#ooc maybe I drew this before story release

[ruinstt]

[livebeginning]

Ok I wanna talk more about my OC Mio from my fic Pretty Little Pet where I ship him with Raphael. So under the cut I'll put:

Art!! (mostly picrews and one drawing by me)

Mio's life before Raphael bought him

Raphael buying Mio

How Raphael treats Mio and his motivations

About Mio being Raphael's pet

Art

First of, I intentionally never described Mio's appearance in the fic, because I kinda wanted the reader to imagine their own version of Mio. So if you read my fic and are now going "Wow I thought Mio looked really different!" That's totally valid! He can look however you want! (Also please tell me how you imagined him, I'd love to hear about it!)

The first picture I drew myself, but it's heavily referenced off of the picrew in the second picture.

The second and third pic are basically a timeline of how Mio changes throughout the story (and the different outfits he wears). The other picrews are random outfits and based on vibes haha

Picrew for the second pic

Picrew for the third pic

Picrew for the fourth pic

Picrew for the fifth pic

Picrew for the sixth pic (lost the link, will add later)

Picrew for the seventh pic (lost the link, will add later)

And the 8th pic is my attempt at making him in BG3, he's a half-elf here because I didn't like any of the male elf faces ^^'

Before Raphael

Mio is a male high elf in his 30s, living with his parents. Mio is his child name, as his parents have not yet given him an adult name.

His parents are criminals, although Mio isn’t aware of that, thinking they also work regular jobs. They mostly commit petty crimes but still dream of one day running a criminal empire. Every time something goes wrong they just skip town. The few times one of them gets caught and released for [money] they blame it on their lack of finances, making Mio feel guilty for not working enough.

Mio was definitely not planned and he often feels unwanted. His parents treat him like a child and while they aren’t physically abusive, they will berate him for the slightest mistakes, send him to bed or work without letting him eat and are just generally pretty shitty.

His parents make him work regular jobs like waiting tables, cleaning and other work that requires little education. He’s their only reliant source of income. Despite this, he has no control over their finances, all money going directly to his parents.

He has little contact with other people, working most of the time and leaving town before he could make meaningful relationships with his coworkers.

Mio is generally shy but polite, pretty much in customer service mode at all times. He has learned to just do whatever his parents tell him to, to avoid getting yelled at or going hungry yet again. Since his parents often tell him that he’s still a child by elf standards, his only real aspiration is to reach elven adulthood (generally around 100 years) and receive his adult name, so that he may leave his parent’s household and become independent. (Most elves in his position, living in mixed society and working,  would have already left their parent’s household. Mio’s parents intentionally keep this false worldview around him so that he’ll stay and keep working for them.)

Raphael buys Mio

Mio’s parents have the brilliant idea to get the money they need to start their criminal empire by selling their son. They seek out various options until Raphael answers. They sell their son for just a few hundred gold coins (Mio is unaware of this). We know from the game that Raphael has bought people before, so it’s not OOC for him. Mio is still considered a child by elf standards so that’s why his parents are able to legally sell him. (Also Gortash could sell Karlach to Zariel no problem and she just worked for him, so the rules on who can sell people are a bit weird anyways.)

 Raphael doesn’t really need Mio, he mostly accepts the offer to see how his parents will fail spectacularly at trying to make a criminal empire and have a bit of fun with that, maybe even profit from the chaos they cause doing this or make another deal for their souls down the line.

Raphael still wants to put his new purchase to work and tries to determine how Mio could be useful for him. While they talk in his office Raphael shows Mio his cambion form. Mio is enamored by his form, and Raphael is not immune to flattery. Raphael also notices that Mio is easily flustered, blushes a lot and is very touch starved.

Raphael enjoys all of these reactions Mio has for him and decides to have some fun with that. He makes Mio the offer to become his pet, with the caveat that only Raphael is allowed to touch him.

Mio is aware he’s dealing with a devil here, who literally owns him and could just decide to torture him instead, so of course he accepts. Generally Mio knows that he has to do what Raphael tells him to and keep him happy, or risk making Raphael angry and getting killed or tortured. While their relationship gets more relaxed later on, Mio is always aware that Raphael is the one in control and he often has anxiety over accidentally doing something that might upset Raphael.

At this point, Raphael doesn’t have any concrete plans for what he’s going to do with Mio, he just thinks he’s cute and wants to see if he can turn him into a loyal and obedient pet by just showing him a bit of kindness. And if that doesn’t work out, it’d probably be still fun to just torture him.

Raphael’s treatment of Mio

Raphael treats Mio generally pretty well, because I believe Raphael can be a reasonable person. Korilla says she likes working for Raphael and the archivist and Nubaldin seem to be at least content working for him. Devils are also lawful evil, so I think they appreciate it when their rules are being followed. Of course, rules can also be intentionally set up to be impossible to follow, so they have an excuse to punish those who break them. 

When Mio breaks the “Only Raphael can touch him” rule, it’s mostly because someone else touched him without his consent. He still gets punished for it and Raphael enjoys making Mio suffer, although he only hurts Mio to an extent he knows he can handle, not wanting to actually break him. Raphael praises Mio for accepting his punishment willingly, which gives Mio conflicting feelings about these punishments. He doesn’t enjoy being tortured, but he likes the praise and attention he receives afterwards and he knows that Raphael enjoys hurting him and wants Raphael to be happy.

By Mio’s standards, Raphael treats him pretty well. He gets his own room and new clothes, much better quality and style than his old clothes. He gets access to the servant’s baths and kitchen (I’m making the HoH way bigger than it is in the game btw) and he can eat as much as he wants. Raphael even tells him to eat at least three meals per day (Mio is used to less so he only eats two when he first arrives).

Raphael makes him work at first, telling him to clean the archive. He does this in part because he wants Mio to keep busy but also because he wants to know if Mio is the kind of person who would try to take a look at his things without permission. The archivist has secret instructions to keep an eye on Mio and report to Raphael on his behavior. Mio isn’t really aware of this test and just cleans the archive as instructed. Later, Raphael has him clean the halls and eventually Mio doesn’t have to do any work anymore, as he has other stuff to keep him busy.

Mio being a pet

Raphael is a devil (technically a half devil but whatever) and I think devils generally see mortals as beneath them. So it’s not uncommon for devils to treat mortals similar to how we would treat cats or dogs (though devils tend to be a lot less nice to their pets).

As his pet, Raphael has Mio sit by his side while he reads or works and strokes his hair or touches his skin. Mio enjoys being pet because he received very little affection before. He also can just relax during these petting sessions, he’s technically not doing anything but he’s still being useful, so he doesn’t have to feel guilty about doing nothing.

Raphael enjoys these petting sessions because he likes how receptive Mio is to him, Mio makes a lot of little noises and leans into Raphael’s touch. Also he has something to occupy himself that isn’t too distracting from his reading/work. Mio essentially functions as a fidget toy for Raphael. Also, petting your pet is just nice!!

Occasionally, Raphael will take Mio to parties or meetings. He likes to dress him up for these events, which Mio also enjoys. It’s a way for Raphael to show off his wealth and style, Mio is essentially an accessory in these moments. Raphael will also sometimes ask Mio to do things just to amuse himself or others, to show how obedient his pet is.

___

Ok I ended up writing a lot more than I intended and I didn't even get to talk about Haarlep and Mio's relationship with sex yet!! Guess that'll have to wait for another post. If anyone has questions or wants to talk about Mio or Raphael, my ask is always open :)

[hope-grace-serenity]

Hello! I know it has been a while and that Far Cry 5 fandom is pretty much dead (D:), but I was wondering what your opinion was regarding The Collapse DLC :-). Because there has been a considerable blacklash about it on tumblr when it came out, but I really liked it & I think it actually showed some hidden depths of the Seed family that I've just been wondering about... till now. So I was just curious about your opinion of the portrayal of the Seeds :-)

Hi! :D I know fandom reception of the DLC was…less than favorable (on tumblr, anyway. I didn’t see backlash anywhere else). But personally? I loved it, and I vehemently disagree with the claims that it was out of character. It might have gone against preferred headcanons, but in terms of what actually ended up on screen in the FC5/New Dawn base games, the Collapse DLC was very much in line with how the characters were previously portrayed. I haven’t seen too much controversy about Jacob, so I’ll focus mainly on John, Joseph, and Faith.

John has always been portrayed as a man with a strong sadistic streak that was simultaneously weaponized and kept in check by Joseph’s presence;  the “urges” speech might not be the most sophisticated writing, but the overall idea was just a reiteration of what we saw in FC5. He takes obvious glee in torturing Hudson and the Deputy and Nick and I did not find the story about the woman he killed to be shocking in the slightest. Maybe it’s because I’m not a John stan, but I find claims that he’s too violent in the DLC to be genuinely baffling. He’s always been portrayed as a sadist. 

In regards to Faith’s portrayal, I felt extremely vindicated lmao. I wrote a long-ass essay about Faith and what I feel are the obvious conclusions about her character and relationship with Joseph that are often ignored or denied in fandom (despite the game’s writer literally confirming it): that Joseph views her as a twisted stand-in for his wife, and he abuses his power to engage in a sexual relationship with her. To provide some background, @intheforest-hides-a-light and myself began collaborating on the doc several months before the DLC was even released. We had 20 pages of content WITHOUT *any* of the blatant subtext from the DLC—and yes, “Faith being the wife’s name” was one of the conclusions we made before it was stated directly. While the hints from the DLC were eventually added into the essay, FC5 by itself provides more than enough evidence that supports that Faith was in an unhealthy dynamic with Joseph.

Joseph is a manipulator and an abuser. He also has a deep sincerity in his mission and genuinely wants the world to be a better place in the post-collapse world. These things are not contradictory, as is the idea that because Faith victimizes others, she can’t also be a victim. I feel like in a lot of discourse regarding his relationship with Faith, it gets broken down into this black-and-white way of thinking that does a disservice to both characters. Joseph is a complex, multifaceted person, and the Collapse DLC just makes him more interesting imo. 

I’m not surprised that tumblr reception to the DLC has been frosty. This is a fandom that rejected Drew Holmes’ own words about the characters he created as being OOC, rejected New Dawn as fanfic despite the director saying it’s canon, and now rejects the DLC. Official content getting rejected in favor of headcanon is par for the course. 

And in a way, that’s fine. The beauty of fandom allows for people to interpret the characters the way they want. There are plenty of fandoms where I downright ignore parts of canon too. But I always remember to separate headcanon from actual canon. And imo, the portrayals of the characters were consistent with their portrayals from FC5.

[shhh-no-ones-home]

heavy cross to bear* matt Murdock x reader

+++++++++ Request @juniebugg: reader and Matt are in a very serious relationship (could be married) but then when reader actually sees Elektra, whom she already knew about but has never seen because she was "dead," she gets really insecure and tells matt that he deserves better or something and he reassures her. Angst and smut"

hopefully its not too ooc this is my first MM smut so i hope you like! and thanks again for the request!!

* - you asked for smut and that really is all this is lol, little bit of story. 

Song: wasted time by skid row

tag list: @cynic-spirit @juniebugg

+++++++++

i sat at the table sipping coffee and thinking. it was almost nine at night and i knew i should be getting ready for bed but my body wasn't quite ready to move yet. when matt disappeared into our bedroom i figured he'd be changing into daredevil for the millionth time but when he emerged in his pajamas i was a little surprised. and then it hit me. maybe he knew. hell, he always knew.

but maybe it was just that something was off, that i needed him to say it again, to stay with me and make sure i knew. but then there was her. she had showed up out of nowhere and took me off guard more than anything else up until now. one more doubt at the forefront of my mind. that i didnt believe him when he said he loved me despite being married for a year, despite having dated for three before hand, and despite everything he has done to keep me safe. because he loved her first and it felt like the biggest lie ive ever been told. even after a couple days of sitting on it and hoping it would go away. still it was there. in the back of my mind:

"matt i dont know if i can do this anymore."

his head tilted to the side and he looked confused.

"do what?"

he asked almost worried, moving slowly to the table and sitting.

"this, us. i just- you deserve so much more, so much better than- well, than me."

he was quick to scoot his chair closer to my own, his hand coming to rest on mine.

"hey, dont even say that. what would make you think i would want anyone but you?"

now he absolutely sounded worried.

"i saw her matt."

"saw who?"

i shook my head.

"that woman, your ex. you said she was gone."

"elektra?"

he sounded a little broken.

"shes something else ill give her that much. i see why you like her."

he swallowed hard.

"elektra is dead."

i shook my head.

"then why was she here? looking for you. saying your name with such... god i dont even know how to explain it. matthew."

i repeated it exactly as she had said it and it felt wrong. like i was acting. saying someone elses emotions and intentions. they were no longer mine. or at least it seemed like it. There was a long silence and I just stared at him.

"She was here?"

There was hope in his voice and I figured that was it. It made me angrier than it probably should've and my only response was to stand and walk away. I got half way across the living room before he caught my arm.

"Y/n, that doesn't matter. I-"

He swallowed hard and I tried to study his face.

"You mean more to me than anything. Yes I love, loved, her but I married you. I chose you. I want nothing more than to be with you. For better or for worse remember?"

He bargained and I sighed heavily.

"How can I be sure you mean that? What if she comes back? again."

He shook his head, taking both my hands in his and stepping closer to me.

"Let me prove it to you. If she really is back then it doesn't matter. I'm with you, I love you, and I'll always chose you."

I closed my eyes, feeling him get closer and closer until his forehead was against my own.

"We belong together."

He whispered before kissing me gently.

"I only want you."

He kept just as quiet, kissing next to my mouth once, then twice, making his way across my cheek and to my jaw.

"Matt."

I breathed out and he paused. I licked my lips lightly before opening my eyes and looking at him. He really did seem like he meant it. He was trying so hard to keep it together.

"I can't lose you."

He sounded so broken.

"Do it."

He drew his brows and I brought my hand up to touch his face gently. We were still so close I could feel his breath fanning my neck.

"Show me you mean it."

I said softly and his Expression changed.

"I love you so much."

He said before kissing me harshly, releasing my hands and pressing his fingertips into my hips. I hummed against him as he walked us backwards. We stumbled along as he pulled my shirt up, tossing it to the floor.

"Matt."

I moaned, pulling his shirt up next. It was gone in a second and he was back, kissing me and moving quickly to get my pants down. His hands roamed my body just as much as mine roamed his. I traced my fingers slowly up his torso, grazing over his scars before wrapping my arms around his neck. I gasped when he picked me up. There was a soft laugh that escaped him and I was relieved to see him smile even if it was just a second. He knew it would take some convincing and he was right. I needed to know he meant it. That Elektra wasn't gonna be a problem.

"I need you."

He whispered again, laying me gently on the bed and situating himself between my legs.

"I need you to know how much I mean it."

He kissed my jaw slowly, then down my neck and across my collar bone.

"Prove it."

I challenged, my breath hitching in my throat as he ripped my bra open from the front, his lips grazing my nipple before taking it into his mouth. He hummed against me, his finger tips down my torso and into my panties.

"Matt."

I moaned, dropping my head back as he ran his finger up me and against my clit. i closed my eyes, pushing my head back into the bed as he stroked me, kissing his way back up to my exposed neck.

"i love you."

he repeated against the heat of my skin. when he resituated i could feel how hard he was already.

"i need you."

i breathed out, pressing my hips up into him as he continued to finger me.

"matt."

i whined, him removing his hand long enough to pull my panties down. i looked up to him with lust blown eyes, watching him intently as he got rid of his boxers.

"youre still okay with this?"

he asked and i nodded quickly, pulling his face to mine and kissing him deeply.

"please."

i moaned, inhaling deeply before he kissed me again, pushing his hips into mine. my breath caught in my throat as he pushed all the way into me, catching my bottom lip between his teeth as my mouth hung open.

"i wanna hear you."

he said softly.

"feel you."

he moaned against my shoulder, dropping his head to the crook of my neck as he placed his large palm over my heart. it was already banging at my rib cage begging to be let out but i could have swore it did when he started moving. he pulled out of me slowly before slamming back into me and i moaned so loudly i was surprised at myself. and then he did it again and again, getting a good rhythm. it was long, and hard. nothing like our nights prior, even on his worst of days when he's frustrated and in need of release. no this was different. purposeful.

"matt."

i held onto him for dear life, pressing my fingertips into his shoulder blades as he continued to pound into me in long drawn out strokes.

"tell me. tell me what you want."

he grunted out, trying to sound as steady as possible.

"i want you. god i only want you!"

i cried out as he thrusted upward harshly. then he did it again and i saw stars, my mouth falling open as i moaned.

"thats my girl."

he praised, trailing his hand down my torso and pressing his finger in circles against my clit.

"youre almost there."

he coaxed, building me up. i could feel the tightness building, pressing my hips up to meet him as he kept his pace.

"im so close."

i panted, pressing my finger tips harder into his bicep as i gripped onto him.

"do it, do it for me, let go."

he said softly and i snapped. my orgasm racked through my body and my vision went blurry. i was breathing hard as he rode out my high, still chasing his own.

"im almost there."

he said, squeezing his eyes shut. he moved to pull out but i wrapped my legs tightly around his waist.

"y/n?"

he asked surprised and i leaned up to kiss him.

"just do it."

i said, pressing a hard kiss to his neck. he kept going, knuckles going white against the bedsheets as he came in me with a loud groan.

"oh my god."

he panted, slowing his thrusts.

"i love you oh my god."

he said, dropping to his forearms, trying not to put his full weight on top of me. my legs were still wrapped tightly around his torso as we both calmed down.

"i love you too matty."

i said softly, feeling him nuzzle his nose against my neck. it made me giggle a little bit and i could feel him smiling against my skin before kissing it gently.

"you have no idea how relieved i am to hear that. youre the only one for me. always will be."

i sighed softly in content, kissing his forehead and dropping my legs.

"im sorry i doubted you. i just. i need a reminder every once in a while i guess."

he kissed my chest before pulling out of me and dropping to the bed beside me.

"i will give you as many reminders as you need, as long as we both shall live."

he said, taking my hand in his and kissing the back of it.

"thank you matt. thank you for everything. especially knocking some sense into me."

he raised a brow, a half smirk on his face and i immediately wondered what was going through that mind of his.

"after tonight sense might not be the only thing i knocked into you."

i couldnt help but laugh, him matching it as i rolled onto his chest.

"i know you want nothing more than to tell the father we're finally starting that catholic family with lots and lots of beautiful babies but i still have my iud."

he let out a short laugh sigh before i kissed him quickly.

"but that doesnt mean i couldnt be persuaded into getting it taken out."

he raised an intrigued brow.

"oh?"

i laughed lightly.

"ill think about it. right now i just wanna live in this moment with you."

i said the last bit through a yawn, resting my head against his chest and hearing his heartbeat.

"i love you."

he whispered, earning a hum from me as i dozed off.

[honeypirate]

Easy Living pt one

Part two

Obi Akitaru x fem!reader

The one where reader almost dies.

Warning- blood. Swearing. Trauma from getting hurt while working. Obi figuring out slowly how he feels.

Part two reader puts on a surprise concert. I don’t know why I add music to so many fics I write lmao. I also write reader getting hurt a lot I think but oh well. Sorry if this is too much like my other one or if Obi is ooc. I’m still learning 🙈

Part two also has a bonus if the ducky explanation

Your boss. He was your boss. You knew how cliche this was, but it didnt help you at all. Didnt stop the way your heart fluttered around him or the way his teasing felt like flirting. There was no way he was flirting with you and you knew that! So you just pretended like everyhting was fine, shoving your feelings as far down as you could and putting the lid on them, gluing, locking, putting everything you could think of to keep those feelings in.

Technically he was your boss because he was the captain, but really, you knew him when you were just fire fighters. you were friends before he was even your boss but still, you were unsure how that affects interpersonal office dating.

Thinking about this whole situation is what got you into the mess you were in, but even now, leaning against the side of a burning building as a metal rod sticks out of your shoulder, you couldnt help but think of Obi.

White clad and infernals, a normal tuesday, you ran into the garage and started quickly pulling on your pants and jacket. Obi comes in half a second after you, sliding into place in his cubby next to yours as he hops into his boots and pants. “Ready for this Ducky?” he says and you roll your eyes “when will you drop the duck thing? Shit Obi its been years.” you say as you throw on your jacket “never” he mutters into your ear, his breath making you shiver as it hit your ear. Good thing he didnt notice since shinra pops up “what about a duck?” he asks and you sigh “i’ll tell you later” you say as you all rush into the matchbox, of course landing you into sitting beside Obi. you really felt like a matchstick in this cramped car, but your heart was warmed becaue it wasnt always this full.

You got separated right off the bat. A white clad successfully drawing you out and leading you down back alleyways. You beat him, quickly you might add, but he was able to make an infernal, releasing a bug while you weren’t paying attention, for the split moment you got distracted thinking if Obi was okay. The infernal took out the building behind you and sent shrapnel going everywhere. Shrapnel like the metal rod currently attaching you to the wall of the next building which was currently blazing.

“Okay. think y/n. If you pull yourself off you could bleed out. You could use your flames to burn the wound but not on the exit wound. Fuck. what do i do here? i cant just stay here please think” you feel yourself get light headed, a wave of strange tingles hitting your body as your blood pours out of you, you can feel it running down your chest and back and pooling in your left boot. It squishes when you move your toes. “Fuck!” you shouted. Your only choice is to pull yourself off of it and since you’re bleeding so much you doubt it’s even tampering off anything and maybe it’ll be okay. Hopefully. Probably. I guess you’ll see.

You felt your tears start to flow from the pain but the fire was moving closer as it raged through the building, making your back feel warm. You could hear people shouting far away but you could tell they were all civilians, you didn’t recognize anything that could be your team. You were too far lost down back alleys to be found easily so you had to work fast.

You took a deep breath and ripped off your glove. “Please, if there is a higher power, dont let me die” you whisper before you shove your glove between your teeth to bite down on as you whine, throwing a mini tantrum because you really didn’t want to do this but your back was starting to burn now from the flames on the other side of the wall, the wood cracking right by your ears. Burn to death or bleed to death? What a decision. What a shitty hand you have been dealt today.

You count down in your head from five and when you get to one you’re screaming and pushing your body forward, gritting down on the glove in your mouth. The metal tears more and more of your shoulder as you pull, you feel blood pouring more down your shoulder, warm and causing you to get goosebumps from the heat. When youre free your glove falls from your teeth as you gasp for air and fall to your knees.

“mother fucker” you whispered and then then mustered up the rest of your strength to use your second gen powers, pulling the fire that's all around you to just hold a small ball in your hand. You tear off your jacket and push down your jumpsuit sleeve, your tank top sleeve underneath torn away and ripped because of the metal rod. You scream out as you try to push the fire into your skin but you cant, you cant physically put yourself through any other amount of pain. You start to sob, you were so scared, you’ve never seen this amount of blood before and it’s your blood which makes it even worse. You discard your helmet, then you pull yourself to your feet, your knees wobbling for a moment before you take off running, using your last energy to make it back to your team.

“y/n?” arthur is asking when he sees you pop out from the alleyway “Arthur please” you sob, your voice breaking from the pain and from your fears “you have to, you have to burn it okay?” hes voicing his confusion but when you turn and he sees all the blood he’s quiet and starts to run towards you “you have to, to stop the bleeding. Please” you say as you try and take a step towards him but falling to your knees.

“I cant. I tried to burn it myself, but i had to pull myself off and i couldn't- i couldnt do it. but you have to! okay Arthur? Use your sword. You have to stop the bleeding or i will die” you say, your body shaking as you reach for him, your hands covered in your own blood and shaking uncontrollably “ I cant burn you y/n. I cant” he says, his voice cracking. seeing you covered in so much blood freaked him out. You growl, getting annoyed with the pain and fear now “ARTHUR DO IT NOW! A TRUE KNIGHT would save their friend” you say, your energy begin to fail as you another wave of lightheadedness hits you and he screams before he places his sword against your wound and ignites his plasma.

Your screaming is what attracted Obi, he heard your blood curtling screams and took off running. You sounded so close you must be just a street away. He pops out to see Arthurs plasma disappear and hes filled with anger “Arthur what did you do?!” he shouts as he runs towards you. “I didnt do anything she didnt ask me to!” he shouts.

Obi runs to you, ignoring the smell of iron covering you and the smell of burning flesh, and he sheds his jacket. He unzips his jumpsuit to shed his shirt, using it to press into your shoulder in the front. He rips the sleeve off your jumpsuit and then rips it more making a makeshift bandage. He rips your other sleeve off as you kneel there a little loopy, your tears still flowing as you looked at his serious face. “Hi Obi” you whisper with a light chuckle and he gives you a stern look making you smile for some odd reason, thinking he looked so handsome in this moment.

He uses your other sleeve to shove tight against your back wound before using the long strip of sleeve to use to tie around you as tight as he can, holding the fabric in place. Obi didn’t know the whole story, just that you were covered in blood and had a bad wound. Once hes done, after about 8 seconds, hes lifting you easily into his arms and taking off running, not even payinng any attention to Arthur.

Everything after he picked you up was a blurr, you weren't all there but you tried to keep conscious as much as you could as your head lolled to his shoulder, realizing he didn't put his jumpsuit back on and your cheek is against his skin. “Stay with me. Do NOT fall asleep. That’s an order!” you chuckle softly, your tears stopped now as you felt safer in his arms, and you lift a hand covered in drying blood and started to trace small circles aganst his chest so you could stay conscious.

“An order from my superior who isnt that much older than me and who was my friend before he was my captain. You know” you groan and sigh as you start seeing dark spots in your vision “i would more likely follow your orders if you just asked me as a friend” he laughs, glad that at least you’re talking and awake even if your speech is slurred and he can feel your blood start to seep through his bandages. “More likely? Like you arent always following my orders to the T anyway little duck” he jokes and you nod, your head swimming from the action. “Yes but who knows the extra miles I would go for you, Obi” you whisper before your consciousness finally fades away into peaceful darkness.

You wake with a gasp, your hand tightening around the one that was currently holding yours, startling the person awake as they move to stand quickly “hey hey shhh shhh shh it’s okay you’re okay” he says and you recognize his voice. Finding his eyes you relaxed into the bed as you remember everything that happened.

“Captain” you said, your voice and throat dry and he hands you some water. “Glad to have you back. What do you remember?” he asks and you go to sit up but wince, your eyes screw shut and you groan as you stop moving. When the pain has stopped a little you take a deep breath and start from the beginning, using the bed remote to lean your body up.

“The white clad drew me away from everyone else and before I realized it was too late. He let a bug go before I took him out and the infernal caused the building to explode, a metal rod flying out and hit me in the shoulder pinning me to the next building which was already burning.” He was scowling as you told him this, anger in his heart about how you got hurt. “The building was ablaze. I could feel it burning my back and I had no other choice but there was so much blood” you voice cracks as you look down at your hand remembering how covered it was. You clear your throat to try and stop the tears that you feel burning your eyes “I made Arthur stop the bleeding because I couldn’t do it. I was so afraid Obi. Please don’t be mad at him. The bleeding had to be stopped” he nods “I know. I still cant help but feel annoyed that he had to hurt you though” you smile softly at him, glad that he was here with you. “It was that or let me bleed to death obi what would you have done?” he scowls “something else” he mutters and you laugh gently and squeeze his hand “been protecting me since we were greenies. I must say, i appreciate it”

He sits again and runs his hand through his hair, he looks disheveled and he has a 5oclock shadow. “I got you to the ambulance shortly after you passed out. I left everything with Hinawa because it was pretty much wrapped up by that time. they took you into surgery and it went well and didn't take a long time. They said the longest thing was the blood transfusions since you lost so much blood. It didn’t hit anything important thankfully and they said that burning it was a good idea given the circumstances” your eyebrows furrow as you realize it’s dark outside. “What time is it? How long have you been here?” you ask and he looks away sheepishly “it’s around three in the morning. And I’ve been here the whole time. What did you expect?” He says with a chuckle and shy smile. you squeeze his hand and he looks back to you “i’m glad it’s you” you say, quite easily in fact that it kind of scares you, until you realize it’s probably the pain meds.

You shiver and try to pull up your thin hospital blanket, but it does nothing to help how cold you feel. “Obi do you know if there are any more blankets in here?” You don’t know why you whispered, maybe because of how late it is or how dark the room is, the only light being from the light on in the bathroom with the door halfway open. He stands and starts to look through the cupboards and drawers.

“I found socks, another gown, and this pack of tissues” he says and you smile “thanks for looking, can I have the socks” you go to reach out for it but unintentionally use your bad arm since it was your dominant hand. You hiss and stop moving, leaning back against the bed. He scowls, hating to see you in pain, but currently he thinks it’s just because you’re one of his closest friends and what kind of person would like to see their best friend in pain?

He takes the socks and moves up the blanket from your feet, gently lifting your right foot he slips on the sock and then pulls a little at the toes so they aren’t too tight. Your eyes widen and your breath hitches at his soft actions and the way he fixes your toes. You’ve never even mentioned that you do that he must have just picked up on your habits and noticed these small things.

Once he’s done he slips out of his jacket and goes to hand it to you “no it’s okay. I don’t want you to be cold too” you say and he smiles softly, “I insist y/n. You’re the wounded one” he says while placing it on you gently. His warmth floods into you and the smell of his cologne which makes your heart flutter. You frown and take his hand before he can sit again “hey maybe we could compromise so we can both be warm..” he raises his eyebrows and you scoot to the edge of the bed on your side, gingerly babying your shoulder as you meet his eyes. looking down at you he can see the vulnerability in your eyes. He remembers how you were crying when he found you and Arthur, how scared you were and the sound of your scream still fresh in his mind. He can see some of that residual fear in your eyes and as you pat the empty space he’s kicking off his boots and climbing in the bed next to you.

He’s slow and easy, a little awkward at first, but he relaxes as you turn into his body, wrapping one leg around his, his jeans rough against your bare legs as you try and soak in his warmth. His arm wraps around your back and stays away from your wound. you sigh softly as you finally stop shivering. “Thank you Obi” you say and he hums in response. His eyes closing as he relaxes into the bed until he feels something hot and wet hit his chest then he’s looking down at you worried.

“Hey hey what’s wrong?” He asks softly and you sniff, trying to hide your face in his chest “I’m sorry” you whisper, unable to stop the tears that fall and he hushes you “no you have nothing to apologize for” he pets your head comfortingly, his fingers sliding through your soft hair. “I just. I was so scared tonight. I’ve never been that scared before. There was so much blood. I thought. I thought that was it. That I wasn’t going to see you again” you sniff and quickly add “or anyone else at the eighth. I thought-“ his hand stops on your head “hey” he says cutting you off “you’re right here” he says “you’re here. You’re safe with me” he whispers and you feel the tears flow harder as you hide your face in his chest. He hums softly and shushes gently, every once in a while telling you that he’s with you or that you are safe.

When you relax into him, your tears stopping and exhaustion hitting you, you sigh and move your head so your cheek is against his chest. He brushes away the stray tears left on your cheeks and you smile in your half asleep state and say “you’re such a good man Obi”

He doesn’t know why his heart fluttered when you said that. He doesn’t know why it made him feel so proud that you think he’s a good man. He was confused about why he wanted to be a good man for you. he sat awake in the dark, playing with your hair and thinking about why he’s suddenly feeling this warm and soft with you, he catches himself thinking about how he never wants to have you out of his arms, where he knows you’re safe.

“Well isn’t that sweet” Hinawa says from the door and you stir in his arms. He shoots Hinawa a glare and brings his finger to his lips. “She hasn’t slept nearly long enough” he whispers and Hinawa smirks as he enters the room, as an outsider who’s known you both since the beginning of the eighth, he’s seen all the signs and knew this would eventually happen. “Is she okay?” He asks as he sits in the chair. “She will be” Obi fills in Hinawa about what happened and told him how your surgery went, he left shortly after to fill out the paperwork for a worker hurt on the job and tell the rest of the team.

When you wake up it’s because Obi is brushing your hair from your face “y/n wake up” he’s saying softly and it pulls you from unconsciousness. You take a deep breath as your eyes flutter open, smiling when you see him looking down at you. “Good morning little duck” he says with a soft smile “the doctor is here and I should get out of the bed so they can do their tests” you nod and move, letting him go as he gently rolls out of the bed.

After the tests the doctors say they want you to stay there for a week under observation so they can make sure your wound doesn’t get infected. you were surprised when it went by quickly and even more surprised that Obi came to see you every day. The rest of the team takes turns on days to come see you so you never had to be alone for too long but Obi was there every day at the same time in the afternoon, bringing you some brunch and staying for a few hours. And every time he leaves he finds it harder to be away from you. The only times he has had to be away from you in years and he doesn’t like it one bit.

“You’re scowling again” Hinawa says during dinner and Obi huffs rolling his eyes “you don’t have to point it out every time” he says and Hinawa just laughs, because he knows how this is going to end and he enjoys watching it go down.

“Today’s the day!” Obi says as he walks through the door and you laugh, you’ve changed into clothes he’s brought you the day before and you just got done with the physical therapist meeting and you’ve set up days to come back for therapy every other week for the next two months. You go to put your bag over your good shoulder and he’s taking it from your hand and putting it over his shoulder “ready little duck?” He says and you roll your eyes “I’m so ready” you say and he grins “let’s go home”

“You have no idea how nice it is to be out of there” you say at dinner and Hinawa looks knowingly at Obi who just kicks him under the table. “We’re so glad to have you back Y/n!” Tamaki says and you smile “I missed you guys. I was going a little crazy there”

Obi makes sure he knows where you were at all times, telling himself it’s just so he knows you’re okay just in case you need anything. Not letting himself believe that almost losing you almost wrecked him

He brings you into his office that night to talk about moving forward and what he expects of you. “Until you’re cleared from physio you won’t be sent on any missions unless cleared by me. Expect a lot of paperwork” he smiles softly when you sigh, knowing your hatred for the mundane task. You nod “yes sir” before he lets you leave his office, he gets up from his chair and gently embraces you. You gasp softly and pause before wrapping your good arm around him and burying your face in his chest “I’m so glad you’re okay y/n. I just wanted you to know that” he whispers and you nod into chest, your heart fluttering and stomach flipping.

You go to shower that night, tucking clothes into your sling and your towel before grabbing your caddy with your good hand. When you exit your room you bump into none other than Obi, who was just about to knock.

Your clothes fall to the floor and he chuckles and apologizes before bending down to pick them up. “I wanted to ask if you wanted-“ his voice goes quiet as he picks up your thong, black and lacy he feels as if his heart stopped as he immediately pictured them on you. He pushes away the thought and his face turns red, your cheeks blush when you notice what he’s holding but you smile softly when he just folds them and places them between your shirt and shorts he just refolded as well, then he grabs your towel and stands.

“I was going to ask if you wanted to” he laughs awkwardly “have a cup of tea with me. Like we used to when we were greenies” you smile as you remember getting tea with him when you weren’t a fire soldier. Every night after work you’d get a cup of tea and talk about your lives and mainly rant about work and the government. It was nice because he would sometimes choose to get tea with you instead of get beers with the rest of the team. Sure you went out with all of them occasionally but he always preferred your company to the rest of your team at the time.

“If there’s lavender tea you know I’m in” he smiles with a chuckle “ don’t worry. I picked up some yesterday”

He walks you to the bathroom, carrying your stack of clothing as you talk, just joking like usual but there was something sweet in the air, and you were pretty sure he was flirting with you when he said “see you later pretty little duck” which he was, but cut him some slack man doesn’t know how to flirt with someone way out of his league like he knows you are. He’s nervous. And that’s the reason why he used your nickname to call you pretty without it being too heavy of a confession that he wasn’t that confident with at the moment, he didn’t know just how deep he loved you yet.

Your feet pad softly against the hard flooring, echoing softly against the hallway walls. You left your sling in your room, not wanting to wear it since you’ll be going to bed soon. You push open the kitchen door to find no one there, but the remnants of someone making tea is obvious. You see the light on the stove that means it’s still hot, and some crumbs on the counter from the cookies you knew Obi was saving on the highest cupboard. You smile and walk down towards the dining room and smile when you see what’s inside.

“Hey there Ducky” he says when he sees you come in and you feel your cheeks flush, not at the name but the way he said it, his voice soft and gentle, no trace of teasing or jokes. Like being called ducky was endearing and not a story you hold as your most embarrassing moment in your life.

The table had tea set out and cookies and had only the lower lights on so it wasnt too bright, it was just the same atmosphere as the tea shop youd go to. “You didnt have to do all this” you say and he smiles with a shrug “just wanted to show you how glad i am you are home” you smile, suddenly feeling shy, and take the seat next to him.

He pours you some tea and adds a sugar cube, just how you like it and you smile “thank you Obi” you say and your fingers brush his when you take your mug and he furrows his bows at the tingles that shoot up his arm. You take a deep inhale of the tea, the lavender already making you relax.

You sit and talk with him for hours, it feels like you’re young again and actually taking time to relax with your friends. “This is really nice Obi. It’s been a long hard road filled with never ending work, it feels nice, to have a moment where I don’t have to worry.” You ended up as close to him as you could be at the edge of the table, next to him at his place at the head of the table. Your left foot was behind his and your right foot was between his that were crossed at the ankles. Physical touch wasnt anything new between you but it felt - new - somehow. “I’m glad I could give you that moment” he says with a smile as he finishes his tea.

“Why do you call me ducky so much? Is it because you’re just teasing me?” you ask as you nibble on a cookie, your eyes were tired and burning but you didn’t want to leave yet. He watched as your eyes rose from the cookie to meet his eye and couldnt help but think how cute you looked as you slowly blinked tiredly at him.

“Because that was the day i realized that you’d be in my life forever” he says with a grin and your heart stops as you stare at him “care to elaborate?” you whisper and he laughs softly “that may be an embarrassing memory for you, but for me it was one of the best memories. I realized that we would be best friends for a long time and that i’d make sure of it” you laughed “best friends. Yeah” you say and then lean forward, pulling your feet from him and sighing “i should get to bed, my shoulder is beginning to hurt” he nods and stands with you, helping him clean up before he walks you back to your room.

“Did I say something? Are you okay?” he asks softly when you get to your door and youre too afraid to look him in the eye so you just wrap your good arm around his side and hug him close “dont worry Obi, i’m just tired. I’m really glad you want to be my best friend. You are invaluable, truly. Keep calling me duck, i dont mind it.” you turn to walk into your room and wants to stop you, wants to cup your cheeks and look deep into your eyes until you tell him the truth, but he cant make himself. He can only watch as you avoid his eye and close your door softly with a click.

[silver-wield]

body language analysis: tifa and cloud train scene!! go!

Oh, Nonny, you made my morning with this!! I mean, it's not like I haven't touched on Cloud and Tifa's body language in gif reblogs, but an actual post dedicated to one of the best moments of the game? YAY!!

Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven't played (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it's gonna be a long one so prepare to scroll.

Also, this is one person's interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that's cool and we'll agree to disagree.

You're also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I'm grabbing them from Youtube and it's frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.

Other analyses if anyone's interested.

Shinra HQ vision scene (Cloti/plot analysis) 

Chapter 3 (Cloti reblog) 

Tifa character analysis 

Aerith Resolution (plot analysis) 

Train graveyard (not really an analysis, but I got some sweet screenshots of Cloti) 

Now, strap in and enjoy the ride.

So, the corkscrew tunnel scene – or clotiscrew tunnel as I've seen it called – begins with Avalanche caught by the sensors on the train. After a timed fight – which, yes, it's possible to lose, but it's also clear this is a “bad ending” where you've made Cloud look like an incompetent dick who can't even handle a few drones – we see Barret mustering his courage and leaping from the train (he's so damn cute sometimes, I'm gonna have to do a post about his development with Cloud at some point).

The action then cuts to Tifa, frozen in front of the door, too afraid to jump (you can hear her whimpering). Cloud calls her name, deals with the last drone and comes over. Now, in the OG, obviously they all jump one after the other because polygons and popeye arms would've just looked like a total mess and Square admitted they neglected Cloti to highlight all the relationship development between Clerith since she dies later.

Cut to 2020 and we get this. Damn, Square, if I didn't already love you for pretty much my entire life already I'd have fallen for you all over again. In fact, I think I probably did.

Ok, I'm done gushing. Kinda.

I think the first thing I have to point out is that Cloud, at no point, needed to do this. He could have verbally encouraged Tifa to jump without the need for physical support at all. After all, the train's slowing down and she was fine in the OG, so who's to say she wouldn't be fine now, too? By calling her name and fixing her attention on him he's actually stalling her jump.

You'll notice that Tifa doesn't take her eyes off the tracks (before this screen obvs since I can see that’s her feet, work with me here), which is fitting since she's zeroed in on that fearful moment and actually can't move without help. Cloud's face in this is displaying typical tension you'd expect in a high energy scene. He's concerned for Tifa, but he's also focused on dealing with the mechs, which he does very quickly. Now, you could argue he did that to get on with the mission, or you could argue he did that because he saw Tifa needed him and his focus shifted to her. And watching the seconds following him turning to look at her, I'd say there's evidence towards the latter because he's actually lost focus on the last mech and it attacks him first causing him to block and parry.

This is the first instance of touching in this scene, and until this point, Tifa hadn't moved or acknowledged Cloud. He needed to physically draw her from her thoughts and you'll hear a surprised exhale from her as she turns to look at him, showing she was lost within herself until he drew her out. Cloud is obviously looking at the tracks, judging his next move. He's already planning what he has to do to keep both of them safe, which is clear from his decisive nod, along with a reassuring, but grim, smile, before pulling Tifa out the door. Remember, I said he could’ve verbally got her attention. He didn’t. He chose touch.

See what I mean about janky quality? Anyway, this is clear concern about Tifa's safety, but also, remember, Cloud is on the mission because Tifa said she felt trapped and he's related that back to their promise that she needs a hero. He's being her hero.

Okay, we're getting to the meat of things now.

First, fucking ouch, he definitely looks pained, meaning that whole manoeuvre wasn't as smooth as he pretended. As they slow down, he puts a bracing hand against the ground to prevent him rolling onto Tifa (because he's a gent and also toting a sword that weighs more than Barret lol).

What's interesting is where his left hand is in this. Make a note: middle of her back. Tifa's head is tucked into Cloud's neck – safety move, so nothing big there. I've seen some people note Tifa's leg is between Cloud's, but I'm gonna discount that as the way they've locked together during the roll. It's unintentional.

Oh, but this isn't! Cloud has absolutely no reason to put his hand back on Tifa. He could leave it lying flat on the ground. You could argue he needs both to help her get off him, but she's on top. She can do that herself. He has no further need past the initial save to have his hands on her, unless that's what he wants. Obviously we can't see his face in this because of Tifa's hair, but this, combined with the next screen tell a very definite story.

He moved his hand! That left hand, he didn't need to move it up in such a caressing gesture. Coupled with the very intense gaze he gives her, I was swooning like a maiden wearing a too tight corset lol

Now, you could argue he's just concerned, it's a high tension situation. Well, I argue that every single trope using this kind of scene results in sexual tension/flustered characters and/or a kiss. Remember, right at this second, he has no reason to still be lying with her like this. In fact, him moving his hand further up her back is a bracing gesture that would keep her close, not release her. Tifa's fists are balled against his chest, which signifies she's protecting her hands – she's a hand-to-hand fighter remember -- but her face is relaxed. She's not feeling awkward or eager to escape.

Eye contact!! Can I just leave it at that? No? Cloud isn't actually the type to keep prolonged eye contact. Oh, did you think I was about to say something else? Well, for literally anyone who hasn't paid attention to him, Cloud often looks away when he feels awkward, flustered, unsure, basically any negative emotion. The only time he looks anyone in the eye is when he's confronting them or at ease. Remember, even when Jessie teased him about smiling during chapter 4 he looked away, embarrassed. Cloud doesn't handle eye contact well. Which is why this is such a huge deal. He's keeping prolonged eye contact with Tifa. He doesn't look away from her eyes when he asks if she's ok. And that question – ah my heart! So soft and tender. You can hear the care and concern in his tone. It anchors the entire scene from start to finish. Everything he just did was because he cares about Tifa and wants to look after her. He wants to make sure she's ok, even if it means he suffers for it. Pretty sure some people will disagree with this, but the damn man wore a dress and went through a humiliating dance routine – humiliating for him, I fucking loved it – just to save her. His first words in Wall Market are he wants to save Tifa, but Aerith cuts him off before he can finish the sentence.

These are the moments that I have to go back over a million times to catch. Check the tiny eye narrowing and uplift at the corner of his mouth. She said she's ok and he's happy about it. He's her hero – in not so many words. Tifa's shaky reply and pale face confirm her shock and fear, but also you can see an easing of the tension in her. There's a subtle softening of her muscle definition and facial expression that displays the trust and belief she has in Cloud that he'd look after her. This is a very mutually appreciative moment between them. Definitely not one sided.

And then the moment is over, without any flustered blushing or stammering, and thank God there wasn't because that would be so ooc I just can't with it. Cloud, despite being an awkward af dork who doesn't know how to deal with women hitting on him, doesn't turn into a flustered 14 year old trying to tell his crush he's leaving Nibelheim whenever they have contact. We've already seen smooth!Cloud giving Tifa a flower and complimenting her like a cheeky bastard. He can handle being around her because he feels comfortable. He can compliment her because of that, too. He might be slightly separated from those childhood feelings, but they're in there and they're motivating him to be outgoing towards her. To show her the cool SOLDIER he became that's worthy of being beside her.

But, yeah, back to the point. The moment is over. Or is it? Because that is some very further prolonged eye contact between them when there doesn't have to be. Tifa moves back, Cloud moves forward, they're both getting up and yet, they're both looking at each other. I don't know about you, but I find it easier to look where I'm going when I've fallen on my ass and need to get up. I sure af don't stare longingly into someone's eyes like I can't bear not to.

And now it really is over because right after this the mechs arrive. But before that, some more prolonged eye contact. There literally is no need for them to do this at this point. Tifa looks pensive, but I think that's her default tbf. Yet, at the same time, there's an intensity in her gaze like she wants to say something – maybe it's just a thank you, that would turn into a flirty conversation of some sort “you didn't need to do that,” “I wanted to” kind of deal – so it makes sense they're interrupted because Square said they didn’t want to overdo the amount of Cloti content they added and this is already a very charged scene.

Meanwhile, Cloud is looking at her like she's his entire world and he's just waiting for her to realise it. There's an aura of expectation in his pose and face. They're both crouching in mirrored poses, which as some of you may know is what you do when you're trying to build rapport with someone. It's basic body language building blocks. Toddlers do this. They're both on one knee, slightly leaning forward. Now, if there was no rapport between them, if they wanted to end the moment, one of them would stand up, breaking the mirrored pose and cutting off eye contact. This would put one above the other and show an imbalance in their relationship. This doesn't happen. They both turn at the same time, rise at the same time and fight pose at the same time.

Conclusion:

Seriously? After all that you can't draw your own?

Ok, I'll be fair to the other side. Let's take away Cloud's history with Tifa – since that's the biggest argument for them: the childhood crush trope.

If Cloud and Tifa weren't friends, just colleagues on a mission, this scene would still be hella charged with sexual tension and implication that Cloud has a thing for her. Even if it's just basic sexual attraction, that's still attraction and a marker on the pathway to a relationship.

But, they are friends, so moving on.

Tifa is the more reserved one in this dynamic. She's naturally shy – it's canon – but even with that, she's affected by Cloud. She holds that eye contact. Her voice is equally soft as his. She mirrors his pose. She doesn't try to get away the second they stop moving. Cloud is the one to move things along, without awkwardness because he's comfortable with Tifa. He's not out of sorts having her lying on top of him – which you can argue means he's not interested, but I literally just pointed out all the ways in which he is into her. Being comfortable in someone's company doesn't mean a person isn't attracted to them. If I had to stick a pin in Cloud's sexuality I'd say he's on the demi scale, meaning he needs to have a deep emotional connection to whoever he's with before he falls in love with them. He's not a love at first sight kind of guy.

This fits with the childhood crush trope. Cloud's known Tifa for years and developed an attraction to her that still lingers, making a reconnection between them easier. He's not slobbering over her because he's Cloud and very stoic – I know people say his true self isn't like this, but it is only with more insecurity and desire to prove himself. He's still a very reserved guy with a dry sense of humour. He's prone to melancholy and self doubt, which is why his friends bolster his confidence so much.

Point is, everything in this scene showcases a deep and meaningful relationship between the two of them at its best, while at its most shallow it shows Cloud is sexually attracted to Tifa, which is something that could develop into a more meaningful relationship later. Either way, it's a marked moment in their interactions that Cloud's non-optional choices led to it. There's no either/or within this. It happened.

[onepdumpsterfire]

Warning: The characters will mostly be ooc and for the most part will not have the same background as in the anime/manga. The reader’s age will be above consent; the exact number is up to you.

Disclaimer: These stories are based ‘loosely’ on the game Obey me shall we date. The major stuff will be the same, but here and there the story will be changed or embellished. It is just an AU and I do not own the game the characters, from both One Piece or Obey Me, nor do I own One Piece in general. It would be cool though…

Time is a Delicate Thing

Devildom!AU

(pt16/?)

Various Characters X Reader

When you first arrived to the past you stumbled out of Kid’s closet, quickly taking cover from the five demon brothers you’d seen in the room on your way down to the floor. They were talking about earlier this day when they decided to disappear into a fake game as a ploy to get you to have a one-on-one with Sabo. 

It felt weird being back in time. Not in a physical sense, it was more mentally. Knowing that you weren’t in your original time, crouching down behind an unfinished project as you listen in on a conversation you would have never heard if it wasn’t for what happened later on this day.

You ducked around the room from one place to another as they moved, attempting to avoid detection. Eventually, though, the owner of the room did find you, releasing a loud and ‘you will totally not mention this again’ screech. “What are you doing here, Y/n? You’re supposed to be with Sabo right now!” Shocked by your sudden appearance, they wondered how they could have been so careless. Maybe you had seen one of them slip away? Ace, probably? He was the last one to disappear before you were left alone with Sabo. 

You eagerly agreed with their theory, encouraging them to let you go through with their plan. “It’s the perfect opportunity to have a talk with Sabo.” You said, already rushing out of the room to go ‘find Sabo’.

Out in the hallway, you still couldn’t get away from the troublesome past. Two voices made their way down the hall. It was the past you and Sabo’s, both of you were discussing the brothers’ disappearances. Giving an exasperated sigh, you ran down the hall to get away from your past self and Sabo. 

Your thoughts bounced around as you tried to think of a room you two didn’t go near earlier that day. Practically flying up the stairs to the third floor until you made an abrupt stop in front of a door you couldn’t quite remember ever seeing. With no time to think, you rushed into the room as your past self walked up the stairs.

On the other side of the unknown door, there was a room you seemed to recognize faintly. It was an inkling of a memory only, though. You hadn’t been in here before but there was a sense of familiarity wrapping itself around you making you feel at home.

A knock on the door startled you from your serened state. The person from the other end didn’t even give you the chance to collect yourself before barging in. “I knew I’d find you here.” It was Law who’d come in, looking relieved to find you. “Isn’t Zoro with you? He said he was coming over. Maybe he got lost along the way?” That was weird. If this was the past, then why would Zoro be outside the attic? A pit was growing in your stomach, something feels off about this time. It’s like it wasn’t you he was speaking to, but he seemed to notice you just fine. There was no mistake in what he said. You’ve met Zoro in this time, but it wasn’t your memory. It didn’t even feel like you were in your own body; just a disembodied being floating right above where you should have been standing.

Law declared he’d help you find Zoro and left the room, not sparing your stunned, immobile body a second glance. 

You willed your out of body experience to end by moving your weighed down legs to take a step. It felt like trying to pull yourself out of quicksand. The seconds it took for you to reach the open door felt like hours, but alas you reached the entryway, quickly closing it behind you as you exited the out of body room and returned inside your own. You looked around the hall you stood in, cod sweat beading on your forehead. You had no other clues to find Zoro in this warped time; but if he was running loose around one of these memories the attic was the safest bet to the time you were trying to find.

An argument spilled down the staircase that leads to the attic, echoing in the vacant hall. Curiously, you eavesdropped into the argument, which sounded like Sabo and Zoro going back and forth about the former’s imprisonment. Zoro shouted at Sabo about how he'd changed. About how the old him would have never been as pathetic as to let someone control him like this. 

Sabo paid him no mid, throwing a comment about how he’d changed too over his shoulder as he came down the stairs. You dashed towards the spandrel to hide from him, sneaking up the stairs after you thought it safe to come out. 

Zoro called out from the room he was locked in, pleaded for sabo to reconsider what he was doing before falling silent. When you neared the door he was no longer right beside it, rather splayed out on the bed taking a nap. Was this a different time? The one you were looking for, you hoped.

You touched the bars that acted as a door, caging the room. The magic Sabo used on them wasn’t as strong as you remember, it just gave away with one small push...Was it you who opened the door when Zoro was released? That can’t be right, you only had five pacts. Had you missed the culprit you were looking for? Or was it really just a mistake Sabo had made?

You walked over to him, waking up a very confused Zoro. He asked how you got in here, but then he saw the opened door and stopped himself from further questioning you... He’s... free 

HE’S FREE!

“You did it! You actually did it,” Zoro shot up from the bed, barreling to meet you by the door with a plastered smile, “I didn’t think a weak human could pull it off, but you actually...” He suspired, making a spall pin in excitement.

 How ironic, to be saved by the one thing he wanted to destroy. “Sabo and Shanks could have never imagined THIS would happen. “I can now go and achieve what I set out to do, thank you for this.” Zoro opened his arms, a dark tint forming in his eyes. “Here, let me show you how grateful I am.” You backed away from him, not liking the way he was looking at you. It was maniacal, a stare full of hatred and elation. 

“It’s rude to not accept someone’s gratitude, Y/n.” He spat his words out like venom. Horns sprouted from his head as a ruthless air came round him, just like his hands did around your neck. Your face was painted in terror as you clawed at his hands, only succeeding in making his grip tighten on you. Your head buzzed from the dual force of his hold and the smothering pressure from his emanating power. 

“AhaHahAHa you should see your face right now! It’s so,” Zoro pulled you up to your tiptoes so you were leveled with him, “Pathetic.” Your neck strained as it tried to keep the weight of your body from snapping it in half. “Don’t blame me for tricking you, blame yourself for being so foolish.” Your hands went slack beside you. Your body didn’t have enough strength to keep resisting the cold, static-like feeling that was overtaking you, drowning out his voice. “But don’t worry, I won’t kill you. I want you to see the destruction of your world.” He squeezed your neck harder, eyes filled with glee that turned sour with his last words to you. “But if you get in my way, I’ll make sure to leave your body unrecognizable.” Zoro dropped you on the floor, not caring to stick back and see if he’d actually left you half-alive.

-

There it was again, the out of body feeling from before. Except this time you couldn’t see anything anywhere. You couldn’t even see yourself. You were just an out of body spirit that floated in complete nothingness. It would have been more comforting if where you were at had a discernible color; a pure black of death or a brilliant and blinding white of afterlife, but there was nothing. You couldn’t make out what it was supposed to be, it just WAS. It existed without existing. It was nothingness, but it enveloped you like it was everything. You couldn’t even say that it was blank or empty because the words entailed that there could be a something in this nothingness. You weren’t even here, yet your disembodied existence floated in and was what surrounded you. This place was a juxtaposition and a contradiction on its own.

Before you could give yourself a migraine by thinking about this, a voice called out to you. There was someone else here. But they weren’t here, there was no here. It was just the void, it was just you.

“Y/n,” the voice calls out again, “you have to wake up and help them, please.” You can’t even turn to try and look for the person; you already had an eagle’s eye view to the vastless nothing in all directions. “Who are you- where are we?” 

“Don’t worry about that. Just know that my name is Kuina, and I’m worried about my brothers, especially Zoro.” The voice was familiar, but in a way that you would never be able to guess. “After my death, I remembered who I was. I forgot my way back to the Celestial Realm, but luckily I was able to stay with them.” Her voice grew quiet and melancholic, “watched over them… but now Zoro is being hot-headed again. Y/n,” she pleaded, “help them, please.”

You must have really had a streak of stupidity because you could just agree. There was something that drew you to her; made her feel like an old trusted friend. Even after what Zoro did to you, what he is going to do to Earth… You still agreed, for her. “...Okay... but first, why me?” 

“That’s because you’re my-” she was getting cut off as you started to regain consciousness. “That’s why-” a sliver of color appeared and disappeared before you. “So please, if y-” Blurry light plagued your vision; finally cutting her off completely.

You laid on the floor, a headache threatening to make your head explode. Gathering yourself with a few deep breaths, you forced yourself to look for the danger that your body wanted to ignore.

You found it in the form of arguing. Walking closer, you saw a gory sight that you wished would have never been ingrained in your memories. Kid sat on the floor, a bloody mess in front of him and the others circling around him. 

“Y/n, stay with me!” Kid shouted over the others, holding on to your cracked skull that threatened to spill your brain. The hit past you had taken was too hard, there was no way you could have survived that, yet a trembling hand slowly came up just to fall back down 

Zoro laughed at the weak display, unaware that who he’d left battered and broken wasn’t the you he had talked to up in the attic. “Zoro, how could you do this?!” Luffy yelled at him with balled fists at his side, he didn’t know how to feel right now. Zoro was in the human realm and suddenly he’s just here and he’s hurt you. 

The real you still stood atop the stairs, watching in on their woe. You should leave, you needed to. Benn said that you shouldn’t be seen, and yet that’s all you’ve done since you got here… But you couldn’t just leave them to suffer like this. Kid and Luffy were freaking out, Law and Sanji were screaming at everything they could, and Ace and Sabo looked like they were gonna explode!

You carefully went down the stairs so as to not startle them in their ongoing clamor. On the last step, you could finally get the full view of your beaten and bruised body. A milky white bone protruding from your arm, dripping with your blood. Your skull bashed in on one side with only Kid’s hand as a bandage to hold it in place. A leg bent in too many different angles for it to be normal. Labored and gurgled breathing wheezed out of your blood filled throat. The gory sight had you stunned in place.

The brothers’ loud gasps were what brought you back from your disassociated state. “Huh?! What’s going on?” Law looked at you flabbergasted, “how can this be?” Everyone was just as confused, giving their own variations of surprise.

“You were supposed to be dead!” Zoro lunged at you.

“No, wait! Kuina, she-”

“Don’t you dare say her name, human! You don’t have the right!” He shoved you down. “She-” you spluttered out blood, “ li-ived happily as a human!” You put your hands up, bracing for his next blow but it never came. “What.. what do you mean?”

You explained to them all that you had heard from the other Sabo. Kuina’s death, his pledge of loyalty, why he had to lock Zoro in the attic until things blew over. Your ‘’far fetched story only seemed more real when the past you disappeared in Kid’s arms.

“They uh… they can’t…Sabo?” They all looked at their big brother for guidance. It was like watching little kids look at their parent, hoping they’d provide clarity for their uncertainty. “... It’s true, what they said,” Sabo hesitantly confirmed, “How do you know that?” 

“Kuina, she-”

“Don’t lie to me! There’s no way she could have,” His confusion was making his words bite, “Who are you really?”

“I can answer that.” You all turn to see Shanks entering the house with Benn in tow. “What they say isn’t a lie.” Shanks gestures at Benn, “I had his look into Y/n ancestry because something wasn’t adding up.”

“It appears that Y/n is a descendant of Kuina’s.”

That part did catch you off guard. Was that what she wanted to tell you when you asked why’d she picked you when you were passed out? A sharp pain made you grab at your head almost like Kid did with your dying body earlier. The throbbing increased until your eyes rolled back and you could see a vision. A time long passed, a memory that belonged to someone else. A promise etched itself into your brain. “No matter how far apart we may be, or how much time passes, even if you don’t remember who you are someday. I will never forget you. I hope you find happiness in your new life. I love you Kuina.” Aline of blood leaked out of your nose as you came back to your senses.

“Those words…. They were the last thing I told Kuina before she was taken away…. How do you know them?” Sabo was once again shocked into silence.

Shanks filled in the missing pieces. Kuina was an angel before being turned into a human, some of her powers must have stayed. A residue of them must have passed down from generation to generation until they got to you. With the limited power Kuina still had, she must have passed on some of her memories to you.

“... Kuina…” Sabo was taking in everything he’d heard. “Kuina...!” He rushed at you, enveloping you in a hug, the others soon doing the same.

Zoro stood back, not wanting to believe what he’d heard. It can’t be. It was too good to be true. He could believe that Kuina was reborn as a human but you, who so happens to be her descendant, manages to get chosen for the exchange program. It just…. 

“Kuina…” no matter how much he wanted to say it wasn’t true, deep down he wanted to believe too. That his sister lived as happily as they said she did. That she somehow managed to hold on until she made it back to them. “...Kuina” He lowered his heartbroken and guilt-ridden face. He didn’t want to look at you after what he’d done.

“Zoro, it’s okay,” you pulled yourself away from the embraces of the brothers. “It’s not. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t been so interested in humans, Kuina would have never-” a knot caught itself in the back of his throat. 

“...Zoro… I didn’t know you felt that way…” Sabo neared him, “it wasn’t your fault. I wish I’d told you that sooner.” Those were the exact words Zoro needed to hear. After all these years, all the guilt that ate away at him. 

He raised his head, finally ready to look you both in the eye, a tired smile spreading on his face. He feels a little bit lighter than he did before. “Thank you.”

*MC gets told one rule to follow. Proceeds to break said rule.*

[marcelinedeleon]

Ending the Madness // Self-para

[speakingintothedarkness]

Old Memes and Memories

Hnn.... It’s been a while. 

Still with Liz. Briefly dated a trans girl long distance over teh interwebs but it went downhill. 

Still... grappling with gender, even though I’m way more comfortable with being not-cis than I was last time we talked about this, dear internet. 

I read a thing today. Its keeping me awake, and I have this weird feeling that if I tried to talk to anyone about it, it’d come off as... either inscrutible, offensive, or both.

Ugh it’s embarassing really. Fucking Homestuck. I know, what is this 2015? But seriously I had read that entire trashfire of a webcomic when it was being released and I only just learned about the epilogues so I figured I’d read that. 

It’s a bit weird. Go figure, right? Hussie is a weird dude who leans into his weirdness even harder than Dan Shive does. The entire thing is framed around a dichotemy, a choice that one character makes and all the action that follows comes from that choice. You get to make that choice for that character, but the story only really makes sense if you do it both ways. And, perhaps typically, even though this is the epilogue to a vast spanning story, somehow it’s not even really about tying up the loose ends. In fact, it leaves you with more than you started. The antagonist of the epilogue isn’t even the villain that was built up throughout the run of the comic and then never directly addressed. 

But that’s not what’s bothering me. What’s bothering me is, of course, the trans question. 

In one of the two branching timelines, a character comes out as trans. In that timeline, he is given time to examine his gender with an understanding partner and winds up deciding on a full transition to being male. 

...but in the other timeline, the same character winds up being married to a straight dude and remains a woman, has kids and basically... goes as straight cis as she can. And its really hard to say which version of them is happier in the end. A bunch of shit goes terribly for both versions (either/both ways, this was not a happily ever after for pretty much anyone involved), but both versions wind up soliloquizing about how they struggled with their gender and are happy with where they wound up. 

This... is a thing that as a tran myself I know I’m supposed to be foaming at the mouth over. Implying that trans is a thing you can choose to be, implying that, if things had gone differently you might wish to not be what you are, even if specifically asked about it... these are cardinal sins. 

And certainly for some people, they’ve known on some level who they were their entire life. But... I am not one of them. I can point to the exact moments in time that pushed me towards this self-realization, three sentences that various people have said to me, and two life-decisions that culminated in me being forced to examine what all this meant. So I guess since I can’t sleep and this is a self-indulgent exercise to begin with, it’s mOtHerFuKiNg StOrY tImE hOnK! 

The first moment that led me down this road, the point that planted the first proto-seed of thought about my gender in my mind was, perhaps predictably, about a game. In this case a long-standing DnD game I’d played with my OC friends in the early days of my relationship with C before she decided she hated them and didn’t want me to spend time with them and that’s own fucking rabbit hole. 

In our game, our characters had become so intrinsically involved in the politics of the nation our game was set in, that we realized that going on adventures was irresponsible and might cause irreparable harm to the world. So rather than end the game, we statted up our characters’ children. To make things interesting, we randomized who got who. To my (at the time) mild dismay, I drew a girl, When I showed the others my slip of paper with the name “Tamora” written on it, one of my friends snorted “God, it’ll be hard to imagine you playing a princess.” And it.... stung. It hurt in a  way I’d never before experienced. My first brush with a now all-too-familiar sense of dysphoria. As if there were a part of me I’d never before examined that had its ego crushed. I don’t remember how I responded. 

Thing is, I played Tamora like a fucking champ. And no one ever made another comment about me playing a girl. I think I’d proven that I could convincingly play any role I wanted to. 

Which brings us to the second sentence. I’ve talked about this here before, a friend on an online game admitting to me that the gender of her character did not align with the one she was assigned at birth. It was both shocking and enticing. In a way its laughable now (we’ll probably get around to why) but at the time, I just sorta assumed that... I’d be able to tell? And S was...  she was as female and feminine as anyone I’d ever met. I’d never wondered for an instant. 

And those two things... those two moments. The pang of hurt, the desire to be perceived as a girl; and the sudden realization that there was a venue where that might be possible. That lead me to make the first of those life choices: creating a female character, deliberately this time, and dive into her so thoroughly that there were times where I was’t sure where she ended and I began. 

Things got a bit weird in all this. I mean, people asked me questions about myself ooc and I would answer as if I were a girl. Hell  I even gave myself a name in all that. Karen, if you can believe it. Its not the name I’m currently using. Who the fuck would name themselves Karen in 2018-19 right? 

But ultimately none of that really mattered, I’d so thoroughly compartmentalized my brain throughout all this that barely anything of my character in the Game leaked into my real life or vice versa. For all intents and purposes, “Karen” who played the game and the me who did everything else were two entirely separate people. 

And yet some of it must have seeped through because C noticed. Or at least, I’m pretty sure she did. She knew I was playing the Game, but I never talked about my character or her gender. She knew that that rp involved romantic and sexual subplots, but I never discussed them with her, nor she her own sex-rp’s with me. It was a sorta tacit polyamory with very specific confines that we’d agreed to in a purely theoretical sense some years back and then adhered to rigidly in practice while determiniedly never talking about it. 

But for all the fucked up shit, she knew me well, maybe better than anyone other than Liz has. I mean, we were a couple of woke 20-somethings in the Obama era, so lgbt issues were pretty forefront at the time. Guess they still are, we were just a lot more... hopeful about it. But she kept sending me articles about trans people. Like, human interest articles. 

There was one in specific that she got really... enthusiastic about, about this one trans-woman’s journey to self-discovery through WoW. C read part of the article to me out loud, culminating when the person in the article was confronted by her wife: “You can be a girl if you want to be”. She kinda repeated that a couple times, looking at me hard. And in retrospect, yeah, it wasn’t fucking subtle. But at the time... it was not a thing I was willing to examine. Like fuck, honestly I think there was a part of me that knew. I mean there had to be at that point, right? But I didn’t want to pursue it irl. I think I made up my mind that it would be something I’d approach the same time that I approached the poly question that was inevitably hanging over C and I at that same time: after we were married. So I just nodded and went “Huh, interesting” with a straight face as my at-the-time girlfriend all but told me that if I wanted to come out to her, she’d be okay with it. 

Never got a chance to see if she really would have been.

After we broke up, all this shit got put so far back on the back burner that... well hell, go back and read my first few posts if you have the fortitude to stand a lot of bitching. Like way more than I’m doing now. 

And I mean the funny thing was I was still playing the Game I just sorta figured that once... I got another girlfriend, that’d have to stop? That who and what I was in the game would stop mattering. Because I was monogamous right? Just like I was male and straight, and the fact that my character was none of those things meant that I’d have to put her out to pasture. So it didn’t matter that I’d been playing a lesbian ethical slut for the past five, six years, because once I was in another sanctioned cishet relationship, I’d have to put all this foolishness behind me and never speak of it to anyone ever again. 

Goddess alone knows if I even could have but I would have tried. I suspect it would have gone badly.

Instead... by almost comicallly random happenstance, I wound up with a poly girl. And after some initial winging about whether or not I wanted that, a part of my brain I’d been ignoring went, “Hey dumbfuck! You never cared when A--- slept around or when E--- was in another relationship, why should it matter to you that CR has a boyfriend?” 

And the rest of my brain took a second to process that and was like “E--- and A--- weren’t involved with me irl, only my character in the game.” 

And the first part was like “Oh yeah, smart girl, if that wasn’t a thing you wanted on some level than how come you fucking jumped into it with both feet in the game?”

And the rest of me rejoined rejoined, “I suppose you have a p--wait! smart girl?”

“Oh yeah, that’s a thing too. You probably better process that because this whole fucking thing is tied together like a goddamn giftbasket of deviancy. Good luck having anything resembling a normal life once you’re done untangling it”

And at that point there was no turning back. I’ve dragged my feet certainly, not... as much out of a sense of general reluctance as a bunch of worries about how my family (who I’m still reliant upon) will take it. But once that realization had occured there was no putting that bunny back in the box. 

Which I guess brings me to my point, if one can even say I have one. 

In a lot of ways this whole misadventure seems less like something that was always there and more like... a memetic virus that somehow burrowed into my brain, incubated for a few years and then burst forth from my skull like some horrifying amalgam of Athena and a chestburster. Like, if I had pulled a dude’s name from that hat... would literally any of this happened? If my friend hadn’t admitted that she was experimenting with gender herself would it have occurred to me to try? If I hadn’t created that first female online character, would I still think I was a man? Would I still be a man? I mean that’s the crux of all this. In the fucking Homestuck epilogue, is candyverse Roxy still a man like they are in the meatverse? Sorry, spoilers I guess. To them, the only real difference is an opportunity to prioritize their own self expression and gender identity. But Candyverse Roxy still has put thought into those things, just because of how and when they had the time to do so, she arrived at a different conclusion than he did in the other timeline. 

And yes, I know that the Meatverse is considered more cannon than the candyverse, and yes, Roxy is the only character  in the meatverse who isn’t being manipulated by Dirk’s mind meddling and therefore we can safely say that his epiphanies regarding his gender are genuine, more truthful and relevant to the character than the weirdness going on in the Candyverse. 

But... where does that leave me. Obviously we’re playing the  “what if” game on a weird scale here but, what if that series of events hadn’t occured? Would I still wind up roughly where I am, genderwise, by a different rout? Or would I have continued to labor under the false assumption that I was a dude... and would that assumption in this case even be false by any empirical standard? That’s the question that’s kept me up tonight. 

I think I can safely say that by the time I had constructed this Karen figment that it was a foregone conclusion. But.... if either of those two inciting incidents had gone differently... Ugh... I don’t know. I feel like some people would want to take my trans card away from me for even suggesting that there’s a universe out there where I’m happily continuing to think I’m a dude. Maybe there is... but ultimately it’s not relevent or true for me, because its not a thing that I can go back to now. In short: it’s simply not cannon. 

[ramheavenandhell]

Finally Ricktober, Bitches!! – Chapter 10: Mysterious Rick – Finding Enrickment

AN: This is one prompt that I've been looking forward to because Mysterious Rick is also one of my fave Ricks ^_^ Even though he is a little saner in this fanfiction. Warnings: maybe a tiny bit OOC and obsessive Mysterious Rick (which is pretty in character though) Summary: Mysterious Rick is finally giving up his search for the Legendary Morty. In return, he finds something that he probably needed for a long time…

Finally Ricktober, Bitches!! – Chapter 10: Mysterious Rick – Finding Enrickment This was it. Mysterious Rick was so done with this. It felt like such a long time ago that he had started to collect Mortys. And he had accumulated quite a collection of them, one that would make other collectors certainly envious. However, he just didn't feel about this whole thing anymore like he used to. It just suddenly started to lack that spark that it used to have. All that time ago, he had set out to find the best Morty of them all – the one that he had dubbed the Legendary Morty – but he never found the one. And now, looking at all his caught Mortys, he felt like a fool. None of these Mortys were especially strong or any more special than the ones he had seen from other trainers. It wasn't just the same thing anymore and the hype that had been made around this "game" on the Citadel had also slowly started to die out. In the end, this fad had been just that. A fad. And fads just went away with time again, to be replaced by some new fad eventually. That was just the natural flow of things. So, Mysterious Rick decided that he was through with collecting Mortys and his fruitless search for the special one that he had wanted. He gathered his collection together and one by one released the boys back into the wild again, not caring if they would end up with one of the few still left trainers or if they would find their way back home or if they would die of hunger or from any dangers somewhere out there in an unknown dimension… not like it was any of his concerns. It was just another day on the Citadel as Mysterious Rick strolled, looking around to buy some materials that he would need for a new invention that he was working on. That was when it happened. It was like a meeting of fate – if Ricks would actually believe in such a thing as fate. But, Mysterious Rick was ready to believe in it if it was what was necessary to meet him again. He had been just walking over the plaza, mostly ignoring the other Ricks and few aliens that still lingered around when one Rick passed him that was accompanied by a few Mortys. This was no biggie, of course. There were still some few Ricks who clung to the dead horse that had been labeled "Pocket Mortys" a long time ago and he had grown somewhat blind to the sight.

However, it was one of his Mortys that drew his attention to him.

He wasn't even sure why that was. Maybe it was the bright golden glow that had surrounded this one. Or, the fact that he didn't looked like any other Morty that he had seen before. Usually not one to engage in conversation with other Ricks, other than it being completely necessary to get something done, he asked the generic-looking Rick. "Wow! What kind of Morty is that?" "Huh?" the Rick looked back at his small entourage and saw the other looking at his best Morty. "Oh, that one. He's called the One True Morty. Cheesy name, but he's pretty damn awesome…for a Morty I mean." The One True Morty. This was the one. This had to be the one! Mysterious Rick was sure that this was the Morty that he had been looking for all this time. This was the one that he thought of as the Legendary Morty. There was no doubt about it! However, he was confused as to how to find one of those Mortys for himself. He certainly had never met one like this in the wild, on his adventures through the different dimensions. So, it was in order to do some research. Sadly enough, he soon had to reach the conclusion that there wasn't much known about this One True Morty. There were some links on a few Morty-only-boards that pointed to Morty C-137, but the boy looked just like a generic Morty and nothing like the one that he had seen. Mysterious Rick almost started to regret that he hadn't just stolen the one from the other Rick, like he used to do in the past, but at that moment, he hadn't fully understood his need to own that one special Morty yet. He should at least have asked him how he got that boy – or rather, young man. After many more days wasted on research, he finally got a hint on a Rick message board where remaining Morty-enthusiast were still talking about the different kind of Mortys, about what was so great about collecting them and tips how to properly train them to turn them into complete killing machines. He had opened a new thread with the question where to find such One True Morty and finally, after many stupid and useless remarks, some Rick stopped being a complete dick for a moment to grace him with a reply that was actually helpful. Following the hint, he sought out and approached and alien that he had met before, but didn't know would hold something with such a huge value to him – Masy Kallerax. "Hey, I got a hint that I could get a special Morty from you?" Mysterious Rick cut straight to the point. "Oh, yeah. I do have a "special one", but I need you to do me a little favor first." The blue-skinned alien replied with a smirk. Mysterious Rick sighed and weighed his options if he should do him the favor or if he should just knock the other unconscious and torture the location of the One True Morty out of him. Well, he could at least hear him out at first, right? "Okay, what's it?" he asked, sounding annoyed and impatient as if to tell the other that this better be something small, quick and uncomplicated. "Well, Rick. I wanted to bake some brownies. Not any normal kind of brownies though. You see I-" Mysterious Rick groaned, already being able to see where this was going. "Just tell what me kind of drug you want and I get it." It took one annoying, long, hard and over the top adventure to get the drug that the guy had wanted. Mysterious Rick thought that he was probably getting too old for all that shit even though he liked some good action as much as the next Rick. 'This better be worth all the bullshit that I had to go through for that asshole!' he thought begrudgingly as he approached the blue skinned alien, his uniform dirty and hanging in tatters from his slim and slightly bleeding body and his hat and red cape were missing. He handed the other a bag with light green powder – the magical ingredient that Masy had wanted for his "special" brownies. "Okay, here you go." The alien said and handed him an egg in return. "What? What is this?" Mysterious Rick sputtered as he held up the pink and gold, oval shaped object. "I came here to get the "One True Morty" from you, not some menstrual product from a weird space chicken." Masy just continued to smirk, feeling like he was better because he knew something that the Rick in front of him didn't. "This is a Morty. And he will become the One True Morty, all right?" Mysterious Rick was surprised about that and now finally decided to take a closer look at the egg that he still held slightly awkwardly inside his hands. Indeed, through the see-through pink shell, he could see something that looked like a Morty. A very small, baby-like Morty with umbilical cord and all that. As Mysterious Rick continued to look at the little thing, he could feel something in his chest start to warm up. It was so cute! Not realizing it himself, he started to grin broadly and made internally a vow to take good care of this little one. He would care for him and protect him and treat him better than he had ever treated any version of his grandson. Mysterious Rick seemed to have fallen instantly in love with this Egg Morty. Apparently that was also the reason why he didn't even hear what the alien was shouting at him as he wandered off, still looking at the small wonder of life in his hands. He cradled it gently in his arms and cooed at the little thing, as he softly dandled it. "You need to put him through hundreds of rounds of grueling combat to have him evolve into the One True Morty!" Mysterious Rick had all but forgotten about the One True Morty and never let his precious Egg Morty fight even in one single battle.

Bonus:

(Imagine this as being Mysterious Rick's view as he holds the Egg Morty.)

AN: Just for today's prompt I made this little mini comic as an extra. This is kind of Mysterious Rick's view at the end of this story. Sorry, that it doesn't look so great since it was rushed. Also, I have this headcanon that a Baby Morty is a Rick's greatest weakness ^_^

Prompts

Chapter 1: Doofus Rick / Rick J-19ζ7

Chapter 2: Surgeon Rick

Chapter 3: Simple Rick + Weird Rick

Chapter 4: Lab Rick (+ Surgeon Rick)

Chapter 5: Deepthroat Rick / Investigator Rick

Chapter 6: Storage Rick

Chapter 7: Flesh Curtains Rick / Younger Rick

Chapter 8: Seven Sins Ricks

Chapter 9: Tiny Rick

Chapter 11: Slow Rick / Tall Morty (+ Surgeon Rick + Lab Rick)

Chapter 12: Miami Rick

Chapter 13: Golfer Rick

Chapter 14: Gouverness Ava Rickinsocks

Chapter 15: Evil Rick

Chapter 16: Chair Rick

Chapter 17: (Rookie) Cop Rick

Chapter 18: Super Fan Rick

Chapter 19: Guard Ricks

Chapter 20: Guilty Rick

Chapter 21: Lizard Rick + Aqua Rick

Chapter 22: Novelist Rick

Chapter 23: Morty Games Rick

Chapter 24: Zero Rick

Chapter 25: Teacher Rick

Chapter 26: Bubble Gum Rick

Chapter 27: Robot Rick

Chapter 28: Jar Head Rick

Chapter 29: Toxic Rick

Chapter 30: Council of Ricks

Chapter 31: Rick C-137