#main suit gets damages if not completely during destroyed or at least just when it seems more convenient like when they're moving

[to-eat-laugh-love-in-peace]

With how Tristamp sets up major plot points in advance with the characters that they name drop or have appear and interact with and learn more about other characters throughout the series no matter how short their screen time was or how small their role to play at the time was, I think that Meryl along with Milly might be a bit more involved in the fight against Gray the Ninelives who really only fought against Wolfwood in Trimax.

Like yeah the girls show up but it's really only at the end and as comedic relief they literally just fall on top of them and knock them out, signalling that the fight's really over now. But like just look at how hyped they looked to fight, guns out and all.

But in Tristamp not only has Meryl gotten to meet and get to know some of Ship 3’s residents, becoming especially invested in Luida’s project in growing enough flora to terraform No Man’s Land into a green planet to lessen the burden on the Plants and ensure the survival of both species, making her more than willing and ready to fight for them given the chance,

but also she’s seen Gray as the both the mech suit in Ep3,

and as the nine people who control it in Ep10,

with her having seen and gotten to know more about them thanks to Conrad possibly setting up that she might actually be the way Wolfwood figures out that Gray is just a giant mech suit being piloted by nine people. And then they could work together to take them down.

Which would be pretty cool to see, maybe they could take three each, given that there aren’t a lot of instances that I can recall at least where Wolfwood fights alongside the girls, plus it’d make for good team building with Milly having just joined the gang. Also, after rewatching episode 4, specifically where right before Roberto’s taken by Zazie Wolfwood makes fun of Roberto’s derringer, it just ignited a want, a need really to see Wolfwood have his ass saved at least once by said derringer.

Speaking of which, there have also been multiple instances where allusions to David and Goliath were made in relation to Meryl in Trimax, notably in the few panels that show bits and pieces of her backstory that show how she got her first derringer, which Studio Orange expanded upon with Roberto, that lead me to believe this to be the case even more.

On top of that, I think that she might be reason for why they're simply going to have them locked up and not killed (wonder if seven of them are still going to be killed during the fight in S2) even after the damage they've dealt and the deaths they've caused seeing as she reacted with horror and pity when she learned about them from Conrad,

a sentiment Roberto himself doubled down on,

which while it might have enraged Elendira and sent her to come after them with her nails, leading to Roberto's death, and possibly souring Meryl's feelings about her, the same can't be said for Gray. @tristampparty

[evienyx]

DSMP Citizens POV 2: The Prime Path Florist

DSMP Citizen POV Masterlist

- - -

There were many florists in the Dream SMP. With how much destruction there was, people were constantly having to rebuild their yards, and the gardens, and the planter pots that would rest outside of businesses, and so being a florist could result in a very successful business.

The Prime Path Florist had been there the longest.

Before even TommyInnit had arrived, the Prime Path Florist had settled down in the Dream SMP, creating a simple garden for themself and enjoying life with their cat, bees, and every flower known to man.

As the server's population grew, and the Prime Path truly came into being as the main way to get around, the Florist claimed a piece of land, built up a humble shop, and started their business.

While there was no competition at first, as the chaos and wars began to rage through the server, more and more businesses popped up offering services to help with rebuilding. One of these such businesses was the Greater SMP Flower Shop, who opened just after the end of the L'Manburg Revolution.

Then, when another, smaller war broke out across the server and the Greater SMP Flower Shop was destroyed, they didn't build it back.

That was where the Prime Path Florist beat out all of their competition. They would always rebuild, if they even had to. The one time damage had been caused to their shop, though, what they had done to the person who caused the damage made it so that everyone knew from then on to not mess with their flower shop.

(Then, eventually, the land that their shop was on accidentally became part of the Holy Land, and it didn't even matter anymore anyway, because nothing on the server could harm the Holy Land.)

Out of all the leaders of the SMP, the first that the Prime Path Florist met was Nihachu, a resident of L'Manburg who was known to be close friends with the president.

"Good morning," Nihachu said when the Florist first met her. "How are you doing?"

"Well, and you?"

"Great! I'm just looking for some flowers to brighten up my bakery!"

"Of course. What kind of flowers are you looking for?"

Nihachu (Niki, she had insisted quickly) had left that day with arms full of white mullein. The next morning, the Florist had opened the door to find a package sitting inside, filled to the brim with baked goods.

The Florist had no idea how Niki Nihachu had gotten the things inside.

The door had been locked all night.

As the L'Manburg election loomed ever closer, it felt as though tensions were rising throughout the server. The Prime Path Florist was fine, though. Their shop was safe, and business was good as the pavilion and stage were set up for the day when the results would be released.

They turned off the public announcements on their communicator as the day of the results arrived. They didn't care to hear about politics. They just wanted to sell some flowers.

The day after the election, the Prime Path Florist was on their way to their shop when they saw VP Tommy running down the back roads that they took to work every day, what looked to be a piglin-hybrid in tow.

All three of them stopped. The stranger's hand floated to their side, hovering over the hilt of an iron sword, which looked like it had been hastily wrapped.

Then, the Prime Path Florist gave the teenager a nod. "Vice President," they said, greeting him the politest way they knew how to.

VP Tommy smiled a little too wide, and glanced at his companion before shooting off down the path again, not even acknowledging the Florist as he passed.

(Later that day, when a customer off-handedly mentioned that Wilbur Soot and TommyInnit had been banished by Schlatt, the new president, the Florist realized that the teen had thought that they had been telling him that they supported him.)

(The Florist shrugged.)

(They didn't care much for politics, anyway.)

Still, customers began coming into the shop more and more frequently (more than usual, at least, especially during a time without too much destruction), and they would lean across the counter and whisper about news from a place called 'Pogtopia.'

When the Prime Path Florist found out that it was the name of a rebellion, fighting against Manburg and led by Wilbur Soot and TommyInnit, who were bent on getting their country back, they were a bit surprised. They said nothing, though.

The Florist didn't care much for politics.

Less than a week after the election, the Florist met their third SMP leader face-to-face, as ex-President Soot's son Fundy walked into their shop.

"Could I, er..." The fox tugged at the edge of his cuff. "Do you have anything for first dates?"

"How long have you known them?" The Florist asked, already thinking through possibilities.

"Well, a while," Fundy said. "It's Dream."

The Prime Path Florist stalled. Then, they said, "I think I have the perfect one." They gathered up a bunch of prairie roses, passing them over to the other. Fundy paid for the flowers, gave a bit of a wobbly smile, and then set off, running down the path as soon as he set foot outside.

The next morning, when two customers gossiped to one another as they browsed, the Prime Path Florist found out that the Admin of the SMP and the son of the banished president of L'Manburg were engaged.

The customers wondered what would happen as a result of this. They wondered how the alliances would work, what with Fundy's father being the leader of the rebellion, Fundy himself working for the new leader of L'Manburg, and Dream being the Admin in charge of everything.

The Florist did not offer their thoughts, because the Florist did not care much for politics.

A few weeks later, the day after the announcement of the Manburg festival, Secretary Underscore arrived, looking a bit too small in his suit, but a smile on his face as he entered the store, the smile widening when his eyes landed on the Florist's bees zipping between the flowers.

"Bees!" He exclaimed, taking another step inside. "I love bees!"

The Prime Path Florist smiled gently. "I do too. What can I do for you today, Secretary?"

"Tubbo, please," the teenager replied. "And I don't know if you heard, but I'm in charge of decorating for the festival! I was wondering if I would be able to order some flowers to be put in the morning of?"

The Florist nodded. "Of course. Would you like to come pick them up at, say, 7:30? I normally open at 8, but I'll delay opening by an hour so I could help you put them in."

Tubbo grinned. "That would be great, thank you!"

"Of course, Secretary Tubbo." The teen looked a bit uncomfortable at the title, but he nodded as they asked, "I assume the Government of Manburg will be paying?"

"Yep. The color scheme is going to be based around the flag, if that helps!" Then, without another word, the kid waved to the bees and was gone.

Just under a week later, Tubbo helped them cart dozens of red Imperial Montagues and Dark Geranium.

"What do these flowers mean?" Tubbo asked them as they moved together down the Prime Path, the air crisp and the sun just beginning to shine over the landscape.

The Florist cleared their throat, tapping the side of the cart handle with their finger. "The lighter ones mean Power," they said as they turned the corner of the path, moving down toward the festival grounds.

"And the darker ones?"

The Prime Path Florist thought of the customers who murmured to them about Secretary Underscore, a secret spy for the rebellion. "...Melancholy. They mean melancholy."

Tubbo's smile dimmed, his eyes darkening just a bit, but he plucked a geranium from the cart he was pushing and pinned it to his suit before continuing on.

(After he gave his speech later that day, the flower ended up being darkened, stained with the blood of a teenager who went out with a bang.)

When Secretary Tubbo disappeared, soon followed by Vice President Quackity, both of them supposedly cementing their places in the Pogtopia rebellion (if the whispers were to be believed), the Florist continued on with their job.

After all, the Florist had never cared much for politics.

One day, when the businesses across the SMP were warned to lock their doors as a battle between Manburg and Pogtopia was expected, the Prime Path Florist was looking after their bees when abruptly the ground shook with a force that nearly knocked over some of the plants. The Florist, perturbed for the first time since they watched a teenager get shot full of fireworks, ran to Manburg, where smoke was rising into the sky.

They arrived just in time to watch the hybrid they had seen with VP Tommy months ago (Technoblade, they had heard, the Technoblade) spawn two Withers and laugh as the people of two countries, one decimated and one not, banded together to fight off the creatures.

(The Florist, glad they had brought their weapon, quickly joined in. Withers, when killed, dropped wither roses, and there was no way that they were letting those flowers end up anywhere but in their gloved grasp.)

A few weeks later, once the reconstruction of L'Manburg, now under the direction of President Tubbo, had just about been completed, the bell above the Florist's door chimed, echoing through their shop.

"And this is the Prime Path Flower Shop!" President Tubbo said, spreading his arms out wide. "And here's the Prime Path Florist themself!"

The president seemed to be giving a tour to the person who stood beside him, a lanky hybrid of what looked to be part-enderman and part-something else. The hybrid had to duck to enter the shop, and they expressly did not make eye-contact with the Florist as they stood beside Tubbo, looking just as stressed as he did during Schlatt's presidency, but somehow in a different way. The Prime Path Florist wondered why the President of L'Manburg was giving a tour to a new resident. There were sometimes hundreds of new people who moved to the server every day. What made this hybrid so special?

"Florist, this is Ranboo! He's new to the SMP. Niki already showed him around the Greater SMP, but she's got her bakery to watch, so I'm here to show him the rest!"

The Florist nodded. So, that was it. The hybrid, Ranboo, had been friends with Nihachu. "Nice to meet you, Ranboo," they addressed the hybrid, who nodded, his eyes still not meeting their own. The Florist turned back to Tubbo. "Would you two each like a flower? Free of charge. To welcome a new member of the server."

Tubbo took a dark geranium (he seemed to have developed a liking for them after the festival), and Ranboo asked for an allium.

The Florist handed him two. The tall teen sputtered and attempted to pass one back.

"I only need one," he said, stumbling over his words.

The Prime Path Florist shook their head and pressed the flowers further into Ranboo's hands. "Alliums always come in pairs. Every good florist knows that."

Ranboo visibly swallowed, but he took the flowers nonetheless.

About an hour later, VP Tommy ran past the shop down the Prime Path, and the Florist could just barely make out an allium clenched in the teen's hand.

Time passed, and tensions rose between the factions of the server. The Florist, nestles comfortably in the Holy Land, knowing that they were protected by the Higher Gods and by the Prime itself, rested easy. People from any side still bought their flowers, and business was still good.

When the destruction of L'Manburg came, the Florist did nothing but offer a discount to those whose homes had been blown down to bedrock, for the Florist had never cared much for politics.

(And then, months after that, after Dream's imprisonment in Pandora's Vault, when peace was on the server once more, the door opened on a particularly slow day with a surprisingly sad chime.

The Florist looked up to see Ranboo standing in front of them, tear tracks burning into his skin.

"What can I do for you?" They asked.

"I... I need flowers. For a grave."

"...Would you rather them be somber or bright?"

"Bright. As bright as possible, please," Ranboo said. "I want to remember him for how he was in life."

The Florist soon passed over a bundle of marigolds and helenium, a few harebells interspersed between them. "Symbolizing grief and tears," they said as they handed the teen the flowers.

"Thank you," Ranboo said, preparing to pass over payment. He froze and looked back up at them, eyes wide. "Actually... could I also get an allium?"

The Florist felt a sinking in their stomach and nodded, plucking the flower from a nearby vase and tucking it into the bouquet. The teen paid and left, and the Prime Path Florist went on with their day.

That evening, the official news broke that Dream had murdered TommyInnit in prison. The server cried. The server mourned.

The Florist did not do much of either, because, beyond their cat, their bees, and their flowers, the Florist never cared much for anything.

At least, that was what they tried to tell themselves.

It was easier that way.

It always was.)

[writer-panda]

Hit on the groom and what became of it - chapter 2/Take me out maybe (with a sniper rifle)

Disclaimer: I don’t own Miraculous or Batman (and other DC characters). This is just a fanfiction. 

Chapter 1  -|-  Next

--------

As much as Marinette disliked the meeting with the female entourage, when the time came to start working on Adrien’s suit she wanted to scream. She could clearly see that he was uncomfortable with even the gentlest touches. She did her best to make it as non-invasive to him as possible.

They had absolutely no privacy whatsoever. The Bodyguard (Gerard; His name was Gerard) and Nathalie observed their every move. Marinette was half-convinced it wasn’t her who was under watch. 

The professional atmosphere was far cry from her usual working environment. When Uncle Jagged, Clara Nightingale, or even Diana Prince came to her for clothes, it was always very informal. They would joke, gossip, or exchange stories while she worked. Now? Now she was wary of even speaking with Adrien. 

Likewise, the boy refused to meet her eyes or open his mouth. 

At some point, when she was trying to find the right shade of white for the undershirt, she noticed a make-up stain that was not there before. 

“I’m sorry, but I will need to request you remove the makeup. It is staining my materials.” She informed Nathalie and Gerard coldly. It was all she could do to resist calling the police there and there. Sadly, the commissioner was good friends with Gabriel, so it would most likely just end her career and make it worse for Adrien. 

“I was assured it would not leave stains on materials. Please accept our apologies. We will cover the costs of destroyed materials,” Nathalie informed her in an equally cold voice.

“I see…” Marinette’s lips thinned. Inside, she was screaming. But there was nothing she could do. The hit was in place. Soon Adrien would be safe. It would go without a hitch. It had to. 

As the group was leaving, she could’ve sworn the Bodyguard gave her a mournful look. As if he shared her sentiment, but was powerless to stop it. She’d know that look. She saw it in the mirror all too often.

---------

The Wedding (even the narrator started to capitalize it) came faster than Marinette wanted to accept. And there were still no words about the kidnapping. She made sure to specify that they were to take him before he was married or no payment. Did she not make the money enticing enough? Were there already attempts that were stopped without media coverage? Maybe she forgot to check some boxes?

A million scenarios ran through her head as she wandered through the alleyways.

The whole event was happening in Gotham Botanic Garden. Whatever the weak excuse was given to the press, Marinette knew the real reason: it was one of the few places in the world where Gabriel could marry his son to Lila legally without messing with courts. And bribes were said to be cheapest there. 

As the designer for both the bride and the groom, she was invited to the main ceremony. 

Lila was kind enough to even give her a seated place… right next to Chloé Bourgeois.

Marinette had a hard time deciding if it was bigger punishment to her or the mayor’s daughter. Ultimately, the two girls did their best to not look at each other during preparations. At first, that is, because the first chance she got, Chloé to drag the designer to a remote garden gazebo in a secluded corner when she was least expecting it.

“Wha-!” Marinette was about to protest, but the blonde covered her mouth. She seated her on the bench and took the seat on the opposite side. 

“I’ve been friends with Adrien since we were kids.” She announced in the usual ‘I’m-better-than-you’ tone. “I also know that you’re not always an idiot.”

“Gee! Thanks, Chloé… I’m honored with your praise.” Marinette deadpanned, interrupting the heiress. “Now get to the point”. She really hoped her dress wasn’t damaged or she might just turn to murder. 

“Fine. You worked with Adrien on his suit.” She paused, and for a moment, just a brief moment, her mask fell. That was not what Marinette expected. She has never seen Chloé so… so… The designer’s brain lacked the word to describe how her childhood bully looked like. “How is he?” The blonde asked, her voice almost trembling. 

Marinette opened her mouth, but no sound came. 

A moment passed.

“Not good.” She finally admitted. “During the measurements, he winced even at delicate touches. Plus I was called in last week to make some adjustments to his garments. He lost weight between then and now. And he wore makeup on his right arm. On both occasions.”

“Makeup?” Chloé’s eyes widened. 

“Yes. I would’ve probably missed it if I didn’t soak my fabric into makeup removed beforehand.” She thought back fondly to her brilliant idea. 

“They hurt him!?” Chloé burst out after few seconds. “I will show those… those…”

“Believe me, I share the sentiment.” Marinette nodded sagely. She needed plan B and needed it fast. There had to be something… “I slipped him a burner phone on his way out. I doubt they found it. If it gets really bad, he can try calling the police.”

“You are devious sometimes, Dupain-Cheng.” 

“Thanks. I try.” 

“So… they are coercing him into it?”

“I think so. He is resigned to his fate it seems, but he tries to show some rebelliousness. It wasn’t his father’s idea to hire me and Lila would rather walk to the altar naked than wear anything by me.” Marinette cringed. Any interaction she had with the Liar made her feel almost dirty. And forcing politeness was physically painful sometimes. 

“I got that much from the fact he hasn’t reported it yet. That burner phone was a good move, but Adrikins was always too obedient.”

“And I’m sure you had nothing to do with it,” Marinette muttered, but Chloé didn’t hear her. The heiress somehow managed to derail her rant into telling the story of her entire childhood.

Marinette listened only with one ear, filtering the information for something useful. The rest of her consciousness focused on something else. She started to seriously entertain the idea of using Miraculous to get Adrien out. She would need a combination of several powers though. Trixx was the obvious choice. Illusions would be a great asset. Maybe the Tiger, for the Power Up? If Roaar didn’t exaggerate her power, she would be able to put a distance between them and the city before anyone even realized what happened. She would need to time her illusion right though. And there were the American Heroes to watch out for…

If she didn’t use miraculous immediately, she might get a drop on the bodyguard(s) and then make an exit using Kaalki’s power when they were alone. Disable cameras, take out the guards, get in, portal out. It was feasible but still involved too many risks. If anyone connected miraculi to the operation, Ladybug would be in great trouble. She couldn’t endanger Paris like that… not even for her partner and best friend. 

Then, there was the most dangerous plan. Don’t use Miraculi at all. She was confident enough in her skills to enter undetected. Maybe even sneak out. The question was, would Adrien make it. She could sneak him Plagg’s ring. Chat Noir would have no problem leaving any prison. But… there would be the same risk as when any other Miraculi was connected and the whole point was not to use them in the first place. 

“Ugh!” She let out an angry sound that startled Chloé. 

“What’s with you, Dupain-Cheng! Don’t you see I’m opening my heart to you!?”

“Shut up, I’m trying to do something productive.” She snapped at the blonde. 

“Why, I…”

“Silence. Your tale was entirely unhelpful. Let me focus.” 

Gotham. What was in Gotham that could help her? The most corrupt city, famous for its high crime rate, mad villains, and eternal gloominess. Even now she could feel some of it resonate in the air. As if the whole city was one big Akuma. Probably no help from the establishment… The police were more likely to put a bag on her head and deliver her to one of the crime families… 

“What in Gotham can help…” She voiced her musing loudly, causing Chloé to peak up.

“Waynes!” She proclaimed. “That serial adopter would jump at the chance to get another orphan…”

“Adrien isn’t an orphan… Yet.” Marinette grumbled. “But he will be married by then, so I would need to plan a double homicide… Meh. No great loss.” She said without a shadow of care. It was like the thoughts about the murder were completely normal for her. 

Chloé shivered. “Remind me not to get into your way when you’re in that mood.”

In the distance, the orchestra was starting to play, signaling the guests that the ceremony would start soon.

“Ugh! Hawkmoth it!” Marinette raged as she ran to the clearing. She no longer had the time and if she was the only one missing, Lila would make her prime suspect for anything that happened. Blast it. She would get one more chance. Screw the career. She could survive living somewhere in Argentina if it all went to hell. 

-------

Adrien already accepted his fate. His father and Lila made sure that all avenues of further rebellion were closed. He exhausted everything there was. 

To this day, he was grateful for that burner phone from Marinette. He made sure to hide it but always have it somewhere nearby. It became a form of a lifeline for him. A one-off save-your-life ticket. It would only work in short term, but at the rate everything was going, it could potentially save his life…

He missed his life before the mess with The Wedding started. 

Hell! He even missed Plagg’s stinking cheese. He would maim for some camembert.

“Adrien,” Gerard spoke solemnly. There was no need for more words. They both knew what was about to happen and Adrien took just a bit of solace in the fact that he was not entirely alone, even if no one could help him. 

“I’m ready.” He spoke, barely above a whisper.

Before he realized it, the ceremony was undergoing. Lila, in her stunning dress, held the attention on herself like a pro. No one even thought about looking anywhere but at them. The dress was similarly just so… Lila. It made all of her features all the more proponent. Yet, there was just a small, barely noticeable, stitch that said Marinette. A smile ghosted his face. There was some good out of this. He managed to make his friend famous. After today, no one would deny her style. 

“Should anyone present know of any reason that this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace.” The marriage officiant spoke. Adrien didn’t even care what convention the wedding was in. 

The silence swept across the garden. 

No one dared to even breathe loudly.

Adrien lowered his head. Here, the last…

There was a rustle somewhere close to the front. He looked up, a small glimmer of hope appeared in his eyes. 

Marinette was standing there, her backs straightened and one finger held up. “I…”

She felt the gaze of hundreds of guests on her. They were the most influential people in the world of modern business. Waynes. Luthor. Queen. Burgeiose. Agreste… And they all kept staring at her. 

She tried to swipe the hall with a glance, but something attracted her attention. A glint of light somewhere in the distance.

“Watch out!” She shouted, tossing a chair she was sitting on just a moment ago. 

The metal item sailed through the air until it crashed in the middle of the alley.

With an arrow sticking out of it.

For a second (which felt much longer) everyone stared at it.

Then the mass panic started. People got out of their chairs and started trying to get out of there. They trampled one another as each considered themselves to be the most important, hence first to evacuate. It was chaos.

Among the mass of people, Marinette tried her best to make it to the altar. She saw that Gerard and several other hired bodyguards were of similar minds. 

She managed to squeeze through the crowd the fastest, only to find Lila knocked out and Adrien and the Officiant missing. Adrien’s cousin (best man) and Alya (bridesmaid) were both nowhere to be found. They probably ran away. There was still no trace of the Groom. That is until she saw a giant mass of brown mud dragging the boy away. 

The sad thing? Adrien wasn’t really protesting much. 

Gerard was the next to make it through. He noticed Adrien a tad quicker and tried to chase whoever it was that tried to kidnap Adrien, but a fist made of mud slammed into him, sending him flying away. 

“Holy Hawkmoth!” Marinette cursed once more. Okay, so far, it was only a curse for her, but he deserved it. 

In the distance, police sirens could’ve been heard, but with how fast the mud was escaping, Adrien would be long gone before the police arrived. Marinette had to do something.

Wait… Why am I trying to stop the kidnapping I ordered? She suddenly questioned herself, freezing in place. 

Two guards rushed past her and started firing at the mass, but the bullets seemed to be about as effective as Parisian police when dealing with Akuma. 

The last Marinette saw of Adrien he was being taken into the sewers.

-----------

After the police arrived, Marinette was of course first to be interrogated. (“Gee… Thanks, Lila”). They wanted to know how she noticed the arrow, did she see the attacker, how did the kidnapper looked like, and dozens of other questions. By the end, she was exhausted. Somewhere after the sixth question, her phone pinged. Luckily, the police didn’t bother with checking it and believed that it was just a worried friend. 

Not the kidnapper trying to contact their employer.

Finally, after the police released her and informed her that no further information was needed, she could contact her Maman.

“Sweety? Are you okay? I’ve seen the news!” Was the first thing that came through

“Yeah. Don’t worry. I’m perfectly fine. The police held me back for questioning a bit. I’m going back to the hotel and be back in Paris first flight tomorrow, okay?”

“Stay in Gotham! I’m coming to pick you up!” Her mother informed her.

“Wha-!? But there is no need! Seriously Maman! There’s no need to trouble yourself.”

There was a silence on the line for a moment and Marinette could feel that her mother was trying to glare at her through the phone. It worked. 

“Fine… I’m at Wayne Plaza, room 30-14.” She relented, not wanting any more arguments. She would still have several hours to sort the mess with Adrien. What could possibly go wrong?

Trying her best to be careful, Marinette left the site of crime and traveled to the industrial district. The taxi driver couldn’t be bothered less about why she wanted to go there. He just wanted to get paid and leave. 

The only-slightly-creepy aura of the completely silent area full of factories and warehouses served as a perfect background to contacting the kidnapper. Marinette, after making sure she was truly alone, activated the voice-scrambling app on her burner and dialed the number that sent her the text about successful work. Her Maman showed her that, thinking she wanted it for a prank. Or that’s how Marinette presented it anyway.

“Who is this?!” A voice on the other side of the call asked.

Marinette took a deep breath before answering. “I was led to believe you have what I wanted.” She tried her best to channel Chloé into her voice. 

“Ah… Yes… There’s been a… complication.”

“What do you mean ‘complication’?” She hissed into the phone call. 

“Um… I had the package… But then someone stole the stolen package…” Whoever that was informed her. 

“Who?” She demanded. 

“Last I checked, Lawton was the one who had ‘im… But it might’ve changed. But don’t worry, Boss… lady?” They asked. Marinette didn’t give either confirmation or scolding, so they continued. “I’m still in the game.” With that, they hang up. 

“What did I just get myself into…” She moaned. Then, the realization hit her. “What did I just get Adrien into…”

Elsewhere, Adrien was starring into a pair of curious sea-green eyes. 

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

[randomsnakesimp]

As the last one seemed to actually be of interest to some people, I thought I might move on to another section of my theories on w.i.t.c.h. : Jonathan Ludmoore, Elias van Dahl and time travel.

So, this one is more of a "trying to warp around canon" kind of theory.

The main issues I am trying to solve here, which I stumbled upon while reading, are:

- how did Elias and Cedric get to 400 years in the past if Phobos is only five years older than Elyon?

- if both Cedric and Ludmoore worked for Phobos, and were seemingly close to him, why did neither of them acknowledge knowing the other in any way, shape or form?

- how did Ludmoore get a hundred years to the past to open holes in the veil if, again, he had to have interacted with Phobos?

- if there is a time travel option, why do neither Phobos nor Cedric nor any of the rebels ever try using it to their advantage?

- We know Elyon was brought to modern day earth, and that Phobos was about five at that point, so Meridianese time cannot run that much slower than earth time, unless there's a weird time warp involved, but...yeah, if I go there, my brain will probably implode. Feel free to if you're smarter than me, though, I'd love to hear thoughts on that.

- We also know that time travel will never be freely available, as otherwise, there'd be time travelers around somewhere during the comics time line for sure, but there has to be some way Cedric and Elias, who were definitely no born time travelers, did travel in time.

Now, I'm gonna offer up two different theories. The first one is the best I can come up with to explain all of the above is the following line of events:

Ludmoore is actually from future Meridian, likely Renaissance or something, so roughly equivalent to the time he ended up in on earth, as well.

He was a brilliant alchemist, and also apparently rather charming, so he managed to get a hold of the pathetic leftovers of the breath of time - remember, it was severely damaged during Phobos' attempt at reviving himself, and according to Yan Lin, only a few corns of the magical sand had remained inside. I assume Ludmoore took the remaining sand and managed to produce a potion or some other sort of product usable by anyone who got a hold of it.

Since this fatally destroyed the breath of time, and it's the only magical artifact with time altering abilities, the only option for more time travellers to exist would have been if Ludmoore got a hold of the old, complete breath of time, since he's the only one with the recipe for the potion and from his first time travel onward, no more sand of time is available, but since he never got there, this explains why no other time travellers exist.

So Ludmoore went back in time, to Phobos' reign just before Elyon returned to Meridian. Using a fake name, so he wouldn't be recognized in history books in his present, he approached Phobos to sell him his time traveling potions, and Phobos used the opportunity to ask Ludmoore to weaken the veil. Ludmoore agreed, and used his magic to travel to earth into a time he felt comfortable with. Since Cedric never saw Ludmoore, and Phobos never mentioned Cedric to him (likely on purpose, as I feel his childhood emotional trauma coupled with his love for Cedric would leave him prone to a never-ending fear Cedric might, one day, meet someone he prefers over Phobos), Cedric would only have heard Ludmoores fake name and since neither of them were aware that Ludmoore created the portals, instead expecting him to weaken the veil even further in their time, they just assumed he failed and kind off forgot about him.

It was only when Ludmoore got to earth that he realized HE was the one to create the holes in the veil in the first place. From there on, we know the rest of his story.

Meanwhile, in Meridian, Elias van Dahl decided that he, for some reason, really needed to paint a portrait of Phobos against his explicit wishes - like, dude, there are so many things you could have painted, why Phobos? - and got himself persecuted. He got a hold of one of the three time travel potions Phobos bought, and used it to escape.

Fearing he might use the extra years gained from this to create a massive rebellion scheme, Phobos sent Cedric after him, using up the remaining two potions for his back and forth travel. Rip Phobos' money.

Now, as promised, I have another take, which does not explain Elias van Dahl and Cedrics time travel, but I somehow just prefer? It came to me from the discussion with @sp1c3m0nst3r about multiple princes in the past being named Phobos.

This theory would be that Ludmoore did, indeed, live a hundred years from the present in the story, and was ordered to weaken the veil by a different prince Phobos, for whatever reason.

This theory builds more heavily on how I believe the book of elements to work. I might dedicate a post to this entirely in the future, but for now, it's enough to know that I think it works like a book for those in it, in that it displays what they would picture if reading the written words - think how the more of the girls are present, the more details we see, and how Ludmoore looks so different in chapter 2's flashback than in person. So, since they don't know it's a different prince Phobos Ludmoore talked to, the one they know is portrayed.

I just feel like this one takes less weird leaps and somehow fits the overall tone and story better? But this might be personal preference.

Last but not least, since this is kinda on the same topic: after some back and forth consideration, I do not think the dinosaurs in the book of elements are a product of Ludmoores time travels, as much as that would have been a great thing to include.

This is mainly due to two facts:

- if they were, the chapter should have been before the one where he's trapped in the book

- the dinosaurs are just so damn inaccurate, and he, being a scientist, would have likely described them in more detail, drawing attention to how they differed from popular belief during the early 20th century, so the girls would likely not just have imagined the stereotypical animals displayed

I believe that, since the chapter is called "Matt", this is the one Matt wrote, and likely Ludmoore was just like "create a highly dangerous environment that will stop my enemies and suit my new giant pet lizard" and Matt's controlled mind - remember, Cedric states he has a pounding headache that makes thinking difficult while Ludmoore controls him - did the best it could. (This should work since I don't think the island Matt stranded on is the same the girls go to, but including the reason for this would, I think, go too far off topic and take up a lot of space. I might touch on it in the aforementioned post on the book of elements, though)

Thank you for reading to the end!

This one was a bit convoluted, and I'm pretty sure I still missed some important points that likely render this theory useless, so again, feel free to agree, argue or add anything you like! I look forward to hearing your ideas on this

[quirkwizard]

Spoiled Sushi

For a while, a certain article has been vexing me. One that seems to have a great misunderstanding of the series it was writing about, missing obvious points and core parts of the worldbuilding. No, it wasn’t by CBR, nor was it by Screenrant. But it was by Cruchyroll of all places. They decided to make an article about the Top 5 Misused Quirks in My Hero Academia. It was not good and has been bugging me. So I decided to give them a taste of their own medicine. I mean they try to shut down whoever even attempts to do what they do, so why not make fun of them for trying to do what I do? Plus you guys seem to like it when I’m snarky, so this could be fun for everyone.

For clarity’s sake, this was written at the beginning of 2019, when the most recent chapter was Chapter 214 and the the anime had only reached Season 3. I’m keeping that in mind as I write. I will also be skipping around some of the parts of the article as I am talking about it. If its not worth mentioning, I won’t bring it up, simple as that. For instance, I’m skipping the intro because it is completely superfluous and would only serve to make a completely different fanbase mad. Might as well, most of what I am passing up are just dumb jokes. But if you are curious... don’t waste your time reading this. Your time is valuable and you have better things to do then read this article.

5. Kurogiri Can Create Free, Renewable Energy

“In all seriousness, though, Kurogiri is probably one of the most powerful characters in the anime, with their being virtually no limit to how far he can extend his Warp Gate portals.”

I mean there are certainly limits for his Quirk. Besides the need to know the coordinates or see where he is moving, there’s obviously a limit to how much he can spread out his body.

“Why then doesn’t he use them to create near-infinite energy? Open two portals one above another, throw in a heavy object inside and watch it fall endlessly. Devise a way to hook a dynamo or something to it and, bam, you have free power that would make Kurogiri a billionaire overnight and a hero to the entire planet.”

This idea has so many problems that I don’t even know where to begin.

One, if this could work, it likely wouldn’t make a lot of energy. Besides the various physics problems involved in this, Kurogiri would just be one guy doing this, meaning that it’s unlikely he’d be able to make enough power to matter.

Two, Kurogiri would still need rest as he is a living being, meaning he wouldn’t to keep up this theoretical contraption forever and you’d get even less energy relying on him. At most, it would work best in a small bunker as a last resort.

Three, that sounds like it would be a lot more dangerous then it would be worth for the energy made. If Kurogiri would to lose focus for a moment, the portals fall apart and there would just be a lot of damage from this heavy object moving at high speeds.

“Even if Kurogiri only cares about taking down All Might, it would still be much easier to do if he had a literal mountain of money/public goodwill at his side.”

What kind of bizzaro universe are you living in where the guy who makes energy could possibly turn public option about the very well liked Number 1 Hero that saves lives every day? That’s literally what Lex Luthor does and people hate him for it.

4. Koji Koda Could Help Feed Billions Of People

“Koji is the resident Class 1-A stoner (get it? he's made of rock? come on) with the power to control ANY creature in the animal kingdom. This would logically also include spiders, meaning that Koji could literally end all street crime in, like, 5 minutes tops by swallowing all the criminals up in a giant arachno-tsunami.”

While this article is infuriating in many ways, it did give us the mental image of an “arachno-tsunami”. Which is totally worth sitting through this jumbled mess of words and ignorance.

“But, you see, Koji is just too shy and nice to be an effective hero. He wants to do good but he just doesn’t have that fighter instinct in him. Which is why he should instead use his Anivoice Quirk to revolutionize agriculture all around the world.”

You can be an effective hero and not beat people up. Sure, it certainly can come up in the job description, but that isn’t all of what a hero is meant to do. Koda’s Quirk makes him great at information gathering and rescue work, two very important aspects of hero work that suit his personality perfectly.

“Give him a megaphone and fly him over American fields, telling feral pigs to stop causing $1.5 billion worth of damage a year in destroyed crops. Fly him to Australia to tell the invasive cane toads and rabbits to kindly lemming themselves off a cliff. Have him tell the aggressive lionfish the get the hell out of the Atlantic. FORCE HIM TO GET OVER HIS FEAR OF BUGS AND MAKE AGRICULTURAL PESTS A THING OF THE PAST. “

There is no possible way Koda could be everywhere at once to pull that off. And considering that the average human voice can only carry for about a mile, IE, about the average size of a single farm. You know, because animals need to hear his voice in order to receive his commands. So even if it was limited to a single farm, its unlikely to do much to help. But by far the biggest issue with this entire plan is that what Koda does to an animal is not permanent. The second his control is interrupted, the animals return to normal, bound to just go back to whatever they were doing before. 

So if Koda tries to change anything, its just going to end up undone by the time he leaves, just delaying the inevitable problem that comes from these animals. So even if Koda told the pigs to go away, they’d likely be back by the next day, destroying farmland like nothing happened. Even then, because of the previous limitations, he’d still have to go farm by farm to pull it off. That’s not even mentioning all of the other suggestions. Honestly, if you wanted to do something with Quirk, you should just convince all the animals to line up during hunting season. Dark, yes, but it least it would offer a more permanent solution then what the writer is suggesting.

“If Koji was utilized properly, he could travel the world undoing mankind’s mistakes and creating organic, pesticide-free crops instead of doing what he does now, which is largely sitting around on his ass roleplaying Snow White.”

Which, in spite of many fans joking about his Quirk, has shown to be very helpful quite a few times.

3. Inko Midoriya Would Have Made A Great Nurse

“Izuku’s mother in My Hero Academia has mainly done two things so far: jack and squat.”

I mean she did design Izuku’s costume, even if it got replaced, its is still a corner stone of his design, and she offered a good amount of drama after the fight with All Might and All For One. 

“She did try to be a good mother but kind of failed at that when she tearfully apologized to her son because he was born without a Quirk, essentially telling him: “I’m so sorry I gave birth to such a loser.””

Would you believe that this one line was what really prompted me to talk about this? Because that is probably one of the worst takes I have ever in relation to this series. If you honestly believed that is what Inko was doing, the woman who practically raised her child by herself and constantly talks about much she cares for him, you must be watching the wrong series. That’s the only way I could explain why that is.

“So, she doesn’t really have much going on in her life. That’s why she should try nursing instead. I realize that becoming a nurse takes a lot of hard work and dedication, but Inko would be a natural fit for it. Despite her initial shortcomings, she is a very caring person with loads of empathy.” 

Inko’s empathic? Could have fooled me. I mean she did feel the need to apologize to her son for giving birth to a loser. No, I am not over that, how could you have possibly gotten that from the scene?!

“She also has the power of limited telekinesis. Inko can move small objects over short distances, and while that would not be helpful for stopping crime, it would be great for, say, removing kidney stones. Or things stuck in people’s throats. Or coins from children’s stomachs.”

Trying to use a Quirk like this in any kind of medical procedure is laughable at best and dangerous at worst. Imagine if Inko had to remove a bullet from someone. From what we see, the process of her moving objects is slow and need several pulls from her to attract the object to her. So if she’s going to try to pull it out and its going to get caught on something, causing more damage to the person she is trying to save. She’s basically going to be keying the insides of whoever she is trying to operate on.

The entire reasons doctors, especially surgeons, train for so long is because the human body can be extremely delicate. It needs a lot of care and time so the doctors don’t make things worse for the patients. It’s why surgeons need to have such steady hands and a lot of time even to due minor procedures. But trying to do that with a Quirk is just going to cause more problems then it can solve. Doing that with a Quirk like Inko’s just lacks a lot of the precision and dexterity necessary to pull this off.

2. Uraraka Should Go Work For A Shipping Company

“Ochaco Uraraka has one of the most well-rounded Quirks out of all the main characters: Zero Gravity. With it, she can make objects and people float, which is great for offense, defense, and rescue operations. As a superheroine, she is doing everything right with her Quirk.”

I mean “Zero Gravity” can kind of be used offensively, but not effectively as other Quirks. Its why she did all of that training with Gun Head to make up for her lack of an offensive presence. Eh, two of three ain’t bad. I’ll take what I can get.

“I just think Uraraka should never have become a superheroine in the first place. Uraraka has actually always been honest about her motivation: she wants dem YEN YEN BILLS YO (for her struggling family.)”

That’s because hero work is an extremely frugal business even super minor heroes can still seem to make a decent living out of it.

“But regular jobs also exist in that world, and that must include shipping companies that would instantly hire Uraraka to Zero-G their freighters, trucks, and planes. Even if she cannot make them float, she can still remove enough gravity from them to save the company tons of fuel. Company profit margins are razor thin.”

First off, its mentioned several times that if you want to use a Quirk for a job, you need to have a hero license. Its to make sure you know how to use your Quirk properly so you don’t end up hurting someone with your powers. So for her to even try this, she needs to go through hero school anyway. Might as well get the most out of it. Second, Uraraka cannot lower the gravity of her target. Either the object is floating or it isn’t floating. There is no in between for Uraraka. 

Third, given what we’ve seen from Uraraka, there is no possible way that she could ever lift that much. She’s barely able to lift three lower numbered robots and that was only for a few seconds. So, at the most, she can lift a few tons. How exactly do you expect her to work with something like a cargo plane, which, on its own, can weight over forty five tons, not including fuel or any extra cargo?

Which is another thing I noticed throughout the article: the writer seems to severely overestimate how effective Quirks actually are. The range and scope of Quirks is much smaller then other power systems, even when compared to similar “low level” series like HunterxHunter. Like every kind of application listed goes far beyond what most Quirks are capable of, such as forgetting certain drawbacks. And that is most notable with the last suggestion.

1. Momo Could Solve Literally All The World’s Problems

I bet Kohei Horikoshi was really proud of himself when he came up with Momo Yaoyorozu’s design: No, see, she HAS to dress scantily because her Quirk is Creation, i.e. the ability to create any object she wants through her skin, which must be constantly exposed. Peachy.”

Oh boy, it wouldn’t be any sort of discussion about Momo without beating that long dead horse. What’s next? Bakugou angry? Izuku cry? 

“Momo can apparently create anything as long as she understands its composition, and seeing as she’s made an ethanol spray can, infrared goggles, a lighter, and a tracker, it seems like there’s nothing she cannot make.”

Oh boy, it wouldn’t be any sort of discussion about Momo without a grievous misunderstanding of how her Quirk works either. Maybe they are in the fandom. As I have mentioned in my Momo Misconceptions post, Momo needs fat to make what she does. She’s not an alchemist where she can just clap her hands and make whatever she wants. If she doesn’t have enough fat, she cannot make items. By those very rules, some things are just out of her reach because it would just take too much fat. It’s why she limits herself to simpler items.

“Cool. MAKE US SOME HELIUM THEN. The world is running out of the gas and we need it for MRI scanners and the like. Momo could make more of it.”

Actually, we don’t even know for sure if Momo is capable of making gases. All we have seen her make is solids and a few liquids. There is the lighter she made, but that could easily run on lighter fluid.

“Or thorium. She could make thorium that we could use to make thorium-based reactors that are apparently way safer than uranium ones.”

Thorium isn’t even that rare, just as about as common as lead and three times as common as uranium. Even if it was a problem, it would likely kill her, either from burning through all of her fat or from the exposure to radiation.

“Medicine, fresh water, cheap electronics that we could send to developing countries: Momo could crank all of those out in an afternoon.“

Yes, in theory, Momo could do that, but not the extent that she would make a major difference in the world like they are suggesting. There are just more practical and better long term solutions then trying to force a single person to do all of that. It’s almost as if Momo is a regular human being who has limitations you need to keep in mind when making these ill informed suggestions.

“And while spending your life as a walking Everything Faucet might not seem that glamorous, it actually has the potential to change the entire planet for the better.”

Given the kind of set up and effort that would be required to even attempt that, I think “horrific” would be a more appropriate descriptor since it would be done to a living, thinking person.

Honestly, I think that most of these people are doing more with their Quirks now then with any of these suggestions. At least, when you actually think about the rules and limits of the characters. Sure, Inko isn’t doing much, but she is a civilian with a fairly weak Quirk. Kurogiri acts as a major player within the League, getting them around quickly and evading capture. I mean he is using his power to help out a bunch of villains, but my point still stands that he is not “misusing” his Quirk.

In fact, a majority of the people on this list are doing more to help people and save lives by being heroes. Given the limitations of their abilities, using them to stop superpowered criminals who risking damaging the people around and helping victims of these crimes is doing then any of those roles in spite of the fact that the article tries its best to downplay that these people are already saving lives. So, in reality, they are doing far more to help people then doing any of these ideas, you damp sock of a writer.

[confusedunit]

The Resonance Project - Dr. Freeman

April 18th, 1998 - Crystal Resonance Test

Dr. Freeman wasn't feeling well, that morning. He'd had the worst flu of his life for the past two weeks, and was finally recovering. He knew that the exposure to samples he worked with could cause lowered a immune system, but he figured it was more that someone else at the facility had gotten him terribly ill. Probably Calhoun the last time they saw each other, with his traveling all over the complex, and his insistence on talking nonstop during the morning tram rides.

But he was recovering now, no longer contagious and cleared to return to work. Despite the test results, he still felt weak and fatigued, sipping at a flavorful soup from his usual coffee thermos. Calhoun had heard from someone, who heard from someone, who got lectured by some 'health food connoisseur' that 'bone broth' would cure all ills. Apparently, it wasn't soup. He didn't care enough to correct himself.

So here he was, sitting in a chair in the observation room, unable to run his own test. If he was honest, he felt a bit bitter about it. He'd spent his college years on his theory, and his two years at Black Mesa designing this test, and now...the first real test wasn't even being done by his own hands. He knew the restriction was for his own safety, due to the risk of radiation exposure when he was still recovering, but...still. It was the principal of the matter.

Instead it was a coworker, Professor Bailey, in the HEV suit downstairs. He had nothing against Bailey, the man was great to work with, but he'd never trained for this. It was so much more than just pushing a sample into a test laser. There were failsafes, safeguards, protocols in place that had to be followed, and Bailey didn't know most of them. His coworkers told him he was just being paranoid. But as he watched the crystal enter the laser down below, he could tell even before the alarms went off that he was right to have worried. The sample went in too fast. And it shouldn't be that shade of green.

He ignored the panic of the scientists around him, focused entirely on what he was doing, as he lunged forward to grab the intercom. "Bailey! Drop the cart and get to the door!" He shouted over the noise, watching as the helmeted man looked up to the window. "Now!"

"Dr. Freeman!" Someone was yelling at him now, and he turned to look at who it could be. Dr. Birdwell, apparently. Didn't he see he was busy? "We need to-"

Both their chairs were quickly yanked back, as the damage resistant glass in front of them shattered. He watched in awe as he heard the tones from the room on the other side, and as the shards seemed to vanish into thin air. He'd been right, about resonance based teleportation. What a scientific breakthrough. It took him a bit too long to realize that the blast had also destroyed the main console.

"We definitely can't shut it down now!" Birdwell's voice rang out through the din.

He blinked slowly, looking from the window to the door. He'd argue with them later, laugh at them for calling him paranoid. But for now...he pushed himself to his feet, arms flying out to balance as the floor shook. "Evacuate Sector C." His tone gave no room for dismissal. "I'll shut it down."

"B-but-" God, Birdwell seemed to have almost a compulsive need to argue. "Dr. Freeman! The console-"

"Is not damaged inside the chamber!" He glared back at the older man. "Go, and start evacuating everyone you can. I'm sending up Bailey and the others. Once they're through, seal the doors." Just in case. A final safety precaution. As he'd fucking demanded be included. Seriously, why did people only listen to him before starting tests? He was twenty seven, not a child.

He ran out of the room before anyone else could argue. A thermos rolled across the floor, contents spilling out across the tile.

-

He was really glad now that he'd run track in Uni. He'd been teased about it initially after his hiring, but it certainly helped in an emergency. He'd sprinted down the halls, vaulted overloaded computer terminals, and sent every panicking scientist that he could find up to safety.

As he ran, he wondered how he was able to take this all in stride. Was it because he'd expected such failure, and planned accordingly? Was it because Calhoun's conspiracy bullshit had finally gotten to him? ...Actually, now that he'd thought about it, it was probably the Tylenol he'd taken earlier. Or at least the Black Mesa Tylenol equivalent, this felt way stronger than any time he'd had to take some before he worked there. Another test maybe? Damn, he really needed to start reading the consent forms they made him sign.

He shook his head. Right, back on track, the failing test. He couldn't help but feel grateful that at the very least, they hadn't changed his test plans, other than the swapping of the person doing it. They'd shown him several crystals, and he'd chosen the smallest one available, wanting a first true test to have the smallest chance for failure, but you can never account for human error. At least he could look at the data later, confirm that's what went wrong.

Oh right, paying attention. Someone was yelling at him, pointing at a wounded scientist being carried away by a security guard. He should probably...listen. "-and I can't open the door alone!"

Oh shit. Bailey. "I've still got clearance, right? I'll help you open it."

The man seemed relieved, hurrying through the broken door to the closest scanner. "We'll need to shut the doors again immediately- there's no guarantee this will be contained, otherwise!"

He crossed the room, scanning his eyes before turning to watch the door open. He saw Bailey run into the 'airlock', but was much more caught up in the events happening behind him. For all the destruction this cascade was close to causing, and had caused, it was almost...beautiful. Shades of light, from orange through to green, accompanied by the tones he felt more than heard. It was haunting. It was awing.

...He was being yelled at again. "Dr. Freeman! We have to go!"

Right. He had other plans. "Take Bailey and any others, and evacuate Sector C." He turned to Bailey as he reached up and pulled off his ID, handing it to him. "Once you all get through the observation room, scan this outside the door."

Bailey tilted his head at him. "But, what about-"

"Don't argue, Bailey. Please." The stress of the situation was starting to sink through the pain medication. "Trust me."

Bailey stared at him through the helmet, before he nodded. He knew the weight behind the words. He was a smart man. "...Godspeed, Freeman." Without another word, he turned and slammed his fist into one of the scanners, shattering the glass.

As the doors shut, Dr. Freeman stepped into the test chamber, closed his eyes, and felt the crystal's tones echo through the room. Through him. He felt his lab coat whip in the wind caused by the failing reaction, the same wind that ripped his hair tie away as he tossed away his necktie.

When his eyes opened again, they were the clearest they'd been all day, and his mental state matched. He had a job to complete. He sprinted across the room, stopping at the lower console. The shutdown safeguard he'd insisted on was that not only could the experiment be shut down from the observatory, but also that it could be shut down from the chamber.

But this kind of resonance? He'd heard cries upstairs about being unable to shut it down. Which meant he'd have to do a manual override. Normally that would be done from both the outer console and the inner upper console. To do this himself, he'd have to run both the upper and lower console through the procedure.

He took a breath to try to steady himself. He'd known as he ran down that he'd be risking his life. He wasn't afraid of that. But only now, as he stared up into the crystal's lights, did he realize exactly what he'd lose if he failed. This wasn't about his work, but his coworkers. Bailey had mentioned his granddaughter's recital coming up. Eli and Kleiner laughing as they entertained baby Alyx. Calhoun's overconfident grin as he talked to anyone who would listen.

...But it wasn't just them at risk, was it? A full cascade would damage worse than just that part of the facility, putting his friends in other departments at risk too. He thought of the look in Bubby's eyes when he'd finally seen the stars for the first time. Tommy's laugh when the strangest things amused him. Dr. Coomer, his mentor, with a spark in his eye and a smile on his face as he debated theory.

If he failed...they could lose everything. He could lose everything. Failure was not an option, even if success seemed impossible. But that was his job. To see the theory, even if impossible to prove. To find a way to prove it. To make it show itself.

He hadn't failed yet. And he wouldn't fail here.

He set the sequence to start on the lower console, scaling the ladder to do the same on the top. He had little time to think, as he hurried back down. He had to do his best to focus.

"Five." He spoke, feeling his voice more than hearing it, as he went up and down, going through the motions.

"Four." He would succeed, and the crisis would stop. The resonance would quiet, the cascade would slow.

"Three." They would never approve this project again. But they'd already proven everything he'd set out to find. In this one chaotic moment.

"Two." The tones changed, the lights moving away from green. The air itself was changing, returning to normalcy.

"One." He stood behind the upper console, and threw the final switch.

He slowly moved down the ladder, walking across the rubble to reach the front of the machine. The glow was back to the yellow it should be, the only echoing through the shaking room being that of the laser itself. He glanced up to the broken window, turning his attention back to the machine. He rested his hands on the sample cart, waiting for the machine to start to slow.

It was only as he pulled the cart backwards that he realized he'd been too slow, that he'd fallen out of sequence. The machine rumbled as it finished shutting down, but the crystal itself, so close to him, began to sing.

With a loud electrical crack, and a flash of green, the machine shut down. It was silent. The crystal was cracked. And the room was empty.

[spottedlekkudancer]

Same Heart

Chapter 3 - Fray

Sum: You are a colonel from the Battlecruiser Absolution now aboard Finalizer in an attempt to close a banking deal for the Order abroad. Not much has ever given you cause to seek a significant other before, however, when several people on the ship start taking a personal interest in you things may change. (Kylo/MattxReaderxHux)

Word Count: 2.5k+

Warnings: Language, Violence

Disclaimer: I am ignorant when it comes to the military. So if you notice any errors please inform me. If the BS doesn't bother you, all the better

@tachibubu @lowlyapprentice @moonlightreetops

Hux’s office felt colder than the rest of the ship. It’s even black doonium walls closing in on either side of your consciousness. The vastness of space out the viewing port behind the ginger’s head was beckoning you, threatening to swallow you whole.

“(F/N)”

Biliousness hit you hard in your discomposure; you couldn’t remember the last time Hux had used your first name standing alone. Or if he had ever. Dread. The next words from him were ones not to be coveted: of this you were sure.

The general's lips were drawn into a tight, unforgiving line. He was the epitome of the Order’s refined system in every aspect. From the way he could make the most casual of clothes look like a uniform to the habit he had of bringing a sensation of foreboding into every private meeting. “Do you know why you are here?”

It was meant to be rhetorical. Like when a cop is stopping you in traffic. You both knew full well why you were sitting across from one another having THIS conversation.

“Shields are charged Ma’am! Bringing them online now.” From the control deck below a voice projected.

“No! Keep them down.” Your reply was swift and firm.

Mitaka stuck close to your side, doubting everyone of your calls. His nerves, considering Hux wasn’t around, were hanging on a thin wire. “I don’t know what you think those pilots are capable of, but they can't perform miracles. We are being fired upon. Whatever it is you are trying to do (L/N) it isn’t going to work.”

“Have a little faith, Lieutenant. I’m your superior for a reason.” The words were spoken with venom, you were getting quite tired of his admonishment of you.

Hux’s hands were folded over his desk, and he leaned in toward you over them. “You took a huge risk, (F/N). You completely ignored protocol. The justifications of which do not outweigh the cause.” His voice was too even. As if instead of being angry with you he was holding onto regret.

You gazed down at your lap, it was easier than looking him in the eye. “I know.”

This fleet was more than a mobile weapons platform, one just needed to know how to use it to its full potential. If you were successful, the lives of both sides would be spared. You waited, trusting your pilots to stick to the orders you issued. Zeta and Epsilon Tie squads were keeping a tight formation around Finalizer, fending off any approaching X-Wing fire. Your Bombers and Tie Defender were in pursuit of the rebel captain's ship. Not to destroy, but to capture. It wasn’t a large spacecraft by any means and you had to wonder why such a small envoy would drop from hyper space to attack now. The planet of Jakku beneath your orbit was a wasteland, and as such held no value.

They were nearing; F-005 had lured the rebels into a mindset of retreat. Z-938 blocking their route of escape just moments before. They couldn’t jump to safety now, not with your battlecruiser in their way and only one working engine. They were being herded into you like Nerf.

Once surrounded you ordered the end of the battle. The rebels would submit now with no other choice. It was time to show why you had left your shields down, and hopefully Mitaka’s insufferable whining would cease.“Engage Tractor beme.” You directed to one of the officers below, then engaged the Comm for flight control. “Good work men, bring them in.”

“Honestly (F/N), It’s calls like this that got you removed from the Navy in the first place. Taking charge when Ren and I were detained can be overlooked considering, however, recklessly leaving us open for attack will not be.”

“With all do respect General, damage sustained was minimal and there were no casualties. Now that we have them in custody -

Hux cut you off. “You apprehended one ship, on a hunch no less. A hypothesis that there is something they want on Jakku. To which now we have reports of two resistance X-Wing pilots landing planetside. If you had followed protocol: all would be eliminated, and there would no longer be a need to send out a ground squad to clean up after you.”

You hadn’t anticipated the absconder’s actions and understood the detriment that put on not only your name but Hux’s aswell. “Yes Sir, but now we can find out why they were here.”

“If a good reason at all. Perhaps they were passing through. This is difficult space to navigate.”

“Sir, If that was the case Protocol dictates that we need to imprison and interrogate any unidentified craft in our territory regardless. They gave no clearance codes. Moreover, they fired onto us first. That is a classic distraction tactic Sir! Does that not seem suspicious to you? If there is something on Jakku they want we need to obtain it first.” You nearly ran out of breath desperately trying to explain yourself. Taking a breath you sat back down in your seat, just now realizing you rose out of it for your vocal bombardment. “I stand by my decision, Armitage. I understand that you have to suspend me during the investigation, but you’ll soon see- I. Am. Right.”

Hux stiffened: jaw muscles tightening, eyes shifting from you to the door. You followed his gaze. Kylo was a silhouette in the gaping arch way. “For your sake Colonel, you best hope you are. Dismissed.”

You gave Hux a curt nod before leaving the two men in peace.

For days you waited. Not once seeing anything outside the bunk you were assigned to. An officer brought you your meals and a Stormtrooper stood outside your door at all times. Stars! If you didn’t know better you would have assumed you were the one under arrest. You soon discovered it was also pointless to ask questions to the little people you had contact with. They would either know nothing or keep their rumors to themselves. There were two possibilities for you now. One) You'd be dragged off ship to Court Martial without a word. Or Two) You’d be dragged back into Hux’s office without a word. The latter of which would be better. At least then you could return as a Colonel to Absolution.

You pondered vaguely what Hux’s excuse was to the banking clan. Would he pull in someone closer of equal rank to sit through the meeting? Would he have Zack sign in your place? Or was he just apologizing and asking them to wait for your “arrival”?  Whatever the case, it didn’t really matter. What did matter was  when they did come for you, several standard day cycles into your isolation, they did not ship you off of Finalizer.

Hux was far more tense during this meeting. Something you would have thought impossible before you witnessed it. After several minutes of formalities in explaining your release from suspension, what happened with the bank, and what would happen now that you were cleared from court martial he said something else that surprised you. You were right. Not that you doubted your assumptions at any time. An admission of Hux being in the wrong BY Hux was just so unlike him.

“Ren proved useful for once and managed to not only get where the x-wing pilots were headed, but took them down as well. According to Ren they are after a map of some sorts. The supreme leader is sure there will be another attempt to retrieve it, and wants us ready for that day.”  Hux elaborated on his point instead of apologizing. Apologies were not his style.

You didn’t gloat. Pride overfilled your ego, but your face you kept neutral.

“And if it suits you Colonel, I’d like you to stay aboard Finalizer.” Hux cleared his throat, unfolding his hands and placing them on his lap in a more casual way. “Permanently. Someone will need to run this ship when I transfer to Starkiller. I can think of no one better but you.”

A knot of uncertainty rooted itself in your stomach. “Sir, as much as I’d love command over a dreadnought such as this one day. I don’t think I’m comfortable with that.” Only a week aboard and you had already experienced as many tumultuous situations as you would in a whole quarter aboard Absolution.

“I will grant you rank of Admiral.”  It was a flat statement.

Eyebrows now knitted you considered his offer again. He would be putting you back into the Navy. This is what you wanted most. Admirals held less political pull than you did now, however, in all technicalities it was a parallel  movement of power.

“Take the night to think about it (F/N).” Hux’s odd behavior had yet to cease but you nodded at his last statement before seeing yourself out.

As you exited the general's office you were greeted by a tall chrome clad warrior. “Evening Captain.” You nodded at her rigged form.

“And to you. Congratulations.” Phasma’s voice was filtered through the helmet she was never seen without.

You stopped short of continuing down the main corridor. “Congratulations?” You turned your body to face her more. Hux had told her before you of his plans? You hadn’t guessed they were that close.

“Did you not agree to the transfer then?” There was no genuine curiosity in her voice. From what you remembered of the Parnassoian she never gave much attention to anything she wasn’t directly involved in. She trained older stormtroopers, led ground commands, and spent her down time training or fiddling with electronics.

You brushed off the inconvenience of her knowing. She was not the type to gossip about it. “I haven’t decided.”

“You will accept.” Always so sure of herself. That bugged you. Could your decisions be that easily assumed? *** That morning you were awoken by a com call. Hux was wasting no time in hunting down your answer. When he said he would give you the night to think about it he truly meant just that. One night. One sleepless, tumultuous night. Your checked the time before replying; your body had only given into the soundness of peace a little over two hours ago. With a grone you picked up the com. “This is (L/N).”

“(F/N) be in my office at 0500 hrs.” Per usual his voice was like thick ice. Straight and unfeeling despite the use of your first name.

“Good morning to you too.” You scoffed away from the mic.

“(F/N).”

“Copy boss,” You interrupted yourself with a yawn. “I’m getting up now.”

Even though you had spent the whole night thinking of nothing else you had yet to come to a decision. Did you really want to stay on this ship with Hux and Ren for gods know how long just to propel yourself into a position you probably weren’t prepared for, or at the very least didn’t deserve?  And why after all these years of animosity was Hux so eager to have you stick around? The whole situation didn’t sit right with you. However, there was this nagging pull in your gut pleading with you to stay. These instincts are the only thing that kept you alive  for so long and you hesitated to ignore it.

A thought struck you while you were in the refresher. Why were you worrying so hard about being around those two? Neither of there were pleasant, sure, but they also had never harmed you directly. Moreover, they were LEAVING! It would only be a few months at most until Hux took charge of Star Killer, and Kylo was gone on missions around the galaxy so often you doubted you would see much of him. What could go wrong in that inturm? The sense of doom you were getting on the ship couldn’t be from them in particular. After all this would be YOUR ship. A Resurgent-class Star Destroyer! You couldn’t dream of having  a better station. Well you could. There were a few ships better equipt or at least bigger than Finalizer, however, you doubted you would ever have the political pull to grasp one of those.

You threw on your last teal uniform and flew out the door. You would arrive early, confident in your new found prerogative.  You. An Admiral. You had been daydreaming about this day for a decade. Not Captain. Not Vice Admiral. Admiral (L/N), command in prompt to Finalizer. *** The meeting with Hux went just as expected. As did the following week. Zach was promoted in your absence and after a short deal close was sent back to Absolution with instructions to have your things sent to you. You hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Matt or Kylo in the wake of it all and that seemed odd to you. It felt as if in your first few days that you couldn't escape them. And now they were both MIA. Avoiding me probably, you figured. You haven’t exactly left good impressions since your arrival nearly two weeks ago. In fact you noted that most of the bridge crew refused to make eye contact with you and whispered about you in the corners. You felt ostracized. But better to be tiptoed around then to face a mutiny. Or be walked over! That’s what your old Admiral use to tell you anyways.

He had called you the night of your promotion. A bittersweet moment. He obviously did not want you to leave his charge; nor did you truly want to say goodbye to him. Admiral Broste then demanded that when their paths cross again you would take his position on Absolution. Come his retirement he wanted to be sure his ship was left in good hands. You chuckled at this and agreed, brushing off the fact that for years Broste claimed he would never retire. “I’ll die in this chair, (F/N). Mark my bloody words.” He’d say to you every so often: grin and drink painting his face red with glee. You knew then that he meant it. He had no other life to go to outside of the military. That’s why you felt he joined the Order after the Empire’s fall.

Your firm opinion of this was soon to change. As Stirling and your other things were brought back to you, you found a note for the Admiral himself. Calligraphy with a stylus on flimsiplast no less. An extremely rare commodity, often considered a lost art by the wealthy and a waste of resources by the masses. You read it aloud to yourself and sterling in the private of your new chambers.

Tears welled in the corners of your eyes. You had no idea he was in such poor health and it made your heartbreak. Guilt clung to your stomach. Broste wasn’t your father, grandfather, or in anyway related to you. However, in you most private and meaningful moments the two of you shared names of endearment. He did practically raise you after all; in and out of the academy. Moreover, he had protected you for years. How could you have left him in such a time of need?

[yellowcanna]

Two Sides, Same Coin

Summary: Since the beginning of Quirks, Yokohama has announced independence from Japan and closed itself from the rest of the world.

To this day and age, no one knows what lies within the city of Yokohama—or that was what the public was made to believe. In reality, Yokohama has long fallen into the control of the world’s largest criminal organization known as the Port Mafia.

Follow Class 1-A as their principal organized a field trip to Yokohama! In their short trip there, they must change their perspectives and learn exactly what it means to be justice and what it means to be villains.

Rating: T

Genre: Crossover, hint of shounen-ai (boy love)

Pairing: Contains mild Soukoku (Dazai x Chuuya) and Shin Soukoku (Akutagawa x Atsushi) if you squint

Author: Canna / Yellow Canna

Available on AO3!!

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CHAPTER 14

STRAYS (NIGHT 3: TUESDAY)

This story has been beta'd by Momentary_Flight, Nanami_ontheShore, Shady Spades

Dazai sat comfortably in his seat as he looked towards the stage, his eye meeting a pair of sky blue ones. Bathed within the red light, nobody noticed the faint trail of a crimson glow slowly disappearing from the singer’s body.

Chuuya was smiling at the crowds and even talked to some of the audience that ran too close to the stage despite the line of waiters holding them back. Somewhere in the back, someone even threw him a can of beer, which he caught with ease before waving in that direction.

The man down there was like a star shining brilliantly in the night sky.

Yet only Dazai knew that, right now, every movement Chuuya made was carefully calculated. No matter how he stood or where he was seemingly looking towards, he made sure that Dazai was well within his sight. Despite how relaxed he may look, there was no question that the Executive would spring into action the second danger towards his boss was detected.

Chuuya walked off the stage, tossing the microphone to Tachihara who took his place.

The music picked up again, pulling the crowd's attention away from Chuuya as the redhead made his way back into the VIP section.

As soon as Chuuya returned, Dazai dismissed the guards around him, leaving the space for only the two of them.

The brunet patted his knees, but the redhead stopped right in front of him with his arms crossed.

“What’s wrong, Chuuya?” Dazai blinked his large, chocolate brown eye at his lover expectantly. “You were so docile before!”

“You want to see how docile I am?” Chuuya gritted, cracking his knuckles to loosen his joints.

“You never know who might be watching, we need to keep the act up!”

“There’s no one watching,” Chuuya retorted.

“They could from that giant hole in the wall.”

“You mean that?” Chuuya huffed proudly as he gestured towards the wall he had thrown the League of Villains through. The hole was already filled up by broken pieces of bricks, smashed together and squeezed into the hole until not even the smallest gap could be found.

“Uwaah…” Dazai made a disgusted face. “I bet interior designers all over the world are crying in joy that Chuuya didn’t become a construction worker.”

“Hah?!” Chuuya felt a vein on his forehead throb. It was a miracle his veins haven't popped yet. "I'd like to see you do better, you shitty—mmh!”

While the Executive was distracted, Dazai reached up, a nimble finger hooking onto the silver ring on the redhead’s choker, and pulled him down. Chuuya stumbled as he fell over Dazai, but he swiftly put a knee between his boss’s legs and a hand on each side of the brunet’s head to stop them from colliding.

Chuuya moaned into a pair of lips that smothered against his, with a wet tongue slipping into his mouth without any warning. Rough, calloused hands caressed his hips before they slipped under his tank top to feel his abs.

The redhead shivered at the touch before pulling away.

Dazai didn’t stop him. He just sighed in disappointment and licked his lips that were moist from the shorter man’s saliva.

“You know, Chuuya.” He looked up to the redhead who was fixing his clothes despite how it didn’t matter since they were in a club and the other wasn’t in his usual suit. “Maybe I should demote you and have you become my personal dog. That way, I can have you on my lap day and night.”

“I would like to ask the boss to please reconsider, as the Port Mafia cannot afford to lose a valuable asset such as Chuuya-sama.”

The boss and his right-hand man turned to see an elderly man making his way up the stairs.

“Ah, Hirotsu-san,” Dazai greeted cheerfully, “did you enjoy your vacation?”

“It was quite eventful.” Hirotsu bowed to his boss before turning to Chuuya. “Your performance tonight was spectacular, Chuuya-sama.”

"At least someone appreciates my effort," Chuuya moved to stand by his boss's side. 

“Well then, tell me about your reports, Hirotsu,” the Port Mafia boss said as he got comfortable in his chair.

Hirotsu reached into his coat and pulled out a large yellow envelope. Chuuya stepped forward to take it before passing it to his boss.

The first thing the two of them saw when Dazai pulled out the papers was the picture stapled on the first page. She was a young girl about the age of six or seven with bluish silver hair, crimson eyes, and a horn on the right side of her forehead.

“I have confirmed that the Shie Hassaikai is indeed creating a drug capable of destroying Quirks. The drug is created using the flesh of Chisaki Kai’s adoptive daughter, Eri.”

“Flesh?” Chuuya raised a brow. “So it’s a Quirk?”

“Yes. The girl’s Quirk is to rewind the time of living beings.”

"Which means with proper adjustments her Quirk can directly attack the virus within the host's bloodstream and completely erase the virus from the body without damaging the body itself," Dazai hummed as he flipped through the documents.

“It is quite similar to the vaccine first created when Quirk began to appear,” Hirotsu nodded.

“But now, those vaccines will only kill them,” Chuuya pointed out. “Since the second generation, the bodies of those outsiders started to merge with the virus and now it is part of their genetics. There's no way of reversing that process without killing them.”

“Yet this girl can rewind the time of the genetic structure of the body to separate the virus without taking their life.” Dazai smiled before his eye snapped to Hirotsu. “How far along is the development of this drug?”

“I would say at eighty percent," Hirotsu replied. “The current drug created by Shie Hassaikai can only temporarily remove a host’s Quirk for six to seven hours.”

“And?” Dazai tossed the documents onto the table. “Surely you’ve brought me the finished product.”

Hirotsu bowed before setting a black briefcase onto the table. He unlocked the case with a finger scanner then swiftly keyed in the passwords.

The case unlocked with a light click.

Spinning the briefcase around, Hirotsu laid it down and opened it to reveal five syringes. Each syringe was within a vacuum-sealed bag and filled with crimson fluid.

“During my infiltration, I had taken some of the incomplete drugs as well as some samples from the girl and brought it to the laboratory yesterday evening. These are the completed versions that the lab has created.”

“So they only needed one day to finish what Shie Hassaikai had been trying for years,” Chuuya snorted. Organized crime in the outside world is getting worse and worse as the years go by. It was also stupid of the Shie Hassaikai to sell the drug when it was still incomplete. Did they think they wouldn't catch unwanted attention? Or were they that confident in thinking they were the only ones capable of creating the drug just because they had the material?

Dazai reached forward and took out one of the syringes. He squinted his eyes to get a closer look at the drug inside. While the colour was the same as blood, the density was closer to water’s.

“Have these been tested on Ability users?”

"No," Hirotsu replied. “According to the head scientist, this drug only targets the body's DNA which the viruses reside in.”

“That I’m sure.” The brunet agreed as he put the syringe back into the case. “But nevertheless, we can never be too careful. Give these to Ryuunosuke-kun and have him test it out on Ability users. If by some miracle it does have the power to destroy Ability…”

Dazai’s eye narrowed, losing the warm light it held before and took a colder, crueler quality.

“Kill the girl and burn the Shie Hassaikai to the ground.”

“Yes, boss.” Hirotsu bowed. Recognizing his boss’s dismissal, he took his briefcase and headed off to complete the first task he was assigned since returning to work.

Chuuya watched Hirotsu leave before looking over to Dazai who was lazily flipping through the documents scattered on the table while humming a light tune.

“You seem pretty happy,” the redhead noted.

“Can you blame me?” Dazai grinned at his right-hand man. “It’s been a while since someone dared to blatantly scheme in front of me like that, especially when the schemer is as easy to read as an open book. I can’t help but play along~”

“Play along?” Chuuya narrowed his eyes, not believing a single word that came out of his boss’s mouth. “You mean manipulating them to play along with your shit? And don’t fucking tell me that making me sing on stage every Tuesday for the past three months was just for this!”

“How could you accuse me of that, Chuuya!” Dazai gasped with his hands flying over his heart. “I truly enjoyed watching you sing every night. Chuuya’s like a shining star on stage!”

Another vein popped out from Chuuya’s forehead. As much as he wanted to slam his fist into this man’s gut right here and now, he knew he couldn’t. They were in public, they had an image to keep up.

“So? What’s with those kids?” Chuuya snapped, changing the subject.

“Chuuya, even if they have eighth-grader syndrome with dreams of destroying the world, calling them kids is a bit—”

“I’m talking about those Hero kids,” Chuuya corrected. “The ones from U.A. You purposely led them here at this time and knew I would have no choice but to let them out the backdoor.”

“I did promise their principal to show them around Yokohama," Dazai smirked. “What kind of guide would I be if I didn’t let them enjoy Yokohama to the fullest?”

Chuuya snorted at the poor excuse. He didn’t care that Dazai didn't answer his question, as he already has a clue as to what that was about. After all, that person was doing his mission nearby. Although the chances of them accidentally running into one another were slim, if a certain scheming bastard manipulated this…

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Seven Months Ago—Port Mafia Headquarters

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  BOOOOOOOOOOM

The sounds of explosions resonated through the air, shaking the entire building as dark smoke stretched towards the night sky.

“Fire! Shoot it down!”  

“The barrier’s been damaged!”

“What are they doing?! Why isn’t the barrier restored yet?!”

“The system’s been jammed! We can’t operate it!”

"Another one's coming!"

"GET DOWN!!"

Within the darkness, a missile flew down from the sky, slicing through the wind as it aimed towards one of the five Port Mafia buildings. The missile slipped through the hole in the barrier the first missile had created, slamming into the side of the building as crimson flames erupted, followed by the sound of explosion.

Alarms echoed across the halls as sprinklers were immediately activated to put out the flames.

Men and women ran towards where the explosion had occurred to help put out the fire.

A man cloaked in black rushed down the hallway, his body almost becoming a blur as he flew down the stairs and arrived at the floors that had suffered the most from the explosion.

“Senpai!” a blond-haired woman gasped as she did her best to catch up to her superior. “Senpai! It’s too dangerous, please head back!” she shouted after him, but the man did not listen to her words.

The explosion had annihilated the hallways of three floors, but that wasn’t important at all. What’s important was the room at the end of the middle hallway.

He ran into the fire, one hand holding a cloth over his nose and mouth to protect his lungs from the heavy smoke. When he arrived at the room, his eyes flew wide at the metallic door that had been completely blasted off its hinge, distorted and leaning against the corner.

His cloak fluttered around him as he walked into the room. Silver eyes narrowed as he surveyed his surroundings. Aside from one side of the wall completely blasted away by the explosion, the remainder of the room was pretty much undamaged.

The man looked over to the bed, then to the collection of large stuffed animal toys. Activating his Ability, black tendrils shot out of his coat, stabbing into the bed, toys, and closets—tearing everything apart.

The blond woman finally caught up, panting heavily as she walked into the room. She wasn’t given the time to take in what the room looked like before her eyes shifted to the missing wall where the outside world was visible to her eyes.

“Senpai!” She cried as the man whirled around, looking up to the sky where a giant whale was swimming beneath the sea of stars.

They were only able to see the barrier around the headquarters materialize for a split second before multiple explosions blasted over the surface of the barrier. For a minute straight, the barrier was engulfed in flames, casting crimson light upon those inside the building.

Everyone shielded their eyes as the barrier protected the building from being touched by the scorching flames. When the flames finally disappeared, all that was left was the crumbling pieces of the barrier. When the raven-haired man looked back up to the sky, the whale was gone.

“So this was what they were after.” The man gritted his teeth as he stormed out of the room, stepping over a framed TV in the process, completely shattering the screen under the pressure of his foot. “Higuchi, send out an order. They couldn’t have gotten far with Q. Send out all men to find Q and kill them on sight.”

“Yes!” The woman hurriedly did as she was told. She tapped onto the Bluetooth in her right ear and commanded, “Abandon all battle stations! Q has been captured by the Guild! All personnel are to find Q and kill on sight!!”

From another building identical to the one that had suffered from the bombing, a man in a black suit and a red scarf stared at the bright flames lighting up the night.

“Boss, please step away from the window! The barrier is gone, it’s dangerous!” the men around him fretted, but the brunet just waved them off.

“It’s fine. They can’t see anything from the outside.”

“But—” The men looked like they wanted to argue, but a sharp glare from their boss silenced them as they remembered their place.

“Boss.”

“Ah, ane-san.” Dazai smiled when he saw Kouyou speed walking over to him. The men surrounding him backed away, making room for their Executive.

“Where’s Chuuya?” She furrowed her brows, instantly noticing the lack of a petite redhead. Ever since Chuuya had become Dazai’s right-hand man, the two were barely ever seen being apart.

“Chuuya is checking on the barrier," Dazai replied. “Do you need something, ane-san?”

"The Guild has Q," Kouyou informed her boss with a grave look on her face. “Please follow me into the safe room until the situation is dealt with.”

“Ah-ah~” Dazai sighed, but obediently followed Kouyou down the hall with men surrounding the two as protection. “I leave the headquarters’ defense to Ryuunosuke-kun and this is the result. Looks like he’ll need some more discipline once the Guild’s been dealt with.”

“The missiles accurately targeted the room Q was confined in,” Kouyou frowned, not as easy going as her boss. “I’m afraid we may have a traitor amongst us.”

“Hm…” Dazai hummed, “There’s no need to worry, ane-san. I’m sure everything will work out.”

Kouyou glanced over her shoulder to her boss. Questions were swirling in her eyes, but the Executive kept her silence and continued leading the way. 

It was only after they began descending the spiral of stairs that she spoke again.

"The Guild has crossed the line by directly attacking us," Kouyou said as they arrived at the lowest floor. She waved off the men around them and led Dazai down a long hallway. “Do you still refuse to let us step in?”

“I told you, ane-san. Taking down the Guild is Atsushi-kun and Ryuunosuke-kun’s job,” Dazai said, stopping in front of a door. The two guards standing by the door bowed at his presence as Dazai’s fingers danced swiftly across the number pad.

After scanning his palm, the doors opened, one layer after another. The moment Dazai stepped inside, the doors slammed shut, clicking sounds echoing in the air as the locks were being put back into place.

Dazai strolled into the simple underground chamber. The most elaborate thing here was the bed and chandelier. He leaned over a handrail, humming as he gazed up at the chandelier hanging directly above his large bed. He should find some time to replace that obnoxious thing.

Dazai blinked, seeming slightly surprised before he stifled a small laugh.

“Four years ago, the first thing that would have come across my mind would be how perfect it is for hanging.” Dazai snorted at his own change as he walked to his bed and plopped onto the king-size mattress. Or perhaps he could sabotage the chandelier and have it fall on him while having a peaceful sleep.

“If you want to die that badly, I can come and finish you off,” a sarcastic voice came from the black Bluetooth in the Port Mafia boss’s ear. “How does the curb sound to you, shitty boss?”

“And leave Chuuya to become a widow?” Dazai smirked as he folded his hands behind his head. “I trust that you haven’t been caught?”

“Who the hell do you think I am?”

In the other building, a short man in a black suit and fedora kicked down the iron door. He emerged from his hiding spot with his hands tucked in his pockets. Despite the entire place being charred and dusty, there wasn’t a speck of dirt on his body.

“As if I’d get caught by that apprentice of yours,” Nahakara Chuuya snorted as he walked into the room that looked as if a beast had been rampaging in it. Everything that could hide a person had been violently torn apart and thrown onto the ground.

“Looks like I wasn’t needed,” he said, kicking away a small piece of cement by his feet. “But to think those bastards broke through the walls with just two missiles…!”

Chuuya clicked his teeth. Even if this was planned by Dazai, he didn’t like it one bit. The outer layer of the building was specially made to withstand at least sixty consecutive missiles! And for the protection barrier around the headquarters to be so easily blasted apart was another issue.

“It’s not surprising that their weapons are more advanced than ours. They don’t have a city like Yokohama to protect them in America, so the developments of their technologies are solely focused on weapons,” Dazai hummed, “Though they were still discovered and hunted for human experimentation.”

Chuuya frowned at that. He has heard of too many similar stories in the outside world.

Despite the seemingly peaceful relationship they have with Japan, the rest of the world treated Old Humans very differently. For one, the knowledge of Old Humans isn’t known to the whole world. Their existence had always been top secret in Japan and kept from the rest of the world. It’s only in the last century that it was no longer a state secret.

As society became more and more stable, there were always curious eyes turned towards the mysterious city. So occasionally, Yokohama would invite a selected few inside, allowing only one to walk back out and deliver information.

This was the only way to get those nosy governments to get rid of any weird ideas about Yokohama—like reclaiming it for example. By showing Yokohama as a threat, the Japanese government wouldn’t move recklessly, especially when they still have the issue of Villains. They couldn’t afford to create another enemy, and as long as they are left alone, Yokohama has no intention of waging war against them.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for other countries. Without a base to protect them, once discovered, Old Humans will easily be captured. Abilities are extremely rare and even if they were powerful, they cannot fight while protecting a whole community.

“If that’s the case, then won’t they blast the entire city to the ground?”

“They won’t,” Dazai replied with certainty, “Even if their technology in weaponry is a tad higher than ours, Fitzgerald isn’t stupid enough to think we won’t have a countermeasure against large scale attacks. And even if he is, he knows he won’t find what he’s looking for if the entire city is gone.”

Chuuya walked over to the open wall. He leaned forward, poking his head out a little so he could see the state of things below. Blue eyes sharply trailed over each man and their positions before the redhead leaned back and glanced to a torn blanket lying on the ground not far away.

“So who were the ones that took Q?” Dazai asked cheerfully. Chuuya was sure the other knew already, but responded anyway.

“It’s the two that engaged with that other apprentice of yours,” Chuuya said as he took out a small booklet from his pocket and flipped through the pages. “John Steinbeck and Howard Phillips Lovecraft. So far, we still can’t figure out what Ability the second guy has.”

“Then perhaps it’s not an Ability at all.”

“You mean he’s a Quirk user?” Chuuya didn’t believe it. After all, if that man was a Quirk user, he wouldn’t have slipped through the barrier.

“It doesn’t matter.” The redhead could hear the smirk behind his boss’s lips. “After tonight, they won’t be relevant.”

Chuuya didn’t ask what that meant as he picked up the cotton blanket and headed back towards the edge. Crimson light coated his body as Chuuya activated his Ability. With a stomp of his feet, the floor beneath his feet caved in. Chuuya threw the blanket around his body as he fell towards the ground.

The sight of the baby blue blanket falling attracted the attention of the men stationed nearby. They raised their guns and circled the blanket that had a bulge in the middle. One of the men stepped forward, gripping the corner of the blanket and ripping it away only to find that it was a piece of concrete.

To be sure, the men searched around the area. After making sure there wasn't anything suspicious, they returned to their posts.

Perched on a nearby tree, a certain Executive watched the sight with narrowed eyes.

“Bunch of morons. I’ll deal with them after this is over,” he muttered darkly before he turned and darted off. He easily made it across the street, undetected by the Port Mafia underlings that were on watch.

The more of them he successfully evaded, the more the redhead felt his blood boil. It seemed their training had been too lax. He'll need to have a long talk with Kouyou about creating a new program after this entire mess got cleaned up.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. With a quick scan of his fingerprint, the phone lit up with a map on the screen. Chuuya stared at the blinking red dot that was rapidly approaching. He looked towards that direction just in time to catch a blur of white darting across the street before it was gone.

“Dazai.”

“Yes, love?” Dazai’s voice whispered gently into his ear.

“If this plan of yours doesn’t work, I will kill Q.”

“Of course.”

◤━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◥

Present

◣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◢

 “Who are you?” the child asked as mismatched eyes looked at the group of twenty people standing there.

They were all stunned at the sight of such a young girl—or perhaps a boy? Either way, this didn’t seem to be a place where they would find a child.

They automatically looked around, hoping to find the kid’s parents, but couldn’t see another soul in sight.

“We’re just some people who are a bit lost,” Uraraka laughed as she crouched down to get to the child’s height. “What about you? Where’s your mom and dad?”

“Mom and dad?” the child hummed, needing to take some time to think over that question before smiling back at them. “I don’t have one.”

“E-eh?” Uraraka’s jaw dropped. This was an answer neither she nor her classmates had expected. She frantically waved her hands as guilt consumed her. “I’m so sorry! I-I had no idea!”

"Sorry?" the child tested the word as if it was something foreign to them. "Why?"

Uraraka blinked as her hands stopped in midair.

Why? Why what?

However, she couldn’t ask that, as she had already stepped on a landmine. Fortunately, Asui came up to save her.

“Do you have anyone looking after you?” she questioned with a finger to her lips.

“I do!” the child chirped brightly, but then saddened as they slowly swung their legs back and forth. “But I got lost…”

“Do you know their phone number?” Iida asked, already pulling out his phone, “I’ll call them for you.”

“I don’t know...” the child replied, looking unconcerned over not remembering their guardian’s contact number. “But it’s fine! He’ll find me. He always does!”

Everyone exchanged looks. They were all skeptical about this. During their way to the bar, the latter half of their trip was void of any people. No matter how they looked at it, this area was filled with factories and warehouses. Why in the world was there a child so young here all alone in the middle of the night?

Didn’t anyone know how dangerous it was?

"Maybe his dad brought him to the bar or something and forgot about him," Mineta whispered, only to be stabbed in the eyeball by an earphone jack.

"Let's wait around for a bit," Midoriya suggested. “Maybe his guardian is looking around for him.”

"Ah…there goes our curfew time," Kaminari whined jokingly. He understood that finding this kid's guardian takes priority over everything else. He looked around the empty street, “What if they never show up?”

"We can always call the police afterward," Tokoyami stated.

Midoriya walked up to the child and knelt in front of them with the friendliest smile he could muster. "My name is Midoriya Izuku, what’s your name?”

“I’m Kyuusaku!” the kid replied. Those symbol-carrying eyes looked Midoriya up and down, scanning over his body before the kid brightened even more. “You’re the one that broke your arms and legs!”

Arms and legs?

Midoriya recalled the foreigner he met when he was handing out the flyers earlier today. “You watched the Sports Festival?”

Everyone was surprised, but then remembered that the people here had access to the outside channels.

“So you watch the Sports Festival!” Kaminari laughed as he crouched down in front of the kid and pointed at himself. “Then do you remember me?”

Kyuusaku shook his head, still smiling so brightly that Kaminari didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“….Don’t mind," Asui patted his shoulder.

"Did you enjoy the Sports festival?" Jirou asked.

Kyuusaku nodded, “It looked really fun! I wish I could play too…”

“Oh! Do you wish to become a Hero in the future?” Iida asked excitedly.

“Hero?” Kyuusaku blinked. They stared at Iida with wide eyes before the child suddenly burst out into laughter, as if Iida had spoken the most hilarious joke they’ve ever heard. “No way!”

Everyone just stared at the child in confusion, then to each other. None of them were able to understand the joke.

“Big brother, do you like Stain?” Kyuusaku asked, mismatched eyes locking onto Iida.

Everyone froze at the name none of them had expected to hear coming out of this kid's mouth. They automatically looked towards Iida, whose face had darkened at the memories of the Villain flickering through his mind.

“Of course we don’t like Stain!” Sero exclaimed, drawing the kid’s attention to him. “He’s a bad guy!”

“Bad guy?” Kyuusaku tilted their head cutely. “Why?”

“Because he does bad things," Sato explained.

“Like what?” the kid pushed on, not noticing the discomfort the teenagers were feeling. There was only pure curiosity on the child’s face.

“Well, like—” Kirishima swiftly caught himself and stopped talking. He couldn’t possibly talk about killing in front of a kid, but even without the redhead saying it out loud, the child already knew the answer.

Kyuusaku smiled at the redhead and finished the words for him. “Like killing?”

Everyone stared at the child who had spoken of killing with such a happy expression.

"Yes…like killing," Yaoyorozu said slowly, eyes darting to her classmates.

“But don’t Heroes kill people too?” Kyuusaku then asked.

“Of course not! Heroes don’t kill people!” Midoriya defended.

At that, Kyuusaku looked genuinely confused as they turned to Midoriya. “So when Heroes fight Villains, they hold back their strength?”

“Well, no—”

“So you don’t hold back?” the boy asked, not even bothering to wait for Sato to finish.

"When Heroes fight, we use our strength to save people," Iida told the boy. "It's not about holding back or not."

“So you fight with all your strength?” Kyuusaku giggled. “Then how do you know you won’t kill the bad people?”

Some of the students opened their mouths but found that they couldn't answer the question.

"I saw a bad person die on TV. He died when fighting Heroes." Kyuusaku told them, still smiling.

“That’s not killing,” Todoroki tried to explain.

“But someone died?”

"Yes, but those are accidents," Shouji told the boy. “It couldn’t be helped. In a fight against Villains, there are always innocent bystanders getting caught in between. A Hero’s job is to—”

“But killing is killing,” the kid stated. “No matter what reason it is, you still killed someone.”

“Kyuusaku-chan…do you like Stain?” Yaoyorozu couldn't help but ask. The child's thought process was so…well, weird. How could a child talk about killing so easily? No, it’s because they’re a child that they didn’t understand the gravity of what their words meant. Considering the amount of influence the Hero Killer brought, Yaoyorozu wouldn't be surprised if Kyuusaku, much like many others in Japan, could understand Stain’s motive.

She wasn’t the only one thinking this way. Everyone else was expecting the kid to answer yes, given the conversation they just had. But to everyone’s surprise, the warm smile on Kyuusaku’s face dropped for the first time. On that kid’s face was an expression of pure confusion as those large eyes blinked up at them.

"No," Kyuusaku answered, as if it should be obvious. “He’s just a murderer that needed excuses to kill people. Why would I like him?”

Kyuusaku’s voice and tone were purely innocent. There was no mockery, no laughter…nothing. The child’s voice only held confusion over why they even asked that.

Everyone was taken back by the child’s response. Never had they heard anyone describe Stain like that. When Stain’s name first came around, the only things discussed were his actions and the current state of Heroes. There had been many debates over whether or not Stain’s actions were right, but so blatantly calling Stain a murderer was…something else.

“Kyuusaku-chan, what do you mean by that?” Asui asked with a frown on her lips.

“Isn’t it true though?” Kyuusaku jumped down from the bench and landed onto their feet. A bright smile lifted the corner of their lips. “He just wants to kill, yet he justified his actions by making a grand excuse. Isn’t that funny?”

“Justified…?” Midoriya stared at Kyuusaku. What is this kid even talking about?

The rest of the class wasn’t doing any better. They stared at the kid strangely as if they couldn’t understand the words coming from the kid’s mouth. This was no longer weird—it wasn’t normal.

“Hey, let’s play a game!” Kyuusaku suddenly changed the topic as they walked up to the U.A students. “I haven’t played a game in a long time! Won’t you play with me?”

Midoriya opened and closed his mouth. He was still trying to wrap his head around what this child had just said.

“S-sure, what do you want to play?” Hagakure hurriedly asked when the silence dragged on for a bit too long.

Everyone was now looking at the child weirdly. There was something not right with this kid. Despite that, none of them saw Kyuusaku as a threat. What they were beginning to worry about was this child’s environment.

Just what kind of environment gave the child such a skewed viewpoint? Kyuusaku did say they don’t have parents, but what about the guardian? Was this child perhaps neglected?

Many of them were already compensating on whether or not to call the police, but then Kyuusaku spoke.

“Let’s play tag!”

“Oh! Tag! That’s a great game!” Sero laughed, trying to brighten the weird tension in the air. “I’m super good at tag!”

“We can play in that park!” Ashido said, pointing to the park right next to them. Even if there weren’t any cars around, playing on the street was still dangerous.

“Alright! Who will be it?” Kaminari asked as he looked around.

“What’s an it?” Kyuusaku suddenly asked, causing everyone to look at the child in surprise.

“Kyuusaku-chan, have you not played tag before?” Asui asked carefully.

The young child shook their head, “I’ve only seen other people play it.”

“…I haven’t either.” Todoroki suddenly spoke up, frowning as he looked at the child.

Everyone stared between Todoroki and Kyuusaku while Midoriya’s eyes widened.

He looked over to the young kid. Could it be that this child had a similar childhood to Todoroki? No, rather than saying it's similar, it's more like…

“The it is the person that catches the other people," Ojiro explained as he walked up to crouch by the child. "They catch people by tapping them. If you get tagged by the it, you’re out.”

“What happens when you’re out?” Kyuusaku asked.

“Then you have to sit and wait until the it catches everyone. After that, the game restarts.” Tokoyami finished the explanation.

“Then I want to be it!” Kyuusaku said happily before reaching their hand out and tapping Ojiro on the shoulder. “You’re out!”

No one bothered to correct the child on how they should be given time to run. The moment Kyuusaku announced this, everyone ran off, squealing and giggling like little kids. Ojiro just laughed as he scratched his cheek, not minding how quickly he got thrown out of the game.

“Do I have to run after them?” Kyuusaku blinked as they watched the older kids run away.

“Yes, if you want to catch them?” Ojiro replied unsurely. "You don't like to run?"

"No, it's just running hurts," Kyuusaku replied. They didn’t sound sad or anything…just stating a fact.

Ojiro’s eyes automatically dropped to the child’s legs. Since the kid was wearing shorts, he was able to get a good look at slender legs lacking any form of muscle. Aside from the kid being a little thin, there didn't seem to be anything wrong. Maybe they sprained their ankle? Was that why they were sitting on a bench?

Believing that he had found the answer, Ojiro turned to his classmates who were scattered on the grass. They hadn’t gone far and were all waiting for the child to begin chasing them.

“Come on, Kyuusaku-chan!” Uraraka called as she waved her hand at them.

“Guys!” Ojiro called, successfully grabbing their attention.

“What’s wrong, man?” Kirishima asked, about to walk up when he stepped on a tiny twig lying in the grass.

Snap

“…!”

Ojiro heard a sharp intake of breath behind him. He turned and saw Kyuusaku standing there, trembling with wide eyes locked on Kirishima. Those irises were dilated and unsteady…there were even droplets of sweats rolling down the kid’s face despite how chilly the night was.

Those small hands were gripping onto his doll so tightly that they were shaking and white around the knuckles.

“Kyuusaku…?” Ojiro called out gently, but the kid didn’t even seem to have heard him. Their breathing was growing faster and faster. The time between each breath was also getting dangerously short, to the point where Ojiro thought they might hyperventilate.

The other kids noticed this as well and they all began to run over. Their footsteps thundered across the grass and somewhere amongst those footsteps, another twig snapped, causing the boy to completely freeze in place, his breathing stopped altogether.

“Kyuusaku?” Ojiro reached out both hands and grabbed the child’s forearms, hoping to snap the kid out of whatever shock they were in. The moment his hands made contact, he felt something very wrong. There were multiple hard objects under his palms sinking into the kid’s arms from the pressure of his grip.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!”

Kyuusaku suddenly let out an ear-piercing scream, pushing Ojiro away and stumbled back, clutching onto the doll even tighter.

“NOOO!!!” They shrieked, voice cracking as pale fingers sank into the fabric of the doll, pulling on the surface of the fabric so hard that some of the white stuffing was being squeezed out. “NO! NO! NOOOO!!!”

“Kyuusaku-chan?!” Yaoyorozu wanted to approach, but was afraid she might agitate the child even more.

“What’s wrong?” Midoriya spoke loudly, hoping his voice could be heard through the child’s screams.

“IT’s aLL YouR fAuLt!!” Kyuusaku screamed, face morphing into what could only be described as pure malice. The doll trapped in his grip was beginning to move, but no one noticed as their eyes were all locked on the child’s face.

“I’LL cUrsE yOU! I’ll CURSE—!!”

“Q!!”

A voice bellowed from the distance, causing Kyuusaku to freeze up.

For a long moment, nobody could move. They all stared at Kyuusaku with cold sweat rolling down their faces.

What…what was that?

What exactly was that?

The sound of footsteps slowly brought the students back. One by one, they turned around to see a person emerging from the dark alleyway. He was covered in a long, black leather coat with white fur around the base of his collar.

Silvery white hair fluttered in the gentle breeze as the person slowly stepped into the light. They couldn’t see much of his face, as half of it was covered by his coat’s tall collar, but the way those golden eyes seemed to glow in the dim streetlight was unnerving.

He looked young… not much older than Class 1-A.

“A…Atsushi!” Kyuusaku seemed terrified as they clenched onto the old doll.

"What were you going to do, Q?" the white-haired boy questioned.

“I-I wasn’t doing anything!” Kyuusaku gasped, sounding desperate as they ran up to the young man. They reached out a small hand and gripped onto his black coat. “I wasn’t, so—”

When those golden eyes narrowed, Kyuusaku swallowed down the rest of the words. They clutched the doll tighter to their chest and spoke in a desperate voice.

“I’m sorry, I won’t do it again! So…don’t leave me!”

The white-haired boy’s gaze softened a little before shifting to the students.

“Thank you for taking care of this child. I apologize for the trouble,” he said, nodding in their direction before turning to leave.

“Wait!”

Upon being called, the man stopped and turned around. His golden eyes met with Midoriya’s green ones.

“Are you…” Midoriya hesitated, eyes darting down to Kyuusaku then back to the stranger. “Kyuusaku’s guardian?”

“I am,” the other replied naturally. That didn’t seem to be a lie…and from how Kyuusaku interacted with this man, he was most likely the child’s guardian. However, it was precisely because of this that Midoriya needed to stop them.

"Do you have any identification to prove that you're that child's guardian?" Iida asked, looking at the man with a face full of distrust.

No matter how they looked at it, that interaction just now wasn’t normal. It wasn’t a conversation any ordinary kid would have with their guardian. Kyuusaku was terrified of this man, yet the way they still begged not to be thrown aside was raising red flags in all of their heads.

The images of Kyuusaku’s crazed look were still fresh in their minds, but that only fueled their desire and need to protect this young child. Anyone could tell by now that the kid’s mental stability wasn’t, well, stable. The cause may very well be this person right there.

 “Proof?” The man raised a fine brow as those golden eyes shifted to Iida. The moment their eyes met, Iida felt a droplet of sweat rolling down the back of his neck. He didn’t know why, but something wasn’t right with this person.

“…There is no need for me to prove anything to you,” the white-haired boy said calmly. He turned again and began to walk away.

“Wait!” Kirishima called, but the other didn’t stop. He just kept on walking with Kyuusaku by his side.

“HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!!” Bakugou roared. He knew he needed to stop them. Something wasn’t right about that guy. He couldn’t let him take the kid. “We’re not done speaking!”

“Don’t yell at Atsushi!” Kyuusaku suddenly spun around and shouted. Those eyes were glaring murderously at Bakugou who stopped in his tracks.

Bakugou was stunned. He couldn’t understand why the kid would defend this man who terrified them like that.

“Q, we’re leaving,” the boy known as Atsushi called. He didn’t look back and continued to walk away, not caring about the group of teenagers behind him.

Kyuusaku ran back to his side, one hand gripping onto the older boy’s jacket as they walked down the abandoned street. From the shadow of the alleyway Atsushi had emerged from, a dagger soundlessly slid back into its sheath as a figure slowly stepped back and vanished into the darkness.

Class 1-A could only watch as the young man and the child disappeared from their sight. None of them were able to stop them.

“We…we have to call sensei!” Aoyama all but screamed after they lost sight of the pair.

“No matter how you look at it, that’s not normal,” Jirou agreed.

“I’m calling right now!” Iida was way ahead of his classmates as he opened his phone, pausing at the contact list. Who should they call? Their teachers? But their teachers were outsiders as well, would they be able to do anything?

So Iida chose the most obvious choice and clicked on Kunikida’s contact. The blond man was the one they were most familiar with. Iida was certain he could save Kyuusaku.

“What’s wrong, Ojiro?” Shouji asked when he noticed Ojiro was still sitting on the floor, the same position he had been in since Kyuusaku pushed him away.

Ojiro didn’t reply, his head dipped low as he stared down at his own hands. When everyone else looked to his hands, they paled at the sight of red fluid covering both of his palms.

“Ojiro-kun! What happened to your hands?!” Midoriya was horrified by the amount of blood that was there.

“It’s not my blood!” Ojiro explained, voice quivering slightly. "When Kyuusaku was screaming, I tried to get him to calm down and gripped his arms, I—"

Ojiro was quickly calming down as he recalled the feeling of what he felt underneath the child’s sleeves. Whatever those were, they were sharp and all over the kid’s arms. No, rather, it felt like his hands were the ones that made those sharp objects sink into the child's flesh.

He quickly explained that to the others.

“Back then…Kyuusaku said that running hurts.” Ojiro felt sick as he finally realized what was wrong. It wasn’t the child’s legs that were hurting, it was his upper body that was hidden beneath his coat. “We have to find him, he might be in danger!”

They should have realized sooner just how incongruent everything about Kyuusaku was!

“Kunikida-san?” Iida spoke and everyone turned to see him on the phone with Kunikida. “We need help! There’s a child and— where are we? Uh…” Iida began looking around, but couldn’t see any road signs indicating their location.

“I know!” Kaminari said as he fumbled with the paper map he used to lead them to the bar.

Iida turned the phone to speaker mode and turned it towards his classmate.

“We’re on—!” Before Kaminari could say the address, Kunikida began to speak.

“That’s alright, I can see where you are on the map,” the blond stated from the other end. “I am not going to start with why all of you are even there. You have forty minutes to come back. I won’t be explaining to your teachers if you miss your curfew time.”

“Kunikida-san! There’s a kid that’s hurt and got taken away by a strange man!” Ashido explained.

“He could be a human trafficker!” Aoyama joined in the background.

“A kid was taken by a strange man?” They could all hear the frown on Kunikida’s face. “By force?”

“No, they walked away together but—” Todoroki tried to pipe in, but was interrupted by Kunikida.

“Forget it.”

“Eh?” Ashido blinked, as if unable to believe she had heard right. “What do you mean by that?”

“Exactly what I meant.” Kunikida said on the other end. “If you don’t know how to get back, stay put. I’ll come to get you.”

“Wait!” Midoriya yelled. “There’s an injured child who might be in danger!”

A sigh came from the other end of the line.

“Yokohama is not the outside world,” Kunikida reminded the group. “Don't stick your nose into places where it doesn't belong.”

“That’s got nothing to do with anything!” Bakugou shouted. “Did you not hear a fucking word we said?! There’s a kid—”

“And I’m telling you to forget about this kid,” the man sighed “Use your brains, would any ordinary kid appear in such an isolated place so late at night?"

“That’s why we need to help!” Yaoyorozu said, as if it was the most obvious thing. “Something isn’t right and that child could be in danger! He’s bleeding!”

Another sigh. “You know what, this is going nowhere. Just stay there and don’t move around. I’m coming to pick you up.”

Click

Just like that, Kunikida hung up, leaving the kids staring in shock and disbelief.

“What the fuck?!” Bakugou hollered, voicing out everyone’s thoughts in three short words.

Iida gritted his teeth, hands gripping tightly onto his phone before he began dialing again.

“What are you doing?” Tokoyami asked.

“The police!” Iida answered, typing in the numbers before putting the phone over his ear. He reached the helpline fairly quickly. Everyone watched hopefully as Iida explained the situation to the operator.

“It’s Kyuusaku, sir!” Iida said into the phone. “Surname? I don’t know...gender? A boy maybe? No, I don’t know for sure—we just met in the park!”

Iida seemed to be panicking as he struggled to converse with the other side. Everyone just watched as his responses grew weaker and weaker.

“Well, yes, that person claimed to be their guardian but—…yes…yes…they left together.” After that, Iida didn’t say anything. He just waited for the other side to finish before he slowly pulled the phone away from his ear.

“They…” Iida opened and closed his mouth a few times before he could finally utter the words. “They said they can’t do anything.”

“What…do you mean?” Uraraka asked. “A child’s being taken—”

“Kyuusaku-kun walked away by himself," Iida told everyone. "And that person said he’s Kyuusaku-kun’s guardian. The operator said the police won’t get involved unless we can provide proof that he was being taken away against his will.”

“What?!” Ashido was outraged. “What kind of response is that?!”

“How can…are we just going to let it happen?!” Sato spluttered.

For the first time since arriving, the kids felt the malice within Yokohama. This was wrong! This whole city was wrong! How could they all turn a blind eye to someone—a child — that needed help? No matter how they looked at it, it’s just not normal!

“I’m going.” Midoriya suddenly announced.

“Deku-kun?!” Uraraka gasped.

“Kyuusaku needs help, and I can’t turn a blind eye to it,” he said as his hands rolled into tight fists. Questions flooded through his mind as he kept replaying their conversation with Kunikida.

Why?

Why did he refuse to help even when there was someone in need of help? Wasn’t the Armed Detective Agency there to help people?

Midoriya didn’t understand, but one thing that’s clear was that no one was going to save Kyuusaku.

“It might be dangerous!” Aoyama whimpered. “Kunikida-san told us to stay put, and we can’t use our Quirks!”

“I’m just going to follow them and find out where they went,” Midoriya explained. “If I can find their location, then we can call the police and have them do something, right?”

“That’s true,” Sero agreed. “They want proof right? If they go take a look for themselves I’m sure they’ll find something wrong!”

“But you saw how Kyuusaku-chan defended that person,” Yaoyorozu pointed out.

“We can’t just do nothing!” Ojiro was the most affected by the situation due to the child’s blood staining his hands.

“I agree with Midoriya,” Todoroki said. “I’m going as well.”

“I’m coming too!” Bakugou announced, still grinding his teeth in irritation at the thought of that man. “There’s something off about that guy.”

“You guys can’t all go! You’ll get found out!” Hagakure said as she pulled off her gloves and threw them onto the floor. “How about this, I’ll go with Midoriya-kun! Since they can’t see me, I can scout the area without getting seen!”

“But your Quirk—” Sato began, only to get cut off.

“I’m not using my Quirk! I’m just naturally like this!”

Well, she wasn’t wrong about that. 

“I’ll go with them!” Jirou said. “Even if I can’t use my quirk, I can still hear better than average people.”

“I’ll go with you too,” Shouji walked over to Midoriya. “If anything happens, I can take everyone and run.”

“Then I’ll—” Kirishima also wanted to volunteer, but was stopped by Bakugou.

“Any more and the enemy will notice, stupid,” he pointed out.

“We have enemies now?” the blond gaped.

“Thank you, Shouji-kun, Hagakure-san, Jirou-san,” Midoriya thanked the three. He knew he was being selfish, and he knew that it was going to be dangerous. Whoever that white haired male was, Midoriya could tell he wasn’t anyone ordinary.

Everyone else knew as well, that’s why none of them could turn a blind eye to Kyuusaku’s situation.

“Fifteen minutes,” Iida finally gritted out. Anyone could tell he strongly disapproved of it, but he also wanted to save Kyuusaku more than anyone else. “If you don’t come back in fifteen minutes, we will call the teachers and Kunikida-san.”

“Yeah,” Midoriya nodded.

“Here, take this phone.” Yaoyorozu held out her phone. “It seems there are trackers on the phone for Kunikida-san to find us. I’ve turned off the sound just in case. If anything happens, we can find you.”

“Thank you, Yaoyorozu,” Jirou said as she took the phone.

Ashido also handed the phone she carried to Hagakure, while Midoriya and Shouji took out their own phones and muted them.

“Don’t do anything dangerous, ok?” Uraraka told them.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be back before you guys know it!” Hagakure said cheerfully, though no one could see her aside from the pair of shoes still on her feet.

Just like that, the four of them took off, running towards where the man had disappeared off to with Kyuusaku.

As the rest of the class watched them go, Asui let out a small croak from the back of her throat and looked up to the cloudy sky. A cold droplet of water came out of nowhere and fell onto her left cheek.

“Gero?”

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[shellheadtm-a]

i should move a list like this to my rules or 616 tony care manual but, for now, i realize i’ve never given a list of the most important runs to how i view tony.  so we’re gonna do that now, so you comic-savvy folks, at least, have an idea of where i’m coming from.  i should point out i’ve read (and reread) about 99% of nearly everything tony’s appeared in.  so you won’t find just iron man comics on this list.  these are kinda done chronologically timescale wise instead of date of publication.

hold on to your asses.  this is long.

+ tales of suspense:  for obvious reasons - it’s the origin story and his early adventures, and how he earned the nickname the golden avenger. + invincible iron man vol. 1:  good insight to how tony viewed himself and iron man and the public face of tony stark in the early days. + avengers vol. 1:  second verse, same as the first, formation of the avengers, their thawing steve from the ice, and all the ups and downs of the team roster. + captain america: man out of time:  after finding steve tony introduces him to the modern world.  steve wants out, realizes he’s been viewing the past with rose-colored glasses, and comes back to the present to help the avengers defeat kang. + demon in a bottle (iim 120-128):  the start of tony’s issues with alcohol but by no means the last.  the set up for his time being homeless. + doomquest (iim 149-150):  firmly establishes doom as an iron man villain, on top of everyone else he bothers.  also known as that time tony got to live his ultimate wet dream as a knight in king arthur’s court and fight alongside king arthur. + invincible iron man (163-170): covers tony’s fall from grace as he gets played by a honeypot and loses his company to obadiah stane, and he turns iron man over to rhodey.  + invincible iron man (172):  also known as that time steve found tony in a flophouse and tried to talk some sense into him but you gotta want to help yourself first and tony very emphatically did not (he was actually trying to drink himself to death so...).  also also known as that time steve bridal carried tony out of a burning building like the cover of a cheesy romance novel but no homo, right, marble. + invincible iron man (173 & 178):  tony hits rock bottom after skipping out of rhodey’s mom’s house.  otherwise known as that time tony lived on the streets for months and no one knew where he was or if he was even alive and helped deliver a baby in a blizzard. + armor wars (iim 225-232):  also known as that time tony’s tech got stolen and he went on a rampage to get it back, and also betrayed steve for really reals the first time.  it’s okay, they make up (the pink superstar shirt). + onslaught (event): it’s a mutant based storyline i don’t even know where to start explaining this one.  but it ends in heroes reborn - which is acknowledged but not written in on this blog. + iron man (early 00s):  a darker, grittier iron man.  also showcases tony’s utter self loathing, loss of hope for any form of happiness for himself, and the things he does to try to make himself not feel like such a waste of space.  otherwise known as the time he had an artificial heart from the suit that went obsessive stalker on him and the birth of FRIDAY.  one of my penultimate iron man runs, highly recommended but super dark. + avengers disassembled:  wanda destroys the mansion and the avengers break up, seemingly for good.  tony can’t afford to rebuild and no one has the heart to keep going after what happened. + new avengers:  until there’s a breakout of the raft and steve decides it’s time he and tony put together a new team.  tony can never say no to steve when he begs.  one of my all time favorite avengers line ups, including wolverine, luke cage, spider-woman, spider-man, ms. marvel (carol).  that time the avengers ended up in luke cage and jessica jones’s wedding photo. + extremis:  that time tony could talk to computers in his head - how that came to be.  also incredibly important:  sets the stage for civil war. + execute program:  definitely sets the stage for civil war and displays in a lot of ways how extremis is effecting tony. + civil war:  self explanatory, i think.  comic civil war was entirely us-based, did not involve bucky as a focus point (he becomes the new cap, after all, at tony’s request), and concerned the destruction of stamford due to the new warriors confronting a villain known as nitro.  bitter is the war between brothers, etc. + fallen son & the confession:  steve is assassinated (or...lost in time, more is the case) on red skull’s orders.  tony stark completely loses his shit and falls the fuck apart.  the confession solidified - i think - stevetony as a valid possible ship. + mighty avengers:  explains tony’s reasoning for doing what he did concerning civil war - which was play damage control so people like spider-man didn’t end up on a dissection table instead of the negative zone.  ultron gives him boobs. + iron man - director of shield:  post civil war, tony’s time at the helm of shield, and having a few mental breakdowns, fighting the mandarin, and finding out fun new things about extremis. + secret invasion (event):  skrulls have been infiltrating everywhere.  tony gets uploaded with a virus that takes out all of his tech?  and extremis itself.  is removed as director of shield, osborn is put in his place.  takes place in the middle of the fraction run of iron man. + invincible iron man (the fraction run):  literally the absolute, hands down, penultimate you won’t find better iron man run and view of tony stark as a person.  includes fear itself, dark reign, and the seige of asgard.  cannot recommend this one highly enough.  tony dealing with the aftermath of civil war, and then the brain wipe.  we love a broken man. + avengers prime:  tony and steve finally make up when the realms merge together.  he and steve and thor have all kinds of fun adventures against hela, tony ends up naked, we find out that thor and hellcat did the do.  good fun for everyone but also displays how much tony’s faking what he does and doesn’t remember, if you’re willing to dig a little. + invincible iron man (2013):  tony’s vacation in space, discovering he’s adopted and has a brother, the return of the mandarin’s rings, inhuman fun, the test city that was really a giant iron man suit, and fun times with dark elves.  this run is a ride and i love it despite everyone else hating it.  it has some juicy tony characterization moments. + avengers 2013/infinity:  look, you’d need a decoder ring to understand this shit without reading the whole damn thing.  contains superior iron man and the incursions, the time tony used the infinity gauntlet, the illuminati...there’s a lot of unpack here but explains the weight the current tony stark is carrying from what he did - especially as superior iron man - during this whole timeframe.  includes old!steve. + invincible iron man (2015):  the lead up to civil war ii/secret empire (note:  we don’t even look in secret empire’s direction on this blog).  just a good little snatch of characterization (surprisingly by bendis).  nice look into how tony views himself and how he handles his problems (which is to say he doesn’t handle them at all). + all new, all different avengers:  tony and his tiny little team, comprised of a bunch of kids, the vision, sam!cap, and jane!thor.  lead up to the thing we don’t speak of, but puts into perspective where tony sits at that moment post-incursions. + winter soldier (2018): he shows up in all of like three pages and is mentioned in a few more, but it solidifies that tony and bucky are close?  that bucky trusts tony knowing where he lives and working on his arm, and it puts tony in a support role over being a main player.  also rod reis did the art and it’s fucking immaculate.  

this is pretty much where, right  now, my full canon for tony ends.  i do include some bits from the newest avengers run (up through the vampires - and possibly tony being tossed back in time, i have the feeling he’s gonna hook up with the prehistoric avengers).  also from marvelous ms. marvel and captain marvel, and web of black widow.  what it does not and will not include ever is tony stark: iron man.  we don’t let slott into this house.

[jarienn972]

Curse of Undoings - Part 11

Emma's off to battle the Black Fairy while an unconscious Killian battles for his life. That's pretty much what this chapter focuses on but, to change the pace a bit, I gave this chapter a bit of a different flow since much of the action is taking place simultaneously. (Please excuse any inaccuracies with the OR scenes as it's not my field of expertise so I gloss over a lot of the details. It's more about setting up a dire situation than about being a medical drama.)

No major trigger warnings for this chapter but there are several rapid scene and POV changes.  Tagging @killian-whump, @castielamigos and @hookaroo for this action packed chapter.

Read from the beginning on AO3 or FF.net or here on Tumblr: Pt1  Pt2  Pt3  Pt4 Pt5  Pt6  Pt7  Pt8  Pt9  Pt10

Henry started to lose track of time as he sat behind the Admission desk waiting for his grandparents to arrive. He was cognizant enough to know that it hadn't been too long since he'd arrived with Killian, but he truly had no idea if he'd been waiting ten minutes or sixty. When he finally spotted the Sheriff cruiser pulling up to the Emergency entrance, his spirits lifted a little. At least, for the first time today, he would have someone he could rely on to get him through it all.

"Where's Killian Jones?" David demanded as the automated doors parted and he stomped purposefully into the Emergency ward with his wife following behind, shaking her head dismissively at her husband's overly forceful behavior.

"David, this is a hospital," Snow reminded him. "You really shouldn't be shouting."

"Mr. Jones was just taken up to the OR for surgery to remove the bullet," nurse Cathy advised the Prince. "It'll be a while before we know anything more, sir."

"Alright," David replied in a more muted tone as he got closer to the Admission desk. "Is my grandson around here somewhere?"

"I'm right here," Henry said as he popped up out of his chair so David could see him behind the tall desk. "What took you guys so long?"

"Sorry, Henry," Snow began. "David couldn't find the keys to the car."

"Hey, it's not my fault that Emma moved them!" David snapped back in mock offense. "I thought they'd still be in her desk drawer, not hanging on a peg on the break room wall." Snow gave her husband the of course, dear look, but didn't question him further. "Anyway, how was Hook when you got here?"

"He was having a really hard time breathing," Henry told them. "They thought the bullet hit his right lung and they said he'd lost a lot of blood, but I already knew that. He'd been bleeding pretty heavily from those cuts on his back and the stab wound in his shoulder even before Gideon shot him."

"You think Gideon was really trying to shoot you?" David asked, although he was really wanting to learn more about Hook's other wounds and how they'd originated.

"I know he was. Well, I mean I'm pretty sure he was. I didn't actually see him because I was too busy arguing with Mom. I just heard Killian shout, he shoved me, and I hit the sidewalk as the gun went off."

David massaged his temples with his thumb and middle finger as he tried to figure it all out. What happened happened to his family in the hours he was missing and where the hell had they even gone to during that time? The Black Fairy had clearly done a number on everyone and whatever she'd done had certainly done serious damage to his daughter's psyche. He wouldn't feel an ounce of remorse for whatever Emma had planned for Fiona.

"What did Fiona do to all of you while we were gone? Hell, what did she do to us?" David questioned, his face wrought with frustration and confusion.

"She made Mom believe that Killian had murdered you and Grandma and filled Mom's head with so much hatred towards him because she was trying to destroy True Love. She wanted Mom to kill her own True Love so that she could undo all of the stories. She trapped the both of you, Mom, Aunt Zelena and probably a few other townspeople inside an enchanted snow globe that fell and broke when Killian pushed me out of the way… But the worst was the book. Everything in the book was fading away…"

"We were trapped in a snow globe?" David asked quizzically before Snow interrupted him.

"Oh, speaking of your book…" Snow jumped into the conversation with a hint of a smile on her lips. "We brought it back for you, along with your backpack. It was a little damp and I think I got all of the glass shards cleaned off of it. It's out in the car."

"Did you open the book? Are the stories still fading away?" Henry asked anxiously.

"I don't know," she replied. "I just scooped it up and cleaned it up for you. Didn't think to open it."

"Can we go get it while we're waiting? I need to see if it's coming back… to see if we broke the whole curse."

"Okay, come with me," David stated. "The car's right outside." Henry hurried toward the automated doors with David and Snow following right on their grandson's heels. Henry saw the backpack resting on the back seat of the cruiser and didn't waste a second retrieving it. He immediately yanked the book out of the pack and flipped through a few pages.

"It's still not all back," Henry announced, displaying one of the faded images for his grandparents. "See? Most of the color and portions of the text are still missing. I don't think the curse is completely broken."

"What if the curse hinges on Killian's survival?" Snow suggested. "If her goal was to destroy True Love, if he dies, Fiona's plan might still go through."

"Regina thought there could be repercussions," David reminded her. "I hope that pirate's survival instinct is still as strong as ever." David's ears perked up at a rumble of thunder off in the distance. "Guess we'd better get back inside to wait. Seems like a storm is rolling in."

"I hope that's really just a rainstorm…" Snow stated, her brow furrowed with worry.

Emma's instinct led her to Storybrooke's infamous clock tower above the library where she found Fiona eagerly awaiting her opponent on the catwalk atop the spiraling staircase. The Black Fairy was no longer attired in the tailored business suit she'd been sporting earlier but had donned her feathery, raven black gown, accessorized with a shiny long sword. It wasn't exactly an outfit that Emma would have chosen for a sword fight, but she wasn't certain of Fiona's level of experience in non-magical battle.

"Certainly took you long enough, Savior," the Black Fairy greeted her sarcastically. "I didn't expect you'd keep me waiting after the curse broke."

"Sorry. Had to stop and pick up the proper armaments first," Emma responded flatly as she reached the top of the stairs, internally cringing at the echo of her footsteps throughout the tower. She brandished the sword Rumple had provided which elicited a haughty laugh from Fiona.

"So, you've been chatting with my worthless son, I see," Fiona chuckled. You sure you want to wage the battle using the weapon your visions revealed was fated to kill you?"

"As long as you're on the receiving end, I'm just fine with it. If I'm meant to die, you had better believe that I'm taking you with me."

"You seem a little testy, Emma," the fairy grinned as she raised her sword. "Something else on your mind?"

"I'm quite sure you know what's on my mind – and that's precisely why I'm here to kill you!" Emma growled. "Now, since you don't have any magic to fight me, you think your skill with a sword is good enough? Or are you afraid to fight me without your powers?"

"Oh, I've some practice with a sword…" Fiona sneered as she surged forward, their blades crashing together. Emma really wasn't surprised that Fiona would have some sword fighting experience. After all, it seemed as though everyone from the Enchanted Forest had training with some sort of weapon. Fiona had probably been the one who'd instructed Gideon because their moves were similar. Of course, Fiona was right about one thing – Emma was fighting distracted.

And she became further distracted when she saw a flash of lightning illuminating the darkening skies outside of the tower. It had been clear a few minutes ago when she'd marched down Main Street to face off with Fiona, so what had changed? The fairy took note of the startled expression on her opponent's face and used it to her advantage, catching Emma off-guard as she scored a blow to her left shoulder, knocking Emma to the grated metal floor of the catwalk.

"What's the matter, Emma? Don't like the weather?" Fiona taunted her as Emma scrambled to get back on her feet.

"You don't have this kind of magic right now…" Emma stammered, shaking her head in disbelief. "What the hell is going on?"

"Did you honestly think that getting your memories and your family back from my little prison meant that the curse was broken?" Fiona lowered her sword momentarily as she laughed maniacally, yet she was very much in control. "The heart of my curse has always been undoing True Love. That storm brewing outside means that your very own True Love is dying. The moment his heart stops beating for good, this town and everyone in it will be swept away. It's not exactly what I had wanted - I would have preferred that you'd done it, but either way, I take all of the happy endings with me…"

"Well then, I guess you die first." Emma swung the heavy sword towards Fiona's midsection but the fairy was faster, easily fending off Emma's parry as the skies continued to grow blacker, illuminated only by the intermittent flashes of lightning.

"Time's growing short, Savior," Fiona gloated. "Do you really want to spend your last few minutes fighting with me instead of saying goodbye to your family?"

"Killian's a survivor. He'll pull through this and if I kill you, I can still save my family."

"Really? Prepared to bet your life on it?"

Emma set her jaw and scowled. This bitch was going down. She owed it to her family – and especially to her husband.

"There's the bullet," Dr. Whale announced from behind his mask. "It's definitely embedded into the rib just as the X-ray suggested. Let's get it out of there and see what we can do to repair the bone. Looks as though we'll probably need to pin it back together. Janet, can I get some suction over here? These little bleeders are making it difficult to see into the incision clearly." He used the point of his scalpel to indicate the spot where blood was pooling. He wanted to get this bullet removed quickly so the pirate wouldn't bleed to death on his operating room table. Jones' blood pressure was still dangerously low and Whale suspected that there might still be internal bleeding around the puncture wound to his patient's left shoulder, but the bullet wound definitely took precedence. His right lung had already collapsed from the trauma and Whale knew that a portion of the tissue probably couldn't be salvaged. That would have to be re-evaluated later though since this life-saving procedure was of the utmost importance.

With his forceps, Whale gripped the offending chunk of lead but just as he prepared to extract it from the surrounding bone, the bright lamp above the table flickered.

"What the hell?" the doctor exclaimed as he paused. " Did somebody just bump the lamp?"

"No, Doctor," came a chorus of replies just as the lamp flickered again – only this time, it wasn't the only device in the room that seemed to be malfunctioning. The monitor tracking the patient's vitals was suddenly registering wild fluctuations in the pattern of wavy lines and numbers and sounded its distress as a series of loud beeps and blips.

"Doctor, I don't know if he's going arrhythmic or if our equipment is going haywire…" the nurse in charge of monitoring vitals spoke up just as all of the lines went solid and crimson warning lights lit up the screen.

"Damnit Jones!" Whale growled. "You are not dying on me!" Not willing to rely solely on the potentially failing monitors, Whale dropped his tools onto a nearby tray and found a stethoscope to confirm for himself if his patient's heart had stopped. He tossed aside one of the mint green surgical drapes to get better access to his patient's chest and soon verified that he couldn't hear a heartbeat. "Get me the defibrillator paddles!" As the nurse prepped the machine, Whale pressed the heel of his palm into Jones' sternum to begin compressions, silently mouthing a prayer that whatever was causing the power fluctuations wouldn't affect the defibrillator before he had a chance to shock the pirate's heart back into rhythm.

"Fully charged now, Doctor," the nurse stated as she carefully handed the defibrillator paddles to Whale one at a time.

"Okay, everybody clear!" he ordered, the team immediately making certain that they weren't in contact with either the patient or any part of the operating room table. Satisfied that it was safe to proceed, Whale touched the paddles to either side of his patient's chest, the jolt sending electricity surging through Jones' unresponsive body. The monitor reflected a brief flash of activity before it returned to a flat line. "Charge again!" Whale snapped impatiently at the nurse while she reset the equipment for a second attempt.

As Whale repeated the process, the room was plunged into darkness for a few precious seconds until the emergency generators kicked in. The doctor cursed under his breath at the unfortunate timing of whatever was causing these power fluctuations. There was little time to waste if he was going to have even a chance to get Jones' heart beating again. He counted nearly thirty seconds before the monitors powered back on with the same warnings flashing on the screen.

"It's going to be a few more seconds before the defibrillator is ready again," the nurse informed him as she tinkered with a series of buttons and dials to get the machine working again.

"Then somebody hold these while I start compressions again," Whale stated as he passed the paddles to another nurse. "We can't afford to waste time here so please - tell me when that damned thing is charged again!"

"It won't be long now," Fiona taunted as the blade of her sword clashed against Emma's once again. "Storybrooke's infrastructure is already failing. Can't you feel it?"

"I have had just about enough of you!" a disgusted Emma shouted as she determined it was time to try a new tactic. As Fiona shifted her stance to ward off Emma's strike, Emma suddenly changed direction, pulling back instead of advancing and stomping her boot onto the feathery hem of Fiona's gown. The move caught the fairy off balance and as soon as Emma saw the opening, she slammed the butt end of the sword into Fiona's rib cage, dropping the fairy to her knees as she became entangled in her own skirt. Fiona attempted to recover her bearings but this time, Emma moved faster, bringing the tip of her blade to the hollow of Fiona's throat.

"Go ahead, Savior – kill me!" Fiona hissed at her opponent. "Go ahead and do it, but it won't stop my curse. The storm is settling in all around us because your True Love is dead!"

Emma wanted more than anything at that moment to simply plunge the blade straight into the Black Fairy's jugular, but her trembling hands - and her own morality wouldn't allow her to do it.

"Hand too shaky to do this right?" the fairy mocked her. "Ah, the curse of being the Savior…"

Emma squeezed her eyes closed for a few seconds, keeping the blade pressed into Fiona's neck as she tried to push the visions and the tremors out of her head. "No – this is all just a trick! These visions, the tremors – it's all you! You've been getting into my head to make me fear this battle, but you know what – I'm not afraid of it anymore and I don't even have to kill you to win." With one swift, skillful swath, Emma drew the tip of the blade from left to right across Fiona's neck, leaving behind a shallow cut that was just deep enough to draw blood.

"That's all? Is that all you have?" Fiona scoffed.

"That's all I need," Emma replied with a triumphant grin as she watched a series of scarlet rivulets trickle down onto the flat of the sword's blade, triggering a reaction that the Black Fairy hadn't anticipated. The blade began to glow with an unearthly greenish light and Emma thought she'd explain what was happening. "You see, your son told me that he coated the blade with a special potion that only required a drop of your blood to activate and now – now I get to send you back where you belong!"

Fiona's eyes widened as the glowing sword began to pull her toward it. "No… No, he couldn't have…" the fairy fumbled for words as she found herself being dragged into the magnetic field the sword was creating. "No!" She had time for one final exclamation as the sword seemed to suck her into itself, causing Emma to lose her grip on the handle which sent the sword clattering onto the grating. As it hit the floor, the glow faded away, allowing the blade to resume its normal appearance - and the only remaining trace of the Black Fairy was a fluttering of stray feathers.

A shaken, exhausted Emma leaned against the tower wall, unable to trust that her weakening knees would continue to support her. While Rumple has said that simply drawing blood from Fiona would send her back to her realm, it had still been quite disconcerting to see her opponent sucked into the blade like that. The Black Fairy was now trapped permanently in some distant dimension, but her cursed storm wasn't letting up. Now Emma feared that Fiona had been right – it might already be too late.

She needed to get to the hospital now.

[softgothsweetheart]

Colors {Chrysalis}

The rain and wind was harsh and unforgiving as she walked up a path.

What the hell is going on?

Paisley got to where the path ended when she realized she was standing under a lighthouse. But then Lee saw another female and walked slowly to her. There was a giant tornado from what she could see and as she looked around, there wasn’t much else to be seen aside from buildings being completely destroyed. A boat flew from the storm, hitting the lighthouse. Just as Paisley recognized her classmate, she heard the loud groan and they both looked up, the lighthouse was coming down. Paisley shoved her classmate out of harms way just as the lighthouse collapsed on her. As she woke up, she realized she wasn’t in the middle of any storm, she was in class.

Paisley calmed her heartbeat and sighed, deciding that she would have to listen to class. Maybe her uncle giving a lecture would calm her down. Ground her, give her some sense of up and down until she could make sense of the dream.

Was it really a dream if I don’t remember falling asleep?

Paisley watched her uncle Mark lecture the students on Diane Arbus and chiaroscuro, all about photography – something she loved a lot. He’d taught her the beauty of it when she was old enough to hold one and not damage it. Lee knew she was old enough to form her own opinions of people and she – at the young age of 14 – had decided her uncle wasn’t truly who or what he said he was. The night she figured that out, it was too late, her aunt didn’t seem to care either – if she even knew what he did. But Lee was almost positive aunt Prudence knew. Not much too later, the bell rang, and the students were dismissed, only Kate, Max, and queen bee Victoria were left. Kate’s head was down, like she was thinking too hard, like she was overthinking. Lee wanted to believe it wasn’t because of the Vortex club party she’d attended a few weeks back, but she knew that it was. She must’ve remembered bits and pieces; Nathan hadn’t expected her to act out so much whilst under the influence.

Then Paisley stood up and walked over to her uncle who immediately dropped Victoria. She scoffed and glared at the younger girl, “Excuse you Paisley.”

Mark seemed to glare at the tall blonde, a look she didn’t notice. But he intervened before his beloved niece got hurt.

“Excuse you, miss Chase. Paisley is the youngest student here and she is also my niece and assistant.” He turned to her and asked her what she needed.

“Oh—I need to know where to go.”

“Just head out to the diner if need be.” He shrugged; Lee nodded obeying. As she walked away, Max walked almost alongside her but stopped when Mark called her name. Lee continued out of the quiet classroom into the noisy hallway where her fellow classmates were. Kids older than her by at least three years on but were more rambunctious than a room filled with toddlers. She quickly walked the halls, toward the bathroom because the feeling of eyes watching her had suddenly become too much to bear. Paisley had recently begun to experience something abnormal.

It’d happened one day when she was cleaning a camera and elbowed it off the table. The loud crash was heard in the back rooms of the house and her uncle had come rushing out, yelling. When he was coming at her, she held her hands out as if it were going to stop him and everything went backwards until her vision faded and burned at the edges. When Paisley looked behind her, the camera was fully intact and back on the desk. She thought it’d been a trip, but she even threw a rock into the house through a window before rewinding time until before it happened, even throwing her aunt’s phone at her head. The feeling and power had grown stronger, she knew that much.

Paisley’s feet took her into the girls’ bathroom, she holed herself in the last stall, listening to music on her phone as she sat on the toilet. It was a soft song—one of the many Rachel Amber had told her she’d like and gave to her on a playlist. It was sad that she’d no longer see her friend except through the miserable posters she saw around campus. The song was so soft that over the music she heard the door open once more and whispers. For a few minutes, Lee breathed silently and had her music low to listen when the door had opened with a loud smack, some more talking and another thwack. Shadows moved outside, she hadn’t a clue if they knew she was here in hiding. So, she killed the music and removed her headphones.

When Paisley looked down in the stall and to her left, she could see her fellow classmate’s shoes—Max’s to be exact. They weren’t hard to recognize. There was an exchange happening between Nathan and some random girl.

“You’re wrong—that’s my family—not me.”

“Oh, boo hoo, poor little rich kid. I know you’ve been pumpin’ drugs and shit to kids around here… I bet your respectable family would help me out if I went to them. Man, I can see the headlines now.” If this girl knew about the parties and drugs—if Nathan told, then she would die. Especially if she knew who the real culprit behind this was.

“Leave them out of this, bitch.” Nate growled, he wasn’t in the best of moods and she was testing his patience. It was going to get bad no doubt.

Maybe he can reel himself in… C’mon Nate, do what I taught you.

“I can tell everybody Nathan Prescott is a punk ass who begs like a little girl and talks to himself—" Seems the unknown female cut her sentence short, gasping, her shoes scraping against the tiling as she fell back to the wall.

“You don’t know who the fuck I am or who you’re messing around with!” He shouted.

“Where’d you get that? What are you doing? Come on, put that thing down!” She seemed to be begging, Paisley peeked through the cracks and couldn’t see a damn thing except for Nathan’s movements. He growled in rage and she had a frightening thought—

Maybe it’s the gun uncle Mark bought for him! Oh god, no.

“Don’t EVER tell me what to do. I’m so sick of people trying to control me!”

“You’re gonna get in hella more trouble for this than drugs.”

“Nobody would ever even miss your ‘punk ass’ would they?!”  

Is he going to shoot this girl? What would he do with the body? The gun?

“Get that gun away from me psycho!” A loud bang rang out, Max yelled, and Paisley saw her arm stretched out through the cracks before everything rewound. Lee was sat back in class, diagonal to Max who seemed to be alert. More than one time traveler sounded crazier than one did. Class went on, everything the exact same as before, except for Max elbowing her polaroid camera off the table and rewinding it until it was no longer broken. After Max played with her rewind, using Victoria’s answer against her and Mark’s quote against him when he asked her where her photo was, they both left the classroom. Lee pulled her aside where no one could overhear them.

“Stop rewinding, Max, seriously.”

“How did you—” The older female seemed panicked that she knew.

“I can time travel too. Stop using it on nonsense. It won’t work when you truly need it if you don’t.” Paisley didn’t expect Max to listen, but it would have been nice to. They re-entered the bathroom and followed what they had done previously and waited until Nathan had pulled his gun again. Max moved the trolley, picked up the mallet, rewound so the trolley was back and smacked the emergency alarm in the corner. Loud blaring sounds that came were deafening, Nathan had fallen to the floor with a slam as the blue haired female shouted and made her escape. Nathan followed suit and Lee opened the stall and saw Max giving her a look that showed her relief.

They exited the bathroom together, but the security guard promptly stopped them, scolding and interrogating as if they were children and had done something wrong.

“Hey, Madsen, don’t be such a dick. I have familial issues and Max was helping and consoling me.” Paisley glared, and Max tried her best but looked like a small child.

“Miss Christopher—shut your mouth—” Lee scoffed, fake tears springing to her eyes as her hand covered her mouth. Principal Wells intervened and the were glad, but when exiting the building he stopped them.

“You both look stressed out. Are you both okay?”

“Mr. Madsen has serious issues, he just told me to shut up. He interrogated us. Today is such a hard day—it was my mother’s birthday.” Max seemed to be impressed by Paisley’s lying abilities.

“Is that all you’re thinking of? Or have you done something wrong?”

“Are you accusing me of lying, principal Wells?” She questioned, her tears drying up and shooting him an accusing glare.

“I’m sure my uncle informed you that it is in fact my mother’s birthday. I get very sad during this time of year. Max found me in the bathroom and consoled me. So, yes, principal Wells, I am rather stressed.” He must’ve bought it because he nodded and gestured to his office.

“My door is always open to give advice.”

“Thank you so much. It really means a lot.” Paisley nodded, giving a watery relieved smile before pulling Max to the main campus through the doors. The alarm was off but the ringing from it was annoying as all hell. Once they descended the stairs, Max yanked herself loose and it spun Lee around to face her.

“You didn’t tell him about Nathan—”

“Max, you don’t understand what happens if we go down that road. Wells won’t give a shit; he won’t look into it. Then he’ll tell Nathan’s dad who’ll threaten him and tell Nathan. It’ll come back to us.”

“But—shit—you lied so well that Wells bought it!”

“He’s a fucking drunkard, of course he did. Plus, I have tons of experience under my belt that I might as well be an expert.”

“Thanks, I guess… You’re Paisley Christopher, right?”

“Yeah I’m Mark Jefferson’s niece.”

“I didn’t know that, you look super young. How old are you?”

“Fourteen, he made sure I got into the academy.”

“Doesn’t seem like you’re fourteen, you seem older.” A ping from Max’s phone sounded and she instantly checked it, texting.

“It’s Warren, I have to go. I’ll see you later?” Max asked, Paisley nodded and while her classmate went around campus to socialize, she went directly to the dorms where Victoria was sat with her minions. All three annoying plastics. When Paisley tried to pass, Victoria scoffed, sitting up.

“Whoa freak, you don’t even stay in the dorms.” She mocked, pointing out. Paisley rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.

“I mean, don’t move if you wanna crush your chances at the Everyday Heroes contest. I would, especially since I have ways of convincing my uncle.” Lee examined her nails, letting her green eyes flicker to Victoria’s.

“You’re like fucking twelve!” She shouted in displeasure.

“Nice guess, Tori, but I’m fourteen and I don’t screw around. If you want your fair chance to win the contest I’d move.” Victoria rolled her eyes, standing up even as Courtney and Taylor scoffed. They’d told their queen bee not to move a muscle and she had. It made Paisley feel powerful as she went up the steps and into the boys’ dorms.

Paisley entered the dorms, walking down the corridor before turning left and knocking on the first door there;111.

“What?” She heard Nathan’s upset grumbling from behind the door. Lee opened the door and walked in to where Nate was laying on his bed.

“What the fuck do you want?” Paisley closed the door behind her and sat on his couch and tried to get comfortable.

“You, the bathroom. Wanna tell me what the hell you were thinking?”

“The bathroom?” He asked, waving his hand dismissively.

“Your goddamn gun, Nate!” She whispers shouts and he was up and on his feet in an instant, his hand wrapped around her neck loosely. Nathan’s hand squeezed lightly, trying to remind her who was in charge.

“Don’t fucking yell at me, you’re like ten years old.”

“I’m fourteen, Nathan. Don’t play the age card.” She removed his hand and shoved it into his chest.

“He’ll kill us if he finds out.” She reminded him and he groaned.

“You actually want to live with what we’ve done?”

“Can you please take this seriously?” Nathan let out a laugh, devoid of any humor. It answered her question. He collapsed back on his bed and relaxed.

“Where were you in the bathroom?”

“I was hiding in the last stall.” He locked eyes with her and squinted, making sure she wasn’t lying.

“I guess you left the fucking Polaroid then. You gonna join Max on her twee hipster expeditions?”

“That one wasn’t mine, Nate.”

“Then who does it—” He stopped himself short and sat up.

“Max Caulfield. Fan-fucking-tastic! Are you sure she was there?”

“She saw the gun, she almost told Wells too, I had to step in and lie.”

“You only stepped in to cover her ass.”

“Not even, I stepped in because what if Wells begins investigating? You know Mark wouldn’t be happy about it. I convinced her that it was best if she didn’t clash heads with you.”

“Damn right.” Nathan was off his bed and out the door and had Paisley trailing after him, he was in the main campus and in the parking lot in no time at all. Paisley was trying to stop him, pulling on his arm but he yanked out of her grip.

“Max Caulfield, right? You’re one of Jefferson’s photo groupies…” He asked as he approached her.

“I’m one of his students.” Max corrected; Paisley cursed her. Why couldn’t s have just gone along with it?

“Whatthefuckever. I know you like to take pictures, especially when you’re hiding out in bathrooms. You best tell me what you saw. Now!” Nathan demanded, yelling. Paisley braced herself for the worst, she knew it was coming. She shook her head at Warren when he looked to her, Nathan towered over Max. She shouldn’t have told him.

“What are you talking about?”

“I know you’re new here but don’t play dumb with me.”

“I’m not new. I’ve lived here for years.”

“Then you should know the Prescott’s own this shithole.”

“Nate—"

“Then you shouldn’t worry about me… worry about yourself.” He grew angrier, his hands clenching tighter into fists. Max seemed to have a penchant for pissing him off, then again, didn’t everybody?

Nathan was so far gone, lost in his anger and beyond reasoning. If a hand was laid on him, a fight could break out. He was a ticking time bomb.

“Do not analyze me! I pay people for that. Worry about yourself, Max Caulfield.”

“Take a step back, Nathan Prescott.” Max's words have him stepping closer, into her face.

“Oh, man, you’re telling me what to do?” Warren gets in between and as a result, gets headbutted. He falls to the ground, clutching his head. Max shoves Nathan and he turns back to her, his hand gripping her around the neck.

“Nathan!” Paisley shouted, eyeing Warren on the ground.

“Nobody tells me what to do,” he shakes Max, “Not my parents, not the principal, or that whore in the bathroom!” She manages to scrape his cheek and he shoves her to the ground. Lee grabs Nate by his shoulder and he backhands her, and she stumbles as a rusted beige truck drives up. It almost hits Max who immediately stands up and gazes at the driver.

“Chloe?”

“Max?” They hear the driver exclaim.

“No way, you again?” Nathan questions in a growl. Warren stands up and tackles Nathan to the ground.

“Go, go! I got this!” He yells and Max gets in. Paisley looks around and all she can feel is her heart beating in her chest. Nathan pauses hitting Warren and stands up, kicking the car door closed.

“Get your punk asses out of there now! Don’t even try to run! Nobody messes with me! NOBODY!” He shouts as the female from the bathroom pulls away. Paisley watches as the truck gets farther and farther away. Madsen comes over and the teenagers turn towards him.

“You three, Principal Wells’ office. Now.”

“Fuck off old man.” Nathan gives the security guard the finger. Warren stands to his feet and Paisley feels her cheek and looks around between the guys.

“Miss Christopher—move it—”

“Dude I said fuck off! Do you not understand English?” Nate shouted, lighting a cigarette. Madsen grabbed Lee by her bicep, and she tried pulling away, protesting.

“Leave her alone—” Warren said.

“Stay out of this Gayram.” Nathan sneered. Madsen forced them to the Principal’s office, Warren with an ice pack, Nathan with a bandage where the scratches were, and Paisley who had makeup on hand to cover the forming bruise.

“Would either of you three care to explain?” Wells asked, each of them looked at each other. The boys not bothering to mask their disdain for each other.

“Nathan started this.” The younger boy spoke up. The older boy raised his eyebrows and leaned forward, giving him the finger, which Wells didn’t even bother to comment on. Warren gave a mocking face and Nathan almost smacked him from behind Paisley when Wells scolded him. Warren and Paisley argued until it became too loud and they all silenced at Wells’ yelling. Nathan made half assed comments and left the office, not bothering to close the door behind him.

“We done here? Cause I’m leaving too.” Warren stormed out in a slightly less aggressive fashion and Paisley secured her bag as she stood up.

“Want to explain miss Christopher? It seems like the most trouble you’ve caused, and the week is only beginning.” He asked, leaning over his desk. Paisley shrugged.

“I’m just unlucky. Bad timing is all.” She chalked it up, leaving the room as she heard him sigh behind her. She exited the school and what ever students were left from earlier whispered and eyed her. First time she’d taken it in stride, she’d made it to the campus exit when she received two messages at the same time from two very different people.

UNKNOWN > You just wait until I see you later.

Warren > How could you defend such an asshole? He hit you!

Not a good end to any day, this meant bad news. When she met her uncle in the parking lot, he didn’t look pleased in the least. Paisley got in the car, no protesting and he climbed in the driver’s side. The whole ride home, he expressed his disappointment calmly. Most likely he’d get angrier at home where she could receive her punishment.

They arrived but when she slowly went to hide but failed, he caught her by her lengthy brown hair, yanking her downwards until her knees hit the laminate.

“I wasn’t going to discipline you but then I saw the look in your eye. You were going to hide; I just know it.”

“Please—uncle Mark, I wasn’t! I promise!” She cried, her knees rubbing harshly even with her dress to protect them a little. Her hands covered his, attempting to undo them.

“Go to your room, I don’t want to see you until tomorrow.” He let go of her hair and Paisley managed to stand up on her wobbly knees.

“My punishment?” She asked, stumbling back.

“You take the photos Friday. I choose the subject and you don’t get dinner tonight.”

“What subject?” She asked fearfully, maybe it was Stella? Or Alyssa, or even Taylor and Courtney. It was impossible to figure out who his intended target was.

“Victoria, of course. You’re drugging her at the Vortex Club party. After I announced the winner of the contest.” Paisley nodded, leaving his presence and staying in her room. He’d left a bit ago by the time the sun was setting, it was getting late and she was getting hungry, but she wouldn’t dare try to eat. Paisley lost track of how much time she’d been sitting in the window. When she saw the snow, she didn’t believe it to be real. The house was silent meaning her aunt Prudence was gone and had taken Amelia to work.

She simply went outside and watched it snow. Lee sat on the steps of the backyard and felt sharp pains in her head, passing out. There was thunder, harsh winds. Paisley forced herself to walk up the steep terrain. She managed to barely avoid collapsing trees and rolling boulders. They obstacles she probably couldn’t have managed without her rewind abilities. As she ran up, Paisley realized it was a lighthouse. The lighthouse, she looked over the edge and saw nothing but Arcadia Bay in ruins.

When she made it to the top, she saw Max who was holding a newspaper.

“October 11th? Is this Friday? That’s only four days away!” Max exclaimed, letting the paper fly upwards into the storm. Paisley reached out, her hand touching Max’s shoulder as she zapped back to the stairs. Lee stood and stumbled into the house, locking the back door and locking herself inside her bedroom.

Maybe it’s time to be a hero.

[bakaiju]

(T-02-1##) Abnormality Emperor

Abnormality Basic Information

Code: T-02-1##

Name: Abnormality Emperor/ Emperor of Monsters

Level: ALEPH

Attack Type: White 7-9

E-box output: 34

Work Results:

Good 22-34

Normal: 13-21

Bad: 0-12

Abnormality Work Favor

Instinct Work: Very Low-Low-Low-Common-Common

Insight Work: Very Low-Low-Low-Common-Common

Attachment Work: Low-Low-Low-Common-Common

Repression Work: Very Low-Very Low- Very Low- Low-Low

Abnormality Managerial Works

Tip 1: When the work result was normal, Qliphoth Counter decreased in a low probability.

Tip 2: When the work result was bad, Qliphoth Counter decreased.

Tip 3: This creature gets bored and frustrated easily as its Qliphoth Counter decreases after a long time without anyone distracting it.

Tip 4: The White Damage inflicted by the work is due to the stress of having literally thousands of lives in the palms of your hands to distract the creature away from civilization while extracting energy.

Tip 5:  This creature might not be in the containment room but the threat is very real: When T-02-1## ‘escaped’ loud steps were heard outside each 10~15 seconds, dropping the Qliphoth Counter of an Abnormality in random in the Facility. And thus starts the longest 3 minutes on Earth. (Probability of affected Abnormality: ZAYIN= 0%; TETH = 20%; HE= 35%; WAW= 35%; ALEPH= 10%)

Tip 6: After 1:30 minutes have passed, three ‘offsprings’ appeared in the Control Team Department and will spread and head down the Facility.

Tip 7: Once the 3 minutes passed, T-02-1## is finally distracted again and work can be done again.

Abnormality Escape Information

Qliphoth Counter : 2

Abnormality Defense: The creature is already out.

EGO Information

No EGO gift

EGO Weapon: ALEPH Kaiju Killer

Type: Pale (15-20)

Speed: Normal

Range: Very Long

Description: When equipped, the powers of a giant monster invades the wearer. They will feel like an Emperor ruling over a world filled by inferior creatures, the power of destruction in their hand.

Special effect: This weapon was designed to kill powerful entities. Damage x1.2-1.5 to any entities level WAW or Above.

EGO Suit: ALEPH Kaiju Killer

Red (x0.4) Resistant

White (x0.4) Resistant

Black (x0.4) Resistant

Pale (x0.2) Resistant

Description: When equipped, the resistance of a giant monster invades the wearer. They will feel like an Emperor ruling over a world filled by inferior creatures, the power of not feeling pain on their body.

Special effect: This suit was designed to not feel pain from inferior beings. When suppressing, and only when suppressing, neglects any kind of damage from entities level HE or lower.

Abnormality Story

This Monster could never be contained. That’s probably why it's the Emperor.

No one knows where it comes from or even how old it could be but it just appeared one day on the surface of the world and started to destroy everything on its path.

-Diary of a survivor-

« I… I don’t know what happened, we were all having fun and suddenly it went south. Everyone was in the streets, screaming and running away from this gigantic shadow overtowering us like we do on insects. The monster was destroying buildings and stepping on us as if we weren’t even here. Like in those old movies.

Of course, our military tried to kill or at least push the titan away. But it wasn’t effective and was just making it even angrier. With its pale blue laser breath it destroyed and killed everything in its burning light.

At a moment, it's chestplate opened up and dropped three big dark bombs. When the dark objects hit the ground and exploded, three smaller versions of the giant but with different colors stood instead and immediately started to kill of people hiding in the buildings.

[...]

It’s been at least days or weeks we’ve been hiding in this underground shelter until we got news that the smaller creatures were eliminated but the giant one was relentless. Instead they decided to bait it away from the city and it’s a success so far.

Just how long until it comes back…? »

« It’s back. Oh God it came back! And it looks even more furious than before! We all immediately ran towards the shelter but the kaiju -I heard that’s how giant monsters are called- was faster this time and seemed to be aiming directly at us unlike last time where it was just wandering around. Also the three smaller kaijus started digging on the ground instead of chasing us like before…

[...]

This time I heard that some people were supposed to watch over the monster so it doesn’t go on a rampage again. Well whoever they are they fucked up! They fucked up bad! More of my friends are dead! More people died! More children died and cried! If only… if only that damn thing was dead! »

-Diary of employee BKJ3135-

•I’ve been an employee at Lobotomy for a few months now. I’ve seen many scary things and lived through a lot of pain just to survive, but there’s also many good things! [...] But today was very different.

I was assigned to a new Abnormality but when I was about to enter the containment room, a big book of how to manage the creature was given to me and I had to read. Which was strange since it never happened with any other Abnormalities I had to work with before.

There was a lot of control tips and manuals, I thought the creature must be some kind of robot like the Little Helper.

But when I entered the room I froze completely as terror filled my soul. There was a big control panel and a giant screen on the wall. And on that screen was that Kaiju, it roared and I almost ran away.

That was what happened last time when I was on the surface and it attacked again… someone was working in this same room and failed to distract the monster, leading to a hundreds of deaths. And now it’s my turn.

I started working with the multiples joystick and buttons but everything I remembered from the book disappeared out of my mind.

Memories of my family, my friends and all the people screaming filled my mind. All depended on me, if I fail… more friends are going to die. More children are going to burn screaming, more and more and more death… because of me.

The monster looked at me through the screen. Could it see me? It just grunted, what was that supposed to mean!?

I can’t… I… am I doing wrong? Good?! What? …

[Redacted]

It seemed I panicked shortly after and pissed the monster but it didn’t go on a rampage. I don’t remember any of that but I do remember I was so mad and scared that I tried to kill it with whatever I was controlling in that room.

Of course it did nothing.

The Kaiju might be ‘under control’ for now, but how long until it eventually gets bored of us?

It’s just a question of time before it attacks us again and cleanses the World of our existence.

Then it will rule it as its Emperor.

I just hope to be long dead before this day comes.•

The offsprings of the Kaiju ALEPH Abnormality.

They all start from the top of the Facility in the main room of the Control Department, then they'll start heading down the facility killing and attacking everything on their path.

The White one will take this path: Control - Security- Central Command - Welfare- Record

The Red one this path: Control - Training- Central Command- Disciplinary - Extraction

And the Black one this one: Control - Information- Central Command

The White one will do roars attacks while walking, inflicting heavy White Damage to everyone in the room with it. it's defenses are : Vulnerable to Red Damage (x1.5); Immune to White Damage (x0.0), Resistant to Black Damage (x0.4) and Normal to Pale damage (x1.0)

The Red one will step heavily, bite, tail whip, scratch and punch anything around it while walking, inflicting heavy Red Damage. When its HP are dropped to 25%, it will do a heavy combo once. It's defenses are: Immune to Red Damage (x0.0); Resistant to White Damage (x0.4); Vulnerable to Black Damage (x1.5) and Normal to Pale Damage (x1.0)

The Purple one will use laser breath attacks each time it enters a room/corridor that reaches the other end of the room/corridor, continuously inflicting average Black Damage for a short time. When it's HP drops to 50% or when it reaches the Central Command Department it will do a circular laser breath attack that goes through the walls and to the other end of the map, only once, inflicting heavy Black Damage. It's defenses are: Resistant to Red Damage (x0.4); Vulnerable to White Damage (x1.5); Immune to Black Damage (x0.0) and Normal to Pale Damage (x1.0)

The player have to suppress all three of them during the timer of the Original escaped Abnormality all while suppressing the the other Abnormality who escaped at the stomps of the Kaiju outside the facility

Hope you like it! I certainly took some time to come up with all the details! I’m thinking of submitting the idea to the devs.

[newstfionline]

Sunday, May 23, 2021

As US schools resume testing, large numbers are opting out (AP) Standardized tests are returning to the nation’s schools this spring, but millions of students will face shorter exams that carry lower stakes, and most families are being given the option to forgo testing entirely. With new flexibility from the Biden administration, states are adopting a patchwork of testing plans that aim to curb the stress of exams while still capturing some data on student learning. Some of the nation’s largest districts plan to test only a fraction of their students as many continue to learn remotely. In New York City, students must opt in to be tested this year. In Los Angeles, most students are not being asked to take state exams this year. Other districts are scaling back questions or testing in fewer subjects. As in the past, parents are polarized. Some are demanding tests to get a sense of their children’s progress. Others see no need to put their children through that kind of stress.

Their Own Private Idaho: Five Oregon Counties Back a Plan to Secede (NYT) Political divisions in Oregon can to a great degree be measured by a river, the Deschutes, which winds its snaky, circuitous way through the state’s midsection. The river divides the high prairies of the eastern half—agricultural and politically conservative, largely—from the wetter, woodier western half, which has long been more populated and more liberal. The statewide shutdown orders that accompanied the coronavirus pandemic last year deepened those divisions, crippling businesses at a time when some rural counties had few cases. The protests and riots over race and police conduct in Portland, the state’s largest city, widened the gap further still, and the defeat of former President Donald J. Trump, who won most counties but still lost the state by a big margin after President Biden’s strong showing in the cities, capped off a litany of frustrations. This week, all of that led thousands of east-bank residents to a single resonant but highly improbable word: secession. A majority of residents in five eastern counties said in nonbinding votes that they would like to leave Oregon and join with their more like-minded conservative neighbors further east in Idaho. “Those of us in rural Oregon are written off,” said Mike McCarter, a retired agricultural nursery owner who has led the secession drive.

After an absence, New England’s ticks are back—and hungry (AP) A late-summer drought virtually eliminated ticks in parts of New England but they’re back with a vengeance this spring. Dog ticks, which do not carry Lyme disease like deer ticks do, have been especially active since early spring in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. And people who’ve been getting outdoors because of the pandemic are discovering the arachnids on themselves and on pets. The busy spring for ticks has been sending more people to the emergency room in Maine. Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported 176 tick-related emergency department visits for the week that ended May 16. Last year, there were 91 tick-related ER visits in the same week. “Tickborne diseases remain a serious threat in Maine,” Maine CDC said in a statement.

COVID-19 deaths in Latin America surpass 1 mln as outbreak worsens (Reuters) The death toll from COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean passed 1 million people on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, with the pandemic worsening in the part of the world with the highest per capita death rate. From the dusty highlands of Bolivia to the Brazilian metropolis of São Paulo, the pandemic has swamped underfunded healthcare systems after spreading fast across nations where many people survive hand-to-mouth and have been unable to enter lockdown. With cases falling in Europe, Asia and North America, and flat in Africa, South America is the only region where new infections are rising rapidly on a per capita basis, according to Our World in Data.

Lula Starts to Rekindle Old Magic in Brazil Souring on Bolsonaro (Bloomberg) They came by the dozens in solicitous clusters from the left but also the center and right to a Brasilia hotel suite this month. They smiled and fist-bumped. They tweeted. The man whose attention they were seeking, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, received them, pope-like, surrounded by exhilarated aides. Lula, the Brazilian shoeshine boy who founded the Workers’ Party, became an epoch-defining, wildly popular president, then was jailed for corruption and cleared by the supreme court, is emerging as the main challenger to President Jair Bolsonaro in next year’s election. As the country of 212 million reels from the death toll and upheaval caused by Covid, driving down Bolsonaro’s approval to 24%, interviews with a dozen political leaders indicate that Lula, who was president from 2003 through 2010, is rapidly uniting a vast chunk of the political spectrum around his expected candidacy. As his Workers’ Party president, Gleisi Hoffmann, said in an interview, after pressing for more vaccines and aid to the poor, “Our main role is to organize as many forces as possible to face the greatest evil that is Bolsonaro.”

BBC faces questions of integrity after Princess Diana report (AP) British broadcaster BBC, seen as a respected source of news and information around the world, is facing questions at home about its integrity following a scathing report on its explosive 1995 interview with Princess Diana. Britain’s justice secretary said Friday that the government would review the rules governing oversight of the BBC after an investigation found that one of its journalists used “deceitful behavior” to secure the interview and the corporation obscured this misconduct for 25 years. Princes William and Harry, Diana’s sons, excoriated the BBC late Thursday, saying there was a direct link between the interview and their mother’s death in a traffic accident two years later as she and a companion were being pursued by paparazzi.

Bienvenidos! Tourists invited to rural Spain to save dying villages (Reuters) Instead of the traditional sand and sea holidays, foreign tourists are invited to enjoy the charms of the Spanish countryside, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday, launching an ambitious plan to save Spain’s dying villages. The 10 billion euro ($12.18 billion) plan aims to save rural life in a nation where 42% of villages are at risk of depopulation compared to a European Union average of 10%. From Monday, Spain will open up to tourists from outside the European Union deemed low-risk for coronavirus, notably Britain and Japan, who will not be required to show a negative test. The left-wing government plans to increase internet access in rural areas, improve transport routes, offer grants for young entrepreneurs and small businesses and launch a rural Erasmus educational scheme. Sanchez said that Spain’s 47 million people occupy just 12.7% of the land, compared to 67.8% of the territory populated in France and 59.9% of German territory.

2 separate China quakes cause damage; 3 dead, dozens hurt (AP) A strong, shallow earthquake shook southwestern China near the border with Myanmar, killing at least three people and injuring more than two dozen, while a separate, more intense quake early Saturday collapsed a bridge and caused other damage in central China. The first, 6.4 magnitude earthquake hit Yunnan province late Friday. The second 7.3 magnitude quake occurred hours later in the southern part of Qinghai province, about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) to the south, according to Chinese measurements. While no deaths have been reported so far in Qinghai province, the quakes tore up roads and bridges, with one collapsing completely, broken into segments.

After the Cease-Fire, Gaza Wakes to a Sea of Rubble (NYT) The skies above Gaza and Israel were silent for the first time in 10 days on Friday night, after a truce between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza, took effect early Friday. But while Israel could quickly rebound, with the authorities reopening roads around Gaza that had been closed during the conflict, the scale of the destruction in Gaza will not allow a return to normality for some time. Central thoroughfares in Gaza City looked like a dystopia. A sea of rubble, several yards high and dozens wide, spread across several streets, blocking half their breadth. A vast crater filled a wide intersection, a burst sewage pipe gurgling at the bottom. A burned-out white car, hit by an airstrike this week, remained on the same spot at the seaside traffic circle where it was struck, forcing drivers to edge around it. Israeli airstrikes killed more than 230 people, destroyed more than 1,000 housing and commercial units, rendered more than 750 uninhabitable, and displaced more than 77,000 people, according to tallies compiled by Gazan officials and the United Nations. Seventeen clinics and hospitals were damaged, as well as three major desalination plants, power lines and sewage works, leaving 800,000 residents, or nearly half the population, without easy access to clean drinking water, the United Nations added. More than 53 schools were damaged.

Boko Haram Leader, Responsible for Chibok Schoolgirl Kidnappings, Dies (WSJ) Abubakar Shekau, the fundamentalist warlord who turned Boko Haram from an obscure radical sect into a jihadist army whose war with the Nigerian state has left tens of thousands dead across four nations, has died, according to officials, mediators, phone calls intercepted by a West African spy agency and internal intelligence memos seen by The Wall Street Journal. His death, which Nigeria’s military has erroneously reported at least three times before, was confirmed by five Nigerian officials who detailed how he detonated a suicide vest during a confrontation with rival insurgents to avoid being taken alive. It removes one the world’s most brutal and effective terrorists, who plunged four nations, including Africa’s most populous, into a religious war. Globally, he was best known for kidnapping nearly 300 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok on the night before their final exams.

Volcano erupts near Congolese city of Goma; residents flee (AP) Congo’s Mount Nyiragongo erupted for the first time in nearly two decades Saturday, turning the night sky a fiery red and sending lava onto a major highway as panicked residents tried to flee Goma, a city of nearly 2 million. There was no immediate word on any casualties, but witnesses said that lava already had engulfed one highway that connects Goma with the city of Beni in North Kivu province. Mount Nyiragongo’s last eruption, in 2002, left hundreds dead and coated airport runways in lava. More than 100,000 people were left homeless in the aftermath, adding to the fear in Goma on Saturday night. “We are already in a total psychosis,” resident Zacharie Paluku told The Associated Press. “Everyone is afraid; people are running away. We really don’t know what to do.”

Fungi (Scientific American) We are likely to think of fungi, if we think of them at all, as minor nuisances: mold on cheese, mildew on shoes shoved to the back of the closet, mushrooms springing up in the garden after hard rains. We notice them, and then we scrape them off or dust them away, never perceiving that we are engaging with the fragile fringes of a web that knits the planet together. Fungi constitute their own biological kingdom of about six million diverse species. Fungi break rocks, nourish plants, seed clouds, cloak our skin and pack our guts, a mostly hidden and unrecorded world living alongside us and within us. That mutual coexistence is now tipping out of balance. Fungi are surging beyond the climate zones they long lived in, adapting to environments that would once have been inimical, learning new behaviors that let them leap between species in novel ways. While executing those maneuvers, they are becoming more successful pathogens, threatening human health in ways—and numbers—they could not achieve before. Surveillance that identifies serious fungal infections is patchy, and so any number is probably an undercount. But one widely shared estimate proposes that there are possibly 300 million people infected with fungal diseases worldwide and 1.6 million deaths every year—more than malaria, as many as tuberculosis. Just in the U.S., the CDC estimates that more than 75,000 people are hospitalized annually for a fungal infection, and another 8.9 million people seek an outpatient visit, costing about $7.2 billion a year. For physicians and epidemiologists, this is surprising and unnerving. Long-standing medical doctrine holds that we are protected from fungi not just by layered immune defenses but because we are mammals. That may have left us overconfident.