#monthly comic beam

[danishexmachina]

Villain Mystery Manga "EVOL" by Atsushi Kaneko (Soil, Wet Moon) is on cover of the upcoming Comic Beam issue 9/2024. 3 teenagers attempt suicide but fail. When they awake, they got superpowers & are determined to use them for evil. (x)

[colleendoran]

I went to a lot of comic cons in college. My impression was that most of the creators were… creatives. People that spend long hours in front of a drawing board or a typewriter, building worlds out of the aether that is their brain(s). That’s illustration to me. Physically manifesting the metaphysical, moment by moment. Picking the best moments for each beat of the story.

I -flat out- went to school to be a comic book artist. I just cannot fathom feeding my wife and my boys by manifesting the images in my head into a monthly income. But hey, that’s me. Your work is a continuous source of inspiration and joy for me.

My eldest son loves the power rangers. He he drew the green ranger in pencil on a canvas. He then painted the drawing with acrylic. He had a full-on meltdown when the painting didn’t look as good as he wanted it to look.

I sat with him and explained the process of creating comic book artwork. From blueline to publication. I spoke with him about the value of perseverance, and the value of using mixed media. He waited a day and then outlined his painting with Sharpie. He BEAMED with pride when he showed me the final product. Made me so, so happy.

Rodin was a hack. Dude had no deadlines, and no narrative outline.

Keep being awesome. You are an inspiration to me, to my boys, and to generations to come.

I am so glad you are encouraging your son to make art and enjoy it, and it is great that you find so much to appreciate in comic art and have so much respect for those who make it. We all truly appreciate it.

A few thoughts, if I may.

If you want your son to understand and appreciate mixed media, you might want to move him away from using markers like Sharpies.

If you are concerned about the longevity of the original art, I regret to inform you alcohol based markers such as Sharpies and Copics are not lightfast. That is to say, they fade on exposure to UV light. They do not use pigmented inks, they use dyes.

The fading may not happen today, it may not happen tomorrow, but it will happen sooner than you would like. Many well-known cartoonists who used Sharpies on their original comic pages, or did commissions sketches using them, have seen the art fade markedly (pun intended) over time.

Here's what that looks like.

This Klaus Janson commission has just about gone home to Jesus.

Try to switch to pigment based markers, such as those from Faber Castell, or go wild and learn to use a crow quill.

Also, while I truly appreciate your kind compliments, it's not necessary to do that at another artist's expense.

Rodin was the complete opposite of the definition of "hack".

A hack is a term originally used for one who works on tight deadlines to publisher specifications, and produces poor quality work.

That's not Rodin.

Rodin was a spectacular talent who earned his place in the canon. He came from humble beginnings and spent the first two decades of his career sculpting decorative architectural elements. He obtained his place as a fine artist after many years of struggle.

And even then, a fine artist often works to deadline, as there are salons and exhibit specs that must be met, as well as the requirements of patrons and clients, to say nothing of the grueling formal training aspiring artists were subjected to in the ateliers.

His work often contains strong narrative elements as well, as evidenced by his design for The Gates of Hell.

In fact, for most of the history of modern art, narrative elements were considered anti-art. As someone who prefers 19th century genre art, this attitude is bummerific.

The term "hack" comes from the 17th century term "Grub Street Hacks".

Back in the day writers did not get royalties. Bookstores usually published books and paid writers a flat fee and never another penny, which resulted in a lot of very broke writers, or writers who came from wealthy families who could afford to scorn the sordid topic of coin.

Grub Street was located in London where a lot of book publishers were housed next to brothels and flophouses. It's now known as Milton Street. This area was the location of the lowliest of the low publishing joints.

The great Samuel Johnson was once a Grub Street Hack.

I've just read the most wonderful book about Samuel Johnson which has many amazing details about the development of publishing. The Club: Johnson, Boswell and The Friends Who Shaped an Age. My highest recommendation, though some will be very upset by attitudes and behaviors toward the women in these men's lives.

Johnson, despite many years of poverty, was able to escape after his work eventually earned him a royal pension. When well-thought of creative people couldn't make royalties, they were supported by wealthy patrons and the royal pension system.

While I don't have a formal education, I spent many years doing research for auction catalogues and ghost writing articles about art history, which is why I am annoyingly pedantic about it all to this day.

[wanderingmind867]

My take on Kyle Rayner:

Warning: This is a follow-up to my idea of third dc universe created in 1986. And since Kyle Rayner is a character I know very little about, i took the limited information i had and created this concept at school yesterday.

Kyle Rayner was an aspiring graphic designer, living in LA in 1986-1987. Down on his luck and struggling to pay the bills, Kyle was talented but poor. Your basic starving artist. He longed for a chance to prove himself. To make something of himself as a comic book artist, working with the medium he grew up reading. But then one day, fate brought kyle rayner a gift. A gift he would soon come to cherish most dearly.

One day when kyle was out in the hills outside of San Francisco, sketching out the terrain for an art assignment, he saw a giant green meteor crash into the San Francisco Bay. Running to try and find out what it is, kyle finds a strange lantern floating at the bottom of the river. The lantern's still steaming from it's crash landing on earth, and it burns kyle's fingers to touch it. But suffering through the pain, he manages to drag the lantern out of the water and bring it home with him.

Kyle still isn't sure why he felt so mesmerised by the glowing lantern. He wonders if maybe it had some sort of hypnotic effect on him. But it's pulsating light in the evening hours inspires him to make sketches of it. He's reminded of an old favorite comic book character, Hal Jordan and his Green Lantern. But what kyle couldn't expect is for the lantern to end up talking to him telepathically.

It tells him that it came from a far distant world, a far different time and place. When it's home universe collapsed (during the crisis on infinite earths), the lantern was bombarded with energy beams, giving it reinvigorated power and a temporary sense of sentience. Flying through space like an asteroid, it eventually crashed on him. Looking for worthy individuals in the nearby area, kyle was the only one the lantern sensed. So it called him to it, and convinced him to take it home.

Rapidly losing it's sentience (which was only granted to it temporarily), the lantern gifts him a ring, and tells him that if he says an oath in front of the lantern once every 24 hours, he will receive tremendous power. As Kyle trys the oath for the first time (vowing to the ring that he would never betray it's trust) he is transformed into the Green Lantern! And the lantern (now losing its mental sentience) says it's last words to him: "Congratulations, Green Lantern… may your light shine bright…and protect this world you call earth"…

From here, kyle becomes the Green Lantern! Champion of the Underprivileged and Hero to Millions! Coincidentally, Kyle Rayner is eventually hired by a comics company to draw a monthly comic chronicling the exploits of the Green Lantern. Kyle eventually proves himself capable of writing the comic too, meaning his day job is writing and drawing a comic all about his real-life superhero identity.

This whole "superhero writing a comic about himself" idea would allow us some particularly cool avenues of writing. More specifically, it means we can have a back-up feature on the book. The Green Lantern comic covers Kyle's real exploits, but the back-up feature shows us how kyle turns his real adventures into slightly exaggerated tales in his comic book. Hell, we might eventually get some stories told purely through the lens of kyle's comic.

And as for what kyle's lantern is, let me explain: kyle's lantern is a lantern that once belonged to a member of the green lantern corps. But that lantern died during the crisis, and the radiation waves as his sector was destroyed imbued the lantern with temporary sentience. From there it fell to earth and chose kyle to be it's new wielder. So kyle is a member of the green lantern corps, he just doesn't it initially.

[allthegoodbobdylanlyricsaretaken]

I get the joke but also serialized formats were extremely common for popular fiction in the Victorian era. For example, most of Charles Dicken’s works were also published as serials. People bought collections of serials and short form stories, magazines, shilling monthlies, penny dreadfuls. People read them out loud socially and followed them the same way we follow manga and tv shows and comic books today!

Beam Stoker was not some revolutionary new writer he was a master of an old and practiced craft.

Bram Stoker, mangaka, over 100 years ago with incredible predictive accuracy: Well, I'd best leave a few weeks between entries here, a mid season hiatus is a healthy tradition that will build anticipation and give stragglers time to catch up for all those following along in real time in the year of our Lord 2024

[ljaesch]

Glitch Manga to End in June 2023

The June 2023 issue of Kadokawa’s Monthly Comic Beam magazine has announced that Shima Shinya’s Glitch manga will end in the magazine’s next issue on June 12, 2023. The manga is described as: “Are you one of the ones who can see them?” Minato notices something strange about their new town on their very first day of school, when they witness an eerie shadow. Together with their little sister,…

[newsintheshell]

Pet, Ranjou Miyake è al lavoro sul sequel del manga

La nuova serie a fumetti sarà lanciata ufficialmente il prossimo inverno.

L’account Twitter ufficiale dell’adattamento anime basato sulla Remaster Edition del manga “Pet” di Ranjou Miyake, ha annunciato che l’autore sta lavorando ad un sequel intolato “Fish”.

Il nuovo manga sarà incentrato sulle vite future di personaggi come Hiroki, Tsukasa e Satoru. La serie a fumetti debutterà il prossimo inverno sulla rivista Monthly Comic Beam di Kadokawa.

Twin Engine ha finanziato la serie animata di “Pet” appena andata in onda, che trovate in streaming su Prime Video.

Alcune persone hanno il potere di infiltrarsi nelle menti umani e manipolarne i ricordi. Sono temute, odiate e chiamate “pet”. Hiroki e Tsukasa possiedono questo potere che, senza il legame speciale che li unisce, avrebbe consumato i loro fragili cuori. Tale legame viene sfruttato senza pietà dall'organizzazione criminale “la Compagnia”. Quali conseguenze avrà l'alterazione della loro amicizia?

L’anime è stato diretto da Takahiro Omori (Durarara!!, Baccano!) e sceneggiato da Sadayuki Murai (Boogiepop Phantom. Knights of Sidonia) presso Geno Studio (Golden Kamuy, Kokkoku). Il character design di Junichi Hayama è stato adattato per le animazioni da Masashi Kudou (Bleach, Chain Chronicle: The Light of Haecceitas). 

Autore: Ougi (@AbsEndogonidia)

[FONTE]

[kyopmi]

♡ — sightseeing

‣ you convince sakusa kiyoomi to visit a grocery store together ...

‣ gn!reader, fluff

‣ 806 words

‣ this is an entry for milo @taintedsorrcw 's writing collab, too much to dream !

sakusa kiyoomi didn’t particularly understand when, last night, you had asked if he wanted to visit the newly-opened grocery store a few blocks away. puzzled, he reminded you that just last week, the two of you had done your monthly shopping in the supermarket you usually frequent and there’s nothing left to check off your list. it’s a different grocery chain, you had insisted, and therefore, will probably have different stuff. it finally clicked in his brain that you’re not interested in going with the intent of purchasing anything, but rather to go sightseeing, and he finally agrees to accompany you, noting the beam that instantly appears on your face when he does so.

how silly of them to be so excited over visiting a grocery store, he thinks to himself, features softening into a small, affectionate smile as he watches you bury yourself under the covers, seemingly satisfied with yourself as if you’ve completed a quest.

i love them so much.

and thus, this morning, you’re both walking hand-in hand from your shared apartment to the new store you can’t stop enthusing over, the mini expedition filled with conversation. he tells you about his upcoming matches, how he’s fairly confident in the Black Jackals’ ability to score a win, and recounts the comical antics of his teammates from their previous practice he had kept in mind because he thinks you’d enjoy the story (you did). in return, you tell him about the recent milestones you secure in your projects, a new book that piqued your interest after your friend had recommended it (sakusa makes sure to remember the title), and a possible family dinner in the next month that your parents would love for him to join.

10 minutes later, you and kiyoomi are already standing by the automatic sliding-glass doors of the store. it definitely has a different vibe than the usual supermarket, he’ll give it that. when you first step in, you’re greeted with the delicious smell of freshly-baked pastries from the artisanal bakery right at the front floor of the store. the air-conditioned indoors is a more-than-welcome change from the outside, providing relief from the humid summer heat. instead of the regular harsh fluorescent lights on the ceiling and the white-painted walls that seem to highlight everything on the shelves, the interior is darker, with both the walls and the floor in a complementing shade of dark grey. the lights are warmer and positioned right above shelves almost as tall as kiyoomi, perfectly distanced to provide an adequate but not overwhelming amount of lighting, while the sides and backed are reserved for refrigerators and freezers, showcasing produce, dairy products, and fresh meat and seafood. from where you’re standing, you can even make out what seems like a small deli near the cashier stations, advertising a selection of cuisines and delicacies.

it’s definitely not your usual supermarket.

even kiyoomi is taken aback, as the both of you momentarily still after you enter the store, admiring the modern interior that clearly, neither of you were expecting.

he takes a glance at you, amused at the way you’re looking around wide-eyed in wonder. he’s reminded of one of the reasons he loves you — the way you’re able to appreciate the little things, whether it be the aesthetically-pleasing assortment of goods on the shelves of an unfamiliar grocery store or the constellation of freckles that splay across his skin, once upon a time being an ugly source of insecurity until you start leaving soft, shy kisses all over them during nights when you hold each other close under the covers. the way you fuss and pout when the bouquet of flowers he gifts you start to wilt, despite knowing he buys one for you every week, anyway. the way the umeboshi that you make for him and pack into his lunchbox always has the right balance of sweet, salty and sour. the way you can’t meet his eyes for a second, loopy smile on your lips, right after he kisses you. the way he thought you would only be a temporary stop in his journey when you’d first met, only to find himself wanting to stay longer and longer by your side until he can’t even think of leaving.

kiyoomi nudges your side to grab your attention, silently snickering when you slightly stumble and narrow your eyes at him. his hand reaches out to find yours, heart fluttering when you immediately slot your fingers in between his, and he begins to lead you through the aisles.

“come on,” he smiles at you, giving your hand a gentle squeeze, “looks like we have a lot of sightseeing to do today.”

♡ taglist — @sachan1956 @gojoanti @llyslikeliz @sunkeiji @rinsramenshop @justmyownreality @a-cosmicdawn​ @emmyrosee​ @tyler-dimples-jones​ @crystal-lilac​ @loutij​ @kissmorax @awkwardaardvarkforever​ @ohtokki​ @twismare​ @kitsunekanojo​ @toorude-er​ @mattsunkawa​ @hyeque​ @le3nur​ @epkatn​ @wonpielle​

unedited and i will never stop talking abt kissing kiyoomi's moles n freckles

[missionimpossibleburger]

When Art Becomes Industry - The Menu Review

For my elementary school yearbook, I was given a slip of paper that had me answer the following prompt: "What do you think you'll be when you grow up?" These would later be printed just below my name and portrait that would proudly beam on the glossy pages of the 5th grade section of the yearbook, among the other classmates off to do wonderful and ambitious things as preteens in middle school. In short, this was like a high school yearbook quote, but a little more hopeful and earnest.

I answered Probably a comic book writer or a piano player. While the use of "Probably" helped me ease into the idea of letting go of my short-lived comic book writing ambitions, it still amazes me today that, at 10 years old, I knew in my heart that the piano would be a part of my life.

My earliest memories come from the time when I was a toddler who could barely walk, stumbling down the soft carpeted hallway of my childhood home in South San Francisco as I approached the mysterious and booming mid-range tones from the piano in the living room. I'd see my dad's legs, rhythmically pressing on the ornate pedals with the balls of his feet at irregular intervals, like he was operating a weave as he conjured up a net of harmonies beneath his palms. While I might not have fully comprehended it at the time, there was a understanding in our family that the piano is a gene in our household, and I inherited it from my dad, whether I liked it or not.

Fortunately, I did like it. My dad took me to my first piano lesson when I was five years old, in the back of a Chinese-owned musical instrument shop on Clement Street. I never saw that teacher again (maybe the first lesson was complimentary, and my dad just didn't like her enough), but I got to keep the book. At home, with the help of 12 colorful cartoon characters printed in my book, I taught myself all 12 notes in the scale (more if you want to count the treble and bass clefs), simply because I was hungry to learn more notes and more songs. I took great pride when my dad clapped for me finishing Mary Had A Little Lamb, and shame when he reprimanded me for improvising wrong notes. I loved learning new songs, and held myself over with nursery rhymes and folk songs until it was time to take formal classical lessons from a teacher who met my dad's approval. At nine years old, I finally was reaching the next step.

My piano teacher introduced me to the world of music education and the rigors of music training. She was compassionate and warm, but demanded dedication. Through her, I internalized the technicalities of finger placements, metronome speeds, hand compartmentalization. I expanded my repertoire to included Russian contemporary composers whose surnames sounded like Harry Potter spells, but whom sometimes wrote the easiest pieces for my nimble fingers. I reckoned with the performance anxiety that dreaded my psyche before every monthly recital, which eventually bled over to my Certificate of Merit performance auditions. While I changed schools and subjects during the day, music became the constant test that loomed over me.

By the time I became an adolescent, I had nothing to show for it. In high school, it dawned on me that, not only was the piano barely used in any high school ensemble, but everyone knew how to play it better than I did. Everyone knew an ensemble-friendly instrument, whether it was a string instrument for the orchestra, a woodwind for the symphonic band, or a brass for both. All I had was piano, an instrument that's barely heard unless there's a solo, a concerto, or a jazz rhythm section involved. If I wanted to be heard, I had to be perfect. All 4 years of high school, I didn't pass a single audition for piano - not for the school jazz ensemble, not for any of the school musical pit orchestras. I dreaded each audition anyway, and probably flubbed them out of nervousness. I only got into orchestra after I begged the music director and offered to be a TA and a percussionist for the orchestra class, and the one time I did play in the musical pit orchestra was for percussion.

The stress and pressure I felt in the rigors of the music world left me jaded; they were a sobering reminder that I would never be cut for a career in music, or at least as a piano player, as my 10-year-old self prophetically proclaimed. My worth was at the whim of directors listening for every perfect note. The world was telling me that I wasted my time with the piano, a constant reminder of my own inadequacy. I became angry. I lost sight of why I was even spending time and money on these piano lessons, when I had schoolwork and college applications to worry about.

It's this jaded feeling that I think The Menu fully understands. Ralph Fiennes' Julian Slowik is a world-renowned chef who uses his reputation and art to seek retribution for the ills of the arts-turned-service industries. His dishes are the visceral expressions of his stoic hatred and rage for the pretentious, capitalist, and opportunistic subculture that has plagued his beloved art. Having been deeply engrossed in the higher world of fine dining, he manipulates and upends the culture to his own vengeful benefit, usurping expectation and surprising his guests (and by extension, us) by forcing them to confront their dismissive participation and moral crimes against art and humanity. In public reference does he create his own personal chaos, a heaven out of a living hell for those he finds undeserving.

There's a point in the film in which we see Slowik's origins. In one photo shown, he's younger, relaxed, and smiling, holding up a greasy burger patty on a flat and wide spatula, like the kind you'd see in cartoons. It's in stark contrast to the Slowik we got used to seeing, a stoic and terse statue of a man with thunderous claps and a commanding presence, arms crossed. And it's this point in the film where we see it's emotional core, an outlet for our own passionate angst and frustrations. We see a man who was once happy, doing what he loved, now grown into a bitter, spiteful shell.

With nothing else to audition for (save for the slightly less rigorous annual piano tests I habitually studied and trained for), my time with the piano became much for personal. Around my early adolescence, my love and ear for music bloomed with The Beatles, and the piano became the perfect outlet for that rediscovered joy and love of music. Like how I was when I was five, I began dedicating myself to learning more and more songs I loved, Beatles and beyond. I sought new territory and creativity in jazz piano and improvisation, a new language that was previously shunned from me.

When I see Ralph Fienne's Slowik as he is, I am reminded of all of those failed auditions, those nights slumped on the piano bench, those feelings of worthlessness, and if I sat through more of those and eventually found the success I was looking for, I'd come out a shell like him. But, when I see Slowik cooking a burger, I am thrust with nostalgia for the days when I learned Beatles songs on the piano, noodled jazz piano solos over wavy chords, and weaving harmonies out of thin air.

So yeah, I got pretty emotional watching this.

[bonny-kookoo]

Alien koo drabble: y/n having her period, and kook reading up on human behaviour (or ask joon?) to help her feel better. Cue mountains of chocolate and a big nest’y pile of electric heating blankets?

It was cold outside, but even that didn’t really explain why the hell you were still craving the uncomfortable spot in front of the oven more than the couch. Jungkook had noticed quite quickly that something was bothering you; from the lack of movement throughout the day, to the small wincing of your features here and there. He could also pick up a more iron-ish scent on you, which did freak him out at first, until he remembered something Joon hat told him about.

The more he researched and found out about humans, the more he personally felt like he had to protect you. Not only was your kind rather stubborn and impatient, as seen from the countless wars you’ve started through the ages that his own kind had observed yours, you were also painfully frail and fragile compared to his.

Alcorian children weren’t as common as on your planet. He’d found out that within human families, having two or three or even more kids was absolutely normal. In some weird way, having human females around now was a beacon of hope, considering the slowly declining numbers of his own kind. It was one of the major reasons however on why he was so eager to know everything there is to know about that particular topic. It was interesting, yeah, but after learning just how painful your monthly cycle could be for you, he’d made it his personal mission to make you feel as comfortable as he could.

He knew the signs already, so spotting it wasn’t a problem for him after realizing what may be going on with you. You became more picky with food, and when you’d complained about a stomachache as well, he immediately knew. When he’d brought you the second hot water bottle for your cold feet, practically begging you to stay in his bed between all the blankets and pillows, you started to laugh a bit. He looked so concentrated, so determined that I was almost comical to see. “Koo, what are you doing?” You giggled as he slowly crawled underneath the blankets with you, holding you against his chest.

“I’m taking care of you. I read that menstrual cycles for humans can be quite painful and uncomfortable, so I searched for every remedy there is to conquer that.” He explained, before adding something after a moment, quiet, and unsure. “Am I.. is this okay?”

You smiled, crawling into his embrace like a kitten as he instinctively kissed your head. “You’re doing great. Thank you.”

He smiled, practically beaming. “Ah, it’s nothing.. after all you’re gonna carry our child soon.”

“I.. what?” You asked, and he grew a bit nervous at your quiet tone of voice.

“Do you not want a child with me?” He asked, and you sat up, making him whine as he immediately went to pull the heating blanket around your middle again, careful not to be too rough. “It’s okay if you don’t want to but I thought..”

“I do.” You said, placing your hand reassuringly on his cheek as his eyes widened, almost sparkling as they showed you just how much those two words meant for him. “It just.. came a little sudden, I guess?” You giggled, and he unfroze at that.

“I- not right now! But like, soon? Not next week or next month though, I’d have to make the house child-safe, we’d have to prepare so much and- and that takes time, because Ei want to make it perfect because our child would be perfect I know that and-“ he became frantic, and you had to kiss him to make him shut up. He almost melted at that gesture, eyes still wide as they looked at you.

“Are all alcorian men so keen on having kids? You’re more concerned about child-safety than anyone I’ve ever met.” You said, and Jungkooks brows furrowed a bit.

“A child is rare.” He explained. “And they’re fragile. It’s.. it’s Normal for them not to reach adulthood, since, you know, the woman of my kind don’t really.. they don’t have that materna bond with their kids like yours do.” He says, which did explain a lot to you. “So it’s usually us men who take care of the children.” He finishes, before he runs his hand through your hair. “I’ve seen so many videos and read so much about your kind and- and it’s just.. only imagining how nurturing and sweet you’d be makes me want to cry because a child is.. the ultimate goal of a partnership.” He says, and you hug him right after his head leans down to hide his face behind his hair. “Can we really.. you’d really-“

“Of course Koo.” You reassure him softly. “Of course I want to have a child with you.”

And you can feel him squeeze you a little tighter at that.

[littleeyesofpallas]

I'm feeling a special kind of weird. So, I'm gonna liveblog rereading SOIL and see how far I really get.

As some background, SOIL ran in Kadokawa's Monthly Comic BEAM from 2003 to 2010 (they're not a super well known magazine outside of Japan but they've been the home of series like Kaoru Mori's Emma, Desert Punk, Suehiro Maruo's Panorama Island, Wandering Son, and Thermae Romae, among many many others...) and it was collected into 11 volumes: Making it the longest of Kaneko's manga.

He's done a lot of great shorter series as well as one-shots and anthology work, so something a little longer and less overtly punk is curiously outside his wheelhouse; He normally has a persistently grungy aesthetic that really sets him apart from more conventionally "anime looking" artists.

Tragically the only one of his manga to be translated into english is his 1998 series, Bambi & Her Pink Gun. SOIL has however been translated into both Italian and French, because of course it has.

There was also a live action TV show that ran concurrent to the end of the manga and had its own unique ending. The show actually did a phenomenal job of capturing a lot of the tone and energy of the manga, right down to some of the cast really being the spitting image of their characters.

[sasa-gay-yo]

His Little Teacher (Levi Ackerman x Teacher!Reader)

Request: Here

Summary: You never knew your favorite kindergartener, Isabel Ackerman, had such a good-looking father until Parent-Teacher Conferences. 

Timeline: Modern!AU

Warnings: this bitch is LONG, Some slight mentions of sexual activity, drinkin 

Art Credits: ? help pls

She was the only child who never had a chaperone, or a parent come with cookies or treats on their birthday. If you didn’t look at her profile, you wouldn’t even know what day her birthday was and that it had passed a month prior to today. Even when you would go on field trips, like today, sending home permission slips encouraging parents to come to museum, all that came back was the five dollars for lunch and his elusive signature.

Levi Ackerman

Despite that, you loved the little raven-haired girl. She was smart, she always listened, washed her own face and hands after craft time, and she always talked about her father. Even now, on the bus to the museum with her pink princess backpack on her lap, she was talking about her father to you. From what you gathered, her mother had passed away when she was born, and he was the only one taking care of her. That’s what her preschool teacher had said to you in the teacher’s lounge last week. You felt bad that you judged his parenting when you finally learned that, now knowing he was probably working hard to take care of her and raise her as well as he did. You just wanted parents to be involved with their children, especially with your favorite child. However, from what she’s told you about her father, you didn’t need to worry about that too much.

“And he’s so strong Miss. (Y/L/N)! Yesterday, Daddy and I went to pick out a fish tank and he carried it even full of water to our kitchen table. Daddy got a Dory fish and I got a Nemo fish.” You smiled down at her, nodding at her stories. She grabbed at your hand harder, trying to convince you at how strong her father was. You did wonder what the man looked like, again, having the preschool teachers tell you all about her glorious looking father. Still, halfway through the school year, you’d never met him, and she took the bus back and forth from school every day. You just had his neat signature.

Throughout the whole field trip, she didn’t let go of your hand, dragging you around to all of the stations while you let your other fellow teachers deal with the whole group. They knew that they couldn’t do anything to drag you away from that child. She was like a magnet to you, even on the first day of school. Your fellow teachers said that your first class of students was always special, and so it made sense that you had a relationship with a child like that. Bright-eyed, cute, and very insightful on certain things. The only thing that you would write down on her monthly report cards was how blunt she was to her fellow students.

You would have to hide your laugh with the things she said to them. In her defense, nothing she said was wrong, but you did have to teach her how to give constructive criticism without insulting anyone. When you sat her in the time out corner, she would give an annoying look at the calm-down toys, her arms crossed. It was comical, but oh, so cute. This is why you taught kindergarteners. They were just learning how to live life, and you were there to guide them along on their quite funny mistakes... and you got a front row seat to those hilarious moments.

“Miss. (Y/L/N), did I tell you that Daddy can come to student teacher conferences? He gave me a note to give you!” She dug through her backpack again and pulled out a cleanly folded white piece of paper to give to you.

“That’s great, Isabel! I can tell your father how good you are.” She beamed up at me, and you knew how much she loved when you praised her. It must be what her father does at home. You took time to read the tiny note, taking in neat and orderly handwriting.

Miss. (Y/L/N),

Next week’s Parent-Teacher conference openings are at weird times in my work schedule, but I do really wish to attend to talk about Isabel’s first school year. Is there anyway we can have a meeting later in the night? I’m sorry if it’s too much of you to ask to stay in the building that long, but either 8 or 9pm would work best for me. I am able to get Isabel a babysitter then.

My email is: lackerman23@gmail.com

Thank you in advance,

Levi Ackerman, Isabel Ackerman’s father

There it was, that signature. You had seen it almost every week on a random piece of paper or Isabel’s planner. You would make sure that you would stay late for him. You wanted to meet the man that raised your favorite student on his own. Even if it was Friday and you were planning to go out for drinks, you were sure your friends would understand your lateness.

When you had waved all the children goodbye, including Isabel who was always last on the bus wanting to keep talking to you, you went right away to email Mr. Ackerman back.

Hello Mr. Ackerman,

This is Isabel’s kindergarten teacher, Miss. (Y/F/N) (Y/L/N). I received your note today, and am totally willing to meet with you at 8:30 or 9 pm. The last scheduled meeting for Friday is at 8:00 pm, so you won’t be holding me back in the building at all. I am excited to meet you and talk about Isabel’s progress!

Best,

(Y/F/N) (Y/L/N)

You sent the email and sat back in your chair, thinking about the man before you got to grading the color tests. From what the other teachers had told you, he was short, but very good looking. He also seemed a bit young to be a father, or at least that’s what their judgement was. You probably wouldn’t be very focused on his looks, but his personality. If it was anything like Isabel’s, it was to be enjoyable. You wouldn’t be upset to stay back for that.

In the teacher’s lounge, you took out the early dinner you packed, turning to the others who had done the same. The town had to be small enough that even if they didn’t have Isabel in their class, they would know about the Ackermans. You didn’t grow up in this town, and you only did your student teaching here, so you knew absolutely nothing besides what the PTA moms gossiped loudly about in your classroom.

“Do any of you know about Levi Ackerman? All I’ve heard is that he’s young and good looking. I have a conference with him this week.” You sat down with the younger teachers whom you formed a bond with your first day here. They also looked eager to answer your question in hushed tones.

“The only thing I know is that the woman he got pregnant was like a one-night stand or something. They didn’t like each other, were in the same friend group, and then it was like a drunken fantasy or something.  Then, she shows up a few months later after he got hired at this big company in town, pregnant. Rumors say that she was going to terminate her pregnancy, but he vogued to keep it. The day after Isabel Ackerman’s birth, she took off, never to be heard or seen from again.” You mouth widened as you shoveled in your rice.

“I thought she died? Isabel said something like that.” The all shook their heads no.

“It’s probably what he tells her since she’s too young to understand.” You nodded in agreement and turned to Mella who was student-teaching for the preschool when Isabel was there. She was the one who told you how he looked, and she apparently went to school around him.

“Is he as handsome as they say?” She shrugged and took a drink.

“He is, short, but like, he’s a dark handsome if that makes sense. It’s the personality that people didn’t like. He’s really antisocial and mean to other parents, like he’ll insult you for anything. He was the best at everything during high school, and people always thought he was cocky, hence the attitude..”

“So that’s where Isabel gets her little problem from. I hope he isn’t like the other parents then, thinking their kid is the best. If he is, I guess he’ll just be nice to look at.”

Friday 8:39 PM

“Yes, well, sometimes when we see this behavior in a student, we first tell the parents to see if it is something at home affecting them. Perhaps other older siblings? Someone who may show negative emotion to him?” She scoffed in your face and grabbed the behavior evaluation sheet out of your hands.

“There is nothing wrong at our house! How dare you to assume that about us!” The husband just sat back in the chair almost glaring at his wife. Right, right, nothing going on at your house. You felt bad for Ryan too. The boy was smart and incredibly creative, but he couldn’t play well with anyone else. He felt the need to yell at any child who tried to get him to share, probably emulating behavior of an older sibling or parent. No doubt, the mother… but you had to be professional about the headache she was giving me.

“I’m so sorry if my words offended you! I didn’t mean anything like that,” you held your hands up in defense, “Maybe it could be TV shows he watches that models this type of behavior? Something to spur anger?” That made her calm down and think about it. You didn’t think a six-year-old was watching violent TV shows on PBS, but who knows what goes on in that house.

“Maybe we can monitor his TV intake, yes.” You sighed and looked up at the clock. This had gone over thirty minutes because they had to pick apart everything you said about Ryan. You sneaked a look out the door but saw an empty hallway. When was he going to come?

“Thank you both for coming. It means so much to me that you are involved in your child’s education at such an early age. It shows them the importance of an education and makes my job that much easier!” You gave them your spiel, standing by the door, and she refused to leave for some reason. She probably wanted to stay and brag loudly to the next parent who was coming. That was a common thing, for the parents waiting to talk about their kids, but how much genius could you find in your kids scissor practice paper?

“Do you know what parent is next? We’re friends with most of them, you know, PTA president things! It’s getting late however, are we the last ones?” She was looking left and right down the dimly lit hallway to stalk her prey.

“Next is Mr. Ackerman. He’s the last parent to go.” Her smile dropped.

“Oh, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him around. He doesn’t donate for the fairs; he hasn’t come to any of the Daddy-daughter dances we’ve had… I wonder what he even does, all alone like that.” You heard the tone of judgment ricochet through her words and your headache got bigger. She had no room to judge other parents.

“Well, I think it’s very commendable how he’s raised such a wonderful child in the circumstances he’s been given. Being a single parent is never easy. My mother raised me and my siblings by herself.” She looked you up and down, now judging you for your upbringing. She should be judging how her attitude affects her son’s interpersonal skills.

“Ah, yes, how commendable of your mother! Honey, we should get back to the kids.” She gave me a sickening smile before hauling her husband down the hallway, no doubt to insult you. You made sure she turned the corner, and the hallway was clean before you collapsed back on the door frame, holding your head.

“I swear I never had such bad parents when I was student teaching. Ugh, my head. How much can you analyze a five-year-old’s sight word recognition?”

“And they want judge me for not going to any PTA meetings when they act like this.” You jumped, covering your mouth as a silent scream ran through your body. How had you not seen him? He was leaning on the wall right next to the door, suit coat in hand. You were sure you checked both sides of the hallway before you said that. Damn it. Strike one to you acting professional.

“M-Mr. Ackerman. Nice to meet you finally!” You re-tucked your shirt back in before extending a hand. He looked down at it, smirking, before shaking your hand back.

“Nice to meet you too, Miss. (Y/L/N). My daughter seems to only talk about you these days.” You almost blushed at his words and from the fact you finally got to see him. He was incredibly handsome. You didn’t know why you didn’t listen enough your fellow teachers, and you wish you prepared yourself more than the sweater and the midi-skirt you were wearing. You did have a change of clothes for the bar you’d be going to with your friends after this, but that was highly, highly school inappropriate. What was also inappropriate was how long you were staring at his suit clad form. It was the way he had his sleeves rolled up and two buttons undone that made you stare.

“Let’s go in,” you smiled at him, gesturing to the circular table you set up in the center of the classroom. You had Isabel’s file right on the desk waiting for him. It was funny to see him sit in the small chair that was meant for a child who tagged along, but you didn’t have the heart to tell him. It fit his height a bit, and was very cute.

“That chair is for the children unless you would like to sit in it. I have no judgement though; they are surprisingly comfortable.” He looked up at me before seeing the regular sized chairs at the other end of the table. He then just shrugged and set his suit coat to hand on the side of the purple chair.

“We have these at home, so I’m used to it.” You nodded and opted to sit down on an equal sized chair to be eye level with him. He noticed your gesture and smiled at you. Now that, you would literally pay to see him smile again. You thought back to what Mella said. Cocky, insulting; you didn’t see any of that now. Maybe he’d matured the few years after they went to school or just was trying to act nice in front of his daughter’s teacher.

Isabel had talked so much about her father, but he never said how incredibly hot he was. I mean, that made sense, but still. He couldn’t have been older than you, there was no way. How was this man hiding in the midst of all the middle-aged parents? You were excited to share the news with your friends after this. A hot parent was always nice, and you hadn’t had one yet. He would be your first.

“Well, Mr. Ackerman, this is going to be a short meeting. Isabel is my model student really. Here’s some work of hers to look at. She’s smart, attentive, clean, and very, very sweet.” He smiled down at a drawing Isabel had made of him and that made your heart sing even more. This smile was very different from the short one he gave you. It was like his soul was singing through his eyes. How could he be so hot and so loving of his child at the same time? You could see it. The genuine love he had for that drawing and the little girl who made it. The little girl who looked exactly like her father, minus the eye color.

“But she does have a mouth, I know that for a fact. The fat mom called me a few weeks ago complaining about what Isabel said to… what’s his name? Rock? Rufus?” You couldn’t hold in your laugh this time, even if it was unprofessional to agree with him. The whole meeting was unprofessional at this point. You were sitting in foot tall chairs and thinking about how good of a figure he had. It was actually refreshing how laid back he seemed to be, unlike the other parents, especially this late at night.

“Yes, she is sometimes very… critical of her peers. Ryan is a student who doesn’t get along with others. She had to let him know that. To be honest, it is very funny, but still, we have to teach her to be constructive with it.” He nodded, now listening to your words with the same attention he gave to Isabel’s drawing. It made you melt even more. He cared so much about his child. Oh god, why was he perfect?

“I’ll work on her with that. She gets that from me. During quarantine, when she was doing preschool at home, I was also working. She probably heard me talking to some of my workers in that tone.” That made me perk up, knowing absolutely nothing about him. You usually do parent introductions at the first all-class meeting, but he, obviously, wasn’t there. Now that he exceeded all your expectations, you want to know more.

“If you mind me asking, where do you work?” He leaned back as much as he could in the chair, trying to spread his legs under the table. The way his ankle brushed against yours didn’t go unnoticed.

“I’m a Lead Captain in the Survey company in town. I’m fifty-fifty office work and on the job work, lifting and things.” That would explain how good his arms were looking under his sleeves. He did manual labor half of the time. 

You nodded and handed him Isabel’s behavior sheet out of the folder. You got your pen to explain him the scales, and when you turned back, he had leaned in pretty far to hover over the paper. Trying to hide your blush in your hair, you tried not to react to his closeness. He didn’t seem to pull back, so you continued to explain to him how her score was perfect except for group behavior. Again, he listened so intently to your suggestions and what you had to say about Isabel it made your heart glow with warmth.

“I guess when she was younger, the only interaction she would get was at morning preschool. She only has a babysitter since I can’t afford daycare. That’s my fault, one hundred percent. I-I heard that you know how single parenting is.” He pointed to the door with his thumb, referring to the interaction you had with Ryan’s parents. It was refreshing for a parent to take the blame too. He was getting more and more perfect by the minute. A perfect child and a perfect father. It made so much sense.

“Yes, growing up I was an attention hog. I only had older brothers, so when I went to school I expect to be treated like a princess. I had my first great awakening when a boy threw mud at my face during recess because I refused to share my swing.” He leaned his head back and let out a deep laugh and you matched him, taking in the view he was giving you. This seemed to be a one night only type thing, so you’d take your liberties where you could. I mean, if you didn’t study his face, how were you going to describe him well enough to everyone at the bar?

No. You shouldn’t be thinking this much about how good looking and perfect a student’s parent was. You shouldn’t be thinking about what’s under his clothes either.

“With the way Isabel talks about you, you might as well be a princess. It’s ‘Miss. (Y/L/N) does it this way, Daddy’ or ‘Daddy, today Miss. (Y/L/N) and I did this!’ You seem to be taking my child away from me, Miss. (Y/L/N).”  You smiled, and almost blushed at what he was telling you about Isabel and put a hand over your heart. The teachers were right about your first class.

“You can call me (Y/F/N), Mr. Ackerman. We seem to be similar in age.” He sat up again, nodding and taking the behavior sheet you gave him.

“Then it’s Levi to you, (Y/F/N). I’m thirty-two. May I ask how old you are?” Your mouth dropped and you couldn’t help it. You didn’t think he would be in his thirties and now your numbers were thrown off.

“You don’t look at all like you’re over thirty. I’m twenty-seven.” He smirked again and seemed to be comfortable enough to lean back again, arms coming together behind his head. The pose made your heart beat faster again. Oh yeah, you were telling your friends all about this.

“Well, thank you, (Y/F/N). I’m glad you think I’m so young. Isabel calls me an old man already.” You laughed and looked up at the clock. 8:52. You had time to talk more, pushing a few minutes, but you didn’t know if he had somewhere to go. This meeting itself was set up because of scheduling conflicts. You wanted to talk to him more about Isabel and his experience raising her, but you didn’t know if that would be too personal for him.

“Now, that might be my fault. She asked me sometime during our lesson about family how old did someone have to be to be considered an Uncle and I told her above 30. Then she asked if I was old, and I told her that compared to her I was. So, she now thinks that people about twenty-seven are now old.” He shook his head and let out one huff in laughter.

“Now because of you I have no game. Imagine, first, I already have a child, and now when I bring a date home, she tells her that I was an old man. I never get a third date because of that. Are you trying to keep me forever single, (Y/F/N)?” Was he… was he flirting with you? No, it couldn’t be. He was just talking, just bantering like every parent does. The problem was is that he was a very single, very good-looking parent. This was a dangerous situation and it happened during your first-year teaching. This was bad.

“I’ll talk to her on Monday to tell her to stop calling her father an old man. Does that atone for my sins?” He quirked an eyebrow up, smirking again, but this time you could tell that he was definitely flirting with you.

“Maybe, I’ll have to come to these meetings more often. To check up on your progress with getting my daughter to go against me. The only reason I don’t come around the school often is because of the other parents.” You leaned your head in your hand, finally just deciding to go along with it. Even if he said that, this was probably the only time you two were going to meet and Isabel was going to progress on to a new teacher in a few months. You both were young too, nothing was going to get to HR.

“Next week, I’ll try to get her to call you a silly, old man, how about it? We can have a progress check next Friday.” You felt your Apple Watch buzz, looking down to see who was calling. Armin. He was probably wondering where you were, but you thought you told them you’d be late.

“I’m sorry about that, it’s just my friends.” You went to hang up, knowing that in a few minutes Eren would call. Then Jean. Then Connie. Then Sasha. Then Historia. Mikasa wouldn’t care, but at this point, the train of calls would be never ending. You were going to yell at them for cutting into your time with Levi.

“Ah, don’t worry about it. I also have something to do tonight, but it was great talking to you.” You almost pouted when he went to stand up, grabbing Isabel’s folder. You were dumb to think he was flirting with you, and now you got your hopes up.

“If you have anything you need or any questions about Isabel, I’m here to answer them. Also, I’m supposed to extend out an invitation for our Spring Festival celebration next week. If you would like to come, it will be on Friday at 2 pm.” You stood, matching his height. You really wanted him to come this time, as he never came to anything, but you knew he probably wouldn’t.

He smiled at you, “You know, maybe I will come. You’ll just have to protect me from the PTA moms.” You both started walking to the door and you took the chance, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Levi, I stay as far away from them as possible. It’s an all-school thing, so it will be easy to avoid them.” You saw the little glance down to your hand before he just nodded once and continued to walk out of your classroom. He put on his suit coat and looked back at me, smiling a bit to say goodbye.

“Have fun with your friends tonight, (Y/F/N). A great teacher like you deserves to relax.” You smiled back at him, leaning on the doorframe.

“You, too, Levi. With whatever you’re doing tonight. A single father like you deserves to relax.”

Club Rio 

“Eren, if I have to tell you to stop touching me one more time, I will break your arm off!” He winced, taking his arm off of your shoulders and drinking his beer. The bar was packed tonight, so there was almost seven of you crowded around a single circle tabletop. You already felt smooshed, so you didn’t want Eren to make it worse.

“How were your conferences today, (Y/F/N)?” Armin asked you from across the table and you held a thumb up while taking a drink. It may be squished, but it was worth it to get this buzz. You took Levi’s advice and relaxed hard. The amount of bullshit you spewed in the last three days to make the parents happy to it out of you.

“Most of them are the same old, your child is great, I love having them in my class, here’s something to work on though, and then they blame my teaching. It’s really annoying having to agree with their criticism of me, but I want to keep my job. However,” you held a finger up, “the last meeting was with a single father in my class. He was amazingly hot. A bit over thirty. He also is the father of my favorite student, so it just added to it. Like a treat at the end of a hard week.” You could hear Jean and Eren scoff, but Historia leaned in, her blue eyes wide and sparkly from the drinks. 

“What did he look like?”

“He’s short, like my height, but he has black hair. An undercut. Then he’s definitely muscular. You could even see it through his button up. Thirty-Two. His eyes are really narrow, but like a type of grey that shines. One of the teachers described him to be a dark handsome, and I completely agree. She also said he was kinda of cocky and insulted people a lot. Too bad he doesn’t show up around the school because he’s busy at working at some company in town.” You saw Jean and Armin exchange looks and you pointed at both of them.

“Hey, hey, hey. What was that?” Jean spoke up first.

“Um, well, is this person - is his name Levi Ackerman by chance?” Your eyes widened and you stood straight up, your body colliding with Eren’s. Jean now had your full attention.

“How do you know him? You two didn’t live here before!” Jean leaned to rest his arms on the table, looking at Eren to explain since he wouldn’t have to yell over the crowd.

“No, but he’s our team captain at work. Short, black hair, mean, grey eyes: I think you described him to a T. But, you said he was a treat? That doesn’t sound at all like the Levi that chewed me out today because I didn’t put a signature at the end of my email.” Eren answered and you gave him a confused look. Levi seemed really nice and he joked with you. Maybe it was just his work personality.

“He was though. He even called me a great teacher and we went by first name basis.” This time Mikasa spoke up next to Eren.

“Levi’s nice to women, Eren. Not to people who probably mess up all the time at work.” Eren groaned and you arched your body around his so you could look at her. She did look a little like him, but she was half Asian, so there was some doubt in your mind. From what you could connect though, they may act alike in certain situations. Maybe it was on her dad’s side.

“Ackerman! Are you related?! How did I not think about that before?” She nodded as Eren nudged her for the comment she made about his work ethic. 

“On my father’ side. We’re cousins, but distant. I don’t talk to him unless we’re forced to at family functions. But he does act how they’re saying. He’s cold and calm, you can’t tell what he’s thinking usually. Most of the time he has a scowl on his face and doesn’t talk a lot unless it’s an insult or something. Then again, you’re a pretty woman, so that could have changed his attitude.” You blushed a bit, trying to hide it in your hair, but Connie caught you.

“You have a little crush on the DILF, don’t you?! I can see it!” He poked your cheek, him and Sasha roaring in laughter.

“No, he was just nice to look at! He also really cares about his daughter, which is just… girls like guys who are good with kids. Teacher’s also like parents who care about their kids, it makes my job easier.” They still couldn’t stop laughing and you couldn’t stop blushing.

“A teacher-parent relationship, how scandalous,” Jean added in on making fun of me, “What will the PTA moms say about that (Y/F/N)?” You glared at all of them as they laughed.

“I told you he was just hot!”

Paradis Elementary Spring Festival     

“Do you need any help reorganizing this whole table so the PTA mom’s stop roping me into work I don’t want to do?” You jumped at the body that came close behind you. You also jumped because you didn’t expect him to show up. The little raven-haired girl ran to the playground and you turned around quickly, eyes wide.

“Levi! I mean, Mr. Ackerman. I’m glad you showed up!” He nodded and used both hands to lean down on the table seeing the cupcakes that I rearranged four times, so I didn’t have to talk to the mothers about their kids.

“You said you’d protect me from them, but there I was carrying all the boxes from their damn cars.” You looked over at the mothers, now huddled around staring at you talking to Levi and gossiping. Figures. Last year, one of the third-grade teachers breathed in the wrong direction and there were rumors about her having an affair with a married man. You hoped you weren’t next on the PTA list.

“Well, its not common for a father to come to these types of events. Notice how there aren’t any on the PTA.” He switched positions so he could lean on the table and watch Isabel play on the swings with her friends and the older children. You picked up the Capri Suns from the ground, deciding to organize them by flavor.

“You know what Isabel asked me the other night? After our conference?” You perked up at his words, signaling that you were interested in what she said.

“Hm?” He scratched the back of his neck, now debating whether he should tell you this. It was a bit personal and maybe would make you, as a teacher, uncomfortable with Isabel. Either way, he did it.

“Well, I actually had a date that night,” your heart dropped a little bit, and you scowled down at your chest, “and my date needed an umbrella, so I went in to get her one. When I came out Isabel was there outside our apartment, glaring up at this woman, arms crossed and everything.” You giggled at that, imagining it in your head. You could see her signature glare now looking up at someone three times taller and five times older. You looked over to Isabel, matching Levi’s stance against the table. Right now, it looked like she was lecturing a boy on how to play the floor is lava.

“She asked me why I didn’t bring you home,” he said through a laugh and you followed his cue laughing. You weren’t doing any laughing on the inside. Your mind was swirling now after he said that, but he couldn’t have meant that. It was just Isabel thinking like a six-year-old. If Levi told her he had a date, she might have just thought that the two meetings were connected. Yeah, he couldn’t mean anything other than that.

Still.

“Ah, she’s funny, isn’t she?” You almost winced at how dismissive your tone was. It sounded like you wanted to move on from the conversation and you were afraid he took it the wrong way. You didn’t want to dismiss the opportunity of it being him flirting with you, but you also didn’t believe that was his intention. Now he thought must have thought that it was your intention to ignore it anyways. He stayed silent after that. Goddamn it. You had to fill the space somehow.

“Are you related to a Mikasa?” He seemed to perk up after that, turning his head to look right at you in recognition.

“She’s my cousin, yes. How do you know her? Are you friends with those brats?” You huffed in laughter at his tone. Brats wasn’t a word you would use for your friend group, but you guessed since he was a bit older and, from what you heard, was annoyed all the time by them at work.

“We know each other from college, yeah. Since they had secured a job at Survey, I decided to follow by teaching here so we’d all live by each other. I met Eren first.” He lifted up an eyebrow and you could see a little trace of annoyance gloss over his face. It was very much an Isabel look, or rather, she’d gotten it from her father. Pretty much copy and paste.

“You met him first and wanted to meet the rest of them?” You rolled your eyes at that. You can see how Connie and Sasha got a bit wild, Eren and Jean a bit intense, but overall, they were great people to be friends with. Armin had helped you through a required science class, Historia and Mikasa stayed with you and bought you ice cream when your boyfriend had broken up with you, Connie and Sasha were the life of the party any hour of the day, and Jean and Eren, respectively, would provide you some stress relief and good times when you were down. No, they were the greatest people you’d met.

“They’re my best friends, Levi. I love all of them.” The annoyed look still didn’t leave his face and he crossed his arms. Was he really going to argue with you about your friend group? If he did, you would definitely text the group chat to make his next work week a living hell for revenge.

“You don’t seem to be like them. Maybe Historia, but still, I wouldn’t peg you to be with that group.” You turned back around, seeing the children starting to walk over to the snack tables. Soon, once they were done with their lunch, they would descend on the cupcakes you were guarding and destroy the orderly table. You had to tape down the cheap plastic tablecloth, so it stood a chance.

“What do I seem like then? They’ve told me about you, you know. I couldn’t believe what they were telling me.” You grabbed the tape, ducking under the table do you couldn’t see his expression. However, his legs moved as he turned to face where you once were.

“Much more professional and put together than them. Maybe Armin is okay, but the others, I had to teach them how to write a formal email.”

“Well, you’ve never seen me outside of a school setting. Arguably, you know all of them more than you know me. If I had to compare myself to any of them it would be a mix between Armin and Jean. When we all go out, it seems to be like that. I can see, though, how they’d be a bit tough to handle at work.”

“Well, then why don’t we meet outside of school?” Your breath had to have stopped, but his face was completely serious. Did he just ask you on a date? Right in front of the kindergarten cupcake table?

“Miss. (Y/L/N)! Can we have a cupcake now?” Two or three of your students gathered at your leg, and you looked down at them, probably with your eyes still wide. You then looked back to Levi who was giving the children a very annoyed stare, before stepping back from the table so they had full access.

“U-Um, what did you – Cupcakes! Yes, El, you can have one cupcake each. What color do you want?” You went to hand them the specific colors you wanted, and you thought that your business would make Levi go somewhere else, but he was there staring at you while you handed them out. His gaze was unwavering as he leaned up against the basketball net’s pole. Even when Isabel came to stand next to his legs, he didn’t look down at her. You knew he was waiting for an answer and you were having an internal crisis.

You didn’t think you’d get this far, actually, no you never thought this would happen. It was going to be the one parent-teacher meeting, then you’d never see him again and only complain to Mikasa and Historia about how you let him get away. Now, he literally just came out with it. Was this his whole intention of coming today? Your stomach did flipflops because of that. But now, you were thinking of how unprofessional it would look if you two did start something. You would be offender number one for the PTA moms and it was only your first year teaching. Then, on the other hand, the school year was almost over, and you would soon not be Isabel’s teacher and you and he were both single. And he was very good looking. And he was good with kids. And you did like him a bit, only having talked to him for thirty minutes. Still, what could fully develop if you took up his offer?

“Can I please have all the parents and their children gather?” You turned your neck to look at the principal who had yelled that through a blowhorn. He was standing on the makeshift stage in front of the school, probably going to give the day ending speech before dismissing the children with their participation medals for the games we played. You would have time to ask your crisis hotline and you were thankful that Isabel so eagerly pulled her father towards the front of the school. You still couldn’t shake his gaze, him looking over his shoulder at you while you tried to hide your blush.

Once you were alone on the basketball field, you used your watch to send a text to you, Historia, Mikasa, and Sasha’s group chat.. You knew whatever they were doing, they would take the chance to slack off. It also had to be important if you were texting during the school day. 

From Mi: What are you texting us for?

From Mrs. Potato Head: Yes, aren’t you at school?

From (Y/F/N): Okay, well a situation has occurred, and I need quick guidance. I only have like two minutes

From My Queen: We can help!

From (Y/F/N): Thank you, Historia. I know I can count on you.

From Mrs. Potato Head: Just get on with it! I didn’t eat lunch today and I’m starving!

From (Y/F/N): Ok, ok, ok! 

You glanced over at the parents and there he was, staring at you while holding Isabel’s hand. 

From (Y/F/N): Oh god, I can’t believe I’m even saying this to you guys. I think Levi asked me on a date!

From Mrs. Potato Head: OUR BOSS LEVI ACKERMAN?!

From My Queen: You sound like a sixteen-year-old, (Y/F/N)! Of course, he would ask you out, who wouldn’t?

From Mi: So, what are you asking us? It’s a yes isn’t it?

From Mrs. Potato Head: Yeah, by the way you were talking about him at the bar last week, it has to be a yes

From Mi: If you two get married, we’ll be cousins

From (Y/F/N): Stop that! I don’t know if I should! I’m his daughter’s teacher and I barely know him 

The principal was on his ending notes, and you could tell that Isabel was going to race up to you before saying goodbye. She always did. At the end of the day, you would take he to the bus with the other kids, and she would have to run her homework by you, tell you one or two random things, and then get yelled at before she would go on the bus.

From My Queen: Isn’t that why you go on dates with people or am I mistaken? Mikasa, is your cousin a serial killer?

From Mi: No, Historia, I don’t think he is. I think you should do it, (Y/F/N). Even if it’s kinda weird I’m setting you up with my cousin

You rolled her eyes at her remarks and the clapping notified you that in about thirty seconds a little raven-haired girl was going to be at your feet.

From (Y/F/N): Don’t tell the guys about this please. Not unless the date goes well, okay?

From Mrs. Potato: Oh, so you’re accepting! That’s mad crazy. My best friend and my boss. I’m going to tell Connie

From Mrs. Potato Head: Oh, wait, shit sorry. Nevermind

You groaned and knew that your request would fall on deaf ears. Soon you’d have Jean and Eren at your heels telling you that you shouldn’t go out with anyone but either one of them.

“Miss. (Y/L/N)!” Isabel started her bounding run towards you, and you could see Levi starting to walk in that same direction, his eyes never having left your figure. Jesus, this man’s gaze was so intense.

From (Y/F/N): We’re talking more later 

You put your phone away, turning around to face Isabel with a big smile hiding how nervous you were in her father’s presence. Everything wrong was going through your mind. What if he didn’t mean a date? What if he thinks you’re too young for him? What happens when the date goes terribly that you end up hating him?

“Miss. (Y/L/N), I got a medal from the principal, look!” She held up the participation medal that all the children got. Something about everyone deserving to win something. You were falling asleep during that meeting.

“That’s great, Isabel! You can hang it on the fridge, yeah?” You could see his eyes spark when you said that. He smirked, too, finding it funny that you knew about their fridge, completely covered with Isabel’s drawings, report cards, and various other trinkets. Perhaps it was even a bit heartwarming to him.

“Is, can you go get your backpack from the classroom? Daddy needs to talk about you to Miss. (Y/L/N.” The little girl just lifted her head up, almost falling over to look back at Levi.

“But Daddy, I’m not done talking to Miss. (Y/L/N)!” One second of annoyance reappeared on his face before urging her to go do it again. This time, with a pout, she walked inside with the rest of her classmates to go get ready to leave.

“So, how does Saturday sound?” He was really direct, and you’d guess it was his age or the fact that you haven’t dated anyone other than college frat boys in their early twenties. You looked back at him, remembering what the girls said. They wanted you to go on it and you, yeah, you definitely wanted to go on it too.

“At seven?” You suggested and you swear you saw a smile break across his face before he dropped it to nod. That made the butterflies come back again.

“Seven, yeah. I’ll get your address from Mikasa.”

Saturday, 3:57 AM

“I couldn’t believe he posted that either! When Mikasa showed me that, I thought he was for sure getting fired,” my hands moved with my words as I explained to Levi about Eren’s awful thirst trapping social media posts. While I was doing this, he gripped my shoulder with the hand shrugged around me, trying to steer me in the right direction. Granted, I was also probably a little tipsy from the alcohol we consumed at the second bar. It was cheaper and fruitier, so I obliged, and Levi seemed to find it amusing.

“Oh, he definitely got reprimanded. It took everything in me not to kick him. Erwin is usually away, so I’m the one who has to deal with everything. One time they started, oh what are those things called, the pictures that are supposed to be funny?” He was gesturing with the hand next to my ear, trying to get me to fill in the blank.

“Memes? I knew you were old, but not this old, Lev.” He rolled his eyes at you, ignoring your insult and continuing with his story.

“They started a Meme fight in the company group chat even though I clearly laid out the rules to them. Apparently, their explanation was that if they got everyone to do it, I couldn’t punish everyone in the office.” I smiled up at him and grabbed loosely at his fingers, trying to hold his hand, but not really. I ended up just playing with them as we walked up to my apartment building.

“So, you punished everyone twice, yeah?” He smirked as we stopped outside the doorway of my building.

“Three times.” This made you both giggle like children, and you were sure the alcohol, the third round of drinks, was starting to have an affect on you both again. You’d make sure he’d call a cab to get back.

“I can walk you up to your door?” He suggested and your eyes widened, shaking your hands in front of you. He couldn’t know that Historia, Mikasa, and Sasha were on a stake-out at your apartment. It was something you all did when the other would go on a date with a new person. It was to make sure that they got home right and that they had someone to immediately rant, cry, or laugh with depending on how the date went. Last time, you, Mikasa, and Sasha almost went to egg a guy’s house that made Historia cry. However, this stake-out was going to be very different.

“No, it’s fine. It’s fine. I’m actually against gender norms. If anything, I should walk you home.” He raised an eyebrow, taking his arm off my shoulder. He wore the same suit had had during the parent-teacher conference and you made sure to comment on how hot you thought he looked back then. Rolled up sleeves, buttons undone, and now, tousled hair courtesy of you. It was a very good look.

“You wouldn’t want your kindergartener seeing you drunk.” You hit his chest after that comment, knowing you weren’t completely intoxicated. You could get up to your house, take off your makeup, and have a very productive conversation about how he had treated you to ice cream halfway through your bar hopping session.

“I’m not drunk, just happy. Tonight was really fun.” He smiled at you and nodded in agreement.

“Let’s do it again? And again? You up for it?” You matched his smile and grabbed his hand.

“Of course I am. This was probably the best date I’ve ever had, Levi.” You saw the blush paint his cheeks as he went to scratch the back of his neck.

“Me too, (Y/L/N). Me too.” You sent him off in a taxi, a single kiss on his cheek that left a smirk on his face. You stood there for a while too, letting the cool spring wind blow over your bare legs. Yeah, that was a few hours of heaven. Your heart warmed as you went up in the elevator, replaying the events in your head over and over again. You were sad it had to end, but it was almost four in the morning and you’d exhausted all open sit-down bars.

When you got inside your apartment, you saw them all sleeping on the couch besides Mikasa who locked very annoyed eyes with you. You just smiled and slid down the door, sitting on the floor.

“Oh god,” Mikasa groaned, seeing your lovesick face. She never though she’d meet someone who’d act like this for her cousin, must less one of her best friends. Sasha and Historia woke up, rubbing their eyes to look at the time. You wondered when they fell asleep.

“Why are you back so late?” Sasha mumbled, seeing the clock hit four in front of her eyes. At least you left her a stocked fridge. Historia was the first of the two to be wide awake, seeing your face clearly. She almost jumped up from the couch and ran over to you on the floor. You smile was still plastered over your face, thinking about Levi.

“How was it? How was it!?” Sasha covered her ears at Historia’s yells. She would care in the morning when she was awake. For now, she just looked at you as you stared Historia right in the eyes and said those bone crushing words.

“Historia, I think I’m in love.”

“Love?!” Mikasa popped up, sounding so taken aback by that. No, she’d never, ever bet on someone liking, much less falling in love with her cousin. What had he done to you? She rested her head on the back of the couch, looking over to you. Historia grabbed your hand hard, excited for you.

“No way! Are you sure? How do you know? What did you two do for some long? Huh! You didn’t!” You shook your head, knowing what she was thinking. No, he was a gentleman the whole night with you, even if you did exchange a few buzzed kisses here and there on the fake leather couches of a swanky bar downtown.

“We went for dinner first at a hibachi place. We talked for hours and hours, I couldn’t tell you how long. It was just, I could’ve sit and talked to him in that uncomfortable chair for hours. We just walked about everything. Our lives, Isabel, how I became a teacher, you guys; it was just so refreshing. Then, when the hibachi place closed, he said he didn’t want to end it there, and so he took me to this high-end bar, and I had an overpriced martini and we talked and talked some more. I just couldn’t run out of topics, Historia. Maybe it was because I drank so much, but still, I was buzzing the whole time around him. Then when that bar closed, we went to ours, the one we go to, and I drank more. He did too. I guess the alcohol just opened us up. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to someone for that long about absolutely nothing. Even on the way back, we walked by the river, it was so pretty and there were almost no people. Just a little slice of heaven. I’m sad it had to end, but he asked if I wanted to do it again, and again. He’s just so nice and gentlemanly and funny and handsome and cute and-“ Sasha cut you off with her hand. She couldn’t stand someone talking about her boss like that. If she kept listening to you, she would definitely say something at work and she was too afraid of what Levi would do to her.

“Guys, she’s completely whipped for our boss.” You smiled up at her, acknowledging that fact. Being with Levi just felt so good. Your heart was light and your head was buzzing around. Every time he leaned over to kiss you, you had butterflies in your stomach like some little girl. You even went into the date telling yourself you’d have to act more upright than you really are, but that went out the window when the hibachi chef squirted Levi in the eye with water and you couldn’t handle it. You were just so comfortable around him, it was hard to be professional and upright. He did tell you that you were correct, you were different outside of school, but he loved it.

“He told me that my personality came out tenfold when I was outside of school grounds. He said he liked it a lot and thought I was cute.” You were wringing your hands together, the feeling hitting your toes. God, you never had a man make you feel like this. All of the fairytale books you read the kids now made complete sense. Even Sasha’s gagging sound didn’t take you out of that trance.

“You look so head-over-heals, (Y/F/N),” Historia said, laughing next to you while looking at your eyes. She took, well, they all had never seen you like this around a man you went on a date or one-night stand with. Not Jean, Eren, the one guy you dated in college, or the one right after graduation; none of them made you look like this. It almost made Mikasa sick looking at how lovestruck you were on the floor. All for Levi.

Five Months Later

From Captain <3: I venomed you for the pizza last night. You should use it to bring me a bubble tea from that shop we went to last week

From my little teach: I’m in a meeting, but in like an hour, sure.

From Captain <3: I never understood how you seem busier on summer vacation than you did during the school year

From my little teach: Not my fault you chose to date a teacher, at least I’m always free at night

From Captain <3: Then you have to leave early in the morning and the bed gets cold

From Captain <3: You know I’m anemic ☹

“Miss. (Y/L/N), do you find something funny about the change in our core curriculum?” Your eyes looked up to the fifth-grade teacher presenting and smiled to try and hide your embarrassment.

“No, Mrs. Warnas, I was just thinking about the unique drawings I’m going to get from my kindergarteners once we introduce them to storyboarding.” That seemed to satisfy her enough to turn back around and smile to herself at my compliment. I’m glad that was in my head still, because I didn’t want to get caught in front of all the teachers. They already knew I was in a relationship with a past parent, so them catching me texting like a high schooler in class would be mortifying.

From my little teach: You just got me in trouble

From Captain <3: I’m texting you in a meeting too

From Captain <3: You’re just bad at being sneaky

When you showed up at the office, two bubble teas in hand, you were greeted first by Connie who wanted one.

“Pleaseeeeee, I’ve been working so hard today!” You moved the drinks away from his grabby hands and glared at him. You knew that if Sasha came over too, you’d have to guard these drinks with your life.

“They aren’t for you, Con. I’ll buy you one another time.” He whined again and Jean’s head popped up from over a cubical, one arm resting on the edge.

“Jeez, (Y/F/N). Isn’t this the third time this week you came here? I don’t remember you ever visiting us this much before you started dating our boss.” You stuck your tongue out at him and took a sip of your tea to rub it in his face.

“You’re just jealous you didn’t land me. You had so many chances, yet it slipped through your fingers. You and Eren both.” His eyebrow quirked up, smirk breaking over his face. He was going to say something either sexual or annoying.

“I mean, if you want to talk about my finge-“

“What did you say, Kirstein?” Jean dropped his head, mumbling something, and sitting back in his chair. You turned around, locking eyes with Levi who was in the doorway of his office. His face was one you had gotten used to over the few months of visiting him at work. In this building, he was constantly on edge and it showed all over his face. His gaze was harsh, non-smiling, and always laced with annoyance or sleepiness. His words were the same way. Even the tone he took with Jean was the complete opposite of the one he talked to you or Isabel in.

“If I have to hear about Jean or Eren’s college relations with you one more time, I’ll fire both of them. I swear, I thought it would calm down, but almost everyday they have to say something and giggle to each other like fucking school children. Did you get the brown sugar boba?” You handed him his cup, sitting in the chair opposite his. He looked cute sipping on the boba while in his professional setting. The only time he wore his suit jacket was at work, but as he walked out of that door after clocking out, it was the first thing to come off.

“Bad day? You only ask for extra sugar when you’re feeling bad.” He huffed once in agreement with his bad day, taking another big sip and running a hand through his hair.

“A deal with a Japanese company we thought would be easy is toying with us and since Erwin’s out of town, it falls on Hange and I. I’ll probably have to take stuff home tonight and work.” You frowned, putting down your cup on his desk and leaning forward. He’d been stressed recently about work, which culminated in him needing daily visits to his office for you to calm him down. Pretty soon, he’d lock the door, making sure the blinds are all pulled, and have you sit on his lap to calm him down.

“I can take Isabel to mine if you need to concentrate tonight. We still have a few Barbie movies to watch.” That made him smile, but he shook his head, looking down at the papers sprawled all over his desk. 

Isabel had been very quick to accept the fact that her teacher and father were dating, and she probably happier than either of you. You both told her after school ended so she didn’t start something with the PTA moms, but it was your carelessness that caused all of them to find out over an email thread. Isabel, however, didn’t care that Ryan would make fun of her for having “Miss. (Y/L/N) as a mommy” because there was finally someone in her like that would play princesses with her that would fit the role. You asked Levi if, before you came, he was forced by the seven-year-old to wear a crown and fake earrings, but he refused to answer. It was also very easy to transition your relationship with Isabel from teacher to, basically, co-caretaker since she already saw you as such. When you told her she could call you your first name, she went crazy being able to call an adult by their first name. Now, she’d gotten more and more comfortable with you over the summer and just recently was able to finally see you as Daddy’s girlfriend and not Miss. (Y/L/N). Soon enough, she was falling asleep with you on the couch or your bed when you babysat her, and had just mistakenly called you mommy a day or two ago.

Levi and you had talked about that situation happening before, so you were prepared to sit her down and tell her that you weren’t her mommy yet, so you’d have to make up an easier nickname to call you. Both you and Levi were pretty sure that you were the person for each other, so there was no reason to forbid her from calling you that. Actually, it was during a post-steamy cuddle session that he’d brought it up.

“I can’t see myself being with anyone else. I know it’s early to say that. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, I feel the same. No one I’ve been with has made me feel like you do, Levi.”

“M-me, too.”

“I was going to ask you to come over tonight anyways. Mikasa offered to babysit Isabel over the weekend.” He trailed off on the last word, trying to suggest that we had three open days without a little girl trying to sleep in between us at night. Of course you’d go over.

“I guess I can come. You’ll just have to help me test out some kindergarten activities for the new core curriculum. School starts again next week.” He groaned, more work, but agreed to do it. How hard could it be? It was just cutting and coloring and he did that with Isabel on a daily.

“Mikasa and I are going to watch the Twelve Dancing Princesses tonight. I know you wanted to watch it with me, (Y/F/N),” she said lowering her head onto your chest as you laid on the couch. You laughed and ruffled her hair that you’d just combed out for Levi. He was still in his home office running over papers and making phone calls. Your job was to get Isabel ready and packed to go to Mikasa’s, but she was running late, so you decided to watch videos on your phone till she got there.

“That’s okay, Bel. I’ve seen it before. That means when you come back over, you can watch the Princess and the Pauper with me.” The little girl smiled, which was followed by a yawn as she watched some toy opening video on YouTube.

“Can we sing like last time?” You laughed a bit, so you didn’t disturb her tired form, slowly slipping into a nap as she laid on you. Apparently, Levi let her stay up last night, forgetting that this little girl won’t tear her eyes away from the television until you force her too. He had gone back to do some work and when he emerged at two in the morning, there she was struggling to keep her eyes open. So much for trying to get her back into a school sleep schedule. You were no better though, going to bed at three last night because you waited last minute to start writing lesson plans. This made you yawn along with her and close your eyes.

“Yes, we can sing like we did with Frozen.” She hummed a bit, snuggling again against your chest as she decided it was time to take a nap. You quickly agreed with that idea.

Knocking on the door broke Levi from looking at the figures for the latest project and he leaned out of his office to see both you and Isabel sleeping on the couch. He smiled to himself, heart singing at the view, and went to open the door for his cousin.

“Where’s she at?” He frowned at Mikasa, moving so she could walk in and see you two sleeping on the couch. Levi didn’t want to move you two, and in actuality he wanted to add another picture to the album on his phone, but it would be way too embarrassing to do in front of Mikasa. Mikasa on the other hand had put a pizza in the oven and was ready to go. Levi grabbed her arm to stop her from shaking you two awake.

“Let them sleep. They both stayed up late.” She rolled her eyes at Levi and he responded with an even more annoyed eye roll. Couldn’t she calm down for a few minutes?

“They get five more minutes of beauty sleep.”

“How gracious.” He stood there, arms crossed, looking over at the two who had no idea Mikasa walked in the door. You had one hand over Isabel’s head and the other hanging of the couch, gripping a phone still playing some YouTube video in the background. Isabel had her small hand touching your cheek, head buried in your chest as she snored soundly on her favorite bed. When Mikasa looked over at her cousin, she thought she was going to be sick. It was the same look you had coming back from you two’s first date and one she’d seen on your face when you bounced into their office. She’s gotten used to you, but this was the first time she saw Levi like that. She snorted at him and he dropped it, morphing back into his normal, harsh glare.

“Never thought you’d be so wrapped around (Y/F/N)’s finger.” Levi scoffed at her, making sure it wasn’t loud enough to wake you two.

“I’m just admiring my girlfriend and kid; can I not do that, brat?” Mikasa laughed a bit at him trying to hide his embarrassment with another insult. He did the same when she walked in on you two making out in his office, having forgotten to lock the door.

“You can, just not with my best friend. Makes me sick.” Levi felt like his eyes were going to roll out of his head. Once you two started dating, that whole friend group had been insufferable to him. Eren and Jean talking about all their college flings with you, Connie and Sasha always bursting out laughing for no reason, and Mikasa made fun of him for showing emotion. The only one he still liked was Armin who inquired about your class activities as school and the other kids besides Isabel. 

“When are you going to marry her?” Levi was taken aback by that question, but Mikasa was completely cool. It sounded so natural coming from her lips that Levi couldn’t help but actually answer back. It wasn’t a surprise to Mikasa when he told her his intentions. From the day you came back from your first date, she knew you’d probably become her cousin in less than a year.

“Haven’t planned out anything, but I have a ring.” She laughed at him again, this time adding a tad bit of happiness into it. Yeah, she was okay with Levi and you, but she didn’t know how the others would take the news. Eren and Jean would be distressed, Historia and Sasha ecstatic, and Connie and Armin probably neutrally happy. She’d probably have to pull Eren “that should’ve been me” Jaeger and Jean “if only she gave me a shot” Kiersten home from some random bar.

“Did you tell Isabel?” Levi nodded, remembering the conversation he had to have with her about keeping very, very important secrets. He even said that if Isabel told you, he would cry, which made it seem very serious to Isabel.

“She helped me pick it. Something about knowing what plastic rings (Y/F/N) liked. She slipped up this week though and called (Y/F/N) mommy. I had to bust my ass to cover that up.” This made Mikasa actually smile. Her best friend would be a great mom, but she didn’t want to think about it. You weren’t the first person she thought was going to get married in their group. Probably Historia, or Armin and his girlfriend, not you, the girl that fell into the Education major who partied all the time stereotype. 

“You’re marrying someone crazy; I hope you know that. By day, she’s a wonderful kindergarten teacher who all her students and parents love, and by night, she’s on top of some table in the club singing to Abba.” Levi grit his teeth, remembering clearly the first time he was forced out with you and the brats. Eren challenged you to a drinking contest and you stupidly accepted, which made it Levi’s job to drag you home and nurse a hangover the next day. It didn’t help that the next day you had another Teacher’s Institute meeting and complained to him that everyone there knew you were hungover. Those were some giant hoops Levi had to jump through to explain to Isabel why you were “sick”.

“Who do you think is the one getting her down and waking her up for school the next day?” Not caring anymore about saving face with Mikasa, he took his phone out, taking a picture of his two girls. Staring down at you holding his daughter, his heart swelled even more. You were going to be a great mom to Isabel, even if you told Levi that you weren’t made for it. Levi thought the same thing when he held Isabel for the first time, alone and abandoned. He reassured you, saying that Isabel has never had a mom in the first place, but you were still worried.

You don’t have to be worried, he thought watching Mikasa kick you awake, you’re perfect. His perfect little teacher.  

“Five minutes is up. Time to come to Aunty Mikasa’s so you won’t end up in therapy later in life for childhood trauma!”

xx Perhaps I got a LITTLE carried away, i hope you like it though! It’s a bit less cute than originally planned

[redantsunderneath]

DC COMICS: Incoherence as Not-a-Bug-but-a-Feature (Spoilers for Batman 89-100)

Due to the emergence of the new Batman villain character Punchline, I wound up buying the last 12 issues of Batman and reading them in a single sitting. I’ve had trouble following DC comics for a while, constantly feeling that they were in trouble since back in the mid 2000s (with a glimmer of hope here and there). The act of reading DC comics has been a frustrating experience, where individual good stories and runs were laying around in the context of a lot of things that didn’t make sense while the company’s thrust felt chaotic and ideas not well blended. Every status quo change seemed hard to figure out the rules of enough to parse the context.  We’ll get into the background of this, but my reading today of this extended stretch of comics that keeps losing the plot in favor of a fever dream of what’s happening at the moment with specific characters that refuse to cohere, it became obvious that what I had been looking at as subtext or critique was actually the text. I could see the messed up trees but was missing the the forest the universe was trying to describe.

What happens in these issues (Batman current series 89-100, I missed the beginning of the first of 2 arcs) is rolling war between the major Batman villains and the heroes (plus Harley Quinn and Catwoman), which shifts into a Joker and Joker adjacent vs. all as the Joker double crosses everyone then manages to steal Bruce Wayne’s fortune.  We meet 3 new baddies – Underbroker, whose schtick is putting ill-gotten gains beyond the reach of the legal system (with an explicit line to rich globalists drawn), the Designer, who back in the day offered the four A list Batman villains plans to achieve what they most wanted, and Punchline, who is your toxic ex’s new millennial GF who really has it in for you (there is also a new good guy Clownhunter, which is a whole different thing, and a new costumed detective that predates Batman).  This doesn’t convey the chaotic nature of what is happening issue to issue, but there’s more than one Batman hallucinogenic spirit quest, dead characters ostensibly walking around, a plan revolving around the Bat’s origin story that tells some version of it several times, and a no-nonsense declaration that the Joker, as the Devil of the Batman spiritual system, cannot die.   The whole thing has the effect of convincing you there is no definitive sequence of events, only versions.

Alan Moore’s Killing Joke is not a favorite of mine, for a number of reasons.  But the ending holds up.  The Joker has done terrible things there is no antecedent for, and Batman wonders aloud if this never-ending dance they do ends in anything but both of their deaths; can they uncouple from the unhealthy duality the cycle of which simply repeats.  The Joker responds, well, with a joke about two lunatics trying to escape an asylum.  One jumps the roof to the next building, while the other is too scared to try.  The escapee offers to hold a light while the other crosses on a beam but he says no, no you’ll just cut the light while I’m half way across.  This not very funny joke nonetheless has a bunch of resonances – BM and Joker as conspiring co inmates, BM wanting to break out, a commentary about their natures (almost a reversal of the frog and scorpion story where the scorpion won’t go because he knows how this ends), but mostly it implicates BM as the one who is enabling the cycle, the reason why it won’t end.  They both laugh uproariously, and the ambiguous final panels can be read as the fundamental realization of his complicity causing BM to kill J.  A lethal joke indeed… except, next month, we see the both of them again.  In broader context, the ceaseless cycle of the diad is reaffirmed.  This has been hellaciously sticky as an idea in the Batmen universe.

My realization of what DC has been doing is pretty banal in its pieces. Marvel has “ground level” heroes while DC has a mythos, a pantheon.  Their archetypal makeup is strong, the seven JLA members lining up with the pantheon of Greek gods and the Chakras weirdly closely.  DC has big characters that are somewhat flat which they can use tell big bold individual stories that are cool the way legends and fables are cool. But these stories require bold strokes that a bit incompatible with each other. People get attached to these iterations. Meanwhile, Marvel trucks in soap operas where the characters give you an empathetic stand in and are narratively flexible. Marvel events are usually about the writer vs. the company, asking you to sympathize or deconstruct the creative impulse amid efforts to impose control or order.  DC’s events are about editorial vs. the audience, the shapers vs. the forces of the world.  It may seem obvious, given this description, that DC’s focus is on an archetypal tableau though it may be less obvious that this tableau is under extreme pressure from expectations when trying to tell ongoing tales month in, month out (or semi-monthly in some cases). The stories are constantly compared against the big stories that have gone before, and the audience’s ideas of the characters exert pressure to push them in directions that capture “the” version they believe in.  This circle is not possible to square.

DC and Marvel both have a multiverse of sorts.  DC used to tell “Elseworlds” stories which were later tucked into pocket universes.  DC invented crossing over between “realities.”  DC’s continuity is heavy baggage and they began to have “Crises” to resolve the narrative incompatibilities.  These only made things worse as you can’t get rid of the past people have a relationship with – it will come back.  Now you have to explain that away too.  Marvel just lets it lay – forget about the iffy stories, they count, sure, just no one is ever going to talk about them unless they have an angle.  Marvel continuity is all angles and amnesia. This is just easier to do with dating and rent and your ancient aunt’s medical bills than with Gods. Marvel’s multiverse is about sandboxes that you can always dump into the mainframe if they work (and never really mention the sandbox again).

There is a shift that occurred in the industry in the 2004 to 2005 era that is less remarked upon than many upheavals in comic’s history. Marvel had gone through a period of incredible new idea generation in the early 2000s after a late 90s creative cratering but had just fired the pro wrestling inflected soul of that moment (Bill Jemas).  DC was coming off of a period of trying to do moderately updated versions of what they basically been doing all along. The attitude was “yeah we’re under stress from the combined history of these characters, but we got to keep telling the stories.” Geoff Johns was one voice of DC over the 99-04 period that showed potential - he seemed to get how to find the core of characters and push them into a new in sync directions if they over the years have lost a clear identity.  But mostly he had internalized a basic schism between something mean that the audience wanted, and something good and wholesome about the characters themselves, and figured out how to mess around with this in a equilibrating fashion.

Interestingly, the ignition point of the main forces that were going to blow DC over the next decade and a half was a comic that had virtually nothing to do with any of those main forces. Brad Meltzer, a novelist, was hired to do a comic called Infinity Crisis, which sold extremely well and was, justifiably or not, recognized as an event.  At the same time, everyone also kind of hated it because the dark desires of some DC fans were pushed forward just a bit too much for comfort and for a comic with Crisis in the name it didn’t do a whole lot other than “darken” things.  Nonetheless, this lit an “event” fire at both companies.  Marvel chose a shake up the status quo for a year, then do it again, pattern and was off to the races (I have written about this, and more, here) while continuing its Randian framing of beleaguered do-gooders opposed by rule making freedom haters.

As this was playing out, Dan Didio quietly took power in DC Editorial.  His outlook was more Bloomian – he seemed to spark off of writers who exhibited anxiety of influence. He recognized Johns was the one person they had could be promoted into something of a universe architect, starting work on two key projects from which the rest would evolve. The first, was bringing back Hal Jordan as Green Lantern and diffracting the GL universe into its own symbolic system, with parts frisson-ing other parts, and almost a Magic the Gathering color scheme of ideas. The other was to build up to Infinite Crisis, which would become the model for most of their universe changing events until the present day.

The basic frame is this: DC heroes want to be good (in a sense of their inherent nature) but forces outside form a context that makes them fall.  It’s a very gnostic universe, DC.  They  examine reflections of the concepts, invent scapegoats for certain tendencies (see Superboy Prime as entitled fanboy, Dr. Manhattan as editors that try and fail to mend things, etc), make characters violate principles, rehabilitate them, then show that the world if anything is more broken than before.  This is kind of Johns’ thing and it fits Didio’s narrative as historicval tension fetish.  But then came Scott Snyder (not to be confused with Zack) who began to work on Batman in 2011.  Since then, as much as Justice League is pushed as the central title and Lex Luthor has been pimped, Batman has been the core of the universe and the Joker the core villain.

Snyder had the same continuity conflict wavelength but was significantly more meta and able to contain multitudes than Johns.  He was the first to make an explicit mystery of how there could be several Jokers around at one time (who are the same but not, he posited 3 – man, Christians!) that seems prescient given the near future coexistence of filmic Jokers that are not able to be resolved.  I believe he was the first to begin to tease out an idea – that different versions of things in comics are not a diffraction or filter effect, a using the set of things that work best for that story and leaving the rest, but are a matter of the archetypal system of the audience coming apart. From an in story perspective what appears to happen is that multiple versions of incompatible things exist in the collective unconscious of the continuing narrative, and this is something that the characters may become conscious of.  

The run I just read is written by James Tynion IV building on the above trends.  The trick seems to be going all in on the Jungian aspect (at Jung’s most religiously epiphanic).  The Designer was a progenitor and adversary to Batman’s predecessor and his intellectual approach eventually defeated the detective… broke him.  At some point in early Batman history, the Designer brought the top four Bat-baddies together and offered each, in turn, a plan to achieve what they most desired: the Riddler, a way to achieve an empire of the mind; the Penguin, power; and Catwoman, money.  They are all elated as they await the Joker to come out.  The Joker emerges with a furious Designer on his heals and promptly shoots him dead.  He explains that he didn’t like his joke in the form of a fable – the devil offered four people the path to their greatest desire: the three chose earthly things, but the Joker’s wish was to be him, to become the devil.  The story proceeds to suggest that the Joker just exists, he is present as a necessary component in the system.   You can kill him, yet he is alive.

DC has been using physics metaphors for the nature of their reality since Flash of Two Worlds in 1963.  The multiverse as a continuity concept was their idea and the holographic universe of the hypertime was a thing.  It seems like since Dan Didio took over, they’ve been heading towards a concept of broad superimposition, of measurement effect being weak, of the universe being like a quantum computer with all possibilities coexisting and the story instantiating not one reality but a path through all the possible ones.  By making Batman trip balls through quite a few issues and relive his origin from different angles, the story is one of its own instability and the heroic task that confronts our hero is attempting to actualize the world.  The Joker is the Devil in the sense of lack of fixed meaning, of relativistic chaos, of the world not making sense because it’s unmoored nature with ultimately no knowability.  Batman, in this story, functions as a postmodern knight crusading against the impossibility of epistemological grounding.

There’s more going on, sure.  One plot is, literally, defund Batman.  There is rioting, people brainwashed by being exposed to toxic ether, people paid to go to theaters even though they will die as a result, and questions about neoliberalism similar to that one Joker movie. Punchline has no personality yet (Tynion’s not the best at that) but she serves well as a generational foil for Harley – a rudderless ideological vacuum susceptible to Joker-as-idea-virus rather than an unfulfilled MD who felt alienated due to the structures of her life and was seeking escape into structureless possibility.  The Designer stuff is both continuity play (See why they changed from goofy villains to more “realistic” ones! Look how pulp heroes informed superheroes!), a comment on the nature of a longstanding narrative (strong intentions die out as Brownian motion overwhelms momentum), and a lawful evil/chaotic evil setup of the dualism of apocalypses (overdetermined authoritarian vs. center does not hold barbarism).  But the thing that ties this to the past decade and a half of DC is the sense that the reality is fluid and susceptible to change or outright s’cool incompatibility.

This is different than other flavors of meta in superhero comics.  Grant Morrison believes the archetypes are stronger than the forces that seek to bend them.  Alan Moore wants you to deconstruct your sacred cows and probably hates you personally.  Marvel might play with self-awareness, but effortlessly resolves inconsistencies after it’s finished playing.  DC, at this point, allows you to watch the waves solidfy into symbols and dissolve, and the constant confusion and lack of grounding is more of a choice then I thought this time yesterday.  The conflict theory of DC reality has been in full swing but this looks to be turning towards a kind of Zen historicism, holding contradictory things in your mind at once. Warren Ellis’ JLA/Authority book is the nearest comparable text I can think of. I need to call this, but I didn’t even talk about Death Metal, DC character multiplicity as meta-psychosis event extraordinaire.  Comics just keep getting weirder.

[yurimother]

Yuri Manga ‘Mizuno to Chayama’ by the Creator of ‘After Hours’ Published in Entirety

On January 11, the entirety of Yuhta Nishio’s Yuri manga, Mizuno to Chayama was released in Japanese in two volumes by Kadokawa. The two volumes, Jou and Shita, contain all of the manga, which was serialized in Monthly Comic Beam from 2018 until its conclusion in December 2019.

The manga follows a high school student named Mizuno, who lives in an isolated region. She struggles to balance her academic work, social life, and her father’s political campaign. In secret, she meets and loves another girl.

Yuhta Nishio is the creator of the Yuri manga After Hours, which was published in English by Viz media.

[mirahuyooo]

Set The Night Alight | pjm

Set The Night Alight

— Shining through the city with a little funk and soul, Park Jimin sets your night alight.

Word Count: 2,159 Contents: flUFF, a pinch of AnGST, having fun, y/n be stressin’ but still hustlin’, jimin be sweet af uwu, mention of Hobi, Yoongs, n Kookie, non-idol au, best friends to lovers! au Pairing: Park Jimin x Reader

A/N: I planned on posting earlier but uhm... I didn’t eheh This one is heavily inspired by Dynamite! My sister got a great screenshot of Jimin so I made used it for an edit and write this little blurb skskksksks Hope you enjoyed!

[masterlist]

A grimace resurfaced on your face for the umpteenth time as you swerve away from yet another couple eating each other’s face before your very eyes. A frustrated huff left your lips at the inconvenience adding to the ever-growing misfortune you’ve had for the night. Just to your left earlier you had witnessed a crummy-looking drunk getting slapped by a woman for grinding on another girl.

You fled to a less distasteful area of the club, all by your lonesome. This has got to be the worst night out you’ve ever been to—and at the worst day of your life to date, too!

After waking up with nerves raging over test results in anticipation, you forced yourself to be ignorant of the looming sense of disaster you’ve felt since the night before. You wanted to start the day with a positive mental attitude—try to, at the very least. However, you were further tested.

When you arrived late to class after missing the bus, the professor looked at you with a disappointed stare that could rival that of your overbearing parents’. It was then announced to the class the news that you’ve been waiting for since you woke up. As it had turned out, you did fail the test. You didn’t cry, of course—even though part of you wanted to—but it definitely took a toll on you.  

For the rest of the day, anyone who would’ve laid eyes on you could sense the despair lingering in your aura. Your body sagged at the figurative weight you carried on you, as though you were Atlas holding the world on your very back. Your (e/c) eyes blinked as slowly as you responded to the world around you—your mind stuck in a haze that dipped your heart into more emotional baggage.  

Work came after class, as you, of course, had to support yourself for the goals and dreams you had in life. Alas, even the haven you found in the small diner was short-lived. Your ex-boyfriend enters the premises with his monthly new plaything, effectively souring your mood even more. Being the bastard that he is, he reveled at the contrast of your lives and though you didn’t bother to care about aspects, his general presence still irked you.  

“I thought I told you to get rid of that frown, hm?”

Pulled out of your stupor, you lightly jumped with a gasp as you were rendered startled and alarmed by the unannounced presence, until you realized that it was only Park Jimin—resident wild child, fellow diner worker, and best friend of six years. He had the audacity to giggle at your despair, while you recover from the slight scare with a hint of relief.

Your eyebrows furrowed with yet another frown. "I thought I told not to sneak up on me like that, hm?" You snippily countered, landing a smack on his arm to which he let out a yelp at.  

Still, Jimin grins brightly, a little woozy and clearly enjoying himself—a stark contrast to your still sober and still fuming state. He had two glasses of soju with him, setting them down before the two of you and leaning against the tall table on his elbows. "Come on, (Y/N). The night is young. We're young," he urges you, "You should really learn to loosen up."

If you had a dollar for every single time he's told you this phrase, you would have enough money to not be such a sour puss. It's not like you didn't have conception of fun. You, too, can be wild, go party, and dance the night away—albeit not as stunningly as your best friend—but with the fire in you that you're desperately trying to keep alive to spite the world, you found it difficult to easily do so.

Agitated, you ran your hands through the (h/c) hair that you've barely even brushed throughout the day. "A man almost vomited on me while I was out there," you cursed, not really at him, but it still stung nonetheless. You bring the bottle to your lips, wincing a bit at the taste but still gulping. Jimin does the same.

After a moment, you break the silence, fiddling with your fingers. You knew the irritable state you were in wasn’t easy on Jimin—or anyone else really. "I'm sorry, Chim," you sigh, "but you know I really can't be in the mood right now. We should’ve stuck with binging night."

Something about standing in the local pub right now made you feel out of place. Though you know you shouldn't be, you were irking to get going and do something else—something productive. Not that you would’ve been that productive with binging night, but at the very least you would’ve caught up on your current favorite series. Then, you would’ve had more time to do actual fruitful activities.  

You paused for a moment, frowning at your own way of thinking.

For the majority of your life, all you did was hustle. You were uptight, determined with proving yourself and the rest of those who've wronged you that you could be the thriving woman of your dreams, living the life goals you're working ends meat to achieve. The fire in you longed to see the people who abandoned you on their knees, kissing your feet at your success. And so, you move on after moping a little—this day will be yet another testament to such a fighting spirit.

At times you applauded your resilience. You were proud of the things you've managed to move yourself on from. Alas, this meant that you often starve yourself of care and leisure. Jimin knows this brilliant yet damning mindset of yours and constantly tries to ease you into the carefree lands of self-love.

When Jimin had offered you this night out after your shifts, you instantly rejected the offer, like you almost always do. He didn't like the way you held back on having fun, because you thought your mother would find out and her accusations of you going astray in life would spark into yet another rant of you wAsTinG yoUr PotEntiAL.

He does convince you somehow, thus this current situation. You were, however, beginning to regret going out instead of your tradition of breaking down in the confines of your apartment before switching yourself into an auto pilot mode where you work on projects and whatnot for God knows how long.

Your best friend, however, would never want you to feel such a way, especially if he could do something about it. He clapped his hands together. "Come on then," Jimin encourages, catching you off guard as he secured a hold on you by lacing your fingers together.

"What?"

The man before you downs a few swigs of the alcohol and smiles, eyes disappearing into crescents. "Let's go somewhere else," he tells you, matter-of-factly. "The night is young. There are lots of things to do."

You gawked at the sight before you as Jimin danced to the beat, his body moving effortlessly with the street dancer. Instinctively, you, yourself, were swaying to the beat. The crowd that had gathered around you had done the same.

Exiting the club, as it turned out, had been a notable move from the both of you, drastically mending your mood as your night was suddenly set alight by the bustling streets you wandered with your favorite person in the world. This predicament, however, landed before the two of you when you saw a performance going on. Jimin knew the performer—Hoseok, if you recalled correctly—and, in spite of not preparing beforehand, began dancing along to the music. He was doing brilliantly for someone who, about thirty minutes ago, was giggly from slight intoxication.

As the beat came to a drop and Jimin flips his body like it was nothing, cheers erupted from around you. Vigorously clapping along with the crowd, you couldn't care less if your cheeks were starting to hurt.

"Great work!" You beam at your best friend as he shyly walks back towards you with yet another charming grin that wills his eyes to close. "You've improved so much," you say, eliciting a blush from him. Both of you have aching cheeks now, but that didn't matter.

As the crowd began to disperse and he waved goodbye to his friend, Jimin offers an arm to you. “Let’s go?” he muses, still slightly out of breath.

“Go where?” you asked, but linking your arms together anyways.

Jimin says nothing, seemingly pleased with his plans. Butterflies ran amok within you, as his smile promises you more of these spontaneous adventures.  

As the night bled into later hours, the both of you sat in the very diner that you two worked at only hours earlier. Jungkook, who had gotten night shift this day, disappeared into the kitchen after getting your orders.

Feeling better than ever before, you allowed yourself to savor the serenity. Your hands drummed to the beat of the music flowing from the jukebox resting on one corner of the diner with your head swaying along too. Jimin, in front of you, was also lightly dancing in his seat.

Eventually, Jimin stands up to his feet, dancing as he reached out a hand. He comically wiggled his brows, inviting you to dance with him—and you let him.

There were no other customers in the diner, and Yoongi, who had manned the cashier, didn’t really care to be bothered about the shenanigans the two of you were up to. You let out a giggle as Jimin twirls you around.  

At this time, you took it to yourself to look at your best friend. As he often does, he had styled his brown hair back to expose his forehead, causing him to look attractive enough to fool anyone into thinking he's a reckless party animal when reality states that he's a soft gentleman at heart—and you support such a statement.

Park Jimin, with his massive golden heart, has stuck by your side far longer than anyone else in your life. In all of the years you’ve known him, he’s always been one to drop anything to help you with your plights. A sensation fluttered within you, rendering you frozen for a moment as you were confused by said feeling. Jimin, however, continues to goofily dance around you without a care in the world and elicits a snicker from you.

There was a whimsical sense in the air. Dynamite’s retro décor really had the ability to make you feel as though you had travelled back a few decades earlier. With Jimin’s own choice of outfit, the nostalgic effect multiplied tenfold. Could the butterflies in your belly be from the atmosphere of the moment?

“You look beautiful when you’re happy, y’know?”

Jimin’s words knock the air out of your lungs, sending you crashing back to reality. Before you, your best friend stood only a few inches away from your dancing dooming you into such a close position. Your heart once again picks up the pace.

You managed to let out a scoff but fail to counter his statement any further and simply shyly averted your gaze, leaning away to give the two of you some distance. To your shock, Jimin’s hands clutched yours in his hold, his eyes shining like diamonds as he stared into you.

“Chim—”

With the words you planned to say being stolen from you by the lips that captured yours, you couldn’t help but melt. As if on cue, the music’s beat picked up, encouraging your heartbeat to do the same. The emotions within you whirled wildly, setting your body on fire as Jimin pulls you closer. As you had felt his hold loosen, you took the chance to slide your hands up his shoulders and wrapped your arms around his neck, letting yourself get lost into a kiss you never thought to anticipate so much.

Eventually, the two of you pulled away for air, with Jimin grinning like the love-struck fool he was, while you were still in a haze from the kiss. You felt lips on your forehead as he soon pulled you in an embrace.

“(Y/N)?”

Your heart squealed at his voice, prompting you to hug him back tighter. “Hm?”

“I like you.”

With your head buried into his neck, your eyes fluttered to a close as his words bloom an ease in your heart—as if you had reached home after a long exhausting journey. There still existed a sense of surprise in you. You never expected to feel this way towards your best friend.  

Jimin, in spite of his worries from your silence, proceeds to murmur into your hair. “I want you to be happy,” he tells you, “I’d be happy if you let me be the one to make you smile.”

You pull away with a soft smile, eyes glistening with tears.

“You already are.”

[mortyvongola2-0]

Proof of Strength

Chapter 1: Whiff

Pairing: Alpha! Kylo Ren x Omega! Reader

Genre: a/b/o fic, slowburn, multichapter, 18+

Word Count: 2.9k

Warnings: language, sexual themes, lying, and a/b/o dynamics.

Read it on AO3

Next Chapter

The First Order offered great opportunities. You were poor and downtrodden when they showed up, claiming to have solutions to your poverty, that they would clothe, bathe, and provide food for all in exchange for hard work. Their propaganda promised a beautiful future, where no one would ever be as poor as you were again. Immediately, you wanted to join but there was one rather large problem. The First Order only hired alphas and betas. And therein lied your problem, as you were neither an alpha nor beta. You were an omega.

 Omegas were rare, as the gene mutation required to be an omega was even more recessive than the alpha gene. They were less independent, they required protection and mass amounts of supervision during their heats, and the biggest difference in strength was in their upper bodies, as omegas do not require the upper body strength of an alpha or even a beta. In exchange the lower body strength of an omega was much more prevalent then for either other designation. Being an omega was also a lot harder to hide then being an alpha, the hormones of an omega heavily influence those of other designations, which was most likely the reason why the First Order did not hire or train them.

 Nowadays, alphas found omegas to be more of a chore than anything. It used to be that alphas and omegas were fated to bond, that they would thrive well when mated with one another, but as more and more betas arose the less alphas wanted to put in the extra effort to take on an omega. You understood, if you weren’t an omega you wouldn’t want to have to be stuck with what the rumors made you sound like either. But, to you, there would always be something special about the bond between an alpha and omega. Others called you an idealist, or a romanticist, but you had seen that special bond firsthand. Your parents had that bond, so strong and beautiful, and you wished for that same sort of love.

 You scratched at the scent gland on the left side of your neck as you stared at the First Order poster on the wall. The wind blew your scarf into your face along with some grains of black sand. I could get away with it, you thought. This shouldn’t be a problem. You clicked your tongue and tugged the poster off the wall. My family needs the money, and everything else they’re offering doesn’t sound too bad. Can’t imagine it being any worse than this. You rubbed a dirty finger under your nose and began to walk back out and into the streets, the poster now shoved into your satchel and a hum on your lips, images of infiltrating the First Order playing continually in your mind’s eye. This’ll be fun.

 ~

 This is most certainly not fun, you thought as you crawled, much slower than everyone else, along the thick mud. The First Order really knew how to whip its people into shape, that’s for sure. You had passed their physical exam, as the differences between omegas and female betas bodies were very minimal hormone wise, and you made sure you had been suppressing with steroids long enough beforehand to not have to worry about being caught, besides hardly anyone tested for steroids anymore. Most designations didn’t suppress and if they did it was with more herbal remedies, as steroids were seen as archaic and more dangerous than helpful. The biggest differences between omega and beta, however, were all anatomically the same as an alpha. A bonding gland and six scent glands; one on each side of the neck right under the jaw and closer to the ears, one in each wrist, and one at each junction where pelvis met pubic area. But luckily for you, they didn’t do any full body scans and your bonding gland was smaller than average, so it could be easily passed as a simple knot or inflamed muscle on your shoulder.

 However, passing the physical labor portions, like crawling, climbing, heavy lifting, pushups, and even shooting, those were the tests where the true difficulty for you was. You were barely scraping by, and it took all your effort to be passable in these areas of strength. Unfortunately, that meant you were at the very bottom of your class, but at this point you were far too invested to give up. Passing was still passing; no matter what place you were. Though your testing scores and stamina more than made up for what you lacked. You were a quick study so your grades placed you above average testing wise, which balanced out with your physical scores, rounded you out to a nice average.

 You were very aware of how suspicious your weaknesses could make you seem, so you did your best to tone down the strengths of your lower body as well as worked really hard to increase what you could do with your upper body. And after a little more than a year of training, you were officially inducted as a member of the First Order, smack dab in the middle of your class. You were so proud of yourself and were extra relieved when you learned that your position put you far away from the frontlines.

 As time passed your work ethic brought you more and more promotions. Seven years after your graduation saw you as a lead programmer and the promotion after that brought you to your station on the Finalizer. You loved your job. The only downside to it was the amount of exposure to the Commander as well as the General of the First Order. Both of which were very strong alphas, probably the strongest you had ever seen. The stronger the alpha the better they could smell and the more reactive they were to omega hormones and pheromones/scents. You had to avoid them like the plague, as despite your monthly steroid suppressions they would still be able to catch a whiff of your scent. If you got too close your cover would be blown and you’d be removed, or worse killed, for your lies. Just thinking about it had you close to hyperventilating.

 “You alright?” Your coworker, Lee a beta, asked you and placed his hand on your shoulder softly. That snapped you out of your trance and you turned toward him calmly. You hadn’t realized that you’d been spacing out. Earlier that morning Kylo Ren had almost gotten close enough to smell you and that had thrown you into a frenzied inner monologue of please don’t take a deep breath, please don’t take a deep breath, please don’t take a deep breath!

 “Leave her alone, she literally almost bumped into the Commander this morning,” your other coworker, Avery also a beta, said in response to Lee. She pointed her fork at him and leaned forward on her elbows “Her life is probably still flashing through her eyes. She’s lucky he ignored her.”

“Ah man, that is lucky,” Lee mumbled and put his hand back down beside his plate. He picked up his eating utensils and used them to take a bite of the meat he had chosen from the dinner line. “Kylo Ren has been aboard for quite some time, why do you think that is?”

 Avery shrugged then pushed her plate forward, no longer interested in her dinner choices. She used her fork to emphasize her hand motions. “I don’t know, but the General has been really on edge because of it.”

 “Heh, he almost exploded this morning after Kylo Ren destroyed one of our consoles. I’d never seen so much color on his face before,” Lee snickered. You snorted in response, remembering the steaming General in all his angered glory. The feud between the ginger and the helmeted knight was no secret, they fought often and loudly. Hux with his sarcasm and snarky attitude and Kylo Ren with his blatant disregard for all of the rules and commands the General had in place. It was quite comical really, like a well-rehearsed routine. You slurped up your soup thoughtfully.

 “What I wouldn’t give to sit on that pale face,” Avery said in a playful lilt. You promptly spit out your soup and Lee choked on the water he had started to sip at.

 “Kriff, Avery, don’t say crap like that when I’m eating,” you grumbled and started to wipe up the mess you had made. She snickered and crossed her arms over her chest triumphantly, unashamed of her hazardous mindset. You could see it now, the General chuckling as he shoved her out the airlock for embarrassing him. You shivered.

 “What? I’m serious,” she said with a smirk. “He is one attractive man. You can’t tell me that you haven’t thought about it.”

 I’m too busy thinking about the ways he’d murder me if he got close enough to smell me, you thought and shook your head at her. “Nope, can’t say that I have.”

 “You’ve seriously never thought about it? What about for any of the other officers? Is there not an alpha you would pretend to be an omega for?”

 “Avery, give it a rest. Not everyone is as crazed as you,” Lee muttered. “Besides, don’t you think they would rather have an actual omega then someone pretending to be one?”

 “But there are hardly any left, plus I remember someone talking about how much of a hassle being bonded to an actual omega is.” That irked you. You doubted anyone, let alone any alpha, on this ship had actually met an unsuppressed omega let alone bonded with one.

 “Well you could still be a bit more respectful.” You nodded in response to Lee. Respect would be nice, you felt like you were owed at least a little of it due to your success in hiding who you were and proving that omegas were more than capable of caring for themselves. “Leave your weird fetishes for your diary log.”

 “How do you pretend to be an omega?” Curiosity had gotten the better of you.

 Lee sighed loudly and placed his hand against his forehead. “Why would you encourage her.” Avery, in response, beamed at you and leaned forward; both of her hands pressed against the table and fork long forgotten by her plate. “Pretending to be in heat is of course the main thing. Except, be a bit less needy and it’s not like you can actually last for as long as a real heat. You can also say a bunch of stuff about scent, and bonding, and blah blah blah, pretend to be weaker and in need of protection, it’s a lot of fun if your partner is into it.”

 “Gross,” you muttered and took another slurp of your soup. Heats in general were gross. They were long, lasting anywhere from 5 to 14 days. It started with a fever, general sluggishness, difficulty breathing and a foggy mindset, eventually your body would start the reproductive response. Slick would start to pool around your entrance and your glands would swell to the point of discomfort, it hurt quite a bit. An urge to lesson discomfort through orgasm would grow and eventually everything would begin to blend together. Pheromones would  be released in order to attract any nearby alpha and force them into a rut. The only things that could lessen the immense discomfort were sex and medications, but those were short term remedies, as their effects would dissipate rather quickly. Unless the sex involved a knot then, and only then, the discomfort would dissolve long enough for an omega to take care of themselves. Part of the reason why they required protection during their heats was because they risked dehydration and malnourishment the longer the heat went on.

 You had never had sex, let alone with an alpha, so you weren’t entirely sure how clear minded you became after knotting. Even now it had been many years since your last heat, but you could somewhat remember struggling through them earlier on in your life. “I don’t think so but, whatever. I’ve got to get back to training some new recruits.” Avery yawned and stood. She grabbed her tray and started walking toward the exit. “See you guys later.”

 “Bye,” you stated and waved in response, now trying your best to remember what struggling through your heat felt like.

 “She needs to keep quiet about stuff like that,” Lee told you quietly. “The First Order is very strict about relations between officers. She could get in real trouble for just saying some of that stuff.”

 “Then you need to be careful too.” A smirk crawled onto your face and you wiggled your eyebrows at him. “Did you think you and Miss Vanya were being discreet?” A light blush dusted his tan ears. You chuckled at his embarrassment and shook your head. “I didn’t need to hear the two of you in your office, but I did. You’re more of a screamer than I thought.”

 “I um, I just realized I still have a project I need to finish, so I’ll uh- we’ll talk later,” he scrambled to clean his area. “See you!”

 After he scurried off you kept your smirk and finished your soup. You checked the time to make sure you still had a bit before you needed to head back and lazily began to clean your space. A yawn escaped your lips as you started your trek back to your office.

 Lee and Avery were good people, very smart and hard workers. Avery had been your friend since your initial training, she had helped immensely with trying to get your upper body in shape. The two of you had been separated after initiation and reunited when they assigned you to this ship. Avery was now the trainer assigned to your section, working alongside or sometimes directly under you to help the newer programmers meet First Order standards.

 Lee had trained you in your original position when you first arrived on the Finalizer and now, he was directly in charge of the stromtrooper training programs and battle training designs. You were proud of him, even though his position meant you couldn’t see him as often. He was at Captain Phasma’s beck and call, coming up with the ideas that your department would bring to life via code. Again, you snickered thinking about his embarrassment at your discovery. You were determined to never let him live it down.

 Once you reached your office, you punched in your code and the doors easily slid open. Your main job was to receive orders and delegate the coding and programming to those under you. The paperwork was immense, and you hardly ever got to do any of the actual programming that you enjoyed, but you enjoyed the raise and respect the position brought you. Besides, if someone else didn’t understand or finish their work, it was up to you to do it so there were occasions when you got to do what you enjoyed, however rare they were. You slid into your desk chair quietly and got to work.

 Later in the evening, after your shift had finished, you entered your quarters and immediately knew something was wrong. The hairs on the back of your neck were standing, and your omega instincts were kicking into gear. Predator, your mind supplied. The faint scent of alpha pheromones tickled your nose and you shivered. The suppressants dulled your sense of smell, so you could not identify who it was, but you knew what they were. You took a tentative step forward, hands trembling and body on full alert. Who would have access to your quarters? Higher command had access, generals, captains, commanders. An alpha and a higher up, oh no. They must know. They’re here to kick me out, to kill me, they know!

 You took a few more steps forward, right outside the open entrance to your bed. They were in there, in your room, the smell was stronger in that direction. There was no sound, so they weren’t moving, but they were in there. A cold sweat broke out all over your body and you could take a guess as to who it was. It had to be the Commander. He was the only one who had been close enough to you to get a good whiff of your suppressed omega smell. Kylo Ren was absolutely going to murder you, no question. Still trembling, you resigned yourself to your fate, and finally stepped into your measly bedroom.

 And there he stood, in all his black and murderous glory. Kylo Ren was standing against the left wall, his visor was turned toward you, effectively intimidating you further. You almost squeaked under his intense scrutinizing and judging by the way his chest rose and fell a bit more deliberately, you knew he was taking in your scent. He took a large step forward; you took a frightened step backward. That cycle continued until you were no longer able to back up. He had you back up against your refresher door, his helmeted head literally pressed into the crook of your neck, one hand at you hip and the other holding your head back to further expose your nape. Your instinctual response was submission and following that instinct you craned your head away and further into his hold, effectively exposing your scent and bonding glands to him. I’m going to die, he’s going to strangle me, and I will die.

 And all at once, he pulled away.

[thearkhound]

Osamu Kobayashi on the Snatcher manga from Monthly ASCII Comic

The following is translated from Osamu Kobayashi’s 2014 artbook One Night City (based on his earlier anthology of short manga stories of the same name). The Snatcher manga, loosely based on the Konami game of the same name, was serialized in the now-defunct manga anthology ASCII Comic from the February to October 1993 issues, but was never republished in book format, aside from these two pages. Kobayashi-sensei provides his thoughts on the manga on the second page.

Snatcher is a hardboiled manga set in the near future that was serialized in 1993 on the now defunct manga magazine Monthly ASCII Comic. Editor Ken Kintaichi, who went on to work for ASCII Comic’s successor Monthly Comic Beam, invited me to do a serial, which lasted for seven issues. It was based a video game developed by Konami, but aside from the name, everything from the story to the characters ended up being completely different. That was no good. (laughs)

The hero of the manga is named Nirasawa and he has two friends named Taketani and Terada. I wonder where I heard those names before. (laughs) The only thing that was the same as the game was the fact it took place in Kobe. I had the opportunity to go to Konami and meet Hideo Kojima, which is more than I deserved.

The line art for the manga was drawn with a pigma pen and then finished with diluted ink. Unfortunately the reproduction accuracy was a bit low due to the letterpress printing used at the time of serialization. Anyway, I’m extremely happy that I’m able to introduce this work. I was assigned to draw 32 pages a month by myself for each issue while also doing commercial work on the side, so I had little time to spare, but looking it at now the art is rough. Moreover, the story is a bit embarrassing. But I still want people to read it.

I had Mahiro Maeda and Koichi Noda to assist me with the art. I asked Maeda-san to design the robot that appears at the end. With Noda-kun, this manga provided an excuse to be reunited with him when I asked for his cooperation on Grandia. I wasn’t acquainted with Maeda-san prior to this manga, but I liked the design of the Garfish from Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, so I asked for his involvement. After this, I became involved with designing the world of Blue Submarine No. 6, an OVA that Maeda-san directed. (looks faraway)

Snatcher had a hero who lived in a boat, a dancing heroine in a weird outfit, car chases and bikes that I liked. It was a fun manga to draw. Looking it now, the story really resembles the one I wrote for Love Power, a short story featured in this book. It’s quite predictable. (cries) I have fond memories of Bunny-chan’s shop at Kobe, a place I was taken to during location scouting (it was my first time seeing such a place, but I digress).

I want to republish this someday if the opportunity ever presents itself. A foreign translation would be nice too.

Please publish abroad my comic. It is quite interesting. Thank you.

Source:

ONE NIGHT CITY: OSAMU KOBAYASHI ARTWORKS 

ISBN 9784835450865