#monster rat b

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Monster Rat A and Monster Rat B

Debut: Birdiy

Wow! The most abstracted rats I have ever seen in my life! No pointy snout. No whiskers. No little ears. No little handy feet. The only ratty things about them are the fact they have eyes and mouths at all, and their tails. And those things I described are the only aspects of the design!

Um. Hi, Monster Rats. Yes, I am talking about you. I would prefer if you did not stare at me like that.

Wow! They understood my request! What clever Monster Rats. So as was established, these are the red Monster Rat A, and the cyan Monster Rat B! There are only two of them, so it is easy to tell them apart. It is also easy to project character traits onto them and develop headcanons about their personalities! If you still need help telling them apart, though, think B for blue, since cyan is made from blue. Think A for red. The A stands for, "Ah! This one is red!"

You probably don't know what Birdiy is, huh? I literally just found out about it myself, and was captivated by these Monster Rats. I promise this is a real game and I did not just doodle some weird sprites to prank you! Look at this:

See! Birdiy! An arcade game about a mama bird collecting larvae to feed her babies! And look, there's our friend Monster Rat A! Hi! I guess the lines on its tail are to make it look like a wormy rat tail, but the shape is not helping anything. It looks like a waxed cheese wheel with a floppy baguette sticking out of it. I'm glad it does! This image reassures us that it is, indeed, supposed to look so baffling.

The goal of both Monster Rats is to eat the little baby bird whole. Yes, they are enemies, no, they are not Bad Guys! These are just some creatures! Despite what the media may suggest, being a baby bird does not make a creature morally superior. Sometimes a baby bird is simply eaten, by a Monster Rat. It's fine. It's good!

Look at this little drawing of Monster Rat A from the flyer, which also calls them CLEVER monster rats in another section! So silly and cute. They call the chicks "chickens" here. This game did not sell well at all. But you can bet I'm pointing to Monster Rat if anyone ever asks me to give an example of #retro 1983 nostalgia! It's a little sad Monster Rat A gets all the drawn art. All both of it. Thank goodness for hue shifting!

There you go, Monster Rat B. Now there are as many images of you in the world as there are of your crony!

Oh yeah! There is a skunk in this game, too. Just in case you were thinking they just couldn't draw quadruped mammals, and went with lumps instead. They can indeed draw quadruped mammals! They could have drawn actual rats! And I love actual rats, but thank goodness they didn't! I love everything about Monster Rats, little as there may be to work with!

Here is a tileable image of our friends the Monster Rats. I made it my background, then changed it back because it did not look very good at all. This is my gift to you.

[zippocreed501]

...images from the lost continent of cult films, b-movies and celluloid dreamscapes

Dirty Rat-Bastards: Rats in horror films

Willard (1971) Ben (1972) The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972) The Food of the Gods (1976) The Rats/Deadly Eyes (1982) Of Unknown Origin (1983) Rats: Night of Terror (1984) Graveyard Shift (1990) Willard (2003)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

also if only the physical copy of how to disappear completely & never be found i first encountered & read a few years ago (sort of [roughly avg age ten] reader book, not any similarly titled How To) hadn't disappeared completely & not been found since, probably b/c i put it somewhere i intended to be For Safekeeping, which is also how my binder vanished....b/c it's one of those like. those book for late elementary/middle school readers when they just weave in this unrealism which makes for a delightful range & unpredicability? and with a cynical protagonist girl like off to the races like wow her mom is depressed asf & smoking? and it's about A Family History Secrets Mystery so blatantly a haunting that the inciting incident is basically introducing a haunted [family history secrets mystery] house. and spoilers don't matter like it's stemming from there being this missing uncle who grew up so in contrast to the Winsome Winning Sibling Who Does It All Right while seeing his own affiliation with rats that he tried to disappear completely & never be found which led to this Tragedy which led to this more unintended disappearance of his & he haunts this house & wants to be left alone & only goes out at night with this [ambiguous Is That A Giant Rat Or Weird Small Dog (protagonist affected by these family situations who expresses her preoccupation with an awareness of how fate can Strike and Get you with this interest with roving packs of killer chihuahuas. people think she's weird though she spontaneously befriends this other girl struck with this bolt from the blue & a bit weird / outcast & then Insightful who i wish was in it more)] & plays into the hauntedness danger like playing into the [something's Wrong with you then] until having to take yet more action where the urge to express the truth comes out more both b/c living that hidden is more threatened but also b/c now the niece children are more threatened as well. ft. a sort of preternatural blurring of time b/c of only being communicated with through this uncle via his comic pages (that he paints?) of dubiously accurate translations of irl events that are created so quickly it seems to verge on foresight, imagine like "hmm what's this painting. it's me standing in this room looking at this painting??? as someone ominous lurks in the shadows right behind me?" in both [now how could you know this & paint it really fast ahead of time] and [horror]

[gg-id-good]

Full Kylo comic

There is more coming soon

I hop you like it

You can ask me questions if you want

[beatrixst0nehill]

"Just making a little jab at my company. It's soooo frustrating earning a Master's just to wind up at a company that thinks all women are good for is inflating our breasts until they burst! My boss has been aggressively forcing every girl at our company to take experimental breast growth pills which have like a billion different side effects. So I was complaining to one of my coworkers that I'm depressed cause none of my old clothes fit anymore because, you know, I'm not a B-Cup anymore. I'm ...... whatever the hell this is! I don't even want to know honestly, it's too embarrassing. Probably an R-cup or S-cup.

But, well, my coworker ratted me out for complaining and because I said I was depressed I got this crazy letter at my desk saying 'Unhappy? We invite you to Lakehurst Women's Mental Wellness Center'. I cracked up laughing so hard I hard to run to the restroom. My boobs started lactating uncontrollably just because I was laughing SO hard, which they've been doing more and more lately. Hurray more side effects!

But for those not in the know, I'm not shocked Lakehurst is in my company's healthcare network, with how misogynistic my boss is. Basically you go there and they experiment on you to 'break you'. They force you to get insanely pregnant, like humiliatingly big, a dozen kids at once. You're kept naked 24/7 as male interns and students from nearby colleges are trained on you. They get to perform whatever kinky surgeries they want on girls, and fuck them, of course. Gotta make sure guys' dicks don't stay hard for more than five seconds, it's the state's number one priority! I hear they even lobotomize girls there for fun, to 'lower their IQ' if they score too high on tests. Because according to state law a high IQ for girls, or anything above 100 can be considered mental unwellness, and can legally be treated, by force if a partner or parent wants. Oh, and of course they also force you to grow giant tits, because having big boobs is good for a woman's mental health, or something.

Sooooo, I got my stupid letter and now I'm not gonna complain anymore. I just shut my mouth like a good girl and grow these monster tits for my pervy boss, who literally just sits in his office and jerks off all day, very loudly, to porn or he has us go in and strip, 'shake' and 'jiggle' our massive breasts for him so he can cum all over them, which we're not allowed to clean up the whole day if he does. There are already girls on our floor who have boobs so big they carry them in these trendy wheelbarrows or carts. I'm gonna buy one this weekend after I get paid because I'm kind of jealous, they are just soooo stylish and cute, and it'll make walking around so much easier, until they get so big I can't lift them up anymore. Godddd I can't believe I have to grow these stupid things, I hope my future husband really, really likes massive boobs. He's gonna have to get used to taking care of me real quick!"

[rallamajoop]

So why are there so many gay vampires?

From the time of Carmilla all the way up to the works of Anne Rice (a universe that seems to get only less subtle as the years go on), gay vampires have been a thing basically as long as anyone was writing about vampires. Lesbian vampires have been a genre all their own for decades. Bram Stoker, author of the most famous vampire novel ever written, was gay himself. So why vampires specifically?

I’ve seen people attempt to answer this one before, and there are all sorts of contributing factors I could point to here, from the genres’ beginnings with Lord Byron (infamous bisexual disaster fuckboy), to modern discourse about why queer folks so often find themselves identifying with the monsters and outcasts of fiction. Few other monsters besides vampires can so easily pass for ‘normal’, or are nearly so well known for their snappy dress sense and ‘unnatural cravings’ for human flesh. And that’s without even getting into all those skeezy outdated stereotypes casting queer people as predators, or the idea that even one ‘gay experience’ could somehow ‘convert’ you into being one yourself.

But to my mind, there’s just one really important thing that makes vampires so gay, and it’s the same thing that makes them sexy in the first place: plausible deniability.

You see, a vampire’s bite is simultaneously a) ridiculously sexual, and b) not even a little bit sexual at all.

You don’t have to look far for vampire canons where there’s nothing sexy about being bitten by a vampire. Bloody, violent, painful, sure ‒or just clinically miserable, human bodies torn open or hung up to drain like a human blood bag. What’s sexy about getting bitten by a mosquito, or a fecking leech? The diet of the actual vampire bat requires it to process so much water that it apparently spends mealtimes busily pissing out the difference, and the anti-coagulants in its saliva leave the wound bleeding messily long after it’s gone. The basic act of feeding is no more inherently sexual for a vampire than it is for a zombie.

Vampires are even a surprisingly acceptable monster to market to children. There’s a vampire muppet, a cartoon about a vampire duck, and a whole series of books about a vampire rabbit. You can put a vampire on the side of a cereal box without undue outrage. Vampires do not have to be R-rated for sex or violence.

So of course vampires will go after victims of the same sex. Do you stop to inquire whether the cow you’re eating was male or female? It’s all just predator and prey!

Until it’s everything but.

Do not let the ‘vampires aren’t supposed to be sexy!’-purists fool you. The tradition of sexy vampires goes all the way back to the oldest folklore, where the first victim of a newly-risen vampire was often their still-living spouse. Vampires were even occasionally known to get women pregnant (a convenient excuse for any widow who might turn up pregnant slightly too many months after their husband's death). The ‘original’ Nosferatu sounds more like an incubus than the naked mole-rat creature they made that movie about. The demon lover aspect of the vampire has been there all along.

And it’s not hard to imagine why. If someone is biting and sucking on your neck, then either they’re a vampire, or they’re well on the way to second base (other folklore has its vampires feed directly from their victim’s heart, which is scarcely less suggestive). The implications of an exchange of bodily fluids were never subtle, even in Stoker’s day (I'm looking at you, Lucy-with-the-three-husbands), and the vampire as a sexual predator was a popular literary device well before Stoker's time. Beautiful vampire women would seduce men to their demise, and the males of the species might visit the bedroom of some innocent maiden time and again. The Victorian obsession with mesmerism, meanwhile, provided the perfect explanation for how victims might be hypnotised into eager compliance, and perhaps not even remember being fed upon at all. Vampires have been the ultimate guilt-free sexual fantasy since way back in the day, compatible with all your awkward Victorian mores! (Not quite ready to admit they're sexual fantasies? No problem: he's just here to, y'know, suck on your neck a bit. No subtext here!)

The whole act of biting is so suggestive that in the early years of vampire cinema, it wasn’t shown at all, not even between opposite-sex participants. The camera of 1922’s Nosferatu maintains a demure distance during the climactic scene where the heroine is finally bitten and slowly drained of blood, and Universal’s Dracula conveniently fades to black or cuts away whenever it’s about to take place. But even if the biting has to take place off screen, who’s to say a vampire isn’t going to pick victims of both sexes?

The stately tradition of the lesbian vampire has cinematic examples going all the way back to 1936, with Universal’s Dracula’s Daughter. Though the titular vampire has a nominal male love interest – a psychologist who naively advises her to confront her temptations without fear – the result of his advice is a famous sequence where she picks up a young woman under the premise of wanting an artist's model, and convinces her to remove her top. No actual biting or nudity is shown (it was only 1936), but her fate is left in little doubt.

By the era of 70’s sexploitation, all such subtlety had been abandoned. If we’re all good with naked boobs, who’s going to be offended by a little biting?

In fact, when it comes to men rather than women, a vampire bite was, for many years, far too sexy to be shown, or even alluded to. Nosferatu clearly feeds on that film’s Jonathan-expy, but our only evidence is the bitemarks on his neck in the morning, and the final sacrifice to defeat the evil monster must naturally be female. Universal’s Dracula had to ignore explicit studio mandate that only the brides should be allowed to feed on their own Jonathan-equivalent, as to even imply that Dracula himself had fed upon a man was obviously far too homoerotic to contemplate (never mind that it’s Dracula who must be established as the threat in this opening sequence, or that it’s Dracula his victim will spend the rest of the film obsessed with).

But in that unspeakable land of male-on-male homoeroticism, you might be surprised how much homo we can squeeze in even without resorting to fangs-in-necks. The Lost Boys is surely one of the most homoerotic vampire films ever made, but there, the one big blood-drinking scene is rendered in a bloody massacre of slasher-movie violence. And though Anne Rice certainly describes the scene where Lestat drains Louis of blood in lurid detail (and even has them spend their first sunrise together sharing a coffin), Louis is already thoroughly seduced before he ever reaches this point.

You see, the lore of the pop-cultural vampire conveniently comes with a second and equally-compelling target for plausible deniability: the act of making a new vampire.

Obviously, to work, this has to be deliberate. A world where anyone bitten by a vampire becomes one hasn’t much to offer us, and the relationship between maker and fledgling can just as easily be framed as parental, as recruitment into a cult, or purely transactional. But whichever way you twist it, the implications of choosing another to share in your own eternal youth and immortality… like, I don’t have to spell this one out for you, do I? Did I mention how that thing where a vampire’s traditional first victim tended to be their own mortal widow goes all the way back?

But if we’re not ready to be completely obvious with our mainstream audience, some alternative explanation can always be provided for cover. Lestat doesn’t really want Louis, he just wants Louis’ money! (He also really wants Louis.) The Lost Boys just want Michael to join their gang! (Their very, very pretty gang, who swan around in mesh shirts, tank tops and assless chaps.)

The two sides of the vampire-deniability coin aren’t mutually exclusive, either. Carmilla drinks her new paramour’s blood, but also gazes into her eyes while promising her you will be mine. Drinking blood is a key part of making a new vampire in so many vampire stories, after all.

Carmilla isn’t even the only gay vampire story of the Victorian era. I recently posted about two other fascinating examples, both featuring male/male pairings: one being pretty much just a gender-flipped version of Carmilla, and the other a tragic love story filled with significant "vampire = gay lover" metaphors (why oh why must the townsfolk keep us apart, when we’ll only ever be happy once we’re united once more?) This stuff goes surprisingly far back.

In fact, you can find queer subtext in vampire fiction that predates even Byron and Polidori. 1819's The Vampyre was the first published vampire story, yes, but the first known work of vampire-fiction in the English language is a poem published by John Stagg in 1810, also called The Vampyre (look, the genre didn’t exist yet, you didn’t have to be creative with your titles).

In brief, Stagg’s poem recounts a conversation between a wife (Gertrude) and her dying husband (Herman), whose dear friend Sigismund, lately deceased and deeply mourned, has returned as a vampire. Night after night, he crawls into Herman’s room to drain his blood. Herman’s fate is already sealed, but unless Gertrude takes action, it will surely be she that Herman will take as his own first victim when he rises from the grave.

There may be nothing intentional about the queer subtext of this tale. A vampire’s victims often include friends he knew in life, as Stagg himself cites in his introduction. But if Herman’s first victim will be his wife, what are we to read about the fact Sigismund’s first victim is Herman? Especially given how long he’s kept secret from poor Gertrude that his dear ‘friend’ has been climbing into his bedroom each night, lying beside him in bed and sucking and draining "the fountain of my heart!" while Herman moans and tosses (in pain, obviously!), always leaving him "exhausted, spent." Ultimately, Gertrude is saved only when both Herman and Sigismund are staked through the heart, and we close on the image of them slumbering together in the tomb.

It is, however you turn it, pretty gay.

I reiterate: this is the very first known work of vampire fiction written in the English language. The second was the one that was kind-of-written-by, kind-of-stolen-from, and unambiguously based on bisexual-disaster-fuckboy Lord Byron. And the two most influential works of vampire fiction of the next hundred years would be Carmilla, the very lesbian vampire story written by a… presumably straight man? And Dracula, the not-completely-convincingly-hetero story written by #1 Walt Whitman fanboy Bram Stoker. Vampires have always been very equal-opportunity kind of monsters.

There are, of course, plenty of influential heterosexual vampire tales to fill out the roster too. Varney the Vampire, a penny dreadful from the 1840s, was so successful it ran for over 200 chapters. The 1960s had their own wildly successful Varney-equivalent in the soap opera Dark Shadows. Love it or hate it, we really can't ignore Twilight either. My own introduction to the genre was Christopher Pike’s The Last Vampire series, which came out alongside the original Vampire Diaries novels. So there's plenty of material around to keep the straights entertained – and honestly, that’s only as it should be, because the very thing that makes vampires so queer-friendly is that the sex of their victims doesn’t matter. And it’s so easy to make vampires sexy (let alone a full vampire-proposal!) that even the Victorians could do it.

Now, if your reaction to all this theorising is to tell me "but the LGBTQ’s shouldn’t have to hide behind plausible deniability!" I can only counter, "well sure, but why should the straights have all the fun?" Because playing with all the ambiguity of "is this monster really just after my blood or is this going somewhere?" can be all sorts of fun, regardless of the genders involved. And as long as they’re up for exchanging bodily fluids with persons-and-or-victims of either gender equally, why not have some fun with it?

So, okay, maybe the real title of this post should have been "why are there so many pansexual vampires?" But the answer doesn’t change. Vampires have been the bisexual disaster fuckmonsters for as long as anyone’s been writing about vampires, and have been a metaphor allowing people publish barely-coded gay attraction since 1872. And much like the queer community, they’ve only become more complex, more sympathetic, and all the more popular as romantic paramours as the years have gone by.

[themoonweaversden]

All 179-244 (or so) codes that were found so far (no spoilers)

Note: As far as I'm aware if you input any word after selling your soul to Bill and press the knob you'll get the same result. I still think it's important to highlight the ones that didn't have any result once you imput them normally the day the website updated (AUDIOLOG, BUBBLES, CLEAR, CONTRACT, SMALL) these may have been just an error since it has been fixed since then

#

3466554

29121239168518

333 Sundapple Lane Cozy Creek IL 60714-94611

A

ABUELITA

ADASTRAPERASPERA

ALEX HIRSCH / ALEX / HIRSCH

AM I BLANCHIN

ANSWER

AXOLOTL

B

BAAAA

BABY / BABY BILL / LALALALALA / MOMMY / DADDY

BILL / BILL CIPHER / CIPHER / ILLB / LLIB REHPIC / REHPIC

BLACK SHEEP

BLANCHIN / BLANCHING / BLANCH

BLENDIN

BLIND EYE

BOOBERRY

BURN SIDE

BURNED INSIDE

BYE GOLD

C

CAESAR ATBASH VIGENERE / MULTILEVELMARK

CARD

CARYN

CIPHERTOLOGY

CLONE / TYRONE / PAPER JAM

CONSPIRACY

CRAY CRAY

CRYPTOGRAM CODEX

CURSE WITTEBANE

CURSED

D

DEATH

DEER TEETH

DESTRUCTION IS A FORM OF CREATION

DIONARAP

DIPPER

DIPPY FRESH

DISCO GIRL / BABBA

DISNEY / MICKEYMOUSE

DISPENSE MY TREAT

DIVORCE / BREAKUP

DORITO / NACHO / CHIP

DUCHESS APPROVES / THE DUCHESS APPROVES

DUCKTECTIVE

E

EASTER EGG

EMMALINE BUTTERNUBBINS

EUCLID / SCALENE / SCRIMBLES

EUCLYDIA

EVEN HIS LIES ARE LIES

F

FAMILY MATTERS

FBI / CIA / NSA

FILBRICK

FIXINIT1

FORD / SIXER / STANFORD

FORDTRAMARINE

FORGET THE PAST

FUCK / SHIT / BITCH / SLUT / SEX

FUCK YOU ALEX

G

GIDEON

GIFFANY

GLASS SHARD BEACH

GLOBNAR

GOD / HELP ME / SAVE ME / FRILLIAM

GOODNIGHT SALLY

GRAVITY FALLS

GREBLEY HEMBERDRECK

GUN / THE GUN

H

HAROLDS RAMBLINGS

HECTORING

HEY NERD

HISTORY

HOLOGRAM

HORROR / CREEPYPASTA / ANALOG HORROR

HOTXOLOTL

HOW WILL I DIE / WHEN WILL I DIE

I

IM STILL ON YOUR MIND

IRREGULAR

IS HELL REAL

IS THERE AN AFTERLIFE

J

JOURNAL 1

JOURNAL 2

JOURNAL 3

JUST BLEND IN

JUST FIT IN

K

KINGS OF NEW JERSEY

KOOK

KUBRICK

L

L IS REAL 2401

LIAR LYRE

LIES

LIFE

LOVE / BOYFRIEND / LONELY

LOVE YA BRO

M

MABEL

MASON

MATH / GREECE / SHAPES / GREEK / PLATO / GEOMETRY

MCGUCKET / FIDDLEFORD / OLD MAN MCGUCKET

MEOW / MEOW WOW

MONSTER

MORALITY

MOUNTAIN DONT

MYSTERY

MYSTERY SHACK

N

NAITSUAF

NO

NOT A PHASE

NOTHING

O

OCCURREMUS ITERUM

OH YES THEY BOTH

ONE EYED KING

OROBOROUS

OWL TROWEL

P

PACIFICA

PAPER IS BOOK SKIN

PEAK

PINATA

PINES

PLATINUM PAZ

PORTAL

Q

QUESTION

R

R34LITY

RAT

REALITY

RIDDLE

ROBBIE

RUBBERHOSE

S

SCARY / SPOOKEMUPS / SPOOKY

SCIENTOLOGY

SEASON 1 / SEASON -1

SEASON 2

SEASON 3

SEVEN EYES

SEVERAL TIMES

SHAVE YOUR GRANDMA

SKELETON

SKIBIDI / FORTNITE / ELON / CRYPTO / DOGE / GYATT / RIZZ

SOMETHING

SOOS

SORRY

STAN / STANLEY PINES / STAN PINES / STANLEY

STOD EHT TCENNOC

SUCK IT MERLIN

T

TAD STRANGE

TANTRUM

THE BOOK OF BILL / BOOK OF BILL

THE DUCHESS APPROVES

THEORY / MATPAT

THERAPRISM

THEYLL SEE / THEYLL ALL SEE / I SEE

TINSEL SNAKE

TITANS BLOOD

TJECKLEBURG

TOBY DETERMINED

TORTURE MENTALLY

TOURIST TRAP

TRIANGLE

TRIGONOMETRY

U

UNIONMADE

UNIVERSE

UNREALITY

V

VALLIS CINERIS

VIRUS

W

WADDLES

WEIRD

WEIRDMAGEDDON

WELL WELL WELLBEING

WENDY

WHICH RELIGION IS RIGHT

WHO ARE YOU

X

XGQRTHX

XYLER / CRAZ

Y

YES

YOU CANT KILL AN IDEA

YOURE INSANE

Will update if more are found

[frankiethedarkangel]

What monsters do you think would struggle to parent a human and why? (Ex: drider, werewolf, orc, etc)

Monsters that would struggle parenting a human.

This was fun :)

Vampire

They’d suck at parenting a human. (Pun intended) I feel like this one is controversial, being that they are a humanoid. Vampires probably wouldn’t understand human hunger. Only their own hunger. They’d definitely have impulse control with a blood bag constantly around. On top of that, they wouldn’t be awake during the day like humans are.

Alien

These guys know nothing about humans. We are as much of aliens to them as they are to use. Their parenting skills are just using you as a lab rat. Plus, humans can’t breathe in space. Huge lack of oxygen.

Ghost

This would be 50/50 depending on the type of ghost. Regular house ghost? Yeah they couldn’t help care for a human. They can’t even touch anything. A poltergeist? Maybe.

Tentacles

They’d accidentally drown the kid. That’s all I have to say about that.

Merfolk

Same as tentacles, they’d accidentally drown the kid. I also feel like they’d try and teach them how to be a siren. Probably wouldn’t go well but they’d b sure you look pretty at all times. Just isn’t idea to raise a human when you can’t even live on the surface.

Gargoyles

Gargoyles I feel would be too protective. They’d know whoever they’re parenting would be fragile. Really fragile compared to the gargoyle species. They’d make sure the kid would be so sheltered. Good luck having your freedom as an adult.

Fae

The fae are bullies. Also, most of the time there’s a size difference (not always). Picture it, a small evil little creature trying to parent a human. That would end in the human having some trauma. Just like having human parents, but meaner.

Mimics

These guys? Good lord. They’d try mimicking a toy and end up traumatizing the poor kid. It’s the thought that counts I guess.

Monster Masterlist

[downwiththemutantnjnjaturtles]

Leonardo's First Love—Splinter's Talk

When Leo realized his heart was being divided, he felt afraid. 

His attention had always been captured by his family and his mission—he knew what it was like to love them. But never had he thought his love was going to be snatched up, split, and taken almost wholly by someone of the race that thought they were monsters. 

When Leo noticed the pull towards something else, something new, he pushed himself away. 

He found himself tonight an observer to soft skin, a vulnerable but inviting form that seemed to master existing as is without striving for status-quo. And it was entrancing, desirable; sparked sensations in him he had put under wraps years ago as a teen. Useless instinct. Basic drive. He had more to expect from the world, and expected more, he did…but every night, went back to the same old scenario. Her. 

"Get out of my head," he groaned as he laid up in the quiet lair when he was supposed to be resting, lost in thought. Smooth curves. A small stature against his. Hands, running down—he paused. Somewhere in the middle of a fantasy, he'd heard the words "I love you". That brought him back to the fact that it wasn't just desire. For that there were things he felt embarrassed to indulge in sometimes; but it didn't help anymore. Because those people in the screens, the words on a page of an R-rated book, were not her. Couldn't be, even if he tried. He wanted to know for just a moment what it was like to be human. To have that possibility of love there for the taking. And to never go for it, with all the permission those men had just for being human, he was disgusted. Feeling bitter over that fact sent his mind into overdrive—because he would feel even worse if some man did go for it with her. Like a walking contradiction, he was fighting with himself every step of the way. From she should stay away, to she should be with me. 

He got up to practice some forms. Maybe do maintenance on his flexibility. Sharpen his katanas. Anything to stop thinking and start doing. Somewhere during his steady training, he heard Master Splinter enter. 

"What is the matter, my son?" asked Splinter. He always knew even when his more stoic child Leonardo was troubled. 

"What's the matter? Nothing's the matter. I'm fine," Leo replied, balancing on one leg. "[Y/N] should head home, it's almost time for patrol." 

Splinter sat cross-legged down on a cushion with a slight smile. "So quick to mention [Y/N], even when you're preoccupied," he commented, "I told her she was welcome to stay whenever she liked. To repay for her generosity." That generosity being, stocking their fridge with things they couldn't get a hold of, to help out the heroes of New York. Something along the lines of making sure they were eating right for all they did. 

Leo paused, "What? I'm not quick, I was just saying…Splinter, it's weird having someone around now." 

"Does not have to be 'weird'," Splinter said. Leo felt his black eyes on him even when turned around. He was flustered, still going through the smooth motions of his kata. "Tell me what is really going on, Leonardo. I know you have something on your mind." 

Giving up his rotations, Leo slumped a little as he stepped off of the pedestal, setting his katanas down as he faced his father. "I don't know what's up with me, Master. I just don't get it." 

Splinter gave a knowing hum. Still, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "It seems like you've been quite bothered over [Y/N], my son."

He knew he couldn't hide anything from Splinter. There was no point in deflecting longer; he was only embarrassing himself. Finally, he admitted, "I can't…you know the way it is, Master, it'll never work. She's cool with us, but she's a human. And I'm a mutant." He sat down before his father on a plain mat. 

"Yes, a very beautiful human, too," the old rat mused, gently stroking the longer hairs of his chin. Leo flinched and opened his mouth to switch the focus of the conversation, but Splinter beat him to it. "Surely a woman like that would not ever spend money on, cook for, and give quite undivided attention to such a mutant when he's training. You are correct, my son, it's over." 

Leo's face flushed cold, blood rushing to his cheeks as he listened to his father. "Master Splinter! I'm being serious!" he fussed as he leaned forward onto his palms. "I don't know what to do, I—" 

"—want to stop feeling this way, yes, I know," Splinter finished for him. "Oh, young love." 

It was quiet for more than a moment. Leo's face softened, his blue eyes studying his father's as he gave Leo a look of acknowledgement. He gathered the courage stuck in his gut fluttering about his stomach, mind bouncing between [Y/N] and what his dad was saying. "I made myself stop thinking about love and stuff a long time ago. Mikey's always going on about it. I know Raph wants to be accepted more than anything, and Donnie, he's got his secrets. I'm supposed to be the example. I was supposed to show them we can live and not care. That our lives are worthwhile even without humans being involved. But now…" 

Splinter raised a brow at him. 

"I'm in love," Leo said. "And—and want it so badly." 

Splinter reached forward to place a hand on his shoulder. As soon as [Y/N] had entered their lives, he knew this day was going to come for one of his sons. It was inevitable, he thought. "Welcome to manhood, my son, this was fated to happen at some point. I've only been waiting since she arrived." 

Leo felt exposed. He felt unsure, and that uncertainty was driving him insane. He was always steadfast in his approach. Knowing he was a fish out of water in this situation disarmed him. 

"Master Splinter, what do I do? Tell me." 

Splinter's idle smile left as the tone turned  more serious suddenly, adding to Leo's growing discomfort. "You must understand that having [Y/N] means that your burden will grow. Not only will it be your brothers you will have to protect, but her, as well. It is your job to defend her from anything that could put her in harm's way. She is not built to fight like you. She is vulnerable, and being affiliated to us will only add to the dangers already present in this world. That is what you must come to terms with. But you must not ignore your heart, either." 

Having another body to look after. He contemplated that before answering. When he thought about defending her, it did not feel like an added chore. He wanted to. What was he so strong for if not to also protect the woman he loved? And what he had said before…could she have felt the same way? 

"You've prepared me more than enough to be able to handle another person, Master." 

He wanted nothing more than to hold her. That was something he could not deny. He enjoyed being an observer to a way of life so different from his; femininity, not always being the one taking care of others. He loved his family, but at times, leading was tiring. He wanted to forget about it for just a little bit, maybe lay down, be with someone he didn't have to "manage".

Splinter would have been lying to have said he wasn't surprised at all. But he knew his sons, inside and out—Leonardo had iron will. 

"It is your choice, Leonardo," Splinter said amiably. 

His choice? He wanted to laugh. There almost wasn't a choice. He felt like every road led back to her. It was either face his fears, or stay awake every night plagued with the possibilities of what could be. And he didn't handle fear well. It twisted his stomach and ate him up inside when he felt uncertain, afraid. God, one word is all I need from her. Just one "yes". One touch. One kiss.  He wanted to feel her hands explore his plastron, run along the edge of his shell. Love what made him, him. 

Overcoming the hesitance he felt, he let out a deep breath, committing to a final answer. " I don't know how, but...I want to try. I can't let this go. There has to be a reason all of this happened. If everything that's happened to us up until now has been destiny...I can believe it for this, too. Thank you, master."

Just felt like writing our leader in blue having a talk with his father 😌 Going to make this a little mini series for all the boys!

[figueroths]

okay so this is long and likely impacted by my poor memory but I wrote a lot of it down friday night so it’s still somewhat accurate!! but here are my favorite things that went down during gauntlet at the garden (which is still so crazy to not only play msg but sell it out!!)

she’s already famous but still worth mentioning: the brennan murph kiss

lou genuinely in distress about the pyrotechnics because brennan repeatedly chose violence hitting them without warning

siobhan rolling a giant dice for world’s biggest box of doom marked out on the floor plus getting the front audience to get their luck all over it

luck failing and rowan having to help out with the roll anyway!

getting to do a re-roll chant

business dragon as thee recurring bit from jump

telling wealth by nail beds + siobhan’s unnoticed callback to this mid-show

oil tycoon family money energy

kug having friends in the 80s who called themselves business dragons

kug ranking his friends without hesitation

sofia ranking a new rat in the crew as her number one and kug being soooo offended because he put sofia as his number one

the new rat’s name is parker and he has a car but they can’t use it because it doesn’t work and emily running with it saying of course she assumed he had a car because his name is parker and brennan adding that if it did work they’d call him driver and then doing cute little chin hands or smth like that

murph having his starstruck hair 🥰

siobhan looking so good in the yellow outfit and just not having these monster’s bullshit

ally trying to cast fireball on a dragon and then arguing can it be dream sparkles - successfully!

emily looking like a snack and at some point referring to herself as one - oh because calroy asked what kind of food they were

defeating junkmother by befriending her

lou jumping in when brennan had more than one character tell sofia that she reminds them of someone and being like “who reminds you of someone is it me???? is it me????”

the lighting being off when they swapped places post-intermission and then murph decided to play to the crowd and the whole group got in on an impromptu battle royal where lou hit murph with a stone cold stunner - brennan letting them go on (including siobhan with a steel chair) only to be like “and now im being told you need to be in your seats for them to adjust the lighting”

gilear being there at all

gilear dying immediately (yogurt related ofc)

audience participation on rolling for support

nat 20 roll to get ayda (i got a nat 20 on that roll but didn’t even think to screenshot it 😔)

ayda saying she’s gay as hell

ayda being there to protect her paramour’s father 🥺

ayda saving gilear’s ass from getting roasted

ally calling themself out about including pete’s medical bracelet in the character design for it to specifically be carrying testosterone but it doesn’t come in pill form so pete was just walking around with an empty medical bracelet that whole campaign (but now it has adhd meds I think)

wally showing up to shit talk staten island

zac getting the third highest roll on initiative during one fight and then getting the crowd to chant “third highest roll”

kalvaxus getting applauded for ending a crypto bro’s life (literally)

kalvaxus getting polymorphed into a rat and gilear then claiming the mantle of the chosen one and beating the shit out of him

P90X dvds and anachronisms

plug

coronitas on the staten island ferry

making plans they will Not be keeping about hanging out more and living healthier lifestyles

pete giving gilear jaeger from a flask

pete saying plug and gilear have a similar energy

genuinely just the delighted cheers at every gay thing and there were so many gay things

parker the rival rat doing the baby dance correctly but kalvaxus as a dirty little rat does it all wrong and they all start kinda doing it

murph living out his wrestling dreams and doing a heel turn just for the fun of getting booed

there was a shoutout to the two crew but I forgot now if it was murph or emily who rolled it (I think murph but with no confidence behind this thought)

grenade arm sofie!!!!!!!!!

K2 mention

ricky fail flirting with esther

kug magically communicating with the cockroaches across town but everyone starts treating it like a phone call so sofia has her ear pressed up against his chest and then when she asks for visuals (again this is not a phone call) brennan asks how does that work and someone (ally??) said “like teletubbies” agdjsks

emily genuinely sharing staten island facts

back to gilear dying immediately - kingston revivifying him (or a similar spell), someone else also did something I think but I forget because then sofia said she’s giving him a makeover and then proceeded to do semipermanent makeup with the most insane eyebrows

lou wasting his turn doing a bit with gilear just for kalvaxus to have a legendary action next

the kalvaxus battle starting with pete casting a cantrip during a handshake (shocking grasp) for FIVE points of damage ally why are you like this (never change)

junkmother letting ricky get away with a weak reason he counts as discarded (something like he discards his legs when he doesn’t work out enough lmao) while the party attempted to endear themselves to her but not before saying she can tell he’s the fitness expert because that was a stretch

so many closeups of emily like whoever handled the screens you’re so me

brennan (idr which npc) saying quangle and emily laughing through her own joke about pelvic floors pretending sofia heard him say kegel lmfaooo

kug getting charmed into thinking he’s doing audience participation for the nutcracker while tin soldiers try to kill him

all of it! it was all such a great experience and they are so talented and giving and I just had a lot of fun 💕🌸

[morgana-ren]

Throwing out the idea that Astarion furiously masturbates over your sleeping body while he drinks your blood. Your blood is the first he’s ever drank in 200 years, it also dosn’t help that you keep being so nice to him. He can’t help it.

I am sorta back after months of medical troubles and I am announcing it in my normal fashion: with a reprehensible smut piece.

Warning: Extreme sexual content, vulgar language, thoughts of noncon, references to noncon, semi-dark Astarion, things that could be interpreted as sexual violence and regular violence, blood and the works.

The skulking has him feeling like more of a lowly rat than usual. He slinks quietly through the fauna like a cat stalking a canary, sneaking across the camp where he has made his own nest, his eyes darting about at every slight flicker of light and every unexpected noise. His comrades-in-arms sleep peacefully, strewn about the ground and various makeshift tents, blissfully unaware that a monster lurks within their midsts, and he fully intends to keep it that way.

As dastardly and lowly as he feels, an unknown feeling courses through him. Something that leaves him feeling strong– predatory. The weak blood of rodents and livestock thrums through his veins, every synapse sparking alive, the string and sinew of his body singing to his limbs in anticipation. Anxiety sends his thoughts racing, and yet, he is giddy as a child with mischief on the mind.

A long-denied truth demands acknowledgement, and so he finally acknowledges it. He is vampire. And he is hunting. 

Even a spawn possesses fangs sharp enough to rend flesh from bone and claws of steel, honed to a fine point. His senses so keen that he is aware of the deer that scamper in the forest and the birds coupled away in the branches of trees on the outskirts of the meadow. The pulsing of blood that rings a siren’s song in his ears, awakening the long-dead glands nestled alongside his teeth.

He finds that, for once, he is not the victim in the arrangement. No, he isn't. In fact, he is the horror, looming over his vulnerable and slumbering mark, their body entirely at his mercy— His right to his to sink deep fang and claw and anything else he might deem fit, helpless to stop him. For once, his true self shines through in the dim firelight of camp, and he is not the Astarion he has been browbeaten into seeing himself as. He is not unmolded clay, ready to be shaped at will by clutching hands and eager thoughts. He is not malleable and he shall not bend. 

He is not Astarion the spawn; Astarion the mongrel; Astarion the Honeypot; Astarion the tool to be used and discarded. He is not the meek, or the charming, or whatever else his prey finds need of. He is power and gluttonous greed incarnate. He is the prowling shadow over the unsuspecting sweet and he will take what he needs. 

He is Astarion the Vampire– and he is ravenous.

The gentle toe-tip-toe through the grass to where his prey lies ignorant, sleeping so terribly peacefully, his silken shoes making nary a sound as he creeps ever closer. Feet light as air, graceful as a swan. Even the wind seems to disregard his presence, passing over him with hardly a fuss through his silver curls.

They suspect not a thing. Even the warrioress Lae’zel, her sharpened senses whetted like a blade, keeps her eyes sheathed shut, her breath even and her body unmoving. There is no cry of anger or protest as he approaches the clutch of blankets where you have made your rest, leering over your slumbering form, feeling all parts pure need as he observes.

Saliva slicks his ivory teeth like a slavering mutt, his hands almost shaking as he kneels on bended knee to witness the gently pulsing column of your exposed throat. It calls to him, sings to his senses, and every ounce of his being begs him to shred hungrily into his meal like a carnivore– like a beaten animal starved of nourishment. Like a dog offered scraps of offal.

But he is not an animal, and you are useful to him yet. He is dignified, but more than that, he is in control of himself. He is in control of his words and actions, and for one time in his all-too-long life, he will not yield to the whims of another, even the dark voice in the back of his mind that urges him to rip and tear and maul like the wretched thing he is. 

No, his first meal will not be one of viscera and terror and screaming, even as the idea appeals to the baser parts of him. It shall be quiet and quick as a rogue in the night, and though he would expect disappointment from the revelation, he finds that this moment shared privately with himself and only himself is something he intends to treasure. 

He has named you for his mark for this most special of occasions. Even as he knows you likely wouldn’t feel honored by such a thing, he feels a quiet sense of pride on your behalf. You are his first taste of true life. A place of high honor in the triumvirate of freedom:

His first glimpse of the sun; his first venture into the world; his first true meal. 

Gentle as a lover, he kneels over you, teeth bared, scarlet eyes flashing in the firelight. A calm hand on your shoulder to steady you, the other splayed across the grass to anchor himself. His fingers quake in both eagerness and anxiety, his hearing hypersensitive to every rustle and sigh that does not belong to the chorus of nature in the evening hours. He has committed himself to this, but to be caught is to condemn himself red-handed to the stake– a fate he’d rather avoid. 

As he leans, his teeth gliding gently across delicate, slightly dampened skin, he believes it worth the risk. 

The tang of sweat and flesh hits his taste buds as he softly glides his tongue across the pulse-point of your throat. He licks where he intends to find his feast, savoring the flavor of his intended prey. Many times he had caught himself staring, wondering what it might be like; what you might be like, and he fully intends to satiate the curiosity that had been building in his brain for weeks on end.

As he indulges himself in the thought, he finds he can no longer wait. He tells himself he cannot stall– cannot draw this out as he might’ve liked to– but the nagging churning in his gut rings above all else. He is starved and he must sate it. He does not join in the argument between the two warring forces in his mind, and instead resorts to pure instinct to settle the matter. 

His fangs dimple tender flesh at first, and then, soft as a whisper, sink inside. Lifeblood floods his mouth like a symphony of rapture, the taste of ecstasy on his tongue, and his lips clamp like a viper on your throat, eager and yearning for more. It is as liquid fire as it slides down his throat, your soft whimpering spurring in tandem with the  glory that branches through his every quivering limb and sets his mind alight. His eyes, vigilant at first, now flutter shut, allowing himself to fall into the velvet-cloaked abyss.

The thousand-year fog lifts from his brain as he drinks and for the first time since breath still filled his lungs, he feels right. 

Raw strength almost seems to inflate his lean muscle, plucking a harpsichord on his tendons. The pounding drum of your rabbiting heart beneath your ribs plays in tandem with the rush of blood in his ears. The deafening cacophony of the cold, miserable years is blasted away and finally stitches together in unison with an ethereal orchestra of utter intoxication. A preternaturally beautiful song that lulls him into the first sense of peace he has felt in years– perhaps that he has ever felt. A tune he shall never forget for as long as he lives.

His senses soar so high that he swears, beneath the deafening chorus of euphoria, he can hear the revelry as far as Baldur’s Gate. In his mind’s eye, the unsuspecting citizens of the Jewel are celebrating the birth of a new man born under the silvery spears of moonlight miles away. These many long years, he has been truly dead, and only now, he is resurrected in the swaddling shroud of blood and dark. He has been truly reborn. At one with himself at last, he thinks. At one with you. 

The blood falls easily down his throat, pooling warmly in his gut in glorious fulfillment. The delirium tendrils outward, gently coaxing bliss and promise where it caresses. His legs buckle, pale cheeks hot and flushed, some unknown sensation taking hold like a fist as he suckles and refusing to relinquish the iron grip. The low of his abdomen tingles, drawing in life like a vacuum to a place once desolate and lifeless. 

It is a feeling he cannot place at first. Something dusted and forgotten and placed far and away in his mind, out of reach. And yet, as the delectable warmth floods every inch of his body anew, he experiences it as plainly as when his heart still beat in his chest and youth was as inevitable as the rising sun. The needle-thin hairs of his body stand on end, palms beginning to sweat against your shoulder. A primal need swells in his stomach, a gentle throbbing between his thighs that translates into pain as he strains against the leather of his breeches. 

Arousal. 

Desire bleeds into itself, separate colors swirling together to become one enthralling splash on the rapacious canvas of his brain. The scalding hot bliss of the feed and the tiny, breathy mewls of your still-sleeping form. You have given him what he so desperately coveted, and now, it seems, his nature demands he take more– everything you hold dear in its entirety offered up at the altar of his superior strength and cunning and existence. 

The inherent eroticism of feeding is not lost on him, but it has never held any meaning until this moment. Lust is a cruel stranger that he has opted to spurn. Something wielded against him as a weapon– a barbed whip that has flogged and scarred him into conditioned disgust. It is unfamiliar at first, and yet it screams now with the same familiarity as every other function and twice as demanding. 

Pale lashes flutter open, doubled vision focusing in almost too sharply on your strained features: the soft furrow of your brow, the scrunch of your still-closed eyes, the soft pout of your petal-pink lips, slick with moisture from your unconscious whines of pain. He has noticed you, yes, in the way another might notice a dagger or a halberd or a stocky shield to wield. Your appearance is just one in a long line of defenses he intended to harvest for his own gain, and yet now, as he hazily stares at the shadow of your profile that flickers in the flames, he feels the unmistakable curl and coil of a different kind of need. 

Something steely clamps onto his consciousness beyond the haze of unreason. He cannot. That is too far, and something distant and shrill in his mind knows it. As desperate as he is to crawl atop and mount you, leaving you breathless and hoarse in his wake, he cannot. Some things can never be forgiven, and he has already crossed that line for his own well-being. Ravaging you as you lie vulnerable and helpless– trusting– serves no purpose in keeping him alive.

He tells himself this, his suckling receding to a temperate drawl, laving tongue and teeth across the puncture wounds. The baser parts of him cry protest, the pulsing becoming more insistent with each passing second, until it leaves him knock-kneed and clutching at the grass for purchase against the cresting tide of want. All variety of debased scenarios fly through his mind, each one more debauched than the last. 

Control and lust, two things unfamiliar with each other before now due to the cruel nature of his existence, fold in perfectly as one and sharpen into a vengeful blade he craves to use. How he longs to leave a wound as deep as the one he carries day after day, unrelenting and open as the day it was wrought. He wants to lash out, to strike, to take as he pleases as the world has taken so from him–

A wound not meant for you, he must remind himself through the hot-pink haze, even as it defies him. 

No. It is a line he will not cross. He is a monster, but he is a monster of a different breed. You have given him everything, even as you do not know it. More pragmatically, he will not give his life for one brief, violent encounter of forcefully obliged desire. He is worth more than such vile things, he tells himself, and strangely, he finds as he ponders it, so too are you. 

He repeats it in his head as a mantra, over and over, practically yelling it over the tidal wave of instinctual impulse that threatens to drag him undertow. He is his own man, and he shall not be controlled ever again; not by Cazador, and certainly not by the more wretched pieces of himself, even as they screech and claw at the cell where he has locked them away, howling their dreadful, unspeakable demands.

It does not abate. The insistent pulse of blood that brings long forgotten life to his appetite, the mortifyingly genuine urge that begs him to touch you, feel you, taste you in the ways he has not craved in eons. It frightens him, and yet, even as he longs to pull himself away, to run and run and run into the darkness where neither you nor this horrible need can find him, he does not. He sits still as a marble statue, almost as if carved in some grotesque form of this heinous moment captured in one rotten, eternal exhibit: half atop your sleeping body, clutching and panting in need, and half splayed absurdly in the dirt, straining and desperately trying to conceal his shame from some invisible force that mocks him.

He cannot have you. Even as he yearns and craves it with a fire that singes and burns his overactive nerves and imagination, he cannot. Yet, his body will not relent, demanding release from the torment that plagues both his mind and his nethers in equal form, paralyzing him in a dangerous inactivity. You won’t awaken– he has taken too much and your weakness is apparent– but the others might and he must act. Compromise is a risk he cannot take–

And still he must. 

And so, even as he should withdraw and return to the pitiful, empty loneliness of his tent, he does not. Instead, he realigns himself, as quiet and swift as the wind, still half-perched over you, but with a newly freed hand to his disposal for a contemptible purpose. It snakes the length of his torso to the waist of his breeches, his dexterous fingers undoing the laces with desperate speed and agility, his expression equal parts humiliation, shame, and anxious desire. He slides the waistband down enough that his long-neglected cock springs free, his muscles bracing and tensed as his newly blood-warmed flesh is chilled in the cool night air. Pinprick pores betray his discomfort at the crisp evening gale, but the rest of himself is otherwise occupied, consumed by his present task. 

One of his sharply tipped fangs worries at the swell of his plush lower lip as he wiggles his pants further down, both internally cursing and praising the newly unlocked spectrum of his vampiric grace that make such conspicuous actions effortless and reticent. Even as he is agile and practiced, each urgent movement feels fluid and natural. Silent as the grave and insignificant against the sounds of nature that envelop their surroundings. He does not fumble or falter, smooth as satin and with steely resolve as his palm finds his shaft and a shiver runs the length of his spine, settling readily in his abdomen.

In his previous encounters, he could put himself into working order, but nothing like this. It was a job– something that must be done, no matter how distasteful or degrading. What he feels now, it’s almost foreign to him; his cock strangely hot and pulsing with a heartbeat of its own. Heavy as sin in his hand and just as demanding, just as cruel in its insistence. Stiff and throbbing, a compass point dogged and unrelenting as it seeks to nestle between your wet, silky thighs and burrow there. It shrieks in his head, unsatisfied and wailing at his refusal to acquiesce. 

He ignores it, testing with one brusque stroke with his palm. It twitches, pleasure blooming upward through his gut even at the slightest of contact. Again, he tightens his fingers around his girth, pumping slowly as the sepulcher where he had locked away all dead semblance of lustful craving and fervor comes to life once more. As he thumbs the top, he feels the thin, sticky fluid leak from the tip, betraying his eagerness even as he pretends composure– as much composure as he can pretend in this unbelievably humiliating debacle. 

He will have to worry about that later. 

His eyes sweep over your face once more, peaceful now that his teeth no longer injure your tender neck. Your lips slightly agape, eyelashes fluttering softly as you sweetly dream once more. He imagines how different it might look if he were to uncage his urges– to allow himself the forbidden pleasure of sinking himself inside of you twice in one night. How your eyes might fly open in horror, your lips ready to shriek, little fists balled in defense, only to gasp as he pushes his length between your splayed thighs, enveloping himself in your tight, wet heat. White-hot. Exquisite. Immaculate.

The companions are gone– no, they don’t exist. It is only you and him now, you sprawled beneath him, half shock and half horror, and he– the predator that has stalked you from the shadows, the vampire in the night– taking as he pleases, as is his right. He feels your velvet walls flutter around him, trying to adjust to the cruel new thickness bullying inside them, squeezing him in the most delicious way. Your mouth is still open in a wordless cry as he plunges his tongue between your teeth, tasting a different part of you now, swallowing the desperate sounds you begin to make. 

His cock throbs against the calloused flesh of his palm as he strokes himself, teeth gritting to quiet the noise that bubbles in his throat from the blossoming pleasure that takes root and begins to grow rapidly out of control. The fantasy plays in perfect form in his head, and it almost feels real as he gathers the precum in the crook of his thumb and slicks it over the shaft with firm fingers, pretending it’s your body that wets and grips him.

You would fight and struggle– he knows you would– but you are nothing in the face of his sheer strength and dominance. Pinned by the deceptively strong muscle of his lean body, you have no choice but to follow his lead, thighs forced wider to accommodate his narrow hips, back pressed firmly against the ground by his weight. Your tits, warm and soft beneath the thin fabric of your nightshirt and begging to be squeezed, squashed against him with the frantic rise and fall of your chest.

The squeal his first thrust would rip from you would be heavenly. High-pitched and pathetic, and yet almost drowned out by the equally sweet clench of your body around his. So tight that it almost aches him, unaccustomed to the intrusion and compelled to yield to him, moulding itself to the shape of him inside of you. He slides out slow, almost callous and so terribly casual in his malice, making you feel every inch of him drag against the supple walls of your cunt before slamming in again, vicious in his impact. Your body jumps beneath him from the force, whining into his mouth. Your blunt nails digging into his arms and tearing at his frigid, stone flesh. It is futile– he can barely even feel it, and the slight sting he can is laced with pleasure and the reminder that you are at his mercy now.

He is panting, breath coming in ragged staccato bursts even as it is unnecessary to him. Pure instinct has a hold of him now, his hand working in unfailing rhythm between his thighs as he loses himself in the vision. Your injury weeps ever so slightly, and he cannot help the flick of his tongue along the twin-pocked bitemarks, leaving a thinly shining trail of blood-streaked saliva in his wake. He aches to touch you; to slip the delicate sleeve of your nightwear down and indulge himself in the softness of your body. 

He is not so subtle in his mind. He simply tears the garment, ripping it from your body with terrible ease. One hand busies itself with containing yours above your head, squeezing at the wrist to keep you captive even as you thrash, the other luckier still as it gropes and pinches your breast. Warm in his hand, he can feel your pulse skyrocketing in fear or perhaps excitement– whichever suits him most– as he reels back and cants his hips forward again. 

His hips slap against your thighs with bruising strength, your body beginning to respond to his in kind. He feels your wetness slick over his cock and lubricate his next few thrusts, heightening his pleasure. You mewl against his tongue, body arching into his, perhaps against your own will, fingers flexing and furling fruitlessly in his grasp. He settles into rhythm, cruel but precise, hips grinding with every punctuating impetus. It takes an absurd amount of mental discipline not to simply take you in furious, animalistic fashion as he longs, but he manages through the impulse, lower body moving in circular rhythm, his pelvic bone stimulating you with each contact. 

Your panicked breaths become heaving pants, flittering eyes glazing over and becoming heavy, the muscles that are pulled so tautly in defense waver and eventually flop, accepting your defeat at his hands. Perhaps you are betrayed and hurt and hateful, but you desire him. He is beautiful in the moonlight, pale as a ghost but alive and burning with unhinged need and that same fire kindles between your legs and winds and winds tighter like a top before the spin. He releases your swollen, puffy lips only for his fangs to find your throat and your cry is desperate and howling, your blood sweeter than the finest wine as it touches his tongue. 

You cannot formulate words– neither of encouragement nor protest– as he fucks you relentlessly into the ground, helping himself to your body and your blood. Only nasally, frantic cries can make it past your throat, your hands grasping at him, pleading and desperate. He hooks your thigh around his waist, fingers digging into the flesh with bruising strength, and you clamp it there, almost as if clinging to him for purchase as he bucks and snaps, snarling like a beast perched to pounce.

You are helpless and small and defenseless and vulnerable in the face of him, and he is strong and virile and predatory and fearsome. He has no need of your protection; he is the ruthless power of the night and the fear the lurks in the dark. He ravages you with no regard to the future, knowing only that he holds it in his palm, and if he wants you, he shall take you. He does not walk in shadow and skulk in fear, but boldly in the open, the world and you ripe for the plucking. 

He cannot help it. His hand is not enough. Ecstasy builds in his apex, building and bubbling at his fantasy, but he needs to feel. The hand not currently stroking himself in frantic need finds a way under the loose opening of your shirt, defying his mental mantra. The curve of your breast coaxes his skin, swelling and warm against his flesh as his insubordinate fingers find their way lower and lower under your blouse. Your nipple peaks as he gently rolls it in his careful, ghostlike fingertips, squeezing at your chest with an inhuman tenderness that only has him craving harder, more– 

Your cries would come in unison with his own, yours wailing and pathetic and squealing, and his rugged and husky and snarling. You would bare yourself to him– all of you– acquiescing to his unrelenting power. He would take you there, on the ground like an animal how he pleased and for as long as he pleased. Now you are the clay for him to shape and play with and use as he pleases, existing only for him and his wants. Your blood is in no short supply, and he sups and dines as he pleases while he uses your body to pleasure his cock and the baser parts of himself that have reignited inside of your core. You are powerless to fight him, so you give yourself over completely to him, debasing yourself for him, crawling for him, needing him. 

You’d beg for him, body and soul, so eager and ready. Desperate and pathetic. He’d fuck you until your whines became higher and higher, eventually spilling into the night in humiliating urgency as you came undone beneath him. Your legs quivering and shaking, senses gone and inhibition nonexistent. Your fluttering walls would tighten and squeeze and damn near strangle him, the absurd sound of your wetness utterly mortifying if you had your wits about you, but music to his ears. 

Harder and faster with no regard for your overstimulated crooning, he’d take you, working himself to his peak, almost rabid in his unhinged, disjointed movements. His rhythm would fail, becoming more convulsive and urgent with every plunge of his hips. He’d chase his end inside of you, the blissful heat of your body, the cadence of your moans, and snug, velveteen swaddling of your sopping cunt the closest taste of the divines he’ll ever have– that he’ll ever want. 

He’d cum inside of you, burying himself so deep that he’d be certain you could taste it. It would spill out of you as he milked himself to completion with your pliant body, heaving against your bloody neck, a hand in your hair to rip your head back and drag down against him. Bruised inside and out in the shape of him, his hands, his teeth, his cock all leaving their permanent mark. It won’t heal, it won’t ever heal, he’ll make sure of it–

It’s his– it’s his– it’s all for him and no one else. Not even the Gods could wrestle this away from him. There isn’t a force in the planes that could pry him from atop you– you belong to him, your body, your mind, your tongue, your taste, your cunt–

His cock throbs furiously in his hand, gritted pants and strangled noises escaping his throat. It is only through sheer supernatural ability that he is able to withdraw his hand from your shirt and catch himself before he slumps completely atop you, no doubt waking you with the force of it. The ecstasy spills over, unfettered bliss exploding outward from his core and sparking fire throughout every inch of his body. His eyes roll backward, head slooping forward as he works his pulsing cock, every last ounce of self-control in his ancient body holding back a howling cry. 

He spills into his palm, carelessly covering his shaft in the sticky, gossamer fluid as he milks clean the very last remnants of pleasure from himself with the fervor of a man starved of it. His toes curl in his shoes, teeth gritting to the point of pain as he withholds a sigh of euphoria. His extremities tingle as his body sags, muscles exhausted and screaming from the exertion, and he almost collapses as it fades from him as quickly as it approached, still singing beautiful contentment somewhere deep inside of him.

Sagging completely into the dirt, he lies there, bare and open to the sky: Hand defiled and dripping with the seed of his shame, sweat wetting the delicate white curls behind his ears, breeches pulled cleanly to his akimbo knees. It takes a moment for the world to settle into his foggy brain once more, but shame cuts as cleanly as a knife as the clouds of desire split and the light of reality once again illuminates the situation. 

Frantic fear takes hold of his stomach, and his head swivels towards where you sleep, calmed only by the fact that you still sleep soundly with no inkling or inclination as to what he has just done. As he glances around, the rest of the camp is equally unaware, each person neatly in their place, unmoving and unalert. His secret is his and no one elses.

He allows himself a few moments to catch the breath he does not need, wiping the evidence of the encounter into the grass with a sense of disgust and indignity as he does. He feels remarkable– alive for the first time in centuries– and yet it is marred by the yoke of scandal he feels having been bested by such an absurd thing. Overwhelming desire he has not felt since he was a young, handsome elf brimming with potential and swarming with suitors, back when his chest still beat with blood and his skin was flushed and warm rather than pale and pallor. 

It’s unfamiliar to him, and he bares his teeth at the thought. Sex is something filthy and cursed– and yet it didn’t feel so in the moment. Even now, his fingertips tingle at the thought of your puckered peak gently caressed, the soft sound of your sighs, the vulnerability you show him. He’d barely touched you and yet you sent his senses alight like a bonfire. The taste of you still lingers on his tongue, and he cannot help but savor it. As he hikes the band of his pants back up his hips, he feels shame, yes, but also something different. Something oceans away from the helpless misery he usually feels after the degrading act. 

He feels at peace. He feels satisfaction. He feels right. He does not feel debased, but empowered– almost giggly as a schoolboy at the wrongness of it all.

He chose this. For the first time he can remember, he chose this. He took control and his pleasure did not come at his own expense. It came at yours, yes, but he doesn’t like to make a habit of grappling with fragile, banal things such as morality. He is a libertine, and where he finds pleasure, he shall take it, because he knows all too well what it is to be starved of it and all that makes life worth living. 

Besides, you seem fine. Sleeping deep as a babe in the cradle, none the wiser. As he sits right and dabs potion at the wounds at your neck so as to not leave a trace of his crime, he allows himself one quiet, satisfied sigh. It disconcerts him that as he studies your slumbering body and slack face, he feels pinpricks in his core once again, whispering remnants of that desire that had unhinged him so before, but he will have to unpack that later. 

He is no fool. Something has changed, and it isn’t the strength that flows through him free as a fountain that was once clogged and stunted, nor the heightened attunement of his mind to damn near everything around him to the point of absurdity. He feels right for the first time with the blood he has stolen away with, and smug at getting away with something so risky as he often does, but more than that. 

He is a vampire fully satisfied in more ways than one, and the fulfillment and delight he feels overrides the shame and wrestles it into the quiet. 

You are something to him, though he isn’t sure what. He had not questioned why he’d picked you before, but the question begs itself now. He does not allow himself the indulgence of touching you once more. He doesn’t taste you or feel your skin. He only withdraws as silently as he came, backing off and away from the light of the fire that burns low, dying embers spitting against charred, ashen logs, his shadow stretching long before disappearing into the dark of the night. 

As he moves back to his tent, he stalks the shadows, but he does so with head held high, back straight as a bow, graceful and the very picture of pride. There’s an unmistakable grin on his reddened lips and a flush to his face not wholly attributed to the blood that now courses through him. Pieces of himself unlocked after so many years of servitude. He feels himself again, and the world feels his oyster once more. What your role is in that world, he doesn’t know yet. 

But he has a feeling he’ll figure it out soon enough.

[comingdownwithme]

what do they do now that they’ve seen each other?

and how long does it take toby to eventually become fond of jeff again?

When they first saw each other, Jeff was fucking elated. In that moment, he wasn't "Jeff the Killer", a wanted man, dead or alive for a growing number of homicides, instead, he was Jeffery Woods, known teen troublemaker, eldest brother of a four person family, and a lost man who had damned himself to hell when he took out his grief and rage in the worst way possible after that night of the fire.

The man was desperate for that sense of familiarity, a sense of normalcy, of home, and there he was, just out of reach.

But for Toby, the bane of his existence was there, just within swinging distance.

And so, the proxy attacks.

Jeff would move on instinct, swinging first before he could even think.

The guilt that followed when he realised he had left a long, clean line from Toby's chest up to his shoulder still eats at him to this very day, stinging far worse than the deep cut Toby had left when he swung his axe into his side.

Jeff, crashing hard from the high he was riding only the briefest of seconds earlier, ran.

The proxy gave chase. The hooded man was in his territory, the hunting grounds of a faceless monster and those who serve it, and if there's any place Toby knew better than the back of his hand, it was these woods.

But Jeff didn't get this far, didn't get to live this long, if he wasn't a damn good escapist.

So, in the end, he had managed to get away. The odds were vastly against him, but Jeff was a survivor at heart and he had a track record for evening the odds and turning the losing hand the universe gave him into something passable.

Still, as the white-hooded killer grew the distance between him and the edge of those damned woods, confused and hurt not only by the still-bleeding wound at his side, but by the way his best friend had reacted, Jeff- sinking into his most selfish impulses- wanted that sense of normalcy, wanted to sink his teeth into the feeling of comfort he had gotten a mere taste of so badly and never let go, and if the world won't give him that, then he'll just have to carve that space himself.

And so, Jeff kept coming back.

It would take a good while until Toby warms up to Jeff again, both because of his reluctance to and because the both of them aren't exactly ones to stay in one place for too long, though Jeff is the one that makes sporadic appearances due to being- y'know- a known serial killer on the run.

Still, Toby does eventually grow closer to him. Especially when A) Jeff is a persistent asshole who won't miss a single second whenever he's around to visit Toby, even actively searching for him when he has the time to and getting into trouble as he does, and B) Toby just... can't bring himself to actually kill the other man. He's hated him for so, so long, but in every instance he had caught him off guard and attacked, Toby would stand, frozen in place before he could even finish the other man off.

The first time Toby had attacked Jeff led him to rsalise that something had happened to his best friend. Something bad, and something big. but God knows Jeff shouldn't be talking about how much someone had changed when he can barely even recognise the thing that stares back at him in the mirror.

His own hesitance annoyed the proxy to hell and back at first, but eventually Jeff's persistence and a lack of self preservation paid off, and Toby- either feeling too worn out to even bother, or was feeling particularly generous that one night- gave in just this once.

Then he gave in again when prompted at Jeff's next visit.

And again with the next.

And again.

And then one night, maybe, he's come to the realisation that he's started to miss the pale, deformed rat of a man who seems to know Toby better than even he himself does, to miss the ghost that had been haunting him all this time.

[planesky]

Every Outcome I Got Out Of The Website

(thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com)

-I keep updating this-

1. The Gun / Gun - “Oh Yes Oh Yes Oh Yes They Both”.

2. Dorito - Bill Cipher Jump Scare.

3. Matpat / Theory - Matpat Video.

4. Blanchin - https://youtu.be/iW29Peruj-0?si=tJCbMXskZ2PE_2PK

5. Alex / Alex Hirsch - Google Search “Flannel”.

6. Blind Eye - Eye Exam Code.

7. Giffany - “Input Deleted. AI Antiviral. Activated.”

8. T J Eckleburg - “Never Mention That Name Again”

9. Adastraperaspera / Ad Astra Per Aspera - Journal Pages About Bill’s Corpse.

10. Dipper - Note From Bill To Dipper.

11. Mabel - “Lab Now Fully Mabelized” after a few clicks.

12. Stanford - Lab Report.

13. Stanley / Stanley Pines - Ebuy Stanley Related Items, After Six Clicks “The Wheel Of Shame”, A Poem After You Click On “How He Beat Me” Many Times.

14. Wendy - Note To Wendy From Unknown.

15. Soos - Letter From Soos.

16. CIA / FBI - “Your Webcam Is On. We Are Watching”.

17. Nothing - “Something”.

18. Something - “Nothing”.

19. McGucket - https://youtu.be/mOYZaiDZ7BM?si=SpB78zp3ZO5BZyRv

20. Gravity Falls - “Never Heard Of It”.

21. Skibidi / Gyatt - “Life Privilege Provoked. Now Releasing Poision Gas.”

22. Fuck / Shit / Bitch - Note “Not S&P Approved”.

23. Triangle - “)”.

24. Pacifica - A Letter From Pacifica.

25. Gideon - Google Search “Sweet Resistant Bolo Ties”.

26. Mystery- “?”.

27. Journal 1 - “The Journal For Fun”.

28. Journal 2 - “The Journal For You”.

29. Journal 3 - “The Journal For Me”.

30. Axolotl - “You Ask Alotl Questions”.

31. Bill - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Providence

32. Bill Cipher - https://youtu.be/cZdiFNhu31c?si=-_-vBtwmRtunKcAr

33. Cipher - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle

34. Death - “Life’s Goth Cousin”.

35. Life - “Life: 72% Complete. Now Loading: Death”.

36. Book Of Bill: “Hide It Under Shirt During Pledge Of Allegiance”.

37. Scary - Book Named “Spookemups” By B. Cipher.

38. Ducktective - “Ducktective Stars In “Love, Quacktually” Coming To: “Oi, It’s The Cockney Chunnel Innit?” This Fall”.

39. Card - Bill Cipher Business Card.

40. Geometry / Plato / Greek / Greece - Page About Plato And The Pythagorean Theorem In Ancient Greece.

41. Mystery Shack - Google Search “Confusion Hill”.

42. Babba / Disco Girl - Dipper Singing.

43. Lies - Lies Board Game And Explanation about Truth.

44. Answer - “Question”.

45. Question - “Answer”.

46. Season 1 / Season -1 - “Season -1: Antigravity Falls”.

47. Season 2 / Season -2 - “Season 1”.

48. Season 3 / Season -3 - “Season 2”.

49. Sorry - A Picture Of Fiddleford And Stanford.

50. Lalala / Daddy / Baby - Bill Ultrasound.

51. Disney - “Rat.gif Censored For Your Protection”.

52. Rat - “Thurburts’ Number?”

53. Reality - “Is An Illusion”.

54. Universe - “Hologram”.

55. R34lity - Polaroids Of The Henchmaniacs.

56. Love / Romance - Book Named “The Love Triangle” By Tabitha Lustheart.

57. Waddles - https://pigplacementnetwork.org/

58. God - A video of an Axolotl swimming next to a bill statue.

59. Meow - https://vt.tiktok.com/ZS2dBpWYf/

60. Naitsuaf - A Page About Selling Your Soul.

61. Weird - A Video Of A Man Stuck Inside The Computer.

62. Fixinit - https://youtu.be/zgKSrJ_hmNY?feature=shared

63. Mason - Note From Dipper About Anagrams.

64. Who Are You - “I Could Ask You The Same Question”.

65. Monster - Google Search “THERES A MONSTER AT THE END OF THIS BOOK”.

66. Platinum Paz - A Story About Pacifica.

67. Robbie - Messages Between Robbie And Thompson.

68. Love Ya Bro - A Doodle Of The Grunkle With A Code On The Back.

69. Vallis Cineris - A Video Of Little Bill.

70. Pines - “A Good Family Tree”.

71. Blendin - “Time Agent Lost And Presumed Incompetent”.

72. Imstillonyourmind - A Video Of The Ocean With Unknown Voice.

73. Tantrum - A Transcript Of A Conversation Between Bill And The Time Baby.

74. Hectoring - A Song About Bill.

75. Irregular - Bill Mugshot With A Code.

76. Paperjam - A Picture Of Messed Up Print Dipper.

77. Shave Your Grandma - Textbook Page About The Human Life Cycle.

78. Hotxolotl - Bill Cyper Wanted Report.

79. One Eyed King - Bill Hypnosis.

80. Titans Blood - “Hoot Hoot. Password Please!”.

81. Kings Of New Jersey - Downloaded A Zip File On My Computer, The Zip Contains The Font Of The Code Behind The Love You Bro Doodle.

82. Just Fit In - A Board Game Commercial With Sad Background Music.

83. Music - It Doesn’t Response To The Word, Nothing Changes Including The Background Music And It Doesn’t Show An X.

84. Cryptogram Codex - Fonts Of Several Codes.

85. Divorce / Breakup - Gives you “O’ Sadleys” Logo.

86. XGQRTHX - “Where Do Tri Angles Come From?”

87. When Will I Die - Says A Random Number Each Time.

88. Abuelita - https://youtu.be/1sdZazjDq-4?si=YAwvWQdWJVHE3_QS

89. Portal - “Portal.exe has been deleted. I bet you could build one”.

90. Cray Cray - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_health

91. Multilevel Mark - “Who Defeated Silas Birchtree—?”

92. I see - “Is Seeing Believing?”

93. Pinata - Someone Hitting A Bill Cipher Pinãta.

94. Euclid / Scalene - “Life Form Not Found”.

95. Horror / Urban Legend - The “Always Garden”.

96. Forget The Past - Color Techincal Error.

97. Dippy Fresh - Reddit - https://i.redd.it/4p4142atrf381.jpg

98. Morality - Fun Game.

99. Oroborous - Journal Pages About Axolotl And Bill.

100. Xyler - https://youtu.be/lkQE5wuBFeY?feature=shared

101. Well Well Well Being - “Paitent File: Bill Cipher. Greatest Love: Himself. Greatest Fear: Himself.”

102. Theraprism - Brochure With A Code.

103. Deer Teeth - “For You, Kid!”

104. Weirdmageddon - The Gravity Falls Gossiper News Paper Artical.

105. Glass Shard Beach - Wildwoods-Sportland-Pier-2-1024x667.jpg 1,024×667 pixels

106. Curse Wittebane - Bill Seance Board.

107. Tad Strange - Bread Cutting Montage.

108. Burned Inside - A Video Of A Oregon Park Department Tag On The Ground.

109. Boo Berry - The Meaning Of Life.

110. Fuck You Alex - Google Search “Get Help Therapy”.

111. Harolds Ramblings - “How Is Clown Repellent Made?”

112. Butternubbins - “You’ve Earned A Treat! Enter “Dispense My Treat” To Download”.

113. Dispense My Treat - Zip file named “BILLS FILES DO NOT OPEN!!” And contains photos from the book.

114. Goodnight Sally - A Yellow TShirt.

*When you click the skull’s golden teeth you get a “Get Out Of Death Card”.

**When you click the book you get a letter from Stanford to Dipper.

***When you click the McGUCKET LABS Engraving on top of the computer you get a Letter from McGucket.

****When you click “The Book Of Bill” at the end of the page you get a link to the B&N Exclusive edition of the book The Book of Bill (B&N Exclusive Edition) by Alex Hirsch, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble® .

*****When you click the button next to the red switch the computer loses reception.

******When you click the eye in the bottle you get a picture of “Failed Portal Attempt #47: Altantis” with explanation.

Decoding:

Prism Code - SORRY

Stanford’s Letter In The Book - Ad Astra Pav Aspera

How He Defeted Me - (I cAN STilL sEe) Through The Eyes Of Everyone I’ve Ever.

Candle Code - ?

Wall Code - ?

Morse Code Hypnosis - Naitsuaf

Theraprism Code - (In Case Of) The Old One (Do Not Use Elevators).

[kirbybecomesastarwarrior]

Marx (Singuf) The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Marx is the Pied Piper of Hamelin but he didn't pipe away rats.. he pied Dark Matters away. (Hunold Singuf was the name of the Pied Piper... in one of the iterations, so I used it for Marx)

Marx despises his former happy-go-lucky self; this is also why he initially hates Kirby (because he reminds him of his former self...) and can't help but taunt Kirby on his overly trusting & good nature (because he used to be like that..)

Especially when Marx realizes how much he and Kirby can relate to each other... a fact that makes Marx second guess himself every step of the way for his plan...and when he realizes Kirby's basically another him... It really shakes him to his core

His main reason for revenge was due to the loneliness he was feeling and thought he couldn't belong anywhere else than Nightmare's fortress with all the other monsters. (Cause Kirby defeated Nightmare & the Cappies blew up the place. )

Basically he wanted Kirby to feel the same level of betrayl he felt with the people of Hamelin... only to find out that him and the cappies aren't as close anymore wha...

PLAN B: So instead he just exposed the growing cracks of his friendship with Tiff & Tuff (Fumu & Bun). Please read Marx's role in the story (here), this contains all the explanation of this and the background info on Marx.

Keep Reading for~

The story of Marx & Hamelin:

So, after the explosion of Nightmare's base, he is one of the very few monsters that survived. (Being blasted onto some remote planet... you guessed it, Hamelin). And wouldn't ya know it he fell right on his head so amnesia!

Marx doesn't remember his purpose (he was a monster that created Nightmare and was supposed to be the perfect friend for Kirby and made to trick him... yada yada yada... I explain it more in the previous post)

Basically, it's a dark mirror reflection of Cappy Town... Marx drops in on the town of Hamelin and the towns infested with Dark Matters. They welcome Marx inform him of the problem and give him all the hospitality they can offer (during this time of crisis)~

Originally, the town was filled with music, but since the Dark Matters came in (no music), the first thing they did was swipe the town's instruments... and now they seem to be going after the people! Half of the town belonged to the Dark Matters.

I wonder why?

The townsfolk so graciously ask for Marx's help (but in reality, they are looking for fresh meat to sacrifice while the other townsfolk have to save the hostages before they get possessed.)

Marx, not knowing what these terrible people had planned for him (throwing him head first into the den of wolves). But to him, he was repaying the nice people who sheltered him so he happily agreed... all he had to do was distract them.

So they went out to save the hostage with Marx running in the middle of town as a distract. Naturally, he was incredibly slippery and managed to stumble to the main stronghold.

Marx, having his natural curiosity figured, "Whatever they were guarding in there must be super valuable..." and scurried his way in. Imagine his disappointment when he found "just a bunch of crummy old instruments- WOAH wait, what that~"

The golden flute (the shiniest one), seemed to naturally catch his attention and before he knew it, it flew into his hands. He didn't know what drove him but naturally he started to play.

And just like that, all the Dark Matters were hypnotized by the flute's spell... Marx understood the power he had. And had the good sense to pipe them away from the town.

The people were all shocked and amazed (especially since they didn't think the little guy would survive the night!) But at long last, the Dark Matter infestation was solved, and quickly dubbed Marx as their savior and protector.

This was all just so new and exciting to Marx, and seeing all the happy faces of the townsfolk made. He feels like he truly belongs... and he couldn't help but say yes to all of it.

Marx mastered his craft, learned several (if not all) instruments, and would happily perform on the streets. Naturally expanding with classic juggling, magic tricks, etc. (Also, it was part of what he was made for by Nightmare~) Just a bring out a smile or two~

Not for pay, he just enjoyed making the people happy... and whenever there was a dark matter he'd gladly take care of it. Even happily helping the other neighboring towns and villages with their infestation problem.

But slowly, as time passed, the people started to take their hero for granted. They'd complain about how loud his playing was, why couldn't he get rid of the dark matter faster, couldn't have avoided the property damage...

And this ungrateful attitude seemed to increase as the town slowly seemed to become richer... buildings were being renovated... property expanding... that's weird...

The townspeople were nice to him still... but this love was all superficial only really loved him when they needed him or after the threat was gone~ He still felt like he was an outsider...Not really offer the genuine love and understanding he needed as an individual/as an actual person...

And it seems they needed the happy-go-lucky fun time Jester Marx... so he just played along...

Sound familiar to anyone~

This all came to a head when he saw the mayor carrying a suspiciously large sack of gold into town hall... Marx couldn't help but be curious... he managed to tail him inside, hiding under the main table to listen in.

The three others entered the room... Four more people made their way towards it to take their seats.

~

Mayor: Take a look at this haul *pouring the sack* Perhaps we should loan out the little urchin to some more of our neighbors to get rid of their pests.

Councilman: We're so lucky one of N.M.E's monsters fell right at our doorstep... I was surprised by how incredibly expensive a small one would be, I'm sure we could-"

Councilwoman: No we can't so that, you know owning a monster from N.M.E's monster is illegal now... ever since Nightmare's defeated the G.S.A is regaining control the new leade of the-

Mayor: We don't need to worry about him yet, all we need to do is keep him keep a low profile... is all.

Councilman: Fine... after all, we can't risk losing our dear Marx... annoying little brat... but he makes great money for just merely piping a toon, do you when such a thing understand the vaule of money

Mayor: Probably not, and besides, why was he our monster? We were not different from the many others, whoever ordered... this one just managed to drop in our laps, and we should be allowed to use him as

Assistant: We might want to rethink those plans. I just received this *reveal a letter with a G.S.A. logo,* I think they're on to us.

Councilwoman: So before you two idiots rudely ignored me... I've heard of those letters. I'm pretty sure a Star Warriors is coming in a sweep with town for any monster ownership... Sir Arthur will not allow any of this.

Councilman: We have to find Marx immediately... we can't have him getting us all in trouble...

Councilwoman: Frankly I'm surprised he survived this long given he was supposed to be bait... we just got this place back on it's feet we need to think of something quick!

Mayor: Perhaps this can all be solved by our little friend again.

Assistant: Ugh, we need to hurry they could be here-*door slam*

Everyone left sprinting out of the room~ All except one...

~

Marx was still frozen in horror at what he had heard... He leaves through the back door unseen. His mind was reeling at... "Surely this is a misunderstanding..." Despite only being afraid to find out the truth... Marx boldly ran up to the mayor in the middle of the town square...

Marx: Hey, we need to talk I heard you and-

Only to have someone grab him from behind.

Mayor: There it is.Thank you Sir Dragato so much for taking of this little monster~

Marx: Wha-

Councilwoman: He's been such an inconvenience having him run amok in our town... thank heavens it's over...

Councilman: Yes we do appericate your service nothing to see-

Marx: WAIT, WAIT WAIT- NO you can't this is my home too I've lived here, I'm good please I'd never hurt anyone I', the town protector I-

Lady: I've never seen that monster live here with us

Old man: He probably means the forest-

He watched one by one as each townsfolk helped weave this whole fabricated lie. Not one of them stood up for him or claimed him... Marx's heart sank even deeper with each one.

Councilman: Just one of Nigthmate playing his tricks again if you would be so kind as to get rid of-

Marx: Are all of you-* looks towards Dragato* Please ya gotta believe me they're lying please don't kill me I'm good-

Sir Dragato: *gives Marx an indifferent look and holds the sword near his neck* Pipe down-

Marx was seething with anger at this point and.... wait a moment piped down that's it! (Dragato of all the things you just had to say "pipe down")

Sir Dragato: Everyone! Please *extremely annoyed* it's just a small runt of a demon; there's nothing special about it I can just take him out with- *plays right into his ear* aaarghhaaaa! *Releases Marx*!

The townsfolk watched in horror as the sweet smile Marx bore turned into something sinister. He was overcome with shock & grief; the people who had been protecting them had merely seen him as a tool. Not only that they profited from his hard work! And now they're just going to throw him under the bus like this and... The negative nature he felt inside started to build.

He leaped into the sky raising his flute for one final show. And for the first time, his demoniac instincts kicked him... Then, grandly, the announced:

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN THIS WILL BE MARX SINGUF'S LAST PERFORMANCE AND FOR THE GRAND FINALE I WILL PIPE ALL THE DARK MATTER BACK INTO HAMELIN~

Soon, the town was overtaken by all the Dark Matter quickly overwhelming the town. And started to destroy it ...The people and Dragato watched in horror as the town was ripped to sherds.

Marx took his prized flute (the one he had held on so preciously as a memento on his first day in Hamelin as a luck charm...) and threw it away. And vowed to never play another tune ever again

Dragato is automatically put off by the power of Marx but still believes he could take Marx "You've terrorized this town long enough-"

Marx: Terrorize me.... terrorize me, Terrorize me *Marx's Soul form comes out for the first time, tears in his eyes* I DON'T THINK YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!

And pretty much beats Dragato to a pulp... "You will not succeed you will never take this town-ugh!" *Marx stuffs with a literal sock*

Marx: I don't want this crummy town you dingus *looks over to the townsfolk* I've had enough of it. *Snatches Dragato's bag* And here I thought you Star Warriors were supposed to be something special.

Looking through stuff see a Nightmare Enterprises logo... *triggers a memory* Maybe my answers lie there... *Smirks at the tied-up Dragato* you gave me a useful hit! SO LONG YOU RATHOLE TOWN HAVE FUN CLEANING UP YOUR OWN MESS!

This leads up to Marx's finding out his past and planning his grand revenge on the cappies and Kirby!

Shortly after (much to everyone's surprise, including Dragato's) Sir Arthur arrives... and the first thing he does is pick up the discarded flute of Marx... which was the real reason Sir Arthur sent the letter.

(Not for Marx as everyone had assumed ~)

Soon the mayor goes on to explain (his fabricated story) that Marx was the one who had brought in the Dark Matters... with his cursed flute...and Sir Dragato confirms their story... only for Sir Arthur to look at him disappointed.

Sir Arthur: I already know you're all lying through your teeth... you better tell the truth this time.

Mayor: But we already-

Sir Arthur: No, you didn't! You better tell the truth before I add to the list of charges you've already committed! *Brings out the scary dragon aura* TALK NOW!

Assistant : You're right we're lying~

Dragato: Wait wha-!

So townsfolk are forced to tell the truth, leaving Dragato frozen in disbelief... (Marx telling the truth). After the whole story was debunked Sir Arthur arrested the council members, leaving only Dragato and himself.

Sir Dragato: How did you know they were-

Sir Arthur: This flute is a sacred relic created by the Ancients... when they said it was cursed I knew they were lying and *he looked at Excalibur* these sacred items are all connected... And I knew its owner was in trouble...they were begging for anyone to believe them... but you.

*The golden flute quivered in anger and emulated a sad aura as if it were seeking justice for its owner*

Sir Arthur: You are demoted. You are responsible for cleaning up this fine mess you've made with the people of Hamelin *stares at the townsfolk's guilty faces* And as for the rest I will be confiscating this ill-gotten loot you made from Marx's hard work & whatever is not there you'll have to work to earn it!

Sir Dragato: It was their fault I was lied to... and that- he's one of-

Sir Arthur: We need to take accountability for our actions, and mistakes... *thinking back to Uther's regime* I'm trying to move the GSA in a different direction... one of tolerance away from the age of fear and paranoia I can not push things like this under the rug...

*looks at Dragato*

The situation was made worse due to your negligence... *flute starts angrily trembling* You were going to kill that boy from the looks of it, you don't even feel guilty for what you did...

I cannot trust you with any solo missions so from now on you'll be partnered up with Sir Falspar until deemed trustworthy and-

Sir Dragato: That "boy" as you call him is may I remind you... IS ONE OF NIGHTMARE'S MONSTERS! You can't do this-

Sir Arthur: I CAN AND I WILL! This happened because you ignored that boy's plea for help... You punished the innocent and nearly rewarded the guilty. Be grateful I do not permanently dismiss you...

We need to set an example... report back to me once you're done...

Dragato: *thinking to himself* (grr... you always did have a fondness for strays...*referring to Meta Knight*)

Notes:

Everyone has always said that Marx was supposed to Mirror Kirby in a way so... I made him the perfect Mirror to Kirby. The similarities in their stories are the main reason why Kirby is so sympathetic to Marx and the main reason Marx hates... (and not completely hate Kirby)

All the game characters I try to have them woven into the anime cast... With Fluff I made him have a connection to Falspar by using the Fisher King (King Fisher).

With Marx's storyline matching up with Dragato's... I know it seems like I wrote him rather villainous. But bear with me he has good reasons (aka Mommy issues with Dame Morgan).

Meta Knight, Dragato & Falspar are supposed to be reflections of Arthur, Morgan & Nonsura. (which I will expand on later~)

So Dragato is extremely jealous of MK (similair to Morgan with Arthur but for different reasons...)

I'll explain more on a later day. Right now, I have to stop myself before I write a whole novel.

And for those of you who are wondering what on earth inspired me to connect to mix the Pied Piper & Marx. WELL~

Perception check By Rom Cardy

TRY AND TELL ME THAT MARX IS NOT THE HUMAN BARD & NOT DO VICOIOUS MOCKETY! "LOOT THAT BODY"

(Sorry guys, I just wanted to end this on a light-hearted note~)

I think I'll try to post lore stuff like this once a week while the tournament is going on. I hope you guys enjoyed it & have a great day everybody.

[laur-rants]

Fic Update: Blood Wolf

Chapter 6

Fandom: Dishonored Relationships: Daud and the Whalers, some Daud/Outsider on the side

Rated: Mature to Explicit, Strong Violence and Gore Ahead!!

Synopsis: Werewolf!AU :: Daud-Centric Prequel to Wolfbann. Origin Story, pre-canon. Centers on how Daud turned, and his subsequent marking by the Outsider and his formulation of the Whalers. Content Warnings for this chapter: body consumption, decapitation.

Notes: He isn't a like them, he's still sane. He's sure of it.

AO3 Link Previous :: First :: Next

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Dunwall, The Sewers Month of Songs, 1820

  The sewers stretched onwards, a winding maze if the one traversing them didn't know all the proper twists and turns. Jordan gripped her crossbow too tight, letting the pain in her palm distract from the sweat on her brow, the prickle at the back of her neck. At any moment she still expected Daud or Rulfio to lead her down a tunnel that was sightless and quiet, cornering her and ending her right then and there. It was a legitimate fear, she told herself, considering what she had just seen, had just tried to do… 

She looked warily to Daud, eyes trained on his broad shoulders, watched the tension bunching the muscles under his assassin suit, and swallowed. She had seen what he could do with her own eyes, had seen his fully furred head, ears, teeth… and yet, her brain was still trying to process what the actual fuck it was that she had seen. 

She scrutinized everything, her eyes tracing his lines, looking for anything beastial, anything irregular, anything… inhuman. 

In flickering moments, her eyes would meet with Rulfio's. Those stern Tyvian pupils would look back, saying more with a glance than words ever could, before they went back to following Daud. Rulfio had always been closer with Daud than with her but that didn’t stop Rulfio from being something of a father figure to her. When she was still green in the assassin business, taking bounties that didn't always involve killing, he was there to steady her hand and make true her aim. Void, he wasn't even that much older than Jordan but the experience he carried in his hands was worth decades. 

To see him backing Daud up on this, however, did little to assuage her (she won't call it fear, she can't be afraid, she will miss the shot if she ever needs to—) trepidation over the current situation. If she had known that Daud could move faster than she could see, that he could disappear, could grow claws and fur and turn into a monster… 

She bit down on her cheek until she tasted blood. Brimsley owed her for this. She was not experienced enough for this. Nobody in Dunwall had the experience to deal with whatever Daud was now. 

They walked together in relative silence, just hearing the errant drip of water, the splash of a hagfish on its way in from the river. She watched the water ripple with unseen movement and her fanciful ideas wandered until her head was filled with sea serpents and massive swimming rats, with crocodiles and sharp-toothed merfolk. So many thoughts swam in her head that she didn't realize when Daud had stopped, nearly running into him. 

“Hey, what—” 

A hand came up to silence her and she obeyed, jaw working hard enough she could hear her teeth grinding into dust. Another glance to Rulfio, looking for some sort of answer. He met her eye and just nudged his head forward; they had stopped outside of a large door, probably to a maintenance room.

“It's in there,” Daud said, his voice filled with an unknown emotion. For whatever reason, Jordan watched him… hesitate? Daud didn't hesitate for anything; hesitation for an assassin was death. The sweat on her neck rolled down into her shirt and she blamed only the summer heat for how much the world closed in on her.

It was suffocating to stand still. When Daud didn't move fast enough, her impatience moved instead. Growling, she pushed past both of the men and rushed the door until it shifted. 

It was heavy and slippery but that didn't matter; Jordan threw her whole back into it.  After a moment’s resistance, the door shuddered and relented, scraping against the concrete before fully swinging open. 

Inside, a large amphitheatre with a huge domed cage showed itself to the trio, the seating lined in such a way that anyone in the audience could look down and into the center arena. On the walls and floor lay the evidence of what last happened here; Jordan’s eyes lingered on the gouged stone, the banged cage walls, the massive amount of splattered blood, and, upon further inspection, the half-eaten body of a man on the floor. 

It's not like it's her first dead body, but it's clearly been here a while and there's a difference between a fresh kill and advanced decay. Bones and mummified skin sat inside scraps of clothing while angry flies buzzed around, leaving their maggots to finish the job other bigger animals couldn't. The smell wasn't in the putrid stage anymore, but it was still awful and stale, like it had been left to mold rather than rot. 

“A lovely place to enjoy some drinks,” she groused, nose wrinkling. She turned back to the men; Rulfio looked pale while Daud was busy investigating the huge claw marks on the stone, the depth and width of their size. She frowned, tossing her hair out of her face. “What's with that face, Rulf? You ain't never seen a dead body before?” 

It was a friendly tease but Rulfio just averted his gaze anyway, watching Daud, addressing him first. 

“So, is this… is this where…” It was like he couldn't finish the sentence but he motioned to the ruined side of Daud’s face. 

Daud shook his head, brow furrowed and sharp. “No, this isn't where Jerome attacked me, this is the hound pit itself. He was chained up, blinded, forced to fight dogs for the money and the entertainment of disgusting people. I watched a pit hound split his neck wide open,” he pointed to the huge blood stain on the floor, more blood than a human could spill. “Bled him until he died, and then the bastard just— came back. That sorry sack of meat was already trying to collect his dog when Jerome came back to life. Too close, got sliced to ribbons.” 

Rulfio nodded, his face paling further as he studied the mummified remains, but Jordan's frown only deepened. 

“Hey, you guys want to clue me in here? Are you talking about the same Jerome who went missing a few months back? What's he got to do with this?” 

Daud's sharp blue eyes found her and she had to fight the urge to step back. 

“He's got everything to do with this. Fink and his brother have a sick experiment happening down here, leading chumps to get killed by a monster, or worse, become a monster themselves.” 

“What? You're telling me Jerome—” she pointed to his face, but the steely face looking back told her the answer. She whistled, hands going to her hips. An awkward moment while her foot twitched in a tune only she can hear. 

“So, what, he still down here?” 

“No.”

“You know for sure?” 

“I killed him.” 

“Even though you just said he came back from a ripped throat?”

“I saw the body.”

“Oh.” A pause. “And any others?” 

Daud blinked. Had the audacity to look confused for half a second. 

“Others?” He repeated, his harsh voice breaking. Jordan searched for something else to look at than his unnerving (inhuman) gaze. 

“Yeah, you know…” her arm waved. “Others. Other monsters. You said people come down here and get killed or become monsters. Which means Jerome couldn't have been the only victim, right? Someone had to-to change him too.” 

The horror was plain on his face; he hadn't considered this. Rulfio looked even more hardened, more concerned. 

“You brought me down here without thinking there might be more of these monsters running around?” Rulfio's voice was scarily even and deadly sharp. Jordan sensed the storm brewing, the return of the argument the men were having earlier. “I’m not about to let you lead me to an early grave, Daud!” 

Daud, to his credit, managed to look hurt, but it was hidden too quickly under a rising tide of anger. 

“I didn't know, Rulf, because when I crawled out of this pit half-dead, nothing was here. I don't know if there's anything else but—” Then, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and stalked away from both of them. 

“You asked me to trust you, Daud, and I do, but I don't want to be what you are, I didn't sign up for black magic and voices in my head and whatever other evils you're still hiding!” 

Jordan chewed on her cheek more, getting the creeping feeling she's privy to a conversation she was never meant to hear. Her eyes remained on Daud, watching as his hand waved, glowing and smoking. Then, his eyes were looking somewhere else, watching something else, through the walls and floor. The prickle at the back of her neck returned and her eyes widened as she realized, belatedly, that he was doing something magical again. 

Eventually his breath returned to normal and he looked back to Rulfio, his clawed (Outsider's ass when did that happen?) hand shaking out and back to normal (Is human normal for him now? Or is the beast normal?). Her head swirled with questions she couldn't ask, both awed and horrified that her fellow assassin had come across something so wondrous and terrifying. Rulfio still seethed; she worked to pick her jaw up off the ground. 

“From what I can sense, if there is anything here, it isn't just openly roaming around. But there… there are others, it looks like. Nobody fully changed but there were bodies in what looked like cages, maybe…” He squinted at the wall, as if being able to see through it with his naked eye. 

Rulfio sighed, ragged and annoyed. 

“And we're going to go and find them, aren't we?” Daud gave him a look: something apologetic, something imploring. Rulfio groaned loudly, rolling his eyes. 

“You're an Outsider's bastard for this, literally,” he complained, checking the sword at his side and his pistol at the other. “You promise me right now, Daud, that I'm walking out of here in one piece.” 

“I won't let them hurt you,” he affirmed, a deep conviction in his words. He looked to Jordan as well. “Both of you. I killed one already, I'll do it again, if I must.” 

Jordan's heart leapt to her throat, prompting her to clear it. “Well, what are we waiting for, then?” Her voice squeaked painfully. “Onwards, wolfman.” 

------

The Void thundered in his ears like a sour pulse, urging him towards a destination where he didn't know what awaited him. The Outsider had given him this power to hear and listen correctly, but whatever this noise was, it was repulsive as much as it was magnetic. Surely it wasn't supposed to make his head throb and his ears ring and set his teeth on edge. His hand itched and burned so much he was tempted to chew it off right then and there. The call to leap through the Void, to leave his companions behind was intense beyond measure; he swallowed it down, staying apace as best he could. 

The problem, however, was that he could hardly focus on anything they were saying behind him. 

“So, can I know exactly what we should be expecting when we get there?” Jordan asked, no doubt trying to wrap her head around everything. Rulfio had been filling her in on any other details Daud had neglected to recount, but still, neither of them had any idea what to expect going forward.

And to be honest, Daud didn't know either. What he saw in his Sight didn't make any sense and had only disturbed him; strange bodies had lit up for him like candles, bright yellow against a desaturated world. Sporting long limbs and too-thin bodies, they didn't look like monsters… At least, not yet. 

“Wolfbanner are gigantic, with claws and teeth and huge bodies that heal wounds,” Daud explained, his voice sounding as if his vocal cords didn't heal right after being slashed apart. “But they can also just as easily look like me. They could be weak from being down here so long. Won't know until we get there.” 

Jordan said nothing else; what else was there to say? They were along for his ride, trusting him with an unknown factor, putting their lives in his hands. 

From the amphitheatre, Daud led them down a long, hidden hallway. From there, they entered a room filled from head to ceiling with large, wired hound cages. Daud had not gone this direction when he was first here, but it's clear Jermone did; the cages were busted as if something massive had run into them and a few blood splatters coated the floor and walls. Nothing was fresh, not even the water left over in forgotten bowls. Daud could hear Jordan exclaim behind him. 

“How big did you say these things get, Daud?” She asked, trying to hide the waver in her voice as her eyes trailed the damage above her head height. 

“Whale sized,” he growled and his sensitive ears picked up the gulp in her throat. His jaw worked and he turned forward, another gaze into the Void telling him they were close. “Come on; nothing ahead of us is close to that big.” And certainly not as big as he could get, not that the idea of what he was capable of brought him any comfort. 

Truth be told, he hadn't fully transformed since that first night. Something about exuding such power, being so massive, so noticeable, didn't sit well with him yet. Maybe it would one day, but not now, not when he still had a shred of humanity left.  

The destruction only continued. Jerome, in the blinded state that he had been in, had spared no time destroying whatever his body could touch once he was freed. Splintered wood, tossed tables, a body under rocky rubble. And yet… 

Daud stopped to inspect a room filled with bookshelves and tables. Papers were scattered across the floor while delicate instruments sat behind broken glass. In places rubble was swept aside, pulled into piles of dust and dirt. Daud frowned, brows knitting together while the other two looted on their own time. The soft clink of coin reached his ear before he heard Rulfio grunt. 

“You might wanna take a look at this, Daud,” he rumbled out, pointing to a flipped board. Daud did as he was told, coming to inspect the scribbled writing in chalk. 

Drawings of a whale-wolf, of its size and properties. Dates of when test subjects were attacked, who lived and who died. The length of time between attack and transformation… something about an “incubation period.” And amongst it all, a paper with the crude scribble of the Outsider's Mark, the same as his, on the back of a clawed hand. 

His insides twisted unpleasantly as he turned from the board, cursing. He sat somewhere between ill and angered, of the thought of those innocent people who asked for nothing getting dragged into this for entertainment. How many died? How many were like Jerome, scarred and blinded and starved in chains? 

“This is so fucked up,” Jordan breathed and his gut clenched even more. Something prickled down his neck and he turned to see both of them looking at him, their faces holding too much concern, too much worry. He breathed out through his nose, hard and angry, all of his features turning severe. 

“I didn't bring you here to throw pity at me, you know.” His teeth felt heavy in his mouth and he willed them to stay normal as his fist opened and closed in agitation. “I'm not like those sorry sacks; I'm alive and I'm not locked up. Those individuals are all dead and gone, and I don't plan on joining them.” 

“And the madness?” Rulfio asks, softly. “What is going to stop that, Daud?” 

He snarled, teeth flashing as he brought his hand up. Jordan flinched, but all he did was let the Mark hidden under his glove burn hot enough even they could see it. His claws grew long and he was tempted to stop time, to jump through the Void, to get away from those scared eyes and those judgemental frowns. Instead, he yanked his hand back down, letting the smoke and ash fade away. 

“Do you think me so weak? You think I crawled out of this pit, with my face looking the way I did, to let madness take me? The god of the Void himself decided he wanted me to live, and that magic keeps me here and as myself. I don't intend for that to change any time soon.” 

He stalked out, ignoring their glances and willing away the fur trailing down his neck and over his shoulders. He didn't need to lose control here, in front of them, not when it wasn't their fault. But also he needed the space, needed some place where he could burn off energy and not be looked at like a freak for it. 

As soon as they were out of earshot, he clenched his clawed fist, rushing through the Void. The sensation was cooling against his angry-hot skin, the icy plunge a balm on his emotions, moving the humid air around his body. He jumped again, breathing in the smoke and ash and letting it settle in his chest like the draw from a cigarette. One more, and then another—

Suddenly, he found himself hanging in midair.

He had transversed out of the sewer pipe and above a lower room, sunlight bursting down allowing the whole circular area to be illuminated. It only took a moment of his suspension to realize where he was and why, perhaps, he was unconsciously drawn here. Beneath him were the cages, and through the Void, he could see their sleeping bodies. 

His fist clenched and in an instant he was rushing to them, appearing in front of them in a blink. As the world returned and air rushed back in, he could hear the echoing calls of Rulfio and Jordan. Looking for him, no doubt, as if he would answer their calls like a dog off a leash. If anything he wished now more than ever they would quiet down and act like Void-damned assassins. 

The irony in that, of course, being he was the only assassin in the Isles who actually was Void-damned.

They called for Daud. Daud didn't call back to them. Instead, his attention was pulled fully to the cages and their inhabitants. 

Inside, humans groaned and stirred, but they were only human in passing. Their eyes glowed in the gloom, their limbs long and their chests deep. Strange, heavy breathing escaped mouths thick with mismatched teeth, and broken and brittle nails grew from skinny fingers. Their clothes, if they had any at all, were ripped through, their feet deformed into strange shapes. As one of them locked eyes with Daud, he felt the trickle of a poisoned mind reach his and he recoiled, locking his emotions down and stepping away. 

The rippling growl he heard was his own, escaping out of his chest. 

“Ugly Turned.” 

Heavy footfalls approach from behind him, followed by a metallic scraping. Daud whipped around, his teeth lengthening of their own accord as his lip curled back into a snarl. He crouched into a fight stance, hand hovering over his blade. 

A man approached him, tall and hugely muscled. His head was hairless but only because it was shaved down, his prominent ears sticking out all the more for it. His severe face didn't hold much intelligence, but that was less worrying than the thick heated crowbar he held in his gloved hand. 

“Come to save them, filthy dog? They won't listen.” The man dwarfed Daud by at least two heads: as soon as he was close enough he swung hard for Daud's shoulder, but Daud was leaping away far before the blow landed. The swings were slow, uncoordinated; this man didn't know how to fight outside of brute force. Easy enough to deal with. 

Daud sneered, eyes flashing, and he called on the Void to stop time fully around him. All noise and all movement ceased, giving him full permission to rush his attacker, his sword unsheathing, shining and angry. 

“Won't work,” the man rumbled out, side-stepping Daud's sword swing and countering him easily. The hot metal rod hit Daud squarely in the ribs and his grasp on time dropped. His breath rushed out even as air and sound rushed in; his body toppled, rolling from the force of impact. Black, oily claws grab at his side, assessing if the rib was broken or not. His attacker stalked slowly over, unbothered. 

“You think you're special? I'm special too. Master makes me stronger than you ever will be.” The man brought the crowbar back over his head, looking to smash it into Daud's head. That was, if Daud hadn't already transversed through the Void; the metal clanged loudly onto the wet concrete, sending water droplets flying on impact. He reappeared, ending up behind the Brute, inching closer instead to the holding cages.

Too close, apparently, for the inhabitants behind bars. Wet, wild snarling started up and long, now-sharp claws swiped at his ankles from wherever they could reach. His teeth snapped at them in a bid to intimidate them away but nothing swayed them; their wide eyes held no self-preservation anymore. 

“See? Won't listen,” the Brute reminded him, voice deep and slow. “They’ll only listen to me. Wanna see?” 

He raised a gleaming hand, his smile broken and nasty. Behind Daud, the snarling grew deeper; bones snapped and whines dripping in whalesong ripped out of their throats. In horror, he turned to see their bodies lurching, heaving, changing… 

Metal groaned and claws pushed against bars, bending them like rubber. Their cages were far too small for the monsters those poor souls were destined to become. It was mere seconds before all of them would be bursting forth, rushing him, or worse…

A quick thwip and a heavy thud reached his ears and the man yowled, grabbing at his magical hand. A crossbow bolt had pierced his palm and he bent over, clutching his wrist, but not before another bolt was loosed and buried deep into his thickened thigh. The smell of blood filled his nose and drove the caged wolves into a frenzy as they pressed against their bars. His heart thudded too fast, whales singing in his ears so loud he almost missed the three pistol shots, the gun unloaded. The Brute definitely ate at least one of those bullets but Daud knew better; if that man was exactly like him, then he'd survive. He'd live. 

Through yowls of pain the attacker disappeared, and Daud knew he had fled. However, his absence didn't stymie the chain reaction already in place behind him.  He leapt away, gaining distance; soon those captives would no longer be captives. Blood and fur and screeching came from the cages and he could feel his body lurch and heave in response. 

Fur rippled across his neck and back. He brought his searing hand up to his face, as it stretched and grew and lost its humanity, and he laughed. 

“Fine, you mangy dogs, come to me! Fight! We will see who among us is truly mad!”

His thoughts thundered outward, not caring what minds he touched, and he had the satisfaction of watching at least one of those dogs stop and whine. But then the hinges broke, those mangled bodies poured forth, and his cackling, sharp-toothed smile was all that was there waiting for them. 

------

That wasn't Daud. 

There was no way. Everything in Rulfio's senses was rejecting what he was experiencing, what he was seeing, like a horror story becoming reality. Despite everything he had learned in the last few hours of his life, seeing it, bearing witness— that was another thing entirely.

And what he was bearing witness to, was the form of Daud heaving, smoking, growing, all while four amalgamations of fur and flesh bore down on him. 

Thinking fast, Rulfio grabbed Jordan and pushed her away from the ledge of the sewer pipe, keeping her as far away from this new pit as possible. She naturally protested but he gripped her arm tight, his eyes serious as they searched her face. 

“Get out of here. Now.” 

Her eyes were wide and terrified, darting from him to the commotion down below them. Rulfio shook her again, pulling her in, dominating her visual space so all she looked at was him. 

“But, but I heard him? Daud, in my head…” 

“Jordan listen to me! If you stay here, you will die, and I'm not about to have that on my conscience.” 

“But what about you?” She gasped. A sound like screaming whales reverberated through the room, shaking Rulfio's whole chest and limbs. He pushed her away again as she winced, whimpering from the noise. 

A huge thud. A cry of pain followed by a wet, squelching noise and the snapping of bone. Rulfio refused to turn and look. Jordan paled as the sounds worsened. 

He urged her harder, shoving against her until she was in the other rooms, further away. 

“Go back the way we came,” his voice shook but his hands were still steady. “Once you get to the ampitheatre, go to the right of the doors. There is a sewer outlet three clicks down, it should drop you into Rudshore—” 

Something shuddered the concrete they were standing on and Rulfio's head was filled with a dark, wild laughter. The giddiness of the other mind was enough to overwhelm his own feelings of fear, but he shook it off. Jordan still gaped, too terrified to move. 

Rulfio growled, his teeth gritting together as he pushed her as hard as he could. 

“GO!” He yelled, and that seemed to wake her up. She picked herself up, turned, and ran back into the sewer, leaving Rulfio alone. 

But he wasn't really alone. His breath was ragged, filled with the tumultuous thoughts of another, of someone in the throes of a killing spree. His limbs shook and he closed his fists, steeling himself to turn around and witness the carnage. 

It was more than even he expected. 

A huge wolf monster, black fur glistening with wet-red blood, towered in the center of the room, biting down on the neck of one of the last remaining test subjects. Its dying screeches were unearthly and nothing like what the wolves of Tyvia sounded like during the winters of his youth. It thrashed against the vice of his teeth but then he shook and it's neck snapped, blood gushing out and pooling on the floor in dripping rivers. His head raised up, pulling the neck with his jaws until it was snapping, rending, pulling away from the main body. Twitching, tongue lolling from a lifeless mouth, the prize was pried fully away, tendons giving way in a gorey mess. Daud’s huge hand grabbed it from his mouth and tossed it aside, where it wetly hit the ground, bouncing until it splashed into a puddle, contaminating it. Then, as if an afterthought, his head bent and bit into the creature's shoulder, popping the arm out with a tug, as if he was simply spatchcocking a chicken. 

The other bodies were sprawled out in similar fashion; in the minutes it took for Rulfio to convince Jordan to run, the monster that had once been Daud had completed his wet and gruesome work.

 And now, he was feasting on his kill, teeth crushing bone and tearing flesh. 

It was too much. Rulfio made a strangled noise before his feet gave out and he fell to his knees at the sight and smell of it all. He couldn't have run after Jordan, even if he had wanted to.

A long ear twitched, an eye opened, and suddenly a huge head was turning towards him. This was it; Rulfio’s once-friend brought him to the place he was killed, to be killed in turn. Or maybe worse, maybe he'd wake up tomorrow just as scarred and cursed as the man he once knew, the man who no longer existed, because Daud would never, he wouldn't—

When the curious tendril of emotion extended towards Rulfio, he could feel nothing but nauseated as a response. Concern, worry a small amount of fear. Rulfio shut his eyes, pushing that mind out, feeling it recoil apologetically. When it was gone, he expected to feel claws against his body, white hot and burning, teeth at his neck as he became the next meal—

The seconds passed and Rulfio counted each one. No blow came. No noise of breaking bone or squelching blood reached his ears. Just the drip of water, steady and infuriating. 

“Rulfio.” 

Daud's voice was so close it nearly gave him a heart attack. Eyes flying open, he gasped, seeing Daud standing in front of him. He fell backwards, crawling away before standing back up. 

“Get away from me,” he blabbered, trying to get his breath back, to steady his hammering heart. “Get the fuck—” 

He caught a glimpse of Daud's face, of the expression that would haunt him for weeks and months to come. The hurt hanging on those shoulders, the damaged look in his eyes, silent agony even under that layer of blood and grime and gristle. Rulfio tried to rescind, tried to reach out but it was too late. 

The whisper of Void tickled at his ear. He blinked and in that moment, Daud was gone, vanished, and not a trace of his emotions lingered behind in his wake. 

[forestclan-clangen]

MOON 6 (Silver Box Segment End)

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[FINAL INTERACTION RESULTS]

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"Shiverpaw?"

Shiverpaw trembled and felt like a bolt of lightning surged from her ears to her feed. She whipped her head around to see her mentor staring at her with tired eye from next to the Dome.

"Windfur! I - the - " Shiverpaw stammered and gestured her paw towards the crack, only to stare in wide-eyed bewilderment when nothing but darkness was found.

Whatever monstrosity used to be there had vanished out of thin air.

Shiverpaw blinked quickly in shock and terror. What happened? Where did it...

Was that even real?

Windfur sighed, then got to his feet. "Did the Silver Box turn on?"

"Huh?" Shiverpaw glanced at the box, which had now fallen silent. Windfur must've thought she had pointed at it. "The...yes, the Silver Box turned on," she scrambled. She felt like her skull had been grabbed and rattled furiously.

"Well, it seems to have turned off now," he grumbled as he padded up next to her. "Did the noise startle you awake?'

"Um...no. StarClan visited me briefly. I...I woke up before you is all." Shiverpaw amazed herself with that quick answer. That wasn't entirely a lie. Icypaw visited her after she had learned the truth about the woods. But then...

Windfur paused, then nodded. His expression then became solemn. "...How do you feel?" he asked gently.

Shiverpaw froze. His tone was unlike what she had seen of the medicine cat before. Even when she was a kit, he was always stoic and straightforward when answering her questions. Even silly questions she tried to ask to make him laugh, like if putting burdock root up her nose would make her immune to rats, were responded with complete seriousness. Windfur asking her with sincere concern how she felt caught her off guard. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. All at once, the events of tonight caught up to her. The darkness of the staircase. The vision of the Iris. The Silver Box, the voices that overwhelmed her mind and hollowed her out until she was nothing more than a beacon for their words...

And the black, hateful eyes of Rootgrove.

"SHIVERPAW...YOU ARE NOT ALONE. WE...CAN...HEAR...YOU."

The creature's mockery of the channeled words - a kind message perhaps originally meant to offer love and support - echoed in her mind.

And she didn't even know if it was real.

Shiverpaw stared into Windfur's eyes, and the older cat's reserved presence fell. He sat down and wrapped his tail around his paws. He purred sympathetically.

The apprentice padded up to him, and after a long, tense moment, she pressed her forehead against his chest fur. Her eyes shut tightly and her lips curled into a fearful snarl.

"I don't understand," she sobbed. "I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't..." Shiverpaw repeated until her voice was nothing more than a strained whimper. Windfur didn't move, but he continued to purr, his dark blue eyes flickered with empathy.

Shiverpaw trembled. She wanted to go home and curl up by Iciclepool's side. She wanted her mother. She wanted to learn about herbs and listen to stories. She wanted to smell Cloudthunder's cooking and hear Talonpaw try and impress Redstar with his new fighting tricks. She wanted Hopechase to jokingly swat at her, playing an improvised game of whack-a-badger.

She didn't know how to tell Windfur that she wasn't afraid of the Iris. StarClan was trying to protect them. They said they loved the Clans, and loved her. She believed that.

She was afraid of the monster in the wall, and the voices that were not from StarClan. She was afraid of who she became when the voices started to riddle the monster with questions. They called him "Rootgrove". They asked him about the Iris. About what happened to him. About whether or not Redstar could successfully feed the woods. It weaponized their words in return. And the entire time, she felt powerless. Empty. Like she was dreaming, and she was floating and falling at the same time. She wanted to wake up, but it was like her body slowly turned to her, watched her scream and beg to let her wake up until her voice gave out, and only when she was weeping on the ground did it softly whisper, "no."

"You're going to be okay, Shiverpaw. StarClan is protecting us," Windfur mewed.

For a brief moment, Shiverpaw remembered lingering words of the beings beyond StarClan.

"We want to help the clan survive against the woods."

"Remember this; StarClan is not your only ally. We support you. Thank you for your voice."

"I hope so." Shiverpaw whimpered. "Stars, I really, really hope so."

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