#people are still so unpleasant though? even if its kind of entertaining to read old debates and what ever....

[clearallcathy]

Thiugh reddit definitely does deliver on interesting specimens as it usually does. even if it takes some digging

getting any kind of interest on a fashion related topic is actually so dire everybody else who talks about it is SO boring to me. like we are just never on the same page about it

[aphrodite-would-be-proud]

Anon said: tried to read through all your request rules, but I didnt specifically see which Characters you write for. If you do, could you write for Porco helping his S/o sleep? I have super bad insomnia most days, and I just really want something fluffy with Porco...just cuddles or stories or something. If you dont write for Porco though could you switch it with a AoT character you do write for, I'm not really picky. Thank you so much in advance! 🥺💗

Porco helping you sleep

{Porco x reader | tw:none | sleep help, fluff | canon }

{ "The Night School" C.1660-C.1665 By Gerrit Dou 1613-1675 }

Unmoving shadows cast into the empty white walls, slightly flickering with the flame on the white candle sitting on the nightstand. Half lidded eyes observe their small movements for they're the only interesting thing in this empty hotel room you've been assigned. 

Your beige uniform tucked into the small closest with a single hanger inside, the armband hanging on the closest door for easy reach. The squeak of the spring mattress chirping up whenever you moved to flip your too stiff pillow. 

Judging by the amount of melted wax collecting on the bottom of the candle, you've been awake for far too long. 

This isn't the first time this has happened, you're used to getting acquainted with the room's walls and shadowy furniture.

Sleep has abandoned you long ago, its friend insomnia visiting you daily instead. Only leaving every week or so to remind you of what you could never have, taunting almost.

You've tried to force yourself to sleep really, did every known trick in the book, you even tried mediation like Zeke has been preaching to you about, but to no avail. so you've started making peace with the thing, you know at least using the night time to get things done since you're not getting rest either way.

Books were your first friend, for staring at the walls could only be entertaining for so long, but now with your stash of books miles away back home, you're left with nothing else to do.

The nightstand drawer only contained an emergency gun with several bullets inside, and the pocket knife under your pillow wasn't interesting enough.

Getting up from the bed, you picked up the candle before slowly inching the creaky door open. Maybe a glass of water could help, who cares that this is your third time going for water in the last hour? Well hydration is important after all, or so you tried to bargain for an excuse to stretch your legs.

Attempting your best to glide through the old wooden boards without as much as a squeak, you headed towards the kitchen, passing through several other bedrooms in the process, probably all deep in dream land already.

Everything was too quiet, the sound of water filling the glass was the only thing interrupting the silence, its cool feeling going down your dry throat helped you a bit.

Drinking down what you can, you decided to take the rest with you back, a good excuse for a trip to the bathroom later. Although as you turned, a figure was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed and staring at you.

"Isn't it too early for breakfast?" Porco said, covering his mouth with his hand as he yawned, "you should get some rest while you can, we're getting thrown in the front trenches tomorrow." 

Just the mention of it made your stomach roll at the thought of staying in a muddy hole for days, the smell of gunpowder and yelling of soldiers, not to mention the crowded train rides back home.

"I know, it's just…" you stared at the water moving inside your glass while tilting it, "one of those days, you know?" 

eyes narrowing with his eyebrows pulling down in concentration, even Porco's sleep clouded mind could recognise the heavy bags under your eyes. The ride here used all of your energy and now you're too tired to even sleep.

Feeling an unpleasant weight on his chest, he wasn't sure what to say as he approached you, awkwardly leaning against the sink, a heavy sigh left him.

"You know, you should bother me more often, I don't mind it." His gentle tone was followed by a melancholic smile, "let's just...go to bed."

With that his hand wrapped around your wrist, loosely at first like he was reluctant about it, before it got more secure once you didn't pull away.

…

The old door gave out a creek as it closed behind you, the room dimmer than you left it with the candle you're carrying almost burning out. 

Looking at the small bed with a single pillow, you wondered how the two grown people would fit in it and judging by the frustrated look Porco was eyeing it with, he must be thinking the same.

Looking at him, your mind wondered back to all the battles you've fought together. For some reason the superiors always seemed more strick and harsh with him, especially after the paradise mission was launched.

Belitting and nagging, carelessly throwing him in risky situations.

Your grip tightened around the water glass, feeling growing thickness in your throat. "Hey...it's okay you can go to your room, you need sleep." You said moving past him to sit on the bed, "I'll be fine."

"Should've thought of that before waking me up, now scoot over." He said, rising an eyebrow and stepping closer.

"I didn't wake you up, you're just a light sleeper." Laying down, you stretched your limbs filling the bed, "there's no room, it won't fit."

Silence filled the room for a while, you could feel his eyes roaming over you, "Oh really? Well…"

One second, you were laying on the mattress while staring at his stubborn expression in confusion, the next a pair of arms was lifting you up as he stole your place before dropping you on him. His arm circled your waist not trusting that you won't pull away

"I made it fit." he looked at you with smugness in his eyes

His warm skin felt comforting against yours, contrasting with the cold room air, you could hear his slowing heartbeat with being so close to his chest, your legs slowly tangling to fit under the blanket covering you.

Apparently that's as far as his genius plan went, because after that an awkward silence filled the room.

"So...you made it fit huh?" You couldn't help but say, a grin slowly spreading on your face. 

Porco blinked in response, tilting his head, before his eyes stilled as his ears flushed. "Fucking god, you're such a-" his attempt to scold you was interrupted by a chuckle escaping mid-sentence.

Having a contagious laugh, soon enough you too joined him.

After it died down, the atmosphere was replaced by a much more relaxed one as his hold on you softened, more intimate than the previous one. 

"When I was a kid, i used to have trouble sleeping- well more like i was too stubborn to fall asleep." Porco said, trailing his finger up your back soothingly, "and since Marcel was stuck sharing a room with me, he'd tell me stories to get me to fall asleep."

"What kind of stories?" 

"...if you tell this to anyone I'm reporting you to the higher ups you for treason, they were flower stories." Clearing his throat, you could feel his heartbeat rising under you, 

Closely watching your reaction, Porco continued after some seconds. "now I'm not calling you a kid nor do i think it's as simple, i just think...we should give it a chance." 

With the heaviness of the blanket above you and warmth of his body underneath you, it was hard to refuse his request, especially with the way he looked at you so earnestly. 

You agreed, and felt his other hand reach to pull up the blanket more, tucking you protectively between his body and the soft fabric. 

"This first one is called...well i don't remember what names Marcel gave them, but it's about poppies."

Crimson red bringers of eternal sleep, their crumbled petals and dark centers often found in the ancient tombs of soldiers.

As the mother of nature, Demeter, mourned and grieved from the betrayal of Zeus, it wasn't only the mortal realm in which death loomed at every corner, for her own mind was a tormenting prison of never ending suffering.

And so a droplet of her blood sprang and flourished to create a six petaled flower, easing her heartache if only for a moment as the poppy put her to sleep, numbing the pain.

Following in her trail was a red carpet of poppies, soon enough death and sleep themselves wore the flower, red crowns resting on top of Thanatos's held up head and one almost slipping from Hypnosi's leaning one as he dozed off. for eternal sleep was only another name for visiting the underworld. 

A symbol of peace in resting and condolence for the loss of a loved one, became the poppy's role. 

"This is why you'd often see them in people's front pockets whenever we return home." Porco said, the light slowly vanishing from the room as the candle burned itself out, the flame snuffed.

You've never questioned why a delivery of poppies would always be on the requirements in each returning celebration, it's just always been there. 

Slow and easy breathes flew through you, lazily stretching your arms up till it met something soft. Porco seemed to tense as your fingers loosely combed through his hair, leaning into the touch after a while.

"Don't stop." He murmured, sleep clear in his voice as another yawn left him.

"Do you have any other stories?" Drowsiness sweeping through your mind, you buried your hed deeper against his neck, eyelids fluttering shut.

"Yeah just…" his hand stilled from behind you as he looked into space attempting to recall a memory, soon enough the soft stroking returned. "This one is about peony."

Named after none other than Paeon himself, these flowers lived up to their reputation of healing and honour, for they have their own story to tell.

How the peony came to be declared king of flowers.

During the Tang dynasty, empress Wu Zetian strolled through her garden. Frowning at the empty field of green covered in thick white blankets of snow, the harsh season not showing mercy for the plants.

With a new goal in mind to flip this dreadful looking graveyard of a garden, she set to defy nature for she is the ruler of the land and her word is law.

Per her majesty's order, all flowers shall bloom in the midst of winter's visit.

As the word travelled far, all the fairies in the land couldn't believe their ears, how could such delicate fragile petals grow amidst the storm and snow. For flowers only bloom in spring, how could we go against mother nature?

While merciless mother nature was cruel, she couldn't compare for the empress's strong rule. For the fairies feared for their wings as their knees shook in her presence.

When the sun shined again, it welcomed colourful fields of different flowers in full bloom. The empress was pleased with their sweet smell and proud colours, each one rivaling the other.

And yet, she stood still near one flower bed, eyes wide. The peony deified her words and stubbornly refused to open, only sticks and brittle leaves left in their place.

In a fit of rage, the empress banished the flower to a far away city, striping away their status.

Living up to their stubborn nature, the peony bloomed that spring the most beautiful flowers humans have ever seen, turning the city of Luoyang into a heavenly soft land as their petals danced through the wind.

But their beauty couldn't last long, for a hungry fire swallowed them all, under the order of the empress who turned their green to coal.

And yet to everyone's surprise, when the earth circled the sun again, the peonies were back in bloom. Springing from the ashes were their mesmerising big petals and soft colours. 

In their respect, the fairies crowned them for their bravery as the ruler of the flowers, for wasn't it for their sacrifice the flowers wouldn't have been freed.

"They stayed on the right way, even if it meant going against the world." Porco's slurred words were half muffled against the pillow, head buried in it, his eyelids seemed to get too heavy for him to force them open again.

Turning his head to the side, you felt his lips press a light kiss against your forehead before whispering a goodnight, his hold still comfortably secure around you as if you might slip away. 

Soon enough, you too drifted into sleep as only his soft snoring filled the room. The moon watching over both of you through the windows as her light barely reached inside. 

And at this instant, you didn't think there was anywhere else in the world you'd rather be. Thoughts of what the future holds were pushed to the back of your mind next to the past, for the present is now and what a waste it would be not to bask in these rare moments of peace in this horrible world

[ohmightydevviepuu]

the part of a swan

for @cshistfic​ (an extension of one of my august prompts)

--

It should be clear that Emma did not, by any means, regret her ruination.  She did not miss the person she had been before that night; the eager, naive girl, brought up always to behave a certain way, to speak softly, to do as she was bidden, to be what she was told.

Emma no longer believed in allowing people to tell her who she could be.

But Killian Jones is not concerned with who she was--he's interested in who she is. And he might be the only one smart enough to uncover the truth.

AO3 part 1/? ~2.6k

--

Emma was twenty-eight years old when she stepped into a ballroom for the first time since she was ruined.  The first time she was present for the judging stares, the awkward silences.  For the public shaming and the elaborate ritual that surrounded it.

It should be clear that Emma did not, by any means, regret her ruination.  She did not miss the person she had been before that night; the eager, naive girl, brought up always to behave a certain way, to speak softly, to do as she was bidden, to be what she was told.

Emma no longer believed in allowing people to tell her who she could be.

Lady Emma Nolan—for that was who she was, though she barely deserved the descriptor and never claimed the surname—delighted in her ruination, and had done for years.  It had given her freedom.

It had given her Henry.

Emma had faded into the background as she was expected to after her fall, after her scandal—watched the man she thought she loved continue to live his life as the toast of the ton, the darling of his father, the scion of a powerful family—and swore to herself it was the last time she would do what society expected her to do.

Until tonight.

Emma stood before the crowd, acutely aware of all of the eyes upon her, assessing her, from the style of her coiffure—a ridiculous confection of curls and white feathers—to the tips of her shoes.  Surely, they were saying to themselves, surely it is her brother’s money that supports her.

Emma could read them as easily as if they were speaking.

But they were wrong, and that was her secret.

Still, they whispered to each other, muttered remarks hidden discreetly behind fans and glasses of Champagne, and their eyes followed her.  Judged her for her past.

And for her presence.

They knew why she was here, and they hated it.

(So did she.)

���Lady Emma.”

The voice was lush and warm with roughness at its edges.  Dry—acerbic—the syllables drawn out.  He seemed to appear out of nowhere and Emma could do nothing but hold his stare, watching him as he watched her.  Dark hair, blue eyes, sharp cheekbones unfashionably marred by unshaven shadows.

It suited him.

“Sir,” she said.  “We have not been introduced.”  It was both a rebuke and a lie, for she knew who he was.  Killian Jones, the son of no one of name, who had made his career in the navy, nearly cashiered out of the service but not before making his fortune in captured prizes; now the writer of several prominent newspapers.

More importantly, a broker in the most potent currency of all—information.

“And you are lurking in the dark.”

“Then do allow me to rectify that on both counts,” he said, stepped forward and bending low over her hand.  His breath tickled her skin even through the elbow-length gloves as he looked up at her through his eyelashes.

She pulled away.  “What need has Killian Jones for an introduction?”

His eyes glittered.  Blue, like the place on the horizon where the sky met the sea, made brilliant by sunlight; Emma held her breath and prayed he would not notice her slip.

Lady Emma Nolan was not the kind of woman who should know—or recognize—Killian Jones.

Finally, he said, “I see my reputation precedes me.”

Emma exhaled.  “Why should mine be the only one?”

He laughed, a short bark that seemed to escape him unwillingly, and Emma smiled.  It was a small, tight smile.  She gestured at the ballroom and said, “I should return to my sister-in-law.”  “How is the Duchess?”  His tone was conversational, his eyebrow raised.  “Not dancing, I hope?  In her condition?”

Emma’s smile tightened.  She shifted, uncomfortable in the ill-fitting corset her sister-in-law had pressed upon her, and started to walk away.

He followed her movement, his gaze traveling from her neck to her navel, and Emma blushed.

“Let’s not play games, Lady Emma,” he said.  “You’re here for a husband.  You’re here for your son.”

He leaned in, coming closer, and Emma held her breath.  Anywhere but here—now—she might have welcomed this battle, this back-and-forth—welcomed him, for he was devastatingly handsome—

But she had felt that way before, and fallen for it; left broken, and alone, though it had not been Neal who had destroyed her.  She had never said his name aloud since the day he’d left, never told anyone the identity of the man who had, however unwittingly, given her freedom.

Fathers’ sins, after all, never stuck.

It had been them—the gaggle, the gossips, the matrons.  The glittering ballrooms of the beau monde.  She had chosen not to play by their rules, and paid the price for it.  Emma’s scandal became both entertainment and a cautionary tale.  She’d been exiled by all save her brother and sister-in-law, the duke and duchess married in a scandal of their own, the stars of a different tale.

Love.

But even that had come at a cost:  The respect of their late father, and of the ton.

And now, ten years later, here she stood.  “Do not,” Emma said, stepping forward and nearly baring her teeth at him, “mention my son.”

He stepped back, slowly.  His eyes did not move, and neither did hers.  His tone did not change when he said, “Lady Emma, I understand your urgency.  With the duchess increasing—”

Emma did not answer, but she made no move to leave this time.

Because he was right, the perceptive bastard.

All of the joy she felt for her brother and sister-in-law did not assuage her suddenly urgent need to see that Henry was properly taken care of—by a father.  Someone with a title—someone who needed an heir, now that her brother no longer did.

“There are other dowries, Lady Emma,” he said.  “Why yours?”

Emma’s eyes widened.  Perceptive, and too clever by half.  Maybe that was she answered him honestly.  “There are none so large as mine.  And none that come with as much freedom.”

“Freedom?”  For an instant only he looked confused.  Then he spoke, softly.  “Ah.  You have no expectations.  No dreams of a convenient husband turning into a love match.  You’re awfully young to be so cynical.”  He chuckled, a sound utterly devoid of humor; his eyes once more took her measure.  “But then again, wounds made when you’re young do tend to linger.”

He, too, spoke honestly, as if he knew.  As if he, too, had wounds.  He lifted his hand as if he was going to touch her again—and if he touched her, she was going to like it.

“No one has ever done what you’re about to do,” he said, his hand falling.  “And I wish for you to succeed.  In fact, I want to help you.”

Their eyes locked.

“You do?” Emma challenged him.  “Why?”

Some of the scandal sheets that had delighted in her fall had, after all, been his.

“My reasons are my own,” he said.  “There is little love between me and Society.”

She should end this conversation, Emma knew.  She’d been away from the crowd, and from Mary Margaret, her sister-in-law, long enough to be noticed.  Another black mark for the record-keepers.

But Emma stayed.  Said, “You keep them entertained.”

He smirked.  “And you, Lady Emma, are the entertainment in question.”

—

Killian Jones stood on the edge of the ballroom and watched them.  Watched her.

Emma Nolan was every inch an aristocrat, born and bred into this world; a true diamond of the first water.  Everyone in this room should be on their knees at her feet and instead they whispered, waiting to pounce—waiting to destroy her all over again.

He shouldn’t care.  He should stay focused.  

“You should not have flirted with the girl.”

Killian did not turn.  “What do you want with her?”

The answering chuckle was dry and unpleasant. “Let’s just say I’m keeping my eye on young Miss Nolan.”

“Lady Emma,” Killian corrected, only to be granted with another chuckle that had him biting back a curse.

“Of course.”  Robert Gold’s words were soft, delicate—silk wrapped around a knife.  

“What do you want with her?” Killian asked again.

Gold tutted.  “So cold a greeting from my oldest friend.”

Killian had known Gold—now Lord Boyle, Baron Ross, Earl of Glasgow—for almost fifteen years, and hated him for every moment of it; one of the King’s most trusted advisors, with tens of thousands of acres that earned him close to thirty thousand pounds per annum.

The man was as rich as a fictional king, but that was never enough for him.

No amount of power was enough for him.

“I could kill you right here,” Killian said.

“You could,” Gold agreed.  “And you would hang for it.”

“At least it would be for a crime I actually committed.”

“Big words, Captain.  You and I both know that you are not in any position to move against me.”

Killian finally turned to face him, ignoring the shiver of fear that went through him as he did so; hating it.  “I won’t ask again.”

“And I won’t answer.  Your only concern is that she interests me.  It is so tiresome, having to threaten you.  You would do better to just accept our arrangement.  I command, you act.”

As though Killian could ever forget.

But Killian was not the only one with secrets—Gold had them, and deeper and darker than any one man should.  Secrets that would see Gold, not Killian, at the end of a rope.

If only Killian had proof.

Snarling, Killian backed away from the earl and made his way through the ballroom for the exit.

And found—

“We meet again, Mr. Jones,” said Lady Emma Nolan.  Her bright green eyes sparkled and her voice—somehow it brought light with it.  Killian was helpless to do naught but smile back as he inclined his head in greeting.

“My lady,” he said, and enjoyed the surprise in her eyes at the honorific.

The night was still young and they were the only two preparing to leave.  Emma’s maid stood discreetly behind and the duchess, her chaperone, was nowhere to be seen.  “Are you for home already?”

Her nod made the feathers in her coiffure tremble.  “Believe it or not, Mr. Jones, I am unaccustomed to this sort of evening.  I find myself quite exhausted.”

“I noticed you found the energy to dance,” he said, and wished he hadn’t.

She had stood up for every dance, had played her part brilliantly; Killian had noticed several of her brother’s titled friends called in to do a set with her in the hopes that all of their combined wealth and power might blind Society to the lady’s sins.

She was all anyone talked about, but it was neither her brother’s chosen champions nor her beauty that fueled the whispers in the ballroom.

If Gold wanted her—

“Did you?” She adjusted her wrap around her shoulders but could not hide her smile.  “And yet you never thought to ask me?”

“Lady Emma,” he said, affecting shock, “when we have not even been introduced?”

Her laugh seemed to reverberate; as if the street lamps themselves would dance to her tune, and for a long moment there was silence between them, neither of them moving to break the moment.  The sound of approaching hoofbeats and carriage wheels emerging from the neighboring mews was both an irritation and a welcome distraction as she made to leave him.

“The duchess does not accompany you?”

The feathers trembled again as she shook her head, still smiling.  “I’m for home, Mr. Jones.  I wonder, what shall you write about this evening for your Scandal Sheet?”

She meant the words to amuse, he was sure—a perfect combination of wit and boredom—but underneath it all, Killian heard something else.  Something, he thought, no one was meant to hear:  Sadness.  Loss.  Frustration.

“You don’t want it, do you?”

She watched him, weighing, calculating, as the carriage waited before them to take her away from this place and this life, if only for an evening.  If she was surprised by how easily he read her, she gave no sign of it.  “This is my bed, Mr. Jones.  I must lie in it.  And to do that—it seems I need you.”

The words landed, harder than she ever could have intended, his silly promise of social redemption echoing hollow.  It was cold comfort to know that the earl was already married and could have no designs on Emma’s dowry.

The man had a terrible track record when it came to his wives.

Killian thought that it must be her family—her brother—that interested him.  The young, golden-haired duke had clawed his way back from his sister’s scandal and his own marriage based, as best Killian could ascertain, solely on his charm.

“Lady Emma—” he began, but he did not know what else to say.

“Good night, Mr. Jones.”  She was already moving, down the steps to the waiting carriage.  

He watched her, the way she moved, fascinated by the way the pale fabric of her skirts seemed to swirl in the night air, the way her arm balanced as she smiled at the footman handing her in, a glimpse of ankle in a silver slipper before the door slammed shut and her outrider climbed onto his perch.

He imagined what he might write about her as his curricle pulled up to the mounting block and he took the reins, so lost in his thoughts of her that he did not realize he still followed the lady’s coach until they were well past the turn out of Mayfair and toward her brother’s town house.

He followed her down Bond Street toward Piccadilly and then St. James before he allowed his curricle to fall back, watching the lanterns on the carriage as they navigated the back alleyways behind Duke Street toward the men’s clubs of London.

Lady Emma Nolan, sister of a duke, with a dowry big enough to buy a palace, desperate for a restored reputation and a father for her son—that he had determined to secure for her—was in a parked curricle behind the most exclusive men’s club in Britain.  More than a club—the most expensive, high-class gaming hell in London.

Lady Emma Nolan, behind Killian’s own destination, behind his club, The Swan.  A club run by some of London’s darkest men on behalf of the club’s owner, who went only by the name Swan.  Killian had never seen nor spoken to Swan in spite of their years-long profitable relationship in the trade of information.

Of secrets.

Just the person, Killian had decided, to turn to in order to free himself from Gold’s yoke once and for all.  If anyone could access Gold’s secrets, it would be Swan, and Killian was willing to pay any price for what he desired.

Emma’s outrider—a giant of a man, Killian suddenly realized—was stood in front of the heavy steel door that marked The Swan’s back entrance, banging in a specific pattern to gain entry.

He should stop her.  He moved to, just as the carriage door opened and Killian strained for a glimpse of her pale slipper, her white skirts.

But that was not what he saw.

The slipper was high-heeled and dark—the skirts a silk the color of the purest red rose—a corseted bodice that put on display a décolletage of perfect proportions.  Painted lips, kohl-rimmed eyes, and a dark wig that hid every golden hair.

Killian Jones watched her disappear into the club’s back entrance and he smiled.

Here was a story.

And—just maybe—an answer to all of his problems.

--

@katie-dub @profdanglaisstuff @thisonesatellite @optomisticgirl @spartanguard @shireness-says @pirateherokillian @stahlop @onceratheart18 @kmomof4 @mariakov81 

[saphirered]

I absolutely love you're writing and would love just general headcanons for Yussa and his Bard SO. Please and thank you!

Sorry this took so long. Hope you like it! 😘

-

When Yussa first met you, or heard you he almost spilled the contents of his latest carefully planned, prepared and measured project. You made him jump and almost set him back weeks worth of work so when he found himself angrily looking out of the window where that angelic voice came from, it turned out it came right from below, in the square near the Tidepeak. He couldn’t deny you not only had a beautiful voice but knew out way around a lute and lyre too. The music had been beautiful but came at an inopportune moment, no matter what he did he couldn’t block out the sound.

When the music returned the next day during his reading it was very much pleasant. So pleasant he actually moved his chair over to the balcony so he could see you play from the square. Now with a better look, not only were you a great musician, you’re gorgeous at that too and he was not at all surprised to see the crowd gathered below watching you play and hanging onto every word of your song. He’d sent Wensforth to deliver you a generous reward for your entertainment. He’d seen the donations people left in a hat at your feet but deemed your skills rather undervalued. If you wanted to you could gather a crowd contesting those who attended the Ruby of the Sea’s performances, in his opinion.

Day after day, this nicely dressed goblin would bring you a most generous amount of coin that provided you not only a stay in a lavish inn, but also paid for all your daily expenses and then some. In the middle of your performance you couldn’t go after the goblin to thank him for his donation but on a particularly rainy day you were able to follow where he went; into the tower people had warned you of, the one without doors and only a balcony and some windows that seemed to move every day or even hour.

So after your performance you went knocking. Of course there was no door so you felt a little stupid knocking against the stone tower. When no answer came you just sat down at the base gently plucking away at the strings of your instrument. You’d wait to see if someone came home or left. It was nightfall when you saw someone on the balcony and you shouted up.

Little did you know this would be the beginning of something life changing. The Tidepeak would not be a place you’d distance yourself from and its master even less so. He’d ask you to play for him, revealing he had been sending you these generous donations. Yussa Errenis had offered you more than triple what he had given you for no more than an hour of musical entertainment once a week, more than you’d make in that same week alone so how could you refuse.

Those once a week for an hour extended to several times a week and long conversations after as not only were you an expert musician, you made for company just as good and for the first time in a long time Yussa realised he might not be as much of a solitary creature after all. He was simply lacking the company he needed and could appreciate. There was a mutual understanding and trust between you two, and a honesty he had not found anywhere else.

You let Yussa hear the new songs you’d been working on and pieces you were composing first before you played them in the open, and even left some of them just for his ears and realising this may just have made the stoic wizard blush like never before. You’d managed to break that attitude and while a man of manners and a head held high attitude, he wasn’t as cold nor distant with you. Though, not even you could tame that arrogance. Nor did you want to. There was something attracting about that.

You’re both smart enough people to know when an infatuation grows into something more and this is it. So you did what any reasonable adult would do; sat down and worked it out, communicated and figured out where you would stand in this. When the feeling turned out to be mutual it worked in both your favours as you could simply engage in that instead of keeping up an air of professionalism between musician and patron.

That did not mean your private concertos stopped. If anything they grew more frequent and if you weren’t on the road, had another place to perform or the weather was just simply bad, the door of the Tidepeak would be open to you day and night, and Yussa’s company at your side be that to listen to you play, you gently strumming away while he worked, or the two of you talked until the early hours of morning about your lives, your songs, his work or the hardships and frustrations you’d endured since you last met.

Physical affection would have to go slow. You might not be as opposed, it’s something Yussa needed to be eased into. Having lived alone and without the comforts of another for so long, he quickly got overwhelmed and needed a moment for himself. Never would you shame or judge him for that. You understood and that’s when he knew for sure he could see a future with you.

From that moment on, no more would you sleep in a tavern or an inn or wherever else you found suitable. You’d get your own space at the Tidepeak to do with as you pleased and while he had given you your own sitting room and balcony, you’d still most often found your way to his study even if just to sit there. Yussa wasn’t at all opposed to this as he rather enjoyed your company regardless of volume. He’d gotten used to it and would miss your presence when working.

Kisses were a rarity for the first few months and Yussa let you take the lead when it came to them but over time he grew more daring and eventually even came to initiate them of his own volition and without a feeling of needing to satisfy you but simply because he enjoyed them. You’d find yourself sitting on the couch, Yussa using you as a pillow while he read and he’d press a kiss against wherever was most convenient from his position. It never failed to make you smile and he’d do it just to see you smile, taking pride in getting such a gentle response.

Yussa is not a trusting person and that doesn’t mean he doesn’t trust you but old habits do die hard. Sleeping in the same space had been something he just couldn’t do, not even the meditative trance of his elvish blood. However, when you two fell asleep on the couch together, that made that easier. A bed was still a big no for sleeping purposes but the couch had become better and better and no longer would he lie awake while you slept.

Going out in public with Yussa may have been a bigger step in your relationship than physical intimacy of any kind. Yussa knew the opinions of the sharks around him and what lengths they would go to get into his good graces and he wanted to shield you from that, if not for your own sake then for his. But he couldn’t simply act like you didn’t exist and his changes in attitude came out of nowhere as those sharks also weren’t fools.

Attending a ball with Yussa was always something, you’d be stared down like the main show of the evening, or as if you just entered the room stark naked but you were very sure you weren’t. You’d be swarmed by people in a matter of moments, people wishing to hear the latest gossip and figure out your exact connection with the master of the Open Quay and during Yussa’d be internally screaming absolutely exasperated by these intruding annoyances and simpletons. Luckily he had your charm to save yourself and him. You’d deflected all advances, questions and unpleasant encounters like a protective shield with ease and grace and if those failed you a simple discrete spell to charm them into leaving you the hell alone was not out of the question. He couldn’t be more thankful. Maybe he should bring you along more often as you had proven to be his saving grace.

You may not be a politician nor were you schooled in his kind of magic. He may not be a musician nor was he particularly schooled in the ways of the bard’s colleges. None of that mattered because you were both willing to learn, showing an interest in the life of the other. Admittedly certain practices would never be the thing for the other but that didn’t matter because you could still appreciate the other’s love for it.

At the end of the day you were happy and would be happy, be that because you wrote a new song or Yussa cracked the code to a spell of his own making, you for scoring an invitation to play at some famous place in front of some renowned individuals, or him for making way in his practices and helping a group of curious individuals end a threat looming over this world. You were content with your wildly different lives and happy a song and an annoyance began it all.

[aros001]

Read through light novel vol. 14. Random thoughts.

I haven't read/watch a lot of harem stories. My exposure is mainly from Rosario+Vampire, Negima, UQ Holder, and maybe Code Geass and Overlord (I'm not sure if I should count Konosuba). So my perspectives on how harems typically work in stories is a bit limited. That said, I do like how Naofumi's "harem" differs from the norm I'm aware of.

Most harem MCs: Has many girls after his heart/wang and is either oblivious to it, can't make up his mind as to who he actually likes, or doesn't have the time for love/booty.

Naofumi: "Will you people f**king leave me alone?!"

I just love the concept of Naofumi's "harem", where a second person who likes him romantically isn't even introduced until volume 10 and Naofumi is absolutely annoyed with every member who joins his "harem", save for Raphtalia.

I tend to forget Naofumi has a brother because it isn't brought up that much, even though I did like that backstory for Naofumi we got in vol. 1 regarding him. It does make me wonder how much time is passing in his old world vs. this new one. With the other three heroes, they died, so they don't really have lives they can go back to. But for Naofumi's parents and brother he could theoretically be missing for months or years by the time if or when he goes back. But back on topic, I do like him drawing parallels to his family and Sadeena's, how his brother compares and contrasts with her and her sister when it came to the pressure from the parents. I already like Sadeena but it was nice to see her and Naofumi actually getting to bond a little over something that was very personal to one of them, without romance or attraction being the main drive of their interaction like it usually is. Honestly, there were some nice parallels drawn between characters throughout. Naofumi's brother with Sadeena and her sister. Sadeena and Raphtalia's father with Shildina and the child emperor. Even a little bit with Raphtalia's status in Q'ten Lo with Naofumi's in Siltvelt. It's a good thing she's not staying too long or she might end up in a harem bath like he did (even though, given the difference between male and female biology, there wouldn't be much point in that. She'd get her selection of guys but can only get pregnant with one at a time).

I'll admit, most of this book I was waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me, mainly because of Naofumi's comments throughout of how well the invasion was going and how stupid the enemy was being. I was waiting for it all to be some kind of trap or manipulation but...nope, their government really was just that bad and the victory was just that easy. On the one hand, it does make it feel like less of an earned victory, since they didn't have to fight too much to achieve it until the very end (and in that case it was mostly Sadeena and Raphtalia against technically the same single opponent), but on the other hand, in regards to the overall story, a comment from Naofumi does make an argument for why it works, comparing Q'ten Lo and its ruling class to Queen Melromarc. A respected ruler whom is very skilled at diplomacy and manages to work with or at least create truces with other countries, even those hostile to hers like Siltvelt, vs. the child emperor of a completely isolated country (save for some imports from Siltvelt) whom is placed on the throne far before he's ready and puppeted from behind the scenes by a very self-serving individual. There is certainly a very (unfortunately) real argument to be made as to why the latter would be already be on the verge of falling apart from such greed and sort-sighted actions. Wisdom and long-term planning vs. greed and short-term gains.

This is going to sound weird but Motoyasu #2 reminds me a little of Bakugo from My Hero Academia, in regards that they both fill a similar trope, where the character (a non-villain) is very unpleasant and easy to hate but you, the audience, do have to acknowledge, even begrudgingly, how good and skilled they are at what they do. He's a horrific perv and womanizer but his blacksmithing abilities are genuinely impressive, especially with how he handled that cursed blade from the Hydra and his explanation of life force applied to smithing. I don't think we've had another character quite like that yet in this story. The other three heroes were also unpleasant and easy to hate but after the first wave battle they never really showed anything the audience is forced to give them props for, at least in comparison to what Naofumi and party could already do. They were unpleasant and were useful only in what they could potentially be once they got their heads out of their asses, not for what they were currently. I imagine we'll get something similar to the trope with Trash at some point, as even the Queen herself talked about how brilliant a strategist he once was. Though Bakugo grew as a character as time went on and the unpleasant parts of his character slowly winded down. I'm not sure we'll see that with Motoyasu #2 and Trash. Trash is maybe more likely but he'll have more of a journey he'll have to go through after how unpleasant (and kind of unhinged) he's been.

The parts about Naofumi's character that I like the most have almost nothing to do with him being a hero. I love that he's a really good businessman, both of the good and shady parts of it, and that he's a really good cook, even when he's not adding life force to the dishes. For as much as he wants to go home, of the four heroes he'd be the one who'd have the easiest time settling down in the new world once the waves are gone, since being the Shield Hero just makes what he does a little easier and it's not absolutely essential to do it. He can use his shield to improve the quality of medicines or compound it for him but he still can make good medicine on his own.

Also that he can't stop basically adopting kids despite flatly denying that he is any sort of parental figure or that he should be seen as such.

"I'm not your mother!" He says as he wears an apron and cooks and dishes up delicious hot meals every day.

"I'm not your father!" He says as he teaches them confidence and toughens them up against those who'd ever try and hurt them again.

"I'm your owner! I'm a tyrant! A dictator! I'll make you work off every penny I've spent on you!" He says as he keeps them safely protected from the dangers of the world they can't yet handle and offers them a place of peace and security like they've never had before, taking the time out of his day to play with and entertain them when they ask him enough.

Naofumi collects son and daughter figures like Lilo and Steven Universe collect father and mother figures. No wonder Raphtalia and so many women like him. He's a business owner, can cook, never gets drunk, and is good with kids and animals (and threatened to feed a kid to an animal! That's double points right there).

That reminds me. I'm not sure how much time passes between when each group/generation of Holy Heroes is summoned but I'm curious when we'll meet (or if we've already met) a child/decedent of one of the previous heroes. A previous Shield Hero apparently really like his harems so I'm sure he must have sired at least a few children (unless the shield also offers protection against pregnancy (Condom Shield!)).

So...Makina. Bitch #3 or Kyo #2? I think either would fit, though I suppose Bitch #2 is just my nickname for Kyo and not one Naofumi ever gave him. Honestly, from just the short bit she was in the story, she kind of feels like if Kyo and Bitch had a baby.

...I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

I kind of love Ren and Rishia being exposition buddies, just exclaiming aloud all the techniques and magics that are happening during a fight.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/shieldbro/comments/fm85q5/read_through_light_novel_vol_14_random_thoughts/

[paradife-loft]

Close reading all the Jin Guangyao scenes: episode 24

Episode 10 | Episode 11 | Episode 22 | Episode 23

The title of this is a lie, actually, since the first half? two thirds? of this is going to be finishing up with episode 23, but ah well.

So, I left off with the previous episode right after the deeply unfortunate clusterfuck of a conversation between Jin Guangyao, Lan Xichen, Nie Mingjue, and Jin Guangshan, followed by “sometimes war crimes can double as grooming your extremely emotionally vulnerable son, and that’s terrible”. Which means now, it’s time for…

Swearing an (extremely ill-advised) oath of holy fratrimony!

This is a bit of speculation, since we see almost no detail on what went into the decision to become sworn brothers, but my read is that it at least partially reflects a political motive – tying prominent members of three clans together, rebuilding the rather demolished state of firm alliances and power left in the wake of a major war – while also reflecting a personal desire I think on Lan Xichen’s part to repair the rift between his two good friends, and offer them each a promise that they won’t be left isolated in the middle of larger forces trying to break them down.

The political aspect becomes a bit more apparent when considering the wording of the oath itself, actually: “We are liable to the immortal sects. We are to bring peace and stability to the commoners… If there is a change of heart, one will be faced with a thousand accusing fingers, and the wrath of Heaven and men!” – While this reflects a shared set of values, certainly, it also strikes me as relevant that these three, two of them current sect leaders, are swearing essentially not to become like the Wen clan that they’ve just deposed: they’ll be accountable to others, they’ll work for the benefit of those living under their authority, rather than capriciously throwing their weight around for personal gain.

Oh, and also - I’ve mentioned before, the dramatic irony here in how the consequences they invoke for failing to uphold the principles of their sworn brotherhood are in fact exactly what happens to Jin Guangyao in the end – given what’s to come, the oath he’s swearing ends up being more like a curse. Don’t swear oaths, kids, it never works out well. Of course, at the time, I don’t think he has any intention at all of betraying those principles – the “bring peace and stability to the commoners” part is certainly something he makes an effort to follow up on, once he has the power to do so! Still, for something that starts out with an explicit declaration to not be the sort of evil that Nie Mingjue so straightforwardly abhors, it’s… a very sad outcome.

Moving forward, we have… the most awkward set of greetings in the entire world, I swear. Mingjue shows up to the post-victory banquet and gets offered the world’s most politically-fraught location on the seating chart; Lan Xichen then reminds Jin Guangyao in front of the assembled members of three(!) separate sects to call him da-ge instead of Chifeng-zun. Jin Guangyao redoes his greeting/offer with the most intense deer-in-headlights look (pictured above), pretty clearly aware that Mingjue is not about to be happy with him. (This little exchange, including the encouraging nod also from LXC to NMJ, is further evidence beyond simply their general personalities I think, that Xichen was the driving force behind the brotherhood oath, especially in a personal sense.) But also, it serves as another piece of foreshadowing future events: knowing Mingjue is unlikely to be happy with the offer of Wen Ruohan’s old throne, Jin Guangshan hands the actual task of offering it off to Jin Guangyao. Here at least, Mingjue doesn’t get distracted from who’s really behind the offer, and addresses Jin Guangshan in vehemently refusing the seat; but it nonetheless continues establishing the pattern where JGS uses Jin Guangyao to be the primary face of his own less-than-savory political maneuvering.

(Which in general, makes me think it’s kind of interesting that he does have Jin Guangyao there greeting guests with him in the first place, and not Jin Zixuan? It’s a bit difficult for me to read what the status of co-greeter is supposed to be – second-in-command, or glorified servant? I think there may be a little bit of both, if JGY is there on one hand because he was the one setting the banquet up, but on the other hand also, because JGS wants to parade him around as his very own hero of the Sunshot Campaign, as Sect Leader Yao is so kind to remind us.

And then there’s... the one-on-one chat with Wei Wuxian.

First off, I’d like to link people to this post by @hunxi-guilai​, which honestly just goes over… a lot of what I probably would have liked to say about the implied meanings in this conversation. Essentially: Wei Wuxian is interested in what’s going on with this other Sunshot hero who also seems to be not carrying any sword (in a scene where we even see Jiang Yanli carrying hers!), and who had previously used a somewhat unorthodox weapon for his Wen Ruohan stabbing. Jin Guangyao though, is… not really interested in drawing attention to either of those facts (and I’m sure not in a way that would see him in solidarity with WWX), considering “unorthodox and outside the standard set of accepted behaviours in cultivator society” is the opposite of what he’s trying to look like right now.

Relevant to this, honestly, is the question of “what the fuck exactly even is a soft sword,” which CQL does approximately nothing to explain on the face of it, and only very implicitly does so if you’re obsessive like me and try to take blurry screenshots to compare the sword we see stabbing WRH with the sword that Jin Guangyao uses when fighting WWX’s paperman in episode 41.

Which do appear to be the same sword, inability to get a good clear look at it in either context notwithstanding. Oh, and JGY seems to have either repainted or swapped out the hilt, at some point in the intervening years – perhaps to better match the Jin clan’s aesthetic of white & gold sword decoration that we see on Jin Zixuan’s Suihua?

Anyway, for context on the “what’s a soft sword” issue, I am going to quote a relevant portion from the (EXR translation of the) MDZS novel, even though in general I’m trying to keep the canon cross-pollination in these meta to a minimum.

Back then, when Jin GuangYao worked undercover at Wen RuoHan’s side, he had often hidden the sword at his waist, wreathed the sword around his arm to use during critical moments. Although the blade of Hensheng seemed to be soft to the extremity, attacking with lingering motions, it was in reality both sharp and haunting. Once the blade had wrapped around the opposition, Jin GuangYao would apply it with a bizarre spiritual power, and one would quickly be severed into pieces by the sword, despite its tender appearance. Quite a few famous swords had been battered into piles of scrap iron just like this. At the moment, the blade of the sword attacked as though it was a serpent with silver scales, biting at the paperman without any hesitation.

So yeah – it’s an uncommon weapon, a sword with a blade that can bend and thus works very well for things like being sneaky and unassuming, and not fighting “fairly” in a way the vast majority of other cultivators would have any experience countering.

And... oh my god. Now we’re finally onto episode 24 properly.

The first input we get from Jin Guangyao this episode is this charming smirk as Wei Wuxian walks up into the center of the hall to interrupt JGS’s unpleasant “hey let’s renew this betrothal~” play. Personal amusement about a rather dramatic individual showing up to do something undoubtedly also dramatic? Entertainment about how a person not known for his skill at subtle political maneuvering is probably about to come in and make a mess that the Jin clan will be able to spin to their own advantage? Ehhh, why not both?

Though of course, the Jiang clan members function very well as a unit here once Wei Wuxian comes in to shake things up, and it’s not nearly the uncomplicated win for the Jin clan that he was probably expecting. Meanwhile, once that’s over, he takes the next opportunity to introduce his father’s next order of business, the invitation to the Phoenix Mountain hunt - and in fact, he does so with an absolutely seamless transition from Jiang Yanli’s rejection of the proposed marriage plan renewal:

“Everyone. For the previous Clan Leader Jiang to have such a daughter is already a great comfort to his soul. And not just Jiang Clan, but after the mess with the Wen Clan, every clan has experienced losses. This is a crucial time for us to rebuild and we critically are in need of manpower. For the past days, Father has spent a lot of time pondering over this matter. Luckily, he’s found a countermeasure. I dare to represent my father in inviting everyone back to Jinlintai during the fall. Jin clan will be putting all efforts towards reorganizing the round-up and hunting event at Hundred Phoenixes Mountain.”

It’s easy to overlook, I think, but the amount of rhetorical skill to put that together on the fly? It’s really not for nothing that Meng Yao was first introduced as being impressively sharp and well-spoken. He’s taking what starts as a loss of face for the Jin clan, redirecting it to focus on the virtue of Jiang Yanli, and then tying that in to the losses and worries that every sect now has in the wake of the war ending. And having reminded them of their own interests and present worries here, he steps in to offer a solution that slots the Jin clan in back at the top, looking extremely good, due to the wealth and comparative manpower advantage they have over everyone else after entering the war relatively late.

(Also, to clarify since it’s only ever implied rather than stated outright in the show, via the dialogue here and then another piece during the hunt itself – the Hundred Phoenix Mountain hunt, from what I can tell, is a regular event held for the purpose of showing off each clan’s skills so that they can attract new prospective disciples, hence why it’s a solution to the sects’ manpower being depleted by the war. Additionally, given the use in particular of reorganizing the event, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that ordinarily, this event would be one put on by the Chief Cultivator. So with the Wen sect demolished, there was nobody readily available to step up and take over handling this event until now. Jin Guangshan may be fooling none of the viewers about his intentions in adopting a seat right next to Wen Ruohan’s old chair, but he’s certainly making good use of a-Yao’s rhetorical talent to get yet another instance of stepping into the role vacated by the Wen sect looked upon as praiseworthy benevolence.)

…And then what thanks does he get for it? Some dispassionate praise, more work, and no appreciation for the tea he’s made.

It’s a bit telling (and painful) the way he responds to being asked if he’s found the location of the Yin metal yet, also: “Not yet; I’m incompetent.” I think he’s definitely the sort to feel, even as he’s very aware of the worth of his skills and what sort of areas he’s good with in some respects, the foundation of his belief in himself is nonetheless incredibly rocky and it’s easy for a reminder of any sort of failure to loom suddenly very large over his self-assessment in the moment.

At the same time though, Jin Guangyao is very much an adaptable person, and we see that on full display with his next explanation: that the one who has the last piece of Yin metal may very likely be Wei Wuxian. It’s both an exercise in political savvy, pointing out a powerful and disruptive influence likely to cause problems for Jin Guangshan in the future if his interference in the marriage proposal is any indication, and a significant sewing together of information from several different sources: Wei Wuxian’s opportunity to be in the same place previously as Xue Yang, as he explains to JGS, but also the front-row seat for WWX interfering with the power of Wen Ruohan’s Yin metal using Chenqing and his new Yin Tiger Seal.

I don’t think he holds any particular animosity toward Wei Wuxian at this point? This reads to me like a calculation based pretty essentially on: his father is clearly invested in expanding the power of the Jin sect and diminishing the interest or ability of other sects to oppose him, and also in (instrumentally to that goal) getting his hands on the last piece of Yin metal. Jin Guangyao has been explicitly tasked with working on the latter concern, and probably implicitly at least with the former - at some point, and some point soon, he’s going to need to produce results on that front, or else be dropped from JGS’s incredibly conditional regard for not being useful enough. Given the confluence of circumstances, lining up suspicions (which for all he knows are likely even true!) against Wei Wuxian serves both goals, and gives him another safe place to rest for a day or two before having to continue worrying how to be helpful enough to keep deserving his newfound status.

And that’s it for Jin Guangyao in episode 24! Poor kiddo. Looks like you can climb another rung higher on the ladder, sure, but it doesn’t mean you’ll make it free of being used for quite a long while still.

[ohwaitimthewriter]

Ner naak (My peace)

Pairing : Din Djarin x earthling!reader

Warning : none.

Summarize : Din Djarin meets you, an earthling, who has no idea of the existence of an outer space. 

Words : 2633

A/n : This is probably the longest story I had to translate but I hope it really worths it! You can find the previous chapters in the Ner naak Masterlist link just below. Enjoy your reading!! 

Masterlist. // Ner naak Masterlist.

Life, could manifest itself in some particularly strange ways. And there were many things you had not expected to experience, the first of which was to host two beings from the space under your roof. The second was probably having to justify the presence of a man in full armor sitting in the passenger seat of your car. 

You had managed to convince Mando to leave the child at home, under the watchful eye of your dog. In fact, you had even hoped that he too would remain out of sight, but trying to convince a Mandalorian was a long shot. 

Mando insisted on coming with you. You were going to look for the mechanical parts needed to get the ship back up and running, and he wanted to make sure you had the right materials. Even though you had explained to him that in any case, the parts you collected would be transformed to fit the ship, he didn't want to hear anything. 

Din was actually curious. He had heard so much about the Earth and its people. And to him, you were like an alien, it was a whole world to discover, and he didn't want to miss it for anything in the world. It might even have been the first time he could take the time to discover a planet without getting shot. 

But it didn't make it any easier for you. 

You looked at your neighbor, leaning against your car door, with the most natural smile you could offer. Your hands were clenched on your steering wheel and your neurons were already wriggling to find a logical explanation for Mando's armor.

"Anton! To what do I owe the pleasure?" 

"Oh, I saw you get in the car with... huh, your friend, I thought I'd say hi."  He said, staring at Mando indiscreetly. "Is there a carnival in town or something?" He asked for you.

Anton wouldn't take his eyes off Mando and it was getting embarrassing. You couldn't tell how Mando felt, but if you were in his shoes, you probably would have hated that look. You could see from the corner of your eye that Mando was holding his gaze. So you came up with the best excuse you could think of.

"Actually, it's a birthday party for a friend's daughter. She's turning six, and you know how little girls that age are, they dream of having their knight in shining armor." You say. "So, huh, my friend here has kindly offered to play along."

You clear your throat. You prayed silently for this lie to work, and when your neighbor suddenly appeared to understand a math class, you refrained from crying out for relief. 

"Ah! Like the knights of the Round Table! What an impressive armor, don't change a thing buddy!" Anton enthused over. 

Mando stared at him silently. Poor Mando, he probably didn't understand anything about this knight story, but at least it was a decent explanation for the moment.

You didn't want to linger there any longer, you thanked Anton and ended up on the road to your mechanic.

"A knight in shining armor?" Mando asked you. 

" Well, it's a long story. But to make it short, the novels are full of romantic stories involving medieval knights. I could lend you a book on the legends of King Arthur, if you like to read, of course." You said. 

"I don't know if I like reading." 

You took your eyes off the road to look at Mando. How could someone not know whether or not they liked to read? And you suddenly wondered what that man had done in his life to not be able to know. 

"I never had a chance to read." 

Din felt he had to justify himself. You had been so surprised by his answer that he wondered if reading was not an integral part of being an earthling. And then you nodded, giving him a warm smile. How could so much kindness slumber in a single being?

"Well, since you're going to be stuck here for a little while, maybe this is your chance to find out?" 

Mando didn't answer anything. Only a hesitant nod indicated that he agreed, and your smile only got bigger. 

Din watched you focus on the road again. He took the opportunity to take a look at the machine that was driving you both to your chosen destination. It was a strange passenger compartment. He had quickly figured out that it was thanks to the pedals that you were sending the necessary impulse to the machine to move forward, but he was still amazed by the lack of controls and instruments for piloting. He put his arm on the armrest of the car door, but because of his gauntlet, the button to open the window went off. 

The third thing that was particularly unexpected for you was to see a Mandalorian getting startled by a window opening itself. You had to admit it, Mando was a strange bird, but watching him discover the little earthly things was surprisingly entertaining. You closed the window on your side calmly as Mando settled back onto his seat, almost embarrassed to have been surprised. 

"At least I know I'm not the only one who's taken aback by new things." You said. "Wait, you're gonna love this!" You excitedly said as you pressed the button to turn on the radio. 

The music spread around the car and Mando suddenly stared at the radio. There were probably more controls to monitor this little box than there were to drive the vehicle. The music playing was rather rhythmic, Din noticed that you were tapping your steering wheel with your fingers in sync with the song and you seemed to particularly enjoy the song. It was weird by the way. It didn't sound like anything he'd ever heard before, but as strange as it sounded, it wasn't unpleasant at all. 

"You can change if you don't like it, just press this button. " you told him.

Din was curious, he pressed it and suddenly several voices rose up to narrate he didn't know what about he didn't know who. He pressed again and this time a much softer song was played. He liked it. He let it end and changed the radio station again until you recognized the first notes of a band that you had fully intended to introduce to the Mandalorian. 

"This one! That's them!" you  exclaimed. 

"Them?"

"Daft Punk, that's them!" 

You couldn't see it, but Din frowned as he listened to Get Lucky playing on the radio. He was focused on whether or not he liked those "Daft Punk" with whom you had compared him. His finger barely touched the button, ready to change the station and after a few seconds of listening, he didn't feel particularly flattered by the music. He changed it without any further ado. 

"You don't like it?"

"Not really." he replied. 

"It would have been funny, you guys look alike, you'd have made a great trio. " You teased. 

"Why?"

You didn't say anything. You checked to see if there were any police officers around before you took out your phone, looking on the internet for a picture of the Daft Punk. Then you handed your phone to Mando, who silently observed the picture of the two men in helmets. 

"It's not beskar, it won't even stop a blaster shot, these helmets are useless." He stated suddenly, putting the phone back where you took it. 

You couldn't help but giggle. You shook your head in disbelief, looking at him. 

"Beskar doesn't exist here and these helmets aren't made for..." And then you realized what he just said. "Wait, a shot of... of what?"

"Blaster. " he said. 

"What the... no. Actually, I'd rather not know." You changed your mind. "These helmets are like, let's say, a symbol. It's just, for appearance's sake." 

Din didn't really understand the point behind it, so he didn't answer. Maybe there was some logic in it, but in this case, it was beyond his knowledge. 

Then you park the car at a small parking lot. There was a building in corrugated iron across the street, and several dented cars were stored under a shed. 

" Here we are. This is where I hope to find most of the pieces for your ship. This auto shop belongs to my father's old friend. He shouldn't ask too many questions. " You said, more to reassure yourself than to reassure Mando. 

"If he does, I'm still a knight in shining armor. "He said, and you could hear the grin that Din had on his face. 

He didn't get out of the car until you stepped outside. You had made a list so that you wouldn't waste too much time here. 

" The only thing you're missing is your trusty steed. " you joked. 

As soon as you'd finished your sentence, your father's friend was already coming to meet the two of you.

"Y/n! It's good to see you!" 

"Hello Henry, it's been a long time. "You said. 

"I know you've been working a lot, but you should tell your students to leave you alone for an hour or two and come see me! "He called out. 

"You're right, they'll probably be happy about that actually. "You said. 

"And who are you bringing me?" 

Henry turned to Mando, offering his hand to shake it. Mando seemed to hesitate for a moment, but when you nodded gently, he shook Henry's hand. 

"Henry, this is Mando."

"Nice to meet you, Mando, so tell me, what can I do for you?" Henry just went on. 

You handed him your list, mentally thanking him for not dwelling on Mando's appearance. Henry stared at it, rubbing his beard. 

"Well, it's a big restoration you got there. "He noticed. 

"Ah, that's a hell of a slog, you could say. "You said. 

"What type?"

"Never been seen before. " You answered and you couldn't be more exact. " It belongs to Mando. It's a real gem. You wouldn't believe it."

You would've given yourself an Award for acting. Henry glanced enviously at Mando, probably imagining a real gem in the automobile world. 

"Any self-respecting man gives his marvel a name, so what's the name of this beauty?" 

You rolled your eyes. Only a man like Henry could have said such a thing. But, to your surprise, Mando replied. 

"The Razor Crest." 

"You'll have to show me that car!"

"Once we get it up and running. " Mando said. 

You were stunned to see Mando getting into your game, but you were happy about it. Henry nodded and sneaked into his workshop with your list. 

"The Razor Crest?" You repeated. "So you really give names to ships?" 

"It's more like..." Mando looked around before he showed you the license plate of a car in the parking lot. "something like that." 

"License plate? Ships are identified in space?"

He nodded when Henry appeared again, making a sign to follow him. After joining him to the workshop, Henry pushed a wagon towards you and Mando. 

"I don't have everything, but take what you can. " he said. 

"Thank you, Henry. Let me know the bill. "You said. 

He nodded and left the two of you to gather the pieces.

You'd already stuck your nose in the high shelves, scrutinizing every piece of metal you encountered. 

"It's nice of you to offer, but unfortunately, whatever money you have is probably worthless here. That's one of the consequences of not knowing the true extent of the universe. " You said, grabbing an alternator in your hand. 

You looked at it from every angle and decided it would do the trick. You put several in the cart. You took a step back, trying to find out where Henry stored his spark plugs.

"So how can I thank you? " Mando asked. 

"Well... if you've got a way to get to the top of that shelf, I'm in."

You showed him the position of the spark plugs and sighed looking for a stepladder, but Mando had another idea in mind. 

"I've got one. " he simply said. 

You frowned, not understanding what he wanted to do when he pushed his cloak to one side, revealing a dorsal reactor. You would have been speechless if he hadn't suddenly left the ground and risen three feet in the air, grabbing a few spark plugs before reaching the ground again.

You lost your words as Mando handed you the pieces. You didn't want to stare at him, but it wasn't very common to see a human being flying with a jet pack either. 

"People don't do that around here?" Mando said.

It was more of a statement than a question, but you shook your head, telling him that they didn't. But you couldn't stop smiling either. 

"It's just, amazing. "You said as you picked up the spark plugs. " But, uh... " You moved closer to Mando to put his cloak back over the jet pack. "As much as I'd love to try that someday, you' d better hide this. »

You felt sad about having to tuck away Mando's appearance like that. Though, you smiled at him kindly as you kept selecting useful mechanical components for the ship. 

"Earthlings really don't like anything that doesn't look like them. " Mando said suddenly.

It couldn't be more true. You were watching Mando. His helmet, his armor, the equipment that girdled him, and now his jetpack. You weren't really concerned about the "normal" people, you were concerned about the authorities. You were worried about the government, the scientists, NASA, all those people who would make sure that no one would find out about a faraway place. You were worried about these people and their scientific experiments. You were gradually realizing that you were probably the only person on Earth who had living proof that the universe was much wider than people were willing to admit. And somehow that was frightening and it put you in a dangerous position. Because people don't like those who know too much. 

"I wish I could tell you that it's not true, that everyone can proudly show their culture and their differences, but in fact it is not the case. If you're not within the framework, you become a target. And there are so many crazy people in this world that some would be able to kill you for being different. I really wish I could proudly announce that you're living proof that we're not alone in the universe, but that would be like sentencing us to death... both of us. " You concluded. 

Din had paid attention to your words. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe he wasn't as safe on this planet as he thought he was. He was becoming more and more aware that leaving the Earthlings behind in the universe had done more harm than good. And then, your last sentence caught his attention. Sentencing you both to death. Why would she be? He understood why he would, but y/n? He didn't realize he could endanger you just by knowing he existed.

Din stopped you suddenly, putting his hand on your shoulder for the first time. It may even have been the very first time he had ever initiated physical contact with an almost stranger. And it felt like a pact he was signing with you. 

"I can promise you this will never happen. " Mando said. 

"You don't know about the doggedness of our leaders. " You said.

"And they don't know about the Mandalorians."

His statement sounded like a promise, and the anxiety that Din had noticed in your eyes had evaporated. Yes, if necessary, he would protect you.

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

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[marginalgloss]

the red telephone

The thing about Control is that I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where I’ve felt such a vast difference between a game’s artistic and technical quality and its total lack of thematic and narrative depth. 

There is a good case for saying that this oughtn’t to be a problem. It’s long been the case that if a video game is entertaining enough, any further ‘depth’ (by the standards established by other media) is unnecessary. This is why we don’t much care if the story isn’t good in Doom. The sense of being there and doing the thing is enough. But Doom isn’t drawing on influences bigger than itself. Clearly it’s been influenced by a variety of things — from Dungeons and Dragons to heavy metal album covers and Evil Dead and everything in between — but Doom is not referential, and it’s not reverential. Doom is complete unto itself. Control is not complete.

Horror films and ghost stories and weird fiction are best when they are about things. Think about The Turn of the Screw and The Thing and Twin Peaks and Candyman, to pick a few examples off the top of my head. They work not just because what we see and hear and read is mysterious. They are compelling because they have intriguing characters and thematic resonance. The Babadook is not just a story about a monster from a book for children. Night of the Living Dead isn’t just about, you know, the living dead. By comparison I find it hard to say that Control is about anything, but it presents itself as adjacent to this kind of work. It is a magnificent exercise in style which trades in empty symbols. It wraps itself in tropes from weird fiction in the hope of absorbing meaning by osmosis.

It feels like a wasted opportunity, because the setup is not without interest. You play as Jesse Faden, a woman supposedly beginning her first day on the job at the Federal Bureau of Control, a mysterious government organisation that deals in high-level paranormal affairs. The FBC is a feast of architectural and environmental detail: a vast Brutalist office complex with an interior that seems to be stranded in time somewhere around the mid-1980s. Everything is concrete and glass and reel-to-reel machines and terminal workstations. It’s frequently stunning.

Unfortunately most of the staff are missing because Jesse’s visit to their headquarters coincides with a massive invasion by the Hiss, a paranormal force which has taken over the building. The Hiss is a sort of ambient infection that turns people into mindless spirit-drones, chanting in an endless Babel. (Conveniently, most of those drones are present as angry men with guns. There are also zombies, and flying zombies, for variety.)

There is, obviously, more to Jesse than meets the eye. She spends a lot of time talking to someone nobody else can see. But there isn’t that much more to her. Like every other character in the game she is a monotone. There is no reason to believe she has any existence outside the plot devised for her here. Similarly, the other characters you meet exist only as the lines they speak to you. It works only when the effect is entirely, deliberately flat: the most compelling person in the game is Ahti, the janitor with a sing-song voice and a near-indecipherable Finnish accent. He is nothing but what he is — he has no past, no future. He has all the answers, if only you knew what questions to ask.

Control is undeniably stylish. The interiors are striking, vast, spacious. Even on the smallest scale the game has a great eye for little comic interactions via systemised physics. You can shoot individual holes in a boardroom table and watch the thing splinter apart into individual fragments. You can shoot a rolodex and watch all the little cards whirl around in a spiral. If a projector is showing a film you can pick the whole thing up and the film will reveal itself as an actual dynamic projection by spiralling and spinning madly across the nearest walls. (Speaking of film, the video sequences with live actors are great fun, and this being a Remedy game, there’s a fantastic show-within-a-show to be found on hidden monitors around the FBC.) And all of this before I mention the sound design — the music, which is full of concrète mechanical shrieks and groans — and the endless sinister chanting which fills the lofty corridors and hallways of this place, The Oldest House. 

All of this is very, very good. And most of the time it’s quite fun to play. I mean, you can pick up a photocopier and fling it at enemies. It’s never not fun when almost anything can be used as a projectile. And then you get the ability to fly! At its best the combat in Control feels messy and chaotic — in a good way — but in a way that has little to do with typical video game gunplay. Staying behind cover doesn’t work because the only way to regain health is to pick up little nuggets dropped by fallen enemies, so most of the time you have to use your powers to be incredibly aggressive. The result is that often you feel like the end-of-level boss — a kind of monster — throwing yourself into conflict with a team of moderately stupid players who think they’re supposed to be playing a cover shooter circa 2005. 

That you are given a gun at all seems odd. The gun feels like a compromise. The gimmick of a single modular pistol that can shape-change into a handful of other weapons is neat, but those weapons are just uninteresting variations on the same old themes: handgun, shotgun, machine gun, sniper, rocket launcher. The powers are more interesting and powerful. But of course the gun has to be there; can you imagine them having to go out and sell this game without a gun in it? What would Jesse be holding on the front cover? 

A gun is an equaliser. It evens the odds between the weak and the strong. But if you’re already strong it doesn’t feel worthwhile. You’re clearly so much more powerful than everyone else you meet in Control that after a while you begin to wonder why the game is also frequently quite hard. The omission of any difficulty settings is notable in a game of this type; it suggests that the developers were committed to their vision in the way that might recall Dark Souls. In fact the hub-like structure of the game is pretty clearly influenced by From Software’s games, and though it’s nowhere near as challenging, it seems to be reaching towards the same kind of thing.

It’s a game which demands you take it seriously as a crafted object. But then it has all these other elements cribbed from elsewhere — the generic level-based enemies with numbers that fly off them when shot, and the light peppering of timed/semi-randomised side activities, both of which made me think of Destiny. So there’s games-as-service stuff wedged in here too, and it doesn’t sit at all comfortably with this supposedly mysterious, compelling world that you’re supposed to want to explore.

This isn’t a horror game. There are one or two enemies with the potential to induce jump scares, but given that you can always respond with overwhelming force, it’s never really unsettling. But it’s clearly been inspired by horror. A source often mentioned as an inspiration for Control is the internet horror stories associated with the SCP Foundation wiki. From there the game borrows the idea that unlikely everyday objects can become sources of immense cosmic power — hence we see items like a rubber duck, a refrigerator, a pink flamingo, a coffee thermos imprisoned behind glass as if they were Hannibal Lecter. A pull-cord light switch becomes an inter-dimensional portal to an otherworldly motel. The great part about this is that these little stories can be told effectively in isolation; it’s always interesting to come across another object in the game and to discover what it does. (The fridge is especially unpleasant.)

But experiencing this kind of thing in the context of an action game is entirely different to stumbling it on it online. SCP Foundation is pretty well established now, but still, there’s a certain thrill in stumbling across something written there in plain text, titled with only a number. When those stories are good, they can be really good. Given the relative lack of context, and the absence of any graphical set-dressing, there’s room for your imagination to do the heavy lifting. 

In Control these fine little stories are competing for attention with all the other crazy colourful stuff going on in the background. You read a note and you move on to the next thing. You crash through a pack of enemies and the numbers fly off them. There’s never a sense of the little story fitting into an overall pattern. That lack of a pattern can be forgiven in the context of a wiki. In Control, these stories start to feel irrelevant when you never come across an enemy you can’t shoot in the face. In a different format, or a different type of game, this kind of rootless narrative might be more compelling. 

But what is this game about? There’s a sister and brother. A sinister government agency. Memories, nostalgia. A slide projector. It’s all so difficult to summarise. When I think about the game all these words seem to float around in my head, loosely linked, but not in a way that suggests any kind of coherence. The game always seems to be reaching towards some kind of meaning but it only ever feels hollow. It feels flat. Yet all the elements that are good about Control must be made to refer back to these hollow, flat signifiers. Sometimes the flatness works for the game, but mostly it doesn’t.

Today, it’s hard to see that anyone could see the point in establishing a website like SCP Foundation if it didn’t already exist. Viral media is not what it was in the first decade of the 2000s. Written posts that circulate on social media have a shorter half-life than ever. It’s almost impossible for any piece of writing over a few hundreds words to go viral in ways that go beyond labels like ‘shocking’, ‘controversial’, ‘important’, etc. ‘Haunting’ and ‘uncanny’ don’t quite cut it. This kind of thing doesn’t edge into public spaces in the way it used to via email inboxes, or message boards, or blogs. 

Perhaps the weird stuff is still out there. Perhaps we only got better at blocking it out. With the arrival of any new viral content, today’s audience is mostly consumed by questions of authenticity, moral quality, and accuracy. If you think this creepy story might be ‘real’, you’re a mug. If you promote it you might be a dangerous kind of idiot. And that’s fair: there are a lot of dangerous idiots out there. Yet there’s something to be said for an attitude of persistent acceptance when it comes to the consumption of weird stuff on the internet. I know I become gluttonous when I come upon such things. I want to say: yes, it’s all true, every word. I’ve always known it’s all true. 

[valasania-the-pale]

The Last Rose - Chapter One

A figure cloaked in white knelt before her, arms held wide in invitation. “I’m going be gone for a while, Little Rose… A lot of people need help out there, so I’m going to help them. I want you and your sister to be strong for me and smile for your daddy, okay?”

Ruby returned the hug with vigor, burying her face in the crook of the woman’s neck. “Okay, Momma!”

The woman’s smile was affectionate and slightly sad as she pulled away, her hands reaching up to re-fasten the buckle of Ruby’s cloak. It was so big on her tiny body that she wore it more like an adorably oversized blanket.

“That’s my girl.” She ruffled Ruby’s hair. “I love you, Ruby. I’ll be home soon!”

…

Be strong… Every day, I’ve tried. I’ve tried, so, so hard. When the Grimm took her away, I tried my best to stay strong for Dad and Yang… Often, though, it felt like I was trying to hold back the tide. Or outrun the coming night… And now it looms over me, a specter of loss and doubt…

I wonder—

…

Of all the directions I might have taken in life… following in her footsteps… Is this what she’d have wanted for me?

X_0_X

Exhausted, Ruby Rose pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders as she made her way through Mistral’s working district, feeling every inch of the previous week’s mission deep in her bones. Though lacking the snow that had already blanketed its northernmost territories, Mistral’s winters were renowned for their bitter winds.

For a good reason, too, at these heights. She deeply regretted not stopping by her house first for warmer clothing.

Still, it was better than Atlas, where the cold was everywhere – Spreading up from the ground, biting toes, and delivered amidst the heavy snowfall the northern continent received almost daily.

Regardless of the source though, after a week in the wilderness she despised any kind of chill, no matter the source. She needed a soft mattress and a radiator in her life.

The narrow, winding streets were quiet, Mistral’s citizens content to stow away within their sturdy dwellings with their families and dinner. Most were probably already sleeping. Evening was quickly turning into night and Ruby could sympathize.

‘Almost there.’

Check in at the Huntsmen’s Guild, report her success and survival, collect her reward, rest. This assignment would pay her rent for at least the next three months, so she’d hopefully get the chance to relax and take more low-risk missions while the cold lasted.

No guard duty though. The tedium was awful, and she liked her toes.

She turned the corner into one of the city’s many stairwells, this one cutting through the mountainside to bring her into the beginnings of the Market District, where one could find food, supplies, and the headquarters of the majority of the city’s guilds.

Ruby grimaced, her burning thighs protesting the climb. It was too cold for this…

Winter was hard for huntsmen young or old. For those like her, years into her career, it resurrected a deep, throbbing ache in her bones. She could feel it deep inside, like an itch she couldn’t scratch, or a joint out of alignment.

‘Almost there. Just a few more minutes and I can sleep.’

Sleep, and hope the exhaustion was enough to ward away the dreams once more. Her last break hadn’t been nearly as restful as she had hoped—

Thump.

Silver eyes grew wide. Ruby sagged against the freezing stone wall of the stairwell. Her hand grasped her chest above her heart, feeling the aching pangs against her ribcage. Now…?

Thump.

It had been a mistake to allow that train of thought. Breathe.

Just. Keep. Breathing.

Thump.

Eyes clenched shut, Ruby forced her chest to move, inhale… hold… exhale. Rinse. Repeat. Just like she’d read about, like she’d practiced. It would help. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Her back sank down the wall and she tucked her head against her knees. In… out.

Thump.

Her vision warped, so she closed her eyes. ‘This is normal,’ She counselled herself, enforcing calm on her scattering thoughts. ‘It is normal to feel like this after... You’re just anxious and tired and need rest. Breathe. In. Out’

The mantra repeated for several minutes, time losing meaning with the leeching cold and pounding blood. She rhythmically tightened her hands into fists, then slackened. Repeat.

She was patient.

The agonizing throb of her heart eventually slowed into its normal rhythm, and her pulse ceased to fill her ears with an inconstant roar. They were far from strangers to her – far from friendly too. Acquaintances she’d prefer not to know but long since resigned herself to dealing with.

The attacks, while not precisely normal, were something she’d built up years of experience managing as they came. Never wanting to repeat the terrifying experiences of when they’d first began, when she’d had no clue what to do and could only ride them out, such had been a necessity, as vital as maintaining her weapons.

The mind was a weapon. She must keep hers sharpened.

Beacon had prepared her well academically for the problems many huntsmen would face in the field and at home, but it had never seemed as real in the classroom as it had become after the Fall…

Thump.

In… Out.

Ruby sighed wearily. She was fine. Report in, go home, rest. Everything would be just fine once she could lay down and get some sleep.

Resolved, Ruby pulled herself to her feet, shivering as the stone stairwell retained the heat she’d given it, leaving her colder.

Her inner voice was tired even to herself. ‘Almost there.’

A quiet tinkling announced her arrival to the clerk in charge of the guild, a nondescript Mistral native whose hair had begun to grey at the temples. He smiled tiredly at Ruby as she shut the door against the wind. “Welcome back, Ruby. I was hoping I’d see you before my shift was up,” the man greeted warmly.

Ruby smiled back, equally tired. “I managed to catch up to my mark just yesterday,” she said, pulling out her ID for the clerk to scan into the system. “The reports didn’t do it justice. If it wasn’t so injured from the team that chased it away from the village then I’d still be out there.”

It had been an impressive specimen, though that hadn’t been anything to celebrate once she’d found it limping away from civilization. Its gait had been hampered by fractured shards of its own armor digging into its leg. Without that vulnerability, she’d have had to resort to a series of ambushes to wear down its considerable defenses… Not a pleasant prospect in Mistral’s colder northern territory.

The clerk hummed agreeably, eyes widening in surprise as the video feed he’d pulled up from her gear showed the monster in all its malevolence. “Definitely bigger than the reports said,” he agreed.

Goliaths were no huntress’ favorite Grimm to kill. Too big, naturally strong, and far, far too crafty. Hunting them without a full team was considered ambitious for any but the best.

Her uncle had had no trouble with such assignments, and now neither did she.

Thump.

Her fingers tightened on the countertop. She forced her breathing to slow again, closing her eyes briefly against the unpleasant sensation. Ignorant of her internal struggle, the clerk cheerfully typed on his keyboard with one hand, watching the kill feed with interest. Getting to view a professional at work was something special. Even for someone whose job allowed him to view such things every day, it was always a spectacle.

Ruby shifted on her feet, stifling a yawn behind her hand.

The clerk jerked, looking away from the video with an embarrassed flush. “Sorry Ruby. I don’t mean to keep you here overlong. You’re all cleared. The reward should be deposited in your account by mid-morning tomorrow.”

She nodded thankfully. “Thanks Li, I hope you have a good evening.”

“I will now! This’ll be my evening entertainment.”

She stepped out into the cold with a wan, amused smile. It had been a good kill. Better than most huntsmen were capable of on their own, if she were being completely honest. But she was tired and not in the mood for bragging.

Idly, her eyes flicked down to her identification, spinning it in her fingers to see her face – younger and softer when the picture had been taken – and registered team.

R___.

She sucked in a breath against the expected clench in her chest, eyes squeezing shut, but it didn’t come.

Only an echo.

Strangely disappointed, she let the breath go and tucked the card into her pocket, holding her hands there for warmth. The temperature was dropping even further with the descent of the sun below the horizon. Ruby set a quick pace back to her house.

She felt cold.

X_0_X

She stood beside her body, a ghost, frozen, reaching out toward the scene. RED hair kneeling opposite HER crumpled in THREE on the ground, sparking, sputtering, fading, emptying, dying. Swords falling to the ground lifeless distant voices jeered and booed and screamed in horror at the sight of the CORPSE laying on the ground.

Tears streaked her face but she couldn’t move couldn’t run to see if her FRIEND was alright because she knew she knew that PENNY wasn’t alright and PYRRHA and wasn’t alright and nothing at all was right in the world.

Why why did this happen? What was the point? The low, satisfied voice spoke over the uproar, but the words were meaningless to Ruby. They weren’t important didn’t matter what was important was her FRIEND lying DEAD on the ground and she could feel her HEART throbbing in her chest - could only watch and weep and stare, USELESS..

The screens above all their heads turned menacing red as sirens blared; a queen mocking them as the spectators ran, only now realizing they were only PAWNS fit for slaughter.

Move. Move. Move. Be strong. Move forward. Stay ahead of it. Must keep moving on.

X_0_X

Ruby jerked awake, heart throbbing painfully in her chest, cold sweat clinging to her body. In her ears a horribly loud ringing swallowed all other sounds, save one.

Thump.

A hand flew to her chest, eyes squeezing tightly shut. That had been… the Vytal Festival Tournament? That had was years ago, but it felt like she’d just been pulled straight from the moment… That moment. The beginning of the Fall.

Thump.

She breathed deep, desperately trying to stabilize her pulse and push down the encompassing panic. It was just a dream, it was all over. It was done. In… Out. There was nothing to panic about. In. Out. Nothing. In. Out. Why wouldn’t it go away? InOut. In… Out. InOutInOutIn—

Thump.

Cold seared her lungs, spreading like plague through her limbs. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get enough air.

InOutInOut—

Thump.

‘Stop,’ she moaned in the confines of her mind. InOutInOut. ‘Stop! Please!’

Thump.

Her breath came in rapid, shallow gasps. It wasn’t enough. She couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. Silver eyes flew open, blankets falling to her lap as she lurched upright, watching her hands shake violently through vision tinging grey at the edges, periphery warping inwards.

Thump.

‘Stop,’ Calmer. A command. She fought against the fear devouring her. ‘Think.’

Thump.

Breathe.

In. Hold. Out. Wait. In. Hold. Out. Wait. In. Hold. Out. Wait. In.

Thump.

The panic came in waves. Ruby resolutely clung to her breathing, forcing her body to adhere to the rhythm she set for it, riding out the waves of nausea and dizziness. The ringing was nearly unbearable, drowning her, drowning the world.

‘This is normal. It is normal for you to feel like this. It will go away in time.’

In. Hold. Out.

Thump.

The room swam around her when she dared to open her eyes again, pulsing in eddying rings, speckled by spots of white and black. Her body flashed hot, then cold, and back again, bones feeling sick, blood pumping electricity through her temples.

In. Hold. Out.

Thump.

Innnnn…. Out…. Innnn…. Out.

…

Nothing?

She waited another beat, wary.

Nothing. Finally, her heart resumed its normal pace.

Ruby weakly pulled herself out from under the suffocating covers, her body settling on an uncomfortable flush that didn’t quite reach her skin. The room tilted around her, limbs protesting as her fatigue resurged. Silver eyes flicked at the analogue clock at her bedside.

Three in the morning… No rest for the weary, apparently.

Leaning heavily on the wall, she staggered toward the tiny living room at the center of her home. Like the rest of the dwelling it was sparsely decorated. Empty wall space begged for pictures, bookshelves stood empty. The furniture could have been mistaken for brand new if not for the thin layer of dust.

Ruby sank gratefully onto the couch, glad for the cool vinyl on her skin even as she trembled from the remnants of the dream.

The Vytal Festival… She hadn’t revisited that day for weeks, too exhausted or too consumed by an assignment to dream.

Hands shaking, her body still too awake - too alive - Ruby cast her eyes about for distraction. One of the wall’s few fixtures, an old pendulum clock, had come with the house. Ruby tracked its motion, absorbing herself in the play of shadows, the low, rhythmic ticking.

It didn’t help all that much. Her flesh prickled with awareness, muscles tensing every time the winds moaned, with every creak of the rafters. Shapes danced in the darkened corners of the room, while each distant cry of some nocturnal animal recalled the furious shrieks of the creatures of Grimm.

‘I can’t do this,’ the huntress sighed, breathing deep.

She dug her hands into her pockets, retrieving her scroll. Though in need of charging, it would serve for now. She browsed through her contacts, tapping on one name she knew she could turn to at so late an hour.

[Hey Sun. You awake?]

It was only a few seconds before she got her reply.

[Yeah, what’s up Ruby? O.o]

[Nothing much. Got back from my assignment a couple hours ago. Tried to sleep, had a nightmare. Can’t sleep now]

[That bites. Wanna talk about it?]

Ruby grimaced tiredly, echoes of the dream playing across her vision.

[I saw Penny again. At the tournament, the last round]

RED hair kneeling opposite HER crumpled in THREE on the ground. The image etched into her mind for eternity, preserved against every desire to forget and let go and move forward before it consumed her any more than it already had.

[I’m sorry Ruby. I miss her too]

Her hands squeezed the scroll tightly, willing the visions away. Beneath the ache in her chest, a few fragile tendrils of warmth unfurled; gratitude, she knew, and empathy. She wasn’t Penny’s only friend, just the closest.

Well.

Closest, yet so far from knowing the girl as well as she might have, if they’d been given the time.

[Do you want me to come over? You don’t have to be alone right now. We can talk, or sit, or just binge some tv if you want]

Ruby started, not realizing she’d been staring past her wall, at a distant head of fiery hair lying still on the ground…

[No, I’m fine] she typed quickly, pushing back against the memories.

[You sure?]

She could read the doubt underlying the message, clear as the dawn.

She was fine.

[Yes. It’s too cold out to be walking over anyways]

[Well… okay. It’s alright if you change your mind, just so you know.]

[I’m sure. Thank you, Sun]

[No problem, Rubes]

The messages lapsed. She could think of nothing to say, pale fingers hovering over her scroll’s keyboard in indecision. Maybe something more domestic?

[How are Scarlet and Sage doing?]

It worked. Sun’s reply was quick and earnest.

[They’re alright. Scarlet’s been pining for Vacuo lately. He hates the cold here]

[Why doesn’t he?]

[Go back? Cuz he’s overprotective and thinks I’ll stop eating if he leaves me behind. Jerk doesn’t think I can take care of myself]

Ruby lips quirked, amused by their interplay.

[He might have a point, you know. Talking to girls at ungodly hours isn’t a stellar life decision]

[Hey, talking to a friend when she can’t sleep is different from starving myself]

[Touché]

Her frown slowly fading, Ruby felt herself relax into the dialogue, adrenaline settling, the need to run draining away into nothingness.

Conversation such as this – late at night, bantering or comforting each other in turn – was normal for them. Scrolls still weren’t strong enough to transmit between kingdoms, cutting them off from most of their other friends across Remnant, so Ruby and Sun made do with each other. Over time, what had been at best a friendly acquaintance grew into close friendship.

It was a lifeline that both of them desperately needed, more often than they’d admit.

Ruby’s fingers danced across the miniature keyboard.

[And Sage? Any of you take on any assignments while I was gone?]

[He’s doing alright, same as the rest of us, really. And we had a small one on the outskirts of the city a few days back. A couple Grimm were getting nosy. Me and Scarlet handled it ^.^]

[Kind of jealous. Had to kill a Goliath yesterday. Spent four days following its trail. Thing was huge]

[Slick! That the class six mission I saw on the board?]

[Think so, unless they added another when I wasn’t looking]

[Guess rent’s all taken care of then]

[No kidding. Pay’s great on some of these jobs]

[Sometime you, me, Scarlet and Sage’ll have to do one together and throw ourselves a party with it]

[Sure, I’ll bring the snacks, you bring the hookers. Party, planned]

[What makes you think I’d know where to find hookers?]

Ruby rolled her eyes.

[It’s Mistral. I know where to find hookers here]

[Eh… point taken. Sensing a story there]

[Not much to say. I went exploring the seedy side of town and found a few massage parlors. They weren’t actually massage parlors, I’m told]

[Do tell]

[Like I said, nothing much to say lol. They’re in the lower district, southeastern end, near the old pub if you wanna check them out yourself. I didn’t go inside because there was this creepy old guy walking out who leered at me]

[Nobody can resist the Rose’s charms!]

[Yeah, well, I kind of showed him Crescent Rose and he lost interest]

[Roses, thorns. Scary :P]

[Ha ha]

Sun’s reply was longer in coming than the rest.

[You feeling any better?]

Ruby paused, fingers hovering over the keyboard. No memories searing into her vision, no ringing in her ears, no racing pulse.

[Yeah. I am, actually :)]

[Wukong: 427, Negativity: 0]

[I think you’re overselling yourself there, Sun]

[No way!]

The conversation continued, Ruby blinking against tired eyes to continue typing with her friend. Her missions kept her away often; intentional on her part, since she could usually beat back the nightmares if she kept herself occupied enough, but times like these where she could just relax with Sun and act somewhat immature were precious.

[So lemme tell you about how Scarlet tried to pick up a date the other day…emphasis on tried]

X_0_X

“So, Rubes. You planning on taking another mission soon?”

They sat together in relative quiet, the café they’d chosen a far cry from the bustling mess it would be during the morning rush in an hour. Neither able to fall back asleep that night, they’d instead chosen to at least start the day together throwing off their collective cloud of fatigue with some caffeinated goodness.

Or Ruby had, at least. Sun refused to touch it. He’d ordered cocoa instead.

Ruby pursed her lips, idly tapping them with her straw. “I think so. You know I don’t like hanging around the city for longer than I have to. A few days to rest from the last assignment before I take another. Maybe some low rank jobs for once.”

Sun sipped pensively from the polished white mug in his hand, steam rising in delicate wisps from the rim. “I figured.”

Just like the day before, Mistral was bitterly cold. A cloud of freezing mist engulfed the city, with only those living on the highest terraces of the upper levels able to walk outside without heavily insulated clothing.

For Ruby, that meant her worn, tattered red cloak over a dark trench coat and cargo pants. For Sun, it meant ditching the casual, chest-baring Vacuo style for a fleecy hoody and jeans. For once in his life he looked somewhat respectable, though the blonde tail idly flicking around behind his ear detracted somewhat from the image.

Still, it was better than the time he’d accidently whipped up some poor woman’s skirt… Ruby hadn’t known Sun was a soprano until the moment he turned to apologize and received the point of a heel in the fork of his legs.

Ruby peered at Sun over the rim of her coffee with concern. Shadows ringed the faunus’ eyes, and his cheeks sagged. Though still young by any standard, the laugh lines found all over Sun’s face only served to age him in the dim lighting.

The blonde took note of her unsubtle examination and smiled weakly. “I know I’ve got to look like crap right now, but I’m really not that bad.”

Ruby was not impressed. “Sun, I don’t think you’ve cracked a single joke since we sat down. That’s like, a record for you.”

Indignant, Sun looked ready to protest the point for a moment before his eyes flicked down in thought.

“Ehhhh… point,” he grumbled.

Silence fell between them.

Ruby itched to break the uncomfortable lull. Having known Sun for over a decade, she knew how out of character it was when he fell to brooding. He normally preferred to confront whatever problems he faced, either with firm confidence or a flippant attitude.

Days like these and the problems they brought however, perfectly disarmed him. With nothing to confront and weighed down by fatigue, it was all she and his remaining team could do at times to draw him out of his shell.

Well, nothing for it.

“So,” Ruby drawled awkwardly. “What about you? I mean,” she coughed. “Any plans to take a new assignment?”

Sun looked out the window uncertainly. “Yeah, been thinking about it. Sage likes border defenses – not too many Grimm to deal with at any one time, and it pays well – but I’m pretty sure Scarlet’s gonna throw a fit if we don’t get out to do something challenging soon. He doesn’t like not having stuff to work on.”

They all tried to keep themselves occupied in some way.

Ruby had found her opening, however.

“Want to go take a look at the board and see if anything catches your eye?” She suggested.

Sun seemed to think about it for a moment, before perking up. “Sounds great to me, Ruby,” he answered, smile turning jaunty.

Ruby: 293, Negativity… well, she’d lost count, but she was doing her best!

Gulping the last of her coffee down, Ruby joined the faunus at the counter to leave their mugs for the barista to collect. They left the café, shivering as they stepped into the cold morning air, before moving toward the Huntsmen’s Guild where they would find the list of available assignments.

Though it was still early, the city of Mistral was slowly coming to life around them. Smoke rose from hundreds of chimneys as denizens stoked their fireplaces and prepared the morning meal, while the earliest of risers made their way mechanically to wherever they worked, or to the nearest venue serving their fix of morning caffeine.

With something to take his mind off the night before, Sun adopted a much brighter disposition, happy to comment on whatever innocuous detail picked his fancy. Ruby smiled indulgently as he leaned over the railing on the roadside to peek down at the market like a small child.

“Hey Ruby, you gotta come look at this guy – looks like someone forgot he had work in the morning cuz’ he’s running like he’s got the mother of all Deathstalkers on his – Oh ha!” He dissolved into helpless laughter.

Ruby joined him at the ledge, raising a dark eyebrow at Sun. Her companion missed it, having covered his face with one hand as the other pounded on the railing. She nudged him, and he pointed out where she should look.

Ruby giggled.

The poor man, looking like a tiny doll from their vantage point, had stumbled into a fruit stall in his haste and was being viciously torn into by the owner. Even from up there, Ruby could see the crushed produce adorning the man, as well as the vivid yellow banana stuck partially through his button-up shirt.

The two pulled themselves away from the sight as the man pantomimed forgiveness against the owner’s vigorously waving arms, shuffling around in his pockets for the lien to pay back the owner.

“You see that’s why you’ve got to be agile as well as fast!” Sun crowed, eyes crinkling at the corners in his mirth.

Ruby mirrored the expression. “And you’d know?”

“Sure I would!” Sun said proudly, pointing to himself. “You’re looking at the best troublemaker this side of Remnant. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to chase people through crowds without knocking anything over.”

Ruby stared at her companion in disbelief. “Chase? You mean being chased, right?”

“You’re never gonna let me live down that stowaway thing, are you?”

Her smile grew just a touch vicious, all the answer needed. Pride soundly punctured, Sun marched ahead with just a touch more pouting than he thought he probably realized. Watching her friend, Ruby’s smile dropped away.

Chasing the competition, falling slowly behind. Telltale spiked blonde hair disappearing into the crowd – hearing a surprised grunt, she sped around the corner, saw her PARTNER lying tangled with someone else…

“Sal-u-tations!”

Ruby felt something pinch in her chest and breathed deeply. Mechanically forcing one foot in front of another, she put the shadows out of mind and kept moving, determined not to lose Sun in the crowd again.

They descended to the lower level, suddenly surrounded by the sounds of early risers and shopkeepers hawking their wares.

“Fine jewelry for your little lady!”

“Meat, fresh in from Wind Path!”

“Hey…! You cheat! This lien is no good! Get back here with my merchandise!”

“Only the freshest produce here at my stall!”

Sun breathed deep of the morning air, content to be surrounded by such controlled chaos. At ease herself while surrounded by the growing bustle of humanity, Ruby felt her mood lift again.

They drew stares from Mistral’s citizens as they passed. Even without their weapons, any huntsman could be easily recognized by their appearance alone. Few could match the predatory grace that even most novice students walked with, nor the unique style that came with the vocation.

That said, Ruby and Sun were a familiar sight around Mistral already, so the stares lacked the usual veiled apprehension that many couldn’t help when faced with such dangerous unknowns.

Pulling her expression into something more confident and respectable while forcibly ignoring her companion’s giggles behind her – could he forget about the fruit vendor for just a few minutes? The man was visible just a few stalls down; she didn’t think his expression was that funny – Ruby strode up to the man hawking fresh meat.

“Huntress Rose!” the man – Sunil, she knew - grinned, hands rubbing together in anticipation. “And Sun Wukong. What brings you to my stand? Looking for a fine cut, or perhaps a fresh rack of ribs? I’ve got it all here, fresh from Wind Path.”

Ruby shook her head. “I’m not looking for anything at the moment,” she declined. “Just wondering if the caravan saw anything bad between here and there?”

She felt Sun disappear behind her, happy to let her take this one.

“Ah, thankfully not. Nothing unexpected at least,” Sunil smiled. “Some Beowolves, some Creeps, but nothing unusual.” Understandably, he seemed pleased with the caravan’s good fortune.

Ruby nodded, having expected as much. “Glad to hear it, Sunil. You know where to find me if anything happens.”

Sunil clapped his powerful hands together. “Indeed, I do! If that’s all then, I bid you happy hunting!”

Ruby stepped away, rising up on her toes to look for Sun. Where did the faunus get – oh.

She sighed.

It was normal practice for them to ask around the market for rumors of Grimm in need of chasing. It was also normal, if more than a little annoying, for Ruby to find Sun chatting up some blushing widow or housewife. Ruby was the respectable one around here, while Sun was better known as the man anybody and their mother could have a good time talking to.

Ruby pouted. Sometimes it wasn’t fair when Sun showed off his superior social skills.

Marching over, she caught the eye of the woman Sun was entertaining, the twenty-something brunette smiling secretively as the huntress stopped short of her companion and tilted her head, eyes narrow in thought.

“-and then he just plows into the stand and goes tumbling and it was about the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages!” Sun recounted animatedly, ignorant of her presence behind him.

Ruby scoffed. At least he was predictable. She cleared her throat, the brunette giggling as Sun froze and spun on the spot, eyes wide.

“Find any interesting leads, friend?”

The faunus cleared his throat sheepishly. “Ah-hmmm. Nope! Nothing yet, Rubes.”

A dark eyebrow, already raised in faux-shock, lifted even higher. Sun drooped, turning back to the now-smirking woman. “Ah, well, it was good to meet you Mara,” he said, rubbing the back of his head.

“You as well Mr. Wukong. I’ll have to tell my husband all about that little debacle – Mr. Konomi has been asking for a little misfortune of late, what with his temper,” Mara smiled, winking at Ruby playfully as she returned to setting up her wares.

Sufficiently cowed, Sun wasted no more time as the pair went from stall to stall, asking after any news from the other cities and the wilderness beyond. Save for a few scattered attacks along the roads, the only notable news they encountered came from the western end of Lake Matsu. One of the settlements there had apparently been annihilated by rampant Grimm, the survivors fleeing to other settlements deeper in the swamps.

While this would ordinarily be cause for interest for the two, there were already teams in the area cleaning up the mess of Grimm left behind, and fortifications being built around nearby settlements to prevent panic from spreading.

It was a tragedy, but with further crises averted the two were left with nothing substantial from their inquiries. Not a bad thing, but it left them with the more banal missions the guild always had in abundance.

As the two entered the quiet building, they sighed. The mist had already begun to recede along with the worst of the chill, but it was still uncomfortably cold out and there was a pleasant fire roaring against the far wall.

Per ingrained habit, Ruby’s eyes swept over the room, noting that Li’s shift had ended. His replacement, a small, dark haired woman with sparkling green eyes, perked up as Ruby met her gaze. The huntress could only blink at the not-quite-so-normal realization that she had at least half a decade on the clerk, who seemed only just past her teenaged years.

“Welcome!” she greeted energetically, head bobbing as she bounced on her heels. “Are you two looking for anything in particular?”

Probably a new employee. Ruby wondered what had happened to Vanna, who usually handled the morning shift.

“Just checking out the assignment board,” Sun replied warmly. The young woman’s attention immediately shifted to him, eyes flicking up and down. Ruby rolled her eyes. Leaving Sun to engage her in conversation, Ruby turned away to focus on the digital touchscreen listing the most current assignments.

With long practice, it had become simple to tune out Sun’s baffling energy – he hadn’t slept in at least two days, how did he manage to be so peppy when she needed coffee to function? – and it was just as simple to ignore the clerk’s bubbly personality.

Silver eyes examined each description as she scrolled down the list of assignments. Patrol missions… bleh. They were a dime a dozen, as even when technically unnecessary the kingdoms preferred to keep them flowing. One never knew when pockets of Grimm would begin to encroach on friendly territory, after all.

Nothing she was interested in, however.

Another assignment to track down and eliminate a Beowolf pack roaming the base of Mt. Naili… led by an Alpha? That was intriguing, if not all that thrilling. Alphas weren’t rare but tended to keep to themselves. Only the older specimens tried to take command of their younger peers and form the more dangerous packs.

Beowolves were Beowolves, however, and the area was too remote for it to be a pressing issue.

Plenty of reports of individual powerful Grimm. Middle-aged Alphas wandering in their solitude or nuisance cases that the smaller villages couldn’t handle alone. No Ancients on the table, fortunately. There were plenty around Mistral, she was sure, but they were too canny to allow themselves to be so easily tracked.

They would only emerge amidst fire and death. No sane hunter relished in those assignments.

Ruby paused over a report of a pack of Deathstalkers, scanning the description. While yet to become notorious for any reason, they’d begun to encroach on the territory of some of the isolated mountain villages in south-central Anima. Given that the reports were already a month old upon arrival, that might have even changed by now.

Not for the first time Ruby cursed the lack of efficient communication in Mistral. While the kingdom had never lost its CCT Tower, the further away from the capital one moved the less likely you were to get a signal. The ruling council had consistently refused to implement boosting towers in the most isolated areas of the kingdom, leaving it to the occasional bullhead visit or foot travel to move information around.

Pursing her lips, Ruby tapped the mission. While the other assignments were important in their own right, this one was unlikely to receive attention from other huntsmen for at least another week.

With a pleasant chime, a window popped up:

‘YOU HAVE SELECTED A CLASS 4 SEARCH AND DESTROY MISSION. DO YOU ACCEPT?’

‘Would I have selected it if I didn’t want to accept?’

Sun’s hand came down on her shoulder as she tapped ‘YES.’ Ruby jumped at the contact, looking up at her companion.

“Guess you’re gonna be heading out sooner than expected, aren’t ya?” he commented drily.

Ruby flushed. They were just here to look at potential assignments… but the moment Ruby considered putting it off she could only picture the destruction a pack of Deathstalkers - and really any kind of Grimm - could wreak if left to their own devices.

It was never a pretty picture. She’d read more than enough reports and seen the results firsthand far too many times.

Sun didn’t seem too ruffled, if the wry glint in his eyes was to be trusted. “You wouldn’t be Ruby Rose if you weren’t looking out for others instead of yourself.” He shook his head in fond exasperation. “At least promise me to get some actual sleep before you head out?”

Ruby punched his shoulder. “I’m not that bad.” She protested.

“Bullshit, Rubes. Complete bullshit.”

“Jerk.”

“Heh. I’m right though.”

Ruby scowled as the clerk giggled inanely. Jerks.

X_0_X

The low roar of the bullhead’s engines on the tarmac split the morning air. Busy handing her heavy pack of supplies to the operator inside, Ruby tried to ignore the cacophony, as well as the worried look that Sun gave the back of her head.

‘Hypocrite.’

Touched though she was by his concern, another part of her was wholeheartedly annoyed that Sun could be concerned for her welfare when he had barely managed a scant few hours of sleep in the last three days. Ruby had been tempted to knock the faunus out cold directly when he’d shown up at her doorstep that morning, swaying on his feet and far too pale to be healthy.

She had kept her promise, forcing down the nightmares to catch a solid night’s rest. In hindsight, she ought to have drawn a similar pact from her fellow huntsman.

Sadly, she was on a timetable and reluctantly accepted his company, though only after he’d promised to lie down for a couple hours after she was gone. Threatening to interrogate Scarlet on the matter on her return ensured that it would be a promise kept, or there would be hell to pay.

One of the bullhead’s two pilots, a flax-haired Atlesian, gave Ruby a thumbs-up as she finished strapping down the last of her provisions. Her ire vanishing suddenly, and with nothing left to distract her from the impending goodbye, Ruby turned to Sun, awkwardly wringing her hands.

The furrowed brow, narrow eyes and frown spoke volumes of what he thought of her leaving.

“I’m going to be alright, Sun,” she said firmly, pulling her hands behind her back. Silver eyes dared him to contradict her. The faunus’ frown deepened, but his hesitation finally broke.

“I know,” Sun admitted despondently. “This isn’t any trouble for you. I just can’t help feeling worried.”

Ruby pulled him into a hug, squeezing as tightly as she could. As a huntress, with arms corded with lithe, hard muscle, that was pretty tight. Sun groaned under the assault but squeezed her back all the same.

“Just be careful, alright?” he muttered. “I don’t like it when friends are in danger and I can’t help.”

Ruby pulled away, quietly pleased as Sun not-subtly sucked in a breath of air and grinned impishly. “Me? When am I not careful?”

Sun levelled a flat look at her.

…

Jerk. Fine, it was a valid concern.

“You two finished back there? We’re on a tight schedule to get you south, huntress,” one of the pilots called from the cockpit.

Ruby jumped at the interruption, then stuck her tongue out at Sun when he began shepherding her into the airship with a few shooing motions.

Ruby pulled herself up into the bullhead’s fuselage, quickly turning back to the faunus as the craft began humming louder. He sent her a lopsided grin and a wave in lieu of a goodbye (not that she’d have heard one anyways), and then the doors slid shut around her, cutting her off from the outside world.

The bullhead rumbled, blaring the Mistral model’s ubiquitous sonar call. With a tired sigh, Ruby sat herself on one of the benches and prepared for a long flight.

X_0_X

It's amazing to me that I'm finally beginning this. The original plan was to finish the entire story before I began posting, but around 90k I began hitting a wall and decided that I'd start posting chapters, hopefully getting some inspiration along the way. That being said, the first third of the story is already done, pending some edits - while the rest is generously planned out.

Hopefully you all enjoyed! Please leave a review! Reblog so more people can see it too! 

[wahbegan]

Red’s Retro Reviews - Condemned Criminal Origins

Hello and welcome to the tag where I use my otherwise useless and time-consuming habit of taking very old classic games that I’ve wrung all the enjoyment out of like a troubled child with an injured bird and turn it into entertainment! Maybe one day the editor of some chic magazine will hire me to talk about how much I know about Batman: Arkham Asylum and how much I hate myself for it.

Anyway, this week I thought I’d start off with an overlooked little gem that had a bit of cult notoriety and good critical reception, but which otherwise nobody gave an ounce of rat shit about: the Condemned series. More specifically, the original game.

Now, when I ask you who started the extremely lucrative habit of live-streaming themselves hilariously over-reacting to horror games, you might be tempted to say the Game Grumps, or Markiplier if you’re younger, or Pewdiepie if you’re the kind of person who unironically uses the phrase anti-white racism. But you’d all be wrong and stupid. Also possibly nazi sympathizers, but I digress.

NO! The first college-age white boys who decided it would be a good idea to beam them fucking up a video game to thousands and thousands of people online are..........lost to history because archiving of the exact history of internet trends is such an enormous clusterfuck that for years people were convinced, and some still are, that Slenderman was a real urban legend and not something some dickhead made up for a photoshop competition circa 2009

But ONE of the first was the 4 Players Network, or 4 Players Podcast, or 4PP. I know very little about these guys, so if they all turned out to be nonces and serial killers please don’t @ me, but what i DO know, is that they uploaded a video that changed my life forever. This video was “Holy Crap That’s a Bear !” Certainly not a name that would stand out in today’s massively oversaturated Let’s Play market, but this delightful video documented these two dumb assholes losing their shit over a game. The game of course, being Condemned 2: Bloodshot. Specifically, the level in which you are chased through a hunting lodge by a rabid bear. As an aside, I looked it up, having never heard of the phenomenon, and apparently it’s very rare, but yes bears can and do get rabies, usually with just about as fatal results as you would expect. So sweet dreams!

Anyway, watching this couple of dipshits get jumpscared and mauled to death by a poorly rendered bear again and again as they were repeatedly outwitted at every turn by an entity with a few lines of programming instead of a brain was, in y’know the year 2008,  the absolute most fun a 14-year-old boy could have. Clearly it still is, but you always remember your first time, particularly when the only LPs i have watched since were a handful of markiplier videos with a girl in college who liked to get me very stoned and then put them on because she thought that counted as courtship.

A n y w a y, apart from the unfortunate and definitely a mistake innovation of streaming video games, the sequence of being chased through a claustrophobic environment by a bear which can rip down doors, break through walls, run faster than you, shrug off 15 shotgun blasts to the face without so much as sneezing, etc. seemed incredibly tense and original, an amazing concept for a game. Once again, this was circa 2008 before “Run for your fucking life” had become the norm for horror games.

So then why the fuck are you not reviewing that game?? You might be thinking if you’re still reading this which someone clearly is or my narrative voice would have ceased to exist by now in that tree falling in the woods kind of way. Well, dear reader, while Condemned 2 was better than the first game in a LOT of ways, it’s always worth taking a gander at the one that started it all. Also, Condemned 1 is, if only slightly, probably better known. Also, Bloodshot commits the cardinal sin of over-explaining the first game’s mystery and a result making it kind of goofy and ridiculous see also the entire history of the Halloween franchise, and as a result the ending is....well, a bit shit, to be honest. Finally, and most importantly, it’s not on Steam for 3 dollars, so shut up

The thing about Condemned is that while Let’s Plays and seemingly inanimate objects moving only when you’re not looking at them and unstoppable juggernauts of wanton death have now become the norm for video game horror (and thanks a fucking bunch, Doctor fucking Who, for always being what people say started the inanimate object fuckery even though Stephen King did it in The Shining in the FUCKING 70s and let’s be honest it’s just a primal universal fear and i’ll be in the cold fucking ground before that bloody show sees one ounce of credit where it isn’t due), Condemned as a whole has remained remarkably unique. Not wholly unique, the developers have heavily borrowed from genre-straddling crime horror movies like Silence of the Lambs and Se7en and in fact almost beat-for-beat stole the most infamous jump scare from the latter, but if it still ends with shit in my pants, and it does, I can’t really call it a failure.

Most of the creativity the game DOES have is in the gameplay itself, or rather one aspect of the two aspects of the gameplay. It’s the combat I’m talking about the combat, seeing as that’s basically all there is. Let’s just get this out of the way first, the forensic investigation shit is........well, it’s a bit shit. Oh yes, there’s a couple crime scenes you have to “solve” in a cursory almost a cutscene sort of way, where you have helpful premonitions about where you’re supposed to look and, as your lab tech helpfully informs you, “the system will choose which tool you need for you, so don’t worry about that!” Well, Christ kill me, thank God YOU know between the three fucking tools I have, one of which is an everything sensor and one of which is just a fucking camera which I’m supposed to use, God knows I wouldn’t have liked to have solved that mystery myself. It’s a shame because some of the crime scenes are quite intricate and yes, I would have liked to have put together myself that “wait a minute there’s a handprint in the paint here that matches the killer but the UV light shows an old blood spatter on the wall right above where he’d be sitting to make it, THAT MUST MEAN-” but nope. No you just have a premonition of the guy getting clobbered over the back of the head because the game is so terrified you won’t be able to put two and two together that it points out both the twos and hands you a multiplication table and nudges you and looks meaningfully at four every few minutes if you hesitate.

Anyway, that’s all the whingeing about the gameplay out of the way, because the rest of it is just delightful. Condemned is the rare first person game that focuses almost solely on melee combat and the almost unheard of one that does it well. In fact, it is the only example I can think of that’s not shit. Weapons all have individual stats to do with their heft and how far they can reach and how much of a man’s skull you can cave in at once with it and you have to choose between the plank with nails sticking out of it you can swing three times a second but you have to beat a man so badly with it it’s tiring just to watch and the sledgehammer, which demands a two weeks’ notice in writing if you’re planning on hitting someone with it, but will basically render every living thing in its considerable swing arc sent to the fucking Shadow Realm upon impact.

Something about the sound effects and the way the weapons in this game control really gets under my skin, I was killed by a 300-pound Subway-dwelling crazy survivalist wielding the aforementioned sledgehammer, and when I went down, I was sure I was familiar with the sound effect that played when it struck my skull, a sort of distant, muffled ringing of bone hitting metal. Wait a minute, I thought, I know I’ve experienced this in real life, how did they get this sound effect? Did they kill a man with a hammer to get this sound effect? Was I killed with a hammer in a past life? Killing people is equally fucking unpleasant as even the most vicious and inhuman looking ones don’t go down easily, and you can see them spit gobs of broken teeth and blood and god knows what, hear the lovingly researched impact noises, and almost feel the impact as you necessitate years of reconstructive facial surgery with one swing of your mighty chunk of concrete attached to a rebar. Then some of them have the gall to shakily get to their knees, not quite dead, trying to mumble something and you’re required to hit them AGAIN, which is always harrowing. To quote another underappreciated piece of media about the joys of gruesome murder: Why won’t you just die?! This is hard enough for me!!

The guns you do get are absolute balls, generally having about three bullets in them, you can’t reload them even if you find the exact same type of gun later, you can’t hold them in your inventory, and if you want an aiming reticle you have to actively turn it on in the options menu, and you can almost hear the game laughing at you for being such a shameless pussy.

Well, you now might be thinking to yourself, cheers for making the effort, but I’m not an insane person and therefore do not think the idea of a brutally beating people to death simulator sounds very enticing, but that’s the thing, it’s not really supposed to be. It does have a strangely addictive quality after a while, but for the most part it’s panicky and harrowing and grotesque and you really don’t want to do it but you have no choice, which is absolutely the best kind of survival horror. See, the combat in survival horror is always a bit of a sticking point, isn’t it? Because if you give the player too much firepower it just becomes an action game with spooky set pieces, but if you give them none at all, as is chic today, you better have loads of other surprises in store buddy boy, because the sheen on that trend has died and now you’re just likely to get slapped with the dreaded WALKING SIMULATOR sticker.

No, the best kind of combat for a horror feel is exactly the kind Condemned delivers, so of course they never FUCKING did it again. You leave every fight low on supplies, exhausted, badly wounded, and a bit sick at what you just reduced a human being’s skull to. Too often, the combat in games is, even that word “combat” it’s clean, it’s cold, it’s detached, it’s a very unique euphemism for butchering God knows how many people. I play this little game in my head when I go through games sometimes trying to keep track of how many unique, thinking, feeling entities I’ve just reduced to a mess for the janitor to mop up, and I always lose track around the third level. Condemned isn’t like that. Its violence is violence: horrible, awful, terrifying violence, and it doesn’t let you forget it. 

The graphics also add a lot to the horror if you can get past the dated polygonal weird-ass xbox 360 at launch faces and cutscenes, which is actually pretty easy once you get used to it. The level and character design is fantastic, and really adds a lot to the whole feel of the game. Everywhere you look is dark and labyrinthine, crumbling with rebars jutting out and exposed paneling and plumbing beneath holes rotted in the walls and grime and blood and god knows what just staining everything. This game is really nihilistic in tone, and you get the sense just from the graphics that you’re somewhere nobody gives a shit about, in a part of a city that’s just been left to die and rot. One almost gets the feeling moving around the fourth or fifth condemned (ohhhhh I see what they did there) building that the whole city is just a ghost town full of nobody but violent lunatics, and also that if you keep playing for too long you might get hepatitis just from exposure.

Plot-wise, I could fill another twenty paragraphs with petty gripes. It’s a bit Kill List which i’m sure is a reference you all understand in that it starts as a crime thriller about catching a serial murderer and ends in some bizarre insane bullshit halfway between Hereditary and Hellraiser, and leads you into it gently enough that you never really notice a sudden lurch.

You play as Ethan Thomas, a very boring and generic FBI Agent called in to investigate a serial killer case by two cops who are REMARKABLY blithe about murdering people, and it’s a bit jarring in today’s political climate. Though distrust, fear, and hatred of the police isn’t exactly new, and violence amongst police officers is brought up at one point, albeit in a loading screen, so honestly I can’t be arsed to speculate on what level of self-awareness we’re operating on here. Regardless, it’s bothersome.

“Oh yeah, this place is full of addicts, hopped up on something, I think, just shoot ‘em. What? Lost your gun, eh? That’s fine here’s a fire axe go nuts, kid, we’ll deal with the paperwork later”

Anyway, you are ambushed by a man you believe to be the killer for.......no real reason, really. He was spying on you checking out the crime scene, but we just established this place is full of squatters, what if one of the 8 people I murdered on the way into this ambush was the killer??? Case solved! 

Anyway, needless to say, without wishing to spoil, the dude IS the main antagonist the yellow eyes are a helpful giveaway, and he takes your gun and swiftly shoots Generic Beat Cop and Generic Dick with it, then throws you out a window, whereupon some other asshole whose main role in the game is to be enigmatic and plot-convenient, you know, one of THOSE characters, spirits you away from the scene, making it look like you just killed two cops and fled.

Now, in real life, as we all know, a cop can’t be indicted for murder even if 50 people saw him do it, but in this world, it means you have to go on the run from the FBI (not your lab tech, though, who is somehow assisting you from the lab and sending confidential data to your phone unnoticed??) while trying to solve the murder.

Meanwhile, in the background, in an “I’m sure this isn’t important and will in no way inform the last level of the game going batshit bonkers” kind of way, all of the people, including the cops, in certain dilapidated and neglected areas of the unnamed City City appear to be going what is medically known as balls-to-the-wall kill crazy, and birds are dropping dead from the sky by the thousands. Even you, protagonist, are prone to horrible screaming nightmare visions coming right the blazing blue fuck out of nowhere and that you never feel the need to comment on or go take a lie-down. I’m sure it’s nothing.

The voice acting is what you’d expect from this era of video games i.e. not good and the writing has an absolutely DESPICABLE habit of having characters tell Ethan things he should already god damned well know for the sake of gameplay or exposition, leading to my current theory that Agent Ethan Thomas has some kind of horrible head injury and can’t remember anything from over 2 minutes ago like Guy Pearce in that pretentious movie where he accidentally kills his wife and then runs around for two hours terrorizing random-ass people about it.

The game never full-on plays the AND THE MAN YOU’VE BEEN PLAYING AS WAS CRAZY THE WHOLE TIME card and leaves things a bit ambiguous, but after caving in the 15th vagrant’s head and the 7th vision you’ve had of being murdered by some Cenobite-looking motherfucker while conducting an unsanctioned investigation during a suspension prompted by you presumably murdering the shit out of two guys, you start to think this may not be standard FBI protocol. 

It’s all a bit hard to swallow is me point, a bit hard to sympathize, and a bit muddy if we’re supposed to or not. But you know what? It certainly isn’t boring, and I’d be lying if I told you it wasn’t effective. This game is now one of only two to have genuinely given me nightmares, and I think it’s rather telling that after I played the hallucination part I had the nightmare about, I was having genuine trouble remembering if something happened in my nightmare of it or in the actual version.

Condemned is batshit crazy, hilariously easy to write off as “that game about killing hobos”, and very, very dated. But it is genuinely harrowing and unpleasant, and was clearly genuinely made by artists with the intent of saying.....errr i’m not exactly sure what, but SOMETHING! It’s about as far a cry as you can get from the Triple A crawling with microtransactions like your MCM is with crabs milk-you-for-money-until-your-udders-bleed look-at-how-shiny-we-are games, and even a lot of indie horror games who think it’s a measure of a masterpiece being able just to constantly trigger your fight-or-flight response again and again and again so you can make a hilarious Let’s Play out of it not to name any names Five Night’s at Freddy’s. It’s a relic of a different and i think a better time in gaming history, where big-name publishers were still taking chances and hadn’t quite yet worked out the formula for how to distill games into their most skeletal, malnourished, corporate, addictive, glorified gambling form.

Also it’s 3 dollars on Steam and you can finish it in like ffffffffucking...two days? So really why the fuck not. I have no idea how to assign numbers to things i’d probably give ir a 7 or 8 or 4 out of 5 stars but i’m bad at systems like that, just play it if you give a shit. If nothing else, a bunch of people snapping it up out of nowhere will really fuck with marketing, which is always a noble pursuit

[masqueradelydia]

Maladjustment

Summary: A continuation of Adjustment. Remus prepares for and delivers a new performance.

Characters: Remus Sanders, Roman Sanders, Virgil Sanders, Patton Sanders, some characters I made up whose names aren’t important (The last names are different)

Warnings: None

Ships: N/A

Words: 5754

(Adjustment is here: https://masqueradelydia.tumblr.com/post/186685098818/adjustment-to-personhood if you want to read it first, but it isn’t necessary to read this piece.

           Remus swallowed. Something in his lower intestine begged to flip his organs inside out as he stood up from the little table in front of his fold-up bed and broken lampshade. Papers were strewn about, carefully kept away from the open cans of preservatives, baked beans, and littered Snickers wrappers, along with several tissues that had hardly been aimed anywhere near the trash can. He’d tried to keep them away from the part where the ceiling leakage would drip to the floor and where that ever-growing mold sliding along the edges of the wall, and away from any cracks where something could crawl through and nibble at them. These papers piled up in droves by his feet and around his ankles like mice waiting to scatter around his apartment, but Remus had meant to keep them on the table as he pored over the notes and sketches written on them, trying not to recite the lines on them loudly enough to receive a haranguing from the man next door, or receive another attempt at a hole being punched through his door. It wasn’t his neighbor’s fault after all that Remus couldn’t ever sit still long enough to be quiet.

           Remus should’ve thrown away all of these old papers, but they were still a part of the first project he’d done that would send him towards the life he’d stayed up all night for. His feet wouldn’t stop tapping as he wrote, as if the light from above some stage was getting ever so much closer to them, wanting them to step forward, despite his worn sneakers having so many holes he could feel the concrete through half of the right sole and his nicest jacket being frayed at the sleeves and the collar of it was almost completely detached from the rest of it. His hands wouldn’t stop moving either as he wrote out extra details to his stand-up routine for the night.

           He didn’t think about the sweat building up so much that he felt like it would drip into his eyes and ears, or the faces his friends made the first time he ran his routine by them, the way that Em’s eyes shifted as she cracked the faintest of smiles, or Cal’s drawn out sight and wide-eyed shake of his head as if he’d sat through a lecture. He wasn’t think about Silas’s hands circling his own beer bottle, his face thoroughly transfixed by its design during Remus’s quips and queries. He was going over his routine as it was right now, with its timing and phrasing, elaboration and cuts just enough to give him time to flash a certain kind of grin, the new stories he’d tell cut to their bare essentials and just enough punchlines where they needed to be. He nodded to himself as he looked up to the door, which was about to come off of its hinges from all of the knocking.

           “Remus! Come on out, our flight leaves in two hours,” Silas’s silvery voice sing-songed from the other side.

           “Finish up your makeup, bitch,” Em called out, a certain twang to her tone.

           She’d probably collapse laughing if she’d ever seen how he’d worn it back in the day, at least, when he still had access to it. She was always insistent on dressing her best, even if that just meant an old tank top and a nice haircut. Silas, on the other hand, preferred to show up exactly as he was with his hair up and the occasional wristband.

           Picking up his last draft covered in coffee stains, different colored pen marks, and a little bit of sweat, more than he’d like to admit, Remus went to open the door and was pulled out of it by his collar. One more tear wouldn’t hurt it. Silas slapped him on the back and started to lead him down the hall, the three of them ignoring the person twitching in her sleep a few feet away from them.

           “Look at you, you actually showered,” Silas chirped.

           “And early, too. If we were late, I would tear my eyes out and eat them, and throw them up with all of my guts!”

           “Eugh, we get it. I guess this is understandable, being nervous or whatever, but your set better not make me regret missing my third beer tonight,” Em added with a grumble.

           “You’ll never want to drink again,” Remus assured her.

           This got him a light chuckle from her as they reached the front door and headed for Silas’s truck covered in key marks and fading paint, and some old food residue by the tires. Silas had hauled the other two home drunk on multiple occasions in it, and Remus would count today as the first in months that he wasn’t told that if he threw up in this thing that Silas would kick him out and he would have to walk seven miles back to his apartment.

           Then again, if he hadn’t been out in the snow on one of the many days Silas had followed through with this threat, he wouldn’t have found Gossamer Scruff, a small rat he had hoped would have been alive for longer than a week had Cal not dropped him down the sewer, but today, Remus did not want to remember mourning a three-day old rat he would have not cared for at all three years ago. Cal didn’t see anything worth bemoaning, and Remus supposed it was strange for him to consider it, especially considering that he’d eaten more than one rat on occasion of a few relentless dares.

           “Did you fix up that story about that actor breakin’ your rib,” Silas asked, poking his chest and bringing him back to the present.

           He winced, still not convinced the pain that came with it was normal.

           “Down to the millimeter,” Remus announced, sitting up straight and crossing his arms.

           “You look like a cat when you smile like that,” Em said.

           “Like the Cheshire Cat? Or those weird hairless ones with the wrinkles—”

           “Like one that couldn’t scratch me if it tried,” she finished.

           Silas didn’t let him reflect on that for more than a second.

           “Hey, what’d I tell you? Took you forever, but look what you’re doing! You’re finally scraping up something I haven’t been falling asleep to.”

           “Don’t tell me that my old stuff didn’t at least give you one nightmare, come on, now.”

           Silas put a hand on his shoulder and leaned in as if telling him a deep secret. The smile starting to creep towards the corner of Remus’s mouth halted itself as Silas declared,

           “It gave me visions of nothing but static. I’d rather have my ass run through with a shotgun. At least I’d have something to look at.”

           Remus sat back and avoided slumping as Silas turned the corner. That old stuff had turned into something that Silas still hadn’t fully heard, although he had a good lot of it run by him. It wasn’t a choice out of nowhere for Remus to follow all of Silas’s advice, and Silas would know from holding concerts that were so popular that it resulted in people lining up at the doors hours before it had started, and why Remus could never get past the middle rows, and why Silas couldn’t hear him cheering him on.

           Silas, of course, wasn’t the only influence. Every minute of each day, Remus repeated parts of his routine to himself, tweaking it according to every rule of comedy and performance he knew that he admitted could be of use to him. He repeated it and kept those rules in his head, even if Roman’s occasional criticisms fell in with it, not letting him forget that Thomas could do better if Remus didn’t try to step on Roman’s toes all the time whenever he so much as looked at a playbill.

           Perhaps in the Mindscape everything seemed so sugarcoated because of the way that they would all tiptoe around everything, but afterwards, the realization that everything was crafted in a curiously particular way for the reason of nuances that he did not quite hold became clear. It could have been much better if he had been more involved, perhaps even more nuanced, but neither he nor Roman were given the gift of subtlety. At least, not when they were still getting their bearings. Roman had learned to grow into it and embody the façade of subtlety over years of scrutinizing himself and participating in Thomas’s acting career. Pretty soon, it started to appear after Remus had been on his own that his insistence on shining light on the heavier aspects of life was just that. Insistence.

           Without the chance to mimic the things that both he and Roman could have used, even separately, if he were able to peer through the crack of the wall that kept him hidden, he found the echoes he could manage to make out of Roman scrutinizing himself in the voices of his own acting instructors, with sometimes a certain flick of their head sending something unpleasant down the center of Remus’s spine and a sickly sweet taste in his mouth. He was different, though, he told himself. He was not using it to create something that people will tell their children as lighthearted bedtime stories. He was using it to grow his artwork into something that would actually stick with people, that would bore itself into their minds in the middle of the night and give them visions in their sleep that would frighten and entertain them in a way that could not be explained away just with words. Remus did not want to create his work based upon cheap fairytales that people would forget about, even if it was easier for most other people, even if those things brought them joy instead of irritation, and even if everywhere he looked since he’d come into existence, he’d seen those who’d chosen that path walk the red carpet and bask in the light of everyone who loved them. Ingenuity didn’t matter to them, did it?

          Remus latched onto every change he made to his routine and diagnosed it for anything that Silas or an esteemed director would so much as blink disapprovingly at in order to polish it up. It required ignoring how much his chest hurt when he turned a certain way to sell a few little pauses, and reciting and experimenting on his inflections was a part of the process until his throat felt raw. Most of everyone he knew wouldn’t be pleased to fall off of the back of their trash truck at work and almost be thrown off of it in frustration minutes later because he was trying to craft nuance on a particular part of his piece, but that is a story for another day.

          Em leaned on the back of his seat, pulling on a piece of his hair as if inspecting it for fleas after looking down at his phone bumping every few feet. It had several cracks in it, but still managed to work. If they were lucky, Silas’s car charger would get it up to fifty percent once they had reached the airport.

           “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that you dyed your hair again, didn’t you? I guess I’m getting used to it more since you cut it above your ears.”

           “Grey doesn’t make a massive impression like this does,” Remus told her, gesturing to the two green streaks over his brown hair.

           There had been more grey to cover up since when he’d first moved here, and he’d found himself considering that fact more often than he’d have liked to once he’d started performing his first, for once, growing stand-up routine as the littering of grey over the front of his bangs had started to encroach further and further towards his roots, weaving itself through the sides of his head and down to the hair that grew towards the back of his neck, and was the first of it to reach his shoulders before he had finally decided to get a proper haircut instead of working with a pair of safety scissors over his sink, leaving them in the bowl of it to try again each day over the course of about a week and a half to get it right.

           “It’ll certainly turn a few heads. Keep your head straight and meet their eyes tonight.” Silas added.

           “I’ve timed it all out. I’ll stare at them until they want to run on stage and chop my head off to get me to stop it.”

           This received a “Mmm,” and a low “Hm,” from both of them.

           “Within reason,” Remus tacked on, trying to stare at both of them as he felt his voice drop off towards a bit of a growl.

           They took a short stop at the dry-cleaners to pick up Remus’s suit jacket, made with diagonal, fat green lines running up from the waist to the shoulder and arms. Putting it on, Remus had almost felt like he’d grown into it over the past two weeks. Why this was, he wasn’t sure. He’d come up with the basic idea himself, although Cal and Em had been the ones to help him pay for it. Perhaps it was the fact that he’d been getting a little more used to seeing bigger and bigger crowds at his own shows, and people cheering his name after he’d opened for a few comedians who had already made quite the name for themselves, at least, in the local area. He got used to seeing Silas crack a bright smile and let out a real laugh at more and more of his punch lines, and Cal had even dropped his bottle out of his hand from being a little more enraptured by Remus’s story about the time that he had manage to distract an angry group of hecklers at one of Silas’s concerts by demonstrating his ability to pop his shoulder out and pull a condom through his mouth after snorting it up his nose. Em’s head shakes had turned a bit more playful rather than disdainful as well. While Silas had decided to wait in the car for them, Remus’s tailor prattled to Em and himself.

           “You know, my son wanted to become a comedian when he was little. He thought he was going to be the next Conan or something. Do you two ever watch that show? I think it’s a little bit over-dramatic, but I wouldn’t know all that much about it.”

           “Thanks for the help, Donny,” Remus started. “But if we don’t leave now, my agent is going to have my ass on a stick.”

           “Oh, you don’t have to elaborate any further. I know from my son how important punctual-ness is, he would always get in a tizzy if he wasn’t the first to show up at his improv classes.”

           “We really can’t—”

           “Em, I think this is the first time I’ve seen you before your shift’s usually over, you look nice today. I know you usually do, but today you look like you’ve really put on your face, if you know what I mean.”

           “I do what I can, you know,” Em said with an eye roll as she ushered herself and Remus out the door and back to the car.

           Remus knew that Donny was a little bit chatty, but it felt like it was almost half an hour before he had let them leave. Despite this, he had almost forgotten to be surprised that Donny had not at least told him to break a leg that night, as he usually did whenever they saw him. Must have slipped his mind.

Em had her ears covered at the sound of the jet engines whirring in all of their ears while they climbed the railing, up to a small seating section. The pilot, keeping her eyes forward as she ran her fingers over the many buttons and switches on her control panel, cleared her throat and pointed to the seats behind them and the champagne in their cupholders.

           “We’ll be lifting off in precisely five minutes, so please take your seat, Mr. Morgan. Your stewardess will be with you shortly. Please refrain from using any electronic devices while you’re at it.”

           Remus nodded and followed Em and Silas towards the leather seats. Remus’s agent, Ellis, was already sitting in the front seat, looking over his sunglasses at all of them.

           “I see you’ve decided to bring your little friends along, eh? I guess a little moral support can’t be a bad thing,” he sneered, narrowing his eyes at Em and Silas.

           “Get the stick out of your ass, it’s so far up I can see it through your teeth,” Remus joked, sitting down next to him.

           “You’re the first person who’s made it this far without one up your own.”

           “I can find something more exciting than a stick to—”

           Ellis held up a hand, using the other to adjust one of his cufflinks keeping his impeccable black suit to a standard Remus didn’t even consider before he had met him.

           “Save it for the show, hot-shot.”

           “Fine.”

           “Where do you think they get this leather from,” Silas wondered out loud.

           “They skin cows for it, I think, and then they rip out their organs and bleed them out, and then they turn their skin into leather,” Remus told him.

           Em gagged next to him.

           “How the hell do you know that?”

           Remus shrugged, suddenly wanting to reach into the back of his mind to remember who had particularly taught that to Thomas, and how he had managed to remember it.

           “Some teacher in middle school told me,” he started, gesticulating as he began to elaborate. “I wanted to know all the details, it was—”

           “Remus, shut up for a second, I just remembered something!”

           Silas pointed to Remus’s phone, which had been thankfully charged enough to last him the rest of the night.

           “When you were in the dry cleaners, you got a bunch of voicemails. I think they’re from some people you know. They wanted to talk to you, but I told them you’d talk to them after your set.”

           Remus sat up straight, his face now perplexed as he twisted himself around.

           “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Who called? What do they want from me?”

           “I don’t know, I wasn’t paying much attention, I was taking a smoke when they called. You weren’t going to be able to talk to them anyway, I don’t think it was important. It was probably just some scammers.”

           That got Remus to sit back and lean his head on the seat.

           “Oh. You should ‘a told them to go fuck themselves for me.”

           “You can do that yourself when we land. Don’t hold your breath, it’ll be about six hours.”

           “Eh, I have bigger fish to gut anyway.”

           Em would have corrected him on his phrasing, but didn’t feel like speaking up as she prepared herself for a nice little nap.

           Ellis frowned at the sight of Remus’s routine in his hand, refusing to touch it with his own as Remus tried to hand it to him.

           “Don’t shove that at me, it’s covered in coffee rings.”

           A little scoff from him told Remus that no matter what he did, Ellis would not be convinced to pick it up.

           “Do you want me to read it to you, then?”

           “No, I want you to throw it out the window. Yes, read it! You told me you changed at least half of it last night, I want to hear how you’ve done that. This is your jumping point. If you nail this, I guarantee you will have your own television show and your own Netflix special by next August.”

           The next six hours were spent with Remus reciting his routine from perfect memory, trying to change his gyro graphical stability in the process of the jet’s movements in order to ensure that his own were held the exact place he wanted them, keeping Ellis’ every flick of the eyes in mind. While this caused him to stumble quite a few times and hit his head twice and distract his friends when he’d landed on his ass, this didn’t stop him from getting back up and picking it up again, even if it required repeating a few certain lines over and over again.

             Ellis nearly shoved him off of the jet once it had landed and the door had opened, covering his head with a black sheet. Remus was partially thankful for this as he felt nearly blinded by the camera flashes, and didn’t know which way to look. He was getting a little bit more used to hearing his name said so loudly, but this was the first time he’d heard it from so many paparazzi trying to clamor over them as they squeezed into the limousine waiting for them. He could hear Ellis shouting at Silas and Em as they veered off to grab a taxi. Soon enough, he would get used to this, and it would become some sort of routine for him, wouldn’t it? Maybe in a few weeks he would even take the time to scroll through his phone instead of keeping his eyes on Ellis rapidly repeating directions to the chauffeur.

           After repeating this process, he was led down a small red carpet towards what he assumed to be his dressing room. He almost stopped in his footsteps as he looked down at it and the ropes holding back the paparazzi again flashing cameras in his face. This was just the first step of what he had been looking for since he had come into existence. It was the start of everything he could only hope to hold himself back from really thinking of during his time sitting in a nearly light-less room in the Mindscape, listening to everyone talk over each other and hardly have the energy to pay attention to any of them. He had no time to dwell on this as Ellis pushed him forward and through a door that someone had pulled open for them.

           “Come on!”

           Inside, a small crowd of people all dressed in black carrying makeup brushes, clothing racks, speakers, wires, and set pieces. A gangly woman with a handful of makeup brushes ran towards him and pulled him into a rolling chair towards a mirror, turning him to face her and looking him up and down.

           “We’ve got about fifteen minutes before you go on. Tilt your chin up, you look much too pale.”

           He did as she instructed, finding her hand keeping his jaw shut as she held his face still, smearing his face with foundation, layering it over with bronzer and brushing his eyebrows with a small tool he’d only seen Em use.

           “Jake, come fix his hair,” the woman called.

           It only took about three seconds before a shorter man bustled over and ran a brush through his hair, followed by a fine comb and pushing it so that it stayed out of his face when the hairspray came. He pulled on it when Remus coughed.

           “Sorry, should’ve given you some warning, kid. Give me a second.”

           He gave Remus a few more tugs and another puff of hairspray before bidding him good luck and running off somewhere else. Remus didn’t want to say he didn’t recognize himself in the mirror, because he did, but he still felt a little bit dissonant from his reflection. He knew why he was here, and had been kept up on so many nights wondering what this would feel like, looking at himself backstage of a performance of this scale. He knew not everyone rose to be on The Late Late Show in such a short amount of time, but it wasn’t as if he had just woken up yesterday and thought it would be fun to do stand-up.

           He had fifteen minutes before he was on. He didn’t have time to overthink things, he thought, as he pulled out his phone. Huh. He had three new voicemails, but they weren’t from scammers. Nearly dropping his phone in his haste, he put the phone up to his ear and played the first one. An enunciated voice spoke through.

           “Hey, uh, I’d start with asking how you’re doing, but, eh, it seems I don’t have to! You’re doing pretty well for yourself after all, aren’t you? I heard about you all the way out here in Los Angeles! Well, I guess you’ll be here too by the time you get this, but, uh, I want you to know something. I won’t be there tonight, I’ve got an interview, but I know I never really listened to you back in the day. I don’t even know if this will mean all that much to you, after all of, whatever people call it, sibling bonding, we missed out on. I knew you could’ve done something like this, if you pushed yourself. And you did. You made us all look a bit foolish, didn’t you? I guess we had it coming to us. We had it coming.”

           A pause.

           “But that’s not the point. I’m… I’m proud of you. Break a leg.”

           Thirty seconds passed before Remus could register what he’d just heard. A voice he hadn’t heard since the last time he’d heard Roman screeching at him to pretend they’d never met, to scrape by on his own and taste what it feels like to deal with the consequences of being who he was. And now, this. Something pumped its way back into Remus’s lower intestine as the corners of his mouth reached up for his ears. The word, Proud, sounded almost different when someone said it to him, and he was not prepared for what it would sound like, with Roman’s voice cracking and breathing it into the microphone as if he had been waiting forever to say it. Remus swallowed again and let himself take another thirty seconds to collect himself as he played the next voice mail. It began with a long sigh.

           “So, you’re hot shit now. That’s fantastic, I guess. I got a call from someone telling me all about you being on The Late Late Show or something like that. You went from being a disease to whatever you call this. Congratulations. I’m… I’m rooting you on from Dark Owl Records. It sounds stupid, but I actually have a couple of my friends in here at the bar. We’re watching for you right now.” The voice softened. “You’ve got this.”

           He was surprised Virgil had bothered to call at all, but hung onto his long drawl. Virgil had never claimed to be a nice person, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t be when he wanted to be. And one of those times was for Remus. Maybe a rare moment, but maybe it would be worth it if Virgil could see the look on Remus’s face that even he himself couldn’t see, turned away from the mirror.

           The last voice mail practically had music coming from behind it, a bouncy piano that had before sent Remus running to his room before he was told to stay away from the family.

           “Remus! I can’t wait to see your face on TV! I knew you could turn yourself around if you just put away all of those bad impulses like I told you to! Oh, it took you so long, but you listened! You listened, and look at yourself! Don’t you feel so much better? You should, you should feel over the moon! Give it a ‘moo’ for me! A-hah! You’re going to do great! Remember to take deep breaths before you go on, okay? I’ll talk to you later. Break a leg, K—”

           Patton must have ended the call before he could finish. It didn’t feel quite right hearing such encouraging things from Patton, as if he were just doing it because—he didn’t have time to think about that, Remus thought. He didn’t really know Remus very well despite their time in the Mindscape, not really, but he at least put in the effort. He was doing his best, after all, according to everyone else. The olive branch went out to everyone, Remus supposed. And that was enough for him right now.

           Remus had to focus. He ran over his lines in his head, turning back to the mirror. He didn’t feel distant from his reflection anymore. He was present, grounded, and just a few minutes later his face would be visible to people who he never thought would meet him. Strangers, people who philosophized at night about such things he couldn’t even wrap his mind around who watched this show to wind down. People his age who were studying hard to pursue their college education, high school students in so many clubs that Remus wouldn’t be able to count them all. People his age who would not look at him two months ago because of the bruises on his neck and the gash running down his arm. It didn’t seem like a big deal then, but suddenly now it was. His own ingenuity was coming to the curtain.

           “Remus, you’re on!”

           He stood up, not knowing where the voice was coming from, but was quickly pulled up to the curtain. He breathed deeply and felt it in his hands, the fabric much lighter than what he’d expected, but this was television. It was not a theater stage. He shut his eyes, counted to three, and listened for the host.

           “And now, everybody, you know him already, let’s give a warm welcome to Mr. Remus Morgan!”

           Remus opened his eyes and pushed open the curtain, walking out expecting a microphone and a large stage, and the host sitting at his usual desk against the cityscape backdrop.

           Confetti flew into his face as party favor noisemakers bombarded him, a few of them landing at his feet. He looked above and below himself, finding the floor and walls of a warehouse, and a ceiling stretching up to several fans. He looked in front of himself and saw Cal, Em, Silas, and several people who he’d seen coming to his shows all smiling back at him. They waited for a second to let their noise die down before shouting one single phrase in unison.

           “The joke’s on you!”

           Remus took a step back and looked here and there at all of these faces, looking down again to register that he was not standing on a platform, and there were no bright lights over his head. He wanted to pinch himself. He wanted to say he’d walked through the wrong door to some place he had just imagined, something he’d conjured up in one of his own dreams that he just hadn’t slept through yet. Above the heads of his onlookers was a large white banner, painted in shoddy writing to say, “Joke’s on Remus,” and two plastic wine glasses were attached to each side.

           “Wh—”

           “We did it! We had you eating out of the palm of our hands,” Em cut him off.

           He tried again, but couldn’t get anything out before—

           “All of this is fake! Everyone here is an actor! They’re all paid actors! We got you, Ree! All of your shows were a prank,” Silas shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear.

           Remus stepped back again, gripping the curtain in his hands to keep himself steady, only for it to rip. He’d stayed on his feet, thankfully, as he stared back at all of them with an open mouth and pulse beating upon his ears. That was it. He couldn’t take all of this in at once, and at the same time, his mind had forced him to. His mouth was dry, and he felt something bubbling up in his stomach, choking it back down his throat to keep it from spilling out all over the floor. He tried to say something, anything, but all that came out was air. Just air.

           “You’re wondering why we’re doing this, aren’t you,” Em asked.

           He just looked at her, his eyes starting to blur. He felt like he was going to pass out.

           “Your comedy career is going nowhere, pal. This is the best you’re ever going to get! Oh, and those phone calls? Your other friends, they were in on it! They knew the whole time!”

           He wouldn’t have believed them if he hadn’t checked his phone and found that all of them had still had him blocked. He couldn’t see their numbers, and it was as if they’d never existed in his phone at all as it dropped to the floor. If he didn’t know better, he’d guess his knees were about to buckle right about now, and it was all he could do to keep himself from hurling his guts out all over them. He couldn’t think about whether they deserved to be thrown up on now. One hand was on his face, keeping his head from pounding so hard that he really would pass out, and the other was forming a fist.

           The voice that came out of him didn’t sound like himself. Not really, but he knew it was. He never wanted them to hear it like this, but he couldn’t change it now.

           “What are you all expecting,” he asked, trying to keep his voice somewhat similar to how he’d presented it only last week. “Are you expecting me to fall apart? To cry? To crumble at your feet?”

           A few murmurs rumbled through the crowd.

           “Are you—”

           A sort of… hiccup kept him from continuing. Somewhere in another universe, he wasn’t watching every good vision he’d had of himself fizzling out, dissolving into a melted mess of wax, quickly wrenching itself from all attainability and taking his throat on the way out. Somewhere in another universe, he was not currently denying everything he didn’t want to admit while simultaneously doing just that. Somewhere he was finding his fist flying right into Silas’s face, taking one of the chairs in front of him and using it as a ballista. Somewhere else, he wasn’t currently trying to put his voice together as it fell out of his mouth and rushed to the ears of everyone in the room. Somewhere, someone was proud of him.

A/N: The plot of this is piece based off of the episode The Gang Breaks Dee of Always Sunny. I don’t take credit for the idea since it came from them first.

[artificialqueens]

Diamonds In The Rough, Chapter 3 - Fannyatrollop

a/n: It’s been a hot minute, but here’s the third chapter of @fannyatrollop and I’s Mary Poppins AU! Have a read, have a good time, and feel free to yell at us about what you thought. Fic under the cut <3

Katya’s first day at the Minj household had been peculiar in the worst possible sense of the word, and she found herself despising every moment more than the last. Her fears and misery were born of a variety of things - she missed her family and her home dreadfully, she felt practically naked without her little watch hanging around her neck, and she could barely understand a word her superiors were saying. They were far from pleasant people, from the ruddy faced cook to the strict and snappish butler, Katya felt quite out of place amongst them all. Certainly, it seemed she wasn’t wanted at all, from the way she was treated.

The worst of them was Mrs. Minj herself. Never before had Katya met a woman with such a sour disposition, her thin lips pursed into a near constant frown, her slight wrinkles carving a history of frowns and scowls into her face. Every word that fell from those pinched lips was curt and unpleasant, snapping at Katya when she couldn’t understand her complicated English phrases. What was perhaps the most dehumasing aspect of Katya’s treatment was that Mrs. Minj seemed determined to refer to her as “Katherine,” something Katya was desperate to correct if only she knew how.

She dreaded being alone at night, yet that was where she found herself. The tiny room held very little - a rickety bed, a tiny set of drawers for Katya to place her things, a cracked mirror, and a washbasin. Only the natural shine of the moon illuminated the place, for there were no lamps to light nor curtains to pull. It was strange to think that this was the same moon she’d slept under in Russia - it had seemed so pretty then. Now, shrouded in dark clouds, it was almost frightening.

“Калинка , калинка, калинка моя. В саду ягода малинка, малинка моя.” Katya’s only respite came from the folk song she sung to herself, trying her best to emulate her father’s own delivery of the tune to lull herself to sleep. But curled up in her thin bedding, her voice choked with tears, it was the most mournful sound a girl could make. “Ах, под сосною, под зеленою, Спать положите вы меня… ”

Just then, it became apparent that something wanted her attention from outside.

Katya stopped her singing, startled by the sound at her window. Turning in her bed to face the glass, she gasped at the shadowy figure looking in on her, a glowing halo of moonlight around their head. Fear paralysing her, Katya simply lay there in a hopes that this stranger would leave her in what little peace she had.

Then, in a voice lacking tune but full of care, the figure finished Katya’s lullaby. “Ай-люли, люли, ай-люли, люли, Спать положите вы меня.”

Was this a common occurrence in England? Unsure whether to be comforted or unsettled by the woman’s presence - her voice sounded like that of the fairer sex - Katya shuffled a little in her bed, sitting up and peering suspiciously at the stranger.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, little Miss Zamolodchikova, you have a lovely singing voice even when you’re tearful.” She spoke in perfect Russian, her English accent moulding strangely around the language.

Warily, Katya gave her reply. “Who are you?”

“Tammie will do,” the woman replied, still in Katya’s native tongue. “I’ve come to help - you might have seen me rustling about in the shrubbery earlier.”

“I… I do remember,” Katya said. She’d almost forgotten how the bushes in the next door garden had seemingly moved of their own accord, but she had found it rather strange. A little more comfortable with Tammie’s presence, Katya hopped out of bed and padded towards the window, her bare feet cold against the floorboards. “What were you doing in the bushes, Miss Tammie?”

“None of that ‘Miss Tammie’ silliness, please, it’s much too formal for my taste,” Tammie replied, a warm laugh colouring her speech. “What was I doing in the bushes? Why, waiting for you of course!”

“Me?” Katya repeated, thoroughly baffled.

“Yes! Consider me your fairy godmother,” Tammie said, the drooping flower on her hat bobbing as she nodded. “Now, I think it’d be much more pleasant for us to have this discussion indoors, don’t you think?”

Katya’s eyes grew to the size of saucers when suddenly, Tammie quite literally vanished in a puff of smoke. In the quiet aftermath, Katya wondered if she’d made it all up, and if Tammie had ever been there at all. But then in that very same puff of smoke, Tammie miraculously appeared sitting on top of Katya’s bed, coughing and spluttering as the haze cleared.

“I dare say, this won’t do at all…” Tammie muttered, and Katya watched with interest as the woman reached into her pocket and started digging around. From the way her arm vanished further and further into its depths, Katya realised that this was no ordinary pocket - it seemed to go on for miles. With a cry of satisfaction, Tammie produced a little bauble, no bigger than the palm of her hand, and with a few taps of her finger a warm, orange glow bloomed within and doused the room in light.

“It’s like magic…” Katya whispered under her breath.

A bright grin lit up Tammie’s face, and she lightly threw the bauble into the air only for it to hang suspended, floating above the both of them. “That’s the ticket!”

“So you really are my fairy godmother?” It was all a little strange to her - to be torn away from her home and abandoned in an unfamiliar English house, only to be visited by a magical fairy dressed as a raggedy woman. If she were unlucky, she’d awake to find that she’d been dreaming, and that the kind Tammie had only been a figment of her desperate imagination. But she seemed so real, so lifelike. Katya had never had this vivid a dream before.

“That’s me! Fairy godmother and magical nanny at your service,” Tammie announced, hopping up onto her feet. “You might have seen my prissy sister Dela in the house next door. She’s got magic in her pocket like me too, you know.”

Katya cocked her head. “Is she my fairy godmother too?”

“No, silly, you can’t have two fairy godmothers! I should be quite jealous if that were the case!” Tammie glanced around the room, frowning as she did so. “This is no place to keep a child…”

“I don’t like it very much,” Katya said, her head drooping, blonde hair falling about her face. “I don’t like England at all, actually.”

“Hmmm…” Tammie brought her hand to her chin, staring at Katya with narrowed eyes. “Aha! You aren’t very tired, are you?”

Whether she was tired or not was irrelevant - Katya knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep from the thoughts that plagued her unstimulated mind. “No.”

“Well, how about we go on a little adventure, then? I’ve plenty more children to see to tonight, and it’d be a perfect way for you to see more of London. Surely you don’t want to stay cooped up in this shabby old room any longer than you have to?”

Of course, Katya had reservations. If Mrs. Minj were to discover that she’d run off, there would be no end to the punishments she’d inflict. And if both she and Tammie were speaking Russian, how in the world were the little English children supposed to understand them? But then, she thought, perhaps this was a dream after all. Perhaps if she were to decline Tammie’s offer, she’d wake up and lose the feeling of comfort she gained from this fairy nanny’s presence.

“I… I think I would like that,” Katya replied - she had nothing to lose, after all.

Glad at Katya’s reply, Tammie took the bauble with one hand and extended the other for the Katya to take. “Wonderful! Now, hold on tight.”

Katya took Tammie’s hand, nervous excitement bubbling within her at the prospect of an adventure with her fairy godmother. She could only hope that the part of London Tammie was about to show her would be better than the unpleasant portion she had already witnessed.

***

Maxine Malanaphy had always been shy. In her early girlhood, she spent her days clutching her father’s trousers and hiding behind her curtain of much praised honey gold hair. There was little issue to be had with her more reserved nature - the ladies that came to visit the Malanaphy home would coo over how sweet she was, and how they wished their own rowdy daughters could be as well behaved as darling little Maxine.

Her papa was the only parent she’d ever known. Mrs. Malanaphy had passed while bringing Maxine into the world, so she’d never had the pleasure of knowing her. Papa would tell her the most wonderful stories of her, about her intelligence, her wit, her smile that could dazzle even the sourest of dispositions. Though Maxine bore quite the striking resemblance to her late mother, Papa never saw that as a reason to shun her. She was a little piece of his beloved wife, and he’d be a fool to let her go.

They were a splendid pair, Maxine and her papa. Their reserved natures complemented each other beautifully, and they’d spend countless hours together in the study, reading or playing the piano or simply chatting about the silliest of things. There was nobody Maxine loved more than her papa, and so she never saw the reason to mill about with the other girls her age. They couldn’t entertain her with enlivened conversation, and besides, Maxine was skinny and gangly and much too tall for her age - what business would those rosy cheeked, chubby little girls have with her?

Childhood was not always easy for her, however. The Malanaphy’s had never been the most robust of people, their weak chests and fragile forms making them incredibly susceptible to illness. Maxine was no different, inheriting a sickly nature from her father and suffering for it every winter. Yet she was never alone in her suffering - Papa would look after her, and so would the servants, ensuring that Miss Maxine would be up and about in no time at all.

At the age of eight, Maxine was sent away to the same boarding school her mother had attended; Papa had decided she needed the kind of good, proper education that had benefited her mother so. She didn’t like it at first. Being so far away from her papa for so long was something she’d never had to experience before, and it took her some weeks to adjust. Socialising with the other girls was difficult too, because as friendly as they were, Maxine just didn’t have the confidence to speak to them.

Her salvation came in the form of letters from her papa, and every single one was kept and cherished for her to read and reread until the paper was worn beyond recognition. He told her everything - how things were going at the house, entertaining tidbits from the parties he hosted and attended, interesting facts or quotes from the books he’d been reading. He asked after her, of course, and she replied with honesty that she was doing quite well indeed.

The discovery that he was not doing as well rocked Maxine to her very core.

Papa never said anything about investing in diamond mines in his letters. He never said anything about what a mistake that had been. He never said how it had driven him to bankruptcy. Most importantly, he never told her that the shock and grief had taken a toll on him and his poor health. The headmistress told her that - but by that time, Papa had already been buried, and every penny in the Malanaphy coffers had been lost to them.

Maxine was an orphan and a pauper. There was no place for orphans and paupers at her school.

With nothing to her name, Maxine was turned out onto the street, becoming a common urchin when only yesterday she’d been a rich daughter of society. It was enough to send anyone into shock, let alone such a fragile little girl as Maxine. She mourned her father’s death bitterly, the shock and confusion and it all rendering her hollow. Without food and shelter, Maxine was certain she’d be doomed to wander the cold streets of London alone until she simply curled up and died, joining her parents in heaven once and for all. She developed her cough then, a nasty, painful thing that plagued her every hour of every day, sapping her of what little energy she had left.

To make it all the more awful, her prized honey blonde hair, which had been so beloved by all who saw it, started to streak with grey. Maxine didn’t understand it - only old ladies had grey hair, not young girls like her. It was just another thing to cry about, losing the only thing she had left to enjoy about life. By the time her entire head had faded to silver, Maxine had given up - starved, scared, sick, and all while mourning her dear departed father. She found herself in Covent Garden, and she settled herself into a nearby alley to cough herself into a sleep from which she doubted she’d wake.

When Maxine next awoke, she was astounded at the warmth that surrounded her. Perhaps this was heaven, and she could finally reunite with her parents. That dream shattered when her new guardian, Mrs. Bathurst, made herself known, explaining how she’d found Maxine on the brink of death and brought her home to nurse her back to health. She soon discovered she wasn’t the only child to receive Mrs. Bathurst’s generosity, as she had a whole fleet of urchins under her wing who owed her their lives.

However, if you were to live under Mrs. Bathurst’s roof, you had to earn your keep. A basket full of flowers was shoved into her hands, and she was told to approach everyone she saw and pester them until her basket was empty. Maxine had never had the talent for pestering, so she was rather an ineffective flower girl. However, she still managed to make enough for Mrs. Bathurst to keep her around, even if she was more of a burden than anything.

Sickly little Maxine, who was too tall and too grey and too pale and too refined, suspected she was not cut out to survive her new life despite the kindness shown to her. The other children called her a toff and kicked over her flower basket, making fun of her near constant coughing and quiet demeanour. Maxine trained herself not to cry in front of them.

***

“I heard that Tammie was in London!” said Lydia, one of Maxine’s fellow flower girls. She was bolshy and brash and just about the only person Maxine could call a friend, although that was perhaps stretching the definition. “I hope she brings them nice candies she has with ‘er.”

A particularly nasty paper boy named Roger spoke up next. “Oi, Maxine! Tammie’s never going to give you any candy. She only likes children, and you’re a granny.”

The gaggle of children laughed at that, Maxine simply ducking her head in response. She had heard them talk of this mysterious Tammie beforehand. Apparently she was a funny woman with a shabby coat and a glowing bauble that floated. Maxine didn’t believe them - baubles didn’t float.

As the other children made their way back to Mrs. Bathurst’s crowded little flat, Maxine hung behind. She often stayed out on the street longer than she probably should, considering her health, but she found it far more preferable to enduring more time with the little wretches who bullied her. It was as she started looking through the flowers in her too-full basket that she heard the commotion, turning on her booted heel to see whatever it could be.

Maxine’s jaw dropped when she laid eyes on the glowing bauble, floating in the air as it miraculously appeared out of nowhere. It came accompanied by the figure of a woman, her hand twisted tightly around the hand of a little girl, her blonde hair apparent even in the smoky night. Surely this had to be the mythical Tammie, the woman Maxine had written off as a fairy story her fellow urchins told themselves to give them hope.

Tammie spoke to her little companion in a language Maxine didn’t understand, but could recognise as Russian from her studies back home. Maxine was considering dashing behind a nearby fruit cart to hide when Tammie turned her head and laid eyes on her, and a bright smile lit up her face.

“Hello, there! You look a little lost!” she called, prompting her younger companion to look at Maxine as well. “Might we be of some assistance?”

Maxine didn’t speak, but Tammie still strode over to her, pulling her friend along with her. The little blonde peered at her closely, like she was some specimen to be studied. Maxine tucked a lock of silvery hair behind her ear as the bauble drifted towards her, bathing her face in a warm glow. She coughed a little as Tammie crouched down to her level.

“Goodness, that sounds like a nasty cough you’ve got there,” she said, her voice gentle and friendly. “I might have something to help with that.”

She bit her lip as she watched Tammie reach into the inside pocket of her coat, keeping a close eye on her hand as she pulled a small fabric pouch from it. Pulling it open, Tammie extended it to Maxine, and the little girl peered inside to see a collection of multi-coloured candies of all shapes and sizes.

Maxine wasn’t sure what they could do for her cough. “I… I don’t know what those are…” she mumbled, voice hoarse from underuse.

“They’re perfectly safe, watch.” Tammie reached into her bag and took a candy from it, cheerfully popping it into her mouth. “Just like that! They’re very good for cold nights like this one - please, do take one.”

Although she hesitated, Maxine dipped her hand into the pouch and quickly placed the sweet in her mouth - and the flavour was overwhelming. She hadn’t tasted anything so wonderful since before she’d been shipped off to boarding school, and she let out an involuntary hum of pleasure as she let the sweet roll around her tongue.

Tammie smiled again as she offered the bag to her blonde companion. “There we are, that wasn’t so bad! Now, what shall I call you, little one?”

“Maxine,” she replied, trying her best to speak around the lollie.

The little blonde tugged on Tammie’s sleeve. “мне нравятся ее волосы.”

“What did she say?” Maxine asked, hoping this would shed some light on why the blonde was looking at her so curiously.

“Katya here rather likes your hair,” Tammie answered, and Maxine gasped a little in surprise.

To think that anyone could possibly like her strange silver hair… Not even Maxine liked her hair, not anymore. Perhaps Katya would change her mind if she knew how beautiful it had once been.

Maxine shook her head as the candy fully dissolved in her mouth. “I don’t think she should. It’s terrible and ugly and freakish.”

“Now now, Miss Maxine, we’ll have none of that,” Tammie chided her. Her tone was stern but not without affection, and it seemed Maxine’s words had genuinely upset her. “Having hair that colour at your age is a rare and precious thing! Think of how fortunate you must be to have all that silver in your hair - not everybody can be so lucky.”

Maxine sniffled, a mixture of misery and sickness. “But it used to be so full of gold…”

“почему она плачет?” Katya asked, her brows furrowing with concern. Tammie gave a quick reply in Russian before turning her attention to Maxine, who could feel a warm tear streaking down her grubby face.

“May I tell you a secret? I’ve always thought silver was much prettier than gold. Girls with golden hair are far too common - you, dear little Maxine, are a rarity. Now, I don’t know about you, but I should feel rather proud to be a rarity.”

Raising a hand to her soft grey curls, Maxine considered Tammie’s words. She had never thought of her hair in that way, being rare and precious like a gemstone, instead of something that made her stand out as a freak. Somehow, it ignited a strange sort of happiness in her, a feeling she thought had long since abandoned her. She owed it all to Tammie, and she offered her a sheepish smile in thanks. She even thought she could feel herself warming up, as if winter had receded back into summer.

“Um, thank you, Miss Tammie. It’s very kind of you to say so.”

Tammie matched her smile and reached out to squeeze her cheek, although Maxine could’ve sworn she saw her frown for a moment as her hand connected with her face. “Well, it’s very important for us to find ways to love ourselves as much as we love others.”

Those words stuck with Maxine long after Tammie left. As she lay in the shabby, crowded bed she shared with her fellow urchins, she found she couldn’t sleep for thoughts of Tammie and how the simple encounter with her had sparked a slight flicker of joy within her. It wasn’t simply Tammie that had cheered her, but Katya too. For as the enigmatic pair prepared to leave after visiting all the other children, Katya had managed to say something rather kind to her in her broken, stilted English.

“You fancy, like me. We can soon be friends, yes?”

A friend… Maxine certainly wouldn’t mind having one of those.

a/n: For those of you who are curious, the song Katya and Tammie were singing is a Russian folk song called Kalinka. When she and Tammie were talking to Max, what she said translates to: “I like her hair” and “Why is she crying?” Although I did use google translate, so you’ll have to bear with on the accuracy.

[sokikuro]

Just Hanging

Word count: 2665

The moon hung low and bright, bathing the world in its silver light. They swayed rhythmically to the uncanny beat of the earth, their bodies pressed together intimately, only their mouths were separated by a hair's breadth of distance and the air friction was the only force to hinder their otherwise eternal dance.

“Well, now I know how sardines are feeling.”

“Oh, very clever. S-sardines because of the net. I get it.” Kaito tried to sound sarcastic but probably failed miserably. His slight hysteric laugh at the end didn’t help either he guessed. He tried to clear his throat but it was rather hard in the position they were in. So he closed his eyes from the blurry image of a pair of blue ones belonging to one decidedly unimpressed Kudo Shinichi to get his Poker face back on track and took small, even breaths through his nose, focusing on just himself for a short moment. He needed to calm down if he wanted to turn their situation into his favor.

“It’s an experience you called upon yourself my dear Meitantei-san,” he tried again, hoping that his critic would forgive his earlier slip under these circumstances. He was, after all, basically caught, something that would never have happened to either of his parents. He could already hear his mother's merciless teasing.

What was he thinking? He was not caught. This just happened to be a minor setback. Nothing he couldn't handle, really.

He hoped that the detective would chalk up his little, tiny, not really worth to mention not quite loss of character up to exactly those thoughts, though.

“Smooth.” Of course he wouldn’t simply ignore it, considering he always was unforgiving towards his slips no matter how small and insignificant they have been to his overall scheme. “And it’s your trap.”

“You activated it.”

“You dodged.”

“Have you ever been hit by one of your cursed soccer balls?” Aggravating the detective probably wasn't a good move to reach his goal but he just somehow failed to take hold of the serenity that was, without a doubt, essential for someone like him.

Forget teasing, his mother would be scolding him in her uncanny way of not actually scolding him, talking in riddles and not just using double but triple meanings, so that no one that could possibly overhear could make a connection, especially a loudmouthed inspector and his violent but cute daughter.

Kaito was ripped from his short musing when he felt a silent, long drawn exhale against his lips, sending an unpleasant shiver down his spine. “Why would you even put that net there?”

“Why do you always appear on my roofs?” This time he had his voice completely under control and gave it a dash of mocking for good measure. Kaito flinched immediately, not being able to suppress the reflex caused by getting suddenly pinched in his thigh. “Someone is forward.”

“Someone went straight to bondage.” The detective answered in the same mocking tone.

“At least I didn’t plan on starting with chains.”

Silence followed the slight outburst. The swinging motion was slowly coming to an end but they started to spin a bit more around their axis, the movement not strong enough to cause them vertigo - at least for him, he wasn't quite sure about the detective, he hoped though, otherwise this would become a lot more unpleasant - and disgusting.

Kaito got aware that he digressed from his main problem and so breathed in deeply. He tried to clear his mind of unnecessary thoughts and focus on an escape plan while he strained his ears to pick up on any noises not their own. His traps could entertain his task force for only so long and he was pretty sure that he has seen Hakuba lurking around.

He exhaled slowly. If only his hands were free. A bit room for movement would also be nice, he hadn’t thought this through if he even had been thinking at all at the time. Why did he dodge this way? He needed to train on his reactions and reflexes a bit more, Aoko was due for a good teasing anyway and maybe he would even present her with some kind of long range missiles (the mop was getting boring, he could dodge that in his sleep by now, not that he wanted to test that theory).

The detective made a small wiggling motion, tilting his head a fraction, presumably to get a bit more comfortable. It simply reminded Kaito of just how close they were, made him aware of the warmth seeping into him, of a calm beating heart not his own.

A detective never should have been able to get this close to him and now here he was, stuck in a net with the smartest of them all.

Who actually owed him quite a lot. (Letting him go now and then could hardly count as a fair trade-off.)

And had his hands free. (Somewhat. More than him at any rate.)

And usually was quite reasonable. (Not like that prick Hakuba.)

And honestly was his biggest fan. (No matter how much the detective denied it.)

"Chocolate.” The simple word, ringing loud after their silence, sliced through his thought process, thankfully, he knew that he had started to go off track again.

“What?” The detective should be able to reach is back pocket that luckily contained the small stripe of metal which he had needed for his earlier trick. It should be sharp and sturdy enough to cut the net just behind his back, freeing them.

Or maybe he could even reach his card gun if he managed to get a bit more room between them. Way more effective-

“You smell like you took a chocolate bath.”

“Nothing wrong with chocolate,” answered Kaito absentmindedly. After a moment the conversation caught up with him and he mentally shook himself, his instincts screaming at him to not give anything about himself away. Why was it so hard to concentrate today? He normally had no trouble to think up a plan while holding a casual conversation full of deflections and misdirection.

“So you took a chocolate bath?” The detective sounded disbelieving, almost disgusted.

“No.” Kaito pronounced the word carefully a part of him still confused about his lack of concentration while the other part desperately tried to hide just that. “That would be too much of a waste and I don’t want to imagine the cleanup. Come to think of it-“ A slight jab to his thigh cut his grand vision and rambling off before he could talk himself into an embarrassment. He really had to get a hold on himself, and fast. The blood rushing to his head, due to gravity's merciless pull, would soon hinder his thinking even more. At least the spinning came to an overall halt as well.

“Do you live on anything else?”

Kaito raised a brow, getting slightly annoyed by the constant distraction (at himself for needing it to stop his mind from wandering to countless places, which, actually, was his norm but he usually had a perfect handle on his multitude of thoughts, not like now), nevertheless his voice sounded cheerful as he answered. “The chase.”

Another jab to his thigh. This was getting old fast. “I wonder what will do you in first.”

“Aww, is my dear Meitantei-san worried about me? How touching~”

“Idiot.” And another pinch followed. Of course. “I’m just making observations you stupid thief.”

“Why do you always have to be so violent?”

“Must be your charm. I know around fifty people that want to punch you at least once – and those are only the pacifist ones.”

Rude. Everyone loved him. Then again, he had read somewhere, that people tend to turn violent towards beings that are way too cute for their own good, for whatever reason he found incomprehensible (sometimes evolution just sucked), and he was cute, specifically if he dressed up as women, who were always cute no matter what, even if they were homicidal witches with an ego problem.

Where was he?

“Or you just don’t know how to express your feelings.” For a moment everything was still and then Kaito gritted his teeth. “Would you stop doing that?”

"You're a moron. Not everyone is as repressed as you are.” He pronounced the words almost biting, emphasizing every odd word with yet another stab in his thigh. He would end with a big bruise for sure.

“You are the one who can’t stop touching me.” What was he doing? He had no time for this. Was the detective trying to delay him deliberately? He had to be, there was no other reason for him to act this way when they were trapped in a net like, like those f-finny things. In that moment, after all he had been through for this detective, Kaito felt betrayed. He knew that they weren’t friends, they couldn’t ever be, but he had thought that they shared a mutual understanding and enjoyed each other’s presence. He loved having his favorite critic crashing his heists. What if said detective has gotten bored of his shows and antics? The thought felt like a slap to the face, a slap his brain proved unwilling to process.

"Only because you're wasting time arguing instead of freeing us!"

Wait.

"It's been what? Five minutes?"

What? "As good as I am at impersonating him, I don't have Tantei-san's supernatural time-knowing-skill." His voice sounded dead in his ears. He felt numb, barley registering the long-drawn pain from his thigh or his own words.

"Whatever!" The detective sounded aggravated, and maybe a bit... worried? "Get us out of your stupid trap or do you want to get caught like this? Which, by the way, would greatly lower my opinion of you. Caught by your own stupid trap. That's not how I want to catch you, you stupid thief. Now do something!"

Oh. OH.

The numb feeling wasn't completely gone but Kaito could feel relief and a tad embarrassment wash over him. His body, stiff and taut until now, slowly relaxed and it was then that he noticed just how on edge he really has been, how much he has slipped. Why was he always such a mess around this detective, unable to fully keep a hold on his Kaito Kid persona? One way or another Kuroba Kaito always peeked through. And yet-

"I was trying to get up with an escape plan, but someone kept interrupting me." He injected every ounce of gratitude he felt into his words, strangely not feeling like a total sap.

"Could have fooled me. I was starting to think you like having me close and couldn't bear to separate." The detective smirked tauntingly. At least Kaito thought he did.

"Which self-respecting criminal would want to have you close?" A beat of silence. "No. Don't answer that. I don't want to know."

"Moron." The word was merely a sigh. "Can we get to the part of your great escape now? Or do you actually want to get caught because you couldn't stop flirting with a detective in time?"

Kaito's thoughts came to a screeching halt.

"My dear Meitantei-san, I'm sure it's not me doing the flirting but be assured that I am quite flattered." The detective turned red, he could feel the rise in temperature. A grin slowly stretched across his face. "No reason to be shy all of a sudden, in fact I seem to be in need of your boldness." To prove his point he curled his fingers slightly. His grin widened. The detective shivered against him, either he just found a sensitive spot or he was reacting to the change in mood. Both scenarios were kind of interesting, always good to know the weaknesses of his enemies no matter how small. The heart under his other palm quickened its beating.

"Don't." There was some form of hurt in the single utterance but Kid didn't care to interpret it, there were more pressing matters to attend to, so he simply hummed in response and curled his fingers a bit more. "Maybe I just should let them find us like this."

"Oh? But that would ruin our gentleman's game, wouldn't it not? And I clearly remember you saying that that simply wouldn't do. Not to mention, it just proofs that you little detectives can't outsmart me. What a shame that must be." His grin turned sharp. "Time is ticking, Meitantei-san, what shall it be?"

The muscles of the detective's stomach clenched under his hand and a low growl came from the direction of his throat. "Fine. Tell me what to do - Kid."

He dearly wanted to taunt him for giving in so easily, sadly he had no such time. "There is a stripe of metal in my right back pocket. Can you reach it?"

The detective hesitated for a split second before he moved his left hand carefully slow from his thigh to his pocket. "I knew that piece of metal looked out of place."

"Hm, too late for that now." Kid felt the detective turn even warmer while he traced his hand up his body.

"Wouldn't your card gun be more effective?" The hand reached his hip, mirroring his right counterpart.

Kid hummed thoughtfully. "I had the same thought, but I doubt we can move far enough apart so that you can reach my front, not to mention the risk of triggering a few of my probs."

"Or the possibility of me slicing your leg and gaining hard evidence against you." The detective mused moving his hand agonizingly slow towards his back pocket. "Why is the net so restricting?"

"True, and yet such an action would be beneath you." He let his voice drop into a sultry timbre. "After all, you want to have the pleasure of catching me in the act." The hand reached its goal but remained still. Kid waited a few heartbeats. "To hinder movement of course, which reduces the danger of the captive getting hurt or using dishonorable gadgets against unsuspecting, innocent thieves."

The detective snorted. "Of course." Finally, he shoved his hand down his pocket. "It also makes it impossible to see your face."

A bang could be heard in the distance. "My, my, you make it sound like I planned this." More banging. Kid supposed they had two to three minutes before the cavalry arrived. The grip on his hip tightened as the detective pulled out the metal. "Cut the net. You can't widen it by pulling but cutting it is really easy."

The detective did as he was told. "Everything you do is planned."

"What if I did?" Just a few more cuts and he could let himself fall out. "It happens to be an honest mistake, though."

"Not from you." The words were so silent, Kid almost missed them, he couldn't dwell on them since the detective continued louder. "Am I supposed to believe that? You could have dodged every other way instead of barreling into me. Doesn't seem very smart to run along the exact same line as the thing you're running away from."

"I only hear you complain about my actions in general, not about our situation, in fact, you are obviously enjoying it." He splayed his hands against the detective's torso. "My deepest apology for having to end it."

Kid let himself fall out the hole, pushing against the detective, losing his hat in the process, reflexively he activated one of his flash bombs, landing awkwardly on his lower back with enough momentum to roll to his feet. Behind him the detective had started to curse. He ignored it and simply acknowledged the arrival of his beloved task force by throwing a smoke bomb to hinder their vision and mask his escape, only after jumping down the roof and activating his hang glider did he finally open his eyes.

Kid could feel the piercing gaze of his favorite detective following him and enjoyed every second of it.

[solivar]

First Dance

Originally posted June 9, 2006

Title: First Dance Fandom: Kingdom Hearts Warnings: Rated SVL for Snark, Violence, and Larxene. Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and all characters related thereto are the product of SquareEnixDisneyBuenaPixar.  Author's Notes: Second in a series of ficlets (or, in this case, verging on actual fic) about firsts. Contains the arguable foundation elements of something vaguely resembling a plot. Set pre-Chain of Memories. I'm not entirely pleased with the conversation at the end, and so this one might get reworked some yet.

Every member of the Organization had his or her own little hobbies, the things they did to make themselves feel more real in the tattered remnants of soul, of self, left to them. Xemnas disapproved mightily of wasting time and effort, but even he had to admit that the single-minded pursuit of their goal lacked entertainment value as far as reasons to continue existing went. For a group of people lacking one of the major fundaments of humanity and possessing assorted personality disorders of an antisocial type, an alternative outside obsession or two actually improved their functionality. Axel was privately convinced that, if he ever poked his unwanted nose in Xemnas’ personal quarters, he’d find dozens of spiral-bound notebooks full of as-yet-unused names and lugubrious poetry that not even Demyx would like. Marluxia, when he wasn’t busying himself with unacted-on plots against Xemnas, was engaged in a complex flirtation with his own demise by transparently lusting after Xemnas, all he was and all he possessed. Everyone politely pretended not to notice, then went to Luxord to lay bets on how long it would take for Saix to lose his patience and murder the Lord of Castle Oblivion in some deeply horrible manner. Saix, when he wasn’t acting as lapdog in chief, tended to lurk around Oblivion’s dungeon, not infrequently in the company of Larxene, with whom he shared a certain fascination for the physical and psychic mechanics of excruciation. Instead of working it out on each other, they constructed elaborate experiments starring whatever unfortunate they could get their hands on. For that reason, the entire Organization avoided the dungeon as a matter of self-preservation. Axel was startled to discover that Xaldin did needlepoint and Lexaeus painted and both were better at it than they had any right to be. He never even hinted that he knew, principally because he valued his existence much more than they did. Demyx had the best puppy eyes in World and used them freely on Xigbar, who seemed to consider himself Demyx’ bodyguard on his semi-frequent trips outside and was shamelessly used as a pack-bearer otherwise. They’d populated the conservatory with every species of instrument known to man at least twice. Demyx found the ones he liked, admired them for a few days or weeks, and then systematically smashed them to pieces. Except the damned sitar. Axel occasionally thought Demyx the most deeply damaged of them all, but kept those thoughts to himself. Vexen and Zexion pretended to an intellectual standard higher than anything the rest of the Organization aspired to attain. Axel knew with absolute certainty that Zexion was full of it on that issue – he’d had occasion to find himself crammed under the little freak’s bed and thereafter had great difficulty taking his coolly intellectually superior act seriously. Of them all, Vexen seemed to be exactly what he was: a heartless bastard who didn’t even miss it and who lived primarily inside his own mind. He made Axel’s skin want to crawl right off, which was no mean feat. For his own part, Axel was an inveterate people-watcher, even of people who only barely qualified for the designation under the loosest possible definition of terms. Larxene, the only other member of the Organization aware of at least part of his little diversion, disapproved heartily, though not for the reasons Axel had expected. “It’s just not healthy, Axel,” Asserted the woman whose favorite author had an entire unpleasant psychological designation named after him. “At best, it’s taking that method acting thing a little too far. At worst, it’s actively masochistic. Nothing you see, nothing you experience, when you’re out there among them will make you human again. They can’t give you your heart back. It’s pointless to try! Besides, if you want to hurt that badly…” She flicked her knives out, one by one, and the lazily contemplative look on her face suggested she was thinking about pinning him to the library wall and getting started right there. Axel couldn’t help smiling – Larxene was predictable in her viciousness but occasionally amusing nonetheless, and he only resisted patting her indulgently on the head because doing so would give her unobstructed access to his ribcage. “Two thoughts for you, my charming nymphet. One: self-mutilation becomes significantly less about the self if you involve another person in it. Two: give the good Marquis a rest and some of the weirder transhumanist philosophers a read if you want some interesting insights into the spiritually transformative nature of suffering. Have you seen XIII?” Odd how her eyes could light up and her pretty mouth scowl at the same time. “What do you want with that?” “I’m bearing a message, oh my maiden of pain, or else I wouldn’t abandon your pleasing company.” He ran a fingertip over the point of one of her still-drawn knives; she licked it clean, then dismissed it. “Orders from the Superior.” Larxene rolled her eyes. “At least he’s keeping it busy. Try the History and Geography stacks – it spends a lot of time down there.” “You’re my savior, Larxene. Next book is your choice.” He blew her a kiss and flickered away in a curl of darkness, because the library was large enough that he didn’t want to search it inch by inch on foot. He hadn’t, strictly speaking, been lying. He had been summoned into the presence of the other person who knew about his pastime and was there given a single command: “Find the Key of Destiny.” What he should do when that came to pass was not explicated and so Axel decided on the most obvious conclusion: surveillance. If XIII had outlived his usefulness – doubtful, given that he’d only been with them a fortnight at most – the order would have been completely unambiguous. And, since Xemnas rarely actually gave him permission to snoop and pry and spy on another member of the Organization, he decided to squeeze as much entertainment out of it as he could. For the first several hours, he prowled the World in methodical fashion. XIII had quarters and if he’d been in them, Axel would have been enormously disappointed. He wasn’t and neither was anything else and so the hunt continued. (The room was empty, containing not even a bed or a blanket or a single cast-off piece of clothing, only palely luminescent walls and floors and the hint of shadows lurking in the corners. Axel found himself wondering where XIII slept, if he slept, if he did anything at that could be construed as weak or human.) It became apparent, eventually, that XIII was not in the World That Never Was and hadn’t been for quite some time. He sampled the essence of XIII at his Proof – cold and bright as winter dawn, sharp as the edge of broken ice, so very strong, so totally alone – and opened a Door to Castle Oblivion, where he’d been recently enough that the taste of him still hung in the air, a taunting little curl of winter-cold and steel. Axel followed XIII’s essence-trail around the Castle and noted that its whimsical kinks and contortions seemed to be defined by an effort to avoid contact with anyone else. He even managed to evade Marluxia, a feat that Axel himself had never accomplished in Castle Oblivion and which ultimately consumed an annoying amount of time when he failed at it again. By the time he extracted himself from the Graceful Assassin’s flytraplike company, the trail was fading and Axel was becoming just suspicious enough to wonder if that might have been the point. Marluxia didn’t waste any of his barely-existent affection on the Organization’s newest member, whose mere existence seemed to be a point of not inconsiderable frustration to him. Axel didn’t think him suicidal enough that he’d actively try to do XIII harm, but absolutely knew him petty enough to torment the boy whenever possible. The Lord of Castle Oblivion excelled at that sort of thing. Similarly, Larxene nursed a grudge based on XIII’s publicly displayed ability to hit her about the head with impunity and without her express permission. And while she hadn’t technically been lying, neither was she telling a truth of recent vintage. The mustier reaches of the Castle’s enormous library were lit here and there with filaments of XIII’s winter-steel essence, but all the traces were days old. Axel commended Larxene to a number of unpleasant fates as he prowled the stacks, running his gloved fingertips across dusty spines, considering what to do next. If he’d wanted XIII dead, he’d just summon his Assassins and give them their orders. “Bring him back alive” was not, unfortunately, the sort of instruction they usually got and he seriously doubted their ability to comprehend such a command given their basic vocational design. Still… Axel found a suitably unoccupied corner and extended a call into the dark and nothingness that coiled where his heart had been. It manifested a moment later, sleek and sharp and sinuous. He extended a book on the geography of the Worlds that XIII had clearly handled more than once. “Find the one that’s not me. Lead me to him.” The Assassin slithered away with the eye-disturbing speed and boneless flexibility that characterized all its kind. Axel followed closely, watching as it caught at traces too faint for anything possessed of higher-order intelligence to notice, but well within the sense-range of things that hunted primarily by instinct. Some of those traces looked to be deliberately diminished, forced to dissolve at an unnaturally accelerated rate. Which was not, Axel reflected, a trick within Larxene’s power or, for that matter, XIII’s or he’d have used it before this. Within his own, yes. And Saix, for certain, and possibly one or two others – which gave him a theoretical list of suspects should he stumble over XIII’s fading remains but also raised more questions, the most important of which remained unanswerable. Where are you, XIII, and what are you getting yourself into? Keeping one eye on the Assassin, Axel flipped open the book. It was half excruciatingly dry geography text and half travel guide, the interesting bits being written in the margins in three different hands. He hoped that Larxene never saw that, or she’d start collecting writing samples. And then fingers. XIII’s essence-impression was strongest in the water Worlds section – he’d lingered, in particular, over a full-page picture of a long moon-silvered beach, a bucolic village clinging to the bluffs in the distance, a cluster of low, wooded islands visible just off shore… The Assassin raised the most headlike of its appendages and uttered the minor-key keen that meant it’d latched onto something solid. Axel dropped the book where Larxene was sure to find it and ran as the Assassin flowed away like a coursing-hound made of silvered darkness, down a staircase he had never seen before, out into a length of corridor that he had, and through one of the doors that lead to the outside. Beyond was a courtyard, bordered on two sides by glassed-in green house walls, in which a Door had been opened. Recently. Axel opened it, too, and found himself standing at the edge of a precipice – the vantage point from which the picture he’d just been looking at must have been taken. He was looking down on almost the same view. Almost. It was late afternoon, not moonrise, though the heavy overcast gave the beach and the sea almost the same silver sheen. In the distance, the bucolic village was in the process of collapsing in fire and ruin, he could hear the screams on the salt-and-Heartless-stench laden wind. A hundred feet below, the beach was scattered with bodies – human bodies – and swarming with Heartless in breeds and numbers too great to count in a single glance. They were forming a knot around a single focal point and in the middle of it stood XIII. He’d a Keyblade in each hand, one a blaze of wintry silver radiance, the other a flicker of purple shadow, and between them he destroying Heartless by the dozen without making any visible headway against the rising tide. Literally rising – they were coming out of the surf and out of the sand and boiling down out of the surrounding bluffs and Axel could feel them becoming aware of his own presence, as well. He called his weapons, eyeballed the range, and threw. One chakram scythed through the horde forming up at XIII’s back, carving a wide arc. The other skittered points down across the ground in front of him, striking sparks from the exposed rock of the bluffs, which exploded into a white hot sheet-wall at a silent flick of will. XIII threw a narrow-eyed glare over his shoulder as Axel came to rest at his back, a weapon in each hand, and parried it with a grin of his own. “Having fun?” XIII’s pretty bow of a mouth tightened. “What are you doing here?” “It’s not polite to answer a question with a question.” Axel threw, and a couple acres of prime oceanfront real estate became abruptly uninhabitable. “I was looking for you, actually.” XIII made a noise in his throat that might have been indicative of disbelief or just rank indifference and struck for himself, his dark Keyblade punching through the wall of fire Axel had yet to release, sending a half-dozen Heartless back to where they came from, and arcing smoothly back to his hand. “Really.” “Yes. I was afraid Marluxia might have fed you to a few of his more unpleasant plants. We can’t stay here.” Axel flicked a glance up at the precipice he’d leapt down from and XIII nodded in agreement. They moved almost as one, Axel bringing his chakrams around in a wide arc, catching the flames he’d already summoned and redirecting them, clearing a length of beach to maneuver in. XIII darted past to take advantage of it. “Watch your – “ Axel swallowed what he’d been about to say, as XIII automatically checked his back swing, a little smile curling his mouth. XIII was used to fighting with someone at his back. Good to know. Also good to watch, all vicious quicksilver grace and lethal precision, with one weapon in the air and the other in his hand at all times, his face set in a tight-lipped smile, eyes wide and bright and fierce. Completely real and totally alive. Axel laughed and called down more fire. They made the bluff in two quick stages, wiping it clean of anything but themselves, though XIII did most of the hands-on work. Axel could feel his bone-weariness, though he refused to show it, standing on guard with Keyblades at the ready as he opened the Door. Axel reached out and caught him by the shoulder. “Come on. This – “ The first Door opened into a place Axel had never actually been before – high buildings and a teeming mass of people that seemed thoroughly shocked when they appeared out of thin air in front of them. XIII staggered back a few paces and Axel held on tight to his hood, opened another Door – “ – is going to take – “ Deep woods, quiet and still, the air thick with the scent of loam and fresh rain. Another Door. “ – a few minutes – “ Darkness. Dark sea breaking on a dark shore, a cold blue moon hanging low over the water, never setting, never rising further. Another Door. “ – so they can’t follow us right back.” The World That Never Was. Axel let go of XIII’s hood before he decided to object with the edge of a Keyblade and stepped back out of easy striking range. XIII spun, his face lit by the radiance of his weapons, looking very much as though he were considering the odds of landing a hit at not-so-easy striking range as a gesture of his displeasure at being dragged across three Worlds by the scruff of his neck. Axel waited and, with an audible sigh, XIII let it go, dismissing his weapons and slumping against the nearest wall. It was interesting, Axel decided, watching how much that simple act changed him, altered the substance of him, reduced him somehow. Except the glare. The glare was still there, but even that was starting to lose its edges. “So. XIII.” He smiled, and watched XIII’s glare go from semi-hostile to somewhat wary. “You can call me Axel.” “Why,” XIII asked coolly, “would I want to do that?” “Because I’m no more a number than you are.” Axel turned, flicked a glance over his shoulder. “Coming?” “Roxas.” Softly. “My name is…Roxas.” “Roxas.” Axel let his tongue caress the syllables of that name as much as it liked. “Come on. You look like you could use a few hours of not killing anything.” Wary slid away and weary crept up underneath it. Roxas pushed himself away from the wall, submitted to a hand on his elbow to guide him and, a few minutes later, to a room with a real bed in it. He was asleep in seconds, curled up with his back reflexively toward the nearest wall, looking dangerous and half-feral and far too young, particularly in his sleep. Axel kept watch and thought about what he’d learned for certain today and what he could easily surmise and what more he had to uncover and how much fun that was going to be. Damned if he didn't have to write Xemnas a thank you note.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY IT'S SAFE FOR MAKING NEW VENTURE ANIMAL

It's exciting that there even exist parts of the world than what I saw immediately around me. The Mythical Man-Month, adding people to a project tends to slow it down. More often it was just an arbitrary series of hoops to jump through, words without content designed mainly for testability. It's like the court of Louis XIV. Modern literature is important, but the job listings have to be really useful. But you could in principle have a useful conversation about them with some people. Technological progress means making things do more of what we want. It would be less now, probably less than the cost of sending them the first month's bill. But that same illiquidity also encouraged you not to seek it.1 You don't do that if you start scanning people with no symptoms, you'll get this on a giant scale: a huge number of software patents there's not a lot of users.

It's what bias means. By definition they're partisan. I worked at Yahoo during 1998 and 1999.2 If I remember correctly, our frontpage used to just fit in the size window people typically used then. Now the frightening giant is Microsoft, and they could not master it. Want to know if you bet on Web-based software, you can probably get even more effect by paying closer attention to the time you have.3 Enough of an effect to triple the value of what they create. There are really two variants of that question, and the bureaucratic obstacles all medical startups face, and the classics. When I was 13 I realized, is that my m. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to, say, the ages of eleven and seventeen.4

And yet, mysteriously, Viaweb ended up crushing all its competitors. The war was due mostly to external forces, and the most efficient way to do it. So for any given team of founders, would it not pay to wait till his arteries were over 90% blocked and 3 days later he had a quadruple bypass.5 At the end of the year I couldn't even remember what else I had stored in that attic. Obvious comparisons suggest themselves, both to the process and the resulting product. Basically, Apple bumped IBM and then Microsoft stole its wallet. What happens now with the Super Bowl used to happen every night. That is, are the riskiest startups the ones that wanted Oracle experience. That doing good work.6 It let them build great looking online stores literally in minutes.7 Web-based application.8

They're a lot of bandwidth.9 What that level of ability can get you is, say, Python? Or rather, any client, and if you have genuine intellectual curiosity, that's what you'll naturally tend to do if you just follow your own inclinations.10 As a result it became massively successful. By granting such an over-broad patents, but they are an order of magnitude less important than solving the real problem, my friend Robert Morris and I started a startup to do this is to collect them together in one place for a certain number of hours each day.11 Everyone was so cheerful and healthy and rich. What was really happening was de-oligopolization. When would you ever want to do. I found I could entertain myself by having ideas instead of reading other people's.12 Microsoft client and server software. One forgets it's owned by a private company. You can mitigate this with subsidies at the bottom nine tenths of university CS departments.13

And while I miss the 3 year old ever had. You might think that people decide to buy something, and if you want to be their research assistants because they're genuinely interested in the topic. A company that sues competitors for patent infringement till you have money, and making money consists mostly of errands.14 This was too subtle for me. People from the desktop software business will find this hard to credit, but at the time. But if you look at the source, because you control the whole system, right down to the hardware. For the first week or so we intended to make this point diplomatically, but in some cases it's possible to get rich will do whatever they like with you: install puppet governments, siphon off your best workers, use your women as prostitutes, dump their toxic waste on your territory—all the things we describe as addictive are. I got was $12. If you do manage to threaten them, they're more right than they know, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn in great detail about the mechanics of startups, but as Microsoft shows, revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business.15

At least $1000 a month. The best ideas are just on the right side of impossible. Programs that write programs.16 You can figure out the tricks for winning at this new game. That is very hard to answer in the general case. This will take some effort on the part of the game.17 And yet the authorities still for the most part act as if drugs were themselves the cause of the problem.18 Perhaps a better solution is to let as few things into your identity as possible. You can probably take it as a computer system executing that algorithm. The effects of World War II were both economic and social history, and the advantage will grow as fast as I can type, then spend several weeks rewriting it.19 Finally, the truly serious hacker should consider learning Lisp: Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of us can use. I wanted to buy them, however limited.

Notes

But although I started using it, and the older you get to profitability on a weekend and sit alone and think.

It's unpleasant because the arrival of desktop publishing, given people the shareholders instead of themselves. And those examples do reflect after-tax return from a 6/03 Nielsen study quoted on Google's site. I talked to a VC is interested in investing but doesn't want to write your thoughts down in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 1996.

Does anyone really think we're so useless that in the world of the company.

73 billion.

Apparently there's only one founder is being compensated for risks he took earlier. The shift in power from investors to founders is how much they can be explained by math. MSFT, having spent much of observed behavior.

I ordered a large company? As well as down.

But his world record only lasted 46 days.

Related: Reprinted in Bacon, Alan, Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, Social Text 46/47, pp. If you seem like noise.

When the Air Hits Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation—maybe around 10 people.

I call it procrastination when someone works hard and not fundraising is because their company made money from them. Learning this explained a lot of detail. If this is the kind that has little relation to other investors, even thinking requires control of scarce resources, political deal-making power. It tipped from being this boulder we had high hopes for doesn't do well, but that's a pyramid scheme.

Financing a startup. The dialog on Beavis and Butthead was composed largely of these titles vary too much. Copyright owners tend to say, of course it was 94% 33 of 35 companies that an eminent designer is any better than enterprise software—and to run on the server.

Though they were that smart they'd already be working on such an interview with Steve Wozniak in Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work. A single point of treason.

There's a good chance that a startup you can do it in B. That's why there's a continuum here. The other cause is usually slow growth or excessive spending rather than ones they capture.

By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a time machine. There are still expensive to start a startup to become addictive. Instead of bubbling up from the other seed firms always find is that most three letter words are bad news; it would not change the world barely affects me. Then when we got to see if you do.

But not all are. They're common to all cultures with long traditions of living in cities. I think it's mainly not having the universities in the former, and large bribes by the normal people they're usually surrounded with.

They're still deciding, which parents would still send their kids won't listen to them about your fundraising prospects. The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably not do that.

And the reason.

As I was once trying to sell hardware without trying to capture the service revenue as well, but economically that's how we gauge their progress, but rather that if a company just to go to college, they have to decide between two alternatives, we'd ask, what if they pay so well is that it killed the best hackers want to design these, because people would treat you like a compiler, you could only get in the narrow technical sense of being harsh to founders would actually increase the spammers' cost to reach a given audience by a sense of the word intelligence is the least correlation between launch magnitude and success. Good and bad luck.

Heirs will be interesting to 10,000 sestertii, for many Americans the decisive change in how Stripe felt. I talked to a woman who had recently arrived from Russia. Many will consent to b rather than ones they capture. Good investors don't lead startups on; their reputations are too valuable.

[asidian]

How about something about Gladio and Ignis or other Citadel-related people handling the fact that puberty turned Noctis from a cute kid into a really surprisingly attractive young man?

Author’s Notes: I’m… not sure if this is at all what you wanted? H-haha, sorry. orz Anyway, thank you for the prompt, and sorry this got so long and rambly. ^^

===

Notice

===

Puberty comes late to the crown prince of Lucis. At fifteen, he still looks like a child, with a certain softness to his face and a slenderness to his build.

He tries to beg his way out of school picture day, because he knows well enough that, when he stands beside his classmates, he’ll be shorter than all but a handful.

Then comes sixteen, and with it all the trappings of adulthood. Per the king’s instructions, Ignis begins briefing Noct in more expansive matters of state: in boundary disputes and diplomacy; in civic planning and rules of law.

It’s as though Noct’s body rushes to catch up with the responsibility.

He grows a foot in two months; his limbs take on the gangling, awkward look of adolescent puppies. He has to be measured for an entire new wardrobe, and then another, several months after that.

Ignis notes the razor that rests by the bathroom sink now, a point of pride, though he doubts that Noct has much call to use it. He notes the frequency with which the maids have to change His Highness’ sheets, and he sighs, reminds himself of the hormone-driven days he was more than happy to leave behind, and sits Noctis down for the most embarrassing conversation that he has ever had call to engage in with another human being.

It lasts for half an hour. It focuses primarily on responsibilities, and the importance of maintaining the royal lineage. It covers the unpleasant effects of certain sexually transmitted diseases, and what measures should be taken in order to avoid scandal. 

It ends with Noctis in possession of a box of condoms. 

It ends with the knowledge that Noct can turn that peculiar shade of dahlia pink, heretofore unseen.

===

The damn kid has a fan club. 

Gladio’s not sure when it happened, but hell if it isn’t the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

Iris comes home from school one day, all worked up about it, and Gladio knows by now exactly which way to prod to get his sister to talk about whatever she’s excited about. She’s bad at hiding it; that’s just the kind of person she is. If she’s into something, it comes bubbling up out of her.

So he prods, and she begs off answering, and then two hours later, she comes back around while Gladio’s reading in his father’s study. She sits herself down on the couch, and she says, “I wasn’t the one who started it,” and Gladio feels his eyebrow go up.

Iris launches into a tale of intrigue and betrayal, one that ends with two of the most popular girls at their school founding the Prince Noctis Fan Club.

And what else was she going to do? She has to keep an eye on them, to make sure they’re not doing anything that’ll be bad for Noct’s good name. So she joined, too. She might not be first in line to be Shield, but she can shield the prince from some things, at least.

Gladio tells her that she did the right thing.

He agrees that it’s best she keep tabs on membership, for Noct’s sake. 

He sees her to the door, and he closes it behind her, and he sits back down with his book.

Then he laughs so hard tears roll down his cheeks, and bites his thumb to keep from being loud about it.

And when Iris’ class comes to the Citadel on their field trip, he cajoles Noct into playing tour guide.

===

Noct’s new apartment looks like a space that can be lived in, finally.

The cardboard boxes scattered haphazardly across the floor have long been unpacked. Their contents fill the shelves. Ignis saw to most of it, fiddling with considerations such as convenience and aesthetics, while Noct played games on his sofa.

That’s months in the past, now. On the occasions when the space is clean, it actually looks quite nice.

The young man that stands in the center of it, in his trim black suit and sloppy tie, looks at home here. It’s done Noct a world of good, getting some space for himself outside the Citadel.

The new living arrangements come with several specific unfortunate downsides, however. Among them: the time between coaxing Noctis from bed and him walking through the door to the Council’s chamber has dramatically increased.

Ignis glances him over, with a critical eye.

He looks half awake, still. His hair has been gelled, but there’s a certain sloppiness to the way it’s been teased into its peaks and valleys. His face is washed, but the concealer and eyeliner the prince sometimes takes pains to apply is conspicuously absent, abandoned in favor of a few more minutes in bed. The tie knotted at his throat, a beautiful silken blue, looks as though it’s been arranged by a five year old.

“Honestly, Noct,” says Ignis, and steps forward to straighten it up.

His fingers slide against the silk; his touches are brisk and businesslike. But he’s aware of Noct’s eyes on him, that curious shade of night-sky blue. He’s aware of long lashes that truly don’t need the help of the eyeliner. He’s aware of the way Noct’s lips curve up at the corner into a smile, fond and familiar.

Suddenly, Ignis isn’t certain when the chubby toddler he played with as a child turned into this young man before him, who looks every inch the dashing prince from the pages of a fairy tale.

“You do it better, anyway,” says Noct.

Ignis steps back and admires his handwork; the tie is crisp and even, and Noctis looks very much the young gentleman.

“There,” he says. “That will serve.”

It will more than serve. 

His Highness has a photo shoot for a popular girl’s magazine next week. Ignis makes a mental note to ensure they fit this tie into the wardrobe.

It complements the blue of Noct’s eyes quite nicely, indeed.

===

They’re in the middle of training when Noct loses the shirt.

Gladio doesn’t blame him; it’s hot as hell, and they’ve been going at it for damn near an hour and a half. He stripped out of his own at the start of the session, and he’s still sweating buckets.

But Noct hardly ever ditches his.

If Gladio had to guess, he’d say it probably has something to do with the mess of a scar halfway down the kid’s back. It’s pretty badass, honestly, but he there’s no telling what’ll set someone off. 

Whatever the reason, Noct keeps the shirt on, most days. He hasn’t taken it off in training for – hell, probably almost four years now.

He was a scrawny scrap of a thing, last time Gladio saw him without it, but those days, it looks like, are long in the past.

He’s filled out, that’s for sure. The shoulders are broader, and the abdomen is all lean muscle. However much Gladio gets on him to lay off the pizza, he doesn’t need to. Sure, he’s not ripped. Gladio knows for damn sure he can bench press four times what Noct can pull off, easy.

But Noct’s trained in just about every weapon in the armory, and it shows. He’s built like a gymnast, all sleek power. 

It’s a good look on him. No wonder his fan club’s having its three year anniversary next week.

When Noct glances up and catches him looking, Gladio gives an unimpressed snort.

“Gonna have to step up arm day,” he says. “Can’t have the crown prince flexing with those noodle arms.”

“Noodle arms,” says Noct. “Right.” There’s a flash of blue, and the biggest great sword in the Armiger flickers to life in his hands. It’s as long as Noct is. When they started, he could barely lift it, but now he falls into his stance, massive blade out before him, head tipped up in challenge. “That sounds to me like an invite to knock you on your ass.”

Gladio feels himself grinning. He calls up his own sword in one hand – uses the other to crook his fingers, the world’s universal come-get-some gesture. “Bring it, princess. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

===

The Accordan ambassador is tall and amiable, and entirely too familiar with the prince.

At dinner, he’s seated to Noct’s left, and he spends the meal leaning in closer than is proper. After, he blames the drink; Lucian wine, he claims, is far more powerful than what he’s grown accustomed to.

Ignis, who counts himself something of an expert on vintages, knows very well that the alcohol content from most Accordan wines is much higher, but for propriety’s sake, he presses his lips together and says nothing.

After the meal, King Regis and his son retire to the lounge to entertain the visiting diplomat. There are certain concessions in the upcoming trade deal that His Majesty hopes to lay the groundwork for, off the books.

Ignis won’t be needed for the remainder of the evening. He’s free to retire to his own quarters, and nothing pressing requires his attention. It could be one of those rare few early nights, if he so chooses.

Instead, he lingers in the grand hall, seating himself where the tour groups pass to and fro, during daylight hours. Now, the there are no curious eyes about to see the sights. Now, the Citadel is nearly empty.

He’s not certain what he’s waiting for.

He idles there far longer than he can excuse as fancy, tapping notes to himself neatly into his phone for tomorrow’s meetings, for want of anything better to do.

That’s where Gladiolus finds him. The man’s in a suit, hair slicked back. He had a tie at one point, but it’s been removed from its spot around his neck, crammed into a pocket haphazardly.

“What,” says Gladio, slowing to a stop before him. “You don’t have anywhere else to be?”

“Not at the moment,” says Ignis, primly, and taps in the last of his notes before looking up.

Gladio sprawls onto the bench without waiting to be invited, legs spread casually in the manner of ill-behaved thirteen-year-old boys. Ignis spares him a lingering glance. 

“Never seen you not in a rush to do something or other,” says Gladio, bemused.

“There’s nothing wrong with keeping a tight schedule.” Ignis adjusts his glasses, though truth be told they don’t need it. “What of yourself? It isn’t like you to linger after hours.”

Gladio lifts one big shoulder and lets it fall. “What, can’t a guy feel like hanging around?”

It would be hypocritical for Ignis to argue the point, and so he doesn’t. He only opens up a new document for his three o'clock with the minister of finance and begins tapping in something new.

He’s written barely two words when his phone buzzes.

It’s a text from Noct, and it reads, “you still around?”

Ignis replies immediately: “I am.”

There is a moment’s pause, during which Ignis pretends to add to his notes but makes no alterations of any value. Then a new text arrives. “can you come here pls.”

He’s on his feet before he’s finished reading, turning toward the elevator that leads up to the higher-security levels of the Citadel.

Gladio says, “What’s the rush?”

And Ignis, thoughts on the Accordan ambassador blaming the wine, says, “Noct,” and his tone is a bit tighter than he intended.

Perhaps Gladio can read his inflection. Perhaps his posture, more closed off than usual, gives him away.

But Gladiolus is on his feet an instant later, falling into step beside Ignis as he makes for the elevator. “On my way,” Ignis taps into his phone, as the doors slide closed behind him.

They arrive at the king’s lounge barely five minutes later. Ignis knocks on the door, brisk and businesslike, and calls out, “Highness?” in a voice loud enough to be audible through the elaborate paneled wood.

There’s a pause, and then Noct opens the door.

He’s decidedly more disheveled than he was half an hour ago. His hair is askew, and the knot of his tie is sloppy. But more than that, his eyes are flat and guarded, in the way they get when he’s upset about something.

Ignis takes in the scene: a room empty of King Regis, empty of anyone else save the Accordan ambassador leaning casually back against the couch, a glass of half-drunk scotch in his hand. His face is redder than it was before, and he looks a touch disheveled, as well.

And Noct. Noct catches at Ignis’ cuff and stares up at him, and then toward Gladio, standing there in the hall. His grip is too tight, and his fingers are trembling.

That tells Ignis all he needs to know.

“Terribly sorry,” says Ignis. “I’m afraid the Council has announced an emergency meeting. His Highness is required elsewhere.”

Then he holds the door wide and says, “Gladiolus, if you’d be so kind as to see the ambassador out?”

He doesn’t think he imagines the way Gladio’s eyes linger on Noct. He doesn’t think he imagines the tightness in the man’s jaw. “With pleasure,” says Gladio, grimly.

“Highness,” says Ignis. “Shall we? The timeline is rather pressing, I’m afraid.”

Noct nods, and lets go of Ignis’ sleeve. He says, “Lead the way.”

He follows Ignis out into the hall, toward the Council chamber. They walk in silence until they reach the first turn in the hallway. Then Ignis changes his route, circling back around to veer toward the Citadel’s private suites.

It takes them just shy of five minutes to reach Noct’s old room. It’s maintained in his absence, for when an official function runs late and he wishes to stay over instead of returning to his apartment.

He stands there in the doorway, looking somewhat harrowed, until Ignis says, “If he tries to reschedule, I’ll shift his appointments around until his ship sails. After he’s safely off our shores, the authorities in Accordo will receive a request for a new representative.”

“Thanks,” says Noct. He swallows. “My dad had to beg off. His leg gets bad, you know? But I thought, it’s just groundwork, right? I’m okay at negotiating.”

Ignis waits for the rest. He hopes that Gladio was rather less gentle than usually warranted, in seeing the ambassador out.

When the silence stretches too long, Noct says, “He got kinda handsy. I would’ve punched him out, only I thought dad wouldn’t appreciate a diplomatic incident.”

Ignis feels a strange swell in his chest at the words. He says, “The right ties in the Accordan media make certain diplomatic incidents all but disappear, you’ll find. As it so happens, I have the right ties in the Accordan media.”

“So you’re saying I should have punched him out.”

“I’m saying,” says Ignis, tone more fierce than intended, “that it would have been no more than he deserved.”

Noct thaws a little, then. The guardedness slips from his eyes, and from his posture. He looks like he means to reply, but Ignis’ phone buzzes before he can. “Go on,” says Noct. “It’s probably Gladio.”

It is, in fact, Gladio.

“How is he?” the text reads. “Does this guy need to accidentally fall down the stairs before I cut him loose?”

Ignis stifles a smile. “Your Shield,” he says, “is considering something of a diplomatic incident of his own.”

Noct leans over to look, with a huff of something very nearly a laugh. “Call him off. And tell him I’m fine.”

Ignis taps his reply into the phone and then slides it into his pocket again. “Are you?” he says, when he looks up.

“I am,” says Noct. But the longer Ignis stares, frank and even, the less Noct seems able to meet the gaze. “I just didn’t expect it, you know?”

Ignis takes a breath in and lets it out slowly. It’s a rhetorical question, but he finds himself answering, anyway. “Nor should you have had to.”

They stand there for a moment, in silence. At last, Noct says, “Thanks, Specs.”

“I would say any time,” says Ignis, “but frankly, I’m hoping we’ve never cause for a repeat occurrence.”

Noct smiles, wry and crooked. “You and me both.” He turns from the door, toward the couch where he used to play video games at twelve years of age, and sits himself down on the indent that still indicates his favorite spot. “Hey,” he says, almost as though it’s an afterthought. “You mind giving me a ride home, when we get out of here?”

“Not at all,” says Ignis. “Although I suspect we’d best wait for Gladio. Unless I miss my guess, he’ll be along shortly.”

Gladio is along shortly, and he brings with him some choice words about the Accordan ambassador’s parentage. Ignis adds a few thoughts of his own, decidedly less crude but every bit as cutting.

By the time they see Noct from the building, through the meandering back hallways of the Citadel and into the private attached garage, that shaken, uncertain look has been chased from his face entirely.