket.

He strutted to the bar while he pulled a half smoked cigar and a basic lighter from his other pocket. By the time he was sitting, he was already twisting the cigar in the flame, lighting the edges to get an even burn. The bartender already knew his order, given that he was here the night before and was already sliding a glass filled with whiskey to the brim over the counter to his place setting.

Then, it happened as usual. Drink, smoke, and look around the bar. And then, like the pretty little thing that you were, you slid into the barstool next to him. "Hey there," you said. Your hair was pulled back into a half up half down style, and your neck was covered in glittering silver chains. Your ears had similarly matching jewley, dangling earrings that hung to your collarbones. You were wearing a tiny black dress with thin straps and stocking with a pair of pumps.

"Hey," he said, looking you up and down. "Ain't you pretty, doll?" He purred. You blinked, flitting your lashed at him.

"I'd sure hope so if it meant I caught your attention," you hummed. You motioned to the tender and asked for something simple, but logan didn't hear what it was. He was to focused on drinking you in, staring at you, noticing every little detail of your body that he could see. He almost had to stop himself from groaning when he noticed the special way that your dress perked around your nipples, the shape of peircings peeking through. You glanced over as you received your drink,

"Mind if i have a drag, please?" you hummed, raising your head and watching him carefully. You're eyes looked to his cigar and back up, your tounge darting out to lick your lips. You watched a cloud of smoke that was bearly falling from his lips suck back on when he took a deep breath.

"Here," he said, pulling the cigar from his lips to hand it to you. He watched your fingers, dainty as they were compared to his, gently pull it from his grasp. He watched as you brought it to your own mouth, taking a pull. He watched the embers glow and recede, he watched the way you closed your eyes and tilted your head back. He watched the way the vein on your neck throbbed to your heartbeat, and thought about how badly he wanted to bite it. He had to stop himself from groaning.

"Fuck," he mumbled.

"What are you thinking," you peered at the name on his dogtags," Wolverine?" He swallowed thickly and then he leaned in, closer to you.

"Logan. I think we should go talk somewhere eles," the way he said it was low, deep, and his voice rumbled like thunder.

"[Name]. And I think so, too, Logan." You nearly purred at the way he sounded and tiped back your drink, swallowing it whole as he did mostly the same. He helped you slide off your seat, plucking the cigar from your mouth as he did so and putting it back in his own. He stood and gripped you by your waist tightly, stepping with you towards the exit.

Shockingly, the moment you two were walking down the hallway of the hotel was rather controlled. Nobody was making out, slamming into walls, nobody was moaning. It was painstaking keeping your hands off of Logan.

Constant glances at eachother while murmuring sweet compliments about how pleasing one another looked, teasing words like "Oh I don't mind coming with you," and other phrases.

The moment you slipped into the room, words were no longer small whispers, and instead real, volume reasonably added.

Logan wasn't shy. He'd pulled the money to pay for the drinks in the room of the fridge, even adding a bit extra to get a smokers room. He didn't take his time grabbing a beer from the tiny fridge and slamming the necks against the counter to pop the caps off.

You had already relit the cigar that you were forced to put out in the lobby, leaning your torso out the window, your ass in perfect view. You looked so angelically sinful.

"The moon is so beautiful, tonight." Logan's eyes didn't leave you, and when you turned, he offered you a beer. You took it, pleased. "Thank you."

Logan looked out the window, seeing the full moon, and then back to your eyes. The lighting in the hotel was dim, but he was able to see your face.

"You're beautiful, too." He sat down on the edge of the bed and you footed towards him, slipping one leg at a time around his waist till you straddled him. He took a drink and you extanged the cigar back to him to take your own.

"You know the moon used to have a lover," you said. Logan cocked his head to the side.

"Yeah?" You nodded and hummed.

"Kuekuatsheu. Him and the moon lived in the spirit world and would dance together across the sky, every night." He leaned foward a little putting his elbows on your thighs then looked up at you.

"But there was another spirit, a trickster in love with the moon. He was jealous." You used your free hand to comb your fingers through his hair, over his ear. "So the trickster told Kuekuatsheu that the moon wanted flowers, and that he should come to earth to pick them for her."

"Never trust a guy named trickster," he uttered, kicking his lips. You giggled, lightly and gently.

"Well, people do stupid things sometimes. Kuekuatsheu didn't know that leaving the spirit world meant he could never go back. He's trapped, and every night, when he sees the moon he calls out to her. They can never touch eachother again" you frowned, drawing a line on his face.

"Well, Koo-koo-ka-Choo got screwed." You reached down to his dogtags and fiddled with them.

"Kuekuatsheu. It weans The Wolverine, like your tags." He watched her fingers fiddle with the thin sheets of metal. He put the cigar on the ashtray at the end table and gently grabbed your wrist.

You watched him carefully as he kissed right under your palm.

"You should be scared of me," he said, and kissed up your arm.

"I'm not, I know you won't hurt me in any way I don't want." Thoes words made him still.

"What do you mean?" He said. Another kiss to your elbow.

"I like it rough, Logan." He kissed your shoulder blade.

"I can't be anything but rough," he murmured against your shin. He moving his head to the dip of your breastbone. "That's not what I'm worried about."

"Then what is it?" You brought your beer up to your mouth, taking another sip. He did the same.

"Not being able to stop," he admitted. He looked up at you again and swore the light framing your head from the window was really a halo.

"I can stop you if i wanted. I can take it, please, Logan." He tossed his head back, palming your thigh that was holding onto you. He swallowed, his mouth going dry.

"Say my name again," he put his drink on the nightstand and took yours, doing the same.

"Logan," you hummed, dipping your head down to his throat, gently nibbling at the flesh in the crook. He groaned and lifted you by your ass, putting your pack onto the bed.

"God you gave no fucking idea what's going on in my brain, baby. I could fucking destroy you," leaned ontop of you, supporting his weight on his elbows and knees. One knee was between your legs and he pushed it between your thighs.

"I could devour you right now." He kissed your collarbones, then up to your neck and bit you in a similar fashion how you did him. "I could ruin you the same way I'm about to ruin this dress."

You only hummed, your arms latching around his neck. What suddenly shocked you was the clean sound of metal, three claws extending from between his knuckles on one hand, right next you your face.

You felt your heart speed up and he kissed your cheek, then breathed in your ear. "Don't worry, you know I won't hurt you in a way you wouldn't like," and it sent a shiver down your spine. You almost moaned.

He sat up, bringing his claws to the neckline of your dress and pulling the down, slicing the dress in the respective places, small cat scratches underneath. The shallow cuts, like that from paper, beaded tiny drops of the crimson fluid every few inches. Nothing to heavy.

The cool air hitting your now hot skin made you whine, "Oh God's, logan," you watched, eyes open as he cut your stocking waistline elastic, and once slice above each thigh around the bands of your underwater.

"You don't need these anymore," he said. His claws retracted and he shrugged off his beater. You watched him lift the hem and when you saw skin, you latched your fingers onto it. You dug your fingers into his hips above his belt and jeans and tugged your bottom lip in your teeth. He slid off the bed, leaving your grasp.

You sat up to watch him get on his knees, looking at him with confusion. "What?"

"M' just gonna help these off, don't worry," he said, yanking at the destroyed fabric thag was still on you. Your heels fell off with your irrepreably damaged stocking and gasped at the cold hitting your heated core. He took a deep breath and growled. Literally growled.

He gripped above your knees and dug you to the edge of the bed, burring his face in the middle of your thigh and sunk his teeth into it, you head lolled back in a moan.

"I could just tear you to shreds," he said between bites as he traveled up your legs. He but you so hard, you'd sure you'd bruise in no time.

"Please, Lo," you hummed squirming and opening your knees a little further.

"Come on, baby. Beg for me more." You began to open your mouth, prepared you beg, to scream for him to touch you, but you never got the chance. He dug his teeth into your thigh where it meets your hip and you moaned your back arching and pushing your considerably soaked cunt into his chin.

"Fuck," he hissed, grabbing your hips and pushing them back down. "Stay, be good."

"Please, please, Logan, I need you to touch me," you preened. "Please I need you to touch me,"

"There you go," he hummed and used his hands to open your knees for more than just his head. He adjusted his shoulders between your knees before he lifted one leg above and onto his shoulder.

"Oh," you gasped as he nosed his fave into your country, taking a deep breath. He licked a stripe upwards between your folds and you swore you felt your hips jut, just a tad, and you breathed out a shaky sigh.

"Don't go quiet on me now, baby girl. I got you," he nuzzled his face in deeper. Lolling his mouth open, he did just what he said he'd do, devouring you. He sucked your clit into him mouth and your hand flew into his hair at you moaned, sure it would shake the paper walls of the place.

You grappled and tugged his hair, while also trying to shove his face deeper between your legs. He groaned into your folds, vibrating your whole being, which only made you whine more and forget to swallow. The sensation of his mouth sucked around you made you nearly cry when he prodded a finger into you, not even realizing one of his hands left your leg.

He ate you like a starved man, "Lo, i," you panted. It was hard to think, or even speak,

"You what?" He pulled away for only a second but you shaved his fave back down.

"Don' stop, please. M' so close," you nearly cried. He only laughed into your body and added another finger, his lips placing themselves wrapped around your core again. You felt ever fiver in your being tense and began you hurriedly day pleases like a prayer over and over, wrapping your calf around his neck to dig him in further and practically ride his face.

All it took for that rope to snap was his teeth lightly grazing over your clit and you fell off your elbow that kept you propped, your head flung back into a moan. He didn't stop, though. He lapped up whatever juices fell from your hole and grumbled, almost feraly. You shook beneath him and wiggled, until he slurped up ever drop of arousal and release that was left in you before he pulled his face away.

His chin and parts of his chops glistened with what parts of you he couldn't consume and he gave you a toothy, mischievous smile. "Oh baby, I'm hardly done with you."

You panted, still trying to catch your breath, but your hand in his hair hand long went slack, snaking up your hips to grope yourself.

He stood, wiping his face with the back of his hand, up half his arm and then reahed down to undo his belt the metal clanging, then his zipper, hill his pants fell to his feet. You hadn't even noticed he stepped out of them.

He grabbed you, pushing you further up the bed till he settled on his knees, cock standing proud. Your droopy-lidded eyes widening at the sheer girth.

"Don't worry, baby it will fit, I'll make it" then he grabbed you by your legs pressing them over his shoulders and locking you into a mating press. He ran a thumb over your clit. Then spit into his palm, pumping himself.

"I can't wait, please lo," your eyes locked onto his and your lips parted. He grabbed you by your jaw and tilted his head.

"Open thoes pretty lips more," he demanded and you obliged. He spit into you mouth and then shut it for you, massaging your throat as he whispered for you to swallow. When you did, you opened your mouth, all pretty and he broke. "Fuck it."

He pumped himself a few more times, quickly before grabbing your hips the the point that they dimpled and turned white, sure to bruise, and shoved you onto him, hilted in just a moment. His head lolled back his mouth flew Open in the most feral, gut churning groan, or maybe it was your organs readjusting. You were to busy moaning, writhing and shivering underneath him. "Good girl, that's my girl."

He laid one arm next to your ribs to keep balance and the other one grabbed the bearly breathing cigar. He took a drag, slowly beginning to pump his hips. The tiny, almost exhausted embers in the cigar burned back to life and began to blossom the heat through the bud. He left the cigar in his lips and wrapped his hand around your throat, squeezing lightly while you were in a trance, softl, gummed moans leaving your blissed face with every thrust. He lifted your head slightly and blew the smoke in your face, letting you breath in the smoke, then squeezed again, and let go. He grabbed the cigar and dropped his head to your neck, bending his supporting elbow. You choked at the way he went impossibly deeper, but he didn't care.

"You got this, baby," he whispered in your ear. He latched his lips onto your vein and began sucking splotches, coloring your neck in reds and purples, occasionally stopping to suck down another portion if cigar. He moved and pressed his lips to yours, exhaling the smoke into your mouth, which you greedily accepted.

He put the cigar back down, sat up, and used one hand to lube his fingers with some of your juices before playing with your clit again, watching you but at the overstimulating feeling. "I got you, hey, it's okay," he muttered. His other hand locked around your throat once more and he used it to pull you up and down on his cock, effectively making you ride him from the bottom

You whined and pleaded, asking him for more, that you were going to come again. He responded with a squeeze. "Then come on me, baby, all over."

Your hands found his thighs and you dug your nails into his legs, trying to ground yourself, " Yes, yes," you chanted. He watched the drool fall down tour cheek and grinned.

Your hips stuttered and your legs jerked, but the hand from your troat flew to one of your knees to hold you in place. "lo, lo, i," your face scrunched and his hand on your core stilled the same way his hips did as he felt your pussy clench onto him. He felt his thighs grow wet as fluid gushed from where you met, and he leaned back and watched.

"Good, baby. What a good girl," he hummed, pulling himself from you. You winced at the feeling of emptiness, but laid there, eye closed as you tried to recover. You listened as he stoked himself, listened to him groan, and opened your eyes just in time to watch him ejaculate all over your stomach. His warm, thick sperm painted your abdomen and even reached your ribs and then he backed up, putting your legs down gently on the bed.

"Just wait right there, don't move, okay?" He took your humming as a good response and scooted off the bed, walking to the bathroom. You listened to the faucet run and listened to him shuffle around. You heard the faucet shut off, and he appeared from the doorway with a washcloth, damp and warm. He came to the edge of the bed and knelt down, gently wiping your thighs and your mound, moving down to gently dap at your folds before he brought it up to wipe the cum from your stomach.

"You did so well," he said careful to avoid the scabbed slices from earlier. When he finished cleaning you, he climbed back onto the bed and fell to your side.

"Stay with me, [Name]. More than just tonight." You curled into his arms and he pulled the blanket over the both of you.

"Okay, Logan."

[inmyheaddd]

dating grayson hawthorne head cannons

wc ⇨ 800 a/n ⇨ grayson hawthorne i love u!!! masterlist

grayson is the type of man who’d spoil you endlessly. anything you even mention, look at for a second too long, even a passing interest—you best believe it’s at your doorstep the next day. his attentiveness is almost surreal; he noticed you were playing a particular artist slightly more than usual over the past week, and then got you VIP tickets to an upcoming show. 

in turn, you try to match his level and surprise him with things he likes.

you knew grayson collected watches, and with jamesons help, you found out which one was missing from his collection. you’d been making a scrapbook over the past year, and this was no better time to gift it as well.

you walk into his study, slightly confused as he never really calls you in there, “yeah, what’s up?”

“was this your doing?” he gestures towards a gift placed on the desk his sitting at, with a tiny smile present on his face.

“oh,” you struggle to hide your own smile. “yeah it was, why?” 

standing and approaching you, he gently places his hands on your face. "my love, you know you don't have to get me anything, right?" he says softly.

“yeah, i know, but you always do things for me, i just wanted to return the favor” you explain.

“your presence is everything i need and more.” grayson hawthorne had a way of speaking that left no room for arguments. but that was grayson hawthorne, in your eyes, he was just grayson.

“grayson,” you drag out his name in protest, rolling your eyes jokingly, “just open the gift please, let me do something nice for you.” 

“everything you do is nice for me.” he counters.

“grayson.”

“y/n.” 

your attempt at a stern look dissolves into laughter. chuckling at your antics, grayson lowers his hands and decides, "i’ll open it." he never liked to back down, but for you, seeing your radiant smile was worth it. "come here," he beckons, leading you back to his desk and encouraging you to sit across his lap. you oblige.

opening the gift, the first thing he finds is a letter you wrote. heat rises to your cheeks at the thought of him reading the words you poured your heart into, right in front of you. "you don't have to read it now; just look at the other things," you suggest.

“you got me something else?” he sounds truly confused, like no one had ever put thought into him before. you laugh softly, turning your head to face him “obviously, i’d give you the moon if i could.”  

“you shouldn’t have,” he says as he recognizes the brand on the box, previously covered by the letter.

“shouldn’t have gotten you the moon? i didn’t actua—“ your joke is cut short as he raises an eyebrow, though the slight curve of his lips betrays his attempt at seriousness. 

you look down at his lips and back up to his eyes, “what?” you muse at him, as he held eye contact even after your dad joke was cut off, instead of returning to his unboxing.

you often found yourself getting lost into his eyes, momentarily forgetting everything around you this. 

his silver eyes often said more than he did, and you yearned to master the language they spoke.

“i just love you so much.” it wasn’t the first time he’s spoken those words, but it wasn’t a very common occurrence. it just made them all the more meaningful

grayson preferred to say it in other ways, like the 2 squeezes he gives your hand, or when your foreheads stay connected for a moment longer after you’ve shared a kiss. 

his love language is gift giving — clearly, and quality time. 

he plans all your dates meticulously, knowing exactly what you like and what you’d have fun doing.

your relationship is pretty private, everyone knows you’re together, and you post the occasional “soft launch” type of post on your story, but that’s really it.

you’re his muse. his private photography account is simply full of you.

hes not one for extreme PDA, in his opinion its no one’s business but you two’s. handholding, an arm around your waist/ shoulder, peck on the cheek, is practically the limit.

as much as you tell him not to, he puts your needs above everything, even himself. 

he never thought of himself as someone who enjoyed physical touch; he was reserved to say the least, until he met you.

he can’t fall asleep without having some sort of contact with you. 

he wakes up with the most endearingly messy bed head, you adore it. him on the other hand, not so much.

grayson calls off every meeting and any plans he has whenever you’re sick or not feeling your best to stay by your side. movie marathons, all the food you’re craving, soup, blanket forts —he’s doing it all.

you insist on him going and that you’ll be fine, but 10 minutes later you realise there’s no place you’d rather be than here with him.

[gardens-light]

In The Name Of Love

Believing that chaos had settled down, you and the Autobots decide to hit the road again. Leaving the abandoned cathedral behind, and moving on- to where? Neither of you knew. For the next plan of action hadn't been thought yet. But chaos never rests. For little did any of you know, that something else was brewing- a danger so much bigger than yourselves was coming after you.

Content: Events takes place in Transformers- Age of Extinction, (Minor spoilers). Mild coarse language. Reader insert. Optimus Prime x F/Human Reader.

Sparkmate Series: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 7 (End)

A small hiss escaped your lips, feeling Tessa's confused stare as you wiggled into a new pair of jeans. Rubbing your behind and upper thighs, as you attempted to soothe the bruising that began to form.  

“What happened to you last night?"

"Nothing." You simply spoke, avoiding your sister's gaze as you packed your bag. "I uh... got up to get a drink. Must've lost my footing while going down the stairs."

"Oh really?" Tessa raised a brow, while crossing her arms. "Because I thought you told Dad, that you fell in the pool next door, and Optimus caught you."

A small chuckle left her, as you tried to hide your blushing face. Simply turning your back on Tessa, adjusting the backpack upon your shoulders.

"Th-That's what I meant." You lowly spoke, trying to hide the embarrassment within your tone.

"Here's a tip, Sis." Tessa teased, while patting your shoulder. "One, if you're gonna lie. Stick to one story."

You tilted your head a little, "and the second?" you questioned. Slightly hearing that there was more to your sister's statement.

But all she did was turned and faced you, giving you a cheeky smile. "And two... you're not as quiet, as you think you are..."

--- 

A sudden screech of Optimus’ wheels filled the air, as he swerved from an oncoming attack. Avoiding a missile, by entering the left lane of the highway.  

“What’s happening?” Tessa asked, as her body slid into you. Both of you pressing against the driver's door.   

Innocent bystanders blared their horns, as the Autobot cut them off. Causing his passengers to slide against his passenger door, dodging another attack from an unknown enemy ahead.  

The roaring sound of Drift’s and Crosshairs’ engines caught your attention, watching them overtake their leader with effortless speed. Returning fire at the enemy, while Hound and Bumblebee escorted cars off the highway and into the field upon the left.  

“What the fuck is that?” Shane’s voice yelled.  

Your heart raced a little quicker, breath getting stuck in your throat as your wide eyes gazed at the road ahead. Casually strolling towards the Autobots, an unknown Transformer of gun-metal silver caused your hair to stand on end. From what you could tell, no clear sign of Autobot or Deception marked their mechanical body. The two cannons adorning the metal plates of their forearms, caused your stomach to twist in a sickening knot, as the weaponry put Hound’s to shame.  

A scream escaped your lips, as Optimus harshly drifted towards the left. Tires screeching more and smoke emerging from the back of the truck, as his brakes pressed against the floor. Optimus’ plates began to shift and change, as he slowly rolled out of his altmode, causing Shane and Cade to fall out of the passenger side. Luckily having a somewhat soft landing as their bodies rolled against the grass.  

A low growl escaped the Autobot’s lips, as he clutched you and Tessa against his chassis’ with his free servo, Optimus tore up the tar road as his grip dug into it. Slowing him down just a little, leaving Cade and Shane a few meters behind.  

Kneeling against the torn-up road, Optimus looked down at you and Tessa, as he carefully placed the two of you onto the ground. “Are you girls alright?” 

“Look out!” but your warning came too late, as a missile from the unknown enemy ripped through Optimus’ shoulder. Green energon seeped from his wounds and onto you, as he tried to use his large mechanical body to shield you from the blast.   

“Prime!”  

Fear erupted through Optimus’ Spark, his optics widening in disbelief, as a familiar voice boomed from the unknown enemy ahead. Pain clutched onto his wires, as the sound of your sobbing voice called out to him. A scream escaping your lips, as your terrified gaze watched the Autobot take another hit.  

“Optimus! Optimus, get up!” You pleaded, reaching out for him. The ground trembling as he landed upon his back. His helm crushing the hood of the white SUV behind him.   

“I-I can’t... get out of here. Both of you.” His voice spluttered, groaning in pain as Optimus’ body had trouble moving.  

Looking over her shoulder, Tessa saw Cade waving his arms. Gesturing for you and Tessa to come back to him. Her heart ached from racing, breath stolen from her lungs, as her father’s panicky words filled the air. With tears streaming down her face, Tessa wrapped her arms around your waist tightly. Hugging you from behind.  

“We need to go, Sis!-” 

“I won't leave him!”  

With great struggle, Tessa started to pull you backwards. Forcing you towards the direction of the SUV behind Optimus.  

“We need to hide!” she protested.  

Pushing you into the back passenger seats, Tessa closed the door. Quickly wrapping an arm around your waist, while placing her free hand over your mouth. Muffling your cries.  

“Hello Prime.” 

“L-Lockdown?” Optimus’ worried optics gazed up at the bounty-hunter. Watching his old foe lower himself to the Autobot’s level. “What are you doing here? Who sent you?” 

But Lockdown just gave him a smug expression. “Collecting you... our creators want you back.” 

“Cr-Creators? What in Primus name-” 

“Haven’t you ever wondered where you came from?” a small scoff escaped his lips. “Did you honestly believe you were born? No, Prime. You were built! Built for a purpose. A purpose you’ve strayed from.” 

Lockdown’s green optics narrowed onto the SUV, raising a metal ridge as Optimus tried to discreetly push the veicheal away.  

“I feel sorry for you, Prime. Your allegiance to these humans. The trouble with loyalty to a cause, is that the cause will always betray you...” 

--- 

Cade’s worried gaze helplessly watched Lockdown return to his full height. The bounty hunter’s plates shifting and churning, retracting the cannon upon his forearm and revealing a holo-pad. Cade’s pounding heart jumped into his throat, as a daunting UFO emerged from the overcast sky. Hovering over Lockdown, as a small escape pod broke away from the ship.  

“No... No! Girls!” Cade screamed running down the road, as fast as he could.  

--- 

You and Tessa frantically watched a net deploy from Lockdown’s escape pod. Covering the SUV and Optimus.  The pair of you holding tightly onto one another, both of your voices calling out for Cade.  

“Girls! Girls! Get out!” Cade’s voice yelled, his hands slamming against the passenger window.  

“Dad! Help us!” your sister pleaded. Tears streamed down her face.  

Another slam met the back windscreen. Your wide eyes helplessly witnessed Shane’s bloody knuckles smear against the window.  

The engines of Lockdown’s pod fired up, dragging the net upwards. Causing you and Tessa to roll into the SUV’s trunk.  

“Girls! Girls! Break the window!”  

“I’m trying, Dad!” you spoke. Kicking the rear windscreen as hard as you could.  

As the net lifted higher, pain etched throughout Cade’s fingers as he tried to hold on.  

“Girls! Keep breaking the glass!” 

Tessa’s scared expression witnessed Cade’s sweaty hands. “No! No!” 

“I-I can’t hold on!” the burning caused him to hiss. His clutch begging to be released.  

“No! Dad don’t leave us!” Tessa pleaded.  

“Break! You fucking piece of shit!” your demanding voice roared. As you began to take out all fear and frustration onto the rear windscreen.  

“Break the glass, Y/N!-” 

“Dad!” you and Tessa screamed. As the pair of you watched Cade fall back down... 

In The UFO 

“Take those humans to the trash!” Lockdown ordered his small robotic minions.  

“No!” Optimus protested. Trying to struggle against his restraints, as the bounty-hunter dragged the Autobot by his pedes. “Lockdown! If you harm them, I’ll-” 

“You’ll do what, Prime?” he mocked, barely looking over his shoulder. “Besides, don’t you remember this ship?” 

Optimus took a slight look around. Strange prisons held other lifeforms, their snarls and groans filled the air. Parts of the ship looked broken- or more like torn apart. Gun-metal gray covered everything, like it was Lockdown’s signature colour. 

“It was built for all you Knights. The ‘Great Crusaders’ to explore the universe. But, as you can see I’ve commandeered it! Made it my own personal prison.”  

“Welcome back to the Knights Temeos, Prime.” Lockdown gestured at the center of the ship.  

Optimus barely recognized the once great hall, instead of impressive weapons of old. Circular cages and solid prisons with barred doors took their place. The ancient text long stripped away, allowing room for the decapitated heads of Lockdown’s past foes.   

“Y-You... You have disgraced it.” 

A scoff escaped Lockdown’s lips, as he approached one of the solid prisons. Turning a crank, making the metal bars raise and lock into place.    

“You should be grateful, Prime. This is only for the rarest of specimens.” Lockdown spoke with a smile. “The worst of the worst. It’s taken centuries, but I’ve collected all of the Knights. Including you.” 

Optimus struggled against Lockdown’s vice grip, as the hunter forced the Prime into the prison. The Autobot groaned in pain, as the hunter forced his arms above his head. Inducing further injury to his damaged shoulder. As the chains harshly nestled against Optimus’ wrists, the Autobot’s optics widened as Lockdown tilted his helm to the side.  

A low growl came from the Optimus, as he attempted to shift his body weight away from Lockdown. Trying to stop the hunter’s digits from playing with your iron ring.  

“Don’t touch that!” 

Lockdown examined Optimus’ course expression. His sly smile widening, as the hunter fiddled with the item. Finding pleasure of how much it annoyed his prisoner, “now why would you have something like this?” 

A dark chuckle escaped Lockdown’s lips, “don’t tell me... you’ve interfaced with a human!-” 

“Stay away from her!-” 

“Oh Prime... wait till your Creators hear about this.” Lockdown teased. “All this species mixing with species. It isn’t right... isn’t normal. It upsets the cosmic balance, and the Creators don’t like it-”  

“If any harm comes to Y/N, I’ll have your head!-” 

“You were built to do as you were told, Prime!” Lockdown snapped. “The Creators wants to wipe their chessboard clean and start a new. Beginning with you!”  

Lockdown’s digits wrapped around your iron ring, ripping it away from Optimus’ wrist and throwing it against the floor.  

“No!-” 

“You should be ashamed of how far you’ve fallen, Prime!” the hunter spat while exiting the prison. Turning the crank, causing the metal bars to fall down and lock into place. “For she’s just a human!” 

“She’s more than that to me.” Optimus lowly spoke, his optics watching your ring roll along the floor. Stopping against the barred door, “but I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand such thing...”  

--- 

You and Tessa remained hidden in the truck of the SUV. Slowly peering over the back passenger seats, frightened eyes looking out the windows. Trying to find some form of familiarity in the alien surroundings.  

Small robot minions dragged the vicheal into a circular room, the space of metal walls and floor was tight and small. As the large furness in the middle took up the space. Mechanical tendrils grabbed parts of random metal and junk, effortlessly pulling them apart and throwing them into the furness. 

“What the fuck is this place?” you whispered.  

“I don’t know.” Tessa climbed over into the back seat, “but I’m not waiting around to find out-” 

“Tessa! Wait!” 

She slowly opened the back passenger door, once the SUV stopped moving. But her scream filled the air as the sight of Lockdown’s robotic minions greeted her.  

A echoey but mechanical scream erupted from the minions, using their claws to try and grab Tessa.  

“Tessa!” 

She tried kicking one of the minions off her leg, as you clumsily climbed over the back seat. Grabbing a crowbar and smashing the minion's face.  

“Get away from my sister!” You yelled.  

Finally, achieving some distance between yourselves and the robotic minions, you grabbed Tessa’s hand and ran towards the nearest exit.  

“Optimus?” 

“Optimus? Where are you?”  

Your voices echoed throughout the large hall. Tessa’s grip refused to let your hand go, as your fingers wiggled. Trying to loosen your sister’s grip, as your palms felt hot and sweaty.  

Your worried eyes scanned your surroundings, trying to sense your way through strange halls and which direction would be best to follow. Please be alright...  

Back On The Ground  

“Come on! Come on!” Cade hurriedly spoke to Shane, as Bumblebee’s tires came to a screeching halt.  

Both exiting the Camero and running towards the railings of Mehigan Avenue's bypass. People abandoned their cars, as their yelling and screaming voices filled the air. The Autobots changed out of their altmodes, following Cade and Shane’s lead, while Lockdown’s ship hovered above the river nearby. 

“This is a bad idea.” Hound grumbled, shrugging his shoulders. “But hey, I’m all for bad ideas.” 

Drift helped give Shane and Cade a boost, climbing onto the roof of the ship. As its thrusters slowly picked up speed. All shakily making their way towards an opening within the ceiling of the ship.  

“This is crazy.” Shane breathed, slightly peering down into the ship’s metal interior. 

“Look.” Cade caught Shane’s attention, “you wanna cut and run? Now’s the time to do so, Lucky Charms.” 

“I’m not here to help your get your daughters.” Shane spoke, finding his confidence, “you’re here to help me rescue my girlfriend, and future sister-in-law.” 

Cade raised an eyebrow. Cocky bastard...   

--- 

“We’re behind enemy lines now.” Hound lowly warned, as he helped Cade and Shane onto the main platform of the ship. “Lockdown’s ship is bound to have booby traps. So eyes open!”  

“Beware of his bone grinders, brain blinders, flesh peelers.” Crosshairs flat tone sounded almost admirable, rather than a warning. As his green optics scanned the main bridge, “also chromosomal inverters, catatonic sludge, black hole trapdoors, and of course, radiation.”  

“We must be quick.” Drift encouraged, “we have the element of surprise. Let’s try and use violence as a last resort.”  

Most of the Autobot’s silently nodded, but a heavy sigh left Crosshairs. “Well, we looked. They’re not here. Let’s go-” 

“What?” Cade challenged, his eyes giving the green Autobot daggers. “Hey! I’m not going anywhere without my daughters-” 

“I’m unclear. What’s in it for me?” 

“What’s in it for you?!-” 

The whirling of Hound’s cannon interrupted Cade, causing him to fall silent and back away from Crosshairs. As the gray Autobot placed the barrel of his weapon, into Crosshairs’ neck. 

“Easy. Let’s use words.” Crosshairs spoke, holding his servos up in the air.  

“What’s in it for you, is that I don’t kill you.” Hound boldly spoke. “We’re getting the boss back, and the girls. Copy?” 

“Okay, okay.” Crosshairs watched Hound slowly withdraw his weapon, “very persuasive. Textbook machismo... well then. We’re going to need to sabotage something.”  

“Better hurry.” Drift warned, “because the dark-matter drives are preparing to take off. I give us... ten minutes.” 

“Is that what that sound is?” Shane’s panicky tone questioned. “The engines filling up? Are you telling me, that this thing is going to be taking off in ten minutes?” 

“Could be nine...” Drift shrugged his shoulders, “worst case... seven-” 

“Cade, Shane. Search the cell blocks.” Hound instructed, “we’ll find Optimus.” 

“Let’s stop this nightmare ship...” 

--- 

“Optimus?... Optimus?” 

Your voice echoed throughout the large hallway, the walls and floor looming over you and Tessa, making you both feel smaller than you already were.  

“Where are you?” 

“So... how did it start?” Tessa randomly questioned.  

You gave Tessa a little side glance, seeing the corners of her mouth turn up a little. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Right...” her teasing tone mocked, “because most people totally go from, ‘I’m going to take this alien apart’ to ‘I’m going to fuck it-” 

“Tessa! What the fuck?” you questioned between coughs, as you choked on your own breath. “What on Earth are you talking about?-” 

“Y/N, I’ve been sneaking around with my boyfriend for months.” Her tone teased, “plus, you’re my sister. I can tell when you’re lying.”  

Tessa lightly chuckled, as she watched the blush form across your features.   

“But seriously... how did it start?”  

A heavy sigh left you, knowing that she wouldn’t stop until you answered her. “I... wouldn’t be able to describe it.” You lowly admitted, trying to avoid Tessa as you felt her smiling gaze. “At first, all I wanted was to figure out how he worked. How I could use their technology to help with Dad’s inventions. Then Optimus came to life, and my thoughts kept reverting back to the reward money you spoke of. So as I begun fixing him, my mind thought that we could gotten more money by handing over a working Transformer, rather than a dead one.” 

“What changed?” 

“I did.” You simply answered, “the more we talked, the more I realized how wrong I was. The Cybertronians, they’re not simple-minded machines that the government would make us believe. They’re living beings with souls, life, dreams. You should have seen how Optimus spoke about his home world, the hurt and pain I saw within his eyes, as he told me about how their war tore it apart. And the joy that just... just radiated from his Spark as I fixed him. It was like, it had been a very long time since Optimus felt such happiness. Such peace...” 

“Kinda sounds like love at first sight.” Tessa spoke. 

A small chuckle left you, “I guess you could say that... kinda like you and Shane being Romeo and Juillet.” 

Tessa gave you a playful nudge, “I can’t wait to see Dad’s face when he finds out-” 

“He’s not- wait. Did you hear that?” 

Both of you stopped in the middle of the hallway, the low sound of growling coming to your ears. Hearts slowly picking up rhythm, as your hair stood on end. Eyes widening as the sight of four, mechanical dogs prowled towards you.  

“Oh shit-” 

“Run. Run!” 

Grabbing Tessa’s hand, almost dragging her as you both ran in the opposite direction. Yelps and screams escaped you and Tessa, as you ran from one hallway into another. The sounds of the dogs snarling indicated that they weren’t far behind.  

“Quick! Through this way!”  

You shoved Tessa through the bars of a cell, following just in time as the dogs tried to bite their way through the bars. The pair of you backed away into a corner, while the dogs continued to bark and snarl. Alerting the minions of your location.  

“What we do, Y/N?” 

“I’m working on it.” 

Both pressed yourselves into the corner, as your terrified expression helplessly watched one of the dogs squeeze itself through the metal bars. The others backed away, allowing the minion to shoot through the bars. Slapping a hand over Tessa’s mouth, muffling her screams as you shoved her into the wall. Using yourself as her shield. 

You closed your eyes tightly, preparing to feel the beast’s claws pierce into your back. As you placed a free hand over your mouth, trying to muffle a high pitch scream that slowly began to bubble in your throat.  

‘Bang!’ 

A gunshot echoed throughout the cell, followed by the sound of a canine whine. You and Tessa froze, breaths trembling as you nervously waited for what followed... 

--- 

“They could be anywhere.” Cade muttered. Looking around at his surroundings, as he entered a chamber just outside of the Knights Tomeos. Climbing over the center piece, weaving in and out of the swords that stuck out, as he tried to get a better view.  

“It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”  

“We need to find them- whoa! Shit!” 

Losing his footing, Cade quickly grabbed the center sword. Slightly pulling it to the side, trying to stop himself from falling any further.  

Shane gazed at the floor, as a low rumble echoed beneath them. Cade glanced around as the metal plates of the chamber began to shift and change, walls caving in on themselves and statues of armored knights rose from the floor. The large feature wall behind them revealed an array of weapons. 

“Come here! Help me!” Cade shouted, jumping off the center piece and approaching the feature wall. “Grab something that we could use!” 

“Ahh... Cade?” Shane whispered after a while. Wide eyes looking at the red lasers scanning the room. “What’s that?” 

Strapping an unusual looking cannon to himself, Cade peered over his shoulder. Seeing the minions slowly approaching the entrance to the chamber. “I don’t know. But on my signal, run behind that center thing.” 

Silently counting to three, Cade quickly leapt away from the wall. Grabbing Shane and pulling him behind the center piece.  

“I’m not going down without a fight!” he groaned, holding the weapon and placing a free hand upon Shane’s shoulder. “They’re going to turn that corner, and we’re gonna take them! You ready, or you gonna bitch out on me?” 

“No! I’ve got your back!” Shane bravely spoke.  

“Are you ready?” 

“Absolutely!” 

The sound of the minions' footsteps came closer.  Causing Shane’s already fast beating heart to pulse a little more rapidly.  

“Don’t bitch out on me, Romeo! Are you ready?” 

“Yeah! Yeah!” Shane hurriedly spoke. Waiting for Cade’s count down from three.  

“Two! One!-” 

“Wait! Wait!” Shane cried, jumping out of his hiding spot. His terrified expression gazing at the minions who aimed their weapons at him. “I surrender! I surrender!” 

Fucking knew it! Cade’s thoughts hissed. Still hiding behind the center piece.  

Adrenaline running through his veins, Shane threw the weapon onto the metal floor. Quickly hiding for cover again, as the weapon fired. Causing a bullet to ricochet off the walls, and into the minions. 

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!-” 

“What’d you do?” Cade asked, cutting off Shane’s frantic apology. “How’d you do that?” 

“I have no idea!” 

“What my daughter sees in you is beyond me!”  

After fidgeting with the weapon for a moment, Cade’s eyes lit up in excitement as the cannon whirled to life. Lighting up with a purple hue.  

“Stay here, Lucky Charms!” 

Moving away from the center piece, Cade unleashed a wave of gunfire upon the minions. Standing his ground, as his adrenaline beating heart surged excitement through his veins. Allowing the bullets to pierce into the mechanical beings, tearing them apart.  

“I’m so gonna patent this shit!” 

--- 

“That was Dad!” Tessa whispered.  

Tessa quickly maneuvered around the mechanical dog, its whines echoing throughout the cell. It tried to nip at your ankle as you stepped over it. But as you looked down, your heart ached a little as energon pooled beneath its body. A mixture of snarls and whines escaped its throat, orange sparks zapped out of its mechanical joins, causing the creature to wince in pain. 

The glowing of the Matrix caught your attention. Carefully pulling out the pendant from under your collar, eyes shifting between the pendant and the injured beast.  

Sensing your hesitation, Tessa looked over her shoulder. Pulling a confused expression, as she watched you kneel beside the creature.  

“What are you doing?-” 

“Hang on for a sec.” You whispered, “I just wanna try something.” 

Your hand hovered over the dog’s forehead, flinching a little whenever it tried to bite you.  

“That thing isn’t like the Autobots!” Tessa hissed, “Dad’s trying to find us!” 

“I just need a minute.” 

Your fingertips quickly scratched behind the beast’s ear, before bringing your hand back to hover above its nose again. Allowing the dog to catch your sent, between each testing pat.  

“You’re alright, boy.” You cooed, while scratching lightly behind its ear. Using your free hand to remove the necklace, allowing The Matrix pendant to carefully hover over the wound upon its belly. “Let me help you.” 

The Matrix glowed brightly, small blue sparks clashed with the orange ones, that zapped out of the dog’s wound. The beast continued to whine, its body twisting in pain.  

“Good boy. Good boy.” Your voice hummed, gently scratching underneath its chin.  

The Matrix hummed, spinning rapidly causing the chain to twist in your hand. Before a blue flash burst over the beast. A low pant escaped its mouth, as you watched the dog struggle onto its feet. The red glow in its optics fading and changing to a brilliant blue.  

You smiled at the creature, its mechanical tail wagging while barking happily at you.  

You turned back to Tessa, her dumbfounded expression gazing at you as her jaw hung low.  

“What? I’ve always wanted a dog.” You spoke with a smile, placing the necklace around your neck again. “Come along, Torgal.” 

--- 

“Dad!” 

“Girls! Girls! Over here!” Cade yelled, quickly approaching the entrance of the chamber.  

A huge smile spread across his features, as Tessa ran into the chamber. Opening his arms wide, preparing to embrace your sister.  

“Shane! I love you!” her voice cried, flinging herself into Shane’s arms. While Cade stood beside them with an unamused expression, “I love you! You saved me! You came back for me!” 

“Of course, I did.” Shane cooed into Tessa’s ear, running his hand through her blonde locks. “I will fight to the ends of the Earth, just to bring you back.” 

“Oh, yeah. He saved you. Sure.” Cade muttered, a small smile teased the corners of his lips, as your sweet chuckles came to his ears. “Y/N...” 

You wrapped your arms around Cade, feeling him embrace you tightly. “I’m so sorry, Dad-” 

“You have nothing to apologize for, Sweetie.” He cooed into your ear. “I’m just glad to have my girls back-” 

“Optimus!” You cried, catching a glimpse of the Autobot in his cell. As you looked over Cade’s shoulder. 

Cade winced as you accidentally shouted into his ear. Pulling away from his embrace and running into the Knights Tomeos. 

“Can’t you girls be happy to see me for once?” Cade sighed, raising an eyebrow as his eyes watched the mechanical dog follow you.  

You approached the bars, banging your palm against the metal. “Optimus! Optimus, it’s me!-” 

“Y/N?...” Optimus’ optics needed a moment to focus, before realization sunk in. “Sweet Spark!”  

“I’m here! Just hold on!-” 

“Big boy coming through!” Hound’s voice boomed from the hallway, “move! Move!” the Autobot demanded as he stormed through the entrance. Causing Tessa, Shane and Cade to scatter out of the way.  

“Boys! Boys, over here!” you shouted, banging your palm against the cell. As Torgal tried to claw and bite his way through the bars.  

“Nice find, Y/N!” Hound complimented, quickly approaching your side, as his optics roughly studied the barred door. “Alright, Little Lady. Back up-” 

“Hold on, boss! We’re coming!” Crosshairs called out.  

Letting out a grunt, Hound forced the door open. Allowing you to enter, as he quickly got to work of releasing Optimus from his restraints.  

“The arms of this Knight Ship detach.” Optimus spoke. “We can break fee. It’s a separate ship-” 

“Where’s the cockpit?” Crosshairs asked, “right or left?” 

“Right.” 

“I’m on it-” 

“Y/N.” You looked up at Optimus, his helm lowering as he tried to rest against your forehead. “Are you hurt? Did Lockdown do anything?” 

“No.” Your calming voice soothed his aching Spark, “I’m alright. I’m not hurt in any way.” 

“Not knowing what happened to you, my Sweet Spark... I feared the worst.” 

You placed your hand upon his cheek, caressing Optimus’ faceplate with your thumb. “Hopefully this would wipe away any fears.” 

A loving hum vibrated through Optimus’ Spark, as your lips softly enclosed over his. Both closed your eyes, as Optimus finally felt his arms fall free from his restraints. Wrapping his servo around your waist, as you melted into his embrace.  

“Break it up lovebirds.” Hound interrupted, “we’ve got a ship to catch.” 

“You’re right, Hound.” Optimus spoke, breaking apart from your lips as his servo lifted you up. Gently holding you against his chassis. “Lockdown would be in Deep Space before he realizes I’m gone.” 

Torgal sniffed at your iron ring upon the floor, barking at you as he got yours and Optimus’ scent. 

The Prime smiled down at the dog, as Torgal carefully picked up the item with his mouth. Dropping it into the palm of Optimus’ free servo.  

“Would you do me the honor of placing this back on?” 

You smiled, reaching for the iron ring and threading it through the cables of his wrist. “Of course, my love.”  

Tag List

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[sharp-silver4795]

Creepypasta Mansion HC’s

Ok, I figured yall need to know my “au”(?) for creepypasta if we gonna keep doin this.

Once again, I’m gonna put headers and color codes. There are no warnings necessary.

Color code is by the amount of work each section has to do.

None >> Least >> Decent >> too much

Housing [General]

So I’m a bit conflicted on how I think about “mansion”- either the “traditional” idea of the mansion, or (my more main version) ⬇️

I can see it as “the mansion” is an area of land, and not an actual building. Each of the creeps are grouped in different ways to live together in groups of 3-4. I tend to lean towards this one. So, for these HCs I’m gonna stick to this version.

“The Mansion” is divided into four main sections:

True Mansion: the actual mansion. Only the Slenderman/Operator resides here.

Inner Mansion: the smallest occupied area of the mansion. That being said, it has no divisions. This is reserved for most of the Proxies.

Mid-Mansion: The largest collective area of the mansion. It has four divisions. It is the most occupied.

Outer-Mansion: The largest complete area of the mansion. Has no divisions. Has the least amount of occupants.

The rest of my head cannons are going to be sorted by these areas of the mansion. The true mansion will not be included for obvious reasons.

Inner Mansion

Occupants: Rogue Proxy, Wilson the Basher, Kate the Chaser, Masky, Hoodie, Kat Hunter, Neon Spike (OC)

One cabin with two levels. The girls are on the lower level, the boys are on the second.

They have the least amount of work due to no one actually being able to get that far into the mansion grounds.

Mid-Mansion: Game Freaks

The far western section of the mid manor.

Occupants: BEN Drowned, Lost Silver, Herobrine, Dark Link, Glitchy Red, Sonic.EXE

It has one cabin with only one level, but they’re share rooms.

Mid-Mansion: Circus Freaks

Eastern most area. It actually has two cabins due to disputes between certain individuals

Despite being called “Circus Freaks” not all of them are based on a circus.

Southeast Occupants: Laughing Jack, Jason the Toymaker, Candy Pop

Northeast Occupants: Laughing Jill, Doll Maker, Candy Cane

Out of all the sections of the mid mansion, they have the least amount of work.

Mid-Mansion: Outsiders/Defensive Rebellion

So, backstory: there are two parts of the mansion called the “Rebellion”. This is because they don’t exactly “fit” with other creeps. They’re wildcards, if you will.

Called “Defensive Rebellion” because they are at the second North and South Levels.

There are two cabins, one in the north and one in the south.

Northern Occupants: Jane the Killer, Nina the Killer, Nathan the Nobody

Southern Occupants: Puppeteer, Clockwork, X-Virus

I will probably make a separate HC post for the proxies to explain why X-Virus is here.

The North does nothing. The south has a good bit on their hands though.

Outer-Mansion/Offensive Rebellion

Alright. The largest area of the mansion without divisions.

It has one cabin, and four occupants: Ticci Toby, Jeff the Killer, Eyeless Jack, and Liu Woods. (I refuse to call him Homicidal Liu it just sounds weird.)

They have the most work due to this being the first area of the mansion.

But they paid the big bucks 💰💰💰

They kind of solo the different areas of the OR.

Toby takes the Northeast + East, Jeff takes the Northwest + West, EJ takes the southwest, and Liu takes the southeast.

Other Stuff

To the south of the mansion grounds there is a highway that is right next to the city.

That being said, the south of the mansion is usually how people get in.

The mansion isn’t really big into fighting Zalgo and shit, they just protect the grounds for the most part.

Well, I hope ya liked this one. Sorry that my posts are really long, I just try to be thorough-

[randomwriteronline]

(inspired by this post by @byz-was-here)

So maybe he had been a little too brash.

Not the first time Gresh had gotten that yelled at him, though Vastus was usually physically present instead of just in his head.

The point being, his attempt at sneaking into the terrifyingly enormous robot trying to punch the life out of the rickety body Mata Nui was struggling to pilot had been a success, and after what had felt like hours climbing as fast as he could up a relatively narrow tunnel he had at last emerged onto what had appeared to be some kind of island swarmed with bipedal metallic lizards of sorts brandishing spears.

Only one problem left on his plan's path now: he had no idea what the next step of said plan was.

One of the lizards opened its yellow skull into slices, hissing horrendously at him with what seemed like either a weirdly thick tongue or one of those slugs that tasted like rusted copper that they ate in Tajun, and pointed the end of its weapon at him as it crackled menacingly with an immense charge.

The young Glatorian panicked.

Before he could think of responding in any other way he joined his blades and thrusted them forward as hard as he could: a typhoon arose from them in the matter of a second, sweeping within itself the army of armored lizards. They struggled and writhed within the winds in a desperate attempt at freeing themselves from its pull, but could do nothing as their heads were yanked open and the slugs (they had to be slugs, because if those had been tongues it would have been so, so much worse) were almost all torn apart by the centripetal force, those spared from the gruesome fate ending up launched towards the impossibly high sky-like ceiling.

Gresh struggled to undo the destructive phenomenon before he fully lost control of it. As he heaved after at last dividing his weapons, he jolted upright again when a strange sound suddenly stopped not too far away from him. Nobody was around him anymore, and yet the noise was close, so close - almost...

He jerked his head upwards.

The slugs and the lizards had been weird, by all means - they had been what he might have expected from Kiina's idea of life on other planets: properly alien, properly other, properly just comprehensible enough to remind him of vague things that made no sense when presented in that shape and function.

Yet this, for all the ways it should have looked somewhat familiar, might have been the strangest being he'd ever seen in his life.

The humanoid figure clad in silver and red, floating above him thanks to rockets that seemed welded into its shoulders, looked back at him with glowing eyes that clearly mirrored his opinion.

"Now what in Mata Nui's name are you meant to be?" it sputtered at him without meaning to.

Its voice was almost too normal for its mechanical appearance - it still rumbled with melodies only possibly sung by machinery in-between the whistling breaths leaving and entering its frame like steam from a locomotive, but based on the being's looks hearing it pronounce such clear words instead of hisses, clunks, and revving growls was nonetheless quite destabilizing. It carried a weirdly androgynous quality within its deep pitch that made it impossible to understand if whoever had made it could have been envisioning it as female or otherwise, not helped by the martial image its armor projected without really giving its body a distinctively gendered shape. It was armed - the spinning blades it wielded seemed to be fused into one hand, what appeared to be a mini-sized cannon held into the other, and neither resembled any weapon the young Glatorian had ever seen - yet it appeared much more concerned with assessing the situation than attacking.

Gresh, busy as he was having several moments all at once, took in that pile of information and promptly forgot to think about it.

"I KNOW HIM!" he instead shouted way too loudly, pointing a blade at it without really reflecting on how that might have looked. "I KNOW HIM, HE'S A FRIEND!"

The being stumbled back a little in a defensive pose: "Mata Nui?" it asked, incredulous: "You are a friend to the Great Spirit?"

"YES, I KNOW HIM, HE GAVE ME THE WIND THING!" the young Glatorian continued to yell, now smacking together his weapons to better explain what his not particularly stellar choices in lexicon were struggling to convey by themselves before he pointed back at where he'd come from: "HE'S OUTSIDE FIGHTING THE ROBOT AND ALL! I NEED TO HELP HIM!"

"Fighting the what?"

"THE ROBOT! THE HUGE - THE BIG ROBOT, THE BIG ONE, THIS ONE, IT'S HUGE - I NEED TO FIND THE HEAD AND MAYBE KILL IT, HIM, THEM? MAYBE? MAYBE? POSSIBLY? I NEED TO HELP AND IT'S A BIG ROBOT AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO BUT I SHOULD PROBABLY GET TO THE HEAD OF THE ROBOT, THIS ONE, THE ROBOT - THIS ONE, THE HEAD, I NEED TO GET TO THE HEAD!"

He was not making any sense, but in his defense he was probably high on adrenaline.

The floating being gawked at him briefly. In a smooth motion it landed closer to him, looking him up and down with its brilliant pink eyes as it tried to make heads or tails of him without succeeding; Gresh charged at it to try explaining better and distractedly noticed there was flesh within the mechanical limbs.

"HE'S OUTSIDE," he continued just as loud - making the poor thing recoil as it did its best to keep him a little further away before he fried its audio receptors, "HE'S OUTSIDE AND THE PROBLEM IS IN HERE BECAUSE THERE'S A GUY IN THE BRAIN - HIS BROTHER I THINK? - AND IF I GET TO THE BRAIN MAYBE I CAN STAB HIM? MAYBE? PROBABLY? MAYBE? MA--"

"I can hear you," the being grimaced, stern tone imposing some peace and quiet onto the young warrior. "What is your name?"

"GRESH."

"Please quiet down."

"EVERYBODY I KNOW IS CURRENTLY AT THE MERCY OF TWO HUGE ROBOTS RIGHT NOW AND I NEED TO GET TO THE BRAIN OF THIS ONE TO--"

The hand was not as rough as he would have imagined - what with being made of metal and all - and the way it clumsily clamped around his mouth to very quickly and very kindly shut him up reminded him so much of Tarix that his furiously anxious body relaxed all at once, leaving him to look wide eyed into the dark sockets of a crimson helmet housing a pair of miniature yellow stars.

"You were sent by the Great Spirit himself?" the being asked. Despite currently being seconds away from squeezing its cheeks in that annoying way that older siblings tend to do, its tone was quiet with the sort of reverence reserved for gods.

Gresh pulled its palm from his mouth without encountering opposition: "I don't think he knows I'm here," he confessed, "But he's struggling out there, and I want to help him."

His interlocutor mulled over his words thoughtfully.

Its shining eyes took in the young Glatorian's entire frame, the slight change in them muttering its doubts without needing any words - but what could be a creature so strange, made of skin and clad in metal and bone, with a voice laid naked against the absence of its innate mechanical song, holding within such frail hands of flesh and fake phalanxes the same power as a missing brother of Air, talking of things beyond the universe itself, of a battle none knew their god was waging at that very moment, if not a desperate lending hand Mata Nui sent to guide his people in a victory against his cunning usurper?

When at last it looked back into Gresh's beaded pupils, it had taken its decision.

"The enemy is in the brain," it repeated.

The Lebori nodded feverishly: "The head! I think - he should be, right? It's the most important part, all the thoughts and nerves come from it, if you shut down the brain then the whole thing falls down and fails, right?"

A flash of understanding passed through the being's unmoving features: "Metru Nui!" it exclaimed as if remembering something.

"Yes! I think! Probably. If it's in the head then probably."

"We're a long way from there, but we could..." it ran a few quick calculations, producing a sound much like fat sizzling on a slab of lava-heated rock: "How long can Mata Nui last in his condition?"

"From what I've figured out of him I think he'll try to hold on until he's pummelled into scrap."

"Then we should try to be quicker than that."

Without much more preamble the being grabbed Gresh like a sack of flour, hefted him up in the air (he noticed only then how significantly shorter compared to it he was), secured his arms around its neck and shoulders with a practiced ease as the rockets of its armor shifted in a seamless manner to accomodate his passenger and provide the added firepower needed for carrying two people through the air, and got ready for take off as the poor kid scrambled to wrap around it before getting blasted off.

"Huh," it noted with genuine surprise, briefly forgetting their situation: "You're lighter than a Matoran. Are you missing any parts?"

"I'm eating plenty!" Gresh bit back.

A second later he was flying on the back of a mechanical creature with muscle peeking through the gaps of its armor, and the adrenaline washed away his coherent thoughts again.

-

Teridax felt miserable.

He supposed having an entire forty-thousand-feet tall body worth of various cells and microbes and the such viciously, actively and purposefully fighting against his consciousness would have had that sort of effect on just about anyone.

The gigantic robot piloted by a false god trying with all of its dwindling might to kick his jaw in also wasn't helping.

The second problem, however, could be dealt with by punching it into a sobbing heap of mangled rusted limbs begging for mercy with enough determination and brute force; the first one could not.

It required concentration - a very valuable asset currently being used to counter Mata Nui in his ugly runt of a spare frame he'd found in the first trash can of this horrid planet, thus distracting him from unleashing a strong enough counterattack across his organism to stop the squirming little pests from rebelling against him.

So yes, he was cross enough already.

And now he was getting a migraine.

He wondered briefly if fighting someone his own size (or, well... almost his own size, he nearly chuckled out loud to himself as he took a moment to bask once more of the not insignificant height difference between them) wasn't a waste of time. After all, Mata Nui had mentioned something about the safety of those insignificant beasts hurriedly scuttling away from their scuffle: certainly he would have been quite distraught if a careless swipe of his colossal hand caused a couple thousand casualties - maybe enough to be easily toppled and overpowered as he despaired over the loss of so many useless ants...

He raised his palm in the direction of their bothersome scampering, doing his best to place at least some of his power into it as his headache slowly worsened to a nearly unbearable degree.

How much of an increase in gravity would have been needed to flatten them all at once?

They were so small... Maybe just...

"JUNGLE SQUIRREL!" a voice that was not his screamed in his head.

What?

What the fuck?

What was that?

A strong wind arose, but not across Bara Magna.

In the span of a moment Teridax found himself ripped away from the middle of a titanic fight back in his blasted gaseous form as it was slammed and spread into a fog against one of the walls of the Core Processor. Disoriented, bleary, furious beyond belief, he came to his senses just in time to see rushing amongst the machinery Tahu, Takanuva, and - and a short, green, Toa-like, weirdly organic thing that sprinted directly into the control panel of the Great Spirit Robot which had once housed the synthetic soul of Mata Nui.

-

As incomprehensibly terrifying as a pair of colossi duking it out in the middle of the desert was, their size and loudness at the very least allowed much smaller beings to see and hear everything they were doing so that they could make an attempt to move as far away from their hellish battle as possible.

It hadn't been a pretty spectacle so far (few fights like these were), but it had given them more time to move out of harm's way than they would have expected. The escape was going incredibly smoothly, too, which was never how these sorts of things tended to go: neither Zesk nor Vorox had dared coming anywhere near the commotion, which had managed to scare off Bone Hunters and Skrall as well - even as easy a prey as the Agori were at the moment, scattering half directionless into an unclear part of the desert, they were not worth the risk of accidentally getting stepped on by who knows how many tonnes of metal.

The biggest causes of concern other than avoiding collateral damage were thus reduced to two: making sure everybody was accounted for as they left, and whether or not Mata Nui was winning.

Ackar, to the dismay of his blood pressure, was having serious trouble juggling his attention between them.

Tarix yanked him back to attention by his prosthetic arm, causing the Tapyri to hiss in pain: "What's the point of asking me questions if you don't listen to my answer?!"

"I'm sorry," he growled back, "A friend of mine is fighting for his life right now, Great Beings forbid I'm a little worried for him!"

"So are we!"

"I don't see you trying to dodge the fists of a giant robot right now!"

"Because I'm trying to get the slow walkers out of its space so they won't have to dodge its colossal debris!"

"As entertaining as your yelling is, I think we have bigger slugs to fry," Gelu interrupted them in a flat tone. Head caught in the crook of the Koniri's elbow, Berix squirmed and pushed as he desperately tried to regain the sweet taste of freedom only to get squeezed a little tighter. "Somebody tried to go back to the crux of the struggle."

The other two Glatorian abandoned all tension between them to give the young Gaquri a suffering disappointed look, filled with the kind of tiredness that only an adopted father and the kindly man who puts out carved pumpkins for the mangy were-possum creature that skitters around the edges of his property to feed off of every now and then could muster; coherently, Berix replied with an inarticulate mumbling whine too low in volume and high in pitch to be intelligible that was meant to be an apology.

He was very lucky Kiina was not present, or she would have screamed his scales off.

Evidently he wasn't that lucky, because Kiina materialized on her chariot seconds later with Vastus in tow.

"Most of the oldest, youngest and motion-impared are already being moved on vehicles to a safer cave system a few Lebori knew," she informed the small group urgently as the other dismounted from the back of her ride with a worried look on his face.

Getting no answer, she searched their faces for an inkling of what they were thinking and landed squarely on her younger brother's: the immediate rage that took over her features made him scramble harder to evade Gelu's grip and her inevitable wrath all at once, eventually ending up falling right on his ass in the sand when the Koniri let go without warning.

"YOU." Kiina thundered while he scuttled away behind the other Glatorian: "WHAT IN PLUDE DID YOU DO NOW?!"

"Nothing!" he shrieked back, clinging to the white armored leg even as it tried to shake him off. "Gresh and I thought we could have helped if we got in maybe, you know, since it's a machine and so I could have messed up its wiring or something like that so it could have fallen over and the height advantage could have--"

"Wait - wait, Gresh?" Tarix paled. He turned to his wife: "He was with you, right? With you two, further down?"

Vastus replied with an equally terrified face: "I thought he was down here with you," he replied softly as horror built into his voice, "He insisted in covering our backs, he promised he wouldn't have done anything stupid..."

Ackar sunk his fingers into his eyelids with a groan, Kiina following suit in a nearly identical fashion.

The kids needed a hobby.

Any hobby.

Just as long as it kept them away from pulling shit like this.

If they got him back in one piece, they were going to beat his ass.

An ear-piercing sound that was far too close to a pained lament shook them out of their collective mixture of fear, worry and well-deserved rage, rattling the sky alongside with them.

"Fuckin' Quartz Peaks!" Gelu exclaimed.

His eyes were fixed on the gargantuan figure stumbling back into the dunes on suddenly unsteady legs, leaning forward as it clutched its head in anguish and curled upon itself to stave off the pain clearly rippling through it - shoulders so low that they were almost at the same height as the prototype robot's, which instead stood tall despite the strain placed upon it.

Had Mata Nui dealt a decisive blow as they weren't looking?

But the collision should have caused something akin to a sonic boom, and the mechanical body's stance was just as surprised at the change in its opponent's demeanor as the spectators of their fight...

Then suddenly, the Great Spirit Robot spoke as it had done before.

"My head hurts," it said, with a strangled voice that was not the one that had taunted its adversary so mercilessly until now.

The fraction of a second passed.

A green bolt shot through the golden sand in the fight's direction.

Berix tried to follow, but Tarix latched onto him like a lifeline.

"GRESH!" Vastus shouted as he ran as hard as he could, and Ackar realized his heart was beating far too loud in his ears.

He turned to the other Glatorian, skin pasty and spent like that of a dead body: "Tarix, Gelu, you keep everybody going, as far as you can," he ordered. For a second he was struck by a gross sense of familiarity that almost cut off his breath; some part of him grabbed the resurfacing memories of the Core War and beat them back into the hole he'd buried them until he could almost feel the blood on his knuckles. "Get to those caves, make sure nobody is left behind, keep them all in place until you're certain the coast is clear. Berix, don't move from either of them. Kiina, you're with me, I can't run that fast. Are we good?"

All four nodded, and the chariot's engine revved urgently as he jumped upon its rickety frame.

"You'll better get my nephew back, Tapyri," his once enemy hollered before they could speed off into the desert, with a tone closer to a plea than a threat or a joke.

"Who do you take me for, Gaquri?" Ackar shouted right back: "He's my nephew too!"

Tarix watched him and Kiina drive off as fast as the vehicle allowed; only when they caught up with his wife, still shouting for the young Glatorian as though he could hear that feeble cry from that far away, and scooped the veteran Lebori up with them, did he turn away and rush to take care of the last few stragglers.

-

The prototype creaked pitifully as its enormous hands found the massive elbows of the Great Spirit Robot and struggled to sustain them alongside with everything else that was already putting a strain on its faulty frame.

"Gresh?" Mata Nui whispered, searching for his former body's eyes. "My friend, is that you?"

Through the massive fingers peeked at last a large, glowing iris: upon its dark orange color, so similar to red, laid a whitish beaded line - an attempt at replicating the peculiar shape of a Lebori's pupil on a surface not meant to have any.

"This is too tall," the Great Spirit Robot groaned quietly in a still boyish voice, optics hiding away again before the sense of vertigo became too much.

A tremor overtook its massive frame, threatening to destabilize the prototype robot alongside with it; Mata Nui held onto him a little steadier as he tried desperately to figure out how in the name of the lonely endless vastness of the known and unknown universe the young Glatorian had managed to get himself inside the control panel of the Core Processor of all places.

Even ignoring the fact that he should have gone for the Manual Override Computer instead of putting himself through the immense strain of piloting such a colossal body (although in his defense he may have not known how to operate it or how to recognize it or where to find it - hazy memories of it reminded him that the Great Beings really had placed it horrendously, goodness gracious, so perhaps he had a little too much faith in how effectively Gresh could have located it in the first place), knowing that a physical body was currently governing the Great Spirit Robot was absolutely baffling.

Was this possibility planned? Had anybody considered that one day a bodied being could have needed to take the helm? Were there proper safety measures in place for such a happenstance? Did anybody even stop to consider if it was possible? Did a few dozen thousands years old kid just physically brute force his way into a contraption designed to house immaterial beings and make it work? And hold on, how on Aqua Magna had he shoved Teridax out of it? And actually, now that he thought about it, how in the name of himself had he entered the Robot and gotten all the way to the Core Processor apparently completely on his own?

"How did you do this?" he only asked in the end.

"I went in - in the robot, and there was - we went in the brain, in the, the brain, and we - I threw - Bota Magna sanctissima mentula libera me a malo my body hurts so bad--"

He leaned forward into Mata Nui's embrace, enormous body moaning in pain as long fevers crawled over him.

It must have been an internal infection - it must have meant that those within, the inhabitants he had so carelessly allowed to rot in their own bloodshed, had been fighting back against Teridax.

Had he not been preoccupied with being puzzled out of his wits and helping his friend not succumb to the fever of a lifetime, the former Great Spirit could have been overwhelmed by pride for about an hour, cried himself into unconsciousness for a couple more, spent another pair feeling really bad about them putting so much effort into it when he had ignored them for so long, and experienced a sudden spike in the need to beat the tar out of his fated brother's mask harder than he already had been for a few good minutes.

Fortunately, his mind was fully focused on a variety of other things.

Trying his best to pull Gresh into his arms so that he could better offer him support, he steeled his groaning rusted body and spoke to distract him from the pain: "You are in the Core Processor right now?"

"I - I think, so, yes, I think- I think-"

"You removed Teridax from the controls?"

"I threw - with, with the winds, I yanked him out, 'cause he's - weird, he's weird smoke and all - my legs, my legs--"

"You are not alone with him, are you? Is there someone else in the Core Processor?"

"There- yes, there's Ta, Tahu and Tahu- Taka-Takanuuu, va, Takanuva? Tahu and T-Takanuva, they're - they helped, me, get here, and, and - they're here, they're here too, they'll - I'm in, in safe hands - aren't I?"

Mata Nui's grip around him was wonderfully comforting, and for a moment he felt as though his anguish was a little more bearable: "Safe hands indeed," he heard him speak, voice laden with a wondrous pride that set him at ease: "They are as brave and reckless as you are - and I'm certain they will be able to do the impossible and stave off Teridax, just as you did."

The praise cooled the violent temperature in the young Glatorian's momentary gargantuan body, and as he held onto the otherworlder he at last found the strength to overcome the nausea and pull himself up: despite the terrible aches lighting its every inch on fire, the Great Spirit Robot stood tall once more.

An idea struck Mata Nui as he looked at its orange eyes.

His destiny had been meant to be shared by two bodies and minds of equal strength - but he was stuck in a frame too weak, and the mental strain the task would have put on Gresh risked being too much for him to sustain; and yet, if he had already gotten half of the work done in this rickety thing, and if he continued to maintain his efforts steady as his duty demanded of him, the much larger robot would have expended much less energy, keeping the Glatorian's frail mind and frame safe...

"Gresh," he murmured softly: "How are you feeling?"

"Nauseous," his friend replied truthfully, "But I can - I can manage, I can - it's, not as bad as the- the Skrall in Tajun. I can manage, I can help. I want to help. I want to help."

"I am afraid what I could ask of you might be beyond what you should allow for your safety's sake."

To see such a massive creature of metal tremble fiercely as it did its best to bear its anguish was a frightening spectacle, terrible, unnatural; but Gresh held that heavy body tall and straightened its back as best as he could, and his voice was as steady as they came: "I'll bet I've handled worse."

"Worse than pulling two moons into a planet?"

No answer.

"The robot is equipped to do so without having to physically grasp the satellites."

Gresh wheezed - either in relief, or because something in the Voya Nui area had just exploded hard enough to give him a chance to experience appendicitis again: "Ah," his voice rattled out of him, "Alright. Yes, I can do that, that's feasible."

-

For a striking, minuscule second, it felt a little like a deja-vù.

Nothing was the same - not the location, overflowing with unrecognizable machinery; not the fight, much wilder and cruel in its coreography than a slightly more dangerous game of kohlii than usual; not the spectators, who weren't exactly spectating as Tahu was desperately trying to keep his Hau's shields functional around the three of them while not going blind and Gresh was kneeling completely unresponsive if not catatonic in the sunken spot he had jumped into; not even his opponent, nor himself, although they were still virtually the same beings.

But for a striking, minuscule second, it felt like nothing had changed at all from that confrontation beneath Kini Nui.

Teridax lunged at him with its disgustingly rotten green cloud of a body open like a gaping maw seeking to devour the Toa of Light whole; the gaseous particles scattered briefly as Takanuva swung his spear through them, the arch drawn by the weapon's trajectory producing a blade of light.

The Makuta recomposed himself behind his back in a matter of seconds, spreading to cover the entire wall with his essence. There were no eyes in that clutter of loosely held together atoms, but the Toa could feel them stab right through his armor.

He'd almost been less frightening when he'd had a body.

"I HAVE GROWN TIRED OF YOU!" Teridax's voice boomed through the cramped space, bouncing off of the surrounding machinery with the harshness of a sledgehammer: "THE TIME FOR GAMES IS OVER, LITTLE TOA! I HAVE WELL EXHAUSTED WHATEVER PATIENCE I ONCE MAY HAVE HAD FOR DEALING WITH YOU MISERABLE VERMINS!"

"Sounds like a you problem," Takanuva mumbled in reply through gritted teeth.

The wall of shadow toppled towards him with a long, shrieking whistle, like a faraway bomb on the way to the ground: Tahu had two seconds to shield his eyes before his younger brother's body burst with a blinding flare that would have no doubt brought a weaker being to their knees, but only repelled Teridax back into the corners of the room, divided but not broken, ready to slither back into a plume of horrid olive smoke.

How long was this going to go on for? Keeping his Hau active was slowly starting to wear him down, and in the time Takanuva had been struggling against the Makuta it seemed that absolutely nothing had changed from their predicament.

He would have loved to leap to his aid, but his feet were already singing and nearly melting the metal floor from the stress: if he wanted to get them all safely out of here, fighting wasn't an option.

A strange sound, like a strangled whimpered grunt, prompted him to try his luck and open his eyes again.

Gresh was shaking.

As he still kneeled deadeyed and unresponsive within the pod sunken into the ground, his entire body had suddenly started shivering harshly, spasming as though he was being electrocuted - but nothing appeared to be coming from the walls to provoke such a reaction.

Tahu hurriedly lowered himself towards the strange being while Takanuva continued fending off Teridax: "Gresh!" he called out, reaching for him: "What's wrong?"

His hands found themselves stopped in their tracks by an invisible force just above the being. He tried again, pushing as hard as he could in an attempt to make it through the thick air to no avail as his muscles strained but found no gain all the same. Was this what was affecting the green armored creature? Or had it been like this from the moment he'd jumped in? Then it should have protected Teridax when he'd been swirling within it too, but he'd been blown out of it... Could elemental attacks bypass this invisible barrier?

While the Toa thought furiously how to get him out of there without hurting him, Gresh slowly pulled his head back to look out of his shallow prison with small, jolting motions; he began raising his arms upwards at the same agonizing pace, straining for the open exit just above him.

The struggle tore a strangled whine out of his throat. Takanuva staggered at the sound, and the distraction nearly allowed Teridax to rush through his chest and tear his heartlight away with him - only sending the Toa of Light careening back when the gaseous mass instead collided with the shield Tahu reinforced just in time, saving him from shapeless jaws aching to tear him apart.

"FOOLISH INSECTS!" the Makuta snarled as vicious as a Rahi Nui, "YOU CANNOT STOP ME! YOU CANNOT CHANGE MY DESTINY!"

"It was never your destiny!" Takanuva growled right back: the shadows in the room shifted according to his desire, rendering Teridax heavy enough for him to be hit in full by a blade of light too quick for him to avoid. "You usurped Mata Nui and acted like it was always meant to be!"

Pained hisses turned into a harsh laugh: "DON'T PRETEND YOU CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENS AROUND YOU, LITTLE TOA," Teridax mocked him, twisting into a tornado that threatened to rip the whole room to shreds. "THERE ARE THINGS THAT WILL LAY BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION FOREVER - AND ONCE THAT THING YOU'VE BROUGHT ALONG WITH YOU COLLAPSES FROM A STRUGGLE IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO FACE, NOTHING WILL KEEP ME FROM TAKING MY RIGHTFUL PLACE AS THE EMBODIMENT OF THIS UNIVERSE AGAIN!"

The young Toa could have said something quippy, or sarcastic, a good line to at least go down with the satisfaction of a glorious comeback; as he was not planning on dying, Takanuva just roared and blasted the brightest light bomb he'd ever made in his face.

Unaware of the immense luminescence above him, Gresh's fingers finally clawed at the edges of the control panel.

Tahu snaked his own hand under the thin fleshy phalanxes as soon as the explosion of light dimmed, elated to discover the force field waning enough in that area to let him actually interact with the other being and immediately trying to leverage him up - although it was easier said than done, considering how little he had to work with.

Maybe it was a stupid move, after Teridax had so blatantly claimed that Gresh was the only thing standing between him and complete control over the universe, but he had his reasons: for one, it certainly wouldn't have been the first time he'd pulled this sort of thing, so whatever reserves he might have had about the situation had likely already been obliterated into fine mist; secondly, he was not going to let a sapient being die between convulsions like this, especially not an emissary and friend of the Great Spirit; and finally, if that ancient talking cloud that was the Makuta thought he or Takanuva wouldn't have jumped in the Control Panel to take over from the poor organic thing even at the cost of sacrificing themselves to keep his gaseous ass from doing any more damage to the entire known world, he was sorely mistaken.

Gresh shook harder in his grasp, but did not budge an inch.

The Toa of Fire willed himself coolheaded as he gritted his teeth: "Come on, come on, don't give up on me..."

A blast of light turned his vision spotty for a few moments, Takanuva's pained groan reaching him only moments later. The shield must have gotten weaker - he turned his focus back on his Hau in full, but the flare of its power flowing once again around his younger brother filled his limbs with molten lead as exhaustion settled into him and suddenly pulling Gresh out felt akin to getting his arms ripped off.

Had using the Vahi been this excruciating, or was he just easily fatigued when forced to balance his attention between two things? Gali would have never had this kind of problem.

Then again, she would not have had a Mask of Shielding either; so he would grit his teeth and bear it, and succeed even if it killed him.

Maybe it was this desperate burst of bravado, maybe it was Takanuva scattering Teridax across the corners of the room again before the Makuta could even get close to him, maybe it was Mata Nui, wherever he was, managing to perceive their thoughts and lending them a blessing of his own: but at last, somehow, inhaling in a horrendously loud gasp, Gresh clutched Tahu's hands tight and tore through the forces keeping him down as he lurched upright on his feet, nearly slamming right in the metallic chest while struggling still against his yet to be quelled tremors.

Before the Toa of Fire could say anything the organic creature was feverishly crawling out of the sunken trap, pushing him to the floor alongside himself and cawing with a panicked voice: "Down! Down!"

Takanuva turned to check on them. His opponent wasted no time ramming into the force shield around him, nearly slamming him into the opposite wall had Tahu not almost dislocated his arm to catch him in time and pull him under himself to protect him.

"I HAVE TOLD YOU, LITTLE TOA!" Teridax howled victoriously as he spread his form to completely sorround the now three overwhelmed beings curled on the pavement, powerless to stop him: "YOUR IDIOTIC RESISTANCE IS MEANINGLESS! YOU CANNOT CHANGE MY DESTINY!"

He dove back into the control panel with a horrifying laugh, filling its every crevice, at last returning to the so very maddeningly empowering feeling of a gigantic body once more regained, subjugated, under his utter control.

Before he even had access to his eyes again he could recognize the fever of rebellion burning through his limbs, the rusted hands holding fast onto his chestplate, the sound of straining machinery now on its last sputtering forces: at last his immense irises burned bright with a vermillion hue, facing the crude prototype features of his brother's furrowed momentary face in the battle he had been so rudely interrupted from finishing.

But just as he was about to taunt him, Mata Nui pushed with all his strength, and his sluggish reflexes did not let him react in time.

-

Vastus screamed.

He screamed until he felt his chest shrivel and implode.

Ackar wrapped his prosthetic arm around his back, pressing him against the chariot with all his might because he knew full well that if he had let go the Lebori would have let himself fall off into the sand, but looked just as pale as the dead while they both watched the Great Spirit Robot slump forward into the smaller titan's hold.

"He's fine!" Kiina barked while she struggled to regain control of the chariot after swerving too hard, covered in cold sweat and gripping the wheel so hard the scales of her knuckles were creaking. "He's fine! Mata Nui wouldn't just--!"

"He must have gotten him out before that," the Tapyri agreed much more softly, "He wouldn't have let him come to harm."

Vastus heard them both only faintly. His eyes were stuck on the enormous body with a hole in the back of its head that just moments ago had been speaking with his nephew's voice.

"Your friend better pray to the Great Beings Gresh hasn't come to harm," he hissed, feathers raised and bristling with furious premature grief, pupils constricted so tight it hurt, as he watched the rusted colossus lay its enormous bretheren to the ground slowly, carefully: "Because no fucking robot the size of a mountain will keep me from dismantling him with my bare hands if it's the last thing I do in my miserable life."

-

Takanuva blinked. Then he blinked again two more times, just to make sure his eyes were open, as the red shield faded away.

He flexed his fingers in the dark, trying his luck against the shadows sorrounding the three of them to create a little mote of light... Which formed instantaneously, without encountering any trouble or opposition whatsoever.

A good sign. Puzzling, but pretty good.

He turned his head to look around, feeling Tahu's protective hold around him weaken to allow him to properly take in the room and search for... For what? He wasn't really sure. He felt a little dizzy.

Little seemed to have changed in the wake of Teridax returning in control and the subsequent earth-rending rattle that had overtaken the whole chamber for a terrifying second. The walls were still standing, and with them all their machinery as well; everything was however eerily dark and silent, the hushed buzzes now absent, the faint gleams that all together had made up the room's lightsource snuffed out. Even the small chasm the Makuta had disappeared into was unusually quiet and dim.

"Are you both alright?" his brother asked, still so concerned that he hadn't had the time to catch his breath.

"Yeah," Takanuva replied distractedly: "Yeah, I'm fine. Gresh?"

Faceplanted on the floor and making no movement whatsoever, the organic being responded with a grunt that could have been considered affirmative. Tahu carefully lifted his head to check on him a little better while his younger sibling continued to look around, convinced something was off: beaded pupils struggled to peek through heavy eyelids fighting to stay open.

The Toa of Fire turned the poor thing face up, hoping he could be a bit more comfortable: "You look like you got in a fight with a Rahi Nui," he grimaced.

Gresh's mouth twitched spasmodically for a moment or two: "Drippin'," he mumbled back at him.

"What?"

"Sumfin's drippin'," he slurred again, and craned his neck in mild discomfort as he whined: "Oh, tha's so annoyin'..."

"Where do you hear dripping of all things?" Takanuva argued.

"Wha'y' mean, can'y' hear i'? 's loud 's all Plude..."

"In all fairness Takanuva is not known for being too keen in that sense," Tahu said, completely ignoring the pointed look the Toa of Light immediately shot him, "But I can't hear anything either."

"D'y' go' ears full of w'rms? 's blowin' my head op'n, 's righ' 'here!..." the young being bemoaned as he struggled to raise his weak unstable hand to point somewhere right next to them - in fact, bringing their attention back to the shallow chamber that had housed him mere seconds ago.

The small mote of light illuminated what appeared to be a slowly growing puddle of sickly greenish liquid slowly expanding across the metal floor, half caught in the depressions left by Tahu's smoldering feet where they had nearly melted the pavement. A drop landed into it at that moment with a sad little splash: both Toa followed its path in reverse to find its source up, up, on the ceiling...

... Until their gazes sat on a wide wet stain splattered across metallic panels, likely the product of a gas condensed far too high, of a color concerningly similar to antidermis.

Just to be safe, they slowly crawled away from the puddle.

You could never trust Teridax to consistently stay dead, after all.

They picked themselves up in a sudden hurry to leave. When Gresh remained unmoving on the floor, only twitching and groaning at the stray droplets that sometimes fell, Takanuva eyed him with a little bit of worry: "Are you ok? Do you need help?"

"Gimme a sec'nd," the other replied through gritted teeth.

He shifted his feet enough to pull his knees up, only to have them fall to the side rather bonelessly moments later; he opted for turning around so he could be on all fours, achieving getting on his stomach only when the Toa of Fire gave him a hand as though he were a turtle laying on its shell, and while he did manage to push his torso off the ground with his arms his head very stubbornly refused to raise, blocking him in a very stupid pose. The larger beings very kindly elected to slip their hands under his armpits to lift him despite his mumbled insistences that he could do it himself: the second he was put on his feet his legs decided to crumble like a melting cheesecake, and before he knew it he was cooped up nice and safe in Takanuva's surprisingly big arms as his golden sphere was replaced by a warmer ball of fire, courtesy of Tahu.

"Wow, you're light," the younger Toa noted.

"Right?" his brother agreed. "He weighs less than you did."

"Wait, really?"

"Well, y're re'lly whi'e," Gresh grumbled, offended. His head was lolling back towards the ground in a way that clearly strained his neck, but no matter how hard he tried he could not lift it. He gargled defeatedly: "M'helme's 'oo heavy..."

"Ah - hold on," he heard as he was jostled a little while the other two began walking out of the room and into the tunnel that would once again lead them into the open air.

A kind if clumsy hand carefully went to sustain his nape, lifting his head along with the heavy armor sitting upon it. It took a couple trials, but the helmet did come off eventually: the poor thing's olive green face poofed to almost twice its size as he groaned in relief, and Takanuva watched with awe by the warm light of his brother's flames as the thin feathers adhered back against the skull to reveal features surprisingly flat instead of concave - thin nostrils above a thin mouth adorned with thin ivory teeth, and lashes like a moth's antennas hanging for dear life on tired eyelids, and small ears covered in reddish plumes twitching slightly, and patches of greyish tawny skin between gaps in the down dotted with scars.

The Toa of Light stared, fascinated. Gresh stared right back, so dazed that he barely realized he was conscious.

Takanuva leaned down to his face and told him plainly: "You look even weirder up close."

The other curled up his nose: "An' how d'y'look under tha' mask?"

"Like this, of course," the Toa replied as he briefly lifted the Avohkii.

Gresh huffed a little frightened "Hoo!" and poofed his feathers out right away with eyes blown wide open, thoroughly spooked: "Oh, y'p'ple're ghas'ly."

Takanuva would have objected more vocally if a known voice hadn't rung out at that moment, calling for him and Tahu.

The Toa of Fire enlarged the sphere of flames in his hand while sprinting forward, responding to the cries in tone: soon enough natural light was streaming into the tunnel, allowing the three beings inside it to clearly see Nuparu and Hewkii clambering as fast as their amphibious feet allowed towards them.

"How are things up there?" Tahu asked them immediately as soon as they stopped mere bio before him to catch their breaths: "Is everybody safe? Teridax should be neutralized for now, but we felt some kind of--"

"Sky's broken," Nuparu interrupted him.

The older Toa blinked, shook his head, and sputtered: "What?"

"There's a HUGE HOLE in it!" Hewkii continued whilst flailing his arms wildly in his Earth brother's stead, as he was noticeably more athletic and not currently in the process of being forced to reshape his lungs into something that could actually hold oxygen again: "It was on top of us and then it SHIFTED and went to the horizon and the sea just - pshwoooosh, just fell out of it, all of it - ok, maybe not all of it, but there's- it's- there are Rahi CHOKING on AIR because the sea is just, THAT little, there's THAT little sea in the sea right now, because it- because it FELL OUT. OF THE HOLE IN THE SKY. AND - and there is, there's stuff outside of the hole! There's a sky! A second sky!"

"A what?"

"It looks like the sky on Mata Nui and Voya Nui but maybe I'm imagining things because I'm still reeling, but then there's - sand! There's SAND, there's MOUNTAINS, there's--"

"Hold on," Takanuva piped up, looking as flabbergasted as his older brother, "Hold on, the hole - how, how did that happen?"

"WE JUST DON'T KNOW!!"

"Something might've," Nuparu interjected again, taking a big breath before he could go on: "Scraped it off. Some water - real water, not protodermis - fell onto us when the hole appeared, so a portion of it could have been knocked off or crushed or-"

Gresh chose that moment to give exactly two singular squeaky laughs. He sounded like he was having the most baller time of his life.

"Smack'im with a big rock," he gargled, "Now tha's a classic."

All eyes turned to him.

For a very long second, no words came to anybody.

Then Nuparu said, with the voice of a genuinely intrigued Archivist unfortunately dragging along a rich tapestry of concerning implications: "What is that?"

"We're not archiving him," Takanuva shot him down instantly.

"Yes, but what is he?"

"His name is Gresh and he's in no condition to answer right now."

"Why is that?"

"He's barely keeping awake!"

"So?"

"Not the time for this!" Tahu interrupted them exasperated, launching himself forward to get out and figure out what in Karzhani was happening out there, because while there's a big hole in the sky was a perfectly comprehensible string of words with a meaning behind it there was no way he had processed even just a single one of them in a way that made sense.

-

She would have been much more relieved to see her older Fire brother emerge from the barely still standing buildings relatively unscathed from whatever challenge he'd just gone through (she had actually only vaguely heard of him needing to go under the colosseum alongside Takanuva without knowing what exactly they were meant to do there, but she considered her guess to be a very educated one because quite frankly there was always a challenge of some sort wherever a Toa had to go) had she not currently been wrestling with a skull-splitting migraine caused by the incessant shouting coming from Pridak's now beached fleet as their ships were left at the mercy of Ehlek's enormous water-dwelling Rahi, which were contorting madly in a desperate attempt to get back under what little ocean was left for them to breathe in.

The panicking army was very lucky Gali had been her example for how a Toa should behave, because had she been more closely exposed to, say, Nokama Hordika instead, they would have all been washed out of the enormous hole in the horizon by now.

That little piece of tangible cosmic horror was also certainly not helping her current state of mind.

Back fins outstretched to slow her descent, Hahli glided down from her observation point to land right into her brother's arms, slamming her whole weight on his chest hard enough to make him stagger. The impact tore a loud 'oof' out of him, but he managed to hug her upright without either of them toppling over in the end.

"Glad to see you," she sighed.

Tahu placed her down on her feet, looking her over for injuries: "Are you alright?"

"No," Hahli groaned. Her brain pulsed painfully as if to underline her statement, and she grimaced. "But I'll live. What about you? And Takanuva? Is he alright? What did you two--"

"Teridax has been disabled for now," he just told her, very cautiously wording himself in order not to jinx it.

He then turned towards the enormous hole in reality - bathed not in an impenetrable darkness but in sunlight, looking back at him with the sight of an enormous desert which seemed in some parts to be slowly receding under a quiet wave of something - and stood quiet before it for a moment.

At last he raised an exhausted arm to point at the whole incomprehensible debacle and asked: "What in the Makuta is going on with that?"

His little sister made a pained sound, like the saddest Hapaka howl: "Wouldn't we all like to know..."

"Alright, let's go for simpler questions first," Tahu conceded for the sake of their mental health. "How's the city, is the damage widespread? Any casualties? Everybody accounted for? The Hagah, Gali, Kongu, Jaller, where are they? Are they alright?"

"Pouks, Iruini and Gali are helping the Turaga look after the wounded, but they've already said that things look to be much less worse than they could be, thankfully," she replied: "Kualus, Gaaki, Norik, Kongu and I are keeping watch on the shores to keep any more of the Barraki's forces from trying their luck against us, and some of the Matoran are cleaning wrecks and disassembling the Rahkshi and Exo-Toa since they stopped attacking - Nuparu was helping too but he and Hewkii went to warn you, right? And a piece of-" (she gestured upwards, loosely indicating the spot where the hole in the sky had been, too tired to refer to it out loud) "-Fell in the Ko-Metru area, so Jaller and Bomonga went to see how bad the damage is and what they can do about it."

Her brother nodded, relieved: "Good work, all of you," he reassured her with a few good pats on her back.

Hahli allowed the gentle pressure to push her towards him, laying her head on his shoulder to let herself enjoy the respite lent by his warm hold around her.

"I'm so tired," she wheezed.

Tahu nuzzled her forehead sympathetically: "We're gonna take a break eventually," he sighed. "Sooner that later, hopefully. Possibly."

They whined in tandem at the thought.

That sweet prospect of rest seemed farther and farther each day.

A holler in their direction snapped them out of their momentary miserable exhaustion: Takanuva was rushing over to them (Nuparu's thin form disappearing back towards the city behind him, likely to continue cleaning up the streets with Hewkii), arms tight around his chest and a look of pure relief at the sight of his sister and former fellow chronicler.

He was glad to lean into her hug, talking far too quickly for her to register any of his words properly; he stopped only when she squeezed him tight, tearing a strange pained grunt out of him.

"Right, sorry, forgot you were there," he mumbled apologetically. Hahli gave him a weird look, about to ask what he meant by that, but his attention had already shifted, magnetized by the hole in the horizon with its puzzling world beyond it: he tilted his head down towards his own chest just a little without ever tearing his eyes from the strange panorama, and whispered: "Is that were you come from?"

A small movement and another mumble - "May'e," said with a slurring tone typical of someone who's just woken up and is still squinting at the light, "Bi' 'oo green, I fink," - brought her eyes lower down from his silver mask.

She blinked once, twice, thrice. The strange olive green being laid limply in Takanuva's arms, looking on the verge of passing out with a sonorous snore right there and then.

How had she not noticed something like that?

Were her senses dimming?

She had no time to be relieved about being proven wrong moments later, when a long shadow creeped in through the sky's chasm.

The strangest kind of silence erupted from Metru Nui and its surroundings - the quiet of held back screams, of barely contained terror being muzzled tight before it had the chance to bark at the threat much larger than itself with its tail between its legs, desperate to intimidate what intimidated it.

It was enormous: it fell slowy, outside, away from the universe, but the impact rattled the entire world nonetheless. Patches of brownish red (was it rust?) clung to the colossal segments across what seemed like a shoulder, a neck, the beginning of a head. A long, wheezing exhale abandoned the titan, its size turning it into a terrifying sound, and the whole frame hissed in agony as it grew impossibly taught while its metallic components grinded against one another with bloodcurdling shrieks.

It was a short, impossibly quick moment.

A second, really, nothing more.

It felt incorrect - like looking through the water without a Kaukau to shield your eyes, everything around you fuzzy and indistinct.

But for a second, for just one single second, it was...

Hahli stopped breathing.

"Matoro?"

And then the second passed, and the body stopped its whistling lament and laid limp, and the fleeting sensation was gone.

"Fuck," the being in Takanuva's baffled hold murmured, quiet voice devoid of any underlying mechanical song deafening in the silence: "Tha's concernin'."

-

The ground was covered in something, some watery thing, that turned the slowly less and less sandy terrain into a sopping marsh. Vastus speeded through it with surprising agility for someone with his age and a chunk of lower spine missing, although by the standards of a Lebori who'd lived his entire early life in a swampy grove as he was his form was severely lacking - a hundred millenia without any possibility to practice will do that to you.

Ackar was shouting for him above the chariot's waning engine, trying to tell him to wait as he dismounted from the vehicle only to find himself stuck between going after him to make sure he didn't do anything rash and following Kiina to make sure she didn't do anything rash.

Vastus barely heard him anyways. He was still screaming for Gresh.

Idiot rookie that he was - couldn't he have stayed put for once? Stuck close to Tarix as he said he would? Not thrown himself into yet another stupid plan? Now he was starting to sound like Gelu - useless heroics and all that. But Gelu had a point sometimes.

Maybe they should have never indulged him. Maybe they should have never played along with his prattlings about being fully grown when he couldn't even drink yet without melting his liver into goo. Maybe they should have never gotten attached. Maybe they should have never allowed him to become a Glatorian and just left him to tend to the Thornax bushes in Tesara.

Great Beings, his heart was going to collapse.

The robot's colossal head had been laid so that the gaping wound on its nape would almost touch the ground. Liquid still sputtered out of the skull's jagged edges in rivulets: it was silvery in color, like the material making up the gargantuan body it dripped out of, and pooled in a wide shallow pond just underneath the wreckage.

The overwhelming grey hue covering the whole scene did not make the spectacle of a split open skull less gruesome.

It did, however, make it much easier to spot the bright red head of a humanoid figure as it flew right over the cranial cliffs - and with it, the familiar green shape held tight against its front.

Vastus barely registered the movement of his own limbs. In a second he was standing ankle deep in the silvery pond, Venom Talon in hand ready to strike, eyes trained onto the startled creature floating a few feet in the air while holding Gresh tighter in its grip; the young Glatorian's orange eyes opened blearily, heavy, tired, and his arm dangled in his direction in a manner that could have been a purposeful greeting or simply an unintentional motion.

"PUT HIM DOWN!" the Lebori barked furiously.

Either frightened or not understanding him, the being strengthened its metal grasp.

"PUT HIM DOWN BEFORE I PLUCK YOU OUT OF THE SKY, YOU-!"

"Ai aun'ie," his nephew spoke at that moment, craning his neck out of the crook of his captor's shoulder. His head lolled to the side without any strength, helmet nowhere in sight: his feathers were flat, relaxed, but looked spent as though he was fighting through an illness, and his pupils struggled to adapt to the light or focus on anything even as he turned to his captor with a noticeable struggle, mumbling something barely coherent.

Worry overtook Vastus's mind completely: "I SAID PUT HIM DOWN!" he screamed, teeth bared, thin plumage vibrating, arm pulled back as he aimed straight for the crimson helm-

He found his whole body seized tight in an iron grip.

Ackar wrestled him still as carefully as he could, doing his best to keep him from hurling the Talon while not pulling any moves that could have caused the Lebori's back prosthesis to painfully malfuction or become misaligned: "For the love of Certavus, calm down!" he hissed as he almost lifted his fellow Glatorian off the ground, "If he drops from that height he'll break in half!"

"HE'LL HAVE A HEAP OF SCRAP METAL TO LAND ON IN A MOMENT!" the Lebori snarled back.

"And how's that supposed to cushion him?"

He would have bitten into his friends's prosthetic hand hard enough to dent it if his overly keen senses hadn't picked up the heavy splash of something landing less than gracefully into the pond just a few feet before them.

The being raised a hand in either a defense or a peace offering when Vastus whipped his head around to glare at it, gently pushing Gresh's head to lay on its shoulder. The boy blinked, clearly tired out of his mind as he was adjusted in the metal arms to be a little more snug, and mumbled in his aunt's direction another incomprehensible string of words with a little loopy smile.

If that damned chunk of metal didn't let go of him immediately he was going to--

"He's alright," the thing said.

It had a noisy voice, melodious in the cacophonic manner a heavy factory machine might be. Vastus shook his head briefly with a hiss, feeling the sound slither into his ears like a worm.

"He's alright," it repeated softly. "He's not hurt."

"So you can understand when I talk?" the Lebori growled: "Or is it just what you want to hear?"

"Don't aggravate it," Ackar hissed.

Vastus elbowed him as best as he could, syllables leaving his mouth with a dangerous whistling tone: "I told you to put my nephew down. Immediately."

"He cannot stand right now," the thing replied.

"You said he was fine!"

"He's not hurt. He's just exhausted."

"He's fain, aun'ie," Gresh managed to slur loud enough all of a sudden; with immense effort he raised an arm and managed to bonelessly slap his hand across his captor's face/helmet. "He's a fren' - 's name's 'ahu 'n's go' rrrocke's 'n' a big shiel' 'n' fire 'n' s'uff..."

The way the Tapyri's weight shifted away from Vastus's back cued him on the fact that something, for him, had clicked: "You're a Toa, aren't you?" he asked suddenly.

Topaz eyes fixed on him.

"That's what you are, right?" Ackar insisted as he pulled the other Glatorian upright with himself: "A Toa."

"What in Plude is a 'Toa'?" the Lebori snapped quietly.

"One of Mata Nui's. One of his people. He said something about you once, I remember that, compared our swordsmanship - a good warrior, aren't you?"

'ahu (if that was the being's name) nodded slowly.

Ackar breathed a sigh of relief.

"He's good," he reassured Vastus under his breath. He'd almost completely let go of him, keeping a vice grip only on the Venom Talon to stop him from making any brash maneuvers. "He's alright. Gresh is in good hands."

"Doesn't mean I trust them to hold him," Vastus hissed. His breaths were still heavy, still irregular with worry.

His friend nodded, understanding completely, and raised a peaceful hand in the air: "We're on the same side," he told the strange creature: "We're friends of Mata Nui. Gresh went into that robot, right? Mata Nui's old body?"

The strange being froze for only a second, looking absolutely taken aback, as though he hadn't known he'd been residing into a titanic mechanical humunculus until now: "Yes," he replied finally, a little stunted while he tried to focus back on the question at hand: "Yes, he - I helped him reach the... Brain."

"And he moved the whole thing from there?"

"Yes, I... I think so, yes. We've kept him safe, but it's tired him out."

"Alright. Alright, thank you - thank you so much," and his voice cracked a little bit, "For looking out for him, and keeping him safe, thank you. Vastus can take it from here, he'll take care of him."

'ahu shifted his glowing gaze onto the Lebori, then down to Gresh as if asking for his permission, or maybe his opinion.

(Vastus would begrudgingly admit that threatening to skewer the poor thing out of the air with a scythe had not been the friendliest or most trustworthy way he could have presented himself, but fuck you, that was his nephew and he'd been trained by Bara Magna to expect things to generally want to kill you in some manner sooner or later.)

The young Glatorian mumbled something barely intelligible - some kind of reassurance, accompanied by another boneless swat of his hand on the back of the red helm that was probably meant to be a comforting pat to cement his words.

It took only half a step forward, holding him a little further: before anybody else present could blink Gresh had been taken from the metal arms and was resting his head in the crux of his aunt's neck, the liquid at their feet splashing as the older Lebori rushed away with him, towards the chariot, as fast as he could.

"You complete idiot," he hissed the whole way long, "You total and utter dumbass, you stupid damn kid, what in Plude was your plan? You promised you wouldn't have pulled anything, anything! How old do you think you are? Do I have to start watching you like a toddler who can't be trusted to be left alone now? I thought you were all grown! Responsible! Had some sense knocked into you after the first few missing phalanxes!"

"Wen' well," was all he had to say for himself.

"Pro Certavi amore - as soon as you're all better I'll round up every Glatorian available and we'll all kick your ass into next year."

"Wen' well!..."

He didn't react when his head collided the slightest bit with the vehicle's frame while he was sat in it. Vastus checked his eyes feverishly and found them still focused: he wasn't in shock, which was a relief. He preened the spot that had been hit, thin teeth filing through the feathers as both an apology and a nervous urge to do anything that could make him feel better.

A detail struck him: "Where's your helmet?"

Gresh blinked: "Oh, fuck," he mumbled absentmindedly, "Forgo't'ge' it back from 'akanu'a..."

"And what's that?"

"He's a fren'... 's re'ly whi'e 'n' brigh'... 'n'all..."

His eyelids were so heavy, his body so tired. A nap wouldn't have hurt, especially while his aunt preened him... It had been so long, hadn't it? The last time he'd gotten fussed over like this, when had it been? Maybe he would have remembered better after a short rest. That sounded like a good idea.

He felt Vastus's nails scratch his nape in an annoying manner: "Don't fall asleep," he was telling him with barely concealed panic, "Don't fall asleep, stay with me."

Gresh barely managed to squirm a little: "Am fain," he mumbled with a hissing yawn, "Jus' a bi' tir'd..."

"Look," the older Lebori insisted, pointing to the flourishing mountains, to the savanna slowly coming crawling to life, taking a bit of the planet back from the sprawling dunes: "Look, plants are coming back, the plants from before the Shattering - remember we taught you some of them? We showed you, with drawings and everything else? Do you see any you recognize?"

"Am tir'd, aun'ie..."

"Just try - look out and tell me which ones you recognize. There, that one, I know you know it, which one is it? Do you remember that?"

In some way, he must have realized he was worried he wouldn't wake up again if he fell asleep; so he turned his exhausted gaze to the receding desertification, focusing as hard as he could to some kind of bush in the distance the other Glatorian was directing his attention towards, fighting to stay awake so that his aunt would not have to worry after being forced to endure such a scare.

"Gitalis?"

A soft, nervous chuckle: "Way off the mark."

"Am tir'd!..."

"Come on, try again, I know you remember it."

"Hm... 's... 's a iunpre?"

"Correct, good kid." Vastus nuzzled the side of his head and kept searching for any bleeding wounds. "And what's that next to it?"

-

The optic gave in with a few swift stomps, shattering into large chunks of glassy material that were broken into smaller pieces when Kiina landed on them from above, in a manner that would have easily gotten her feet punctured and mashed into bloody clumps had she not been wearing armor.

Her graceless entrance ended up denting some of the machinery in the robot's head - not that she gave a damn about it, as it didn't look like it was ever going to be good for anything other than harvesting scrap (Berix was going to have a field day with this thing), and most importantly she was a woman too focused on her mission to think of trivial things like the integrity of a shitty gundam's internal parts.

She looked around the control room frantically, desperate to spot that tell-tale golden yellow color somewhere, anywhere in-between the rust and the dissipating vapors.

"Mata Nui!" she called out, "Mata Nui! Where are you?"

A suffering groan had her whip her head around fast enough to almost sprain her neck: fallen on the back of the robot's head, half slipped under a machine threatening to topple over it and only held back by a net of hastily grown vines, laid a dusty mask, its features carved out of a humanoid figure standing with arms outstretched.

She hurled herself towards it, grabbing it and pulling it away from the precarious spot in an instant before it ended up damaged. No body laid behind it - but the otherworlder couldn't possibly be far from it, could he?...

The mask shook in her grasp with an anguished sound horrendously close to Mata Nui's voice.

"You're here!" she cried out. Her moment of elation fell immediately: "Fuck, you're in here," and she flicked her finger at the side of the artefact with increasing panic, "How do I get you out of this thing?"

"Don't hit it," her friend struggled to wheeze, "It's dangerous-!"

A flashing memory of Click turning into a shield had her drop the item onto her lap as though it were scalding; she picked it right back up in an instant, completely ignoring her friend's pleading warnings - she wasn't undergoing any painful metamorphosis at the moment anyways, right? - in order to focus on a solution.

This would have been much easier if she could have thought clearly.

Which she was struggling to do.

Due to the panic.

Mata Nui needed a body, she mumbled to herself, a body, a body - where could she have found a body? The robot was not an option, and she could not see anything she could have used to successfully assemble a frame to the best of her not particularly experienced abilities; she could have worn the mask herself, maybe, but aside from not being keen on the idea of having her limbs taken over by anybody else she had the nagging feeling it would have only worsened the other's worries between the prospect of mind controlling a friend and possibly mutating her.

A second after her thoughts returned to the item's transformative abilities, the solution to the nearly unsolvable riddle jumped to the forefront of her mind.

Sand.

She needed to leave this rickety thing. Now.

Kiina looked up: the broken optic was far too high up compared to where she was, with no option to use any of the toppled machinery to reach up to it properly, and the only things she would have been able to grab onto in order to leverage herself out were unstable pieces of broken glass. Not getting out the way she came in, alright, got it. Plan two set itself into motion as she sprang back up on her feet and ran through the only exit, a hole in the upturned pavement.

If where she had entered was the head of the robot, then the tunnel she was hurrying through must have been its neck, which was usually much easier to break through than it was to do through a skull, so the situation was improving already.

There must have been a grate or a ventilation shaft somewhere, right? Something easy to punch one's way through, looking outside? She wrecked her brain to find memories of something that would have had a similar layout and equipment to the inside of the robot, a building made solely with mechanical work in mind, but what she came up with was awfully muddled and helped roughly as much as a hearty spoonful of Thornax stew would have, which is to say not in the slightest.

Frustrated with herself as she was, she barely realized the floor beneath her left leg disappeared until her teeth nearly bit off her tongue as her jaw collided with the metal walls.

She looked back to find that, in her unconscious stomping caused by the antsiness overtaking her, she had serendipitously hit a weak plate which had collapsed into the much more crowded and much more damaged space between the interior and exterior shells of the gargantuan machine: from where she had collected herself to get her limb out of the hole, she could see parse slivers of natural light streaming in from what might have been punctures through the hull.

So Kiina did the sensible thing to do while holding a dangerous incomprehensible alien artefact currently housing her weakened friend's consciousness: she hurtled her way into the opening with the grace of a cannon ball, smashing into the weakest portion of the metal by pure chance and crashing out of the giant ominid subsequently almost dislocating an arm.

She groaned.

A pained wheeze dragged her attention back to her hands, and with great terror she found them empty.

The mask glowed faintly only a little away from her, barely out of her reach: sand was pooling under it, pushing it upward in the vague shape of a head emerging from beneath the earth at a terribly slow pace, as though it was not so much forming a body from scratch but tearing one through the solid surface with a great deal of struggle.

Digits of dimmed gold pulled an entire hand out along with them all the way up to the wrist; the Gaquri grabbed the palm hastily, to yank the rest of the arm out, but the frail limb instead fragmented and shattered in her grip.

A choked sob accompanied the sand slipping through her fingers. She hissed.

"Sorry," her voice slithered out of her mouth in a whisper while she adjusted herself closer to the artificial face still whining in pain. Her hands laid under the nape, sustaining it: "Alright, let's take it slow, take it slow - there you go, easy does it..."

She wondered if it had been such an anguish the first time, too. As she moved to hold the back of a newly formed arm, watching as a knee arose from the dirt with a strained gasp and feeling the way the unstable skin gained a tentative solidity much weaker than the carapace had been against her scales, she wondered if to grow a body all on your own (to be born, all on one's own?) was as traumatic an experience as it looked.

Finally her friend dragged a long gasp through his mouth as he shook in her loose embrace, and his eyes shined in their sockets.

The Gaquri carefully sat him up as he breathed harshly: "There you are - easy now, easy! You just made this, relax. Plude, you're wheezing like a waterboarded Skopio... How are you feeling?"

"Never," Mata Nui coughed instead, "Never touch the- the mask - it was dangerous- you could have--"

"But I didn't." she cut him off sternly. "How are you?"

His head lolled to the side: "Gresh?" he asked.

"He's got Vastus and Ackar looking for him, how are you?"

"Why... Why are you here? You were - were supposed to--"

"We heard Gresh. How-"

"--To be safe - away, from--"

"Everybody else is fine! Now quit avoiding the question and answer me, how are you?"

Mata Nui folded on himself for a second, prompting Kiina to hold onto his shoulders in the very real fear that he would shatter into a trillion particles in case he barely gazed the ground. She felt him lean pliantly into her hold as she pulled him back with all the caution in the world until the back of his neck was laying on her arm: his frantic inhales slowed down across a few dozen seconds or so, timing themselves on the much louder ones the Glatorian was training him to follow.

At last he seemed fairly stable. His body had a mostly clear shape, completely divided from the normal sand beneath it, and the erratic rising-falling rhythm of his chest had calmed down.

His head turned to face the prototype robot; Kiina turned with him.

Such an elaborate load of junk it was, even to a less experienced eye like her own. And yet it had been home for one hundred thousand years, although dismantled and rusted, and it had done what the Great Beings had judged it unfit for: under Mata Nui's control, it had undone the Shattering.

Maybe Berix had a point, scavenging for trash in the hopes to make something worthwhile out of it.

A rueful sigh distracted her from her musings: "I am... Afraid..." Mata Nui mumbled quietly, apologetic, "I cannot - be true, to the promise I've... I've made, in exchange for your help."

Kiina blinked.

"Huh?"

"The robot," he explained, "The Great..."

"The other one?"

"Yes... It was - I am afraid it was the only means through which - with, which - I could have accompanied you, on other planets. As I had promised you... When you..."

Oh!

Oh.

She had completely forgotten about that.

Her tongue clicked loudly against her teeth as she slipped an arm under her friend's and started helping him back on his feet: "Well, I can't say I'm not disappointed," she started, though her tone was humorous enough to tear a breathy chuckle from the other. "Because I will not lie, I am. Just a bit. But I guess I'll take a pal not being dead, and everybody being fine. And a more livable planet too, I guess. I could start touring this one before expanding my horizons, that sounds good."

"That is - a wondrous idea, my friend," the otherworlder convened. He leaned heavily on her as she sustained him while they walked, though he was so light that she was all but unhindered by him.

She smiled sharply at him with a small nudge: "You're welcome to come along, you know. I bet you'd like to."

A soft laugh: "I would... Thank you..."

"And you can start telling me about the worlds you've visited! So I'll be prepared from when we actually get there. Which will be right after you've gotten some shuteye."

He groaned, almost pained: "Please, no more of that..."

"Oh no, you're gonna get as much sleep as we can stuff into you," the Gaquri threatened: "And I mean real, actual, deep sleep for once, not that half-resting-half-awake meditation thing you do. Great Beings know you need it."

"It is not - necessary..."

"Don't give me that! You can barely stand as you are!"

"I do not--" Mata Nui's argument was interrupted by a sudden creak in his knee, which caused Kiina to stop in her tracks and hold him a little tighter before he toppled over. Her pointed glare dared him to speak further on the matter - which incredibly, after a moment to catch his breath, he did: "Is there a chance that I might... Be able to bribe you?"

She gave an incredulous laugh: "Bribing me? You?" she howled, and her exaggerated reaction tore a giggle from the fallen god. "Did Metus rub a scale off on you after he slithered away or is it just the Skrall mentality getting to you?"

"You are right, it was awfully uncouth."

"Well, don't just take that back, I'm curious now! I wanna know what your offering was!"

Her friend leaned a hand on the prototype's head to catch his breath, winded as he was from their steady if limping gait back to the chariot. They were still a long way from it, but considering his fatigued state they were all in all making good progress.

"A universe," he replied at last. "To visit."

"To visit?" she repeated. He nodded. Oh, he was going delirious then. "Like it's nearby? As in, just around the corner?"

Mata Nui smiled: his eyes curled into tired half moons, offering her their soft, gentle glow so alike the one the former Bota and Aqua Magna had bathed her cold nights of stargazing in for the worst part of her life, wishing she could be anywhere that wasn't that damned ocean of sand.

He pushed through his exhaustion to make a few more steps with her, just enough for the head of the Great Spirit Robot to come into view, and pointed to it - past the jagged edges, somewhere far, far inside of it.

"The Matoran's - my own," he murmured.

Kiina stared at the enormous hole in the metallic skull.

For a long time, she said nothing.

Only looking, listening distantly to the faint sounds rising from it (were they shouts, were those words she could hear? Strange accents speaking familiar dialects?), wondering if a body could really be large enough to hold an entire piece of cosmos.

Finding she really, really wanted to know.

A whisper joined her musings, sheepish, almost embarrassed: "It is a small one, perhaps... But a universe nonetheless."

She hummed thoughtfully: "I'll think about it," she conceded in the end, only making a half hearted attempt at hiding her cautious excitement. "After you've taken a nap."

The other groaned.

It made her snort.

Her name reached them with a holler.

Ackar had always had a quirk of running with his head pushed as far down and forward as his body physically allowed it to go, which tended to make him look like he was charging directly into the first person he saw to headbutt his way through their ribcage like a sandray so horribly hungry it forgot it had teeth.

He was mildly aware of this unfortunate resemblance due to several people outside of the arena letting him know by either looking very scared as he approached or screaming at him to slow down with genuine terror in their voices; so he wasn't really offended when the Gaquri automatically threw her free arm in front of herself and Mata Nui as though she was protecting the both of them from some particularly vicious beast.

"WOAH there!" she shrieked like she was trying to calm down a frightened Sand Stalker, "He's frailer than glass right now, you're gonna shatter him into a million pieces!"

She kept a good eye on him as his gait stuttered and slowed in an attempt to regain control of his legs, ready to whisk Mata Nui to safety before the foolish thing ran up to meet the Tapyri head on and got bodied into a heap of sand, but the veteran Glatorian managed to grasp his friend's hand gently enough to press it to his forehead (an expression of fondness common in his tribe that he'd often given Kiina, too) without breaking a single cell off of it.

"So good to see you," he breathed. A wry smile stretched across his face as the other squeezed his palm back: "How are you?"

"Absolutely exhausted and denying it as hard as he can," the Gaquri answered before Mata Nui could try to lie about it: "He's really bad at hiding it, too."

A quiet groan: "That is not true."

"You needed two whole breaths to say that."

"My friend, please..."

Unluckily for him, Ackar betrayed his hope to avoid being sentenced to sleep as he slipped an arm under his shoulder to sustain him as well: "I'm afraid I'll have to agree with Kiina on this one," he murmured, patting his chest comfortingly. "Let's get you somewhere nice and quiet before you collapse on us."

The fallen god craned his neck with a whimper, but could not fight either of them as they dragged him along despite his lack of collaboration - whether on purpose or not, it was hard to tell.

"Where's Vastus?" Kiina asked.

"Back at the chariot, probably - taking care of Gresh."

"Gresh," their friend perked up with worry: "Is he...?"

"Ever more tired than you, but otherwise unscathed," the Tapyri was quick to reassure them.

Hearing that, the Gaquri squinted her eyes angrily, scales almost turning cobalt from a mixture of emotions she was very unsure she could properly put a name to: "I'm gonna kick his ass," she settled for hissing between gritted teeth.

A tremor under her palm distracted her: Mata Nui had started shaking in their grasp, head almost abandoned to itself as it hung low, a terribly quiet litany falling out of his mouth in an inconsolably guilty cadence - I shouldn't have asked, I shouldn't have asked that of him, I shouldn't have, I shouldn't, I shouldn't have asked, I shouldn't have asked, I shouldn't have asked...

Both his friends had to tighten their hold him before his spiraling led him to the ground. His shoulders were starting to shed themselves into sand, and Kiina felt with horror her hand sink into his chest when she tried to push him upright.

Ackar leaned a little closer, doing his best to speak soothingly: "Easy, easy - he's alright, I told you, he'll be fine."

"He's a tough kid!" his fellow Glatorian added, "He can handle it!"

She turned to her friend so he could emphasize her statement only to see him glance away, as though he'd just gotten an idea. She followed his gaze, and...

The thing was looking in her direction, but not at her.

It seemed shocked.

She was surprised she could even tell, what with the lack of pupils and eyebrows and a general face, but the whole of its appearance came off as oddly expressive.

It stood frozen in place a few meters from them, similar to a prey animal when a predator passes close by it.

Perfectly still.

Like a robot.

"Don't you wanna see who brought him over?" she heard Ackar say a little louder: "I think that could be a pleasant surprise for you."

Kiina shifted her eyes back on him like he was insane.

But he wasn't talking to her, of course; and he wasn't checking for her reaction, of course.

She followed the trajectory of his eyes until she found Mata Nui's: they stared ahead, into glowing yellow irises, appearing to gain a brightness of their own the longer they looked.

"Oh."

-

It hit him.

He had no idea if they'd ever imagined him.

He certainly couldn't remember if he had, at the very least when it came to distinctive, clear examples. On the island, despite having a guideline with the stone Vakama used in his tales, the most he'd ever managed to conjure was a bright floating Hau which could have been transparent or golden or red; in Karda Nui, even with the newfound knowledge of the Makuta species, he had many times in his musings given him an appearance similar to Teridax - to his first mangled, chaotic form, befitting of an impossibly vast being uncaring for those beneath him; and if he dug into the memories he liked the least, into the days of his first birth, of his first life, amidst the frustration and tension, the most he could find was the thought of a vaguely humanoid shape, large and splendent and undefined, towering above everything.

He'd never asked his siblings or the Matoran or the Turaga if they had their own vision on how the Great Spirit looked. He reasoned they must have; inexplicably, though, no being had ever made a single comment on the matter, and nobody seemed to have ever mentioned such a strangeness before him.

So it was surreal - to stand before Mata Nui.

(He had no idea why or how he knew. He just did. It was an absolute certainty buried somewhere within him, like the tip of an arrow lodged into a lung. He could have recognized the Great Spirit in any shape it would have taken, be it familiar or not. He did not know why. He just knew.)

The Great Spirit was looking back at him.

He was...

He was a small thing.

A creature like any other, roughly as tall as him, in a battered armor dim with dust, having to be held aloft by two other beings before his legs gave out from under him.

His mere presence seemed to cut off his ability to breathe.

Mata Nui smiled radiantly.

"Tahu," he called.

He had a soft, sweet voice.

Tahu stiffened.

What was he supposed to do? There had to be something, some kind of code of conduct for these cases - for standing before your god. Was there a formula, a specific sentence he was supposed to pronounce? A pledge, a plea, a promise? Was he supposed to kneel, to lay at his feet, to lower his gaze, was he supposed to meet him head on with a Toa salute? Was he supposed to move at all?

He did nothing as the Great Spirit struggled to approach.

He stood, glancing desperately at Ackar and at the other being (China, or Kena, he recalled the older warrior shouting as soon as he'd caught a glimpse of a body coming into view - the watery blue of the armor reminded him of his sisters, but he couldn't be sure) as if to ask them for help. Neither answered; he wondered if they knew what to do themselves, or if they even understood who exactly they were helping walk towards him.

Would they even know that? They came from beyond the universe. They likely had no idea that the terribly frail thing in their hands was divine in nature.

Were they the Great Beings?

Anxiety constricted him. He almost wanted to cry.

Mata Nui reached out to him. Then he stopped, retracting his hand not in disgust but with a strange fear; he looked the Toa in the eyes with a strange sheepish air about him as his fingers twitched, almost too shy to ask what was on his mind.

Finally, very carefully, he placed his fingertips against the chin of Tahu's mask, as if to cradle it.

They were pleasantly warm. And dusty. Like slowly cooling ash.

He smiled wider.

A quiet sound left him all of a sudden, and his limbs started trembling harshly as his armor began falling apart into a thousand particles; without thinking, the Toa grasped his wrists tightly and sent a wave of blistering heat through the whole body for barely the fraction of a second, so quick that Ackar and his friend barely had time to hiss at the sudden surge of temperature. He felt the arms in his palms creak: they'd been crystallized into glass.

Before he could choke in horror at his impulsivity, his hands were being held between near transparent fingers.

"Thank you," Mata Nui breathed with something akin to a chuckle - was that embarrassment in his voice? He replied to Tahu's wide eyes with a look of pure apologetic fondness: "Oh... Oh, forgive me, I did not mean to frighten you. I just... I am so very excited to meet you!"

His gentle grip tightened around the Toa's palms.

Something thrummed across his body, a quick steady beat. Tahu felt it reverberate through him.

He was definitely supposed to do something. Should he have kneeled? Maybe he should have kneeled, and laid his head low, and stopped looking so directly at the incarnation of their universe. But the Great Spirit was holding his gaze and smiling and readjusting his grip on protodermis hands and he could not move an inch no matter how hard he tried, mind drawing up blanks, at once awed to be faced with such reverence from a god and baffled by the knowledge that said god was so impossibly frail that a mere emotion could tear him asunder like that.

He realized he was staring in silence again.

He should have done something.

Anything.

What was he supposed to do?

"You were not made like this, were you?" Mata Nui asked. It was not a reprimand or an insult, only an inquiry born of genuine curiosity. He sounded like he was sleeptalking, in a way.

Tahu shook his head, and gentle eyes tilted a little.

"No, I imagined," the god continued almost to himself; he squeezed his palms again. "I have seen you like this, once, I believe... Somewhere deep in the bog of a dream... I remember you barely, before that - forgive me... It has been so long... You have changed!... Such a wonderful thing!..."

Was it?

The Toa struggled to think. The crystalline touch intimidated him into silence much like too high praises can embarrass a child quiet.

"How are you?" his god asked. "How are your siblings? The Matoran? I did not think... I assumed it would have been tough enough to not let... Metru Nui..."

"We're," Tahu choked. His throat whirred, clacked, struggled against itself and spat out stunted words: "Safe. We are. All of us."

Mata Nui breathed a heavy sigh of relief; it made something physically click into place in the Toa's body, and he felt like his mechanisms were working smoothly all at once again.

He lowered his head immediately, shifting his gaze down to the fingers wrapped around him.

The glass was so soft around his hands.

His god's voice passed through him like a dream - vaguely, in a haze, he realized he'd leaned closer, apprehension once more thrumming through his frame: "My chosen... Are they...? I could not... I barely know... They came to be..."

His chosen? Tahu snapped out of his torpor: "The Turaga are safe," he answered just as hushedly, ashamed to have been distracted.

Mata Nui's tired eyes regained fervor for a second.

"Turaga," he repeated.

A wheezed laugh left him, elated beyond words - Turaga!, it seemed to exclaim. The poor souls he had picked so hastily, with such little time and such a hard task ahead of them, Turaga! He raised Tahu's hands to what might have been his mouth as if to kiss it, holding back just moments before it could touch his mask - moments before the Toa could melt the ground beneath his feet from the surprise as his heartlight flashed madly.

He smiled wonderfully, reaching out to cup the adaptive Hau's cheek in his palm: "You bring me such splendid news!"

Breathing was hard again.

Not because he couldn't do it. He could breathe! He could breathe very well. Perhaps too much. Far too much. So much that his lungs were starting to hurt.

Ackar seemed to notice that. He met his eyes long enough to read his incomprehensible swirl of emotions, and though amused by the childish panic in them he blessedly pulled the Great Spirit a little back as gently as he could with his other friend's help.

"Give the boy some room," he murmured: "He's gonna get a heart attack at this rate."

But Mata Nui kept his hand on Tahu's mask, and refused to let go of his palms.

That blinding glimmer had already dropped from his eyes, and he looked exhausted, somehow even more so than he already had; he leaned forward, reaching for the Toa still despite the small distance between them.

"I am sorry," he spoke. His fingers curled around the red protodermis. "I am sorry - I should have... I am sorry," he repeated. He sounded weak, and quiet, and honest. "I am sorry... If I had been... If I had not... You have endured for me so much - if I had paid close attention... If I had not been so careless," he creaked. A long crack split open the god's arm with a horrid sound. "You would not have suffered... You would not... I am sorry - I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry..."

His knee buckled under his weight, cracked, and shattered his leg across the ground.

Ackar and Kena scrambled to hold him aloft, words of concern muddling together: a gentle yank nearly ripped half his chest off, and the arm holding onto the Toa's mask turned opaque as hairline cracks burst from within it before it too began falling apart.

Almost numbly, Tahu realized the other crystalline hand was still clutched around his own in a tender grip, the rest of its limb laying broken in the sand.

He felt himself kneel on the ground with hands outstretched on what remained of the crumbling body: if heated up enough the glass would have melted again, filling in the cracks by itself, wouldn't it? He would have been able to fix it all, to put him back together in the span of seconds, minutes, maybe. He would have managed to fix him.

But what if he just destabilized him more? Maybe instead of breaking he would have started melting. Maybe the hot temperature would have triggered the vitrification of the sand beneath him too, and he would have fused with it and become indistinguishable from the rest of it, worsening his condition as he could no longer be separated from it.

Or maybe it simply wouldn't have done anything. He had already started falling apart Tahu had done anything, and his accidental fix had now grown obsolete. Maybe it was just too much. Maybe he just couldn't hold onto himself.

"I am sorry," Mata Nui whispered. Somehow, his quiet voice cancelled out all other sounds. Somehow, his remaining hand was still holding onto the adaptive Hau. "I am sorry - none of this should have... If I had been... More attentive... None of this should have happened... I am sorry, I am sorry..."

Tahu looked up to his face again.

The peculiar pattern of the Ignika met his eyes.

He had not even recognized it. He had not even registered that what he had been staring at was the Mask of Life. He had known so deeply that the being before him was Mata Nui that, in the petrifying surprise that had taken over him, the artefact on the god's face had looked no different than a common powerless Kanohi.

Couldn't it fix him, then? Couldn't it mutate him? If it could build itself a body it could certainly make one for him too, couldn't it? Why wasn't it working? It had plenty of material to choose from - why wasn't it doing anything?

Mata Nui's eyes were flickering.

He stared directly at Tahu as though it was the only thing keeping him together.

"I am sorry," he begged. "I am sorry, for everything, everything - I am sorry... You should not have... I should not have allowed... Such terrible things... To befall you... Any of you... I should not have... If I had been... I should have been... I am sorry... I am sorry - I am sorry... I am sorry... I am sorry... I am sorry... I am sorry..."

Tahu stared back.

This was a god.

A being for whom countless had lost their lives.

Begging, broken and brittle, with a voice barely above a breath and a trembling hand on his cheek, for the forgiveness of his own universe.

Ackar's voice broke through the haze around him: "You need to rest."

Mata Nui twisted his neck harshly: a long crack slithered around it, and the Toa rushed to grab it before it tore away from the torso already on the brink of shattering.

"No!" his deity sobbed. He could feel the clear throat quake with each phoneme under his protodermis digits, broken edges ringing as they scratched against one another: if he were to press even just slightly more forcefully, he would reduce it to a heap of minuscule fragments. "No, no, please, no, no--"

Kiina grasped the Ignika gently in her hands, allowing the straining pieces of anatomy to fall in favor of protecting the one thing actually containing the delirious entity: "It's for your own good!" she argued back at him, but her voice was soft, desperate, trying her best to pull a friend back from the hole he was sinking into as he kept squirming. "Pushing yourself like this is going to kill you - listen to us, damn it!"

The glass chest creaked as it spasmed erratically in the pantomime of frantic breathing (so set he was on living, on being real and present) and an agonizing whimper left the divine wreckage.

The eyes fixed on Tahu's were blue, flickering terribly.

He felt the fingers crack against the cheek of his Hau as they curled around it.

"I am sorry," his god cried so quietly, "I am sorry, I am sorry - no more, no more, no more sleep, please, no more, no more... I am sorry, I am sorry - Tahu... Tahu... I am sorry... Please..."

A hand of protodermis grasped what little was left of a body and laid it down on the sand, carefully, gently, so it would not break. Its twin wrapped around the crystalline palm as it struggled to keep from fracturing and held it - as gently as it had been held by it.

The Toa breathed.

His lungs filled slowly trough the gaps in his armor.

Then, just as slowly, they deflated.

He kept breathing, hands enveloping what little remained of his god's own fragile one.

Mata Nui heaved, and heaved, and slowed down, until his labored inhales matched his protector's own, until the light of his eyes drooped and struggled to glimmer in resignation.

Tahu spoke as quietly as he could, his entire being turning the words into a hushed mechanical symphony: "We can wait still."

"I am sorry," Mata Nui insisted.

"We can wait still," his guard repeated.

"I am sorry... I am sorry..."

"We can wait still. Until you are safe."

"I promise... I promise... I am sorry..."

"We can wait. Rest now."

"I want to see you... I promise..."

"Until you are safe. Rest now."

"I promise... I promise..."

"Rest now."

"I promise..."

"Rest."

Mata Nui shook again.

Then he calmed.

His hand curled around Tahu's and shattered gently over his fingers.

"Alright," he conceded at last, reassured.

His head crumbled in his friends' gentle hands, his empty sockets lost their waning glow, and lulled by the warrior who was fated to awake him he allowed his endlessly fatigued spirit to slip into sleep once more.

-

His entire body hurt.

Not as badly as when he first woke up, but it still hurt.

It was like every single muscle had decided to file a complaint against his brain and set his nerves on fire in an attempt to get the message relayed much more quickly.

He turned on his side with a hiss to try and keep sleeping it off, but he was fully awake by now.

"Oh," he heard - he wasn't sure he could tell voices apart in this state, but that sounded like Gelu. "Sand mite's awake. Watch him a moment, won't you? I've got to get someone."

Some kind of machine made a rockus near the leg of the bed.

A quiet cacophony of noises caused an uncomfortable shiver to wreck through him. Ah, damn it - he shook his head harshly once or twice, gritting his teeth as his neck immediately flared up: deciding he didn't want to be stuck in a losing battle, he grumbled and blearily opened an eye.

The little thing with glowing lime lights in the sockets of its metal green face jumped a bit and retreated away from him at that.

It seemed to be standing on a stool.

He stared at it for a moment.

"Hi," he said hoarsely.

The little thing blinked once or twice with a clicking sound: "Hi!" came at last the reply, face unchanged: "My name's Tamaru."

Oh, he knew that kind of noisy, industrial-sounding, confusingly androginous voice. This must have been... A baby Toa. Or a Toa kid. Or something of that sort.

"Gresh," he introduced himself.

Tamaru nodded, looked him over, fidgeted, and then asked with no shortage of curious embarrassment: "Wayby, what are you?"

"Lebori," he answered. He managed to point back at... Him? Her? Them? It? Xe? Ti? He didn't know how to approach the subject with a mostly metallic alien, so he was going to go with 'ti' for now. All Agori kids were 'ti' at that height. "Toa?"

The being laughed with a tinny sound: "No, no! I'm too bugsmall to be a Toahero. I'm a Matoran. How are you wellfeeling?"

"Bad," he replied honestly.

"Oh. Eversorry."

"I mean," Gresh shrugged: "Could be worse. But not good."

Ti hummed deep in thought, as though ruminating on his words: "Makes sense," ti decided in the end, "You've been sleeping for two days. You must have been bonetired."

"Huh."

Two whole days, asleep.

Yeah, made sense. He'd been absolutely exhausted.

How must Mata Nui be holding up then, he wondered?

He hoped he was fine.

The Matoran turned tir attention to his face again, leaning closer but not daring to graze him: "Are those feathers?"

"Hm-hm."

"Can I handtouch?"

Sure, why not? Kids from other tribes used to ask to do that all the time, this wasn't any different. He gave ti a very weak ok gesture and submitted himself to the inevitable poking and prodding.

That turned out to have been a very good idea, as Tamaru was not only much more gentle and cautious while combing through his thin plumage than any brash Gaquri or Tapyri or Koniri brat he'd ever met, doing tir best not to pull any plumes or feathers out, but also, despite being the farthest thing from a Lebori, exercised a level of so highly specific care towards it that would have probably won ti an honorary place in his tribe.

He leaned his head into lir touch and bristled his feathers comfortably, driving a giggle out of ti.

The Matoran cooed at him, and he cooed back without thinking.

Great Beings, he missed being preened by his aunt.

"You're good," he mumbled.

"Heh heh! I turntame Gukko birds," Tamaru explained proudly, pushing tir chest out a bit. "I have lots of experience."

He could tell.

Wait, birds?

They had birds? In Mata Nui's old body?

His train of thought was interrupted when the Matoran hastily pulled tir hand away as if caught doing something ti shouldn't; before he could protest a new weight settled on the foot bed, and a scaled hand snuck under him to pull him up a little, just enough so that the Gaquri could see his face.

Tarix looked him over in complete silence, checking him up and down at least twice. Finally he pulled him into his arms and squeezed him gently as he pressed his nose into the reddish feathers denoting his young age sticking out of his head.

Gresh did not fight it. He snuggled into his uncle's hold despite the long scales scratching at him, sighing in relief.

Lebori teeth were good at cleaning plumage in a way that no other tribe could vaunt - namely by being thinner than what was usual for Agori, catching loose feathers painlessly without getting them stuck in place and having to pluck them out with their hands afterwards. By contrast, for example, Gaquri teeth were just a little too large the closer the crown was to the gums and retained much more humidity around them, causing the soft barbs to grossly stick to the enamel and the shaft to lodge itself between them, allowing for a generally less than pleasant experience.

Tarix had lost the will to give a damn about how disgusting it sometimes felt during his and Vastus's courting, and so he did his best to preen his nephew for a minute or two, just to reassure him of his presence, to offer him comfort after what had no doubt been a harrowing ordeal. The kid's weight against him melted the worries that had plagued him for the past two days into slush.

He pulled away at last once he found himself satisfied with his work. He cupped the young Glatorian's face in his hands with a sigh, and told him: "We're gonna kick your ass."

Gresh groaned: "Oh, come on!"

"Don't give me that, you little bastard," his uncle hushed him with the fondest tone he'd ever used as he nuzzled his cheek again: "You scared the ever-living crap out of us, we didn't have a single pair of clean pants between five Glatorian for a day and a half."

He felt the rookie squirm and wriggle to get out of his hug: "But it worked! And I'm fine!"

"Passing out stone cold on your aunt is called 'being fine', now?"

"So what! I've woken up now!"

"I can hear that," Tarix grinned. He smacked a kiss on the kid's forehead, getting a little 'blegh' back. "And now that we're all relieved we'll wait until you're all better, and then we'll kick your ass."

The Lebori shook his feathers at him at maximum pique, hissing to scare him off with no success whatsoever.

Tamaru snorted.

He stuck his tongue out at ti too.

Then something large and blue slid into the room like a fury, so fast that its inertia sent it right against the wall with a loud BANG that spooked the Matoran off tir stool with a tremendous clatter.

"YOU!!"

Tarix curled around Gresh to better help him hide.

Kiina circumvented the issue this posed by crawling on her fellow Gaquri's back like some sort of gargoyle, reaching over his protective stance, grabbing the back of the camisole the rookie was wearing, and frantically starting to pull it back and forth as though it were her victim of choice's shoulders.

"I'M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS!" she yelled: "ARE YOU STUPID?! ARE YOU POSSESSED?! DID A SPIKED WORM HIDE AWAY IN YOUR BRAIN?! YOU COULD HAVE GOTTEN SQUASHED TO BITS! AND YOU BROUGHT MY LITTLE BROTHER ALONG TOO!"

"It was Berix's idea," the Lebori tried to rebuke.

"No it wasn't," his traitorous uncle replied.

"NO IT FUCKING WASN'T!!"

-

Hahli looked upon the silent giant and waited.

What for?

She laid her head in her palms, not knowing how to answer herself.

The protodermis was cooling beneath her. She let her legs dangle for the jagged edge of the Great Spirit Robot's broken skull, swaying with the wind coming down the mountain as evening crept closer with its orange hues in a manner similar to how it used to do on Mata Nui; Metru Nui looked so small, so far below, but she could not focus on it at the moment.

Her saddened gaze remained fixed on the unmoving prototype, studying its features in silence.

It wasn't as frightening as its larger brethren. The Great Spirit Robot had a face that looked right out of a nightmare: it was long and rough, with long lines digging deep all the way down to its chin, stuck in a barely open-mouthed grimace which gave the impression that a rumbling voice was meant to come out of it at any moment, delivering righteous fury and reprimands and orders.

The prototype's skull was stouter, almost oval or round in shape. It had eyes and cheeks - or what appeared to be cheeks or cheek guards, at least - and nothing else. A long segmented line ran across the height of its face; flat crests emerged from the top of its head.

The sum of its pieces ended up resembling a Kanohi much more closely than an Agori visage.

She looked at its broken optic, at its rusted fingers.

Waiting for a light to shine through the gaping darkness within the shell, for the joints between the phalanxes to twitch and scratch at the ground under them as it grumbled to life.

Waiting for it to speak to her with a soft, booming, deep voice.

To turn its head and call out to her.

To say, Hahli?

Is that you?

"Hahli!"

She turned. Takanuva's mask peeked from the edge of the robot's head as he held tight onto the protodermis, evidently having been scaling his way up to her; Kopeke, sitting tight on his shoulders, waved at her in his stead.

His sister laughed, hurrying over and grabbing his hands to help him up: "Hey there! What is this, a Chroniclers' reunion?"

"It could be," her Light brother grinned. He sighed in relief as soon as his feet were once again resting on more or less even ground. "We saw you sitting there and thought we'd come up to say hi."

"Is that so? You just happened to be walking around these parts?"

Her friend did not reply, flustered.

The wrecks rested far away from the camps promising to one day become New Atero, much too far for the pair to just casually come across them while struck by the desire for an evening stroll.

No, it couldn't be a coincidence: they had a specific reason to be here. Just like her.

Hahli huffed playfully and helped Kopeke down from her brother's shoulders: "Alright, come on," she gestured back towards the edge of the enormous wound, inviting them both to sit down with her as she returned to her spot. "Spill it. What are you two investigating?"

The Matoran settled next to her in no time, used enough to vertiginous heights to remain completely unbothered before the void beneath their feet; Takanuva stalled a little more, fidgeting with his hands for a moment: "It's nothing," he shrugged in the end as he very deliberately took his seat as well.

"It's not nothing." Kopeke rebuked.

"Yes it is."

"It's not."

"It's..." the argument died in the Toa's throat. He took a deep breath; Hahli watched him turn to the rusting robot with a forlorn look that perfectly replicated her own emotions. "It's something Tahu said."

She followed his gaze.

The prototype still had not moved.

Maybe it would now that there were three of them.

Or maybe not.

Who knew.

"About Mata Nui?" she asked softly.

He nodded.

"What was it?"

"He said that... Well, he told me that when he saw him, you know, he just looked like any other being. Like a Glatorian. The kind you'd forget after catching a glimpse of them in a crowd. But at the same time there was just this..." he clenched his hands close to his heartlight, almost as if to grasp it within them: "This feeling - this certainty, that what he was looking at was the real Great Spirit, and he couldn't have mistaken him for anybody else even if he'd tried. Like there was something deep in his soul telling him."

Hahli did not reply.

"I think... I think I felt that too." Takanuva continued. His eyes were fixed on the prototype. "When I looked at it, on Metru Nui."

Her fins twitched lightly.

A mellow wind passed through, gently leading the sand to crash against the limbs of protodermis like waves of a calm sea, further dulling the darkened rust that covered the dead colossi laying side by side as it stuck upon it, wearing them down impercetibly.

She heard Takanuva adjust his seat.

"Nobody else did. I mean, nobody really looked at it except for us and some Matoran - aside from the Barraki armies, but- you get what I meant. But I think the Nuva might... I think they'd all feel that."

Then he grew silent again.

His sister did not add onto his hypothesis, and kept quiet.

She was still looking at the robot.

Still waiting for it to turn its head towards them.

Still waiting for it to call out to them with a familiar voice.

Kopeke's silence was comforting. It drowned out their own uncomfortable quiet naturally, in a manner hard to explain: but knowing he sat next to them, hands on his lap, looking out to the sprawling landscape before them, just listening, brought them respite from their too loud thoughts.

Takanuva turned towards her, prompting her to face him.

"Did you feel that, too?"

She gripped the jagged skull under her and did not answer.

He waited.

His voice came out of him awfully small: "You said something," he whispered, sounding embarrassed: "When you saw the robot. But I didn't hear it well because you said it very quietly and I was sort of too distracted to pay attention."

Hahli sucked in a breath to speak.

She couldn't.

She turned her eyes down, to the city slowly being abandoned below them, and swung her legs harder to desperately try and find something, anything, that could have worked as a response.

What was she supposed to say? That she thought she was going crazy? That nothing had happened? That she didn't know?

That she'd seen a ghost?

The barbarian hurried deeper in her seaweed hut, crawling hastily into her bed and hiding her Kaukau under her arms, wanting to forget everything again, to wake up and find that nothing had changed, that she was still just a flaxmaker who never spoke and seldom left her village, who did her duty diligently and went to sleep not knowing there were friends outside of her gate waiting to die.

Kopeke sat next to her. He did not touch her. His silence laid a soothing hand on her burning brain.

"Do you know when - when a part of your head is muddled?" she asked. Getting each word though the knot strangling her throat was a painful struggle. "When it's... When it's all murky, and confused, and swirling too slowly and bubbling, and you can't understand what's happening in it?"

Her brother nodded.

She passed her hands over her Faxon: "It was just a second," (she sounded guilty, and she had no idea why) "Just a second - just a moment, so quick I'm not even sure I understood anything I was thinking... And it was so hazy, and unclear, and unfocused, and I - I don't know why, I'm not sure but it felt like--"

Something in her neck swerved from the strain: an unfortunate gear shrieked as it tried to turn where it shouldn't, interrupting her with a short-lived mechanical cough. Two hands of different sizes were quick to pat her back to dislodge the misbehaving piece back into its rightful place.

With a final harsh exhale, Hahli spat out: "--For a moment, it felt like Matoro."

Her arms shook as though she'd puked her soul into the void.

The robot remained still.

Unmoving, unchanging.

Rusted and broken and dead.

What good was staring at it?

It was never going to be him.

Nothing was ever going to be him.

No one was ever going to be him.

She'd been here for hours yesterday, and that feeling hadn't repeated.

She'd been here for hours today, and that feeling hadn't repeated.

She couldn't stop hoping that maybe, if she looked at it long enough, it would feel like him again.

"Do you think he's him?" Takanuva asked with a breath.

Hahli faced him.

It was like looking in a mirror.

"Mata Nui," he repeated. "Do you think he's him?"

Did she?

It would have been nice. It would have been relieving. To know that this whole time, they'd been fighting for a friend. For someone they loved. For someone who loved them. It would have been nice, because then they would have everything back. They would have their paradise back: their island home, their friends, their family. As if nothing had ever changed. As if nothing had ever happened. It would have been nice, because none of them would have died then.

But what about before that? When the Great Spirit refused to look at them? When it neglected and endangered them? Could that have been him? And if it hadn't been him, then who had died with him? Who had he usurped and doomed to fade into non-existence in much the same way as Teridax had usurped Mata Nui? Who had they been fighting for before the Mask of Life chose its vessel?

"I don't know," Hahli replied. "I just don't know."

Her brother leaned his head on her shoulder.

His weight anchored her to reality, dissipating her swirling thoughts.

Kopeke looked, silent, at the massive robotic body.

Krahka came to his mind.

He had seen her - he had traveled with her, with Tahu and Johmak and Onua, and Lariska and Guardian. She had looked exactly like he'd expected, so like nothing he could have thought of at all: but he'd still recognized the sharp grin that spread too wide, the voice that was neither a hiss nor a growl nor a chirp and yet resembled all those sounds, the frighteningly clever eyes that Vakama's narrations had described in such vivid unspoken detail.

She had been every bit the legendary Rahi lurking within the Metru Nui archives, so cunning and terrible that even the Rahkshi fleed from her.

And yet, while he'd looked at her wreck chaos upon Daxia's surface with Onua, something incredible had happened.

No matter what beast she turned into, she looked just like a Toa.

Something about her, about her shifting anatomy, her erratic fighting style, her voice heckling back at Onua when he shouted above the rockus at her, her strange glee - she had seemed like a wild mixture of the Turaga's selves, as though a little bit of each had gotten stuck in her shapeless form and molded alongside her ever changing body, made hers, until she was an equal of what they had once been.

Until she was, indisputably, one of them.

He remembered how Turaga Onewa had sat next to Vakama as he'd recounted their first proper battle against the Horde. He had claimed he was staying to make sure the firespitter told the tale right, but had kept completely quiet the whole story through.

He had caught how he'd clenched his hand during the last struggle between the Tahtorak and the Zivon, his eyes shut tight, as though he were bracing himself for a devastating blow - and how he'd let his fingers rest, dejected, resigned, when the shapeshifter disappeared into darkness.

Maybe she is a Rahi who discovered a little Toa inside.

Kopeke mulled over Pouks' words.

He wondered if Mata Nui liked Rahi.

If he found them intruguing in a manner very different from the detached scientific approach of Onu-Metru archivists.

If he would have talked to tamed ones when they clamored at him, or even repeated their own chatterings back at them to try and communicate with them more accurately.

He wondered if Mata Nui had a good singing voice.

If he would have been shy about it, or instead enjoyed bellowing out hymns and songs to his heartlight's content.

If he would have had such a powerful control over it that he could go from humming a lullabye to declaring a dirge to grinning along a festive chant in mere seconds.

He sighed.

His little body reclined against the cool protodermis as he scuttled closer to his once fellow Chroniclers. Night had fallen: clusters of stars crawled across the dark sky like an infinity of beetles.

His quiet thoughts enveloped the Toa.

He felt them lay down with him, a little calmer, a little more at peace.

In another hour or so a small group of worried Matoran, Turaga and Toa would finally catch a glimpse of Takanuva's glow and start screaming at them to come down, chastising them for disappearing like that without giving them any notice as soon as the three of them were in manhandling reach.

But until then they laid with the empty robot, paying it no mind, breathing in asynchrony under a universe vaster than they could have ever imagined.

It would have been nice.

If Mata Nui had a little bit of Matoro in him.

[yellow-computer-mouse]

More head cannons because yes.

There is an ancient legend of a magical nightwing with so many silver scales you could mkstake her for an icewing that roams the old ruins of the night kingdom diving around the rocks and blessed with immortality and if you find her, she enchants you with magical ability. Unfortunately this tale was lost over the years, until Foeslayer decided to tell Peacemaker who, while I love him, feels like the type to run his mouth about the cool things he learns.

ohh this is actually a super cool headcanon!! watch me allude to this in fanfics (that i'll probably never write) ty!

[the-monkey-ruler]

Do you think you could make a list from the strongest demon king to the weakest?

Maybe Wukong's sworn brothers other than the demon bull king wouldn't be included because we never see them fight (although I understand they fought alongside Wukong when he rebelled against heaven?)

I could only give out a rough outline since I'm not really a 'power scaler' and honestly it's hard to say if by strong you mean the most difficult or if they had powerful attacks. Most of Wukong's worst fights aren't, particularly because his enemies were physically powerful but just had a strong weapon or a single powerful attack while being a glass canon.

While Wukong's sworn brothers did join the fight against heaven, their own armies were captured. Not sure if this was to reflect Wukong's favoritism toward his own monkeys or to show how his sworn brothers were outclassed but I am not even going to try to guess.

So this will be more of a list of Wukong Most DIFFICULT fights to the easiest fights.

Hurt Wukong Trapped Wukong Fought (tie) Fought (lost) Lost without Fight Never seen Fight (inconclusive) Magic Item

Red Boy - made Wukong pass out, Guanyin subdued him, glass cannon

Scorpion Demoness - poisoned Wukong, killed by Pleiades Star Offical, glass cannon

Yellow Wind Demon - make Wukong blind, he needed Lingshan's help, glass cannon

Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord - blinded Wukong momentarily, also taken out by Star Official Pleides

Golden-Winged Great Peng - Talons overpowered Wukong, was taken out by Buddha

Silver Horned King - captured Wukong due to magic spell and has magic item, was killed later though

Single Horned Rhinoceros King - very powerful magic item used, subdued by Laozi

Yellow Brows Great King - powerful magic item and needed Maitreya Buddha help to defeat

Princess Iron Fan - blew Wukong away with magic item, he needed Lingshan's help

Golden Horned King - captured Wukong due to magic items

Six Eared Macaque - tie until Buddha gave Wukong the upper hand

Bull Demon King - impressive fight but still ran away after being overwhelmed in numbers

Yellow Robe Demon - impressive fight but Wukong still needed the 28 Star's help

Nine-Headed Insect - ran away until taken out by Erlang Shen

Black Wind King - good at escaping, needed Gaunyin's help

Great Immortal King of Spiritual Touch - Gaunyin defeated in the end

Yellow Toothed Elephant - defeated Bajie, lost to Wukong

Azure Lion / Lion-Lynx Demon - defeated Wujing, lost to Wukong

Grand Saint of Nine Spirits - Wukong had Tianzun to help

King of Dust Protection - captured Bajie and Wujing

King of Heat Protection - captured Bajie and Wujing

King of Cold Protection - captured Bajie and Wujing, was killed by Bajie

Lady Earth Flow - able to slip away, needed Nezha and King's Li's help

Great King Jupiter's Rival - had a magic item but never got a chance to use against Wukong

Tuolong Black River God - his own cousin took him out but even Wujing could fight him

Python Demon

White Bone Demon - hard to pin down but killed in one blow

Spider Demons - stole Sanzang but very easy to defeat

King of the Southern Hill

Tiger Strength Great Immortal

Elk Strength Great Immortal

Antelope Strength Immortal

White Deer Spirit

Nine-Tailed Vixen

Great King Fox Number Seven

Wansheng Dragon King

Demon King of Confusion

Dragon Demon King

Peng Demon King

Lion Demon King

Female Macaque King

Snub Nose Monkey King

Bear Mountain Lord

This is my personal take on the Demon Kings and as you can see, I did include demons that aren’t technically Demon Kings but rather the main antagonist in their arc. This also doesn't include ALL the demons or any gods or immortals that Wukong has fought with either, these are just the Demon Kings (or at least demons that are the big bad in their arcs) so there are still other antagonists that are in the book on here.

I am solely going on how the fights went in my notes and what I can remember so if you remember these fights going differently and actually want to add any details please let me know. I didn't include anything that the demons like 'claim' to have or powers or feats that they have done, just what they ACTAULLY did in the story, cause actions speak louder than words.

There could be grey area with the demons with magic items. And you could argue how easily the demons that caused Wukong the most damage were easily defeated by other gods just because they could bypass their one (1) magic spell gimic that was just giving Wukong trouble. Two of these Demon Kings were taken out by the SAME ROOSTER just because they are insect demons and roosters are their natural enemies. So take that as you will... Other demons Kings were defeated just cause their owner showed up before they could really fight too.

[lotus-tower]

My Orochi Stood Up: A Draconic Response to "eat shit and die"

tshirt3000’s seminal essay, “eat shit and die,” illuminates the fact that in any sillyserious discussion of Gintama, there is a recurring tension–or overlap, or slippage, or push-and-pull–between the motif of the anus and the motif of the phallus. Far from being contradictory, however, this dynamic conceptual tug of war has the potential to be not only meaning-generating, but fundamental to a thematic understanding of Gintama. In this essay, I aim to illustrate how applying a certain homebrewed framework of mine can help make sense of these interwoven concepts and provide symbolic structure to their analysis. I’m talking, of course, about the ouroboros–also known as the snake eating its own tail.

As we all know, Gintama is full of phalluses. The sword is basically a matryoshka doll of motifs all on its own (or, to invoke tshirt invoking Barthes, the beginning of a chain of images, or significants). But the same vulgar toilet humour that leads to Gintama being chock full of dick jokes (and balls jokes, which for many reasons can be conflated with dick jokes, a primary one being that the Neo Armstrong Jet Cyclone Armstrong Cannon, practically a mascot of Gintama in its own right, stands strong, beautiful, and trinitas) also leads to plenty of hole jokes. Guys like Sorachi thinks it’s funny when the protagonist gets something stuck in his butt, or when gay sex exists, or when a guy is a sub. But there’s no need to discuss this part in depth–just read tshirt’s essay.

There’s a saying among my friend group: “all there is in Gintama is head and hole.” 

Why do the sages say this? First of all because it’s funny. Second of all because it’s true. You can reduce everything in Gintama to essentially two things. Shouyou and Utsuro. Gintoki and Takasugi. Humans and monsters. Those who swing the sword right and those who swing it wrong. Those who take in and those who are taken in. Those who keep struggling and those who don’t. And then you can also always reduce these two things to one thing: Shouyou/Utsuro are, after all, the same being, even if they’re not; Gintoki; simply people, Gintoki once more; Gintoki yet again; and struggling itself. Because losing is part of struggling too. You can’t pick yourself back up if you never lost in the first place. We know that Gintoki has managed to become “a splendid human” by the end of the series–so what was he before that? Was he really a monster? At what exact point in the series did he become human? Was it while he was on-screen, while we were looking, but without us noticing? Was it off-screen, while we were flipping the page, or in the space between the panels? The answer, of course, is that he was learning to be human every day of his life, and if you were to assign him a static, general status to put on a wiki profile under ‘“species”, it would be: “becoming human.” And so “which one is the head and which one is the hole?” is the wrong question. Even if you assigned one to each half and managed not to be wrong, since they’re collapsible into one anyway, they’ll always be both.

In my ouroboros collage, I used western alchemy to stylize this struggle. This forging of the soul into a precious metal, language used by Gintama itself. Chrysopoeia–the making of gold. Or silver, as it were. But the ouroboros isn’t just a major symbol of alchemy. I chose it because, simply put, it’s the It girl. It does it all. It’s a snake. It’s a dragon. It circles the world. It represents eternity. It’s a loop. And while the ouroboros, alchemically, is a western symbol, the snake eating its tail is not. As I noted in my collage, the ouroboros and the world serpent are images that appear in traditions around the world.

I’m going to state the obvious: yes, the snake eating its own tail is the head and the hole. After all, the snake eating its own is also a symbol of fertility: the snake’s tail is phallic, its mouth yonic. Male and female, yin and yang–these are all things the ouroboros represents, because it ultimately embodies the cosmological interplay of complementary forces necessary to sustain a truly endless cycle. Now, tshirt’s essay could not be more clearly about the anus most specifically. But in this essay? Love is love, hole is hole. Sorry tshirt.

In all sillyseriousness, as tshirt details in their essay, the anus “following hocquenghem, normally stands in for the individuating function which itself gives root to desiring within the social sexual system, and the means by which we might therefore transcend the phallus.” Note the term “individuating function.” In my ouroboros collage, I included the following idea from philosopher Bernard Stiegler about the individuation process: “The I is essentially a process, not a state, and this process is an in-dividuation — it is a process of psychic individuation. It is the tendency to become one, that is, to become indivisible.” Indeed, Carl Jung (yes, that Jung) saw the ouroboros as the ultimate symbol of the “paradox” at the heart of the individuation process. Many of the lines in the second half of my poem are from him. Specifically, they’re from this one key paragraph from his Collected Works, vol. 14:

The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This 'feedback' process is at the same time a symbol of immortality since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself, and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he, therefore, constitutes the secret of the prima materia which ... unquestionably stems from man's unconscious.

I believe the relevance of these quotes to Gintama is clear at this point. Because as I said, everything in Gintama is reducible to two opposing forces, which is then reducible to one. The ouroboros fundamentally embodies the paradox of Two, Yet One. And through the style and language of alchemy, it turns this paradox into the preeminent human endeavour, the Great Work of human existence. tshirt’s identification of Gintoki as “a reluctant hole” (very queer I agree) positions him perfectly here as the poor, tragic hero who, despite everything, Is Doing It–who is both recipient and victim of his own wisdom about the undertaking he must choose to embark on. It is a task that will last forever, even after he’s already succeeded. (In Gintama, therefore, to be a reluctant hole can denote both a noun and a verb.) And yet, there can be traced a definite “before” and “after.” In its literal shapes and features, the ouroboros forms an imperfect circle–it is a cyclical figure that necessarily depicts a break in the cycle, where mouth meets tail, where there must be an opening. A gap that must despite the snake’s best efforts exist, because a mouth is not a tail at the end of the day. Something that may seem like an insignificant smudge in the great flow of time, but that was nonetheless enough to shatter Utsuro’s “eternity.” 

Though in some depictions, including the most iconic one, you can see the gap full well. Look. Does it seem like it’s smiling to you?

(We know Shouyou smiled right before he died–do you think that severed head of his still held a smile?)

There are a lot of other things I could say about hole. Like a hole being a sort of lack, something to be filled–a void, perhaps, one that gets artificially filled with all kinds of detritus as part of the process of person-making in Gintama. Or I could say something about the displacement or potential conflation of one kind of hole with another when your protagonist is male, cis, virile (alleged), and obviously straight in a way that makes anal sex jokes funny, and PIV jokes only too racy for Jump. Alas, this isn’t an essay on Gintama hole theory, so while there’s still much to be said about head and hole, I think it’s time we move on to one of the most important elements of the ouroboros thesis: 

The dragon.

Now, the terms ryuumyaku and ryuuketsu were not invented by Gintama. As mentioned in my annotation part one (I now understand why Final Fantasy XV gave out crucial information about its story in disparate chunks spread across multiple mediums instead of behaving normally), the concept of “dragon veins” is part of real life Japanese traditions, and is tied to feng shui. The idea of concentrated life energy, or natural power, flowing through the earth along certain paths, like ley lines, is a rather common one across the world, and thus a basic building block of fantasy worlds. In my poem I highlight the geo-somatic aspect of this, how it conflates Utsuro with the planet that birthed him, effectively turning him into a world snake that walks on two feet. The tendrils of his re-knitting flesh resemble strands of hair, or perhaps the whiskers on a dragon, his blood is a river is Altana is precious oil to be extracted and hoarded by intergalactic powers, his heart is a deep, blood-red stone that denies that his blood was ever liquid, and smoke rises from him when he regenerates as though the fire that Shouyou’s body was thrown into was never truly put out.

What’s notable, though, is the person who delivers the line that draws these comparisons most concretely:

Yes, I’m cannibalizing part 2 of my annotation here. Very sad. But I’ve always said I wished Gintama had more cannibalism. So let’s press on.

Umibouzu is uniquely positioned to make this observation here because he’s the only character to have fought… well, to have come into, shall we say, “fighting range,” with both of the series’ immortals. And as uninteresting as he may be as an individual character, it’s through him that we finally gain access to a straight-on view of Kouka–specifically, Kouka on Rakuyou, before she left her planet to die femininely. 

I won’t rehash too much of what I’ve already said in my collage and annotation. The Orochi on Kouan is a world snake much like the blurry dragon-vein-Utsuro-Shouyou package on Earth: a serpent with innumerable heads, both singular and plural, this time in a more literal way than Utsuro’s multiple selves or the image of a river flowing into countless streams. It’s wrapped all around planet Kouan like… well, a world snake. Or… a world tree. Because as much as it’s clearly a serpent of the Orochi archetype, it’s described in both animalistic and vegetative language (e.g., it has “roots” that spread into the planet’s core, where they soak up the Altana… but the planet is its “nest”). Kouan’s dragon is thus a mutated beast that defies easy categorization, part mythical symbol, part serpent, part plant. Kouan, after all, is no longer capable of supporting normal life, its atmosphere and soil too toxic for anything but mutants. The Orochi, then, is an animated, aberrant substitution for the Lifestream, one whose roots have replaced the planet’s veins, one that can express aggressiveness and loneliness, and whose fleshy corporeality allows Umibouzu to…

…make a bad dick joke. Naturally.

Kouka and the Orochi aren’t conflated the way that Utsuro and the dragon veins are. The Orochi is not her body: being its own creature, it appears much more separate from her than the formless glowing green Sephiroth energy does from Utsuro. But interestingly, they are mistaken for each other through the title of “Master of Kouan,” which the Orochi acts as a decoy for before the story “reveals” that it refers to Kouka. And Sorachi makes clear: the Orochi is lonely. The planet is lonely. Kouka is lonely. The Yato are lonely.

Rabbits can die of loneliness, you know, etc. etc. And as Kagura delivers to us early on in the series, the only way out of this endlessly repeating, and yet endlessly diminishing (sort of like reverse infinite tumblr chocolate) cycle, is to change.

Umibouzu’s dick jokes return us to the self-explanatory phallic-ness of the snake. I don’t think I need to explain the overlap between snakes and dragons, especially in an Asian context. So if Umibouzu is the phallus–the new arrival that introduces change to planet Kouan–then does that make Kouka the hole? Well, yes, but no. Because Kouka is the one associated with the Orochi. Kouka is the immortal, living her life frozen in time until she decides to leave the dragon behind. And in the end, when Umibouzu convinces her to leave with him, he tells her: “You and I are the same. No matter how busy a planet I’m on, no matter how surrounded by people I am. Without you, I’m lonely.” A hole, as we said earlier, is a type of lack. And neither Kouka nor Umibouzu at this point have dirt that can fill that lack–the dirt that, as tshirt put it, “marks the permanence of one’s relationships.” Because only dirt can stick enough, can stain enough to leave an imprint.

Now, in another world where Sorachi isn’t a coward and a boring misogynist, here is where I would be digging into juicy insights into Shouyou|Utsuro’s milfhood, the genderisms of being an Altana immortal, the obvious implications of Umibouzu having been a failed parent unable to deal with Kamui’s situation due to living in the same (shall we say, hole-sided) world as Kamui, which loops back around to Kamui inheriting eldest daughter female hysteria his body isn’t capable of processing a la Oboro, and Kouka’s relationship to the phallus-as-transmissive-samurai-spirit–but given that we sadly don’t live in that better world, there isn’t much I can add to this enumeration that wouldn’t be self-evident.

As an aside, it does have to be said: the nature of the snake swallowing its own tail as a simultaneously self-fellating symbol and an established motif of macrocosmic heterosexual (re)creation of the universe perfectly encapsulates Gintama’s relationship to sexual jokes and the linkages it creates using vulgar wordplay. And it’s also the sort of thing my friend tshirt would love to quote Freud on. Another way of looking at it is that the microcosm of the universe in Gintama is a queer human, who is probably a pervert. Which seems glaringly obvious when you think about it outside of the context of this essay for two seconds. 

Anyway, as Jung said, the ouroboros is not just self-sustaining, but self-fertilizing. Or perhaps self-sustaining is a potentially misleading term, because by nature it cannot remain static. It can only slay itself, and give birth to itself once more. Utsuro was never the same person twice. But what does it mean to be self-fertilizing? It means, above anything else, that in the end people give hope to themselves. That Shouyou put in the work, and that what Shouyou gave birth to was, in essence, the same as himself. 

An endlessly replicating chain of Shounen Determination.

Of course, this goes both ways as well.

Shouka Sonjuku, then, is the embodiment of Shouyou’s self-fertilization–a motif taken up by Gintoki, our illustrious shounen protagonist enacting the genre-typical inspire and change everyone you touch. At the same time–or, you could say, anachronistically–Gintoki is enacting his own self-fertilization, fertilizing his own soul–or tama, or egg–with pieces of everybody that touches him. Because, though the hole is a lack, it is simultaneously where the crux of this self-transformation takes place. As tshirt puts it so succinctly, “the anus—the dirty human things—is the home for the phallus—the ideals we hold, the source of our power.” The scabbard for the sword of one’s soul, so to speak, but that metal for that sword is made up of fragments from many sources–as the Rakuyou arc anime illustrated for us so memorably.

In the Shinsengumi Crisis arc, Kondou (whose status as butt monkey for the crassest of Gintama’s jokes positions him in a unique way for these things) says something similar: nobody is being dyed in another’s colour. It’s hard to even say what colour other people’s souls really are, if everyone’s soul is made up of broken off bits and shards and dead things (positive) from all over the place, like beach sand. What Itto has mistaken as a form of influence over others, as the level of dominance of one’s soul, is really just:

“Because it’s something annoying that you can’t get rid of, in the end it becomes troublesome when you start to care about it.” Or something like that. The translation here is probably at least a little suspect, but you get the gist of it. tshirt’s analysis of gorillahood is potentially interesting and relevant here as well, but I’m afraid I have to move on for the sake of keeping things on track. 

It’s worth noting that even as, from Gintoki’s perspective, Shouyou smiled at him right before he died, from Shouyou’s perspective (and of course, from Takasugi’s)–Gintoki smiled back. 

Incidentally, the chapter two chapters before this one was named “The Two Utsuros.” Later on in this scene, Sakamoto refers to “the two Yoshida Shouyous.” And on this page, we see two Gintokis. Isn’t Gintama fun?

What of Kouka, then? I think her situation is clear. She created literal children of the flesh rather than of the spirit–and there is unfortunately little else to say, because even this is quite obviously a cliche of the dead anime mom. The context of Gintama’s story is enough for us to assume an implication of her having transmitted something to her children, of them carrying on her legacy in some way… but her character is too woefully undeveloped for me to say anything particularly interesting about that. What little I can say is essentially what I depicted in my annotations. When Umibouzu wants to whisk her away from Kouan, Kouka asks him–why did you remind me of these emotions? At the end of Silver Soul, it becomes clear that Utsuro’s professed “void” is not so empty after all–just like Kouka, he had simply been denying that he felt anything that ran contrary to his driving force, i.e. the power of his great resignation (“eat shit and die” terminology intended). For a long time, Kouka was resigned to staying on her planet–on her dragon–as its heads multiplied. In the end, she chooses to leave the planet behind, willingly sundering her eternity, and the planet watches her go. She dies because she became alive–just like Shouyou. It’s also worth noting that, when Kouka initially tries to disappear from Umibouzu, it’s the Orochi that points Umibouzu to her location, blending them into a sort of phallic comrade-in-arms, even as the Orochi is, as I said earlier, attached to Kouka’s existence. So in this ouroboros reading, Umibouzu simply becomes a device for her self-fertilization. Yayyyyy. 

Here we can see the relevance of wordplay and dick jokes to any sillyserious analysis of Gintama. The motif of self-fertilization, in particular, is a rich arena for the conflation of sex and shit that tshirt notes is enabled by Gintama’s beloved [BLEEP]: “connected by dirty things can implicitly stand in for shit, sex, or the penis itself.” In the ouroboros framework, both sex and shit ultimately denote that which gives birth to others and that which gives birth to yourself. Your legacy is made of the same stuff as you, is you, and you are finally brought into being by your legacy, in a process that transcends linear time. The ouroboros is literally connected to itself by its own tail–or head, depending on how you look at it. It’s all one snake, after all. I suppose you could say this is one reading in which Takasugi’s ambiguously alive-yet-dead state at the end of the series makes sense–he was always a shadow that could be folded inside Gintoki’s body. But I don’t like it, so it’s actually very bad.

In any case, the procreation of the universe, yourself, and other people happens interdependently and simultaneously, yet something has to happen first. It’s a chicken-or-egg scenario, an endless cycle that needs an initiating key moment–or, to be Utena-esque for a moment, a shell-cracking moment–for life to exist. If Utsuro’s eternity was an egg, then the moment of Shouyou’s birth as a human, itself undefinable in time, was what cracked it (Utsuro egg cracking moment). Of course, I think all Gintama fans innately understand that the moment of Shouyou’s beheading is the single most pivotal moment in the series. But after speaking of head and hole for so long, I think it’s finally time to address the obvious:

Gintama is about severed heads. A lot of them. (Shoutout to oomf’s severed head collection.)

The importance of beheading as a motif throughout the series interacts in a very interesting way with the ouroboros thesis. Some heads in Gintama need to be cut off. Others resolutely need to stay on. But even for the ones that need to be severed, it needs to be done right–or watch out. Or, as I once said:

“gintama is like. sometimes people die when they are killed. but this is not guaranteed. and sometimes people survive because they are killed. among the cast are people who need to die and people who need to survive. choose wisely” (me, 2022)

Within the stylized aesthetic framework of the ouroboros, this is where the metaphor of the hydra becomes useful. Cut off one head, and two more will sprout in its place. If you don’t swing the executioner’s blade right, the monster will remain a monster–or grow even more monstrous. Even worse, you will have failed to possess a human’s heart while swinging that blade–so what does that make you? Failing at being human in relation to the sword, then, puts you in danger of falling into the neurotic failure state described by Freud described by Hocquenghem described by tshirt. 

Gintoki didn’t fail, though. He just wasn’t able to succeed yet, without the rest of his story having unfolded yet. And so, within that paradoxical instant, the very heart of the ouroboros, Shouyou was saved and Utsuro was born. There is a persistent, and I would argue intentional, analytical ambiguity to this moment unless you allow for the paradox within it, represented by the moment of duplication where Sorachi likens Gintoki to Utsuro and presents both as the “one” wielding the sword. If Gintoki killed Shouyou with a human’s blade, then why was Utsuro born? If Utsuro killed Shouyou with a monster’s sword, then how did Shouyou’s humanity crystallize? If Gintoki became human throughout the course of Gintama, then how did he possess a human’s sword ten years ago? If he didn’t have a human’s sword and do the right thing back then–how could he have been the bottomless mirror standing unbreakable and infinitely reflective in front of Takasugi, Hijikata, Kamui, Nobume, and so many others?

Diegetically, of course, the answer is that Gintoki simply did the best he could, lost everything, and then picked himself back up and un-lost everything. Shouyou, too, just lost to Utsuro, because he was a human, and humans lose all the time, no matter how wise and gnc they might be. But he came back; or he survived; or the world survived without him–it doesn’t matter. Of course, I don’t believe Gintama is a series where you can really separate the “diegetic” from anything else (if you tried to explain anything that happened in it that way, the result would be not only very dull but hardly accurate). In a blend of shounen inspirational metaphor and absurdity, the series’ main themes are simply delivered through the mouths of various characters, without care for either subtlety or compromise. This is, after all, the series where our protagonist was given strength to keep going through a little girl telling him, don’t worry, mister, when I grow up I’ll become a splendid executioner and cut your head off for you! You could say that Gintama is full of a sort of “head anxiety” that only Gintoki is aware of. Oh man, I cut my teacher’s head off. Oh man, what if I did it wrong, that was so scary. What about my head, is my head weird? I bet it’s weird. Is it coming off? Is it stuck on too tight? Is this normal? Is my head too small for my body? Man, I can’t show people this. When is it coming off? Asaemon’s words also link the promise of death with the promise of life, or redemption–he must live so that he might die, and it’s only through death that he can truly live. Very ouroboros-esque. 

One thing I’d like to point out here is that Gintoki was imprisoned after Shouyou’s death. He hears Yaemon’s crucial, This Is A Surprise Tool That Will Help Us Later speech about beheading only after he’s already gone and beheaded someone. This is both straightforward foreshadowing and also unintentionally funny. But what I’m going to argue here is this: the fact that the Reaper Arc comes before Shogun Assassination for us makes it true enough for Gintoki as well. Because the moment Gintoki sliced Shouyou’s head off was the moment Shouyou’s humanity was affirmed, and thus the moment Utsuro’s “eternity” could be confirmed to have shattered. At the same time, it’s the moment of Utsuro’s birth into the world. In other words, it’s where the ouroboros ends and where it begins–a moment isolated in time and space, located, if anywhere, in the time of monsters. And this is mimicked by the Gintama narrative itself, as Shogun Assassination marks the end of the structure the entire series existed in prior. A two-year timeskip would never have been possible previously, as the series’ time circled on in endless loops, one anniversary after another, one Christmas season after another, without the characters ever aging, even as they grew wiser. The moment of Gintoki’s tragedy, finally fished out from within Takasugi’s eye, shattered Gintama’s “eternity,” too. 

I’ve already gone and used the hydra, so I’m going to be exceptionally silly here and invoke another piece of ancient Greek mythology, as a homage to hole and to Gintama’s dedication to bad puns: Uranus. According to Hesiod’s account of Aphrodite’s birth, when Uranus’ balls were cut off by his son, the goddess emerged from the white foam that flowed into the sea. You might be asking, am I really going to compare ball removal to decapitation? (This is a rhetorical question. No true Gintama fan would question this.) As I hinted at earlier, Gintama itself already provides the grounds for this kind of comparison through its ideological commitment to balls. It is, after all, Gintama. Phallic or yonic is largely irrelevant here, as this isn’t really about castration (sorry tshirt). Instead I want to emphasize the “head” in this case being the symbolic object imbued with transmissive and procreative power. This interpretation is, in the spirit of Gintama itself, built on playful punning between tama (ball) and atama (head). In the series, Shouyou and Gintoki are the characters who embody the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm most substantially–with Utsuro’s geo-somatic embodiment of Earth juxtaposed with his dominion over the forces of space, while of course also being the premier “dragon” of the series; and Gintoki enfolding the entire story within himself, both the silly and the sad. And so when Gintoki cut off Shouyou’s head, it was the birth of a universe, the “seed” spilling out from that severed neck and setting in motion the story we know and love. 

(Incidentally, the magic sci-fi spark that gives Tama, who ended her introductory arc as a severed head in Otose’s snackhouse, the ability to be human is called “the Seed.” Did you know that Fuyou means lotus?)

(I just thought that was interesting.)

Incidentally, while Japanese mythology sadly doesn’t feature any testicular cosmology, it does offer a rather interesting tidbit. According to the Kojiki, Izanagi and Izanami were tasked by the other deities to create land together using the heavenly spear Amenonuhoko. This is described thus:

Granting to them a heavenly jewelled spear, they [thus] deigned to charge them. So the two Deities, standing upon the Floating Bridge of Heaven, pushed down the jewelled spear and stirred with it, whereupon, when they had stiffed the brine till it went curdle-curdle, and drew [the spear] up, the brine that dripped down from the end of the spear was piled up and became an island. This is the Island of Onogoro.

…I think this account speaks for itself. The island of Onogoro became the first piece of Japan (and thus the world), formed out of briny white water, reminiscent of the white foam that Aphrodite sprang out of. Izanagi and Izanami then erected a pillar on the island and built a palace around it, then moved in and started making children. There’s more I could say about Izanagi and Izanami in relation to the ouroboros, but I think that would be too much of a digression. In any case, it takes little effort to imagine why multiple peoples long ago might have looked at sea brine and seen in it an intuitive symbol for creation and genesis–especially a people for whom the sea was a literal source of life. But what I’d really like to draw your attention to is the translator’s footnote on the translation of “jewelled spear”: 

The characters translated “jewelled spear” are [], whose proper Chinese signification would be quite different. But the first of the two almost certainly stands phonetically for [] or [],—the syllable nu, which is its sound, having apparently been an ancient word for "jewel" or "head," the better-known Japanese term being tama. (Unfortunately, the characters can't be displayed.)

And there you have it. Is a “spear” really that different from a sword when you think about it, especially when it’s a spear carrying that kind of symbolism? Or, as tshirt put it, “the pole and the hole.” And I’d like to remind you that Utsuro’s body is likened to the land of Japan itself through the very-much-Japanese concept of ryuumyaku, not just my own artistic derangements. His blood is the life-bringing sea, his flesh the earth of the archipelago. When he fell back into the mouth of the earth at the end of Silver Soul, he was falling back into his own mouth, the serpent devouring itself once again. 

Unfortunately for Utsuro, within the confines of this essay the mouth is akin to the asshole. Hole is hole: this I did solemnly swear to you at the start of this essay, and I intend to uphold my vow. Utsuro, then, falls back into Hole, and the earth spits him back out–hydra head clumsily cut off, having sprouted into two once more. You could compare, perhaps, Shouyou only re-emerging after having been thrown back into the dragon vein and shaken around a bit to Gintoki’s soul’s own instinct to fly towards buttholes when knocked out of its proper container. In the bodyswap arc, Gintoki gets hit by a truck and sadly survives, though his soul is shaken loose and part of it breaks off (no wonder, when it’s made up of so many little bits), and ends up entering the asshole of a dead cat. Gintoki is essentially a dead-eyed catboy, so this is an easy mistake to make. Additionally, in one of the most memorable gags of  the final arc, Gintoki gets swallowed by Sadaharu and pooped back out, but missing two-thirds of his body that, again, accidentally came apart from him while he was in there. They need to be recombined in Sadaharu’s guts, which through his connection to Altana as an inugami constitutes a makeshift dragon hole, until Gintoki finally exits hale and whole from his dog’s asshole.

What did he mean by this?

Well, first of all, it seems like you have to be gentle with Gintoki, despite appearances. He’s made up of so many bits and pieces and people that parts of himself will break off without him even noticing. Second, these gags link the idea of plurality to dirt to the anus as the site of the reconstitution of the self. Or, as Jung said, the “integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow.” Gintoki’s shadow can be represented by Takasugi. Or it can be represented by a naked, hyper-muscular Hello Kitty monster made up of his memories of war and his gambling addiction. They’re both missing an eye and have PTSD, so close enough. What’s fun is that in the Sadaharu gag, the punchline, “Gin San,” is about Gintoki’s name–the “Gin-san” identity he must take on once more to be able to face Shinpachi and Kagura. The joke faintly echoes the tonally very different scene on Rakuyou, where Gintoki told Kamui that Kagura and the others filled his emptiness, giving him the new name of “Gin-chan.” Asaemon, of course, also echoes parts of this, as her primary narrative role is to not-so-subtly provide guidance for the reader to understand and resolve Gintoki’s thematic journey, a parallel made more digestible through her distance from Gintoki as a feminine, vulnerable, indecisive character whose past is totally illuminated to us. At the end of her arc, she kills herself, and gives birth to her new self, like any healthy Gintama character.

Indeed, Gintama’s moral is to “fight yourself,” so naturally all the characters who haven’t given up yet are constantly in the process of devouring themselves. But this is a different process than emptying yourself, which is what the antagonists are doing. All Gintama villains are hole-sided, desperately trying to destroy themselves while pretending, as hard as they can, that they don’t know that you can’t destroy a hole–only make it bigger. I emptied myself on purpose, Kamui insists. I did it intentionally and edgily, so it’s different and your criticism is void. He truly is an 18 year-old boy. Kamui and Takasugi were unable to accept themselves as the ultimate fruit of Kouka and Shouyou’s transformations–their magnum opus. It’s interesting that in their very last snapshots, both of them are bodily changed, taking on younger forms invoking a sense of renewal; Takasugi literally being pooped out of a dragon hole as an ugly infant. While I don’t subscribe to Altana immortal Takasugi theory, in a literal sense Shouyou died and Takasugi was reborn–or, to be more precise, Shouyou returned to the macrocosm, to the lands and grasses and waters of the dragon’s earthly body, and Takasugi re-emerged in his micro (short joke) place. After all, the ouroboros always gives birth to itself, and Takasugi was never expelled. He has always been a part of Shouyou. As Sakamoto said, it’s only natural. 

As for Kamui… I originally had a section here discussing his case, centered on his tag-team battle with Kagura against the Eldest, that one-off Silver Soul villain who is first presented to us almost like a strange, low-budget imitation of Utsuro. 

However, as much as this guy does end up being a living dick and balls joke, I’ve decided to reserve this material for a future essay where I can delve into the question of blood more fully. So consider this a teaser. This essay has gone on long enough, I think.

So what can we conclude from it? As tshirt observes, Sorachi cannot resist the phallus (or the balls), even beyond the obvious “sword” metaphor. Viewed from the lens of the ouroboros framework, however, Gintama’s insistence on wordplay enables interesting meaning to be derived from these dirty jokes and their interaction with other motifs in the story. After all, the name of the series itself elevates the spirit of the balls joke, even if unintentionally, to the same level as the other metaphor in the title: “silver.” In “eat shit and die,” tshirt notes the important role that conflation plays in both Gintama’s humour and meaning-making, a role we’ve seen repeatedly in this essay with the purposeful blurring of person and dragon and planet, and its deliberate use of paralleled “other selves.” 

But perhaps the singularly most important example is the -tama in Gintama, with its plethora of potential meanings, each of them just silly and dirty enough that you have to take it seriously. Beyond the obvious joke on kintama (balls) and the “silver soul” meaning (which the series could not be more explicit about), we’ve seen that tama is also easily conflated with atama (head), and even with tamago (egg). This is clearly demonstrated with the series’ fixation on beheading leading to the salvation of the soul and the bodyswap arc hinging on the pun between soul and egg, which English translators very impressively retained using “egg” and “ego.” The fact that the characters end up turning into giant turds, likening the soul-egg-balls to an asshole, only drives the point in further. In this essay, I took things one step further in mapping these different motifs onto the phallic and yonic/anal (the holeic, if you will). After all, the tension between the phallic and the anal is fundamental to the ouroboros’ symbolism. It is this tension, and this complementarity, that leads to both destruction and creation, death and renewal. One of the reasons I chose the ouroboros as my stylization of choice is that Gintama perfectly encapsulates that central concept of death as rebirth–while throwing in the seemingly contradictory case of the main villain, who is very much Rebirth, But Bad. The ouroboros, then, supplies the symbolic technology to convert the inherent contradictions and sometimes difficult to navigate ambiguities of Gintama’s thematic structure into a more legible, metaphorically potent form.

As I noted in the beginning of this essay, every character in Gintama is ultimately both head and hole, both the beginning and end of the serpent, as the two belong to a single entity. If the head demands the cold bite of the executioner’s sword, the void inside of people also needs to be filled with the essence of others before they can be properly human. You can’t behead yourself–you need someone else to swing the blade. And yet that person is also, in some way, you. The one restoring you to humanity is yourself, the one slaying you is yourself, the one you give birth to is ultimately yourself.

The serpent eating its own tail’s self-fertilization schema is the key tying together the draconic motif of the ouroboros with the tangle of messy metaphors, tautological themes, and fraught relationships that make up Gintama. Naturally, the throughline running through it all is dirt–of the dirty joke variety, but also dirt as that which clings to others, dirt that fills, dirt that stains, dirt that, in short, remains. If the phallic is what inseminates and transmits (as the sword that releases and crystallizes, as the heavenly spear that leads to genesis), in other words tama as “balls,” then the anal is the scabbard for the sword, the vessel that receives and holds on to the seed that is dirt, the cradle where our soul is fertilized–in other words tama as “egg.” Tama as “soul,” then, is simply the combination of these things, the result of this self-fertilization: it is ourselves. When all is said and done, this is reducible to a rather simple message that Gintama has always had: you cannot make yourself alone, but that is hardly a problem or an excuse, because you are never as alone as you think you are.

Let us end on the question of Gintoki’s wooden sword, or as tshirt put it so insightfully, his “prosthetic phallus.” In the end, in Gintama all souls are artificially–yet organically–created through the process of chrysopoeia. tshirt’s argument that Gintoki’s wooden sword is made all the more transgressive for not being a “real” sword highlights the fact that even in the most surface-level reading, Gintoki’s wooden sword is more sword-like exactly because it invokes the idea of one without the technical reality. The “human’s sword” that Gintoki attains at the end of the series is airy and abstract, but more than readily understood by the reader because that is the kind of sword he’s been wielding all along.

As I noted before, even if Gintoki has become human, his task has not ended. The Great Work will continue forever, even after it’s already been accomplished. If the human is the microcosmos and the stuff inside them is, as Jung says, the prima materia, the formless base element of the universe, then it is not only the fruit but also the process itself that creates the world. And though this essay has not been about queer theory, let it be said that the profundity with which Gintama treats the act of self-transformation, along with the nuances and textures of Gintoki as a “reluctant hole,” make him a captivating protagonist on more levels than one. And of that desperate struggle to produce a human being, of the base substance inside of people that is their only natural material, let me quote the 17th century Theatricum Chemicum, on the subject of the prima materia:

They have compared the "prima materia" to everything, to male and female, to the hermaphroditic monster, to heaven and earth, to body and spirit, chaos, microcosm, and the confused mass; it contains in itself all colors and potentially all metals; there is nothing more wonderful in the world, for it begets itself, conceives itself, and gives birth to itself.

Emphasis mine.

Appendix A:

[prophecyofwinter]

Nemophilist

;One who is fond of forests or forest scenery

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x Stark!Reader

Summary: You are the childhood best friend of Aemond Targaryen. As children, the two of you made a promise that you two would Wed, no matter the cost. But would a war, a dance perhaps, cause issue with that promise?

Warnings: 18+, Death, Trauma, Toxic Sibling Dynamics, Cannon typical violence. More tags will be added as we go on

Notes: I’m posting chapters 2 and 3 back to back so don’t forget to read chapter 3 when you’re done with this one!

Last Chapter - Next Chapter

Chapter 2: Dumb Brother, Dumb Chair, Dumb Fist

As the guards opened the doors to allow the young prince passage into the gates of Winterfell you found yourself needing to move your gaze lower, instead of straight silver strands you were met with slightly unkempt brown hair, and no striking violet eyes just ones that were the same color as his hair. This wasn’t Aemond Targaryen? But he still had a dragon?

Your face was covered in confusion unsure what to say without embarrassing yourself. The young man in front of you cleared his throat and straightened his back. “I am Prince Jacaerys Velaryon, Lady Stark. I have come on behalf of my mother Queen Rhaenrya to meet with Lord Stark.”

Oh? Oh. You hadn’t seen any of the Velaryon boys since you were extremely young, you hadn’t even recognized Jace even with the dragon.

“It’s lovely to make your acquaintance again my Lord, as Cregan's sister, allow me to take you to meet him.” You said with a smile and a curtsey trying to not let your disappointment at his sudden appearance show. He nodded and you led the way to the throne room, guards at either side of the two of you as you walked.

You hadn’t even thought about the Prince's words until right this moment, ‘Did he say Queen Rhaenrya? But that couldn’t be, that would have to mean…’

“The expression on your face speaks loudly Lady Stark, yes, my Grandfather, King Viserys, has passed away. That is why I have come to Winterfell.” Jacaerys said in a soft voice as he only wanted it to be heard by you. Shivers ran up your body at the admission, so it was true, Viserys was really dead.

“My deepest condolences my Prince, King Viserys was a great king. I’m sure Queen Rhaenrya will do her service to the realm with grace.” You spoke with wavering confidence, your mind could only race with thoughts of what’s to come. As a woman yourself, you knew many lords would never allow a woman to lead a House let alone sit the Iron Throne if they could give it to a man instead.

The two of you had reached the doors to the throne room far too soon for your liking not wanting to see your brother so soon after your argument still fuming.

The guards that had accompanied the both of you grabbed the handles of the door and opened them for the both of you to enter. Just as you had left him earlier, your dumb brother seated on his dumb chair in the same dumb position head resting on his dumb fist. Making eye contact with you for a brief moment before looking to Jace. You’d noticed his wife Arra seated at the table to the right of the seat,embroidering. You and Arra never talk, you believe she thinks herself better than you. Sees you as only a mare that will fix her lack of children that she’ll never have to bare herself.

Cunt

“Thank you Lady Stark, I appreciate your guidance very much, otherwise I’m sure I would’ve gotten lost.” Jace turns to you with a chuckle, taking your hand and placing a kiss to your knuckles. Pink dusted your cheeks for a few moments, just caught off guard by the motion. “It was my pleasure, my Prince, now if you excuse me.” You turn to make your leave holding your breath needing to get away as soon as humanly possible.

‘Why was Jacaerys here? Why would he need to come here to tell Cregan of Viserys, were Ravens not fast enough? Why did it have to be now? Does everyone know something and not telling me?’ You spiral at your thoughts, face down staring at your hands picking at the skin around your nails, tears stinging at the edge of your eyes not knowing what to do now.

“My Lady?”

You jump suddenly at a hand that touches your shoulder, brought out of your scattered thinking. Oh, it was just a maid is all. “I I’m Sorry, what did you say?” All you could say, embarrassed that someone caught you distracted like this. “I asked if you would like to eat dinner in your chambers tonight, my Lady.” She said with a somewhat worried look on her face.

“Yes, I would um, I would like that.” You’d fully forgotten about eating, today had been a lot as it is, eating was the last thing you thought of. As soon as the maid bowed to you and went on her merry way you bolted down the halls. Slamming the wooden doors behind you pressing your back to the door as you sink down to the floor with a heavy whine wiping tears from your cheeks.

Met with two cold noses pressing into your face you would’ve been knocked over if you weren’t already on the floor, the last of your current joys left. Two Dire Wolves that became attached to you about 2 years ago when you found them as pups, were basically full grown by now. Nothing compared to Targaryen’s and their dragons but you wouldn’t trade them for 100 dragons. You had always felt a special connection to animals of all kinds, much felt different than how you felt around people.

Snow and Smoke were their names because Snow was pure white and Smoke was pitch black. You give both of them soft kisses on the forehead and scratches behind the ear feeling all of your worries and anxieties melt away. Failing to notice a very obvious figure stalking around your chambers.

“And none for me? After I came all this way...”

Aemond.

[justsome-di]

The Fairest of All Stars: Chapter 8

Andy didn’t mean to become a pirate captain, but after killing the captain of her ship, she finds herself thrust into the role. Years after the incident, she is fierce and feared and recovering from a tropical fever that wiped out half her crew.

Just as they’re about to dock, they find an injured siren left behind by her choir. Andy, drawn to her, pulls her onto the ship and decides to keep her there until she recovers. But with the Navy hunting for both pirates and sirens, Andy has just made her ship an even bigger target for an iniquitous captain looking for revenge.

Warning for suicidal thoughts and violence. Will contain mature scenes.

Also available for free on Patreon (paid members are five installments ahead and will get exclusive bonus stories) and on AO3. If you enjoy reading Stars please consider leaving a comment on AO3, Patreon, or reblogging these chapters! Follow for more updates!

Despite her apparent disdain for Andy, Syan followed her around like a lost puppy every moment of the day and slept in her room at night.

Andy was becoming pretty fond of her, asking her again and again about the little things about sirens. The novelty of being one of the only humans to speak to a siren only grew with each day. Every time Andy noticed her extra-broad shoulders or the unsettling size of her palms or the way her eyes reflected silver in the dark, Andy remembered how that was a monster. Something that belonged to myths and horror stories told on dark nights—cautionary tales passed from father to child.

“How would I know how to read? Do you think we have books in the ocean?”

“I don’t know! That’s why I’m fucking asking.”

But then Syan also started showing her curiosity.

“What are they doing?”

“They’re telling ghost stories. It’s a new moon tradition. We can join them if you want.”

“How do you shoot a gun?”

“You aim and pull a trigger.”

“And handling a sword?”

Another week passed, and by then, no one turned their heads or batted an eye at Syan being on board. She didn’t take up many of their food rations which were dwindling pathetically low. She didn’t need to drink any of their rum or wine—she was perfectly capable of drinking sea water pulled up onto the ship in a bucket on a rope.

It left Tobi with little to complain about, though he still found excuses to lament the danger of keeping a siren roaming around the ship. The rest of the crew had seemed to accept her as one of them. And why shouldn’t they? They were all drifters. Many of them were left in similar situations than Syan had been on that islet. Why mistrust her once she proved that she couldn’t be bothered to kill any of them?

And that was another thing. Outside of Andy, Syan was almost entirely uninterested in everything and everyone. There was just one other person she regularly talked to.

Pinkey would strike up a conversation with Syan whenever he was around, and Andy surprised herself by not cringing every time she had to overhear him detailing his weapons, the ship’s cannons, his favorite flowers when he got the chance to see them on land. Syan never offered her own interests back to him, but she stayed put when Pinkey talked.

Pinkey and Syan grew so close—as close as two can grow on a pirate ship—that Andy found them together one week in the lower cabin that was designated as the practice space by Pinkey. Though most of the crew preferred to spar above deck in the sun, Pinkey had created an incredible training room with empty barrels as targets and an open floor for practicing footwork. He encouraged crew to come down often, but it was almost always just him alone, running through the motions of well-rehearsed fights and some type of fighting style of the East that Andy had never witnessed before.

That was where Andy saw Pinkey standing behind Syan, his arm wrapped around to her hand where he helped her hold a sword. Syan’s back was pressed against Pinkey’s front. Their shoulders met one another’s.

Syan wielded the saber awkwardly, her long fingers and broad palm not exactly certain how to place themselves around the hilt. There was no confidence in her stance as if she still wasn’t that sturdy on her feet or if she just wasn’t used to being on them in the first place.

“You’ve nearly got it,” Pinkey said.

He used a much more gentle tone than he usually did with the rest of the crew. With those men, he would yell and condescend to them. They were pirates, after all. They should know their shit.

“Everything is so much heavier out of water,” Syan said.

She rotated her shoulder, trying to ease some ache in her arm.

“But you have all this muscle from swimming,” Pinkey said. “Your arms are in good shape. You have a great core. Use that to your advantage.”

Pinkey’s hand shifted to Syan’s waist. He squared her hips with her feet. And seeing his hand touch her delicate waist, the inverted triangle of it, Andy felt a pang of jealousy.

She wasn’t sure why.

Sure, she had been hitting on Syan and had been captivated by her beauty for weeks, but none of it was any genuine romantic feelings. She just didn’t do that. Relationships were never worth the work—any of them. It was safer to be a loner, to do everything on her own and never have expectations to lug someone else around.

Her teasing Syan was no different than when Andy slipped into ports and found women to spend the night with. Andy liked pretty women and never felt anything other than lust for them. It had suited her fine for years. She never felt like she needed anything she didn’t already get.

“Would you like to try dueling with the captain?” Pinkey asked.

He looked over his shoulder and gave Andy a mischievous smile. Syan looked over as well, her face turned down in her usual gloomy look.

“Sure,” Syan said. “If she accepts.”

“It’d be dishonorable to say no,” Andy said.

Syan sighed. “That supposed honor again.”

Pinkey pulled his hand away from Syan’s waist. Andy’s eyes lingered on where he had held her. She wondered how warm Syan’s skin was. She wondered if the heat could be felt from over her shirt.

“Remember what I showed you,” Pinkey whispered to Syan.

Always quick to anger, Andy felt a stab to her ego that hemorrhaged into something furious.

Who did Pinkey think he was teaching Andy so much? Who put him in charge of looking after her? And why did Syan accept all of it when she always put up a fuss in front of Andy?

Why did Syan even begin this mini-lesson? Both she and Pinkey had gone behind her back to do this. It’s not like Syan needed it. She should have had badass siren skills that could kill a ship. She didn’t need private tutoring to learn how to hold a sword.

Andy took a practice sword off the wall, its blade blunt. She waved it around her body, testing out her joints. She felt more mobile than she had in a long while. Her muscles didn’t protest much. The feverish aches that had plagued her for so long had finally let go of her.

The saber felt good in her hands. It had been too long since she had had a good sparring session. She longed for the sweat of a good workout and the satisfying burn that would settle in her muscles hours later.

Andy held up her saber. Syan matched, their blades perpendicular.

Her strength still hadn’t totally returned, but she had no issue overpowering Syan whose movements were clumsy and hesitant from the second she started.

Andy slammed her blade into Syan’s, knocking Syan’s entire arm to the side. Syan almost perfectly hid a wince as her shoulder was nearly knocked out of its socket by the impact.

Andy didn’t give her more than a second to recover. She slammed her blade down again into Syan’s sword and then again and again. As soon as Syan managed to raise it back up, Andy knocked it back down.

Syan began taking steps back just to try to buy herself more time. She was just barely blocking Andy’s hits that were getting closer and closer to actually striking her body.

It was easy enough for Andy. It didn’t feel like a true workout. She was barely sweating, and her heart had only begun to pump a little harder. It was nothing like the usual session against Pinkey who could hold his own.

Andy struck harder, putting her whole strength into hitting Syan’s sword.

Syan’s wobbly legs finally misstepped. Distracted with regaining her footing, she dropped her sword a bit too low. Andy threw her sword down on it, hard. Syan gasped in surprise, in pain when her wrist was forced to turn down.

Totally defenseless, Andy sliced her sword against Syan’s shoulder. The one that held the sword. It wasn’t able to cut through her skin, but her breath was taken away and her grip was weakened. Andy had been hit by the practice swords plenty of times. With enough force behind them, it was enough to numb a limb if they hit just right.

With a clatter, Syan’s sword fell to the ground.

Syan looked up to glare, hand grabbing her shoulder. Andy didn’t let up. She used the hilt of her sword to punch—not as hard as she knew she could have—Syan’s chest. Knocked off balance again, Syan teetered back.

Andy kicked her legs out from under her.

Syan collapsed to the floor in a heap. Still grabbing her shoulder and curled around her chest, she fell hard, flat, on her back.

Andy stood over her and placed the dull tip of her sword to her throat.

“Surrender?” Andy asked.

Syan pushed herself up to her elbows. Her hair fell into her face. She breathed hard, teeth bared. Andy could see how her teeth were just slightly sharper than a human’s, and it looked almost like they were getting sharper by the second. Her pupils had turned to pinpricks.

She looked feral.

Finally, a monster was before Andy.

It felt good for Andy to see Syan like this. Knocked down a peg, her pride hurt. There was a rush of satisfaction through Andy when she thought about Syan’s cocky attitude taking a blow.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Syan asked.

“You said you wanted a duel. That’s a fucking duel. No wonder you were so easily caught in a fishing net. You’re pretty weak.”

Except Andy knew that she wasn’t all that weak. To be able to remain standing for so long in a first duel was impressive on its own.

Syan knocked the sword blade away from her throat. With a feral cry, she lunged forward at Andy.

The women fell to the ground together. Syan’s knees hit Andy’s crotch and stomach. Her hands—so strong and talented—wrapped around Andy’s arms and very nearly pinned her down.

It was thrilling. Andy couldn’t stop herself from thinking, as she wiggled under Syan, if her throat was about to get torn out. If those slightly-pointy teeth were going to dig down into her flesh, cut through her arteries, and rip the meat of her body apart.

Pinkey grabbed Syan with one arm and pushed Andy away with the other.

“Stop it!” he scolded. “Knock it off!”

They were parted, finally. Andy could feel fresh bruises blossoming under her clothes. Her heart was racing. Sweat had broken out along her brow.

“Not during my training session!” Pinkey said. “Not in my practice space!”

My fucking ship, Andy thought. She should have been allowed to do whatever she wanted.

She pulled away from Pinkey and got to her feet.

“Do me a favor,” she said, “if shit goes down while you’re here, stay far away from it.”

Syan sneered. She tried finding her balance on her legs, but she struggled to stay upright even with Pinkey’s support.

“I’m not letting what I have left of this crew die because you fucked us all over and caused distractions,” Andy said.

And then she couldn’t place Syan’s expression. Her sneer fell a fraction, and she yanked her arm away from Pinkey.

Syan stormed out of the room, her legs wobbly and ruining any impression of confidence and anger.

Pinkey rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Andy. She wouldn’t let herself feel guilty. Syan shouldn’t have been playing with swords in the first place, only mastering false confidence with Pinkey’s enabling.

“I’m not apologizing,” Andy said.

“I didn’t say anything, sir.”

Andy kicked one of the practice swords to the side. She wouldn’t apologize. She never apologized.

[bugscreating]

Ahhhh, I have bad Saiki brain rot. I have so many head cannons, I specifically have a ton about Saiki in a bloomcore aesthetic

This is going to be long, but I am having fun. I have more ideas, but they will have to wait til tomorrow

-One time that Kusuke is fixing or updating Saiki’s antennas, he decides to prank Saiki by making them super flowery. But the jokes on Kusuke, Saiki likes them. Doesn’t even ask for them to be changed back

-Kurumi finds them super cute and makes him the sweater I drew. Saiki loves it, but justifies wearing it because his mom made it. He can’t just not wear it

-It doesn’t take long for Kurumi and her parents to shower him with gifts of flower themed clothes and accessories

-Grandpa Saiki gets super excited about it and buys Saiki a custom and handmade flower lamp and bedding, for people living in his community. And he personally travels and brings them to Saiki

-Grandpa Saiki got a stained glass flower lamp, he personally picked out the shades of pink as he wanted the petals to be a mix of different shades of pink and made sure the metal would be silver. He made a new organic flower design to show the crafter what he wanted it to look like. He made it look like the big pink flowers, that went on for miles, that lined a section of the road to Saiki’s grandparents house

-And Grandpa Saiki went out and bought the fabric and thread for the quilt and picked out the colors and lining for the bedding. He also bought the batting so it would be a thick but breathable quilt. He made sure the corners of the fitted sheet would have extra elastic bands to make sure it stayed smooth. He even flipped through quilting books and found a pattern that he thought would look good with Saiki’s furniture (he obviously made sure all the colors he picked for the quilt and lamp would go with his room)

-Kuniharu makes a stupid comment like ‘wow, I always wondered what it would be like to have a daughter. Thanks Kusuo.’ He makes the mistake of saying it in front of Grandpa Saiki and Kurumi

- Kurumi takes on her devil face and YELLS about encouraging things thier kids like and for possibly pushing Saiki away from bloomcore, because she finds him adorable

-the rest of the day and the next day are hell on earth for Kuniharu

-Saiki grateful for the wonderful pieces of decoration and the thought that went into them so he decides to be kind and invited him to get coffee jelly

- The shift in aesthetics catches all his friends attention but no one feels comfortable bringing it up and Nendou is focused on messing around and not how Saiki looks

- eventually the psikickers ask and Saiki shrugs

- Auira is the one to suggest he grows his hair out and when it’s long enough she’s the first to buy him flower themed hairpins and clips

- it makes Saiki happy and excited enough that he stops scowling and his eyes spark with wonder

- that starts the psikickers new mission to buy him lots of cute accessories

-Now about once a week each member of the psikickers will gift Saiki with a flower accessory

-pretty soon between his family and friends, plus the occasional impulse purchase, Saiki has a sizable collection of flower accessories

- to afford all the gifts, the psikickers start a service where they find lost items. Between the three of them, they are guaranteed to find the missing item

-When Saiki’s hair gets even longer Auira starts to braid flowers and leaves into it

-Saiki also has heavenly locks of hair, softer than anything. So Chiyo and Kokomi want to touch it

- Eventually Chiyo gets the opportunity when they have a gum class or chemistry class and Saiki needs his hair to sit above his shoulders and Aren of someone suggests a bun. But Auira doesn’t know any nice buns, so Chiyo volunteers. The bun is amazing

-(mostly unrelated, but I have a head cannon that Chiyo volunteers at a girls home. Like one of those big sister programs. And that’s they she’s so good with Kokomo who doesn’t really have any other female friends and also with dealing with ways to help Mera stay controlled, but still be who she is. That’s where she learned how to do long hair hairstyles)

-Kokomo I’d super jealous that Chiyo got to touch his hair first

[bottle-o-wonder]

Ok so I've tried and failed to leave this fandom, and in celebration of my stay, here's all the cool I remember.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ben Drowned

Jeff the killer

Nina the killer

Jane the killer

Homicidal Liu

Bloody Painter

Puppeteer

Lazari

Zalgo

Stripes

Lulu

Slenderman

The Operator

Masky

Hoodie

Toby

Clockwork

Smile Dog

Grinny Cat

Seedeater

Eyeless Jack

Laughing Jack

Laughing Jill

Candypop

Jason the Toymaker

Zero

Hobo Heart

Lifeless Lucy

Sally

Trenderman

Splendorman

Offenderman

Tenderman

Herobrine

Sonic.exe

Glitchy Red

Lost Silver

Judge Angel

Kagageo

Kate the Chaser

BRVR

X Virus

I'll do my own head cannons for them later.

[sgt-morgan]

High-Ho Silver 🛻

Summary: Joel and Ellie pick up a very interesting stray. Maybe Joel

Likes her, maybe he doesn’t.

Warnings: Violence of the cannon typical variety, death of a child, tears, but some fun stuff too.

A/N: man… I’m obsessed with this show bro.

Masterlist

Joel and Ellie picked you up in the middle of nowhere, riding solo in a ford F-150 without a care in the world. At first? They didn’t trust you, but after saving their asses, and shooting a clicker in the head to save Joel it made them a bit more amiable to the company.

You were a strange ray of unwavering sunshine. Nothing seemed to kill your vibe, and when Ellie told you they had guns and food? Well shit, nothing could have been more appealing. You liked traveling with them, you liked their bickering, their reluctant ‘Lone Wolf and Cub shtick. It was refreshing. It filled a void you hadn’t known you needed refilled. By way of the weeks you spent with them you learned that yeah, Joel had a soft side. He was soft for Ellie. Puns and gun safety seeming to be the way he expressed it. He just didn’t have softness for you, and while you would like softness, it wasn’t necessary, so you let Joel be.

Joel was about as welcoming as shit in a cake. He was abrasive to say the very least, and every move you made seemed to be the wrong move. It was more than likely because he didn’t trust you around the kid, which you understood. So you made nice with Ellie, which only succeeded in possibly pissing him off more somehow, but you didn’t care. If you weren’t gonna make two friends, you’d at least make one.

“So, you know our names, but you never told me yours!” Ellie said one day, happily munching on more canned ravioli while you munched walnuts you had stripped from a tree and roasted. Tossing one at Joel every once in a while to piss him off a bit, and to subtly share. You noticed he had eaten every one that had landed in his lap, so you kept doing it, cherishing the giggles it provoked from Ellie.

“Well darling little Ellie my name is- get this- Ellie.” You gasped very dramatically and nailed Joel in the forehead with a walnut.

“No… fuck you. No way.” Ellie chuckled.

“Yeah, it really is, it’s short for something.” You shrug, eating one more walnut and dropping them in Joel’s lap to go refill your canteen in the nearby stream.

“Well? What’s it short for?” Ellie scrambles after you to the lake, and you shake your head with a laugh.

“Oh no, you’re not getting that outta me.” You giggle again, and Ellie groans, flopping to the ground. “In the mean time, my name is El and you are Ellie.” You bop her on the nose with a finger and she snaps at you playfully. “Oh no zombie lips! You biting me may have unintended consequences.” You shove her face and she falls in the river and you laugh harder.

“Quit making a racket, you’ll draw attention to us.” Joel muttered from over near the truck. You rolled your eyes and helped the kid out of the creek.

“Alright you big dick, we’ll play quiet.” You smile at Ellie with a wink, and from behind you Joel rolls his eyes.

Everyday you seemed a little further from cracking Joel’s shell. He was like a brick wall. Tall, tough, and impenetrable without a way in. So you looked for a way in. From then on you cracked jokes with the kid, shared all your supplies, you share drive time. You do your best to reach him behind that terrible wall you saw him hiding behind, but he was an impenetrable fortress. You knew why too. Ellie told you, something about a little girl named Sarah, a woman named Tess. He had lost everyone. You knew the feeling.

“So, what about you inferior Ellie? You got a family?” Ellie asked one day, Joel was supposedly ‘resting his eyes’ but the snores told you he was sleeping. You were driving closer towards Wyoming, or wherever you were headed, and the girl was making small talk. This question though, shit, this one was almost too personal. You decided to answer it anyway.

“Uh, yeah. I had a family.” You nodded. “They were… everything. My husband and I were High school sweethearts. Me and Mikey? Oh man. We won prom king and queen and everything. Then boom, outbreak, what a way to end Freshman year of college huh? We made it though, we were doing ok on our own in a cabin in the mountains. Then we’ll, then I find out, I’m pregnant in the middle of the apocalypse. Terrrrrrrible timing for one of our condoms to be faulty, but things happen.” You shrug, taking a drink from the water bottle you had mixed with a coveted pack of powdered lemonade. “So we do our best, no plan B’s no doctors, my decision might have been different had I had those, but probably not. We decide to keep the baby, but that we’re not equipped enough for that, so we go for a QZ. In the meantime? We imagine our baby as a little girl who looked like Mikey, and we make our way to the QZ. We were almost there, making good time, picking out names, it was fine. Then, we’re attacked by a clicker in an abandoned building. To attempt to save my life, Mikey shoved me back and into a splintered shelf, it was an accident. I’m skewered through, losing a lot of blood, and most likely the baby right then and there. Mikey, uh. Mikey killed the clicker, then he marched us the last two miles to the QZ. they check me, I’m good, they check Mikey and… he’d been bitten.

They shot him directly in front of me. I, uh. I got patched up, and two days later I was certain my baby was gone.”

“Oh. Wow I-“ Ellie started and you shushed her with a smile.

“It’s ok kid. I’ve made peace with it for the most part. I told you cause- if it was a girl? I guess- I guess I imagined her to be a bit like you.” You pulled over and swiped a tear while she wasn’t looking. “I gotta take a piss. Too much of a good thing and all that.” You shook your bottle at Ellie and left the truck.

You were tracking towards the woods and Ellie stared in shock. Once he was sure you were gone, Joel’s eyes opened. He looked in the back towards Ellie, who seemed stunned. “Is she gonna be okay?” Ellie blurted, staring at your back as you walked away.

“I… I don’t know. I’ll go check. You go and scope the gas station for snacks. Maybe you can find something good.” He groans and trudges towards the woods. When he finds you, you’re staring the water blankly, there were tears streaming down your face, and you were rubbing at your side, at a scar he’s never seen and he can imagine what it was. He walks up to you and you swipe at your tears rapidly and go to stand.

“I-I’m sorry I woke you. Just needed a break. Figured we would grab some gas and keep going from the-“ you were cut off by him pulling you into a tight hug, and then you sobbed. You were there for a while, just letting Joel hold you. This hadn’t happened in a while, one of these fits. He held you the whole time though, telling you you’d be ok. Stroking your hair and holding you until the sobbing slowed and you were just sitting there in Joel’s lap. “‘M sorry.” You sigh, half exhausted.

“Don’t-“ Joel sighed. “Don’t worry about it. I get it. I get it.” He helped you to your feet and wet the end of his shirt in the stream, wiped your cheeks and led you back to the van. When you saw Ellie, Joel noticed you visibly brighten, you smiled and waved. Joel was once again completely astounded by your resilience.

“Well Ellie Belly? Find anything good?” You grinned ruffling the kids hair as you helped her put her new finds in the truck, including a highly celebrated over box of tampons. He didn’t get it but it made you both happy so he let you celebrate. Then you loaded up and started driving. To Joel’s surprise? You were good again, sunshine and rainbows, as if you really hadn’t just had a mental break in the woods, he thought it was for the kids be if it but you really were ok, but the most shocking of all was the hand that lay on his thigh. It rested there without fail, and he wasn’t sure anymore if he ever wanted you to move it again. You’d been on the road for a while, comfortably listening to Hank Williams for about the 100th time, when Ellie spoke up.

“Oh wait! I found another tape!” She scrambled at her backpack and pulled out a tape and handed it to you with a grin.

“Oh Ellie, my brilliant sweet summer child. You have found a masterpiece.” You kissed the tape she handed you and popped it directly into the tape deck.

“What is that shit?” Joel muttered, turning up the volume a bit.

“Oh baby, Joel it’s the Oakridge boys.” You laughed and suddenly he was subjected to what he considered the greatest concert he could have hoped for in the apocalypse. You knew every word, and it made him grin despite himself. Leaving Louisiana, Trying to Love Two Women, Bobby Sue, Y’all Come Back Now Saloon, all of it.

“Fucking shit, if I had known you were gonna be this annoying I never would have brought it back.” She was trying to huff, but the barely suppressed giggled were not selling it for him.

“Oh my dear girl, but it’s time for the best song of all, and I think I’ll finally tell you my name.” You laughed manically, then the song started playing and Joel cackled. Ellie looked stunned

“Oh shit you broke him.” Ellie laughed and then you started singing.

“Ellie? It’s nice to meet you, my name is Elvira.

Eyes that look like heaven

Lips like cherry wine

That girl can sho nuff make my little light shine

I get a funny feelin’

Up and down my spine

Because I know that my Elvira is mine!” He grins at your joy and starts mumbling under his breath.

“Elvira! Elvira! My heart is on fire, for Elvira!

Giddy up! Ooom poppa ooom papa mow mow

Giddy up! Oom poppa ooom papa mow mow!

Hiiiigh ho silver! Away!”

It went on like this until you and Ellie passed out. Joel sat for a bit after, watching you both breathe. The peace of it filled him with glee, made him smile. He kept driving, and enjoyed the calm that accompanied knowing everyone you care about is safe, then he thought to himself. ‘Hey, maybe this found family thing ain’t half bad.’

[sharp-silver4795]

Hi! Can you do lost silver general hcs?

Lost Silver HCs

I love this lil guy 💞🤍

He’s one of the creepypastas that I don’t have a lot of head cannons for, but the ones I have are very oddly specific…. This is more common than you’d think

I don’t think I need any warnings-

Uhh

No Arms, No legs, but fucking hilarious!

He has a lot of practice with his unknown pals.

He is genuinely really likable!

He is the biggest fucking nerd you will ever meet.

I imagine him as being 14-16 years old, but he’s pretty mature.

Despite no arms or legs, he isn’t helpless. He still has Cyndaquil and his unknown buddies.

The perk of being literally ripped from a video game is that you can keep all your cool video game stuff

In the Mansion

He is one of the few creepypastas who isn’t aggressive in himself.

His job in the mansion is being “a beacon” a warning.

When a potential victim (usually one who would be taken care of by other creeps) is able to turn themself around sort of.

He kinda just shows up to warn the person like- “hey, uh… if you don’t stop doing XYZ, you’re gonna die.”

It more looks like this tho:

Do you see what they did to me??

S t o p

No more

He definitely leaves some references to whatever their person is doing.

Unlike some of his other Game-Freak companions, he is really genuine about it.

He really doesn’t want anyone to get hurt.

But he’s just creepy enough for the operator to use him.

It’s not a lot, but I hope you enjoy

[wanderingwolpertinger]

Webcomics I think you should read in 2023

The Silver Eye by Laura Hollingsworth (@ thesilvereye on tumblr)

“The Silver Eye began in 2009. It is an action-adventure webcomic of the Fantasy persuasion, written from a Christian worldview. Two rival royal families are always at odds. The conflict reaches a point where one child king, Apen, sacrifices himself and his country to prevent another war. This leads to some disastrous consequences. The story follows his journey to try to set things right, and if he’s going to do so, he has to work alongside members of his rival family.” (Description from the website)

TSE is my personal favorite, as anyone who’s stuck around my blog has probably already figured out lol. It updates on Fridays. (PG to occasional PG-13)

The Legend of Ruach by Paige Coffer (@ paigecofferillustration on tumblr)

It’s a fantasy/adventure story that’s been running since 2020, updates weekly. I think it’s PG so far, may be soft PG-13 in the future.

Stand Still, Stay Silent by Minna Sundberg (Completed, 2013-2022) (tumblr @ hummingfluff)

"Stand Still. Stay Silent" is a post apocalyptic webcomic with elements from Nordic mythology, set 90 years in the future. It's a story about friendship and exploring a forgotten world, with some horror, monsters and magic on the side. 

It’s a really neat comic to read as an American because of all the Nordic languages and cultural elements present throughout. Warnings for horror elements/violence, maybe some language (I can’t remember for sure, it’s been awhile since I read it, could be blurred out or something) The author also has talked about her return to her faith/and her next comic is going to be overtly Christian (Journey Upstream) It started recently (Jan 2023)

(More comics under the cut)

Lost in the Vale by Crystal Curtis (tumblr @ lostinthevale)

The Outrunners are traveling peacekeepers tasked with assisting the citizens of the Vale. Their top priority: find the missing Prince of Andalusia. For Delica, it's not just her mission - it's her obsession. As she and her teammates travel the kingdom, they will discover more dangers (and mysteries) than they ever imagined.

I started reading this one really recently and quite like it so far, the art style is excellent. Updates Tuesdays, PG-13

Jade Torch by Anne Marie Wells

It’s a book turned webcomic turned soon to be released illustrated novel (if I have that right lol)

“Lunerata “Lune” Bridth, heir to the Havanellan throne, is sent to the court of a rival kingdom, the homeland of her deceased mother, to help negotiate a long-awaited peace treaty. But once there, she finds that things are not as simple as she’d been lead to believe. In this foreign land, there are enemies, allies, traitors, secrets, and a plot that could destroy Lune’s world as she knows it and plunge both kingdoms into war. Join Lune and her friends as they set out on an adventure filled with dragons, assassins, mysteries, magic, and the strange ties of family.“ The Dreamer by Lora Innes

Beatrice “Bea” Whaley seems to have it all; the seventeen year old high school senior is beautiful, wealthy and the star performer of the drama club. And with her uncle’s connections to Broadway theater, the future looks bright ahead of her. Little does she know that her future might actually be brighter behind her.

Bea begins having vivid dreams about a brave and handsome soldier named Alan Warren–a member of an elite group known as Knowlton’s Rangers that served during the Revolutionary War. Prone to keeping her head in the clouds, Bea welcomes her nightly adventures in 1776; filled with danger and romance they give her much to muse about the next day. But it is not long before Beatrice questions whether her dreams are simply dreams or something more. Each night they pick up exactly where the last one ended. And the senses–the smell of musket shots and cannons, the screams of soldiers in agony, and that kiss–are all far more real than any dream she can remember.

Completed, PG-13

Haven’t had a chance to finish this one yet, but it was great as far as I read.

[ffxiv-swarm]

prompt 11: surrogate

It’s not the same. She’d arrived in Eorzea with nothing but the clothes on her back, a few gil, and a battered bow. She’d walked everywhere, or taken chocobo carriages. But then she’d joined the Scions for Operation Archon, wrested one of the ironmen’s steeds from them, and made it her own. The so-called magitek reaper was like nothing she’d ever seen or ridden before, but after much trial and error (and a lot of help from Garland Ironworks, despite her hissing fury at needing to speak to, never mind depend on, Garleans) she’d mastered it. Tamed it. Broken it to saddle like a wild mare.

It’s faster than a horse. As fast as a yol, maybe, though less maneuverable. And instead of aether, it has cannons. She likes the cannons. She likes the plush cloth of the seat under her, likes the blinking lights and well-worn levers in the cockpit, likes being able to survey her surroundings from high up in safety. (Very high up. It flies. She has no idea how the Garleans didn’t just annihilate her tribe when they’d struck, but maybe they’d been lazy that day.)

She paints it screaming bright purple, adds a trailer hitch, reconfigures the engines to run on a mix of ceruleum and aether. She doesn’t name it.

She’s riding that screaming bright purple reaper across the Steppes, grounded to save on fuel, when the banners of the Bayaqud snap in the distance.

She is home.

She is home, and her tribe has remained strong. They mourned their lost members, but they are overjoyed to have even one return. Her parents exclaim over her shorn hair and hug her until she fears for the safety of her ribcage; her khatun holds a feast in her honor, with Gantsetseg seated at her right hand; her cousins cry tears of joy. All of them hang on her every word of far-off lands and far-off wars, monsters and magitek and dragons. (The west is fortunate that the Bayaqud have never been particularly interested in conquering, but Sorkhagtani Khatun is...well, Gan decides not to mention all the wealth of Ul’dah.)

They ask her to stay. Her mother and second father practically beg her to stay. They love her, but even if they didn’t, she is a warrior now, no longer the girl who’d only just completed her first solo hunt and needed her mother to do her facepaint the first time. She should have husbands and horses and her own yurt. She should have silk deels, horn sheaths of silver and gold. All this they will give her, if she stays.

If she turns her back on the Scions. Her friends. Ritanelle, who taught her to bare her legs and flirt with boys and never, ever feel ashamed in a society so unlike her own. Q’yala, who will fight against the Garlean Empire to her last breath. Lyse and Alisaie, who are waiting for her at the Dawn Throne now that the Mol have won the Naadam, who had wished her well when she’d told them she was going off to find her tribe. Alisaie had hugged her so fiercely, Gan wonders if she’d feared exactly this.

Oh, she’d missed her family every day. Her heart had grown cold in its spiny shell, and it’s breaking free now in a flood of tears. The idea of leaving again is almost more than she can bear.

But the Empire still remains to threaten them, and she’s made a promise.

“I’m sorry,” she tells her parents. “But I’ll write as often as I can. I love you.”

“I’m sorry,” she tells Sorkhagtani Khatun. “But I vow to you that I will bring you the head of Zenos yae Galvus, or die in the attempt.”

They let her go, but they aren’t happy about it. They give her silk deels and silver horn sheaths and a yurt, neatly packed up in its own cart.

And they give her a horse, a beautiful chocolate palomino mare. West Wind, she is called, a symbol of the lands Gan intends to return to. Seventeen-year-old Gan would have fallen in love at first sight. Twenty-year-old Gan is...

She’s not ungrateful. West Wind is a fine horse, and she’s proud to ride her. At any other time, she would already be in the saddle, racing across the plains. But she’d come here on a reaper, on her reaper, a beast of iron she’d taken and modified with her own hands, and she’s going to leave the same way.

Besides, she thinks, as she hitches West Wind to the cart and then to the leading rope tied to the back of her reaper, she’s carried a gun for a while now. She’ll have to get her horse used to it first.