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poptod · 4 years ago

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Pull the Stars Out of the Sky (And Gift Them to Me), pt. 5 (Ahkmenrah x Reader)

Description: You finally learn just how far he will go.

Notes: this story takes a very interesting turn, but i promise its worth the ending i promise. ending might not be done for several more chapters though :) hope thats alright! WC: 8.2 k

He left you alone in the garden.

You could've run away then. The trees and brush you'd have to wade through would be a tiny price for freedom, and you were mostly hidden from the view of the house. Instead you curled into a ball, having never felt as small as this in all your life, and hid yourself away. He was on your mind.

A taste of how your life would be if you ran already began to build on your tongue, as though in this moment you were free of his hold, entirely, wholly, and truly. It was bitter, like bile, tainted by the man who would always be on your mind, no matter how far or fast you ran. He had left his mark, scarred your skin, and you would never be rid of his presence. His eye that he forced into your mind would always watch over you, broadcasting his desirous thoughts into your consciousness. A voyeur in your own head.

Bereft of energy, you leant against the alabaster pillar, drooping eyes set uneasily upon the flowing water. He would do anything for you, but how far did that insanity go? Would he eventually grow tired of your emotional distance and forcefully take you for his own? All you knew of him was what he decided to show you––not a single bit more.

"Amoke?"

You looked drearily upwards, but relief filled you upon seeing Haji approaching you.

"You don't look so good," he noted, sitting down on the step beside you.

"I'm just a little tired," you sighed, pulling the blanket on your shoulders tighter around you.

"Did you get any sleep last night?"

"Yes, fortunately. How about you? What is your housing like here?"

"Not too bad," he said with a shrug. "I've got three other men in my room, but we're all in bunks. Main part of the house is nice, though. Lots of baked goods."

"Sounds nice," you chuckled. Your gaze fell once more to the intricate path of stone beneath your feet.

"So... Ahk told me you had a bit of a rough time this morning," he said slowly. You knew that was why he was here, yet still your heart sunk a little.

"I don't often find myself in large cities, much less in the middle of them."

"That's not the only thing bothering you though, is it?"

You sighed, before softly saying, "no."

Haji waited patiently while you thought through your words, contemplating them fully before you spoke.

"I told myself, when I was first caught by your King, that I wouldn't sympathize with him. I promised that I wouldn't fall into that common illness, but... now.. well, every now and then he seems human. Then it all fades away, and then it comes back, and... he's capable of controlling what people think of him. He puts on different personalities for different people. Why does he do that?"

"That's his job," Haji said simply, sending a stake through the core of your mindset. "He can't be a ruler all the time, but he can't not be a ruler when he's out in public. It's good that he hasn't let being a King take over his whole personality, like his father. The fact that he shows you all these sides of him means he wants you to be welcome in all parts of his life."

"... did he tell you to say that?"

He laughed, shaking his head as he patted your shoulder.

"No, but that was a very worship-y thing for me to say," he admitted.

"Heh," you said in a soft huff, wrapping your arms around your legs and pulling them in close.

"Haji?!" Ahk called from inside the house.

Haji sighed, almost rolling his eyes as he pushed himself to his feet.

"See you," he said, trotting off.

A couple minutes later you heard voices, which was strange, considering the garden was a decent distance from the house. You glanced around, eventually looking up to find Ahk and Haji, framing the sides of an open arch held high above the ground. They were discussing something quietly, but the wind carried their voices to you.

"Are they alright?"

"Yeah, considering what you're doing to them."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I – I'm sorry, my K-"

"It's fine," he muttered curtly. "Don't let it happen again."

You bit into your cheek hard, till your skin stung, and your jaw ached with the force in it. How had you ever willingly done his bidding? How had it slipped your mind, that he was still a royal? It was obvious in his step, his manner, his words, and his presentation, yet you had allowed yourself to thank him. To speak softly to him. To share parts of yourself that you had always sworn to keep to yourself.

No matter––you could not take away what you'd already freely sacrificed, but that didn't mean you had to keep sharing things. Today it would stop, and you would feel no more sympathy for the fickle man. As nice as Haji was, he did work for the King, and whatever you told him would end up in Ahkmenrah's ear. Sharing with him would also have to cease.

Maybe you were being too bitter, too closed off, but your crimes were meager in the face of Ahkmenrah's. He wanted you for his collection, to keep your beauty near him like a caged bird. If you yearned to leave, he would lock you up, and if you dreamed to fly, he would clip your wings, to keep you for his own.

Bastard.

That night it rained. Poured down in great sheets, battering down on the stone walls surrounding you, and tearing down palm trees like grass in a wildfire. You remained in the gazebo, rooted to the spot until Ahk came out to see you.

"Dearest, you'll get sick in all this rain," he said in a soft voice, kneeling in front of you, and looking up with familiar reverence dulled by the darkened sky.

You said nothing. Instead you fell into him, exhausted by your rampant mind, and aching from the water soaking down your clothes.

"Let's get you inside," he murmured, setting one arm beneath your knees, and the other behind your back.

With a small heave you were in his arms, the whole of your weight easily carried. He adjusted you a few times before you made it back to the house, where he set you down in front of a massive firepit, leaving you in the piles of blankets to run to the front door. You watched, huddled close to yourself as he opened the door and rushed in a small group of people. Among them was Naguib, who looked in a similar fashion to yourself––drenched.

Wet shoes and bare feet slapped against the white floor, puddles of dripping rain collecting on the path to the fire. The sound would have surely echoed if the fire wasn't roaring and crackling, dulling the sound of the rain, and calming you with every floating ember.

Slowly, the group of people around you grew, till Ahk saddled in beside you, his head on your shoulder.

These were his servants. You assumed that the housing set up for them in Thebes wasn't great, and Ahk had decided his house was a good spot for everyone to house up for the night. Sounded just like him––troubling you to the point of a breakdown, and then following that up with an act of kindness you'd see out of no other King.

"Are we sleeping here tonight?" You asked, barely audible above the murmurs of servants and the dancing fire.

"I think it'd be most wise," he murmured, shuffling to kiss your bare shoulder, before returning to his lax, sleepy position.

As people drifted off to sleep, hidden far away from the storm's ravages, you stared at the fire. It dimmed, and more people fell asleep, and you stared, wide eyes unable to close. By now you were lying down, Ahk curled up in your side as you stared at the burning cinders. He snored, though you hardly minded, finding comfort in his obvious heartbeat and the soft warmth of his breath.

He would always be an enigma to you. Or, perhaps, your affection for him would always be an enigma––reasonless, and petty, and undeserved.

"Sweet... darling," he mumbled through sleep-numb lips, grasping you tighter and forcing his face into your side, hiding away from the world.

You shifted, unable to move your arm beneath his head, and pressed your lips to the top of his head.

"Go to sleep, Ahk," you whispered.

"I love you."

Oh.

I love you.

The words circled your head, always on the corner of your eye as the ship beneath you creaked. It was a barge, or that's what Ahk called it; a carrier for Amun beneath the starlit sky. You tried to keep at the edge of the water, but Ahk kept his hand rooted at your waist. You supposed, in the amassed crowd, it would be a little hard to find you once the boat reached the other side of the Nile.

Behind your ship, where the golden statue of Amun rested, a fleet of other ships sailed in your wake, all of varying sizes. Some people sailed alone on small canoes, while others joined larger ships that took families across the river. All followed a path they'd taken before, one lit by a literal golden beacon––Amun, reflecting the light of torches held high above the people's heads. He would be carried by a team of men, who would set the God in the temple of Luxor for worshippers to place their kisses upon.

You could hardly see the ships, as Ahk kept you on an elevated platform overlooking everything in front of him, which simultaneously blocked his view of behind with a large shack.

"Should I pray with you or.. stay out of the temple?" You asked, careful to keep your voice quiet despite the loud voices of the pilgrims.

"You don't have to pray," he said, looking down at you with an assuring smile. "You don't have to stay outside of the temple, either. You can do whatever you like. I'd suggest partaking in the food, though, just by the way."

"It's alright," you said. "I'm mildly interested in how your religion works, so I'll watch your ceremony."

"Wonderful," he beamed.

Your balance stumbled as the hull of the barge hit the sandy shore, banking in another painted metropolis. Massive statues of Amun met you there, though the standing ones were made of limestone, and were a deal smaller than the golden idol. They flanked the docks, protecting the entrance to the city and the adhering temple.

Torches, held by soldiers who came to greet the boats, made way for the muddy ripples of water to visibly crash into the wood, making the ground beneath you sway. With help from Ahk, you rushed off the boat in an orderly manner. Swaths of people followed from behind, running onto the various docks, and watching the Pharaoh with eager eyes. Those whose attention fell to you glared, or stared confused.

Once most people were off the boats, the soldiers and workers began to lift the golden statue, causing an uproar of cheers from those around you. You nearly cringed from the sheer volume, but the grins surrounding you turned your fear to curiosity. Now you watched, blocking out the yells, as the statue was carried off the boat and onto land, passing by you and Ahk as it made its' way to the shore and the temple beyond.

You made to follow the crowd as it followed the statue, but Ahk tugged on your hand, keeping you on the dock. A soft and unbothered smile was on his face, and you paused in your curiosity.

"What are you doing?" You asked, your voice still hushed despite being alone.

"It's better to let them pray for a little while and mingle before I enter. Gets some of their energy out so they don't trample me," he said with a shrug.

"Wow. They must really like this holiday."

"I think more than anything they're excited about free food," he chuckled, his smile growing when you chortled.

Soon he was leading you back down the wooden dock, following the footprints in the sand towards the towering rocks. The dark of night casted the temple as a silhouette, whose real shape could not be truly identified, other than the fact that it was a very large structure. Even by starlight you could barely see the steps as you approached them.

The hallway you entered was deathly quiet, but lit distantly by the lights of the next room ahead. You slowed, your attention ensnared by the statues on either side of you, and your steps came to a silent crawl. Ahk allowed you to gawk at the art before he lead you onwards, a self-satisfied smile on his lips that parted them ever so slightly. Between the tall statues were pillars, and in front of each God sat a shallow basin, all filled with a clear oil.

You turned back to Ahk, ready to continue, pausing to allow him to endow himself with holy oil. Since the journey to Karnak had been started so late into the evening, you had yet to truly see him, and for a moment wondered if he would be wearing makeup.

Blue painted his eyelids, long, sharp lines defining his eyes as he stepped into the golden light, his entirety bathed in the holy glow. His cape trailed meters behind him, shimmering as though it were nothing more than a mist. Cuffs remained a constant in his outfit, though now they cradled his upper arms, his wrists, and his ankles, each carved ornately with faience and lapis defining the lines. The collar holding up his cape bore a royalty all its' own, crystal beads of red, blue, gold, and green coming one after the other in swirling patterns. Three golden amulets fell from the front of the collar, dripping down like rain on his bare chest and stomach.

Power had a name. Royalty had been born through his name––settling deep into his person, seeping out its' presence through his veins. This was the God the Nubians feared, the Hittites, the Phoenicians, all relented their struggle in the palm of this man's hand.

He stepped forward and the cheers of the hall fell into silence, heads bowing as all came to their knees. Foreheads pressed against the ground, hands outstretched on the temple floor, but consistently retaining a clear path to the statue of Amun.

Ahk continued into the room a few more steps before he realized you weren't at his side. At that point he turned to you, meeting your eye and calling you over with a silent wave of his hand. The blood in your heart froze, petrified by the insinuation, as your eyes darted between the bowed heads and the Pharaoh's outstretched hand. But he was patient, and he waited, his welcoming hand never falling.

After another moment you took his offer, fingers sliding over his palm till he grasped you, entangling your hands together. He pulled you gently forward, and soon you were walking by his side, welcome to bask in the respect of a silent room.

You noticed, once you looked up from the worshippers with guilt, that the statue of Amun had been placed upon a pedestal, a pedestal that had several different levels, and a staircase leading up. On the lower levels, statuettes and reliefs of Mut and Khons numbered many. There was where you stopped and turned, facing the long, torch-lit hall filled to the brim with devotees of Amun and Ahkmenrah.

"They bow for you, too," he murmured in your ear.

Your eyes settled on the exposed backs, the spines popping up, and the different adornments of people from all classes. None of them knew who you were. Would they bow to a stranger just because their King told them to?

Apparently.

To the sides of the altar, you caught sight of the Pharaoh's advisors, and a few of his personal servants, who were bowed alongside the rest.

"I am a King unlike my father," Ahkmenrah began, the first words of a long expected speech. "Unlike my father, I have brought us to peace, and have done so in a fraction of the entire time my father spent ruling. Unlike my father, I will love whomever I decide fit," his hand on your waist tightened, "and I will worship who I desire to. As a King I am allowed these comforts––the freewill of choice, and the means to live fruitfully. I am not controlled by my father... or my advisors.

"Unlike my father, I will give you these rights. Restore what should have never been taken. I will return your free will. I will allow all to marry who they desire, regardless of race, class, or gender."

The already confused crowd began to murmur, heads lifting to whisper to one another in curiosity and disbelief.

"I will pay back what my people sow," he continued. "You will be able to pride yourself on your work, no matter what that is, as all creation is important, and shall be protected under my rule. I will give back the means you give me to live fruitfully. As I regenerate myself and my power during this evening, so shall you be reinvigorated, as my blood runs in your heart, just as your blood runs in mine."

He stopped speaking, and for a moment dead silence ensnared you, before a rupture of cheers and applause broke your ears. Voices surrounded you, echoing off the tall ceiling painted with stars. Beside you, the Pharaoh beamed, basking in the adoration till he turned to you. It was then, within that fiery temple, and within the view of the population of a whole city, that he held your face soft in his palm and kissed you. Needy, incredibly needy, essentially desperate, but gentle. As though you would break. The tension fell instead upon himself, in his tight chest that just barely pressed to yours. His breath pushed and pulled, longing to feel you move against him, never ceasing to thrill your nerves as his fingertips brushed across your bare stomach.

When at last you kissed him back, he melted into you, almost leaning his whole weight on you in relief. He did his best to keep himself upright, and parted when it was clear you were short on breath. For a moment he stared, scanning your wide eyes, before kissing you once more, this time much shorter.

Looking to the sides of the altar, he waved in the servants, who sprang to their feet with trays of food. They dispersed amongst the now-standing crowd, feeding the citizens just as the Pharaoh promised. Musicians appeared from behind tall pillars, strumming melodies you'd never heard before. As they did, Ahk took your hand, kissing the back of it as he began to step down from the altar.

"Ever dance before?" He asked, a teasing smile growing across his face.

"Not in Egypt," you said. Different cultures had different styles of dance, and you were in no state to embarrass yourself with your 'foreign customs'.

"It's much the same as most places," he assured you, leading you down the steps. "Just move however the music tells you to."

Drums brought in a heavy beat, thrumming in your veins as the steps of many dancers surrounded you. The weight of their feet, jumping and pounding in tune with the lutes, created a beat you could easily move your body to. Ahk felt much the same, as he smiled wide and twirled you beneath his arm. Exhilaration caught the breath in your throat, warming your already-flushed skin, and enthralling you with the Pharaoh's many talents. Of course he would know how to dance––of course he would know how to twirl you, how to dip you, to run his hands over every inch of your body without ever truly stopping his melodic movements.

A dream, he was––a glowing halo over his head, the heavenly sky painted above his piercing eyes. His clothes, doing their own dance around his moving body, swayed and whipped the glittering silk high in the air, twirling around him like a golden universe. You found yourself grinning wider than you'd ever done in his presence, searching for his hand and its' warmth whenever he parted. Without thought you chased after him, giggling as he made his way through the crowd, nearly clearing a circle in the middle of the holy temple.

By firelight you caught your reflection in his eyes. It was then you saw yourself, your near-manic smile, your tussled hair, and the royal robes dripping elegantly off your body. This was not you––or, at least, this wasn't you before Ahkmenrah captured you. Yet you found, with his hand on your waist and your chests pressed tight together, that very rarely had you been happier than this moment.

People around you, staring at you, the scent of spilled wine and twice-baked honey intoxicating you. The circle around you continued to dance, but kept an eye on you and the King.

"See?" He murmured out of breath. "You are beautiful. Heavenly. You are already a God. See how they stare?"

"Yes," you whispered out.

"They are simply processing your divinity," he said, his eyes darting to each feature on your face.

"What should I do?"

"Dance."

Beneath the eyes of Amun you kissed him, soft and barely there, before you gently parted yourself from him. He watched, breathless, as you placed your hand on his chest. You circled him, drawing your finger around his chest to his back.

"This is how they dance in the east," you mumbled in his ear, carefully watching the eager crowd as you spoke.

You grabbed his hand, whirling him around to face you as another grin began to cross you. He mimicked your smile, enchanted by your movements, gaze never ceasing as you began to move your hips. The staring of strangers now only served to fuel you, caught up in the wanderlust that had captured you so vividly as a child. This had been your source of energy, how you kept moving throughout the world––the presentation of other cultures, their wisdom, and their art.

Soon you were tangling yourself back into Ahk, allowing him to pull you in circles and dictate your steps. The two of you moved in near synchronicity, and as the temple's dancers joined in on the sides, so did the rest of the populace crammed into the hall. Musicians played louder as the shouts and whoops of listeners began to overtake it.

You caught sight of the golden statue once more, your gaze lingering on those knelt at its' feet. Plates, bowls, and clay pitchers of food and wine now overcrowded the base, accompanied by the reliefs of Mut and Khons, as well as tokens made of Amun's image. Slowly you dragged your eyes upwards, to the watching stare of the golden God.

It blinked.

Massive eyelids closed over empty eyes, causing you to falter in your step. Your own eyes widened, caught horrified by the statue, a terror that quickly halted Ahk's own dancing. He looked at you confused for a moment, before following your line of sight to the statue.

The room fell into an astonished silence, instruments screeching to a halt as the statue's arms began to crack, movement slowly filling them until they tore apart from the main body. Fingers cracked as though sore from stillness, followed by the horrid trembling of the floor brought about by his heavy feet. They tore from the base, stepping down from the altar as the face began to move, animated, and smiling.

The golden eyes of Amun stared at the tiny people below him, a space amidst the crowd cleared for him to stand easily in the temple.

You looked up bug-eyed, your mouth falling open as Ahk grasped your lower arm tight.

"Is this supposed to happen?" You asked in a whisper, but in the wake of silence, your words were clear as day.

"Not... usually," Ahk admitted sheepishly, tugging nervously at his clothes. "Um.. Amun? Have you possessed your statue?"

"In a way," he said, the deep vibrations of his voice humming painfully loud in the echo chamber. "I have my projected my thoughts and voice into this body, so I may give to you the gift of my presence... and so I may give you a message."

Despite the tremor in Ahkmenrah's hand, he kept himself steady, and looked up at the God as though he were any other regular person.

"What is your message, Hidden One?" He asked.

"I desire your... pet," the God said, his eyes falling to you, clinging to the Pharaoh's side. You shrank further into yourself, nearly shaking with panic.

Amun was the creator God. Ahkmenrah could not say no––the pure outrage that would come from the citizens should he do that was deterrent enough for you to be assured of that.

But he stepped out in front of you, cradling you behind him as he glared upwards.

"Why?" He asked, his earlier reverence turned to suspicion.

"Do you dare to question my command?" Amun asked in return, the rims of his eyes beginning to glow an unearthly purple. Smoke filled his mouth, coming out in great billows and plumes, filling the ceiling as he appeared to grow taller.

"I want to know why," Ahk gritted out.

Amun paused, gauging both your expression and Ahkmenrah's, before speaking precise and clear.

"It possesses the knowledge of many cultures. I have tired of my consorts, my own pets, and their closed minds. Your pet is beautiful and knowledgeable," Amun said, kneeling to face you closer, "and I desire it for the afterlife."

Massive eyes met yours, peering over Ahk's comparatively tiny shoulder. They remained rooted for a moment, scanning what little of you they could see, before the God stood once more.

"I want you to kill it, preserve its' body as well as you can, and bury it for when I come to take it," he said.

"No."

Gasps sounded from the crowd, all the eyes on you chittering and murmuring at Ahkmenrah's gall.

"Tiny King," Amun growled, his hand reaching down to pick Ahk out from the crowd.

Before the thick fingers could pinch him, Ahk reached around to one of his nearby soldiers, pulling the sword from its' sheath and slicing the palm of the God. The gasps around you grew louder yet, people beginning to shuffle nervously as they doubted the will of their Pharaoh. Through the murmurings you heard shouts, taunts against Ahkmenrah, claims of sudden insanity.

"Give up the slave!" Came from somewhere behind you, which very nearly broke Ahk's concentration on Amun as his nails dug into his palm, teeth ground together.

"Someone take his sword!"

"Get him out of here!"

"Silence," commanded Amun, and the temple returned to quiet. "A cut will not stop me."

With that he reached forward, his massive hand brushing Ahk aside and grasping your middle, arms forced to your sides. Your breath caught in your throat, unable to yell as you were lifted from the ground.

"You had the choice to willingly serve me or anger me. Either way," he brushed the hair away from your face with his golden skin, "I will have Amoke for my own."

He smiled, soft, and terrifying, as he squeezed you tighter in his palm. The constriction cut off your ability to breathe, muscles pinching and twisting with the pressure.

"You have watched from afar my battles, that I am sure of," Ahkmenrah said. You looked down, desperation welling tears in your eyes as you met the gaze of the King, who had the face of the dead; dark, and dull, and absent of empathy. "Yet you don't know that I will destroy anything that comes between me and what I want."

"Funny," said Amun, "I'm the same way."

Ahk casted aside his sword, instead reaching for the many vases, pots, and basins of oil, throwing them all to the floor till both the offerings and marble floors were covered in holy oil. Confusion struck you till he reached for a torch, at which point you began to wriggle in the God's grasp. Ahkmenrah had done a number of stupid things, especially when it came to his relationship with you, but burning down a temple rung bad news to you.

He threw the torch to the ground, lighting the temple aflame with bursts of fire that burned red and orange. Already heat came to meet you, hitting your cheek and neck with waves of searing warmth, tinted with the smell of lavender and roses. Screams bounced off the walls, blurred by the crackling roar of fire. You watched, high above the crowd, as people scrambled towards the exit, desperately escaping the flames. Then your eyes fell, past the door, past the shrieking, to the Pharaoh, his face lit by fire, and his eyes darkened by the overwhelming shadow of his own crown.

"Fire cannot hurt a God," Amun spat, holding you closer to his chest.

"No," Ahk agreed, "but it can hurt your vessel."

"Gold doesn't melt by simple fire."

"Right again. But the stone on the inside of that frame does."

While they spoke, you began to feel the melting heat of stone surrounding you, burning you wherever your skin was bare. Panic seized you fiercely, quickening your breath till you barely felt your own chest heaving up and down. You cried out as the burning sensation turned to searing pain, melting and blistering the skin of your forearms.

From nowhere you were released, falling two meters from the sky to the ground. Ahk rushed past the burning pools of oil and piles of food, grasping your hand tight in his. Before either of you said anything, the agonized, broken yells of a God filled your head. It spiked and crackled, like explosions in your ears, ranging from deep, mechanical roars to high-pitches screeches that felt like nails dragging down from your eyes to your jaw. Through it all Ahk kept you running, heading for the wooden doors already set aflame. Pillars fell around you, crashing against the marble floor, and in the process causing the ground to tremble. The two of you nearly lost your balance, watching two massive pillars slowly falling to block the exit. He held your hand tighter yet, his pace increasing as yours did, the two of you bolting out of the hall. The moment you exited, the final pillars fell behind you, blocking the door and locking the God into the fiery temple.

Heavy pants filled your chest till it numbed, your teary eyes stinging in the cool, night air. Even through the thick stone you could hear Amun wailing and screeching, clawing at the walls of the temple till the marble gave way, tumbling to the floor and splintering upon impact. The sandstone bricks behind the marble kept him inside, leaving him to die within its' holy walls.

"Are you alright?" He asked, frantic hands and eyes scanning your body. First he held your face, then your neck, till he found the marks covering your forearms.

"I'm -"

"Ohhh dearest," he breathed out, his brow furrowed tight as he took your hands, holding them with a touch so gentle you barely felt it. "I'm so sorry, my dear. I didn't... oh dear.. does it hurt?"

You looked down, scanning over the seared flesh in the dim starlight.

"Not anymore," you said, confused at your own tolerance. "It just hurt at first."

"I'm so sorry, my love, I'm.. we'll get this bandaged up, all right?" He promised, looking you in the eye.

"Ahk, no one's going to help you," you said. His subjects wouldn't accept him back after that fiasco. No way.

"Piye will," he said assuredly, raising your hands to kiss your fingers. "That's all we need."

"Where are they?"

"Still in Thebes. It'll take us a little bit, so let's get some bandages first," he murmured, kissing your forehead.

He gingerly threaded his fingers in yours, assuring himself of you, before the two of you headed away from the desecrated temple. While he scanned the long, dark hallway for people, you noted the figures flanking the entrance, and tugged on Ahk's arm.

“He certainly lived up to his speech,” one of them said.

"I think your advisors are waiting to hand your ass to you," you whispered.

"Ah... fuck. My father himself is going to rise from the field of reeds to throw my ass in my face," he mumbled, chewing on his lip.

"When did you start swearing?" You asked, slightly befuddled.

"Usually when I get into dangerous situations," he said lowly, ducking behind one of the pillars as one of the figures shifted, "it starts up. Horrible habit. My mother tried to rid me of it but she was never quite successful."

"Apparently," you muttered beneath your breath, before helpfully pointing out that there were holes built into the ceiling to let natural light through.

"Perfect, darling," he said, pecking your cheek before reaching for the carved top of the pillars.

Once assured of his stability, he heaved himself upwards, catching the ledge outside before falling. From there he pulled himself up, scrambling onto the roof of the hallway. You attempted to go the same route, but your arms hardly reached the pillar's protrusions, and they were numb with pain. Seeing your trouble, he lay flat on the roof, hanging his arm down. You grasped tight as you could, and with help from your legs you clambered onto the roof.

Ahk huffed, brushed himself off, brushed you off, and only then continued on. From up there you could easily see the advisors and guards discussing, their hushed voices reaching you with little clarity. Spying would do you no good, and Ahk soon realized that, taking you back towards the temple.

In silence he climbed the rest of the way to the temple's roof, helping you up along the way. Your shadow stood before you, casted long but pale against the flat expanse of the roof, stretching out before you like a desert. This was the only area of the temple undecorated, left untouched and plain. It was a funny thought to realize that from above––from a God's view––the temple was as plain as white sand.

By descending far away from the entrance, the two of you avoided sight of his advisors in an act you realized he'd done many a time before. You wondered, watching him sneak along the ground, what kind of a child he was, and if you would've liked him better if you met him when he was younger. Though to be perfectly fair you liked him quite a lot already, unfortunate as it was.

Ever aware of your wound, he led you by a hand on your back, instead of the usual taking hold of your hand. Keeping your footsteps quiet proved hard in the loose rocks, but with your slow pace you safely made it to the boathouse he led you to.

"Here," he whispered, ushering you into the room. He glanced outside, scanning for anyone present, before carefully closing the door and turning back to you.

You opened your mouth to speak, but before you could do so he was pushing you into a chair, hushing you softly. Mildly offended, but more importantly confused, you watched as he rifled through boxes of storage. Most of your questions were answered when he pulled out bandages. Alongside that, he pulled out a small pot of honey, which you yourself had used before to treat infections.

"I am truly sorry, my dear," he said as he knelt before you, unravelling the linen. "I never meant for anyone to get hurt."

"Except Amun."

"Well... yes, there is that," he mumbled abashedly, chuckling.

For a little while you watched in silence as he gingerly wrapped your arms up, careful not to touch the sticky, pale wound with his fingers. Honey kept the linen from burning or attaching to heavily to your skin.

"Why did you do that?" You asked, your voice cracking in your attempt to keep quiet.

"What? Did I wrap it wrong?" He asked, looking up with wide, expectant eyes.

"No, not that, the –"

"The burning thing?"

"Yes, kind of," you said. "You hurt your God."

"It's alright, he's not the only one we've got," he chuckled.

"That's not the point," you hissed, increasingly irritated with his jokes. He laughed at your annoyance, but finally calmed down enough to speak seriously.

"Amoke, the Gods are eternal. They have time to know everything, to have everything. We are not. We have a limited amount of time to enjoy ourselves. I think Amun can wait another hundred years till you die. I can't. Do you understand that?" He said, his hand cradling your face as he knelt between your legs, praying to your reverent eyes. "I don't mind fighting for the things in this world that I own. Because until I die, I am wholly of this plane, and such earthly things are all I have."

You swallowed through a tight throat before nodding. A small smile replaced the worried knot in his brow, and he returned carefully to the task at hand.

White linen soon coated the entirety of both your upper arms, spots of honey and blood rarely peeking through the wraps. He was finally finished, the ends tucked away, preventing it from unravelling when you moved. For a moment you sat still, waving your arms up and down experimentally.

"Thank you," you said as you stood, looking down at the couple blisters along your hands.

"Of course, dear," he said, kissing the top of your head. "Piye will do a much better job. I just don't want it to get infected on the way there."

Seeing as your temporary hideout was a boathouse, it was relatively easy to get a boat. The process was a combination of 'don't let the wood creak beneath you,' 'lay down on the dock, there's someone coming,' and 'untie that knot faster'. Your aching hands were no fit for any small, involved work, so Ahk made himself useful by both releasing the canoe from the dock and rowing it away from shore.

Despite being almost-passed-out tired, you couldn't doze on the boat, too paralyzed by the rocking waves. Ahk noticed––of course he did––but could do little to comfort you. All he had to provide was the information that this wouldn't take long; thirty minutes or so, he said.

To find ease in something, you looked off the edge of the boat to the rippling, black water. Though the stars shined above you, you could barely see them in the river. Instead you found your reflection staring back up at you, unblinking.

"It's not healthy to stare at yourself too long. Drives some insane," Ahk commented in a hum.

"As if you don't spend an hour every morning looking at yourself in the mirror."

"Ouch. Fair point."

Stumbling back onto land was easier than usual, but keeping your balance on the dock was a little harder. Ahk told you to sit down while he tied the boat up, which you did, but only after nearly tripping over a stray rope.

"We shouldn't exclude the possibility that Piye, and perhaps the rest of the Thebes, already knows of what we've done," Ahk said, looking out from the dark shore to the torch-lit city.

"And if they do?"

"Um... we'll get to that when we get there," he said with a sharp breath, his eye still set on the lights. "Let's go, hm? Nice and quiet."

You nearly laughed at his behavior, but a glance to his expression had you sobered. His teeth were digging into his lip, more than usual, and it looked rather painful.

"Ahk?" You said, grasping his arm to halt him. He turned to you, his stress gone, and looked you in the eye. "Are.. are you alright?"

He continued to stare at you for a moment, before saying, "yes! I, um, I'm alright. Thank you."

"... okay," you said doubtfully. He was clearly lying, but you didn't want to seem as though you cared too much, and you could always ask later on.

Keeping low to the ground, just as before, the two of you managed to sneak into the city without being noticed. It was an even more impressive feat considering your clothes jangled with every movement, overcrowded with jewels. Torches had you struck with fear several times, recalling each time the gold swirls of Ahk dancing, and terrified the light would shine too bright off the Pharaoh.

Without attracting too much attention, you made it safely to Piye's housing, placed within a large garden beside several other similar-looking houses. First he looked in through the windows, but ultimately found nothing.

"I'm sure it's fine if we just go inside," Ahk said with a dismissive shrug, tugging on the handle.

"Um –"

"Don't worry, Amoke," he said, directing you inside. "I've known Piye since I was ten. They won’t mind."

Your mouth pressed into a thin line, anxiously looking around the dark room for any sign of movement. Such was your anxiety that when Ahk closed the door behind him, you jumped, long nails digging deep into your palms.

"Careful there," he said as he passed by you, heading towards the fireplace.

He knelt on the ground, his beautiful skirt dirtied on the soot and dirt collected on the hearth. Pulling out several tools from nearby, he soon started a fire, this time much tamer and controlled.

Fire.

Why did the sight of it root you to the spot?

Warmth seeped into the room, gently easing your tight, cold muscles, and asking you to step nearer. Your teeth dug into your cheek, but you fought your impulse and sat nearby on the floor. As you drew your knees to your chest, Ahk scooted over to your side, gently putting your head on his shoulder.

"I swear, I'll -"

The muffled sound of yelling began to ring from the entrance of the garden. You and Ahk immediately looked to one another with wide eyes as you listened, trying to make out the words.

"Osiris won't be enough –– wrangle that –– stuff you in a grave!"

Splinters flew as the door wrenched open, slamming against the wall and bounding back to nearly hit Piye in the face. Fortunately, Piye, being tall and vigilant as they were, caught it without breaking their menacing stare at Ahk. Ahk on the other hand was rooted to the spot, staring up at the enraged magician.

"What the hell were you thinking?!" Piye yelled, forcing the door shut behind them before approaching Ahk with a vindication you rarely saw. "You think you can just attack a God and your people will still love you? You're not above the deities, Ahkmenrah. You're their vessel and they will strike you down for this disrespect!"

"I'm not going to let an innocent person die because some God wants a plaything," Ahk said firmly, keeping his ground.

"You don't get a choice. Don't forget you're a temporary ruler of this world. The Gods control everything and everyone," Piye said, roughly jabbing Ahk in the chest with their finger.

"Piye has a point," you said.

"Amoke, d –"

"They're going to get their way eventually. Why fight it?" You asked, a question that had the two of them quiet for a moment.

"I will fight for every last second I can have with you. If need be I will slay my people for one more minute in your presence," he said as he once more knelt before you, taking your hands in his. "I will burn down this world for one last kiss."

There was a fervor in his eyes unlike anything you'd seen before––bright, brilliantly so, yet lusting for something not in the realm of the holy. Something much more sinister; a lust not for flesh, but for the blood within it. He would keep his word. You knew then and there, staring into those bright, empty eyes, that he would sooner destroy his cities than let you go.

He would keep his word.

"Don't," you barely whispered out.

"I would," he said with the same softness, directing you to look back at him when your eyes strayed.

"I know."

Wooden planks creaked as Piye shifted their weight, crossing their arms as they watched your spectacle.

"I allowed this for a long while," Piye said, their voice drawing Ahk's face away from hiding in your lap. "I let you steal an innocent person. Now I see I should've stopped it from the beginning. You've grown too attached, Ahk. You have responsibilities bigger than yourself, and there are certain things you cannot indulge. Certain pleasures you cannot partake in."

Not once had the Pharaoh looked to Piye. Instead his gaze remained enraptured in yours, dreamy as it was bittersweet.

"And if I abandon my position as King?" He asked, a smile growing across his face as he carefully watched your reaction. Behind him, however, Piye's own expression fell, arms unwinding as they stared stupefied at the Pharaoh.

"Your father would never forgive you," Piye said, much quieter through the tension built in their throat.

"So what? He's dead."

"Merenkahre might not have been a fantastic King but he was still your father, and he cared about you."

"- a care that was most certainly conditional, seeing as how he treated my brother," Ahk pointed out.

"Your brother killed thirteen servants!! I think that's a little different!" Piye seethed, lean muscles in their hands tensing as they spoke through gritted teeth.

"Yes, listen, Amoke got hurt in that little temple fiasco. I was hoping you could help them," Ahk said, finally turning to face Piye.

"Oh. Of course, come here," Piye mumbled, ushering you over. "I'm sorry you got tangled in his mess. I'm sure you don't want to be here."

"Oh, well -" you began only to be interrupted.

"I'll be very pleased to remind you that Amoke willingly joined me this time!"

"'This time,'" Piye mocked. "Oooh, your little plaything actually wanted to be remotely near you one time."

"First off, ouch, second off, you enjoyed it, didn't you Amoke? I mean, besides the whole melting arm debacle," Ahk said, peering over Piye's to see you.

A long, tense silence stretched when you couldn't find an answer, and instead decided to focus on Piye's treatments.

"My Gods," Piye muttered once all the wrappings were off, which was not a good thing to hear from a doctor when they're examining you.

"What? What's wrong?" You quickly asked, eyes darting between the wrappings, your wound, and Piye's concerned expression.

"Nothing, it's just... this is a pretty severe wound. I'm surprised you still have fingers," they said, shaking their head to clear it.

After taking a deep breath, they took one of your hands, holding it up close to their eye.

"I'm going to have to do some... experimental magic for this. Are you alright with that?"

"What happens if it goes wrong?" You asked, a creeping suspicion on the edge of your words.

"I'd imagine either nothing or you'll have arms made of flowers."

You paused to silently debate it, but took little time deciding.

"Alright," you agreed.

"Wonderful. Give me a moment," they said, and began to mutter verses beneath their breath, eyelids closing over glowing eyes.

You looked to Ahk with an astonished look, your mouth hanging open. He just shrugged, unable to give you an answer before Piye reemerged, no longer glowing in their eyes. Now their palms were glowing, surrounding your burnt arm.

"Repeat after me," they said. "I am this pure lotus which went forth from the sunshine."

You repeated them.

"–– which is at the nose of Re; I have descended --"

"–– that I may seek it for Horus ––"

"–– for I am the pure one who issued from the fen."

Heat came from the tip of your tongue, nearly burning as you spoke the last word. With a racing heart, you opened your eyes, immediately drawn to the blue and purple embers rising from your arm. Streams of light soon came from the wounds, blossoming into solid shapes that built the petals of blue lotus flowers.

Every inch of skin that was scarred, burned, blistered, or melted off had been infested with flowers, growing so thick that they puffed out like kinky hair.

"Is it... supposed to do that?" You asked hesitantly.

"It's not.. not supposed to do that," Piye suggested, which was also not a comforting thing to be told.

Either way, you made your way back to your previous seat, your hands folded neatly in your lap as you slouched down. Piye made to grab something from the mantle, but ultimately sighed deeply and flopped down on the floor beside you and Ahk.

"What are we going to do, Ahk?" They asked, leaning forward with their chin balanced on their palm.

"... you're going to help me?" Ahk murmured as he perked up.

"Yes," said Piye bitterly, "of course. But I'm not going to enjoy it."

#ahkmenrah x reader #Ahkmenrah #Night at the Museum #rami malek #rami malek character #ahkmenrah x female reader #ahkmenrah x male reader

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goddess-of-geeks · 4 years ago

Text

Grace and Power pt. 5

The truth comes out

A/N: I’m sorry this took so long. I guess I’ll be updating this story every week instead of every other day, sincere apologies to those who have waited so long.

Word Count: 2635

Warning: Avatar: the Last Airbender is rated pg-13, so they are allowed on f-bomb. Naturally, I gave it to the reader. So I guess the warning is language.

Pt. 4

~~~

You were laying in bed trying to sleep away the nerves. The thought of going back to the Fire Nation made your stomach feel squirmy.

You were originally in your room to get away from Iroh and his constant teasing about you and Zuko. He saw the both of you on the deck earlier, and him being the greatest Uncle in the world decided that bringing it up at every moment would be for the best.

That left you in your room, alone with your thoughts, laying in bed, having a panic attack.

You felt the ship move and you fell off of your bed and onto your floor. The ship continued to sway, and you had to idea why. You heard a crash near the back of the ship and quickly got to your feet. With the ship in constant motion it was hard to stay in balance, but to the best of your ability you ran to the deck.

You slammed open the door to the deck the same time the Engine Master shouted about the broken engine.

“Do not stop this ship.” You heard Zuko shout.

As the ship began to steady. You ran up to the prince to see what you were dealing with.

“Is that a blockade?” You asked in an alarmed voice. “Are we really running a blockade, that is throwing fireballs at us?” You continued.

No one seemed willing to answer your question. Not even Zuko.

You looked around at the crew as the thought finally sunk in.

“Okay,” You nodded your head, “So we’re doing this.”

~~~

Somehow, someway, in a miraculous gift of the spirits, you succeeded in not being hit by anymore fireballs.

You clutched the railing of the ship, and spoke with gritted teeth. “If I ever have to go through something like that again. I am forcefully throwing all of you off the ship, and sailing in the opposite direction.” You stated.

You saw how the ships of the blockade up ahead moved towards one another, in an attempt to bar our way.

“We’re on a collision course!” Iroh exclaimed.

“We can make it!” Zuko responded.

“We’re all gonna die.” You said meekly.

As your ship quickly approaches the blockade, you noticed how the other ships seemed to slow down until they hit a complete stop. You ship glides easily through the blockade.

You turned towards the closest ship and saw Commander Zhao.

“Who else but Zhao.” You said under your breath.

You moved from your place on the deck and stood next to Iroh.

You looked over at Zhao once again, you gave him a dark look, one which he returned.

“Why is he letting us pass?” You wondered aloud.

~~~

The crew prepared another much smaller ship that Zuko would use to follow the Avatar.

“I personally think this is a horrid plan, and that you shouldn't go alone.” You said, voicing your opinion.

“Then you should keep your personal thoughts to yourself.” Zuko said.

You looked at the prince for a solid second before you smacked him in the back of the head.

He brought his hand up to where you hit him, and started to rub it to sooth the pain.

“I deserved that didnt I?” He asked.

“Look at you asking the obvious.” You said.

You folded your arms across your chest and gave the prince a look of concern.

“You’re not going alone.” You stated.

Zuko looked at you then at his feet before responding, “Yes, I am.”

You cleared your throat before speaking up, “Let me rephrase that. I won’t allow you to go alone.”

Zuko turned to you and gave you the “Are you serious” look.

“Yes, I am serious. I’m going with you, or you're not going at all.”

Zuko opened his mouth to speak, but you interrupted him.

“That’s final.” You said.

You turned on your heel and walked away from Zuko.

~~~

You stood on the deck with Zuko, and Iroh as the Crew lowered the smaller boat into the waters.

“Uncle,” Zuko said, “Keep heading north. Zhao will follow the smoke trail while I-”

“While We use it as a cover.” You said interrupting the prince.

The prince gave you a hard look before speaking up.

“I don’t want you coming with me.” He said.

“I don’t want you going alone.” You retorted.

“Why won’t you allow me to go alone?” he asked you.

“Because you’re a foolish idiot, and I don’t want you getting hurt.” You answered simply.

“Why won’t you allow me to go with you?” You asked Zuko.

“Because you’re a little girl, and I don’t want you getting hurt.” Zuko responded.

You laughed humorlessly.

“Oh please Zuzu. You and I both know you’re not foolish enough to underestimate my abilities. So what’s the real reason you don’t want me to come with you?”

Zuko didn’t answer.

“Well since you don’t know, and I don't know. Then I’m going with you whether you like it or not.” You finished.

You boarded the smaller ship, Zuko stepping in after you.

“If you get hurt, I’m leaving you behind.” Zuko said.

“I love you two, Zuzu.” You said with a smile on your face.

~~~

As you and Zuko approached the island you started to wonder aloud.

“What if Zhao isn’t fooled by the smoke trail?” You said, turning to Zuko.

“Trust me Zhao isn’t the smartest man in the world.”

“Oh, I knew that. I kinda worked under him for two weeks.” You responded to the prince. “But he has proven to be smarter than most people are made to believe.” You finished.

You and the prince sat in silence.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t get lucky then.”

~~~

You and Zuko quietly crept up the steps of the temple.

“I hate to say this Zuzu,” You whispered, “But this is by far one of the dumbest things I’ve ever lived to see you do.”

As you reached the top of the stairs you noticed how the Avatar’s companions were attacking the fire sages.

“Hurry up and grab the boy.” You whispered to Zuko.

Zuko snuck to the side of the small boy before he ambushed him from behind.

Zuko held the Avatars arms behind his back. You noticed how the boy seemed to struggle.

“Aang! Now’s your chance!” You heard a girl yell.

Zuko walked into the line of view of the girl, avatar in his grasp.

“The Avatar’s coming with me!” He announced.

You saw how the odds quickly turned against the Avatar and his companions, as the other firesages grabbed the upper hand and tied the two water tribe members to the nearest column.

Your eyes quickly went back to Zuko, but you noticed how the Avatar made several swift moves that knocked Zuko out of balance.The air-bender kicked Zuko down the stairs and turned towards the closing doors.

You caught the prince in your arms when the doors sealed shut.

Zuko quickly pulled himself out of your arms and towards the other Fire Sages.

You soon followed after muttering a quick, “A thank you would have been nice.” under your breath.

You leaned yourself against one of the columns, and watched as the prince gave orders to the fire sages.

“What are you just standing there for? Help me open that door.” He commanded the sages.

4 of the sages and Zuko assume fire bending stances. They shoot 5 simultaneous blasts at the door. This time the locking mechanisms do not respond.

“Why isn’t it working? It’s sealed shut!” Zuko exclaimed.

“It must have been the light. Avatar Roku doesn't want us inside.” One of the sages spoke up.

“Well this has been a lovely expedition.” You said, standing up to your fullest height. “Why don’t we head back to the ship.” You suggested to the prince.

“No. We’re not leaving till the Avatar comes out of that room.” Zuko stated.

You groaned and slid down the column till you hit the floor.

“I should've stayed on the ship.” You mumbled to yourself.

Zuko turned on his heel and began marching towards the traitorous fire sage.

The sage was kneeling on the floor with his hand tied behind his back. The other 4 sages stood behind him.

“Why did you help the Avatar?” Zuko interrogated the Sage.

“That’s a stupid question.” You said before the sage could speak up.

“What?” Zuko asked, turning towards you.

You rolled your eyes, “Honestly Zuzu how do you expect yourself to run this nation if you know a nice amount of nothing about it.” You turned your head to look at the prince, “It’s kinda disappointing really.”

Zuko ignored your statement and turned towards the sage once again.

“Why did you help the Avatar?” Zuko asked once again.

“Because it was once the Sages’ duty.” The sage answered. “It is still our duty.” He finished.

You heard the sound of footsteps and clapping, you immediately jumped to your feet.

Zhao and his soldiers approached Zuko from behind.

“What a moving and heartfelt performance” Zhao said, “I’m certain the Fire Lord will understand why you betrayed him.”

The 4 sages bowed at the newcomer whilst you and Zuko stood tall.

“And Prince Zuko,” Zhao said, turning his attention towards the prince, “it was a noble effort. But your little smoke screen didn't work. Three traitors,” Zhao turned to look towards you, “in one day, the Fire Lord will be pleased.”

You saw one of Zhaos’ soldiers move towards Zuko and grab him. You saw another move towards you. But before he could get his hands on you, you pulled your katana from your sheath on your hip, and pointed the tip at the soldier's throat.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you Zhao, and co.” You said, “But, I’ll slit all of your throats before I face the Fire Lord again.” You stated.

“What do you mean ‘again’ ” Zuko asked, while he was still being restrained.

Your stance faltered and your eyes widened.

“I mean… uh…mmmhh…” You sputtered.

While in your distracted state the Fire Soldier kicked your katana out of your hand.

You looked down and watched as the metal blade clattered on the floor.

“Fuc-”

~~~

You and Zuko found yourselves in chains on a column next to the Avatars companions.

“When those doors open, unleash all of your firebending power.” Zhao commanded his troops.

“Well… seems like we’re gonna be here for a while.” You said.

“Even under my command you never knew when to shut up.” Zhao said as he approached you and Zuko.

“You know Zhao, even as a high ranking commander in the fire nation army, you really are just a deadbeat, low life, good for nothing, waste of space.” You spoke up.

You saw the fire flare in Zhao’s eyes.

He grabbed you by the collar of your shirt and pulled you towards him. He brought his other hand towards your face. A flame dancing in his palm.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t give you and your little boyfriend matching scars.” Zhao threatened through gritted teeth.

“Whatever you do to her Zhao, I will release on you tenfold.” Zuko said, you could see the anger in his eyes.

However you didn’t flinch at Zhao's fire. You trained with Azula during Zuko’s years of banishment, a meek flame such as Zhaos could never scare you.

“You know I don’t really understand how you got to a ranking as high as commander. A sixteen year old bested you in an agni kai. You might as well turn in your uniform now. Nothing can spare you from that embarrassment.” Zhao gripped your collar tighter and the flame in his hands grew hotter. You felt beads of sweat form on the side of your face but you didn't let that distract you.

“Who do you think you are to insult me.” Zhao said.

“The future Fire Lady.” You said without hesitation.

You saw the look of surprise coat Zuko’s face out of the corner of your eye.

“Or the youngest general in the Fire Nation army.” You continued. “Whichever comes first really.”

A nasty smirk appeared on Zhaos face, and he began a humorless chuckle. He let go of your collar and extinguished the flame in his hand before standing upright.

“How could you, the banished girl, ever become a general in the Fire Nation army, let alone the Fire Lady.”

You looked away from Zhao as he turned on his heel to march back to his men.

“That’s why you left the Fire Nation.” Zuko said, turning his head to look at you. “You were banished.” He stated.

“Wow! Thank you, Prince Zuko, for pointing out the obvious!” You said with mock excitement.

You brought your attention back to Zhao and his men. You wanted to do the best you could to distract Zhao from harming that little air bender, even if he did kick Zuko down some stairs.

“I knew you were war criminal Zhao,” You spoke up once again, “buy only a true monster could ever hope to release the power of 9 fire benders against a harmless 12 year old boy.”

Zhao scoffed at your statement, “I wouldn’t exactly use the term ‘Harmless’ to describe the Avatar.”

You narrowed your eyes at Zhao, “Avatar or not. No one that young deserves to go through so much pain for something out of their control.”

Your eyes softened and you turned your head to look at the scarred boy next to you.

“No one deserves to go through that pain.”

You finished your sentence as the doors to the Avatars sanctuary began to open.

“Zhao think about what you’re doing!” You shouted at the same time one of the Avatars companions, the water tribe girl, yelled out, “No! Aang!”

Zhao ignored both of your pleas and ordered his men to fire and the Avatar.

Zhao and his men shot fire blasts into the sanctuary.

But somehow the fire blast didn't enter the sanctuary. The fire was being manipulated to be held at the door and turned into a giant ball of fire. The fire ball slowly begins to open. Standing there, eyes aglow, at the hearth of the fire was none other than Avatar Roku himself.

“Avatar Roku!” One of the fire sages calles out.

Avatar Roku pulls the fire in towards himself before extending out into the room. You flinched away expecting the fire to burn you, but instead it melted the metal chains that kept you and Zuko bound to the column. You turned and saw as the chains were also melted off the young air benders’ companions.You stood there in shock, questions of why the Avatar set you free were swarming a mile a minute in your brain.

You were pulled from your trance, and your spot on the floor, when Zuko grabbed your wrist and ran.

~~~

You and Zuko were once again on the safety of the ship. You watched as the island submerged itself into the hot magma. Whilst Zuko watched the Avatar get away on his flying bison.

“It doesn’t make sense.” You said finally voicing your thoughts.

“What doesn't make sense?” Zuko questioned you, lowering the spying glass from his eye.

“Why did Avatar Roku set us free, if he knew we were a threat to the new Avatars safety?” You wondered, tilting your head towards the young prince.

Zuko was quiet for a moment, thinking about your question, before he spoke up. “I don’t know why he did it.” He said, “But don’t think I’ve forgotten this new information about you.”

“Pardon?” You said.

“You were banished from the Fire Nation.” Zuko said, “And you’re going to tell me why.”

You turned your head away from Zuko. You prayed to the spirits that Iroh would be picking you and Zuko up soon.

~~~

Master list

Taglist form

#atla #atla fanfic #atla zuko #fire lord zuko #prince zuko x reader #zuko x reader #zuko x you #zuko fanfic #zuko imagine

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libermachinae · 4 years ago

Text

Fault Lines Under the Living Room

Part II: Breathe - Chapter 5: Thoughts Expand in Blooms

Also available on AO3! Summary: The consequences of Ratchet and Rodimus' chase become known. Chapter Word Count: 2644

---

“Try again.”

“Yes, sir. Rodimus, come in Rodimus. This is Blaster, coming to you live from the Lost Light command deck. Do you read me? Status and further instruction requested. Over.”

Years of handling the Wreckers’ fluctuating schedules meant it was no effort for Ultra Magnus to resist rubbing his optics as he watched the progress of their three recovery speeders. Siren, Crossblades, and Waverider had launched with minimal deviations from standard procedure (Crossblades would receive a write-up for nonessential helical rotation) and tracked Arcee’s shuttle up to acceptable pursuit range. That was where the chase had stalled, as Rodimus had provided no further instructions and protocol required command from a captain before they could proceed. Either captain.

Protocol fell apart when one refused to leave his hab and the other had stopped answering his comms. Magnus started mentally writing up a proposal for temporary transfer of pursuit command responsibilities while they waited.

The control panel refreshed as the latest information poured in. The speeders were entering upper atmosphere, rotating in pyramid formation in the shuttle’s trail. Acceleration had decreased to the minimum required to maintain orbit and altitude held steady as they sailed through Scarvix’s exosphere.

“Ultra Magnus, I have a visual on Rodimus’ ship,” Bluestreak reported.

“Pull it up.”

The datafeeds compressed to the right of the screen, replaced with the compound live feed from the speeders, displaying the shuttle’s stern, the glow of its thrusters closer to a lightbulb than anything spaceworthy. The engines were keeping it aloft, but there was an unnatural stillness about it, like debris floating through space.

“Again.”

Blaster adjusted settings on the ship’s communications hub and leaned into the mic.

“Rodimus, come in Rodimus. This—”

There was a crackle and buzz as the ship’s receiver finally picked up a signal.

“This is Rodi—ack, Ratchet, this is Ratchet. We read you.”

Blaster’s shoulders relaxed as he transferred primary input to the third in command’s station, but Magnus did not match his relief. Underneath the fritz of the shuttle’s poorly maintained equipment, Ratchet’s voice was shaking.

“Ratchet, this is Ultra Magnus. Report.”

“Report. Report… um, Arcee’s gone. We lost her. Satellite. Crash. Is Cyclonus there?”

“No. What is your—”

“Get him,” Ratchet interrupted.

“Where is Rodimus?” Magnus asked. Ratchet was supposed to be one of the good ones, recognizing his place within the chain of commands. Making demands was out of character for him.

“Here! I’m here,” Rodimus’ voice crackled down the line. “Present. Available. Get Cyclonus.”

Magnus sent the ping and tagged it urgent. Cyclonus had never been known for tardiness, but that put it on the record.

“What is your status?” he asked as he acknowledged Cyclonus’ response.

“Good! Weird? Ratchet is banged up, which is bad. He suffered impact shock in his lower spinal strut, chance there’s a disk… how do I…”

Magnus’ orbital ridge twitched, a coding bug when expression protocols tried to assign a profile to stress of unknown origin. He wiped the cache, regaining his neutral set, and sent a command to have the speeders approach the shuttle. Visual on the command deck would be helpful, but flight integrity was his main concern. If neither Rodimus nor Ratchet was in the right mind to pilot, they would need to engage in emergency grounding maneuvers.

“Ratchet, are you still there? Rodimus sounds incoherent; what is his status?”

“He’s fine.” His voice was briefly drowned out by shuffling and crashing on the other end. “—cessor’s functioning normally. It’s loud, but it’s working.”

“He’s overheating?” Magnus asked.

“Not his fans, his thoughts.”

“Is his comm link malfunctioning?”

“He’s bright like the goddamn sun. I can barely get two words in. Will you shut that off? ”

“Ratchet?” Speeders were closing in.

“Not you.”

“Stop yelling at me!” Rodimus snapped, volume raising and lowering like he was pacing around the microphone. “I heard you the first time.”

“I don’t see how. I can barely hear myself.”

“Aw, poor Rodimus, doesn’t get to hear his own voice.”

“ You’re Rodimus, that’s my line.”

“Rodimus, Ratchet, Waverider is en route to board,” Ultra Magnus interjected. “If you are able, please lower the hatch for arrival, otherwise he will engage emergency stove—”

“No, don’t!”

It wasn’t just that they shouted at the same time, but that Rodimus and Ratchet’s voices matched in pitch, tone, and cadence which caused Magnus, for the third time in his life, to forget what he had been saying.

“Is Cyclonus there?” Rodimus asked.

“There’s something on board,” Ratchet said. “Don’t know what it is, but you can’t let anyone else get near it.”

“It did a weird thing. I’m Rodimus, but also I’m Ratchet? And both?”

“Those sound like the same things, Rodimus,” Magnus said, half distracted as he instructed Waverider to return to position.

“They’re not,” Ratchet said.

“Sir?” Cyclonus’ voice came as a blessing. Magnus gestured him forward.

“Cyclonus just arrived,” he announced. “Cyclonus, Rodimus and Ratchet uncovered something on Arcee’s shuttle. It’s…” He blanked.

“I can feel Ratchet’s processor,” Rodimus said, rushing like it would make any of this comprehensible. “He’s thinking and it’s all really fast and hard, but it’s not rough like you would expect? Like, the feeling of grit in your gears, I thought it would be like that, but it’s more like there’s just a lot of gears and it takes a lot of power to turn them all, and it’s too hard to decide whether to focus on just one or the entire thing. And he keeps thinking about me and my thoughts and how they’re not like that, and I’m thinking about him, and then I get stuck because all the thoughts start to sound the same and I don’t know which ones came from me or which are Ratchet or even which me is me. It’s all a big thought reservoir, a—a thought battle, an entire brain war and I don’t know which side I’m on!”

Cyclonus’ gaze was steady at the screen. Once it was clear that Rodimus was done, he leaned over the microphone.

“Can you send an image of the object?” he asked.

“Sure,” Ratchet said.

Blaster raised his hand.

“Image received.”

Ultra Magnus nodded and the feed of the shuttle was replaced with a still capture, a calamity of wires and light that took his visual center a full millisecond to parse.

“It’s the Enigma of Combination,” Cyclonus said.

“What’s that?” He could differentiate the orbital plating of the object itself and the red dwarf dew drop at its center, but the light it cast on its surroundings made his spark flicker with a disturbing fuzz.

“A plague,” Cyclonus said. “Considered a long-lost relic even in my own time. I would doubt this was the legitimate article, if Rodimus hadn’t so perfectly summarized its less infamous effects.”

“It can do more?” Magnus asked. What it had already done— whatever it had done, he still was not clear on the details—seemed itself too much for a bot to handle. Or two.

Cyclonus hesitated.

“Well, you see…”

“No. No, no, so much no, you’re kidding. Ratchet, tell me they’re kidding!”

“I don’t bloody well know!” he snapped back. He had sunk back into the pilot’s chair while Rodimus paced the bridge. His spark was spinning like a centrifuge, its engine overfed by the deluge of panicked thoughts tumbling through his mind. It was all Cyclonus and shuttle and Arcee and combination and Drift, new threads knocking each other out of the way so nothing could reach a conclusion, just endless half-thoughts pinged repeatedly. Worst was when Rodimus tripped over the junk now scattered across the bridge as it brought everything to a shuddering halt, like a whole expressway’s worth of engines seized up simultaneously.

He pressed his hands to his face and tried to focus on keeping his vents open, ignoring the storm of queries of Is Ratchet overheating? and Drift is going to kill me.

“I can’t be in a combiner with Ratchet!”

He hates me he hates me he hates me rattled around their processors like screws in a box.

“The Enigma has determined otherwise,” Cyclonus said.

So now the damn thing was having its own thoughts?

“It’s thinking ?” Rodimus asked, earning an additional glare from Ratchet.

“No one knows,” Cyclonus said. “It’s ancient technology, built on the same principles that govern sparks.” Principles that even modern science knew so little about. Ratchet was going to say it but froze when he felt Rodimus grab for it, tossing at it a hundred questions he had no answers to: Is that thing a person and Where do sparks come from and Would this stop if we broke it followed by another run of apologies.

“The Enigma has you in a holding pattern,” Cyclonus went on. “There aren’t enough of you to form the combiner, so it’s keeping your sparks connected until it can interface with at least one more Cybertronian.”

Ratchet saw the image that formed in Rodimus’ mind and his glower deepened.

“I don’t have the knowledge or the skills to disconnect something like that,” he said. “Sparks are complicated, Rodimus, and there’s still so much we don’t know about them. I didn’t even think it was possible to maintain a connection of this magnitude without direct contact.” Rodimus’ next idea was even worse. “Have you met your crew? The moment you put it in a box and tell no one to look, Brainstorm, Skids, and Whirl are all going to make breaking into it their personal quest.”

“Isolating the Enigma will not contain its effects,” Cyclonus added. “Because the holding pattern is an open channel, you have become conduits for the Enigma’s energies. If even one of you encounters another compatible component, it will complete the process, regardless of its distance from you.”

Rodimus stilled, then sunk to the floor, his thoughts miserably coalescing into a single thread.

“So, either we drag someone else into this mess, or we’re stuck in this shuttle, trying to think over each other forever?” Forever was steeped in darker emotions that caught Ratchet off-guard, which Rodimus immediately covered up with nonsense branches of observations about the junk on the floor. A negativity storm, Drift would have called it.

From behind, he heard Rodimus chuckle, though his thoughts betrayed little amusement.

“If I may,” Cyclonus said, interrupting no one. “Ratchet, I do respect you as a physician, but modern medicine is not the only source of knowledge concerning the Cybertronian body. Even modern theology, shallow thought it may be, offers insights to the nature of sparks that your specialty lacks.”

“No.” Ratchet scowled and shook his head, though more so at the way he felt Rodimus stirring that observation than the idea itself. “None of the woo-woo nonsense. Drift’s mindfulness agility course was bad enough.”

Unfortunately, his words made Rodimus’s thoughts expand in blooms, accompanied by shuffling as he stood to lean over the pilot’s chair.

“Drift was always trying to get me into his meditation thing,” he said. “He—he talked about the Rossum connection, how the mind impacts the spark and vice-versa. It was mostly, you know, power poses and cool sword moves, but there was more advanced stuff we didn’t get around to.”

“It could be a lead,” Cyclonus said, his grave voice somehow failing to make a dent in Rodimus’ growing enthusiasm. “I know very little about Spectralism, but if it involves manipulation of spark energies, there is a chance it could be used to counteract the effects of the Enigma.”

“Yeah, remember how Drift can see auras?” Rodimus said. “Maybe he can see where we’re tangled and just undo the knot.”

“There is no scientific backing to that kind of pandering—”

But we don’t have any other ideas.

Rodimus drew him up short, his own dearth of creativity reflected back to him as though in a mirror. Loathe though he was to admit it, Rodimus was right: they had nothing else. No leads, no one to fall back on. Cybertron’s history, the ancient mythologies that might have shed light on this technology, was lost to war and time, and all that was left was the third, fourth-hand accounts of people who claimed to know what was lost.

There was a chance Drift would have nothing to offer them, but even the possibility of guidance was an improvement over the helplessness Ratchet felt when he tried to imagine them fixing this on their own.

He received an image burst: Drift, wild and beautifully unhinged, leaping for the chance to care for Ratchet with literally open arms. Rodimus shut it down, distracting himself by counting rivets in the bridge ceiling, but vibrating embarrassment persisted between them.

“Would it be appropriate to call Drift for this?” Ultra Magnus asked, pulling the further from their internal squirming. “The truth about his role in the Overlord plan came out months ago, and since we’ve made no effort to contact him. To approach him now so he can solve this seems exploitative.”

Ratchet caught only the yellow of Rodimus’ hand before the captain vaulted over the back of the pilots’ chair, landing with a solid bang.

“I’ll take the blame,” he said.

“For what?” Ratchet asked, though he could already see it.

“For not fixing this sooner,” Rodimus said. He shrugged, a movement so automatic Ratchet did not pick up who it had been directed to. “I’m the captain. It was my responsibility and I failed. That shouldn’t doom Ratchet to having to live with my mistakes.”

He avoided Ratchet’s optics as he spoke, but Ratchet still caught his expression, the shiver of his spoiler as he spoke. It struck him that the reason Rodimus was so hard to read from an external perspective was because a single look meant so many things: frustration, guilt, grief, and hope piling on top of each other too quickly to discern where any one emotion rooted. His thoughts were going in so many directions all the time, of course it would be a challenge for everyone else to keep up.

“How do you intend to locate Drift?” Ultra Magnus asked, ever pragmatic.

“I have a tracker,” Ratchet said.

“I memorized the specifications for his shuttle,” Rodimus added, his processor spitting out the codes in full.

“And will that ship be adequate? Do you need additional supplies?”

Ratchet turned in the seat, looking around the scattered contents of the bridge, to say nothing of what their collision might have done to the storage down below. Despite the mess, he saw what looked like intact crates of potable energon, and the shuttle’s own systems were not in imminent danger of running dry.

“We’re stocked,” he said, and catching Rodimus’ primary concern, went on, “Unless Cyclonus know how far the Enigma’s effect extends, it’s going to be too risky to dock back in the Lost Light. We’ll make due with what’s here.”

“I’ll have Rewind compile you a list of known energon distributors with minority Cybertronian populations. That will be your best opportunity to refuel without risking exposure, should the need arise.”

Could the Enigma grab non-Cybertronian mechanicals? Rodimus wondered, a query Ratchet did not have the energy to entertain.

“Thanks, Mags,” Rodimus said out loud. “Take care of the place while we’re gone; you know the drill.”

“Of course, Rodimus. Uh, stay safe?”

Rodimus laughed, a sound that Ratchet felt as a golden thread, spun in a ripple through space before vanishing to nothing. He squinted, trying to make sense of what the hell that had been, but Rodimus’ burst of enthusiasm and plans for the coming journey overwhelmed him.

“Don’t worry, Ratchet’s pride will make sure I get back in one piece.”

You—!

It was going to be a long journey to the outer rim. Though Rodimus was grinning cheekily, the tense coil at the center of his thoughts agreed.

#maccadam #transformers #rodimus #ratchet #my writing #longfic #fault lines

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edream93 · 6 years ago

Note

you probably are not taking prompts anymore but if you ever have time and want to write Uma and Harry on pirates of the Caribbean (pirates + Disney)x2!! I think it would be great if it was an Auradon movie and they were called to make a cameo since they are real pirates, but it's up to you 😘

Hi anon! Okay, so this has been in my inbox for awhile and this has also been in my WIP folder for just as long. It’s not the movie idea that you originally wanted but I did have Uma and the crew ride the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. This is just a headcanon list but maybe one day I’ll have time to make it into a oneshot. Hope you enjoy this sporadic ramble of thoughts!

After a tough few months of council meetings, school, and dealing with the relentless press, Ben decides to gift Uma and her crew with a trip to Disney World, the happiest place on Earth (“Sounds like a nightmare.” “Shut it, Harry.”)

(When they had Gil, who had surprisingly taken to using the internet better than anyone else on the crew, Uma had to agree with her first mate that this Disney World did seem like a nightmare.)

When Uma and the crew get there, Uma definitely regrets taking up Ben’s offer.

Unsurprisingly, Gil is ecstatic and gets everyone on the crew mouse ears.

He gives Uma one that has a little crown on it for obvious reasons

Harry gets one with a red and white bow on it with lot of sequins (Either Harry doesn’t know that usually girls get that one or he doesn’t care. Either way, he’s extra enough to make it work.)

Jonas gets a hat that says “It’s my birthday” even though it’s not his birthday but for some reason whenever the stop at a food stand or a restaurant, people always give him some free dessert or something and asking how old he turned (On the Isle they don’t really celebrate birthdays so Jonas has no clue what is going on or why people are giving him free food but he’s not going to stop it.) Winds up with a horrible stomach ache at the end of it but totally worth it.

Desiree and Bonnie get matching Star Wars ears that light up

Gonzo gets a big green hat that says “Goofy” with long black pieces hanging from it looking like ears

And Gil gets the bridal Minnie hat because he was trying it on and Uma (jokingly) said it made him look pretty which Gil instantly believe because in a totally platonic way Gil does think that Uma is super pretty so she would know.

They try all the rides and agree that “It’s A Small World” is a new type of torture because they can’t get the damn song out of their heads and the little doll people creeped them all out.

(“Ye sure this ain’t some sort of cruel and unusual punishment, Captain?” “…I actually have no clue, Hook.”)

Eventually, they find themselves at the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride.

“This feels like a trap.”

“It’s not a trap, Harry.”

“Nah, Captain. He’s right this feel like a trap.”

-annoyed sigh- “Guys for the last time, this. Is. not. A. tap.”

And Uma was right. It wasn’t a trap. It was much worst.

Harry, sitting next to Uma: “What the hell type of sailing are we supposed to do in these dingy little boats? Where’s the mast? Where’s the wheel?” Gil: “I feel seasick….” Uma: “We haven’t even moved!”

Bonnie, next to Gil: “Why is it so dark?” Jonas, grabbing on to an irritated Desiree as the ride begins: “Yo, I had a dream that began like this. In the end, giant gummy bears ate us. I ain’t going out like that. “You hear me giant gummy bears! I AIN’T GOING OUT LIKE THAT!” Gonzo in the back, too preoccupied with playing with the “ears” of his hat

The crew hearing: “Psst! Avast there! It be too late to alter course, mateys. And there be plundering pirates lurkin’ in ev'ry cove, waitin’ to board. Sit closer together and keep your ruddy hands in board. That be the best way to repel boarders. And mark well me words, mateys: Dead men tell no tales! Ye come seekin’ adventure with salty old pirates, eh? Sure you’ve come to the proper place. But keep a weather eye open, mates, and hold on tight. With both hands, if you please. Thar be squalls ahead, and Davy Jones waiting for them what don’t obey.”

Harry scoffing at the voice over, muttering that that’s not how a real pirate sounds before slipping out an unintentional “argggh!”

Harry leading the crew in singing along to “A pirate life” bringing out the flasks of rum that he managed to hide in his jacket.

Desiree, frowning as she hears something, “Does that sound like a waterfall to anyone else?”

Jonas almost peeing his pants at the unexpected drop

Bonnie looking at all the skeletons: “Well this got very dark, very quickly.” Jonas: “Bet you that’s what they’ll do to us once this is over.”

More skeletons.

Jonas: “What the hell?!?!?! How is this the happiest place on Earth? It’s filled with so much death!”

Uma: “Reminds me of when Harry went through his emo phase.”

Harry, smushing Uma’s face with his hands (gently of course): “We don’t. Speak of that.” he says before giving her a quick peck on the forehead. Uma just rolls her eyes.

They past by the figure of Captain Barbossa who always managed to have the best rum on the Isle for a man who couldn’t actually taste it

Harry: “Why does that old windbag get a giant creepy doll thing and not me dad? All old Barbossa does is drink, shit, and fuck!”

Desiree: “Well can your dad turn into a giant walking skeleton at night time? Because you can’t argue how fucking cool that is!”

Harry: -pouts but doesn’t say anything more-

Someone (Harry) passes around another flask of rum that everyone takes a sip from whenever any of the ride’s pirates say “Arrrr!”, “matey”, or any other stereotypical pirate saying. (Jonas and Gonzo taking extra sips basically any time Harry opens his mouth during the ride.)

The pirate crew simultaneously boo-ing but also applauding the Jack Sparrow figure lounging on the throne of gold surrounded by treasure.

Uma, scowling: He was a traitor and a drunk-

Harry, looking like the definition of a fanboy: -but damn did the man have style.

As they pass the robot Jack Sparrow actually smoothly gets up, snatches the flask from Jonas’s hands and gives the crew a bow, winking at Uma and saying “Captain” before falling back in his chair, going back into the robotic motions of drinking from the flask, drunkenly singing “What’s my name? What’s my name? Jack! Say it louder! Drunk pirates have all the fun! Can’t count cause I’m number one!”

Everyone is speechless before Bonny says: “What. A fucking. Icon.”

Jonas looking at his hands: “I’m never washing these hands again.”

Gonzo: “Like you wash your hands to being with.”

The Crew leaves the park with lots of souvenirs thanks to the King’s credit card that may or may not have been given to them

Harry explained easily: he shouldn’t have just left his wallet out in the open like that!

Uma, pinching the bridge of her nose: It was in his pocket!

Harry, looking at her confused: Like I said, he shouldn’t have just left his wallet out like that around pirates!

They also managed to leave the park, only managing to cause one food fight and one small fire (Bonnie: Don’t give me that look guys! You know I like to see things burn!); managing to get the Beast cast actor to go out of character when Jonas threw up all of the deserts he eaten after on him after Gonzo and Desiree had forced him to go on the spinning teacup ride; to scandalize only a handful of parents and their innocent children when Harry and Uma went into a full out makeout with loud moans and wandering hands as the firework show.

When they get back to school and Ben greets them back at the gates Uma places mouse ears with a little tiara between the ears on Ben’s head as Harry smoothly tucks the “borrowed” credit card back into Ben’s pocket.

Ben: Did you see the Pirates of the Caribbean ride? It’s sad that the the Jack Sparrow robot had to be taken out for repairs. You know, when he was still alive, sometimes Mr. Sparrow would show up and take the place of his robot.

Harry and Uma look at each other before saying: When he was alive?

Ben: Yeah, his ship sunk at sea 15 years ago. No one has seen him since and he’s not the most subtle of men so everyone just assumed he was dead after a few years.

Jonas, once been leaves, staring down at his hands: I’m really never washing these hands again!

Uma rolling her eyes but smiling nonetheless: What did you expect? He’s a pirate.

#edream93 answers #disney descendants #uma descendants #harry hook #girl descendants #bonnie descendants #jonas descendants #desiree descendants #gonzo descendants #pirates of the caribbean #jack sparrow #sorry this took forever

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seaofthieves-glacialdragons · 3 years ago

Text

Shroudbreaker Chapter 2: Castaway

Summary:

The Glacial Dragons have found the Shroudbreaker! But just as they think they're in the clear, things take a turn for the worse...

Previous Part: Here

Next Part: Here

Stella wiped the sweat from her forehead as the last skeleton crumpled into a pile of bones, “Phew…those skellies really didn’t want me finding this thing…” Stella sighed as she picked up the medallion, “Hopefully the others didn’t have too much trouble-”

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!”

“I just had to open my mouth…” Stella, medallion still in hand, ran back to the vault entrance where Koa was fending Ali off from a hoard of skeletons with his cutlass. Upon hearing Stella approach, Koa yelled over his shoulder, “Zhen’s already inside with his medallion. I’ll hold these boneheads off; you and Ali put in the medallions and grab the Shroudbreaker!”

“Right!”

“O-ok!”

Ali and Stella rushed into the vault where Zhen had just placed in the medallion. Stella and Ali put theirs in near simultaneously. The altar began to glow a bright gold and a section of the wall at the back of the room lowered to reveal a gold and silver artifact sitting on a pedestal. “That must be it!” Stella cheered as she rushed over to the pedestal and grabbed the idol. “Is it just me, or does it look a lil’…empty?” Zhen asked. “We can focus on that later. We need to get off the island!” Ali replied anxiously. “Ali’s right.” Stella agreed, “Let’s get out of here!” The three pirates rushed out of the vault to where Koa was still fending off skeletons. “Koa, we’re going!” Zhen yelled. “You got the Shroudbreaker?” Koa asked as he pushed a skeleton back with foot before following the rest of the crew to the boat. “Sure did! Let’s get this back to our mysterious friend!” Stella grinned. “Nice job!” Koa smirked as they reached the shoreline where the Icebreaker was parked. “You know the drill! Let’s get out of here!” Stelle called out as they boarded the galleon. Zhen lowered the sails while Stella and Koa raised the anchor and Ali steered the ship away from the island. Stella watched as the skeletons growled angrily from the shore, raising and shaking their weapons at them. “We did it!!” Stella cheered, causing the rest of the crew to follow suit. “I can’t believe we pulled that off!” Zhen laughed, “That was crazy!”

“If we keep going at this rate, the Shores of Gold are as good as ours.” Koa added. “I sure hope so.” Stella smiled, “At this rate, nobody can stop us!”

“I need to stop jinxing myself!!!”

Stella could barely hold onto the cannon as thunder rumbled above her. The Icebreaker had wandered into a bad storm. And to add insult to injury, a skeleton galleon had emerged beside them, attacking the icy ship. Ali was barely able to steer the ship while Koa rushed about the ship, doing repairs and scooping out water. Stella and Zhen were busy with the cannons, trying to sink the enemy ship. “Ali!!!” Stella yelled over the sound of thunder and cannon fire, “Any sign of a break in the storm?!”

“I can barely see anything through this rain!!” Ali yelled back, shielding her eyes from the raindrops that stung her skin. “STELLA, LOOK-” Zhen couldn’t get the full sentence out before Stella felt a sudden searing pain in her side. Her vision went dark as she felt herself soar through the air and plunge into ice cold water. She drifted in and out of consciousness as she sunk below the waves. Her blurry vision could make out the orange glow of explosions above the water, but her ears couldn’t differentiate between the sound of the cannons and the thunder.

Eventually, her vision went completely black.

Stella groaned as her vision slowly returned, blurry at first. She could make out the crystal blue sky above her, but in the centre of her vision was a dark object her currently impaired vision couldn’t make out. As it slowly cleared, she realised it was a face staring down at her.

"GYAH!!!"

"OW!!!"

Stella let out a startled yelp as she involuntarily punched the face right in the nose out of fear, causing its owner to cry out in pain, stumbling backwards before falling onto the sand. Stella shot up from where she was lying and turned to face the person, who she could see was a man, “Oh stars, I’m so sorry! I didn’t…I swear that was-!”

“No, it’s alright! Kinda deserved that.” The man replied, holding his nose, “Quite the arm you got though.” Now that her vision had cleared up properly, Stella was able to get a good look at the man. He had very short ginger hair, orange eyes, a bit of stubble on his face and slightly tanned skin with what looked like black paint smeared across his eyes. He wore an open, black leather jacket that reached just above his waist and had a piece of metal that looked like it was glowing with heat on each shoulder, a black belt, black and grey trousers that looked like they had been repaired multiple times judging by the number of stitches, and black boots. There were black chains wrapped around his arms and hanging from around his neck along with a pendant shaped like a crescent, glowing in the same manner as the metal on his shoulders. There were a few tattoos on his body – one of which Stella recognised as the Gold Hoarders’ symbol – as well as the odd scar, with one being on his lip. He removed his hand from his nose to reveal it was a bit crooked with a dribble of blood coming from it. “I’m so sorry.” Stella apologised, crawling closer, “Are you ok?”

“Yeah…well, maybe not…I think my nose is broken…like I said, strong arm.” He chuckled lightly. “Hang on, let me look at-” Stella reached out to inspect his nose but jerked her hand back when her palm began to glow through her glove. “Whoa! What was that?!” The man flinched in surprise. “I-I don’t know!” Stella replied in equal shock before noticing her crystal was glowing faintly. “Is this…?” she muttered before reaching her hand out again, “Hold still.”

“O…kay?” The man seemed hesitant but obeyed. Stella’s palm began to glow again and gave off a bright blue light as a similar glow surrounded the man’s nose before it seemed to straighten by itself. The glow disappeared and the man began poking at his nose in confusion, “How did…how did you do that?”

“No clue. Must be a new power maybe…” Stella replied, muttering the last part to herself. The man cocked his head to the side, seeming to be confused as to what Stella meant but shook it off, “Well, I’m not complaining. A fixed nose is a happy nose, as they say…ok, I actually don’t know who says that, but my point still stands.” He then held out his hand with a grin, “But where are my manners? Name’s Stitcher Jim.”

“Stella.” Stella smiled, shaking his hand, “Stella Icewind.”

“Nice to meet ya. Been a while since I’ve met a new face. Honestly, I thought you might’ve been dead when I pulled ya out of the water. How’d you end up like that, anyway?”

Stella rubbed her side, memories of being knocked overboard flooding back, “My crew and I were heading back to the outpost when we were hit by a storm and a skeleton ship.”

“That’s some bad luck...”

“Tell me about it. I must’ve gotten knocked overboard by a cannonball or something during the fight.” Stella glanced out at the horizon, “And by the looks of things, I drifted pretty far from my ship. I can’t see it anywhere.” Stella sighed before flopping onto her back, “Now what do I do…?”

“Don’t worry about it too much. I’m sure your crew’s lookin’ for ya.” Jim reassured, “But for now, you can stay with me and my beloved until they find ya!”

“Your beloved?” Stella sat up and noticed a figure under the wreck of a ship’s mast with a red sail serving as a tent. They wore a mask and dark robes while painting on a piece of paper. They briefly looked up and nodded, acknowledging Stella’s presence, before going back to painting. “Aye. The flame in my heart, the stars in my sky! No, she doesn't say much. She likes her privacy. Please don't disturb her.” Jim explained, “She found me, broken and dying in the Devil's Roar. She rescued me, literally gave me a second chance at life. I'd do anything for her!”

“Aww, that’s really sweet.” Stella smiled, “I’ll try not to disturb her then.”

“Well,” Jim got to his feet, “Might as well show you around the island! You comin’?” Jim reached a hand down to Stella who happily took it, being helped to her feet. “Sure!” Stella dusted herself off before walking alongside Jim. “So, what’s your crew’s name, anyway?” Jim asked as they walked

“The Glacial Dragons. Named after my mom’s crew.” Stella explained.

“Your mom was a pirate too?”

“Yep! A pretty well-known one too! Lemme tell you about…”

The next few days were spent through Jim and Stella telling stories to each other. Stella told Jim stories her mother told her about her adventures as well as what Stella herself had been through. Jim told her about his time with a crew called the Forsaken Alliance who found the Devil’s Roar; however, Stella couldn’t help but feel he was holding back a few details. Stella also noticed that whenever she would bring up her mother’s rivalry with Flameheart, the masked stranger would look up from what she was doing briefly before going back to what she was doing prior. She learned a bit more about Jim too. Apparently, after being rescued by his beloved, he decided to work for the Bilge Rats under a man called the Duke. Jim seemed to be intrigued about Stella’s quest for the Shores of Gold too. But despite enjoying her time with Jim, Stella couldn’t help looking out at the horizon, hoping to see the Icebreaker sailing her way.

One night, Stella was sitting down by the campfire, munching on a fish she had caught earlier that day. As she finished her meal, she heard music from down the beach. She looked up to see Jim sitting on the sand with a hurdy-gurdy. The tune sounded melancholy and somewhat sorrowful. Curious, Stella walked down to Jim, hearing him hum along as he played. “What’cha playing?” Stella asked. Jim jumped a bit, apparently not hearing Stella approach, “Oh! Um, just a ditty I wrote a while back. Doesn’t have a name yet. Wrote it after getting separated from my crew.”

“Can I hear?”

“Sure. Have to warn you though, it’s not exactly happy. It’s supposed to be more of a warning, I guess.”

Stella nodded in understanding as Jim began to play.

“The Devils Roar, a land left unexplored.

The Devils Roar, the omen they ignored.

And those who land upon her shore,

Best write to those who they adore.

Just ask the souls who came before…”

Stella noticed Jim take a shaky breath, as if he was trying to hold something back before delivering the last line,

“…those poor forgotten sailors.”

As Jim finished, he noticed Stella’s expression, “Told ya it wasn’t happy. The Devil’s Roar was as hellish as its name when we arrived there. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, boiling waters, you couldn’t take two steps without running into fire or lava.”

“Yikes.” Stella grimaced at the thought, “If it was so dangerous, why did you guys go there?”

“The same reason any pirate would go to explore a new land: adventure, treasure, glory. We thought it’d be worth the risk. Looking back, maybe it wasn’t…”

“What happened to your crew?”

“That’s…something I’d rather not talk about right now. Maybe another time.”

Stella couldn’t help but notice a tinge of regret in Jim’s voice but decided against pushing the matter any further. Jim put his hurdy-gurdy to the side before standing and stretching, “Well then! I don’t know about you, Stell, but I’m tired of this sad talk and just tired in general. I’m gonna head to bed.”

“Same here. See you in the morning, Jim!”

“See ya, Stella.”

Stella watched as Jim walked off. What exactly was Jim hiding from her…? But at the same time, they had only met the other day, so it wasn’t like he was going to tell her his whole life story. Still, she couldn’t help but feel as if something was off…

Stella shoved it out of her mind and laid back on the sand, drifting off to sleep.

To Be Continued...

#sea of thieves #stella icewind #ali kart #koa pahi #hunluan zhen #stitcher jim #the masked stranger #sot stitcher jim #sot the masked stranger #wanda warsmith #sot wanda #shroudbreaker

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treacherycuphq · 3 years ago

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I’m really interested in taking a star player / exploring a “fame monster” dynamic but I don’t want to step on a moderator’s toes - can you guys give some ideas as to how we can explore that without feeling like we’re stealing plots?

FIRST OFF - WE WANT TO SINCERELY THANK YOU FOR THIS QUESTION. IT WAS VERY COURTEOUS OF YOU TO REACH OUT WITH THIS, BECAUSE IT SHOWS YOU'VE READ OVER THE SAMPLE APP AND ENOUGH SKELES TO GET A GENERAL LAYOUT OF CHARACTER TRAJECTORIES & WERE ABLE TO IDENTIFY AN OVERLYING CONNECTION. WE APPRECIATE THE LEVEL OF CRITICAL THINKING THAT OCCURRED FOR THIS QUESTION. I'M ( MOD S ) GOING TO ASSUME THIS IS IN CONJUNCTION WITH MY CHARACTER, MARLENE, SO I'M GOING TO FINISH ANSWERING IT.

WE'VE MADE SEVERAL "STAR PLAYER" SKELES FOR THE PURPOSE OF "FAME MONSTER" EXPLORATION PLOTS, SO I WOULDN'T BE CONCERNED WITH "STEALING" ANYTHING FROM ME ! I PERSONALLY SEE THE CONCEPT OF FAME AS A MULTI-HEADED BEAST, AND DIFFERENT ASPECTS / SCENARIOS THAT ARE BORN FROM IT WOULD AFFECT CHARACTERS IN DIFFERENT WAYS. OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD, I KNOW AUGUSTUS ROOKWOOD, LUDOVIC BAGMAN, LUCINDA TALKALOT, AND EMMA VANITY ARE PRETTY CODED TOWARD "FAME MONSTER" PLOTS OUT OF THE QUIDDITCH PLAYERS. UNDER THE READ MORE CUT, I'M GOING TO LIST SPECIFIC PLOTS I'D LOVE TO SEE !

( SINCE THIS QUESTION SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED 'STAR PLAYERS,' I'M GOING TO FOCUS ON THEM, BUT I 100% SUPPORT THE FAME MONSTER PLOTS APPLYING TO OTHER CHARACTERS, OUTSIDE OF QUIDDITCH, AS WELL ! )

First, you need to address some key "Fame" thematics, before you tap into the monster portion:

Who was your character before they became famous, and who have they become because of the spotlight?

Does your character put on a facade for their public personality, or do they present themselves authentically for public consumption?

If they use a fake public personality, what do they do with the emotional dissonance of pretending to be somebody they're not? Does it affect their private relationships? How do they cope?

If they present themselves authentically, do they maintain healthy boundaries with the public? Can they separate their inner perspective versus the public perception of them? What happens when these two versions don't match up?

Do they have an ability to change back to who they were before fame, or has the appeal of the spotlight changed them, for better or for worse?

The "monster" portion of the fame monster trope really rests in your character responding to a slew of these circumstances negatively - similarly to a "bridezilla," the definition doesn't fit if it's not born of antagonism, y'know?

With all of that in mind, here's a non-exhaustive list of everything I could come up with re: alternate "fame monster" plots / dynamics that don't have any effect whatsoever over me & my current musings.

PLOTS:

BEST OF THE BEST OF THE BEST OF THE...: No one can be flawless forever. No one can be the best until they die. The best is the best until... what? Typically, we see the end of powerful reigns because something else begins to matter more: love, money, power, friendship, self-preservation, addiction, and anonymity are all well-known and valid reasons to finally break ties with the fame monster. Maybe your character did, and is dealing with the fallout from the limelight; maybe your character is about to, but is still trying to figure out what's worth leaving the fame monster behind.

THE LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH & FAMOUS: saying your character has adjusted to their celebrity status would be an understatement; they've flourished beneath the limelight, and now have a personal assistant, an agent, and a public relations manager to help offset even the barest inkling of a bad image. Heck, they've been famous for so long, they barely remember what life was like before - they've become someone that's lost their connection to their roots. However, that's all about to change... because where's the fun in not fracturing everything a person knows, for the sake of conflict?

ICARUS' LANDING: oh how high we fly! oh how far we fall ! your character has found themselves in a typical Icarian tragedy - their fame is hinged on the exploitation of their worst hubris, and they won't stop trying to succeed until it's far too late. Try as they damnedest to touch the sun and dazzle in its spotlight, so too will they find their end and burn beneath its brilliance; whatever your character is using to find fame, they will overindulge and find themselves plummeting toward normality far sooner than they'd ever think.

FAN BASE FAVOR: your character has fallen into the monotony of catering to their fan bases' every wish & whim, creating a public version of themselves that's simultaneously overly enthusiastic & underwhelming. That means that they constantly stop for pictures or autographs, to the point of near compulsion. If they're always willing & able to provide for their fans, what does that mean in terms of their public identity? Are they constantly putting on a show, in case fans are nearby? Do they feel invalidated if fans aren't screaming for their attention at all times? Do they lose hours upon hours responding to fan mail? How do the other people in their lives feel about this exhaustive fan service?

STARRING IN THE SHADOWS: your character's parent was famous, to a high enough caliber that their star power has created an everlasting shadow over your own reputation; nothing you do, nothing you say will keep them from being mentioned in the next sentence. But fame has sunk its teeth into you, and your left with two complex paths: do you cede under their spotlight, and hope it bolsters your own? Or do you try anything to break out of their typecast, and make a name for yourself, outside your family ties? More importantly, does anyone else in the world care? Do you talk about your complex relationship with your own privilege, or let sleeping dogs lie?

MY OWN WORST ENEMY: your character has a complicated relationship with hedonism; whether it be romantic entanglements, illicit substances, or general gluttony of all things sin, they compulsively indulge, with little to no discipline. Regardless of outside intervention, your character partakes time & time again, refusing help for what they don't see as a problem, just a "good time." There's only so long this lifestyle can be catered to, however, before they gain a level of notoriety that blackballs them from the famous circles they were once included in.

DANCING WITH YOUR HANDS TIED: your character has feelings for a certain someone, but is unable to act on it, thanks to their celebrity status. Maybe you're trying to exploit the pureblood/muggleborn dynamic? Maybe their interest rests on someone outside the public eye? Maybe that person has no interest in being brought into the public eye, making your celebrity status the difference between having or losing that special person? Can your character let go of the validation of many for the love of one? Do they even have a choice - stepping out of the public eye doesn't automatically free you from being a celebrity, ask any former child star !

DYNAMICS:

OBSESSIONS & CONFESSIONS: your character may be too famous, as they're currently trying to sidestep a stalker - or "obsessed fan," depending on your definition. Either way, no one enjoys invasions of your property or your privacy - does your character confront the stalker directly, in an attempt to gain their sympathy? Or do they take increasingly ludicrous measures in an attempt to ward them off? Maybe, they enjoy the newfound level of attention, and begin to build a complicated relationship with them?

CHASE YOU DOWN UNTIL YOU LOVE ME: Paparazzi, baby ! Love to hate them or hate to love them, the physical entity that is tabloid publication follows you around wherever you go. Does your character love the constant audience, or crave the solace of anonymity? Is the paparazzi better or worse than the rest of the world's consumption of you? Does one person in particular rile you up for the sake of a juicy photograph, leading to a cumbersome antagonism that's almost targeted at you? Does their presence give your character confidence or anxiety? Maybe your character gets on good terms with one of their paid stalkers, and hatches a scheme to always be on the front page in exchange for the juiciest weekly scoop? Maybe your character is trying to use the paparazzi to increase their celebrity status, which hasn't been fully realized yet?

PEOPLE I DON'T LIKE: there's nothing wrong with making famous friends for the sake of gaining more fame, but Lord, doesn't it get cumbersome constantly trying to please people you barely even like? The photographs may seem favorable enough, but behind closed doors & velvet ropes, these people are NOT your friends - but then what are they? And honestly, is anyone really your friend anymore? What defines friendship, in a world where the flashing light will always mean more than the people standing in front of it?

UPPER MANAGEMENT: all celebrities hit a streak of their pride where they become more eggheaded than egg-ceptional - whether your character is the celebrity or their support staff, the high horse of the limelight has finally caused a conflict between what you think you deserve & what you currently receive. Whether you're demanding a new agent, coach, assistant, or some other ludicrous proclamation, this sudden inflation of your ego has done nothing but piss off the people around you. Congrats ! Now it's time to deal with the fall out of your holier-than-thou expectations.

ASSIST ME: a niche dynamic of the one presented above, this deals with the relationship between star & personal assistant, and the synchrony needed to sail an exceptionally famous ship. Is the assistant good at their job? Is the star judgmental & opinionated, with unrealistic expectations? What does the personal assistant get from this dynamic? How does it further their career? Do they only do it out of contractual obligation to their client, or does their relationship with their assigned celebrity go far deeper than that?

SELL OUT YOUR HEART: your character wakes up one day to find that somebody close to them has leaked explicit information to the press about you. However, this source is left "anonymous." What does your character do? Do they root out the imposter, who sold their personal information for a quick dime? Do they want to know the identity of the perpetrator? Is it actually a betrayal in their eyes, or a product of their work? Or maybe your character picked out someone in their group who exclusively leaks these pockets of information for the sake of bolstering your reputation?

THE BOJACK HORSEMAN PLOT: your character has been playing the fame game long enough that the public has begun the enamored catcalls for a book about your life ! Your character's agent places them with a well-respected ghost writer to get things started; does your character enjoy their time with the writer, or do they find them judgmental / opinionated over your character's past? Does the writer respect your character's vision, or expect them to bend to narrative style of a story? Do they ruminate on ideas that your character finds hit a little too close to home, or maybe they won't write what your character wants at all? Does your character treat their sessions like therapy? Does it force them to confront deep personal issues & views they'd never questioned before? Or do they simply finish the endeavor & send them off, without ever thinking about their ghost writer again? Do they build a relationship with one another, or does it begin & end with work?

FAKE DATING AU: pretty self-explanatory & a fan favorite, especially for celebrity characters !

BODYGUARD AU: also self-explanatory & a personal favorite !!

#wanted ideas #hp rp #new rp #au rp #mod: answer #holy fuck this was a cool question !!!

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courtneytincher · 5 years ago

Text

The Biggest Battleship to Ever Set Sail Sunk in the Ultimate Suicide Mission

Sakae Katano recalled, “We kept swimming as a group for a while and saw the Yamato slide towards the ocean bottom. We gathered some lumber and made a raft, putting the injured men on it. By now there were only five or six of my men with me. I had a bad feeling for I knew there were sharks in the sea.In the late afternoon of April 6, 1945, five days after American GIs and leathernecks scrambled onto an Okinawa beach a scant 500 miles from Japan, two U.S. submarines, Hackleback and Threadin, lurking around the Bungo Suido exit from the Inland Sea, observed the passage of 10 Japanese warships, including a very large one.Last Remaining Pride of the Imperial NavyIn the dim light through the periscope, a sub skipper guessed the biggest enemy vessel was an aircraft carrier. In fact, it was the last remaining pride of the Imperial Navy, the mighty battleship Yamato, under full steam. Escorted by a light cruiser and eight destroyers in the East China Sea, the Yamato could only be bound for the American anchorage off Okinawa. The Japanese task force was under Vice Adm. Seiichi Ito with Rear Adm. Kosaku Ariga in command of the Yamato.Under orders to report but not attack, the submarines advised the Pacific Fifth Fleet headquarters of their sightings. Alerted by a radio message, Rear Adm. Morton Deyo, commander of the American gunfire and bombardment forces off Okinawa, prepared to execute a battle plan that would dispatch six battleships, seven cruisers, and 21 destroyers to intercept the Yamato and its cohorts. Deyo’s superior, Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, advised, “Hope you will bring back a nice fish for breakfast.” But even as Deyo scribbled his reply, “Many thanks, will try to,” the radio crackled news that Task Force 58, Vice Adm. Marc Mitscher’s fast carrier group, had picked up the scent and was already launching an airborne attack. Deyo then added the comment, “If the pelicans haven’t caught them all.”Recommended: How the Air Force Would Destroy North KoreaRecommended: 10 Reasons No Nation Wants to Fight IsraelRecommended: North Korea Has Underground Air BasesA Formidable Vessel From an Earlier EraDisplacing 68,000 tons with nine huge 18.1-inch guns that measured 70 feet in length, the oversize Yamato dwarfed any vessel in the U.S. Navy. Built in secrecy to evade treaties restricting the size of the Japanese fleet, the Yamato, along with its sister heavyweight, the Musashi, boasted armor plate more than 25 inches thick. Launched before the raid on Pearl Harbor, the pair threatened American domination of the sea. But as World War II progressed, the aircraft carrier had swiftly eroded the traditional primacy of surface firepower.The rather elderly battleships mustered by Admiral Deyo matched up poorly against the Yamato. While the Japanese behemoth could toss its ordnance 45,000 yards, the best efforts of the Americans would fall almost two miles shorter. But in theory, the half-dozen U.S. dreadnaughts, bolstered by a full complement of cruisers and destroyers, might outmaneuver the much smaller enemy fleet and overcome the advantages possessed by the Yamato.During the first months of the war, Yamato and Musashi had followed the lead Japanese strike force that aimed at Midway Island in June 1942. But after the U.S. Navy destroyed four enemy aircraft carriers, the Imperial Fleet retreated, leaving the pair of monsters to vainly wander the Pacific for two years, searching for a chance to wield their enormous cannon while dodging American bombers and carrier planes.Yamato Nicked Up During Largest Naval Battle In World HistoryOpportunity beckoned during the U.S. invasion of the Philippines in the fall of 1944. As General Douglas MacArthur sloshed onto a Leyte Island beach to pronounce, “I have returned,” armadas from the United States and Japan sailed toward a shoot-out in Leyte Gulf in what would be the largest naval battle in world history. One of several Japanese task forces, a flotilla that included Yamato, Musashi, and three other battleships plus a cohort of powerful escorts, but bereft of any real fighter screen, plunged into Philippine waters. American torpedo bombers, virtually unmolested, pummeled the intruders. In a day-long assault, nearly 40 torpedoes and bombs smashed into Musashi before the huge ship finally capsized and sank. The Yamato fared better, suffering minor damage. However, the remaining giant fled the scene with its companions.Since then, the Yamato, as a floating bastion prepared to defend Japan itself against invasion, had stuck close to its home base at Tokuyama. But now, with the enemy ashore on Okinawa, on the doorstep of the Home Islands, the High Command ordered Yamato on what even the most optimistic considered a suicide mission. Strategists hoped the battleship’s vast firepower would distract the Americans enough to allow a massive kamikaze strike to penetrate U.S. defenses and destroy the fleet off Okinawa.Naval Kamikaze Mission Proposed For YamatoOne preposterous scenario proposed that if the Yamato could stagger through the enemy gauntlet and the ship could first empty its arsenal of 3,200-pound shells at the American troops, it might then beach itself. The nearly 3,000 crewmen would surge ashore to act as ground soldiers. Some reports claim the Yamato had only enough fuel for a one-way voyage, but author George Feifer’s research indicates the vessel held enough for a return, unlikely as the possibility might have been.With the discovery that it had left its sanctuary, the race to sink the Yamato was on. Seemingly, the contest pitted the seagoing U.S. warships against the dive-bombers and torpedo planes from its flattops. But the American men-of-war would never have a shot at the target. A prowler from the carrier Essex caught sight of the Japanese warships. Then, early on April 7, a pair of Marine twin-engine flying boats, hovering just out of range of the enemy antiaircraft guns, tracked the prey for five hours.When the distance from Task Force 58 narrowed to 250 miles, Vice Adm. Mitscher launched his planes; some 280 dive and torpedo bombers comprised the initial waves. Ensign Harry Jones, a native of Pittsburgh in an Avenger from Torpedo Squadron 17 aboard the carrier Hornet, recalled, “Scuttlebutt on the ship had it that the battleship admirals who outranked the air admirals wanted to shoot it out with the Japanese. But the Yamato’s guns were bigger than anything we had and the air admirals won out. We would intercept them.In Hot Pursuit Of a Big Fish“We took off from the Hornet, seven torpedo bombers plus fighters and dive bombers. The torpedo planes, which had search radar, did the navigation and it was a poor day for flying, rainy, misty, a lot of scud, not much ceiling. The flight leader from another carrier developed engine trouble and turned the lead over to our air group, bossed by Comdr. E.G. Konrad, a Naval Academy graduate.“The lead pilot said they ought to be in range, but we couldn’t see anything on radar. Konrad said stay on course. One plane radioed he saw a blip off to starboard about 50 miles out and we turned right. Then we saw them. Holy Mackerel! The Yamato looked like the Empire State Building plowing through the water. It was really big. We orbited around out of their gun range. They opened up with main batteries, 18-inch guns. What was surprising to us was that there were no Japanese aircraft around even though we were very near their home islands.”Unprotected Yamato Relies On Its Big GunsIn a fatal decision for the Yamato and its companions, the Imperial Navy had decided to reserve almost all available aircraft for kamikaze missions. Less than a half-dozen Japanese fighters appeared on the scene, and they were quickly overwhelmed. In its own defense, the Yamatopossessed awesome weapons. Extra guns had been added to an already prodigious array of antiaircraft firepower, six 6-inch secondary batteries, 24 5-inch antiaircraft guns, and 150 machine guns, along with all that the escorts could throw up. A special new shell equipped with a time fuse exploded into 6,000 deadly pieces. To ward off low-flying torpedo planes, the battleship’s big guns blasted giant waterspouts. But none of these defenses could deal with strikes by so many aircraft manned by skilled airmen.At 12:32, the Yamato had opened up on the approaching aircraft. According to Avenger pilot Harry Jones, “The air boss gave us the order of attack. He said, ‘Shasta,’ meaning those from the Hornetgo in first. Then he read off the order in which the planes from other carriers would attack. We didn’t have too much ceiling. I was at 12,000 feet at most and usually liked to start at 18,000 feet for a torpedo run, a steep approach and then right over the water, drop the torpedo and then get the hell out of there. Meanwhile, the bombers are supposed to be going down, so we all hit the ship simultaneously.”American Planes Draw BloodConfusion continues about who actually scored the initial hits. Some accounts report that bomb-laden Grumman F6F Hellcat fighters from the Hornet actually struck first, targeting the destroyers and the light cruiser Yahagi that formed a diamond shape surrounding the battleship. The fighter-bombers claimed two hits, and Lt. Cmdr. M.U. Beebe, the squadron honcho whose plane bore no bomb, zoomed in for a strafing run at the Yahagi. Hellcats from other ships also blasted the escorts. Their mission was to suppress and draw off fire, enabling the other attackers to zero in on the main target, Yamato.In the assault on the cruiser Yahagi and the destroyers, a swarm of Grumman Avengers, armed with torpedoes set to only a 12-foot depth, zeroed in on the smaller ships. Within a few minutes, the Yahagi lay dead in the water. Seven torpedoes and 12 bombs eventually devastated the cruiser. It foundered with only a handful of survivors left to tread water.Avenger pilot Lieutenant Robert L. Mini, separated from the others in his flight because of cloud cover, glimpsed a destroyer. He dropped his tin fish while dodging flak bursts. “Bingo!” an exultant gunner shouted over the intercom. Aviation Machinist’s Mate Third Class William A. Baker saw the Mark 13 torpedo slam into the tin can with a fiery explosion.Mini is credited with having blasted the destroyer Hamikaze. It sagged amidships, broke in two, and finally flashed its crimson underbody as it disappeared beneath the water. Three more of Yamato’s accompanying warships, battered beyond repair, were abandoned and scuttled. The surviving quartet of destroyers, all nursing serious wounds, would hang about long enough to pluck up some of those in the sea and flee to safety.Stunned But Not Out, Yamato Punches BackIt was not, however, a day at the seaside for the American Navy. Lieutenant Norman A. Weise, concentrating on his destroyer quarry, accidentally passed within range of the Yamato’s antiaircraft batteries. Shrapnel from 25mm shells burst in the vicinity of Weise’s Avenger just as he released his torpedo. Jagged shards of metal ripped through his windscreen and into the cockpit. One splinter dug into his scalp while gasoline from a ruptured fuel gauge sprayed his face, temporarily blinding him. Fragments from another shell wrecked the radio compartment, wounding his gunner. His rudder and vertical stabilizer absorbed two more hits. Weise managed to guide his crippled plane back to a safe landing on a carrier.Nine minutes after the opening salvo from the Yamato’s defenses, dive-bombers plunged down on the battleship at 400 knots per hour. A pair of thousand-pound bombs exploded near the mainmast, obliterating a radar room and a fire-control station. Avenger pilot Harry Jones recalled, “We spread out and I kept diving toward different puffs of smoke, where shells had already exploded. There shouldn’t be any damage there. There were two fighter planes in front of each of the torpedo planes. They were supposed to strafe the destroyers and probably draw some of the fire. I saw one of our replacement pilots in a plane take a direct hit and explode in the air. Down he went. I went down, dropped my torpedo and went right across the bow of Yamato. The ship was turning, but in our attack we always dropped in a fan shape so no matter which way a ship is turning, it is going to get hit. Our group was credited with two torpedo hits out of the seven planes, but the gun camera that showed my angle on the bow didn’t credit me with a hit.” From Jones’s VT-17, Lieutenant Thomas C. Durkin, the executive officer, actually registered the initial torpedo hit on the target.Torpedo Depth Recalibrated To Strike Yamato’s Weaker UnderbellyWhen the first tin fish exploded against the battleship’s hull, however, it did little damage. The squadron’s Mark 13 missiles had been set for 12 feet below the surface, striking the Yamato where the armor was thickest. One of the reasons Mini and those in his squadron settled on the more lightly shielded cruiser and the destroyers had been the knowledge of their vulnerability to even shallow-depth torpedoes. Aware of the problem, VT-84 from the carrier Bunker Hill reset its weapons to dive deeper into the water, bringing them home below the Yamato’s protective iron plates.Lieutenant Commander Chandler W. Swanson led VT-84 and instructed his people at the pre-takeoff briefing, “This squadron will attack the battleship and only in case of necessity will any pilot drop on any other target.” When they came within range of the Yamato, Swanson broke his 14 Avengers into two flights for an anvil-like approach. As they closed to drop their torpedoes, the Americans separated into groups of two and three, making a five-pronged assault.“Our Planes Were Crisscrossing Over the Target From All Directions.”Swanson reported, “As soon as we started diving from the overcast, they threw everything at us, including a barrage from the Yamato’s 16 [sic] inch guns. Puffs of purple, red, yellow and green flak blanketed the sky. It would have been beautiful if you didn’t know it was so deadly. Our planes were crisscrossing over the target from all directions. That was the most dangerous part of it. We had to keep from running into our own planes. There were so many of them and so little room to maneuver. It was surprising we had no collisions.”One plane, hit by fire from the battleship, suddenly nosed down and then blew up when it smashed into the ocean. Undaunted, the others, jinking now and then to throw off enemy gunners, a mere 500 feet above the water, homed in. From a distance of less than a mile, torpedoes flopped smoothly into the sea and then swiftly darted toward Yamato. The vessel swerved in a vain effort to avoid the onrushing Mark 13s. But at 1:37, an hour or so after the action began, three torpedoes blasted the port side, doing significant harm. Moments later, another pair hammered the stricken battlewagon on the same side. Lieutenant W.P. Popp said, “It looked like Old Faithful geyser erupting when the torpedoes hit the Yamato.”Death Blow DeliveredSeawater rushed into the gaping holes, and the ship began to list badly. Rear Admiral Ariga was forced to order flooding of the starboard-side engine and boiler rooms. A warning to sailors in these areas arrived too late, and several hundred men drowned at their posts. While the maneuver temporarily prevented the ship from capsizing, it slowed drastically with only a single screw still churning.For Lieutenant j.g. Jack Speidel from VT-29, assigned to the light carrier Cabot, this was his second crack at the Yamato, since he had been among the aviators whose swipes at the ship during the battle of Leyte Gulf failed to inflict serious damage. Now, in the East China Sea, he arrived on the scene after the first blows at the Japanese giant and her escorts. “When we took off for the Yamatoon April 7, we had one drop tank that gave us an extra hour of flying time. There was an overcast and one group never did find the Yamato. Everybody had to go through a single hole in that overcast, and there was so many planes it was incredible.“I remember colored bursts in front of us and splashes in the water from enemy ships. We came in on the port side, not real low. Others had probably already hit the ship. After we dropped the torpedo and turned away, my radioman was watching and he screamed, ‘We hit it! We hit it!’” The history of the Cabot claims Speidel’s tin fish struck “directly under the bridge, causing a terrific explosion.”Hiding From Japanese Ships In Freezing WatersA pilot from the light carrier Belleau Wood, Lieutenant j.g. W.E. Delaney, made his attack at 1,400 feet, dropping four 500-pounders. As his plane passed over the battleship, he said, “There was a loud explosion under the fuselage. The cockpit filled with smoke and fumes. One wing was on fire. I was afraid the plane would explode and ordered my crew [a gunner and radioman] to jump. They bailed out five miles southwest of the Jap task force. I watched their parachutes open, then I jumped.” Unfortunately, although Delaney saw their chutes deploy, both men apparently drowned.Delaney, after hitting the sea in the midst of the enemy vessels, managed to inflate his rubber raft. He stayed in the water, though, hanging onto the raft and hiding from the Japanese. A destroyer came within a hundred yards but veered off, apparently thinking there was no American survivor. “At first I was so cold,” said Delaney, “when the Jap can approached, I thought of giving up. But I decided they might shoot me. So I stayed behind the raft.”Patrol Planes Aided Rescue MissionThe pilots from the two Marine flying boats, Lieutenant James R. Young and Lieutenant j.g. Richard L. Simms, still on station, saw Delaney floating amid Japanese sailors who had abandoned their sinking ships and clung to bits of wreckage. While Simms acted as a decoy to draw off any fire from the remaining enemy vessels, Young set down his patrol plane, took Delaney aboard, and flew him to safety on Okinawa.According to Harry Jones, observation or scouting planes that ordinarily launched by catapult from the decks of battleships or cruisers had been ordered to tag along to perform rescues like the one that saved Delaney. “I remember a pilot from one of these came on the radio and said he was getting low on gas and was going to turn around. I heard what must have been a fighter pilot say, ‘If you turn around, you son of a bitch, I’m going to shoot you down.’”On board the Yamato, Sakae Katano, a 26-year-old sub-lieutenant with a duty to organize repairs from air raids, made a futile attempt to restore operations. “Telephones were not working any longer and the ship started to heel. I left one of my men behind and took the rest to do the repairs. But while we were running there, a torpedo hit the right side of the ship. I closed the hatch and came up again. Our personal belongings were floating in the water, which came up to our knees.Yamato’s Final Hours“The flag could no longer be seen and I thought nothing more could be done. I tried to go back to my men but found it impossible because of the water. I called my men; there were 18 of them and they came by. I ordered them to leave the ship, jump into the sea. They did not have enough courage to follow the order, so I jumped first. I say ‘jump’ but it was really a matter of sliding down the side of the ship. My men followed.”Ensign Mitsuru Yoshida reported, “The desolate decks were reduced to shambles. Big guns were inoperable because of the increasing list, and only a few machine guns were intact. One devastating blast in the emergency dispensary had killed all its occupants, including the medical officers and corpsmen.”The Yamato, considered a luxury ship by Japanese sailors ordinarily confined to fetid, spartan quarters, could only be described now as hell on water. Amid the continuing explosions of torpedoes and bombs, American planes methodically hosed the stricken ship with machine-gun fire. Steam from ruptured pipes scalded sailors; fire incinerated others; corpses and body parts littered the blood-soaked decks.The Skipper Bound In The BridgeIt was apparent to those in command that the Yamato was doomed. Amid the wreckage and bodies strewn about the bridge, Seiichi Ito, as task force commander, signaled the other ships to abort the mission. Those still afloat would try to pick up some of the men floundering in the water and then head for port. Ito saluted, shook hands with some other officers, then locked himself in his cabin. He would go down with the battleship.The Yamato’s skipper, Ariga, rather than permit hallowed portraits of the Emperor and Empress to suffer the indignities of capture, arranged for an officer to secure himself in a room with the artwork. Ariga then ordered a seaman to bind him to a binnacle on the bridge. There he chewed biscuits, awaiting his inevitable fate.In the bowels of the battleship, fire cooked off ammunition magazines, inducing shattering convulsions of the infrastructure. The subterranean blasts erupted through the steel decks into a 6,000-foot tongue of fire stretching into the sky. A four-mile pillar of smoke trailed the Yamato. At 2:23 in the afternoon, the great ship rolled over and sank, dragging down with it some 2,500 sailors. Only 269 survived.Role Of the Battleship In Naval Warfare Comes To a CloseSakae Katano recalled, “We kept swimming as a group for a while and saw the Yamato slide towards the ocean bottom. We gathered some lumber and made a raft, putting the injured men on it. By now there were only five or six of my men with me. I had a bad feeling for I knew there were sharks in the sea.“American planes came strafing but after a while they were gone. Japanese destroyers began to appear, so we tried to swim to get near them. Because of the tidal current we couldn’t. Finally, we gave up and fell asleep on the raft. Then I heard voices and, when I opened my eyes, I found the destroyer Ukikaze nearby. I swam near it and was expected to climb a rope ladder to the ship. I ordered a crewman on the destroyer to throw a rope down to me. I looped the rope around my waist and put one end in my mouth so my teeth could hold it while they pulled me up. My hands were too slippery to hold the rope and besides I was too exhausted.“After I was rescued, I went to see one of my men. I offered him a cigarette but he could not take it. He was completely armless and legless. He died while on the destroyer.”The hopeless excursion by the Japanese task force ended with as many as 3,750 of its crews dead. Mitscher counted 10 aircraft and 12 airmen lost. The last remnants of the once-powerful Imperial Japanese Navy had been vanquished, and the role of the battleship permanently eliminated.This article by Gerald Astor originally appeared on Warfare History Network.

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