#please do not bring a sword to your school that's a bad idea

[trekscribbles]

Middle School Classroom Management Tip: A Step by Step Guide to Shocking/Scaring Your Class into Mostly Listening to You from Now on, Courtesy of the Merlin Fandom

Step 1: Accidentally find this video.

Step 2: Watch it obsessively until you figure out how Bradley James does the sword flip (around the 4 minute mark).

Step 3: Find the plastic sword you bought at Target during Halloween season a few years before. Practice in your living room until you can also do the sword flip.

Step 4: Completely forget about all of this for 10 years.

Step 5: Become a middle school teacher. Encounter a difficult class who won't work for you unless they like you. This especially works if it's a class full of rowdy boys and you've spent most of the year wearing floral dresses and talking about poetry.

Step 6: Find your plastic sword while cleaning out old boxes. Suddenly remember the sword flip. Wonder if you can still do it.

Step 7: You can.

Step 8: Wonder if it works with yardsticks.

Step 9: It does.

Step 10: Wait for a day when your class is extra obnoxious. Silently walk across the room to get a yardstick. Bring it to the front of the room and place the yardstick across your foot. Make a bet with the class: if you can pick up the yardstick without bending down to get it, they have to work quietly for the rest of the period. If you fail, they can have free time for the rest of the period.

Step 11: They're intrigued. They're quiet. It's a miracle.

Step 12: Flip up the yardstick with your foot and catch it like a badass. Twirl it for good measure. Enjoy the absolute pandemonium that follows.

Step 13: Silently return the yardstick to the back of the room. Remind the class that they are bound by honor to abide by their word. Enjoy 10 minutes of silent work time.

Bonus: The class thinks you're cool now. They're still loud and difficult, but they mostly rein it in when you tell them to knock it off. You push it and try to get them into medieval poetry. It doesn't work. You'll try again in a few weeks.

The moral: No knowledge is useless, and Bradley James is awesome.

[howlingday]

The Interview

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Lisa Lavender Live. As always, I am your host, Lisa Lavender, and tonight we interview a man who was responsible for saving all of Remnant from the Grimm more than twelve years ago. Please, join me as we welcome a hero of great renown, Jaune Arc!"

The crowd roared as they stood and applauded the well-shaven gentleman seated across from Lisa Lavender. His stomach felt like there were rocks tumbling around inside, but that couldn't be the case because he threw up in the dressing room already. He was on camera in front of millions of people across Remnant, all of whom lauded him as a hero, which was part of the reason why he was so hesitant to do any interviews since what became known as "The Fall of Grimm". He'd seen many interviews of celebrities fumbling and it coming back to haunt them years later. Here's hoping this wouldn't be one of them.

"Jaune, how are you feeling?"

"I threw up." The audience laughed. At least they loved it. "In the dressing room. Sorry, I'm not used to being on camera."

"If I recall, you were responsible for delivering Ruby Rose's message to the world, weren't you?"

"I was, but, uh..." Jaune scratched his head. "To be honest, I never was good with technology."

"Is that why you use a sword and shield?"

"It's part of it." Jaune replied. "To be honest, this old thing was just a heavy heirloom sitting on my family's wall until I left for Beacon."

"Beacon Academy, correct? That's where you had your schooling?"

"Well, it's where I first started until the Fall of Beacon, and then I walked all the way to Atlas."

"You walked from Beacon to Atlas?"

"Well, I rode a train from Haven to Argus. Not really a fan of flying."

"What happened the last time you flew?"

"I threw up." The audience laughed again. Two for two, and he was winning each round. So far so good. "Yeah, I don't know what it is, but I was just really bad with flying. I still am, too."

"Are you sure it isn't just nerves?"

"After all the bullheads I've been on, Miss Lavender, yes, I'm sure." Third time and everyone chuckled.

"Well, I'm sure you know that I didn't just bring you on stage to just talk about your airsickness." The hostess smiled. "After all, you were the commander of the Five Kingdom Army."

"I feel sick just thinking about it." Fewer chuckles this time. Okay, the joke was dead. Moving on. "But yeah, it was last minute decision to be honest. As soon as I showed up, everyone started rushing me into these briefings and plannings and I had to be the one to look over the positioning of all five kingdoms. I mean, it would be like someone grabbing you on your first day at Beacon and throwing you off a cliff to see how you landed." He chuckled. "Which, yes, I can compare to." The audience laughed.

"So what was going through your mind when you were planning?"

At this, Jaune was quiet. He leaned back and closed his eyes, remembering what Ozpin and Oscar were telling him about their plan to use Ruby as their trump card. He instantly rebuked the idea. With a nod, he answered the question.

"I was thinking about the best way to get to Salem."

"And putting the Huntress Hero, Ruby Rose, on the frontlines. Was that your plan?"

"When I first showed up, I was being told that all of the kingdoms agreed to pull her back to a safehouse until a final push. I told them that their plan was just asking for trouble and said to put her up front."

"Didn't that seem like a big risk, Jaune?"

"Yeah, but here's the thing. Nobody knows Ruby, or her team, RWBY, better than I do."

"Wait, do you know Ruby or RWBY better?"

"Yes." The audience laughed loudly. "But if you're looking for a more serious answer, I would say I know Ruby Rose better than I know her team. In fact, I know three things that her team forgets sometimes."

"Oh? Would you mind sharing these juicy secrets?"

"I would be more than happy to."

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

Ruby Rose watched the screen, barely blinking her eyes at the interview playing in front of her. Her best... Former best friend cracked jokes and talked about his arguments with Ozpin and everyone else in the war room like it wasn't a three hour screamfest about how Ruby shouldn't be treated like figurehead. Now he was about to spill secrets about her?

The last conversation they had was more than ten years ago, and just like in the war room, it was just as loud and aggressive, though she was the more vocal of the two. He wanted to settle down and she wanted to be free, using her childhood home as a base. Jaune wanted to keep in touch, but she'd slammed the door in his face and never looked back.

And now he was talking with Lisa Lavender on her talkshow, gabbing about the two of them like they were still friends. Part of her wanted to be mad at him, but another part wanted to forgive him. The former was easy, but the latter... She couldn't. Even if it had been more than ten years, there was something about how Jaune put his foot down about having the house and her visiting now and then, it just... It hurt. It still hurt.

Maybe what he's about to say will make her anger more justified.

"First of all," he said, "and you'll probably want to write this down; Ruby is probably the most agile huntress I have ever met. Probably even more so than her teammate, Blake. You could even say, she can really move." He tapped his palm. "She can really move, right that down."

"Okay, I'll write it." Lisa Lavender chuckled as she wrote on a notepad.

Ruby let out a sigh. It was no secret that she moves a lot. After all, the whole reason for their big fight was how she wanted to keep moving but Jaune insisted on staying where he was. He was stubborn and stiff, but she was more aloof and carefree. Was she biased? Of course she was. She's Ruby Rose.

"Second, she's really mouthy." Jaune said with a furrowed brow. "Like, she can be a real brat sometimes and kinda bossy. Like, things have to go her way or no way at all." Ruby shared his scowl. "For that one, write down that she's got an attitude."

"She's got an attitude, got it."

"I do not." Ruby muttered, glaring at the screen. Did she come off a little standoffish sometimes? Sure, but only when big, meatheaded knights were trying to force her to do things she didn't want to. She huffed. How long was he going to be sitting there saying these untrue things?

"Ready for the last one?"

"I'm ready, Jaune."

"So, and write this down, she's the fastest thing alive." Ruby blinked. What did he just say? "Like, I remember we got into a food fight with each other, and she just ended it all with a WHOOSH! Instant hurricane in the cafeteria and I'm on the wall, covered in grease and soda and juice." He chuckled. "I was completely soaked in food and drinks." He sighed. "Could read back what you wrote down?"

"I think I know where this is going, but okay." Lisa Lavender chuckled. "So, Ruby Rose... She can really move."

"Ruby Rose." Jaune said with a nod.

"She's got an attitude."

"Ruby Rose..." His body tensed, grinning ear to ear. Ruby's heart raced.

"She's the fastest thing alive?"

"SHE'S THE FASTEST THING ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE~!" Jaune belted out the chorus, standing from his feet and pointing to the sky like a rockstar. The crowd went wild, roaring with applause, even as he sat down with a sigh. "I'm sorry I had to drag you through that."

"Let me guess, was this a bet you two made?"

"Not really." Jaune chuckled. "Ruby Ro- Er, sorry. Ruby is my best friend. And even though I haven't seen her since we beat Salem together, I would say that she'll always be my best friend."

"Oh?" The crowd cooed at the sweet remark. "Would you say this friendship goes beyond normal friends?"

"Yeah, but not like that." He said with a chuckle. "She's still as much my best friend as I am hers. And even if she doesn't think we're friends anymore, I would say it to my grave that she's still mine." Everyone in the audience cooed even more.

"Well, that's all the time we have for the interview. Anything more you want to say to Ruby if she's listening?"

"Yeah." He looks to the camera, smiling. "I'm still here for you, Ruby."

Ruby turned off the screen, weeping into her hands.

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

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Lisa Lavender Live. As always, I am your host, Lisa Lavender, and tonight we interview the Huntress to end all Huntresses, a woman who just might be the most talked about woman to this day, the one and only, Ruby Rose!"

The crowd cheered and roared with even more excitement that when Jaune was on stage. Thankfully, her best friend stood in the wings, smiling as he watched her. She smiled back to him, and then smiled to the crowd and waved. As the roaring died down, Ruby directed her attention to the hostess as she began speaking.

"Thank you again for meeting with me, Miss Rose." Lisa Lavender said. "I can't deny that I'm a little honored that in the past twelve years since your victory over Salem, this is your first interview, right?"

"Yup!" Ruby replied. "Er, I mean, yes, it is."

"There's no need to be so formal, Miss Rose." Giggled Miss Lavender. "We're just having a conversation."

"In front of millions of people." Ruby clarified.

"You get used to it after a while. And I have to say that I'm surprised that you chose to come on just a month since Jaune Arc's own interview! I guess you two really are as close as he said!"

"Eheh, um, not exactly." Ruby said. "To be honest, when Jaune asked me to come on the air, it was probably only a week or so after we made up."

"Oh?" Lisa leaned in. "Was there tension between you two?"

"Something like that." Ruby answered. "Just a few days after his interview, I spoke with Jaune for the first time in more than ten years. And our last conversation before that didn't exactly end on good terms." The crowd awed at the statement.

"I wasn't expecting this much juice this early on. If you don't mind, would you care to explain."

"Not really, since it's all resolved now." Ruby said with a sigh. "Besides, I'd rather talk about us making up for lost time."

"Ooh~! Now this I have to hear! Do you want to hear, everyone?!" The crowd cheered, making Ruby shrink a little. "Well, there you have it. Tell us everything, Ruby."

"Okay." Ruby took a deep breath and let it all out. "When I showed up at Jaune's door, the first thing we did was hug." The crowd cooed. "And I had to tap him on the shoulder because I was having trouble breathing." She giggled and the audience laughed with her. "The next thing I know, we're sitting on the couch and just... talking. We talked about, well, everything!" Ruby shouted with a smile. "What we were doing, how everyone we knew was doing, when was he going to start growing his beard out." Everyone laughed at that.

"Well, it sounds like you two really are the best of friends. What was it like, burying the hatchet?"

"I..." Ruby gulped. "There was a lot of tears at first. I cried, he cried, I cried more, and then he cried more, and I told him to stop crying more than me, and he said no." The audience laughed after cooing. "And it's just... It's like I walked out that door ten years ago, and not a day passed since I came back."

"Well, isn't that sweet?" Lisa Lavender cooed. "Did anything really change since you came back?"

"Just one thing." Ruby said, smiling. She raised her hand, showing off a beautiful gold banded ring on her finger. The audience screamed at the reveal. She giggled. "Oh, come on. It's not that big."

[nkn0va]

Could we please get headcanons for Ann, Makoto, Futaba, Haru and Sumire dealing with an s/o who is bedridden? Up to you if it's a sickness or they're injured, whatever you feel most comfortable with writing. Thanks!

Fuck I really should've done something with this idea with the Yuzu, Hilda, and Kaguya ask. Oh well, too late for that now.

-Ann had taken you out to play in the snow when it finally came around. Seeing as this wasn't too often you took her up on the offer. Unfortunately you were a out longer than you intended and got a cold.

-After she got over her feelings of guilt and apologies, she decided the best way to make it up to you was to nurse you back to health. She's a bit on the inexperienced side but surely it can't go that bad.

-That'd normally be a way to foreshadow that it can indeed go that bad, but surprisingly it doesn't.

-She probably buys a bit too much medicine compared to what you actually need. She hasn't really gotten sick before and when she does her caretaker is the one to do everything for her so she just kinda wings it on that front.

-She can cook basic stuff like rice and soup relatively ok, but when it comes to the more advanced recipes she'll just ask Sojiro to whip something up for you.

-Well, either that or she'll go out and buy you something. Probably something sweet if she isn't told not to.

-Ann very much wants to hop into bed with you and cuddle you so you feel better, and you'll have to stop her lest she gets sick herself. Even when you do, that urge will always be there until you're feeling well enough to get out of bed again.

-When she can't be there she'll call you as much as she can, though. She doesn't want you to get bored because you can't leave your room.

-It was unfortunately allergy season and you had it particularly bad. It got to the point you weren't able to go to school.

-Makoto soon found out and the first thing she did after class ended was go to your place. The worry was clear in her expression as she quickly took it upon herself to take care of you.

-If there's any woman you should want to be taking care of you, it's her. She knows the exact medicine you need, and she's competent enough as a cook to make what sick people typically eat.

-She's had to take care of herself when she was sick on a few occasions and her sister was too busy to be of much help, unfortunately.

-Of course, this being Makoto, she'll feel obligated to help you keep up with school while you can't go. She won't make you work obviously, but she'll give you some study guides for the classes you missed to go over while you have nothing better to do so you're not completely lost when you come back.

-She unfortunately can't be there for you all the time since she has school, her duties as student council president, and her duties as a Phantom Thief, but she'll always make sure to make time for you whenever possible.

-Knowing Futaba, this probably happened when you two decided it was a good idea to try some weird, new food for a date, ordering it and having it brought to the house.

-Of course you two didn't count for the risk at the time, and you ended up getting food poisoning.

-Unfortunately Futaba's not too sure what to do, she immediately goes to Sojiro and Joker for any advice they might have.

-Most of her taking care of you is bringing you some of Sojiro's curry and whatever medicine he says you should be taking.

-Thankfully Futaba can be there for you all she wants, at the very least. As long as she can work up the nerves to get out of the house and go to yours, that is. In all honesty she probably needs Joker to escort her there.

-She'll bring over a console or two to play with you so that you don't get bored if you don't already have one. In that case she'll still bring over a few games you might not have. Anime works too if that's what you prefer.

-Being a Phantom Thief was dangerous, you knew that. It was gonna hurt pretty bad a lot, but you never thought it was this much.

-A Shadow using Sword Dance managed to get a particularly nasty crit on you. After Haru bludgeoned the unfortunate thing in a brutal showing of strength she was the first to come to your aid. Unfortunately even with Morgana and Makoto's healing it wasn't quite enough to heal everything. You'd have to spend a while in bed to recover.

-Haru knows the basics at least, and what she lacks in more advanced knowledge she makes up for with M O N E Y.

-You're getting the best damn food of your life while you recover and she'll gladly get you any painkillers you need if the pain gets too intense.

-And if that wasn't enough you're getting some of the softest, warmest cuddles you could ever ask for. Just as long as she doesn't put too much pressure on the wound and hurt you more.

-She knows how to put on and replace bandages if nothing else. If it takes longer than expected to get better, she'll have Makoto send the proper resources over to make sure you can keep your grades up.

-Sumire is one to make sure you're keeping in physical shape at all times. She often takes you out somewhere for some sort of exercise date, even if it's as simple as just taking a nice walk in the park or something.

-Of course you try to exercise even when she's not around, she only helped reinforce the habit. Unfortunately that goes awry one day. You make a sharper, more sudden turn than you can handle while running, probably with some kind of sport or other recreational activity and sprain your ankle. (Nova's note: I did that once during laser tag. That shit done hurt.)

-Sumire hears about this and is the first to bolt to your house and ask if you're okay. Thankfully you're not too injured besides that.

-In a surprising moment of boldness, she states she's going to be the one to take care of you until you can stand up again.

-She knows a thing or two about sprained ankles herself, being a gymnast. Definitely has some things to ease the pain that isn't just putting ice on it and some light stretches you can do that don't hurt too much.

-She insists on getting you all the food you need. Probably gets a bit too much out of instinct based on what she personally eats, but at least she can get all the leftovers or save them in your fridge for later, that one's up to you.

-She's a bit more shy when it comes to cuddling with you, but she will if you ask, eventually easing into it and appreciating your presence so close.

[v3nusxsky]

You're accepting request?

Could I request for a platonic Lady Lesso x Never!reader where the reader has a nightmare and Lady Lesso finds out the reader has an abusive family, please? 🥺❤️

I love that you write about sensitive topics and it brings me so much comfort and it just warms my heart.

xoxo,

🫐💋

Hello my darling, Yes I am accepting requests I love hearing from you all so much. And I absolutely adore this idea so I ran straight to writing it for you. I’m glad you enjoy my work I tend to write from experience and if that sheds light on some rough subjects then that’s a bonus. I hope this fic finds you well Anon🫐💋

They still haunt me

*Authors note~ my requests are open guys :) Having a horrid day today so writing this is really soothing my soul to write. I hope that these fics are helping you all as much as me doves*

Trigger warning~ abusive family? Nightmares

Prompt~ see the ask :)

Most people would be distraught at being taken from their own bed and taken to an unknown destination. But you couldn't be happier to leave. Admittedly you didn't know where you were going or why. But did that really matter? You wouldn't be with them and that's all you could focus on. An escape. Your wish finally being heard by the gods above. You should be terrified. But you're not.

When you were finally dropped by the creature you couldn't help but be amazed. This was something from that of the books that you read. Apart from the books didn't give it the justice it truly deserves. One building stood in all its beauty. Light colours with flowers that had bloomed adding intricate patterns on the bricks. To its side stood an onyx replica of the first building. Instead of flowers, vines sprouted there. The two buildings joined by a beautiful bridge. This was most definitely a place of beauty but not one without shades of grey. You were dropped into freezing water outside the onyx building. You began to tread water watching as others were dropped in alongside you. They all seemed ecstatic to be here and that sort of eased your mind a little. It can't be bad if they want to be here right?

Dragging yourself from the water you made your way inside, instantly a tall red head with a stunning cane caught your eye. She seems to alluded a certain confidence which indicated she was the person in change of wherever you were. Timidly you approached her and realised you were right. She was most definitely in charge here. A simple bang of her can and everyone scrambled to find a place in front of her. You being the only one who froze in your spot. You listened as she explained the rules of her school. The dean of evil, lady lesso and also the teacher of curses and death traps. This women was clearly very powerful and well respected here. You made sure to make a note of that, don't piss her off. You quickly found your schedule and dorm room before she pulled you aside.

"Reader" her tone demanded your attention. Reader? "Y-yes?" You stuttered trying to keep eye contact so she wouldn't perceive you as rude. "How are you finding this? I do hope you were paying attention to the rules I will not be explaining them again. Comply or don't, that's up to you. But the doom room will always be there" she stated with a mischievous glint in her eyes. The Doom room? That sounded like the exact place you wanted to avoid. You quickly found a way to scuttle off and avoid any more conversations with anyone else.

You were then all shoved in a hall, you noticed the other side was girls in puffy dresses and boys with swords. Immediately you were glad you didn't have to be subjected to that. The dresses were far to revealing for you personally to wear. The gathering was short but direct. And you were starting to learn that the two sides wouldn't get along. One of good and the other evil. But why wasn't there a middle ground? What if you didn't fit into either of those sides? What would happen to you then? It wasn't worth thinking about. You decided then and there you'd keep your head down and make the most of this opportunity you'd been so graciously gifted.

So much change really was taking it's toll on your body. The stress of a arriving at the school, reliving some of the harsher punishments you received when hearing talks of the Doom room and even dealing with the purple and blue bruises that littered your skin. Adjusting was something you were finding rather difficult if your honest. You were doing extremely well with classes, spending hours sat at your desk, eyes scanning every page of every book you could possibly find. After all you knew you were at a disadvantage not being from this world. A reader as they call you. So you made sure to always put your best foot forward. Always fearing the day where you mess up and receive the correction at the hand of the dean.

The only thing you noticed you lacked here was friendship. It dose sadden you to know that but at the same time it's a relief to not have to come up with lies to cover the truth. You didn't have to spend extra energy covering the internal scarring your family left. This was the safer option despite how lonely it was. This is how you found yourself once again in the small library at the top of the Never building. It was late in the evening and you were attempting to get ahead in your curses and death trap course work when exhaustion took over and you drifted into an uneasy slumber.

That was how you were found two hours lady by the dean herself. She had the torture of patrolling tonight. It was a a tedious task but absolutely necessary, after all the last thing Lesso needs is Dovey reprimanding her on the unruly behaviour of her school. So far tonight's patrol had been dull, the Never's all seemingly behaving, until she heard muttering coming from the top library. As far as she knew none of the students were aware of this library, as it wasn't the main more central one, so it was a complete shock to hear any form of noise from here. It was only natural that she would investigate and when she did the sight that greeted her broke her cold darkened heart.

You had hunched over the desk, head resting on the desk and hands gripping at your sides. You were almost clawing at the skin that was now exposed due to your restless slumber. You had tears flowing down your cheeks, dripping onto the pages of the book below your head, soaking the pages ad you cried out. "Please! No! Stop! Ow! What did I do! I wasn't even that bad!" You seemed to be screaming at someone. In your sleep your body seemingly reacting to a threat that was no longer there. Whatever you were seeing had occurred before that much was clear. Only then did Lesso spot the bruising that was on show.

Putting two and two together wasn't hard, your shyness on day one, the self imposed isolation, trying to follow every rule impeccably and even the way you flinched when other Never's described the Doom room events. It all made too much sense now and Lesso was silently kicking herself for not noticing this sooner. She prides herself on her observation skills so this was an unusual. As Lesso planned her approach you cried out once more, a heart shattering whimper of clear pain. It seemed to echo around the library walls bouncing off them and crashing into Lesso. Whoever had hurt you had hurt you impeccably well.

You shot up, chest heaving and choking on your own sobs as you gasped for breath. You attempted to blink away the remainder of the dream that was playing behind your fuzzy eyes. Due to the state of you, you haven't even noticed the extra presence in the room, even if her eyes were observing every little detail. "Little one?" She almost cooed out, the tone being one you'd expect from the dean of good not Lesso. The words seemingly wrapping around you like a blanket, pulling you back to the present. Only then did you catch a glimpse of the older women and your brain threw you into a panic attack. You were so going to be punished for the display of weakness.

Immediately you made your way to the darkest corner of the room and curled into yourself. Lesso watched in shock not understanding the reaction but not wishing to make it any worse for you. Carefully she stalked forwards hands up in a mock surrender before she knelt in front of you. Your eyes were unfocused and your breathing dangerously out of rhythm. You looked like a terrified child. It was truly a heartbreaking sight. "Little one? It's Lesso, you need to breathe. Can you breathe for me?" She hummed were a comforting tone you didn't know she was capable of mustering. You attempted to breathe as she had asked but every gasp of air was burning your lungs. Sobs now wrecking through you at the pain and knowing you were failing a simple task. "Can I touch you y/n?" She whispered not wishing to spook you in which you nodded and allowed her to gather you in her embrace. Immediately she slowed her breathing to a relaxing rhythm impressed with how quickly you tried to copy it. Praise was flowing from the elder women and effectively aiding in calming you down. You weren't registering the pain of the elder women holding you due to the bruising. Only when you were calm enough did you shrink away from her, the pain now radiating through your body.

"Y/n? What is happening little one?" She murmured not really expecting a reply from you but seeming the fear in your eyes she could come to a good conclusion. "What's the bruising from little one?" Her words causing you to visibly stiffen. "My family" you mumbled through your sobs. It hurt to admit this, despite the truth behind the words. These people were blood, all you had ever known, how could they be the issue when they all shared one common theme. Hating you.  Nodding in an understanding Lesso opened her arms in a silent offer for a hug, you took it instantly overwhelmed and exhausted. Lesso held you tightly but being mindful of the bruising "you're safe my darling, they won't hurt you again I'll make sure of it little one." She reassured rocking you ever so slightly watching as you seemed to snuggle more securely into her warmth. Here in the moment you truly resembled that of a small scared child. It was here that you finally drifted off into a restful slumber, lesso allowed you to stay in her embrace until she was sure you were completely out of this world. Then she simply carried you to your dorm and tucked you in. Before leaving she turned your lamp on and left a simple note on your desk. The note read "dearest y/n come and find me in the morning I wish to speak with you about what you've been going through and find a way to support you, just know you're not alone and won't ever be alone again. You are safe here little one. You're safe with me. Lady lesso"

Word count 1899

*Authors note~ This one was a tough one to write I hope I did it some justice I love hearing from you all feel free to request anything:)*

[blackypanther9]

Uncle x Papa – Nephew!Kid!Lloyd x Adopted Son!Morro x Father!Uncle!Male!Reader (Ninjago)

Part 2

WARNING!: Violence, mention of close to death experience, snake attack, accusation of being an abuser x sexual harrasser, fighting AND MORE ! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !!!

Morro stared at Wu’s back with no emotion. He just made Lloyd lose his Dad. He knew that Wu caused Garmadon to be poisoned in the first place. The Great Devourer. Now Lloyd is Father and Motherless. And they had no idea where Lloyd was.

-Two years later-

M/n was losing hope. He looked for Lloyd everywhere. He doubted that Garmadon sent Lloyd to Jamanakai. He needed a way into the Underworld. To his luck, he soon enough found a way.

“Morro, pack your sword. I found a way to the Underworld. Let us find out where Lloyd is at.”, M/n said one day.

Morro was fast as lightning and snatched his sword. M/n teleported to a camp with Skeletons and he looked at Samukai.

 “So ? Where is Garmadon ?”

A shadow appeared of him and it was in shock.

“M/n ? Morro ?”

“Garmadon ? We need to talk in person.”, M/n said.

“Bring them to me.”, Garmadon demanded.

Samukai nodded and Morro and M/n jumped onto their vehicle. They sped up and soon vanished in a portal. The Skeletons lead them to Garmadon and he just stood there.

“Oh little Brother... Look what happened to you. Are you okay ?”, M/n asked softly.

“I am just fine. How are you two and Lloyd ?”, Garmadon asked.

Morro looked at Garmadon worried.

“We are worried sick. We searched all over Ninjago, but we haven’t found Lloyd anywhere. Where did you sent him to ?”

Garmadon froze in place.

“I...I sent him into the boarding school near Ninjago City. Darkley's Boarding School for Bad Boys.”

M/n nodded.

“I will search him there then.”

“Me too !”, Morro insisted.

M/n nodded his head.

“You too.”

“You have been looking for two years and didn’t look there ?”, Garmadon asked.

“We didn’t have any clues where you left him. I thought he was at a Kita or at one of the places we hid as kids at, but nothing. Then I looked around everywhere, but not inside SCHOOLS. God, Garmadon, Lloyd was FOUR. A FOUR year old doesn’t GO to SCHOOL. Especially NOT a BOARDING SCHOOL.”

“You have a point...”, Garmadon muttered.

“Are you sure you are okay ?”, Morro asked.

“I miss my child, but that is all.”

Morro looked at him saddened.

“I bet he misses you too.”, he replied.

Garmadon looked at Morro.

“Do me a favor, Morro.”

He looked at the banished man.

“Protect Lloyd at all costs, for me, okay ?”

Morro gave Garmadon a determined look.

“I will. I promise.”, he replied.

“Thank you.”

He looked at M/n next and hugged Morro and M/n tightly.

“Find my Son and keep him save, please.”, Garmadon whispered.

“We won’t let you down.”, M/n replied.

-Time skip-

After a while they left and instantly went to the boarding school. They said that they were about to kick Lloyd out, for not being bad enough.

As the Director led them to Lloyd’s room, Morro saw him getting picked on by two other boys. He ran over and pushed them away from Lloyd.

“Oww ! Hey ! Do you know who I am ?!”, one of the two boys yelled at Morro.

“I don’t know you, nor do I CARE ! Leave my COUSIN alone, you little crybaby ! If you wanna feel better about yourself, pick on yourself, Coward !”, Morro yelled.

The two boys got up and saw Morro, shielding Lloyd from them. He looked at Morro in awe. He remembered Morro, even if it was just barely.

The boys laughed.

“That Baby is YOUR cousin ?! Man I would throw him out of my Family tree !”, the other boy said, laughing.

Lloyd looked away, saddened and hurt. Morro was angry. He punched the second boy hard in the face, breaking his nose and the other boy he kicked down. They were both crying and looking at him scared.

Morro scoffed.

“You weeping little shits, DARE to make fun of my cousin, even though you are fucking Crybabies ? Get out of my sight, before I make you wish you were never born.”, Morro threatened.

They quickly got up and ran for their lives. Morro turned around and looked at Lloyd, worried.

“Are you okay ? God, finally we found you. Who else bullied you ? Do I need to kick someone else’s ass ?”, Morro fretted over Lloyd, checking on him.

M/n glared at the Director.

“You better keep these brats under control, before I file a lawsuit on your asses.”, M/n threatened.

“I can file one against your child, Sir ! He hurt two children !”

“And they hurt MY NEPHEW ! And you didn’t do SHIT about it ! File a report, I will file multiple against your Bitch ass !”, M/n yelled at him angered.

The Director shut up instantly. M/n meant business and it scared the man.

Morro smirked at the Director darkly and stuck his tongue out. After that they collected Lloyd’s belongings and left. They went back home and M/n instantly gave Lloyd his own room.

“Are you sure you are okay, Lloyd ?”, the 15 year old Teenager asked.

“Now I am.”, he replied softly.

Then he hugged Morro tightly. He hugged him back.

“Thank you, for helping me and getting me out of there.”

“Of course. We were looking for you everywhere.”

“Did anyone visit you, Lloyd ?”, M/n asked.

“No... Uncle Wu didn’t. Mom didn’t and Dad didn’t either...”, he replied saddened.

“Well, your Dad is banished to another place, right now. He is unable to come visit you. But I am sure he will send you cards.”

Morro was angered that Wu didn’t even bother to visit Lloyd. What a prick !

-A few months later-

Morro was running after Lloyd in Jamanakai.

“Lloyd, no more troubles ! M/n will kill us !”

“Just one last time. I want some Candy...”

“Lloyd, just ask M/n, he will give you some money to buy sweets.”

“I know I won’t get any, but at least I’ll have fun, right ? It’s just gonna be a joke. Also, you KNOW that I wanna be just like my Dad, one day, Morro.”

Morro grimaced at that. Garmadon doesn’t want that for him though. Before Morro could say anything, he started to scare everyone and demanded for sweets. All he got was vegetables and fruit. Morro chuckled, caught an apple and took a bite from it, grinning at Lloyd.

“I hate vegetables !”, Lloyd complained, but almost smiled in the middle of it.

Sure he hated vegetables and fruit, but he expected something like this and it was fun to Lloyd. Yes his clothes will later be dirty, but he WANTED this. That was why Morro didn’t step in.

Morro chuckled and took another bite from his apple. He even looked at the salesman who threw it and gave him two yen for it, which the man thanked him for. (I don’t know how yen work, I just go with 1 yen = 1$.)

Morro got unnerved though, as he saw four colorful, hooded dressed people pick Lloyd up and telling them that nothing was there to see. He followed them and watched what they did. Then he saw that they hung him up in a Dragons maw of a roof, he got angry.

He attacked the Ninja and then saw the weapons. Golden Weapons.

‘Wu !’, Morro thought with distaste.

They had no chance to react and were on the floor.

“Who do you think you are, to do that to a CHILD ?! He doesn’t KNOW better ! And what are you supposed to be, huh ?! Bullies ?!”, Morro yelled angered at the men.

With Wind he got Lloyd down gently, who was actually sad and felt humiliated.

“Then teach him how to behave !”, the one dressed in red yelled like a snotty kid.

“Were you NEVER children ?! He was just fooling around, like damn ! He is a KID !”, Morro yelled.

“He is the SON of EVIL itself !”, the red dressed man yelled.

“YOUR SENSEI IS THE EVIL ITSELF ! HE ALMOST KILLED ME ! HE NEVER VISITED HIS OWN NEPHEW ! HE ABANDONED BOTH HIS OWN BROTHERS ! HE ABANDONED ME ! And what are you now supposed to be ?! The next laugh figures ?!”, Morro yelled at him angered and pissed off.

Lloyd hid behind Morro, scared.

“M-Morro ?”, Lloyd called softly.

He turned to look at Lloyd.

“What is it, Kiddo ?”, he asked, voice soft.

“C-can we just go home ? I don’t wanna play anymore...”, Lloyd asked softly, tears in his eyes.

Morro looked at him with sympathy and hugged Lloyd softly.

“Give me a second, okay ? Don’t run off.”, Morro asked.

Lloyd nodded and let go of Morro.

He used his Wind to blow the other Ninja after himself into an alley.

“How did you-?!”, the blue one wanted to ask, but Morro interrupted him.

“Lloyd was just messing around. Have you all never been a kid ? He never knew his Mom, Wu, his own Uncle, didn’t even visit him and Garmadon was the only one who cared for him, until he got banished to the Underworld. For you it might sound like some sob story of a kid, but he only had his Father to look up to. Sure he wants to be just like him, but mostly he just pulls pranks and other things. He knew he won’t get any candy, he just wanted to play. Leave a kid alone and let them be a fucking child, will you ?”, Morro said, heatedly.

They stared at him.

“We-we had no idea. Wait...Wu is his Uncle and he never visited him ?”, the black one asked.

Morro made a sour face.

“Not even once. He was on the boarding school for bad boys and we pulled him out of it, a few months ago. Everyone bullied him for not being bad enough. He lives with M/n and me now. M/n is Lloyd’s other Uncle and I am his adopted Son, which makes me Lloyd’s cousin. M/n has been pretty busy lately, to get food on the table and I am taking care of Lloyd. He barely did any damage, just messed around and tried to have some fun. I would have been more worried, if he stole items.”

“Sensei Wu never told us about a M/n, Lloyd and Morro. How do we know you are not lying ?”, the white one asked.

Morro’s face darkened.

“Mention our names and ask him about us. That you met us here. I bet he will be surprised to hear that I am still alive.”, Morro answered darkly.

“Still alive ? You mentioned he almost got you killed. Why ?”

Morro stayed silent for a while.

“It is a taboo thing to talk about in the household I live in, for Lloyd’s sake. But let us just say, Wu made me believe in something...Something I was so determined to be, that when he said I am not it...I tried to prove him wrong. I left as he continued to refuse to try and told him I will prove to him that I am worthy. I almost died in the Caves of Despair. M/n and Garmadon found me just in time, before I would have either suffocated to death or burned into my death. The exit was blocked and M/n got me out in time. Lloyd was a baby when it happened and Garmadon was still....well...Garmadon. A Father, an Uncle, a Husband and a Brother. And he was great in all of that.”

They stared at Morro, who gave an angered and betrayed smile.

“Turned out, that Garmadon and M/n were trying to find me, even though M/n doubted I was still around. It was a close call. But Sensei Wu, who had claimed that he cared for me like I was his Son ? He didn’t even BOTHER to look for me.”, Morro spat out.

They were in utter shock. Then Morro left, saying nothing else. He looked for Lloyd and he didn’t find him.

‘What is he planning now...?’

Morro looked around and suddenly...

“BOO !”, Lloyd yelled and jumped out of a corner.

Morro looked at him bored and Lloyd lost his smile.

“I didn’t scare you ?”, he asked saddened.

Morro then grabbed his heart and made a show out of it.

“Oh ! Oh my God ! How could you ?! I can’t breathe !”, Morro fake coughed and then fell to the ground.

He pretended to be dead and Lloyd giggled, until he noticed that Morro didn’t get back up.

“M-Morro ? Morro, it isn’t funny anymore ! Please wake up !”, Lloyd panicked.

Suddenly Morro snatched Lloyd, held him on top of his chest on the floor and tickled him, making the boy yelp and screech in laughter.

“Nohohoho ! Mohohohohrrhohohoho ! Ahahahaha !”, Lloyd laughed out loudly, struggling to get free.

“Never ! I will punish you with tickles !”, Morro yelled.

They both didn’t even notice that the Ninja still watched them, feeling disgusted with themselves how they treated Lloyd a few minutes ago. Lloyd laughed out a stop and Morro did stop, noticing that Lloyd couldn’t breathe.

“You good ?”

“Yes !”, Lloyd chirped.

“Still wanna go home ?”, Morro asked.

“Can we...take a walk ?”, Lloyd asked sheepishly.

“Sure. Come on, on my back you go.”, Morro said, leaning down.

Lloyd jumped onto Morro’s back and he ran away with him, making Lloyd laugh.

“Faster horsie !”, Lloyd laughed out.

Morro made noises of a horse and they left Jamanakai together.

“We were absolute assholes to a child...”, Cole said.

“He didn’t even ask for our names.”, Zane informed.

“Why would he ? He made it clear that he hated us for hurting Lloyd.”, Jay deadpanned.

Kai was silent, but he didn’t like Morro all that much. They left Jamanakai, while Morro and Lloyd walked together, Lloyd kicking stones around. Then they found the tomb of Hypnobrai and got curious.

Morro never heard of the snakes and the tombs they were locked up in. They thought they found a treasure chamber, no one else found. Maybe, if they find a Treasure in there, they can help M/n to not overwork himself anymore ! So they opened it and fell inside. Morro used the Wind to give Lloyd and himself a soft landing.

“It is just Ice, no Treasure...”, Lloyd said saddened.

Morro saw something in the reflection and backed away. The 15 year old had a very bad feeling about this. Lloyd was about to get hypnotized, but Morro pulled him away and they escaped the tomb.  This wasn’t good...

They got in big trouble again.

-Time skip-

Morro promptly went home with Lloyd and M/n looked at the two boys in worry, as he saw Morro’s panic.

“What happened ?”, he asked.

“I...It’s all my fault, Papa ! Lloyd and I, we opened something and there were hypnotizing snakes in it ! We-we thought it was a place where a treasure was hidden away, that no one else found ! I’m so sorry !”, Morro exploded with tears running down his face.

He knew M/n will get mad. He told him many times to not do anything stupid.

M/n surprised Morro when he hugged him tightly.

“It’s okay, Morro. It’s okay... Shhh... You opened the tomb of the Hypnobrai. One of the five tombs, of the Serpentine tribes.”

“I am so sorry, Papa. I didn’t mean to. We really thought it was just a treasure, we thought maybe we can help you out that way, because you are always so busy.”, Morro explained quickly.

M/n ran his hand through Morro’s hair, something that calmed him down, M/n found out.

“It’s okay. I am not mad at you two. I didn’t tell you and they didn’t really make it obvious. Let us just hope that the tribes won’t become friends again.”

Morro and Lloyd hugged M/n, glad that he isn’t pissed off with them.

“By the way, Wu has four new students. They are big bullies. Lloyd fooled around in the village Jamanakai and they wanted to hang him up by his pants on someone’s roof.”, Morro informed.

M/n froze at that and his grip tightened on the both of them.

“Are they a danger ?”, he asked.

“No. I got them down easily.”

“Good. Then I will not have to lock you up in here, for safety reasons.”

“Can’t we make friends with the snakes ?”, Lloyd asked.

M/n looked at Lloyd sharply.

“You NEVER trust a snake, Lloyd. They always fool you. They promise to be your friend, but as soon as there is something they don’t like, they turn their back on you. NEVER EVER trust a snake, okay ? And don’t look Hypnobrais in the eyes, okay ?”, M/n asked.

Morro and Lloyd nodded their heads.

“Good. So...Lloyd, do you want some candy ? I saw that your stash was empty.”, M/n asked.

His eyes widened in wonder.

“Can we get some, Morro ? Please ?”, Lloyd asked.

Morro sighed and smiled at Lloyd.

“Fine. But remember that you will get a limit. I want to get myself some things too, is that okay, Dad ?”, Morro asked.

“What do you WANT to get, hmm ? Hopefully not some naughty comics.”, M/n said suspiciously.

Morro made a disgusted face.

“Daaaaaaaaaad ! No ! I just want to get myself a few pens, coloring pencils, notebooks and maybe one or two history books. Please ?”

“Fine, fine.”, M/n said chuckling.

He gave Morro the money and he eagerly took it. He and Lloyd got pocket money, but M/n wants them to save the money for something they really want one day and M/n can’t afford it.

“Can you also get some apples for me and a few vegetables ?”, M/n asked Morro.

“We can !”, he answered with a bright smile.

With that they went back to Jamanakai, or better...flew. Lloyd loved flying with Morro.

They got the vegetables, candy, apples and were now in the writing utensils store, as people started screaming. Morro got concerned and he put everything down on the floor.

“Watch over this, Lloyd, I will be back shortly.”, Morro said softly.

Lloyd nodded and hid with the stuff behind the shelves. Morro left the store and saw the snakes, they accidently freed. His eyes widened. He opened the shop doors again.

“Lloyd call Papa ! You, Sir, lock up your doors and windows ! Hypnobrai are slithering outside on the streets !”, Morro warned.

The man looked unimpressed, while Lloyd fumbled with the small phone he had gotten from M/n. He quickly called him. A Hypnobrai entered and the man yelled and jumped into action of shutting down everything. Morro kicked the snake out and left the shop altogether.

“MORRO, DON’T LEAVE ME !”, Lloyd yelled in fear.

Then M/n picked up.

“Lloyd what is it ?”, he asked.

“Hypnobrais in Jamanakai ! Morro is fighting them off right now ! I am in the writing utensils store ! The owner closes the shop down, please do something ! I’m scared for Morro !”, Lloyd yelled in panic with tears in his eyes.

The owner of the shop wanted to kick Lloyd out for his stunt earlier, but when he heard how scared he was, he let him stay and locked the doors instead.

“I am on my way, Lloyd. Stay in the shop, behave, stay brave and do NOT look at Hypnobrais !”

“Okay !”

Then they hung up and Lloyd just sat there, sobbing and worrying for his cousin.

-With Morro-

Morro had his eyes closed most of the time, while he fought them. He used his Element to feel any changes and to not bump into anything. He punched, kicked and sent snakes flying. Some villagers were already hypnotized, so Morro had to be careful to not hurt them.

He needed the staff. Either the staff controlled them, or it had the antidote ! He needed it !

He jumped on a roof and opened his eyes, to see that he did kick some snake ass. He saw the leader with the staff and then the colorful Ninja.

‘Them again ?’

They saw him and joined him.

“What is going on here ? Are these real snakes ?”, the black one asked.

“Oh well...Lloyd and I took a walk and we THOUGHT it was a hidden treasure place and opened it, we couldn’t close it again and now they are free. M/n never told us, so....sorry ? They just attacked the village. I think we need the staff.”

“How are we supposed to fight them, if we can’t look at them ?!”, the blue one yelled frustrated.

“Jay, calm down.”, the black one said.

“It is easy actually. Don’t look at them. Look at the floor and just until you see feet. At least that is how I learned to fight blindly.”, Morro answered.

“You THOUGHT it was a hidden treasure place ?!”, the red one yelled.

“It was badly signed to be a serpentine’s tomb ! There stood nothing about it, so what were we supposed to think ?!”, Morro argued back.

“He has a point, Kai.”, the white Ninja stated.

“Shut up, Zane !”, Kai replied.

“We can argue later, do you think you can manage ?”, Morro asked.

“Sure !”, Jay replied.

With that they jumped down, landing like fools on their asses and stomachs. Morro face palmed himself.

He watched them a few minutes, trying to fight them and they were rookies in it. Morro was amused as they ran away from them. He followed them with a cocky smirk.

As they were hidden he looked at them.

“You were saying~?”, he asked teasingly.

“Oh shut it ! You didn’t do anything !”, Kai replied.

“I kicked ass before and I was interested how you would do. But you are such bloody rookies. My god, you were worse than I was for my first training session.”, Morro replied with a smirk.

The black one still tried to recover and get air into his lungs.

“Are you okay Cole ?”

“I’m okay !”, he replied.

Then a girl appeared.

“Nya ?! What are you doing here ?!”, Kai asked.

“I wanted to go grocery shopping, if you forgot. They hypnotized everyone in the village.”, she said.

“Sexy and smart woman. I like her.”, Morro said.

She turned and looked at him.

“Who are you ?”, she asked.

“Oh, Pardon. My name is Morro. I am here with Lloyd, but he is locked inside a shop, safely.”

“Stay away from my Sister !”, Kai yelled angered.

“Your Sister ? Man she has more brain cells and skills than you then.”, Morro said bored.

“How do we heal them, smartass ?”, Kai asked angered.

“I guess the staff. Either it controls them as a whole or it has the antidote. Mix it with water, it should make a fog they need to inhale. I read about something like that in a book.”, Morro said shrugging his shoulders.

“That is right. You need the staff and put it into the water fountain ! It will let out the antidote after !”, Nya said.

They all stared at her and then at Morro, who smirked in triumph.

“This Nya girl is very smart. Why can’t you be just as smart, red head ?”

With that Morro left.

“Hey !”, Kai yelled and followed him.

The others did too, until Nya, she stayed behind, blushing at what Morro said. She felt charmed. Morro jumped from the roof and ran for the leader of the tribe, closed his eyes and used the Wind to navigate.

Soon he was behind the leader and kicked him harshly down. He fell and Morro snatched the staff, using Wind to make the others be blown against a wall. The other Ninja just watched and didn’t notice that Cole was getting hypnotized.

Morro connected the staff to the fountain and the fog rose. Many inhaled it without help and those who needed it, had help from healed villagers. Then M/n appeared out of nowhere and saw the snakes escaping.

He didn’t follow them, he looked at Morro instead.

“Morro ! Are you alright ?! Is Lloyd okay ?!”, M/n asked worried.

“Hello, Papa. I wanted to check on Lloyd right now. He is in this shop.”, Morro answered and pointed at it.

He disappeared and appeared in the shop again. He saw Lloyd there, sniffling, while the shop owner tried to cheer him up.

“Hello, Sir.”

The man looked up and saw M/n.

“Hello.”

“You can open your shop again now. The snakes are gone. Lloyd, are you okay ?”, M/n asked.

He got up and hugged M/n tightly.

“Uncle !”, he yelled and cried into his pant leg.

“Hey, hey, shhh... I’m here....I’m here...shhh...”, M/n tried to soothe the boy.

“Is Morro okay ?!”, he asked in worry.

“Morro is just fine. He saved the village.”

The owner opened the shop and Morro came inside.

“Thank you for keeping my Cousin save, Sir. Is your shop still open ? I wanted to buy a few things...”, Morro asked.

“It is open again. Pick what you want, I will be at the counter.”, the man replied kindly.

Morro nodded in appreciation and then went over to Lloyd.

“Hello, you three cheese high. How are you ? Are you alright ?”, Morro asked.

“I-I’m okay. Are you ?”, Lloyd asked.

“I am okay. Everything is save again.”, Morro replied.

Then the Ninja entered, with Nya. They saw all three of them instantly. Nya blushed as she saw Morro again.

“I will pick my items and then we can go home and watch a Movie, okay, Lloyd ?”, Morro asked softly.

Lloyd nodded. Morro got up and left their sides, looking around for the things he needed. He found the perfect coloring pencils, some lead pencils, a new pen and then some notebooks. Then he spotted gel pens, that had different colors, but they were a bit over his budget to get. He turned to M/n.

“Hey, Papa ?”, he called.

“Yes, Son ?”, M/n replied.

“Can I have these pens ? I could mark my stuff better with them.”, Morro asked.

M/n looked at the gel pens and the price.

“How much are you over your budget ?”

“Uhm...three yen...”, he said softly.

M/n looked at Morro.

“Lloyd need anything ?”

“He didn’t say anything.”

“Can I have this coloring book ?”, Lloyd asked and held up a coloring book of animals.

“How much, Lloyd ?”

He looked at the price.

“Two yen, Uncle !”

“Give it to your Cousin.”, M/n said.

Then he pulled out five more yen and gave them to Morro. He had a bright smile on his face as he got the five more yen. He went to the counter and put everything on the counter. The man didn’t pull the gel pens and coloring book over the scanner though and said a price.

“But the two things are still missing.”, Morro said.

“They are for free.”, the owner said with a kind smile.

Morro was in surprise and paid the 17 yen. The man bagged the items for Morro and then gave the bag to him.

“Have fun with these things and come back again.”, the man said kindly.

Morro gave him a smile and then wished him a good day. With that they left the shop, were about to go home, only to be stopped by the Ninja, who stood outside again.

“So that is your Dad, huh ?”, Kai asked, mocking the word ‘Dad’.

“Leave Morro alone, you big, ugly bully !”, Lloyd yelled, standing in front of Morro, protectively.

Morro put his hands on Lloyd’s shoulders.

“Lloyd, I’m okay. He can’t bully me with such silly things.”, Morro said softly, with a smile.

“I suggest you leave my Son and Nephew alone, Kai Smith. Otherwise I will be forced to teach you a lesson.”, M/n said darkly.

Cole and Jay backed away in slight fear, while Zane studied him and Nya only eyed Morro, but she was surprised that M/n knew Kai.

“What lesson ? How to look ugly ? Hahaha ! Bring it, old man !”, Kai provoked.

M/n didn’t look old. And it didn’t faze M/n that he called him old. He tapped Morro’s shoulder and he backed away with Lloyd.

Kai went straight for M/n’s valuables, but M/n teleported out of the way and as he reappeared he kicked him in the ass harshly, making Kai yelp in pain and smack face first into a house wall.

Everyone stared at him in shock, besides Lloyd and Morro. Morro smirked at Kai’s misery and Lloyd looked at M/n with amazement and wonder.

“That was so COOL, Uncle ! I want to learn that too ! Teach me ! Teach me !”, Lloyd said excitedly.

“When you are older, Lloyd.”, M/n assured.

 Morro only chuckled and then caught Nya staring at him. She turned away, blushing. He crooked his head to his left side and then approached her.

“Hey, Nya, wasn’t it ?”, Morro asked with kindness.

She flinched.

“Huh. Mynameyes,uh....Hi...”, she talked too quickly and then sheepishly only said hello.

Morro chuckled at that.

“Want to meet up tomorrow somewhere ? Maybe in the woods ? Around after Lunch ? We could take a walk and chat with each other, watch the sunset and I can bring you home too, if you want.”, Morro offered.

“Sure !”, she said excitedly, then cleared her throat.

“I mean, sure, if you want.”, she said, trying to sound less like a child.

“Hey ! You have to take care of me tomorrow !”, Lloyd protested.

Morro rolled his eyes with a small smile.

“Oh no, then you will have to deal with another member in the Team tomorrow, Lloyd.”, Morro teased.

“I HATE girls ! They are yuck !”, Lloyd yelled.

Morro laughed and turned back to Nya.

“Don’t mind him, he will warm up to you.”, he told her.

“I won’t !”, Lloyd protested.

Morro laughed again and gave her a smile.

“We meet at the entrance of the woods. I will find you, don’t worry. And Lloyd won’t be annoying.”, Morro said the last sentence teasingly.

Lloyd crossed his arms and muttered something under his breath.

“Okay. I will try to be there on time.”, she replied.

Morro smiled.

“Hey ! No, no, no ! You stay away from MY Sister ! Who knows what you will do to her ! Maybe you will hurt her or force her into something she doesn’t want !”, Kai accused.

“Excuse me ?”, M/n said very slowly and darkly.

Kai’s eyes widened in horror, he forgot about M/n. Morro took a breath. He was unsure who M/n meant.

“My Son is NOT a Rapist, nor is he abusive, BOY ! You can’t control HER life either. If Morro would ever be doing something like that, you can be damn sure that I will send him to jail myself.”, M/n said darkly and slapped the back of Kai’s head harshly, making him yelp.

Then M/n looked at Morro.

“I hope you will NOT piss off this girl. She looks like she can kick your butt, if you make her angry.”

Morro smiled.

“I don’t plan to, Papa.”

“Good.”

“Can we take the staff ?”, Nya asked and pointed at it.

Morro looked at it and shrugged his shoulders.

“Sure. I don’t want it. Have it.”, he said with a smile.

“Let’s go, Son. Lloyd wants his Movie.”, M/n said.

Morro nodded his head to Nya as a farewell and then went to his Father’s side, then they teleported away. Nya was so excited. They flew back home on their Dragons and she ran away from Kai, before he could lecture her.

They decided to talk to Sensei Wu about Morro, Lloyd and M/n. So they entered his room and he was there.

“What do you need ?”, Wu asked, sipping his tea.

“We met some people that said you know them. They aren’t...very fond of you.”, Zane stated.

“What were their names ?”

“Morro and M/n.”, Jay answered.

Wu spat out his tea in shock.

to be continued...

Masterlist HERE !

[lisutarid-a]

[Gakuen K] Munakata Reisi Route Translation

Appearance Check Exercise

LIST OF CHAPTERS

[Translation under the cut]

Fushimi: Hey, you. You're hiding earphones in there, aren't you? I'm confiscating them, so get them out.

Fushimi: If you want it back, go to Awashima-senseis's office after school. She will return them to you with an apology homework.

Saya: (Whaa… Fushimi-kun's aura is even scarier than usual)

Saya: (You couldn't fight back against that…)

Kukuri: Good morning. What's the matter in a place like that?

Saya: G-Good morning, Kukuri-chan.

Saya: We're doing a appearance-check exercise today in the Blue club to take control of the new students who are getting used to school for the summer.

Kukuri: Ahh, so that's what it's all about! It's tough being in the Blue club, isn't it?

Fushimi: You, don't waste your time chatting.

Saya: O-Okay! Well, see you later.

Kukuri: Yeah, in the classroom.

Munakata: Thank you for your hard work. I see that there are quite a lot of students who have broken the rule on bringing personal belongings.

Saya: Ah, Munakata-senpai. Thank you for your hard work.

Fushimi: Today is the first day, so it's quite relaxed.

Munakata: I see…I would like you to be careful at any time.

Munakata: We will advance with sword in hand, for our cause is pure.

Munakata: Please do crack down mercilessly with that spirit on those who break the rules.

Fushimi: Okay. I got it. Serious offenders will be instructed on the merits.

Saya: (Okay, I'll put more spirit into it, too!)

Fushimi: …Oi. You, what are you doing dressed like that?

Yata: Haa? What the hell is wrong with you in the morning? You're just picking a fight out of the blue?

Fushimi: … You're the one who's fighting with me. Where's your bag?

Why are you empty-handed?

Yata: Stop nagging me. I've thrown my textbooks in my desk, I don't need my lunch box because I'm going to the cafeteria.

Yata: I don't need a bag.

Fushimi: You've got a lot of courage leaving all your textbooks at school. President, allow me to draw my sword, please.

Saya: E-Eehh!? To draw a sword?

Munakata: …All right. A strict warning is necessary.

Saya: (Yata-kun it not a bad person, he'll understand if you talk to him…)

Choice: Fighting's not good ❤

Saya: Senpai, even if you say to take strict mesuares I don't think fighting is a good idea.

Munakata: This is not a fight. This is a crackdown.

Saya: I think the other students would see it as a same thing.

Saya: Can't we just give him a stern warning and call him into the staff room later?

Saya: I think it is better to talk to people who can understand if you talk to them.

Munakata: It can't be helped. If you insist so much, let's not draw swords.

Munakata: Yata-kun. I need you to go to the staff room after school with her.

Yata: Haa!?

Munakata: The lady is defending you. Please confess your sins here for her sake.

Yata: S-Sins…Damn it. All right, I'll go to the staff room!

Choice: Get him to apologize

Fushimi: Fushimi, ready.

Saya: Wait, Fushimi-kun.

Fushimi: Ha…?

Saya: Yata-kun, apologize.

Yata: For what?!

Saya: It's against school rules to not only not bringing your bag, but leaving your textbooks on your desk.

Saya: So, apologize properly.

Yata: …I-I'm sorry! I'll be careful next time, just don't come any closer!

Saya: Are you sorry for what you've done?

Yata: …Yeah.

Saya: You won't do it again?

Yata: No. I ain't gonna do it, I told you not to come closer!

Munakata: Well, then I'll leave it to you to instruct him this time.

Please take care of him.

Saya: Okay, understood!

Saya: (Thank goodness…Everything ended well)

Fushimi: Hm. You do this occasionally, don't you?

Saya: I-I guess so. But I like to feel good in the morning.

Munakata: That's right. That feeling is very important.

Munakata: Discipline is important, but please be flexible (take appropriate measures depending on the situation at the time), so that students can spend a pleasant time.

Saya: Okay, I'll do my best.

[Prev chapter][Next chapter]

[topsyturvy-turtely]

OTP challenge - day 14

IT IS BACK YOU GUYS!!! I am bringing it back! ✨turtely's otp challenge✨

please someone tell me they are excited- i need that, lol.

I had the BIGGEST writer's block ever: didn't come up with an idea for mOnThs and when I finally did have one I was like "idk how to wriiiiite that" but today I was like *slams table* yk what?! Fuck that! I am bringing it back! Soooo yeah. Here we go? please lmk what you think!

Btw it is a bit (a lot) different then my other stories sooo bear with me yeah?

[Link to day 13]

14. Geeking out over something

Blue vs. red. Grunts vs. robotic breathing. Good vs. bad. Two lighsabers meet, trying to push the other away. Two male counterparts, fighting for what they think is the right way, which looks decidedly different from each view.

Suddenly - the taller, darker haired, with the black mask - strikes and-

"AAAAAAHHH", the shorter, blonder, with perspiration in his shaggy hair - cries in agony. His hand has been separated from his arm. (Or was he just hiding it in is sleeve?) The boy steps back, covering his injured arm under the healthy one. His weapon is lost. The dark guy steps closer and the blond is trapped on a small part of the treehouse platform.

The other boy man speaks up, "There is no escape. Don’t make me destroy you. You do not yet
realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power. Join me and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the
galaxy."

But the blond boy - even with no escape in sight, even being greatly injured - refuses. Brave soldier until the bitter end, he counters, "I’ll never join you!"

But the masked one does not give up, "If you only knew the power of the dark side. Obi-Wan never told
you what happened to your father."

Desperately holding onto the tree branch the metal construct the blond boy speaks through gritted teath, "He told me enough! It was you
who killed him."
Perhaps you would see a sad smile behind the mask as his friend enemy speaks. "No. I am your father."

Shocked, the blond stares at his counterpart. Refusing to believe even one word, he yells, "No. No. That’s not true! That’s impossible!"

The taller argues in his deep voice, "Search your feelings. You know it to be true."

But the smaller won't believe. "No! No! No!"


"Luke. You can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny. Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father
and son. Come with me. It is the
only way." He puts away his sword, and offers his hand to the shorter boy man.

The injured breathes deeply, indescribable but pronounced tranquility waving over him. He looks over the edge, looks back at the masked man and-

He jumps off, landing safely in a trampoline underneath, falling into the endlessness of the galaxy.

The taller boy rips his mask off and reveals messy dark curls. With one jump he follows the blond boy and lands next to him on the trampoline. The shorter boy giggles and turns around on his belly. His face prepped on his palm, blue eyes sparkling as he looks at his friend. The dark haired boy grins widely and lays onto his back, with one arm under his head. "Nice acting there, Martin"

The blond laughs, "Yours was pretty good too, Ben"

Ben, the taller, dark-haired boy, grabs his own hand and imitates the shout of pain from the act, that appeared minutes before, "AAAAAHHHH!"

The blond - Martin - playfully nudges Ben's shoulder with his hand. "Oh, shut up!"

The dark haired boy smiles at him. Then his face turns serious, "Join me when I go to acting school, after high school."

"We could be Holmes and Watson", Martin grins.

Ben grabs Martin's hand, "Whatever happens you'll forever be the Holmes to my Watson."

But as soon as he says that, Martin has to visibly fight a laugh back.

"What? What is it?"

"It's just-", now Martin can't help laughing. "Have you looked at yourself?! You definitely got the looks for a genius. You- with your cheekbones..."

"My cheekbones?!"

"Yeah! And the dark hair and all that." Martin waves generally at Ben's face. "Gotta be you."

Ben considers that. Then he shrugs. "Alright. As long as it is us."

"Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.", Martin says with a gentle smile, squeezing Ben's hand.

"John Watson and Sherlock Holmes.", Ben replies.

"Yeah, could work." Martin grins.

"BBC is gonna love us." Ben says, a dreamy expression on his face.

"Everyone is gonna love us." Martin says, shrugging, completely unaware how true these words will be.

~The story about how Freebatch turned into Johnlock because of Star Wars.

---

(tags and info under the cut)

sooo yeah I guess that was a multi crossover? Ever looked for a "young Freebatch geeking out over Star Wars and then talking about becoming Johnlock"-fanfic? Well there you go! xDD This was my first freebatch fic ever (I don't usually write or read that because I think the actors deserve some privacy...) and probably my last so don't hate please :P

The dialogue (the one written in italics) is taken from the Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back movie. Check out my Source.

All I've got left to say is: Thank you for sticking with me and reading, my lovely turtles!

tag list! (please tell me if you wanna be added/removed or if i forgot you!) @justanobsessedpan @helloliriels @boredsushi @fluffbyday-smutbynight @inevitably-johnlocked @hisfavouritejumper @rhasima @forfucksakejohn @ohlooktheresabee @turbulenttrouble @7arantellgrrl @ssmeowl123 @so-youre-unattached-like-me @totallysilvergirl @peanitbear @train-mossman @loki-lock @smulderscobie @timberva @grace-in-the-wilderness @chinike @pansherlock @the-smol-bean-libby-blog @jawnn-watson @whatnext2020 @escapingthereality @missdeliadili @kettykika78 @musingsofmyown @7-percent @speedymoviesbyscience @astudyin221b @francj15 @almosttinycowboy @ladylindaaa @we-r-loonies @mxster-jocale @sherlockcorner @noahspector @our-stars-graveside @jobooksncoffee

[spaghettificationandpretzels]

I posted 6,981 times in 2022

That's 6,204 more posts than 2021!

274 posts created (4%)

6,707 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@thegayhimbo

@ramadiiiisme

@rayslittlekitten

@newyorkrican922

@breanime

I tagged 571 of my posts in 2022

#sons of anarchy - 166 posts

#fluff - 158 posts

#jax teller - 133 posts

#sons of anarchy imagine - 128 posts

#soa - 113 posts

#mayans mc - 100 posts

#sons of anarchy fluff - 91 posts

#ivar the boneless - 71 posts

#vikings - 70 posts

#mayans mc imagine - 66 posts

Longest Tag: 86 characters

#one kid who had was never away came to school sick and almost put other kids in the er

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Rest Your Weary Hands Part 7

Here comes the comfort.

Part 6

Contains: Bruises and a beating not graphic, unwanted arranged marriage, violence, hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending, the bad guys get what's coming to them.

1,950 words

Comment to be tagged

Queen Aslaug walks into your little Healers store with one request, help her son. Said to be blessed by the gods, you find your life becoming more and more intertwined with the young prince as you do your best to ease his pain. It will soon be apparent that outside forces have other ideas.

The bird followed him around everywhere, anytime he tried to leave Kattegat it would attack him until he turned around and went back. Aslaug had told him to wait four days, that the gods had shown her a vision that if he went before then, something terrible would happen. So he did, he spent his time pacing and sharpening his weapons.

He was woken on the fourth day to squawking in Ubbe's room, the bird had left his side and turned to his Brother. Ivar got dressed as fast as he could, he didn't even bother putting on his braces, choosing to crawl to save on time.

When he opened the door the scene that greeted him was comical, this birds was hovering over Ubbe while he dressed, if he took too long the bird would swoop down and peck him.

"I'm coming, I can only dress so fast with you at me!" By the time Ubbe was done, it looked like he had lost of battle, his hair was a mess and half his clothes were inside out or backwards.

"I'm coming with you, I have to speak to y/n before you bring her back to Kattegat." The bird let out a terrible shriek and flew at his face. He ducked out of the way before it hit him.

"I think you should stay, that is if you want to keep your eyes."

Bjorn was waiting by the door when Ubbe walked in. He was dressed to leave but he and his Mother were meant to be staying in Kattegat for the next week. He looked like he hadn't slept at all.

Nightmares

"I think Father is trying to tell us something."

They rode as hard as they could, the Berserker who was Aslaug's personal guard had asked to come as well. He had grown very fond of you. You had noticed how much time he spent by the horses when he wasn't working and when no one was around, you had taken to calling him 'Leif the Gentle' rather than 'Leif the brutish'.

There were armed men outside when they rode up. It was clear they weren't happy that anyone was here, let alone the Sons of Ragnar.

"You should leave, she's busy." Ubbe was too mad to react at first so Bjorn cut in.

"You will let us through or you will be in the mines by the end of the week." He put his hand on his sword for emphasis.

When they walked in you had your backs to them, and you were hunched up like you were hurt.

"Please go, you can't be here." You sounded ill.

"Turn around Dove, we're here to take you back to Kattegat." You did so very slowly, your eyes cast down the whole time.

You were covered in bruises and there were scrapes on your cheek, you were breathing like your ribs were broken and you were pale and washed out.

"What in the Hel happened to you?!" you flinched at the Ubbe's raised voice but gave no other indication that you heard him.

"It doesn't matter, I will be fine. You should go, unless someone is dying there's no need for you to be here." you wiped a tear from your face.

"I'm sad to say this will be the last time we see each other. I am to be wed next Sunday." You held up your hand to show a ring on your finger, it was gaudy and hideous. The only Jewellery you wore was the Eir necklace that hung around your neck, and even then, it was tucked into your top most of the time.

"To whom?!" Ubbe was shocked, you had expressed before that you had no desire to marry.

"Earl Knut's Son Brant." The men were looking back and forth from you to each other.

"The morning I got home, my Father informed me that somehow his debt had been paid in full. I have outlived my usefulness and now he is getting rid of me. It turns out that at least to Brant, I am worth quite a lot of money." You paused to take a sip of something from a mug.

See the full post

200 notes - Posted March 26, 2022

#4

Rest Your Weary Hands Part 4

I made Aslaug and Lagertha friends because everyone lives and no one dies and women being good to other women makes me happy. However, Ragnar is dead because I need it that way for the plot, he will still show up and that's all I'm saying.

Part 3

Requests are open

Warnings: Paying gambling debts through labour, stitching up wounds, Ubbe turns into a big brother bear. Brief mentions of child and talks of spousal abuse.

2,659 words

Comment if you want to be tagged.

Queen Aslaug walks into your little Healers store with one request, help her son. Said to be blessed by the gods, you find your life becoming more and more intertwined with the young prince as you do your best to ease his pain. It will soon be apparent that outside forces have other ideas.

"Prince Ubbe, what brings you here today?" You were surprised to see the Prince today, Aslaug had been in the day before to collect more tea for Ivar, so unless something was very wrong with his younger Brother, he didn't really have a reason to be here.

He lifted up his shirt to show you a bruise that spread across his body's left side.

"I fell off my horse." he grimaced as he walked closer to the counter.

"Oh my, come in the back and I'll get you taken care of."

It wasn't terrible, he didn't have any broken bones but you could feel the lumpy bruises under his skin.

"How's Ivar doing?" you were dipping bandages in some strong smelling fluid while Ubbe looked around your back room. It wasn't much, just a small bed and some shelves that were filled with various things, including lots of scrolls; there were also some surgical tools were soaking in a basin in the far corner of the room.

"Well, he has been complaining of more pain but he seems better in himself." he flinched as you wrapped the soaked bandages around his body then relaxed as he felt the coolness settle into his aching ribs.

"I'll see if I can come up with something else to help him, it almost always harder to treat something when it's been with them since birth." To be honest, you were very surprised with how well Ivar was taking it all, you were starting to wonder if he and his Mother knew something you didn't.

"These won't take long to heal. Nothing more than a light trot on your horse until they're entirely gone, I can't promise your ribs will hold out for another fall. I don't care how long it takes you to get back home." You realised you should have said please and been more respectful but part of you felt that Ubbe would appreciate being treated like a normal person.

"Of course Dove, something tells me that disobeying you would be worse than falling off the horse again."

You gave him a very stern look, yes it would be.

"I'll give you some tea to take for the next few days for the swelling, drink it with food or it will give you a stomach ache, and come back when they're gone so I can make sure I didn't miss anything deeper."

He already seemed a little better, although he looked a bit funny with his shirt bludging in some areas.

"As for Ivar, you can try this, but I think it will make him feel too strange. I usually leave it for when I need to treat a severe injury and can't have the person moving around."

You showed Ubbe the small compressed cake, it was about the size of a medium mushroom cap and mottled brown.

"Only give him this amount, and put it in some hot water. It will be very bitter so he can have a spoonful of honey afterwards."

You showed Ubbe a small broken hunk, and put it up against your finger so he could understand the rough size.

"Thank you, Dove. Mother asked me to tell you she will be here on Sunday to come and collect you to spend more time with Ivar, she's very happy with how much he improved when you were there."

You were coming to the conclusion that Aslaug had a plan you were unaware of, Ivar shouldn't need you back for at least another week.

"Of course Prince Ubbe, I'll be ready when she arrives that morning."

You suppose you were grateful you were so good at your job. Your Father's gambling debts were always bad, more so when your Mother died, but the small amount of profit you made kept the debt collectors happy until the end of the week.

The owners of the gambling houses in the area realised that he was a problem and was always going to be behind, but they also realised that he wasn't getting his money by working.

See the full post

219 notes - Posted March 24, 2022

#3

Rest Your Weary Hands Part 1

Prologue

Requests are open

Warnings: The reader is an overworked health professional, mentions of a bad diet, brief mentions of gambling, proper health care (screw the capitalist health care system), time period typical treatment of women and girls.

1,467 Words

Comment if you want to be tagged.

Queen Aslaug walks into your little Healers store with one request, help her son. Said to be blessed by the gods, you find your life becoming more and more intertwined with the young prince as you do your best to ease his pain. It will soon be apparent that outside forces have other ideas.

"Clip clop, clip clop, clip clop"

You could hear the sound of horses close by, more than a couple. You hoped it wasn't the local stable owner, he had enough money that he could just buy medicine with he felt sick rather than do what you told him.

Maybe if you ate a carrot every now and then rather than all that meat, you wouldn't have a constant stomach ache.

You could see them through the window now, that was not the local stable owner.

You rushed to the door to open it before they got here. It was Lady Asluag, her son Ubbe and some of her men.

You went out of your way to act like they were anyone else, while inside, it felt like you had swallowed a nettle bush.

"Welcome My Queen, Price Ubbe. What brings you to my store today?"

They walked in and looked around. The space wasn't tiny, but it wasn't large either, there was a wood bench with ingredients dotted along it, behind which was a small kitchenette, a small table and two chairs, plants in pots hung from the ceiling and were scattered around the room and the room was filled with light due to the many windows.

"I'm sure you've heard of my youngest Son?" she was looking at you like you were a stone in the road and she was figuring out how to get past you.

"Only that he suffers with terrible pain, is that why you're here?" she nodded, more interested in the flowering plant in the conner than you.

"Yes, I spoke to Ulf this morning and he says you work miracles" you were already reaching behind you to get something off the shelf.

"Oh no, only Christians believe in miracles. I simply use what the Gods give us from the land" She looked at you right in the eyes and smiled.

So that was a test

She took a good look at you, focusing on the tie in your hair, it was the same one from her dream.

"No charge this time around, rub it on Ivar's legs twice a day when he, gets up and when he goes to bed, a small handful each time, if it starts to smell or turn a strange colour, throw it out and come and get more, it should stay fresh for 2 months but keep the jar away from the fire."

Ubbe spoke for the first time.

"No charge? he seemed confused.

"Yes, no charge. You have no idea if it works and I will not swindle anyone. If you wish to pay for it, do it when you come to get more" The Queen looked slightly perturbed at that.

"Right then, thank you miss, I'm sure we'll be back soon" she was turning on her heels and leaving your store the moment she stopped speaking, Ubbe stayed a breath longer.

"Do you have a name, Dove?" You wanted to glare and him but you knew better.

"Y/n, My Prince" and with that, he was gone.

"Tora tells me the Queen was here today" your Father's tone was accusatory as usual.

"Yes Father, she was. She just wanted something for her Son. And no, I don't have any more coins, you will have to wait till the end of the week to visit the gambling house again."

See the full post

240 notes - Posted March 21, 2022

#2

Rest Your Weary Hands Masterlist

You will not able to read any chapters marked with smut unless you have your community labels all turned to show.

Contains: Discussion of chronic pain and genetic illness, war and combat, period typical misogyny and treatment of women and girls, a lot of smut, disability and ableism, gambling addition, graphic depictions of violence and death, human sacrifice. I will do my best to tag chapter by chapter, please let me know if I miss anything.

You should expect that each chapter could have a bit of everything, if it's tagged it just means it's more than one sentence. More than one emoji dictates how graphic it is.

Smut💦 Angst😨 Fluff ❤ Violence🔪 Gore🤢 Medical 💉Triggering material🚩

Some of the chapters and snippets will be put to music, not listening to the music won't affect the story. Updates will vary, some days I might do two and other times I'll go a week without posting anything, there will be a time where I will open requests for snippets so you as the reader can have a piece of the universe I've cobbled together.

What's a snippet?

A snippet is an optional one-shot that adds context to the story and expands on some small themes that will appear throughout the story, not reading them won't affect the story but it will take away some of the more fluffy and/or mundane 'day in the life' elements.

Queen Aslaug walks into your little Healers store with one request, help her son. Said to be blessed by the gods, you find your life becoming more and more intertwined with the young prince as you do your best to ease his pain. It will soon be apparent that outside forces have other ideas.

Prologue

Part 1 💉

Part 2 💉

Part 3 😨❤💉

Part 4 😨

Part 5 😨❤

Part 6 😨

Part 7 ❤ 🔪 😨🚩

Part 8 💦❤

Part 9 ❤ 🔪 💦

Part 10 😨❤

Part 11 ❤ 🔪 💉😨

Part 12 💦❤

Snippet 1 - Fierce Protector ❤💉🔪

Part 13 💦❤

Part 14 ❤❤❤❤❤

Part 15 💦💦❤❤💦

Part 16 💦❤❤

Snippet 2 - Little Sister ❤❤❤❤❤

Part 17 💉 🔪 🔪 🔪 🤢 ❤ (only a little)

Part 18 ❤❤💦

See the full post

466 notes - Posted March 28, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

The Reaper and the Death Angel Masterlist.

You will not be able to read certain chapters in this series without all your Community labels turned to show.

Contains: The slowest burn, canon typical misogyny, canon typical violence and graphic depictions of violence, so much fucking smut (in later chapters of course), mentions of child abuse, graphic descriptions of bullying, forensic science. OC is a chronic pain/migraine sufferer, there will be themes of this throughout the story. There will be more and I'll do my best to tag chapter by chapter, please don't hesitate to tell me if I've missed something.

You should expect that each chapter could have a bit of everything, if it's tagged it just means it's more than one sentence. More than one emoji dictates how graphic it is.

Smut💦 Angst😨 Fluff ❤ Violence🔪 Gore🤢 Medical/forensic💉 Triggering material🚩

Some of the chapters and snippets will be put to music, not listening to the music won't affect the story. Updates will vary, some days I might do two and other times I'll go a week without posting anything, there will be a time where I will open requests for snippets so you as the reader can have a piece of the universe I've cobbled together.

What's a snippet?

A snippet is an optional one-shot that adds context to the story and expands on some small themes that will appear throughout the story, not reading them won't affect the story but it will take away some of the more fluffy and/or mundane 'day in the life' elements.

Comment if you want to be tagged. Thank you so always for all your support. However, my tag list has been having issues so the best way to follow is to follow the tag #the reaper and the death angel.

You've spent most of your adult life in and out of war zones, and you've worked with the US military to identify terrorists and dead GIs. Sick of all the death and pain you chose to leave fieldwork and go back to historical research. When your little Brother leaves the Marines and settles in a small town, you decide to follow him. Will you find a home in your small, underfunded Musume job and your Brother's found family? Or will life with the Club just be another war zone?

Pre Season 1

Prologue

Part 1 ❤😨💉🔪

Part 2 ❤

Part 3 😨💉

Part 4

Part 5 ❤😨

Part 6 ❤😨🚩

Part 7 ❤

Part 8 ❤

Part 9 💉

Snippet 1 - The Lab💉

Season 1

Part 10 💉 🔪

Part 11 ❤😨💉

Part 12 🚩❤😨

Part 13 ❤😨💉🤢

Part 14 ❤❤❤💉

Part 15 ❤❤❤❤🔪🔪

Part 16🚩❤🤢(very mild)🔪

See the full post

554 notes - Posted March 28, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[knifesimmons]

okay not to continue to bad media post on main but. my mutual asked and i provide:3

:readmore:

red vs blue disney descendants au. the four from the isle r the new republic four, Simmons, Grif, Tucker, n Caboose

-Simmons is the son of syndrome (buddy pine). he kept his moms last name. still a cyborg, but instead from a bad lab accident. thanks to synthetic skin and holograms, he doesn't look cyborgy, but all the isle kids know. a walking ball of neuroses and stress, the isle was Not good for his blood pressure

-Grif, his mom hooked up with Maui right before getting sent to the isle for minor crimes. surprise surprise, shes pregnant! he's a shapeshifter, but only figures that out off of the isle. Kai still exists, but they don't know who her dad is (it's hades). definitely has the whole "i do not care" personality on lock, but secretly cares So Much

-Tucker was raised by the three witches from The Black Cauldron. it's sort of a foster care situation, but it works out well for pretty much everyone. regular human guy, but his plasma sword is the sword that they traded the Cauldron for. in his Chorus era personality wise, and considers himself the leader of their little group

-Caboose, p obviously Gaston is his dad. so now in addition to his 17 sisters, he's got a couple of brothers too lol. definitely too nice for the isle, but since he's a powerhouse, nobody messes with him.

everyone else is an auradon person. Lopez and Sarge are teachers, Lopez teaches Spanish, and only speaks in it as a goal of immersion. Sarge is a gym teacher for every sport we dont see in canon, and also the shop teacher. Both are wary about the concept of the Isle kids, as neither of them taught the original four to come over

-Donut is the son of Aurora and her prince (yes because the pink). he's on the school's sports team. definitely pro isle kids coming over. his older sister Audrey and him don't get along very well, but they're close, though they used to be closer.

-Doc is the son of Rapunzel and Eugene, and maybe sort of has some of her magic healing abilities? they work arbitrarily and Weirdly, but sometimes do. him and Donut are close, and he's a bit more hesitant about the isle kids

-Wash is the son of Anna and Kristoff. excited to get to know new people. his aunt being Elsa means he's a lot more open to people not turning evil just because it's expected of them.

-Carolina is the daughter of Merida, the director is the same in p much every universe tho.. she was raised in a split custody sort of situation, and has Opinions. about everything. she thinks that having VKs come over is going to explode in a fiery mess. she's on pretty much every sports team, and one of the scariest people at the school

-Church is Carolina's younger half brother, and half fairy. no one is Exactly sure how the director actually did that, but he did. definitely hates a lot of auradon's rules, and totally abuses his magic abilities for his own gain. very excited for the VKs to come over and make things Interesting

plotwise, it would be sorta a follow up to descendants 1. well, the first group of Villain kids chose to not be evil, now the next group. they pick a group of, relatively minor, villain kids to bring over. None of whom are at all interested in revenge plots. instead, they are just massive, kinda messed up, dicks. i have no other plot atp.

things i do want to see tho:

-ppl figuring out simmons is an actual cyborg. How. Why. please replace your parts you're rusting

-grif finding out he can shapeshift, and immediately using it to nap. and then finding out who his dad is. this does not cause problems (it does)

-nobody wants tucker to have a sword. except for tucker. and the sword. can you get ESA exceptions for a magical sword that flies? lets discuss

-caboose goes jock mode. caboose is the only one of them actually adjusting to auradon.

-carolina trying to convince people that inviting more VKs over is an absolute Bad Idea until she meets them and realizes that in terms of actual damage, they're Very incompetent

-church attaches himself onto the VK group in his latest bout of rebellion.

-wash, doc, and donut are assigned as their welcoming/guide team to auradon. this is stressful for all of them

not to ough immediately bad post but. red vs blue characters in the Disney descendants setting. (look we all have our comfort medias, mine just so happen to include rainbow skittle assholes w swords and rip-off ever after high). if this post gets two (2) notes, i will release my thoughts on what an rvb descendants au would look like

[demonslayedher]

Do you any more stuff about charcoal, whether kny related or not? After reading your posts about it, I became really interested but I could only find one good article in English about Japanese charcoal

I am thrilled to have alighted your interest! It's worth noting right away that not all charcoal is created equal, or for the same purposes. I'll be focusing on Japanese charcoal as a general category, as it is generally burned to a higher level of purity than other fuel source charcoals available worldwide. Seriously, though, kudos to the ancient people around the world for getting the idea to burn wood in a low-oxygen environment to a make a longer-lasting, less smokey fuel source. On that note, Japanese charcoal is especially noted for its lack of smoke and odor due to how much of the volatile components are burned out.

The article you found may be around these ones, but here's a brief collection of English resources. My thoughts on the use of charcoal lore in KnY are compiled here.

A excellent peek into overall charcoal traditions as a part of life, but focusing especially on charcoal culture in Ishikawa Prefecture. This includes a short and very documentary, focusing especially on the ancient mountain village (satoyama) and deep mountain (okuyama) cultural ties with charcoal production. Definitely check this one out for a deeper appreciation of Kamado family lore. In this video, they mention charcoal made out of sawtooth oak, which gets turned into "chrysanthemum charcoal," because the inside pattern resembles the flower. Although this artisan charcoal isn't likely the kind of charcoal Tanjiro would had produced for home use, as mentioned in my other post, the handguard of his sword most closely resembles this. This is the sort of charcoal used in the tea ceremony, which is how I fell in love with charcoal. During the sumi-demae ceremony, the host tends to the hearth and adds more charcoal, and for a part of that ceremony, guests are invited to sit closer to the warmth and observe the arrangement and the beautiful state of the fire. This is where I became entranced by the beautiful flickering reds within the coals, like gems with life inside of them.

For a good overview on charcoal for use in the tea ceremony, please see this article, including good visual aid of the specific cuts of charcoal used, as the collection and arrangement of the different sizes helps control the timing of how long the fire will last. Another major source of tea ceremony charcoal is Ikeda in Osaka Prefecture, but very, very unfortunately, a beetle infestation had a devastating effect on the sawtooth oak population there, making every piece of ceremonial charcoal that much more precious. There are many tea schools that do not even use it for regular practices, instead using electric hearths for convenience's sake (especially if located outside of Japan). This makes me sad, though, because the charcoal is one of my favorite parts (though I am still very bad at sumi-demae).

People who can cook also make very specific choices for using charcoal to bring out the natural flavors of source ingredients (a major characteristic of Japanese cuisine), instead of adding any outside flavor to it. It's also a dryer method of cooking, as gas grills add condensation to the air. For an overview on that see this short article, or look up any number of YouTube chefs giving reviews of what charcoal they like. You can also see this article for a rundown of what a Hibachi grill is and why it's mistaken for things. Speaking of grilling, that quintessential image of the Japanese farm house has the whole family sitting around a sunken hearth with the food suspended above it or on skewers around, and this is called "irori." Although not common, you can still experience dining like this is a lot of rural places! It's very aesthetic.

One of the highest quality charcoals for cooking is called Binchotan, from Wakayama Prefecture. Virtually no smoke or scent, and it's such a high purity that it's even a lighter color. While all Japanese charcoal makes pretty sounds (or at least I think it's a rustic, comforting sound), Binchotan sounds like chimes.

It's also worth noting that charcoal is a beautiful aesthetic for potted gardens! It goes very well with moss. I'm always happy when I see it used in decor. Due to its absorbent nature it can be used to control humidity or bad smells, and many people will also use pieces with holes to stick cut flowers into to keep the water cleaner (I have learned the hard way that it will not prevent mold, though. If there is a way to kill a plant, I will always find it).

On that note, yes, it is used to combat food poisoning! Activated charcoal is charcoal that has been burned at an especially high temperature, making it porous to an extreme. That means that when ingested shortly after someone has ingested poison (meaning it's still in their stomach), it binds to those poisons and carries them through to the other end. That being said, this is not a fix-all, it won't work if the poisons were ingested too long ago, and it works because it's indigestible, and will make its way through the entire digestive track. This can result in additional stomach pain as it makes its way through. Also, it has a tendency to soak up medicines like birth control hormones and anti-depressents, so please do not believe any of the detox fad encouraging people to consume this indigestible substance. It will only be helpful in very, very specific circumstances, with medical supervision.

And finally, here is a nice old NHK documentary on the topic, though very sadly the video has a lot of audio trouble and often goes silent. That said, it touches on a lot of charcoal culture and goes into the science behind it and adds a lot of other nifty facts. This was where I heard about adding charcoal to rice.

[huneekrispee]

Where is my lover?

Pairing: c!Dreamwastaken x gn!Reader

Summary: Living outside the Dream SMP, far from the war and chaos, Dream was able to find comfort in you. One day, he leaves, promising to come back to you. It's been months, now you're left wondering... where is my lover?

Warnings: cursing, use of dream's real name, spoilers for the Dream SMP Finale, tiny bit of fluff at the start, angst

Word Count: 2.4k

A/N: I've been watching Attack on Titan recently, and the song 'Call Your Name' has me in the feels :( Sorry for being away for so long :( School has been an ass to me, I hope you enjoy it!! -Hunee <3

Also! Please don't mind the pronouns in the song! This is a gender-neutral fic, I merely just wrote the song lyrics as they are :)

She lost her brother a month ago

His picture on the wall

And it reminds me

When she brings me coffee... her smile

I wish I could be with her until my last day

In the forest, a cottage lays peacefully in a secluded meadow near a running stream. The tall trees lay their shadows onto the grassy floor, leaving marks from the sun. Water solemnly runs along, moving to its next destination through the stream. Grass rustles and a soft sigh is heard.

Stretching his arms above his head, a man clad in green slowly sits up, emerald eyes darting around. He yawns. "(Y/N)!" He's now standing up, searching for his lover. Dream's hand reaches down to grab his mask left abandoned on the grass, quickly putting it on.

Preparing his sword, his hand on the hilt, Dream slowly steps toward the cottage. He rests a hand on the door, waiting for something, anything.

A scream is heard.

He now slams the door open, netherite blade on full display, ready to attack. Looking around, he notices no one but (Y/N) in the cozy home, with a kettle on the ground next to them. Lowering his guard, sighing with relief, he sheathes his sword once more, walking over to his distraught partner.

"Are you alright?" Removing his mask, he takes their hands in his. Dream looks at them. (Y/N) looks down, taking their hurt hand out of his. Sighing, Dream quickly leads them over to the sink, running the tap. "What happened?" The coldness of the water helped soothe the burn. "I just, accidentally burnt myself with the kettle. It's okay, I'll live, Clay."

The man remained silent. The only sound heard in the cottage was the running tap water. After treating the burn on their hand, Dream leads (Y/N) to the chair on the side of the room. "You. Sit. I'll finish doing whatever you were doing. You just sit there and take it easy, you just burnt your hand." Bending down to their height, Dream stands face to face with (Y/N). He narrows his eyes slightly. He was always like this. Whenever (Y/N) got hurt in any sort of way, Dream was always on it, almost suffocating them with his overwhelming protectiveness.

They sighed, avoiding his eyes. "I- I was just... I just wanted to make you a coffee this morning. I know you're going to be busy later, so I wanted to make sure that you were energized for your work." Fiddling with their bandaged hand, (Y/N) smiled gently. "I see how you're always so dedicated to the stuff you do, and I wanted to return the favor, even if it's just a cup of coffee."

Dream's eyes softened. It was true, he was dedicated to his work. Running an SMP was hard, especially with some people interfering with his plans recently. He had plans to take power over the server again. Finding and taking everything his people were attached to was difficult, but at least he had (Y/N) to come home to. It was all for them. It was worth the hard work and pain just to see (Y/N) smile at him, showing him their love.

"It's okay. Thank you for wanting to do that, but you don't have to." Running his hand up to their cheek, he smiled. "I do all of my work for you, to help make a safe place for you. Once I sort out the rebellious people, I promise, I'll come back to you, and we can live together in my SMP." (Y/N) gazed up at him, looking into his eyes. They smiled, beaming at the idea.

"Alright! I promise I'll wait for you! I'll always wait for you. I love you, Clay."

"I love you too. I promise I will come back to you. Always."

He would do anything to see that smile on their face all the time.

She said she gave all her love to me

We dreamt a new life

Some place to be at peace

But things changed... Suddenly

I lost my dreams in this disaster

It had been two days. Two days since Dream had left. (Y/N) had since then tended to the flowers and read a few books Dream had gotten them from a faraway village.

'I wonder what he's doing now?' Looking up at the sky, (Y/N)'s mind began to wander. What was dream doing right now? Maybe he was still on his way back to his SMP? Or maybe he was trading with villagers for resources?

They smiled. Dream had been one of (Y/N)'s lifelong friends turned partner. They had met when (Y/N) used to live in a village as a child. (Y/N) was nine and Clay was ten. Dream had gotten into a rough fight with two skeletons and a zombie. He was stumbling around, trying to find help for his injuries.

That was when (Y/N) appeared. Hearing the boy's cries, they ran out of their family home, taking Dream into the house to be treated, screaming for their parents to help him.

They had grown up together as best friends after that. Meeting George and Sapnap, the group loved to go on little adventures together and play their favourite game: manhunt. Dream would always insist on running, with George and Sapnap chasing after him. Sometimes, (Y/N) would join them, but they quite enjoyed seeing the trio panic during the game. It was fun.

A couple years ago, Dream visited (Y/N), saying that he was starting up his own SMP, a place where he and his friends could have fun and just be themselves all the time. The two of them spend hours in (Y/N)'s room, talking about their big plans and ideas for the SMP. Dream wanted to build a cottage near a stream, and live there peacefully with (Y/N). They were shocked, Dream wanted to live with them? "Why?" They asked.

"Well, because of... I'll just show you."

That was the day Clay had kissed (Y/N) for the first time.

I'm crying

Missing my lover

I don't have the power

On my side forever

A month had passed. Nothing from Dream. Usually, he'd send a message through on their server communicator, asking how they were and informing them of his journey and new discoveries. But that didn't happen, not this time.

It was hard. Clay had been such a big part of their life that sometimes they found it hard not to worry about him. They knew he was strong, he could take down armies of people, but everyone had their limit.

Raising the iron hoe, (Y/N) swung down, making way for the new seeds of crops that would grow over the next few months. Wiping their forehead with their sleeve, they sighed.

All they wanted was for Dream to be safe, and for him to come back home once he finished his business in the SMP.

Oh Where is my lover

And I got no power

I'm standing alone, No way

Calling out your name

Heavy pants of breath echoed throughout the underground bunker. He was panicking. It wasn't supposed to go like this.

The plan was to kill Tubbo and make Tommy give him his disks.

It all went to shit when Punz showed up with backup, showing the people of his SMP that had turned against him fully.

"W-woah! Okay! Tommy, calm down!"

The blonde boy didn't listen, hands gripping the axe of peace and lifting it high above his head.

"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you Dream, right here, right now."

Dream silently gulped. For once, his plan failed. It backfired on him and blew up in his face. 'Sorry (Y/N). Guess I'm not coming back tonight.' He just wanted this to be over. He just wanted to be back in the cottage near the stream, sitting with his lover.

His green eyes darted around to everyone in the room. They looked disgusted, some disappointed, others angry. He knew this would never change. He would never get his SMP back. They hated him. Wanted him gone.

"Does Y/N know you're like this?"

His breath hitched. Eyes went wide.

Sapnap had stepped forward, sword out, pointing it threatening at Dream. "Do they know just how bad you are? How corrupt you've become?!" He was yelling at this point. Sapnap was upset as well. It was hard to believe that his best friend would do all of these bad things, it hurt to betray him, but he had to do what was right.

"S-stop. Stop talking about them."

For once, Dream was vulnerable. He hated it. He was always so soft when it came to them. When it came to (Y/N). Sapnap knew that. He had seen it when they were together, how happy dream was when he was with them, following them around like a lost puppy, longing for their love. It went both ways, (Y/N) was the same.

"Who the fuck is- Nevermind. Dream. Give me one good fucking reason why I shouldn't-"

"Tommy stop." Sapnap stepped in again. "This is important to not just me but for another person as well." Tommy stepped back, axe still prepared to lash out just in case. Tommy kept muttering to himself, something about a green bastard.

"Dream. Where is (Y/N)? You said they would join the SMP with us, but they're not here, nobody has seen them, probably besides you. You said that they changed their mind about the SMP, or was that a lie too?"

Dream gulped, words caught in his throat.

"Tell me, you bastard! Where is (Y/N) and do they know?!"

"No. They don't know. All I wanted to do was protect them from something I knew would happen. The wars, the chaos of the SMP. They didn't need to be a part of that. I didn't want them to get hurt."

It was almost like a plea. Dream's voice was quiet like he didn't want them to hear what he was saying. Sapnap stepped back, somewhat satisfied with his answer. He was also upset, he hadn't seen (Y/N) in years, not since before the SMP started.

Tommy finally stepped forward.

"Now. Tell me why I shouldn't kill you, Dream."

"I can bring people back to life. I can bring Wilbur back."

I said I gave all my love to you

We dreamt a new house

Some place to be at peace

But things changed... Suddenly

I lost my dreams in this disaster

Three months. It had been three long months without him. (Y/N) would spend every other night crying in their bed, missing him. They missed everything about him. No messages from him on their communicator. No death messages about him either.

They had never thought that three months could feel so long.

Surely he was busy doing stuff that would mean the world was safer for them. That's what he always said. He said that he worked for them and that he promised that they could settle down and make a new cottage near a different stream, closer to the SMP.

He said he needed to dig out the rebellious people and make his SMP a better place.

All (Y/N) could hope for was that he was safe and doing okay.

We don't know what is wrong tonight

Everybody's got no place to hide

No one's left and there's no one to go on

All I know is my life is gone

Dream was not feeling safe and right now he was feeling anything but okay.

Tommy had just broken his mask. Split down the middle, from the axe of peace.

He didn't want anyone to see his face, no one but (Y/N) and the people who had already seen it before he started wearing the mask.

His mask was his safe haven. A facade he could hide behind. With it gone, there was now no place for him to hide.

All he had done was tell Tommy that he could bring people back to life. When he mentioned Wilbur, Tommy seemed shocked, but then he seemed to come back to his senses after remembering what Wilbur was like before he died.

He went crazy. Insane. All because of Dream and his stupid motives. He only fueled Wilbur's change, encouraging him to blow Manburg up after Jschlatt took over. Thank God for Karl destroying the button the first time. The second attempt was successful and sealed Wilbur's fate as a psychotic, destroyed ex-president swayed by the masked man into committing destruction.

Tommy was angry at that. At the fact that Dream would even think about bringing back Wilbur.

Enraged, he brought the axe down onto Dream's cowering figure.

I'm crying

Missing my lover

I don't have the power

On my side forever

Sitting up, (Y/N) slowly looked around the room. It was the same as always; no Dream insight. They woke up every day with a feeling of hope that they would turn around and see Dream at the door, back from his trip.

The situation was too much. (Y/N)'s breaths quickened, eyes blurring up with tears, the salty water slowly dripping down the sides of their cheeks. They let out a dry laugh, bringing up their sweater paw hands to their face, wiping the tears.

They stared at the sleeve of the hoodie they had on. It was green.

It was his.

He always left a spare here, just in case.

It always came in handy when (Y/N) missed him.

They sighed, flopping back down onto the bed, curling into themselves and the hoodie. It smelt like him. He always smelt like a run through the forest, with a hint of saltwater and citrus.

It was comforting.

He was comforting.

The tears wouldn't stop. Every time (Y/N) wiped them away, fresh ones would keep coming. Where was he? Was he okay? It was all they could think about.

(Y/N) hugged themselves, hoping to recreate a hug like his. It didn't work. It never worked.

Nothing could ever compare to his hugs.

Still sobbing, (Y/N) cried themselves back to sleep, despite it being morning.

Not like they had any motivation to do anything without the assurance of him being okay anyways.

Oh Where is my lover

And I got no power

I'm standing alone, No way

Calling out your name

Beep.

(Y/N)'s communicator went off.

Dream was slain by Tommyinnit.

[makeste]

BnHA 326: What’s up Kids, It’s Me, Your Old Pal Stain

Previously on BnHA: Ochako shamed the U.A. Clown Mob into letting Deku go back inside his own fucking school by giving them an hour-long speech about how not to be humongous dickheads. Kouta and Gigantic Fox Lady saved the manga by being the only ones brave enough to give Deku a hug. Shouto was all “man, all this togetherness sure does remind me of that promise you made that we would handle Touya together which you immediately bailed on, doesn’t it, Dad.” Aizawa was all, “for the one and a half people out there who thought that my losing an eye and a leg might actually make me less sexy, I’m very happy to prove you wrong.” All Might was all, “[standing outside the U.A. fortress alone in the rain talking to someone or something??].” Like seriously, what was up with that though.

Today on BnHA: All Might is all “here I am in Kamino having a belated mid-life crisis because Deku abandoned me and I’m a terrible mentor and everything sucks and I hate myself.” Stain is all, “don’t make me come over there and give you a ten page speech about why you’re still the goat while menacingly holding you at swordpoint the entire time” because idk if you knew this guys, but Stain is pretty crazy actually. Anyway so he does that, and then All Might gets all emotional, and then the lady from chapter 92 shows up and gives All Might’s statue an encouraging pep talk, and then Horikoshi is all “and it even stopped raining lol can you believe this shit I’m not even a little bit subtle,” and he really isn’t. But I still got emotional anyway, because seeing people reassure All Might that everything he’s struggled for his entire life hasn’t been in vain just got to me okay. Horikoshi knows I am weak to the All Might feels and he just goes for the jugular every time, that bastard.

lmao. “in the neverending downpour, All Might is...” yeah, thank you, glad we’re getting right to that then

“All Might is driving 95 mph in his busted ass car in the pouring rain, is what he’s doing.” huh

so basically a day or two after his adopted child refused to accept the handmade bento that he packed with love, my man is out here acting like he’s got nothing to live for anymore. this sure bodes well for certain prophecies on which the clock is still ominously ticking down

his fucking face though omg. is it weird that I’m kind of hoping more people ambush him just because I think it’d be funny to see them get their asses kicked like the last bunch

(ETA: or maybe he will just stand there openly not giving a fuck and basically daring them to stab him!! get it together please All Might.)

side note, “anti-hero supporters” is such a strange way of saying “people who hate heroes”, which I’m assuming is what they actually wanted to say?? this makes it sound like it’s a group that really loves antiheroes. “these Hannibal stans have been a real menace lately. time to go deal with them”

ha ha ha, fucking ouch

are you really gonna do it Horikoshi you bastard. are you really going to let that be the final encounter between the two characters whose relationship you once described as the vertical axis of the entire fucking story. are you really gonna?? huh??

huh

you’re telling me you were driving 112 mph and you still didn’t get there in time. you’re losing your touch old man. lol Todo’s ice is almost fully melted already, how late were you

(ETA: so apparently this is taking place after the end of chapter 325, meaning he went to U.A., hung out for a bit, saw the kids come back with his bedraggled half-dead protégé in tow, watched as they shamed the civilians into some long-overdue character development, and then was all “welp, time to go argue with the hero-hating faction or something because I’m feeling useless.” and Edge just let him go, just like that. though to be fair I have to imagine it’s pretty hard to say no to All Fucking Might.)

also belated lol at the fact that the kids were all “yeahhhhhhh we are definitely not gonna touch that thing, let’s just leave it here, he doesn’t need it anyway.” probably the right call to make since they couldn’t get a hazmat team on such short notice

fuck. ha ha ha fucking ouch part two

All Might please put that thing down before you get gangrene. also yeah, you dropped the ball, good for you to acknowledge it. nobody’s perfect and you did your best. but yeah you could have handled a lot of things completely differently. but I still love you

is Horikoshi really putting this flashback here. are you serious. what kind of fucking sadist

look, I swear I’m not one of those people that runs up and down the street shouting “DEATH FLAG!!” at every third panel lol. but this shit screamed Death Flag when we originally got it, and it’s screaming DEATH FLAG!!! even more now. like with the capital letters and exclamation marks and all. and that’s just a fact. I don’t like it but that’s how it is

ffkdjslk

“DID YOU READ THE SIGN??!” Horikoshi asks while zooming in maniacally because he thinks we’re blind or something. lol what

-- though actually, it only just occurred to me that this sign is actually written in English. I never really paid attention up until now and had been assuming it was written in Japanese and translated by the scanlators, but the writing here is clearly part of the original image. anyway so maybe that’s why he’s zooming in?? just to make sure everybody pays attention lol

okay fuck this

see, this is the whole problem right here. once again All Might is all on his own. Deku’s self-destructive angst spiral was fortunately brought to a grinding halt because he actually has support from his friends and family and teachers and classmates. but All Might never had that same kind of support, and it’s made all the difference between the two of them, and not in a good way. Katsuki wasn’t wrong when he said All Might and Deku were both cut from the same cloth. but now when it’s All Might’s turn to go all “I WALK A LONELY ROAD~~” once again, there’s nobody in sight

just, after forty plus years of him carrying this torch, I just wish someone would finally come along to let him know he doesn’t have to. all those things that he wanted to say to Deku are also things that he needs and deserves to hear himself. Aizawa was making a little progress there, but now he’s got his sad zombie cloud boyfriend situation to deal with, and we can’t expect him and his perfect hair to solve all our problems. someone else has gotta step up

oh my god

“you rang?” never mind I take it all back sob

omg why am I laughing. shit

this man truly has the best PR game in the series. we were truly convinced he was gonna suddenly become a good guy and defend All Might against the other villains or some nonsense. as if this wasn’t the same man who decided on a whim that Iida Tensei deserved to be paralyzed, and that his fifteen-year-old brother deserved to die for daring to be upset about it

lol even All Might is all “I genuinely never saw this coming” lmao

just want to say, for the record, I have always harbored a very sensible hatred toward Stain. feeling very vindicated right now. good job Past Me

adsfklwkfsdwgkj

ffffwefjslkg. ghsdlkg. dsfkkkslkjldwkjrg

STAIN: heard you talking shit old man

ME: smh that’s what I thought you’d say you dumb fucking Stain

STAIN: how dare you talk about All Might that way

ME: gljfljgk

(ETA: in hindsight I have no idea how I didn’t clue in sooner that he didn’t recognize him -- or, well, ~didn’t recognize~ him, to be more accurate lol. I think it was the whole “is that a slight against the heroes?” thing that threw me. Viz’s translation makes it much clearer that he’s offended on behalf of All Might specifically, not heroes in general. anyways.)

sob. so All Might is all “yeah I don’t blame you for not recognizing me in this sweet leather jacket”

good thing he still knows how to do this party trick

A+ reflexes on Stain’s part presumably pulling the sword back a few inches to keep this dumbass from impaling himself with his whole pufferfish routine. can you imagine if that was the gruesome death Nighteye foresaw. and he was just too embarrassed to say anything

lol anyways guess I was wrong about Stain everyone

way to fucking go, Past Me. you really biffed this one

oh wait

Stain sure is one wacky rollercoaster ride

oh fuck me lol I forgot how much I did not miss this

(ETA: “this here is the sacred ground where All Might gave up the last of his power and turned into a shriveled old man!! please ignore the part where I admit to knowing all about that, and yet pretend not to recognize said man when he’s standing two feet in front of me.”)

Past Me, I know we’ve had our ups and downs these past ninety seconds, but I’m really starting to think you were on to something. this dude has always been kind of insufferable. always acting like his high horse is a fucking giraffe when it’s actually a Shetland pony

dammit now he’s got All Might going off on a depressed monologue

oh my god my heart

shit

why the fuck does that hit so hard. he became a hero because he couldn’t bear to just sit back and let bad things happen to people who didn’t deserve it. I mean that’s basically the same as every hero ever, right? so why does it still hit so fucking hard every single time though. what is it about seeing someone so determined to stand up for other people and fight on their behalf. it just never loses its impact no matter how many times I see that determination mirrored in so many of my favorite characters

“I wanted to make the world a better place.” omg. but you did, though. like seriously, I feel like people are always dogging on him for not being 100% perfect, and fandom really doesn’t give him enough credit for everything he still managed to accomplish. this man came of age at a time when Japan was by all accounts a total shitshow, and singlehandedly managed to bring about an era of peace that lasted for four fucking decades. can you imagine having peace for that long?? that’s longer than I’ve been alive. shit

and he gave people hope. he inspired them and protected them and made them feel safe. and no, he couldn’t save everyone, because he’s only one fucking dude (and also because the whole time AFO was also out there desperately working to undermine him so that he could keep preaching his narrative of “heroes are bad actually”). but you know what he did do, is inspire multiple new generations of heroes who, if they can all manage to work together, will finally be able to accomplish everything he never could

so yeah. forty years of peace, and inspired the “that’s how we all became the greatest heroes” generation -- that’s a fucking win in my book. talk about having a net positive impact on the world. lol anyways now I’m all fired up and ready to fight anyone who tries to talk any shit about you, All Might

“but what if I talk shit about myself” okay listen up All Might I’m gonna need you to try just a little bit harder to work with me here okay. please calm down and stop blaming yourself for every single bad thing that’s ever happened in the world. do you remember that time Bakugou was blaming himself for Kamino, and you gave him a hug and told him it wasn’t his fault, and that he was only a boy, and that even though he was strong, even strong people can struggle with the burdens they place on themselves, and that you were sorry for not seeing that earlier? do you remember all of that? that’s what I want someone to tell you too, dammit. anyway please stop breaking my heart please and thanks

wtf

are you dead All Might

um

I don’t even have the slightest idea what’s happening lol

oh snap did he grab him so they could hide??

hold the fucking phone. don’t tell me this person in the background with the umbrella is here to actually do something decent??

oh my godddd

and here come the feels. oh boy. okay don’t mind me, I’m just gonna sit here sobbing over this fictional lady and her simple act of kindness in this weekly shounen manga that I care about way too much

FUCKING DAMMIT AND HERE’S A SECOND HELPING

DON’T MIND ME, I’M JUST GETTING DISPROPORTIONATELY EMOTIONAL OVER THIS WOMAN’S DETERMINATION TO HONOR A MAN WHO SACRIFICED EVERYTHING TO SAVE HER AND COUNTLESS OTHERS. I’M JUST HAVING SOME FEELS OVER HERE ABOUT HER HEARTFELT, DOESN’T-EVEN-KNOW-ANYONE-ELSE-IS-WATCHING FEELINGS OF GRATITUDE THAT COMPELLED HER TO COME OUT HERE AND MAKE THIS SMALL BUT POWERFUL GESTURE. I’M JUST OUT HERE GETTING ALL PROFOUNDLY WORKED UP ABOUT STATUE MAINTENANCE AND THE HUMAN RACE. NEVER MIND. JUST IGNORE ME AND CARRY ON

holy shit. I was not even remotely prepared. you can’t just do that to me. you can’t just leave all these death flags on my lawn and then suddenly shift gears to show me the best of humanity in a chapter where I was expecting the worst. that fucks a person up lol

OH ARE WE STILL GOING

my heart. you see that, All Might. your legacy is so much more powerful and meaningful than you think

...has. has Stain actually been giving All Might a pep talk this entire time

I give up lol. this dude is a fucking enigma

YAYYY

it may just be a metaphor panel, but I’ll take it lol. I missed them. nice to see the traffic light trio front and off-center. I know the whole “this is the story of how we all became the greatest heroes” thing had left some questioning whether certain characters would continue to play a central role in the narrative, and hopefully this will help to ease those concerns just a bit

anyway, so idk if it’s getting a bit chilly down there in hell, but damned if Stain didn’t just give an actual decent fucking speech

I have to say, earlier when I was whining about All Might not having a support squad, I really was not expecting Stain to be the one to come over and pat his head and reassure him that he made the world a better place

-- okay LISTEN

YOU CAN’T JUST COME INTO MY HOUSE AND HIT ME WITH THOSE ALL MIGHT TEARS AGAIN GODDAMMIT THIS ISN’T FAIR. my god. first 317 and now this

holy fucking shit

“I’m just gonna pretend like I haven’t been stalking him for two days and didn’t see the entire Deku bentogate thing go down, and then I’ll give him the whole big speech that I rehearsed, and then I’ll turn around and be all ‘BUT IF YOU’RE A TRUE HERO’, and then I’ll toss him the super-secret AFO wifi password that I stole from Tartarus. god I’m such a badass. fucking give myself chills”

so basically what you’re telling me is that this whole time my “what’s up kids” characterization of Stain from this shitpost has actually been 100% accurate. just want to make sure I’m understanding this right. okay then

“and then I’ll dramatically spin around and be all NOW COME KILL ME BITCH”

it must be so much fun to write Stain. drawing this coked-out maniac who talks like a chatbot that was trained to speak by reading Alan Moore monologues. that must be a trip

anyway so All Might is still crying, the awesome lady from chapter 92 is admiring her handiwork totally oblivious to the batshit insanity going on fifty meters to her right, and it’s finally stopped raining lol

“THE RAIN WAS A METAPHOR YOU SEE” yes, yes, we got it lol. thanks for that Horikoshi. don’t think we needed any help putting the pieces together on that one but I appreciate the effort

so that’s the end! and as I mentioned in another post, I had the count off by one chapter, but next week should be cliffhanger week! so break out your U.A. Traitor bingo cards, friends and fiends. either that or something else happens that I’m completely not expecting at all. which, based on my success rate with Stain predictions, I’d say is more than likely lol

mmm but anyway, so now that the Hug Deku 2021 campaign has finally come to an end, what’s it gonna take to get a hug for my struggling bento-preparing jacket-rocking world-weary death-flag-waving husband who is the worthiest man to ever live and deserves the fucking world, goddammit

[phykios]

Five Times Percy Jackson Cheated At School (And One Time Someone Cheated Him) [read on ao3]

thank you as always to @darkmagyk for inspo and beta-ing 💙💙💙 and thank you to @arosnowflake for the homer idea!

1)

Percy squints at the paper prompt again, tilting his head, as if the new angle will extract some hidden information. It doesn’t change. The font is the special dyslexia-friendly one used by most departments at NRU, so he isn’t misreading it, either.

Your final will be an 8-10pp (TNR, 12pt, double-spaced) research paper expanding on one of the topics discussed in our class so far, or an alternate idea of your choosing, to be submitted in writing by May 7 with footnotes and bibliography. By 10am on the Wednesday before the Thursday class you will submit online a 750-word essay (word count does not include footnotes) on the research thread you have pursued that week (no written assignments due Week 6 or Week 12). 

Percy might hate college.

“Your neck bothering you again?” Annabeth asks, coming up behind him, her hands already on his shoulders. She’s sweaty, dressed in workout clothes, having just come back in from a jog. 

“My neck is fine,” he says. “Just preemptively freaking out over my Roman history final.”

He tilts his head back over the top of his chair, staring into the upside down, prettily frowning face of his girlfriend, and it does nothing to improve his mood.

“How bad is it?”

“Eight to ten pages,” Percy says, “not including footnotes.”

“Ouch.”

“And,” he grimaces, “it’s a topic of our choosing.”

Her mouth twists in sympathy. “Sucks.”

“Yep.”

“Anything I can do to help?” She squeezes his shoulders lightly, an open invitation. 

He shakes his head, stretching his arms back to grab her waist. “Promise not to break up with me when you catch me crying at 4AM over it.”

“Promise.” And she seals it with a kiss, bending down to reach him. “Dad wants to know if you’re free on the 16th.” 

“The 16th?” He wracks his brain. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t conflict with sailing, or Greek Club, or the monthly intra-pantheon relations council meeting that Chiron and Clarisse both guilted him into joining. “Pretty sure. Why?”

“Dinner--Charlotte’s out of town that weekend.”

“Sounds good.”

“Great, I’ll let him know. Now,” and she grins, “are you going to stare at that computer all day, or do you want to come and take a shower with me?”

Percy slams the computer shut. 

He doesn’t think about his paper topic for a while after that.

***

To his great dismay, Percy gets to her dad’s house first on the 16th. Drama in writing group 🙄 she texts him as he gets to the door, be there asap.

Great. Alone in the house with his girlfriend’s dad. Taking a deep breath, he knocks on the door. 

Not a minute later, Dr. Chase opens it. Last time they went to visit, Percy and Annabeth had ended up waiting outside for almost a quarter of an hour. “Oh, Percy,” he says, fumbling his flight helmet off his head. “Goodness, I thought I’d lost track of time again. Come in, come in.”

“Thanks,” Percy says, stepping inside and shedding his jacket. “Annabeth’s running late, but she said she’d be here soon.”

He frowns, looking so much like Annabeth that it throws Percy for several loops. “Well, that’s alright,” he says. “I’m sure we can entertain ourselves well enough until she gets here.”

“Yeah,” Percy chuckles, uneasy.

Several seconds pass. 

“Oh!” starts Dr. Chase. “Right, yes. Come in. Would you like something to drink?”

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t get much better.

A few minutes of staggered conversation later, it becomes eminently clear why they need Annabeth between them. It’s not the awkward small talk that doesn’t go anywhere (“How’s school going for you?” “It’s okay.” “Good, that’s good to hear.”) or the fact that Dr. Chase doesn’t really grasp how to relate to younger kids (“Have you heard of this website called ‘Vine’?”), but more that it’s just painfully obvious that the two of them don’t really know where they stand with each other. 

Now, he knows that Frederick Chase doesn’t hate him. Objectively, he’s aware of the fact that, if it weren’t for him, Annabeth never would have reconnected with her father in the first place, and he kind of owes him for that. Also, Percy knows that he’s a pretty chill guy--a little scatterbrained, but chill. 

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to make a good impression, though. Or that Dr. Chase thinks that Percy is smart enough for his daughter. Because, like, Percy isn’t smart enough for Annabeth--that much is obvious. Dr. Chase was courted by Athena. Percy barely made it out of high school calculus.

“Would you…” Dr. Chase hedges, plucking off his glasses and giving them a quick wipe with his shirtsleeve. “Would you like to see some of my current research?”

“Uh… sure. I’d love to.” 

At the very least, hopefully Dr. Chase will talk enough for the both of them, eating up time until Annabeth gets here.

A new spring in his step, Dr. Chase leads Percy to his study, where he’s got a setup worthy of Cabin Six: on his desk is a massive map of the Mediterranean, littered with miniatures of tanks, planes, and ships. Ringing the room are wall-hangings, depicting different types of planes, half of their structure in x-rays like people in an anatomy textbook, sandwiching the giant viking sword which hangs directly behind his chair. Every inch of floor space is occupied with a pile of books, some serving as additional desk space for mugs, notepads, spare toy soldiers, and, in one case, what looks like the leftovers of a handful of celestial bronze spearheads, melted down into shiny, useless nuggets. 

“You know I primarily study aviation,” Dr. Chase is saying, tidying up as he walks around the room, “but my colleagues and I are collaborating on an interdisciplinary re-evaluation of the entire North African theatre in World War II. It’s fascinating stuff; until very recently, they used to call it the ‘war without hate,’ given the lack of partisan roundups and, ah, ethnic clashes that you see in Europe--absolute garbage, of course. As if there weren’t civilians caught up in the fighting, too!” He chuckles, pleased at his own joke. Percy forces a laugh out of himself. “Anyway, with my prior experience studying the invasion of Sicily, I was brought on to assist in piecing the timeline together, working backwards from 1943.”

“Cool,” says Percy, filling the natural gap of conversation.

“Extremely! Operation Husky was a terrific endeavor of airborne, amphibious, and land-based combat.”

Percy nods. Amphibious? “Uh-huh.”

“Though, I must admit, I am having a little trouble retracing some of the ships.” Peering over his map, he leans down, fiddling with one of the ships. “You see this one here? The Palmer?”

Stepping up to the desk, Percy crouches down so the little toy ship is at eye level.

“Well, based on official records, the Palmer was supposed to have arrived at the rendezvous point at the same time as all the other ships, but ended up delayed by two days, and I can’t… quite…” He moves the ship again, frowning. “Figure out… why…” 

“Where were they sailing through?” Percy asks. 

Dr. Chase points to the map. “From Alexandria to Malta.” 

“They probably just hit a bad couple of currents,” Percy says, standing up. 

Tilting his head, Dr. Chase peers at him. “How do you mean?”

“If you’re going through the Cretan Passage, you’re going to hit all kinds of West-East currents which will push you backwards.” Snatching up a pencil from a nearby book stack, Percy lightly sketches on top of the map, tracing along the North African coast. “There are tons of overlapping currents in this area that push boats around in circles, especially around Sicily. That’s one of the reasons why so many historians figure that Homer was referring to the Strait of Messina when Odysseus goes through Scylla and Charybdis, here.” And he circles the strait, with a confident flourish.

When he pulls back, Dr. Chase is staring at him.

Percy blinks. “Um… sorry I drew on your map.”

“You--I have been trying to figure that out for weeks.”

He coughs, shrugging his shoulders. “Sorry.”

But Dr. Chase just laughs. “You can make it up to me by helping me with these next.” Clearing crumbs off of southern France, he bends over, pencil in hand. “So, say you were trying to get from Marseilles to Tunis…” 

Forty-five minutes later, still embroiled in battle recreations of the Mediterranean theatre, they don’t hear Annabeth letting herself in with her key, not even registering her presence until Dr. Chase, grasping for a notebook, spots her leaning against the doorway. “Don’t stop on my account.”

“Oh, Annabeth, dear! I’m sorry,” says Dr. Chase, going over to give her a hug. “We didn’t hear you come in.”

“I can see that,” she says. “What are you guys doing?”

“Percy here has been assisting me with naval movements,” he says, proudly.

Lacing her fingers with his, Annabeth steps over to Percy, studying their battle map. “Really?”

“Oh yes, he’s been phenomenally helpful.”

She kisses his cheek, pleased. “Look at you, Mr. ‘Phenomenally Helpful.’”

“It was pretty fun,” he admits, warm all over.

“I’d bet. Although, I guess this means we should probably order in for dinner…?”

Rubbing at the back of his neck, Dr. Chase smiles. “Yes, I suppose we should. Does pizza sound all right to you two?”

“Let me take care of it,” she says, slipping from Percy’s side. “You guys looked like you were in the middle of something. Extra olives, dad?”

“Don’t forget--”

“And anchovies, Percy, I know.” She rolls her eyes, taking out her phone.

Rather than the three of them move into the kitchen, Annabeth ends up bringing the pizza in with her, because of course she has opinions she’d like to share about the Allies’ naval movements. 

“You know, Percy,” says Dr. Chase, “I must say, you have a real knack for this kind of thing. Have you thought about what you might major in yet?”

Ah, the million drachmae question. “Not yet,” he says, fiddling with a pencil. “I figured I’d get through my gen eds first and then see which one I hated the least.” 

“I think you should consider majoring in history.”

Percy’s head snaps up. “History?”

“Specifically maritime history, I suppose. Your predisposition to sailing and ocean currents would be a huge asset to your research.”

“But--wouldn’t history have, like, a metric ton of required reading? I’m not really sure that’s my area.” He has a daughter with dyslexia and ADHD; surely he’d understand Percy’s hesitation.

But he just shakes his head. “Graduate programs these days are very favorable towards interdisciplinary methodology, I sincerely doubt you’d have to barricade yourself in the library. And recently there’s been a significant push to make the field more accessible to students with disabilities, including things like digitization, screen reading for people with vision impairments, and even restructuring programs all together so that students no longer have to memorize the Encyclopedia Britannica in order to pass their general exams.”

“That’s really nice of you to say, Dr. Chase,” Percy says, “But history class isn’t like talking over naval movements with you.” He thought back to the paper that had lowkey been haunting his dreams. “Like, in my classical history survey, I can’t just… talk about currents and battle plans. I have to come up with a topic on my own, and then write about that.” 

“Surely something involving Roman naval movements would be well within your skill set. You have a second sense about these things,” he chuckles, “clearly.”

Percy glances towards Annabeth, hoping she’ll back him up, but she looks thoughtful. Considering. Like she’s actually thinking about her dad’s proposal. “I can’t just choose something in naval history.”

“Why not?”

“Because… it's too easy?” 

If it was anything like his afternoon with Dr. Chase, it might even be fun. And school isn’t supposed to be fun. 

He repeats that thought to Annabeth as they drive home. “School isn’t supposed to be fun.” 

“No,” Annabeth agrees, “but I don’t know… I like my intro art history class way better than anything we ever did in high school because I actually care about it. Maybe if you write about stuff you’re good at, like my dad suggested, you’ll like it more.” 

The idea follows him all the way to bed, where he’s still mulling it over at 2 in the morning. Before he can chicken out, he grabs his phone, shooting off a quick email to his professor with his potential paper topic, then rolls over, eventually falling asleep.

By morning, he has a response. 

Sounds good! Looking forward to it.

***

With shaking hands, Percy calls his mom. “Yes?” 

“Hey mom.”

“Percy?” He hears her perk up, almost visualizing her sitting up in her chair. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

Mom instincts. They can always tell when something is different. His heart throbs in his chest. “Nothing’s wrong,” he says, smiling stretching across his face. “It’s just--I got my paper back.” 

Percy had ended up writing his paper about the Roman navy movements in the Battle of the Aegates in 241 BC. It was probably the most fun he’s ever had on a school assignment, or at least the most fun he’d ever had writing a paper. 

“And?” She sounds expectant, hopeful. His mom has always had such faith in him, even with thirteen years of schooling to prove her otherwise. 

He looks back at his email, just to make sure he’s reading it right. “I got an A.”

She gasps. He can hear the scrape of the chair as she stands up. “Percy, that’s wonderful!” 

“Thank you.”

“An A!”

He smiles into his fist, inordinately pleased. “Thank you.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I am so happy for you!”

“Thanks, mom.”

“I’m so proud of you, Percy.” Her voice is soft now, like twilights on the beach with blue marshmallows. “I know how hard you’ve worked for this. You should be very proud, too.”

“I am.” And he is, weirdly enough. “I just can’t believe it.”

“I can.” His mom must be grinning, her eyes sparkling. “I always knew you could do it.”

“Sally?” He hears in the background, muffled. “Is that Percy?”

“Paul, Percy got an A on his Roman history paper!”

A second voice crowds its way in, equally excited. “An A? That’s great, kiddo! Congratulations.”

Why can’t he stop smiling? “Thanks.”

“I bet that feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“Well, it is very well-deserved,” says Paul. “That was some great work you did. I could tell how passionate you were about your topic just from your first sentence.”

“Thank you.” Maybe he should be worried about all this praise going to his head, but damn, is it nice. “Listen, I have to go get started on dinner, but I just wanted to give you a call.”

“Of course,” says his mom. “I want to hear from you more, okay? Tell me more good news! Like when are you and Annabeth going to--”

“I’m working on it, okay?” says Percy, smiling even more broadly. “I’ll keep you posted, promise.”

She laughs, tinny and happy. “You’d better. Congratulations again, sweetheart.”

“Thanks mom. Love you.”

“Love you, too.” 

And he hangs up, puts his phone down on the table, tilts his head back, and sighs, full, happy, a release. 

Maybe college won’t be so bad after all. 

2)

“You don’t have to do this,” Frank says, hushed. “All you have to do is walk away.”

Five Greek Fire bombs, cloudy yellow, are lined up on the table in front of him, neatly laid out in front of five twenties. From the side, Frank stares him down, surrounded by an army of morbidly curious Romans. Someone turned off the music and turned on the lights a while ago, stopping the party in its tracks, every eye on Percy and his opponent. Figures, his first college party all year and he causes a scene. 

Percy grips the edge of the table. “He insulted the Mets,” he says for the millionth time. “I can’t let that shit stand.”

Frank sighs. “Annabeth?” he asks, hoping to stop this nonsense.

Turning to his side, Percy sees his girlfriend, two drinks in, her cheeks lightly flushed, but solid as she stands beside him, supporting him. Her eyes are hard, fierce, the warrior gaze of Athena all but leaping out of her. “Do it,” she says. 

William, the sour-faced Roman legacy of Juventus, scowls. “A hundred bucks on the table. Sixty seconds. No throwing them back up.”

“Deal.”

“Frank,” Annabeth calls. “Start the clock.”

He sighs. “You guys are idiots.”

“Frank!”

“Okay, okay.” He holds out his phone, thumb primed, hovering over the screen. “On your marks, in three… two… one…” 

He hits zero, and Percy grabs a shot glass. Squeezing his eyes shut, he brings it to his lips, and throws it back.

It’s… not what he expected.

The tequila is awful--no getting around that. Even to Percy’s untrained taste buds, having really only ever had some of Gabe’s sour beer (under duress) and some of the Demeter cabin’s strawberry wine (on his eighteenth birthday, a celebration for actually getting to graduate high school), he can tell it’s cheap, rank, unrefined shit, like he’s drinking straight toilet cleaner. But the garum, the weird Roman condiment that the shot is mixed with, the one that Percy had never heard of before, it’s… it almost tastes like the fish sauce that comes with the pork and rice noodles from the Vietnamese place down the corner of his mom’s apartment, only less… fishy? Yeah. Less fishy.

It’s a weird taste. It’s not bad, by any means, it just--straight up, it just tastes like saltwater. Like the sea. 

And, well. Percy can handle the sea.

He looks at William, and grins. “You are so fucked.”

The assembled Romans cheer, spectators at a gladiator show, as Percy knocks back the rest of the Greek Fire bombs, one after another, clearing them all in under thirty seconds. Annabeth swipes up the cash, shrieking as she throws her arms around Percy. William wanders off, red-faced and glaring, as whoever turned the music off before flips it back on, the night, and the party, saved.

Silly Percy. He should have known what was coming next.

Thirty minutes later, he is well and truly wasted.

“You’re, like, really pretty,” he shouts at Annabeth over the loud music.

She snorts, grinning at him. “Thanks.”

“Seriously,” he slurs, tipping forward on his feet. “You could be a model.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Remember when we were fourteen,” he yells, bracing himself against the wall, “and you got kidnapped by that monster?” Slightly soberer but still a little flushed, she bites her lip, nodding. “Well, I followed the rescue party--I told you that, that I snuck out of camp to follow the rescue party? Right?” 

“You did.”

He takes a sip of water, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. Feels goofy as fuck. “We got hijacked by Aphrodite halfway through, and when I saw her, I thought--I thought, ‘Holy shit, she looks a little like Annabeth.’”

Her brows shoot up, smile pulling at her lips. “Really?”

He nods. “Totally! But you’re way, way p--” 

Still smiling, she silences him with a kiss, the lingering taste of hard cider on her tongue. “I appreciate it,” she murmurs, grinning, “but you probably shouldn’t say that out loud.”

“Gross.”

From out of nowhere, like he always does, the weasley little shit, Nico di Angelo is suddenly in their space, looking surly and emo as ever, red solo cup in his left hand. “Nico!” Percy crows, grabbing for him and missing. “How’s my favorite cousin?!”

Ducking his wildly swinging limbs, Nico grimaces in the way that Percy has to come to recognize as his attempt at a smile. “Better’n you,” he says, a little wobbly. “What’s up with him?” he directs towards Annabeth.

“Greek Fire bombs. Five.”

“You’re a psychopath.”

“What!” Percy pouts. “He insulted the Mets.”

“Aren’t you s’posed to be, like…” Nico snaps his fingers, words momentarily escaping him. “A--representation… person? For the Greeks?”

Percy waves his hand, hitting the wall. “Fuck that. The Greeks can handle themselves. The Mets are sacred!”

“Are you with anyone?” Annabeth asks, momentarily taking up Percy’s usual role of concerned parent friend while he is drunk off his ass. Theoi, he loves this girl so much. 

Nico shakes his head. “No, but Will and I are staying with--”

A thought suddenly blooms in Percy’s tequila-soaked brain. “Nico!” He shouts.

“What?” he hisses, glaring.

Percy pushes himself off of the wall, outstretched arms managing to box Nico in, falling on his shoulders and trapping him. He’s still a short, skinny little shit, the fuck, when are his Big Three genes going to kick in? “I need to talk to you about the thing.”

“The what?”

“The thing! The--the,” then he leans in, scream-whispering over the pounding bassline. “The thing.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“You know, it’s…” Percy licks his lips, language escaping him for a hot second. “Round. Metal. Jewelry thing.”

A beat, then Nico’s eyes widen. “Oh, that thing.”

“Yes, that thing!” Pulling back, he pulls Nico towards him, slinging an arm over his shoulders in a half-headlock. Annabeth watches, bemused, lips pursed as she tries not to smile. “I need to borrow Nico for a sec,” he says, words spilling out of him. “Back soon. Later. Soon.”

Her eyes crinkle, grey sparkling. She’s so fucking pretty. “Drink your water.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Then together, like some three-legged beast, the two boys lurch away deeper into the party, Nico leading them towards the kitchen. “Where’re you taking me?” Percy slurs. “‘M I being kidnapped again?”

“If I’m helping you plan out this stupid proposal,” he grumbles, pouring himself more vodka, “then I need to be less sober.”

***

Some mistakes may have been made.

“Where’s Annabeth?” Percy mumbles, looking back towards the house. The party is still raging, someone’s muffled Spotify playlist making a real racket, the greatest hits of ABBA still bouncing around his skull.

“Simp.” Nico, swaying a little, tries to stand up from his kneeling position, only to fall heavily back down on his knees. “She’s right where you left her.”

Discussing Percy's proposal plan had led to more drinking. More drinking had led to the two of them discussing their shared preference for blondes. (“Malcolm is pretty cute,” Nico admitted, flushing, and Percy almost screamed, “Isn’t he?! Sometimes I think about Annabeth with short hair looking like Malcolm and I almost start crying because she’d be so cute!”) Which then led to even more drinking. Which then led to general bitching about their lives, about Percy's hard-ass classics professor Dr. Bauer who he actually really liked but just pushed him so hard and expected so much of him, and Nico's half-brother Zagreus who was causing some family drama by picking fights with Hades all the time and also hooking up with both Thanatos AND the fury Megaera, which, ew, which then led to Percy inhaling his drink, nearly choking to death on unspecified college punch, Nico laughing at him all the while, as he had the most incredible idea.

"Nico!" He shouted, crushing the red solo cup. "Can you resurrect Homer for me?"

Nico gaped, staring. "What."

"Seriously! I need to ask him something for my paper."

"Percy." Nico gazed at him, all the power of the Ghost King boring into his soul, deep and haunting. Percy stifled a burp. "You're a fucking genius."

Which is how they found themselves around a shallow hole they had dug in the backyard, a large bottle of Pepsi originally intended as a mixer pilfered from the kitchen along with two slices of pepperoni pizza dumped on the grass beside them.

"Maybe we shouldn't do this," he says, uneasy even through his drunken haze.

"It was your idea!"

"I don't have good ideas."

“Fuck you, I’m doing it.” With all the force of a tiny, angry kitten, he snatches up the Pepsi bottle, wrestling with the twist cap for a good ten seconds. “I wanna give that bitch a piece of my mind for making me cry in school.”

Percy looks at him sideways. “Hector killing Patroclus got you, too?”

He snorts. “Fuck no. Achilles didn’t pay his dues to the dead.”

“Seriously?”

The cap pops off, and Nico tips the bottle over, dumping flat, lukewarm soda into the shallow hole. “It’s the ultimate dishonor!”

Freak. Percy would die for the kid.

“Let the dead taste again,” Nico mutters. “Let them rise and take this offering. Let them remember.”

“You’re so weird.”

“Says the guy who’s related to both horses and water.”

“I’m not related to water, I just control it.” 

The dirt turns black, dead soil mixed with sticky sugar water. Nico drops in the pizza, and begins to chant, that same ancient Greek that Percy heard in a dream once, talking of death and memories and returning from the grave or whatever. It’s still creepy as shit. 

Despite the warm California night, the air thickens with chilly fog. Silence, impenetrable, surrounds them, blocking out the noises of the party. From the earth, blueish, vaguely person-shaped figures begin to form, like thunderous clouds before a storm. “Which one is Homer?” he asks, hushed.

“Shh!” Nico hisses. 

Like little wells of gravity, the fog begins to coalesce. On one of them, Percy can almost make out, like, fingers. “Um, Mr. Homer? Sir?”

The figure doesn’t say anything. It lowers its mouth, drinking the soda out of the dirt. When it raises its head, Percy can see it more clearly, curly hair and milky white eyes and a straight nose. It--he?--seems a little more solid than your average run-of-the-mill ghost.

Nico frowns, eyes closed, concentrating. “What’s your name?” he mumbles. 

That mouth opens, soundlessly, jaw working on nothing.

“Speak.”

It--there’s a sound, like hissing, only it’s not coming from the mouth, Percy thinks. It sounds like it’s coming from the earth. “Nico?” he asks. “You good?”

The ghost opens its mouth again, moaning, raising its hands. Weakly, unsteadily, it stumbles forward on feeble legs, tripping over the shallow hole in the dirt.

“Nico?” he asks again, a little more forcefully. “What’s going on, dude?”

Nico blinks, slowly, mouth hanging open a little. “Uh.”

The… thing… raises itself up on its hands? He guesses, and knees, crawling its way over towards them.

Now, Percy may be drunk off his ass, but he has seen enough movies to know exactly what the fuck is up.

Moving with a speed he didn’t quite think was possible right about now, he grabs Nico’s wrist, and pulls him up, dragging him along as he lurches towards the house. “Percy…” Nico moans, stumbling over a rock. “I think I fucked up.”

“You think?” Percy wrenches the door open, tossing Nico inside, before following in after, throwing himself against the door. 

Nico groans, throwing his arms over his face. “Dio santo, my head.”

“Forget your head,” he says, “did we just raise a Homer zombie?!”

Panting, Nico stares up at him, sprawled on the floor of the house. “Oops.”

Percy thunks his head against the door. He does not have nearly enough mental capacity to deal with this right now.

But, he thinks ruefully, at least it’s just one. Even drunk, he’s pretty sure he can handle one zombie.

Nico’s eyes widen. 

Percy stares. “What.”

“I didn’t stop the ritual.”

His stomach goes cold.

Turning around slowly, he pulls aside the little curtain on the window. “What?” Nico asks. “What do you see?”

Percy can’t speak, mouth dry.

Slithering up behind, Nico peers over his shoulder. “That’s… not great.”

“Nico,” Percy says, eyeing the horde which slowly shambles closer, half-decayed bodies in togas bumping into each other, almost identical to the drunk college students inside, as the song changes, once again, to ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).’ “Please go get Frank and Annabeth.”

The following Monday, an announcement is sent out to the entire campus: Per new department guidelines, students may not utilize the ambassador of Pluto to interview the dead for academic purposes.

3)

Percy attempts to flatten his hair. He readjusts his shirt. He almost wipes his sweaty palms on his pants, before he realizes what he’s doing, and clenches them instead, nails digging into his palms. He turns to Annabeth. “Do I look okay?”

“Ooh, ‘Mapping Funerary Monuments in the Periphery of Imperial Rome.’”

“Annabeth.”

She looks up from her brochure. “Relax, seaweed brain, you look fine. You look better than most people here.”

“That’s because I bring down the average age of presenters by about thirty years,” he hisses, eyes darting about at the milling mass of attendees, all packed into the hotel ballroom. 

Dr. Bauer had alternately convinced/pressured/guilttripped him into attending this year’s annual conference for the Society of Classical Studies to talk about the research he’d been doing with her. This year, the conference was held in San Francisco, so at the very least Percy didn’t have to spend five hours stressing about his poster presentation while simultaneously up in the air. But now that he’s here, in the ballroom, surrounded by strangers who know way more about this subject than he does, who are actually smart and probably never nearly flunked out of school or got kicked out or--

“Hey.” Annabeth takes his hand. “I know that look. You deserve to be here just as much as any of them.”

“Do I? I feel like any moment someone is going to come over and throw me out for trespassing.” He vaguely recalls something similar happening to him as a kid after he had ducked into the lobby of a semi-nice hotel to dodge what he had thought, at the time, was just a weird stalker, but had later realized had only had one eye. In any case, the hotel security guard had practically picked him up by the scruff of his neck, tossing him back out into the street. 

“That’s just your imposter syndrome talking,” she reassures him. “No one is going to throw you out.”

He sure as shit hopes so. It would be a shame to have done all this work for nothing. 

Glancing back at his poster, Percy can’t help but feel… good. Accomplished. Proud. About a school assignment, of all things. 

His poster traces the development of the prow from the Greek penteconter, to the Roman liburna, and finally to the Byzantine dromon, looking at artistic depictions in history. Percy had picked the topic himself, spending hours in the library reading, writing, and hand-drawing cross-sections of the ships on the poster board when the images he had gotten from the Cambridge University library had been too small. It had been grueling, frustrating work, but fun, too. And not nearly as much reading as he had feared.

Dr. Chase proofread it for him. Dr. Bauer signed off on it. And Annabeth had taken one look at it, smiled, then kissed his cheek.

That was the best compliment he had gotten.

Though now he’s kind of torn between showing it off and hiding it away before one of these attendees figures out that he doesn’t belong.

He rocks back and forth and his feet, pursing his lips, randomly clicking his tongue. Annabeth nudges him. “Your ADHD is showing.”

That’s when, finally, one of the attendees steps up to his poster. He certainly has the look of a professor, in a black cable knit sweater with grey, curly hair and a receding hairline, thin, rimless glasses perched on his nose. He squints at Percy’s poster, rubbing his chin with one hand. “Interesting,” he murmurs, in a thick German accent. “Very interesting. This is yours?”

“Um.” He glances at Annabeth, who is frowning at the brochure, silently sounding out words that she can’t read. “Yep. All mine.”

“Very interesting.” He leans in closer, tilting his head. “So you agree with Pryor and Jeffreys about the skeleton-first construction, then?”

Percy blinks. Pryor and Jeffreys had written The Age of the Dromon, arguing that the ram, which had been a key feature of Roman liburnians, had gone away in ancient ship construction because of developments in how they built the hull. Right. “Yes,” he says. “The skeleton-first construction is a lot stronger than the, um,” shit, what was the name for this, Leo had only told him about a million times--oh! “Mortise-and-tenon!” He nearly shrieks. “The mortise-and-tenon method. It, um, it wears out a lot more quickly than the frame, so… yeah.” He clears his throat.

He nods. “Very interesting.” 

Percy stares. Can this guy say anything else? 

“This is very well done, young man.”

Oh. “Thank you,” he says. 

“Who are you working with?” 

“Um, June Bauer?” He winces at the accidental question. 

He frowns. “I’m not familiar with her work. Where does she teach?” 

What a loaded question. “Uh… New Rome University.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s--she used to teach at Northwestern, if that helps. Um, retired,” Percy says.

The frown stays, but at least he doesn’t ask any more questions. “Hmm. Well, this is excellent research, nonetheless. I look forward to reading your dissertation.” Then, distracted by something else, he wanders off, chin still attached to his hand. 

“Who was that?” Annabeth asks. 

Percy shrugs. “Beats me. Also, what’s a dissertation?”

“It’s like a senior thesis, but, like, five hundred pages long.”

Five hundred?! “Fuck me.” 

“Maybe later,” Annabeth smirks. “It looks like you’ve got company.”

Sure enough, a smallish group of four people are approaching, led by Dr. Chase, making a beeline straight for them. “Here we are,” Dr. Chase says, gesturing. “This is the project I was telling you about. Percy, would you mind going over your poster for us?”

“No problem, Dr. C,” says Percy, smiling his least-grimace-y smile. 

As one, the adults all turn to look at him, faces politely blank, expectant.

Percy swallows. “So,” he begins, “um, this research is about the development of ship construction in the Roman empire…”

He trips up on some of the words, and at one point, he sees Dr. Chase squint in the way that usually means that Percy is speaking too fast, but all in all, he doesn’t totally fall flat on his face. His audience looks engaged, nodding along as Percy moves from point to point, and no one accuses him of being a giant fraud, which is pretty nice. 

At one point, Percy turns to the poster to indicate a specific point on his ship diagrams. When he turns back, his audience has suddenly multiplied, four people turning into a whole goddamn crowd. Each person gives him their undivided attention almost unblinking.

His mouth goes dry. “Um…” 

Dr. Chase, bless him, saves his ass once again. “Would mind starting again from the beginning, Percy?” he asks, a little bemused himself at the amount of people that had suddenly appeared. 

Silence stretches on for a moment, the muffled noise of the rest of the conference like a dull roar in his ear. 

Annabeth, behind him, coughs. 

“S-sure. No problem.” 

Swallowing, he closes his eyes, breathing in through his nose. Why, oh why did he let Dr. Bauer talk him into doing this again?

He pictures the tides of Long Island Sound, gentle and rocking, unhurried and unbothered, tries to match his breathing to them. When he opens his eyes, unfortunately, the crowd hasn’t disappeared. Everyone is still staring at him. 

But Annabeth stands next to her dad, flashing him a big smile and two huge thumbs up.

Percy relaxes. He’s got this.

“Okay,” he says. “So, about the middle of the first millennium CE, ship construction went through a couple of major developments…”

This time goes much, much more smoothly. He’s not sure what it is--though it’s probably Annabeth, her face fixed in a gentle smile as she watches him speak. Gods, what did he do in a past life to deserve someone as amazing as his girlfriend? 

That’s the only reason he can do this. Hell, that’s the only reason he even thought to do this. If he didn’t have Annabeth there, encouraging him, cheering him on, he never would have had the confidence to put himself out there like this. She’s there to pick him up when he doubts himself, there to listen when he can’t explain himself, there to give him feedback when he needs to practice. 

She makes him feel so strong. She makes him feel like he can take on the world--or at the very least, that he can impress a handful of academics.

And they certainly seem impressed with his talk so far. 

“Excuse me,” says a nasally, pinched looking older British guy, face lined as though he lived his life in a state of perpetual squinting. “I find your conclusions to be suspect--wouldn’t the frame method be more susceptible to breaking than the mortise-and-tenon?”

Well, most of them, anyway.

Percy shakes his head. “You’d think, but no. If you look at the study by Steffy, you’ll see that the three-finned ram from the Athlit wreck was designed specifically to break the mortise-and-tenon hull by causing the planks to flex, so that they’d dislodge the joinerys right next to them. A blow like that can cause the wood to split right down the middle.” A blow like that had sunk Sherman Yang’s ship when they tested it out on the lake at camp last summer, the naiads practically hurling him out of the water so quickly Percy didn’t even have to dive in to save him.

“How were you able to do these strength tests?” asks another listener, an older woman with a thick Hungarian accent.

“Hands-on battle simulations,” Percy replies, easily. “We took our models and tested them in as accurate a simulation as we could make.”

“And how big were these models?” 

Percy holds his hands apart, a vague, entirely inaccurate estimate. “About thirty meters, give or take.”

Her eyes widen. “How on earth did you get your hands on such a large ship?”

Percy freezes. “Uh.”

Oh, shit.

He had forgotten--most people didn’t have dads who could summon shipwrecks from the bottom of the sea, dropping them off at Camp Half-Blood with nothing but a sand dollar and one or two exhausted, pissed off hippocampi who had had to drag them all the way there.

“Um,” he stammers, licking his lips, thinking fast--c’mon, Percy, think! “I…” He swallows, panicking. “I… b… built one.”

In the corner of his eye, Annabeth facepalms.

Simultaneously, every mouth in the crowd drops--in shock, outrage, and even excitement. “You built one?!” the woman yelps. 

Oops. “I had help,” Percy says, quickly. 

Annabeth adds a second hand to her facepalm.

“Where?” The first man asks, his bushy brows flying above the rim of his glasses.

“At my… summer camp…” 

Dr. Chase sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I mean,” Percy chuckles, shrugging his shoulders, trying not to sweat too obviously, “it was either that or lanyards, am I right?”

Dr. Chase, thank Athena, raises his hand, ready to step in. “What Percy means to say, I believe,” he says, attempting to draw their attention, “is that--”

“That’s amazing!” says another woman, probably a grad student attendee based on the fact that she’s wearing jeans. “Do you have pictures?”

Oh this is not good. “Um, not--not on me, but--”

“I do.” Annabeth takes out her phone, holding it up to the person next to her.

Percy blinks. “You do?” He doesn’t remember her taking any pictures.

She shoots him a look, two parts exasperated and one part “shut up and let me handle this,” with just a dash of fondness in the mix. Pointedly, she looks at him, eyebrows raised, indicating that he should continue.

Oh. She’s using Mist. And he needs to keep their attention on him so that they buy it. “Right,” he says, clearing his throat. “Any more questions?” 

His audience placated for now, passing around Annabeth’s phone, he manages to finish up his presentation. After fielding a few more questions, people start to peel off, distracted by other posters and presenters in the ballroom. When everyone has finally wandered away, Dr. Chase comes up and pats Percy’s shoulder awkwardly. “Nice work,” he says, and he seems like he means it. “A little touch-and-go there for a while, hm?”

“A little.”

He chuckles. “Still, you should be proud. I don’t know how many undergraduates would be able to handle that kind of pressure.”

“I mean,” Percy says, shrugging a shoulder, “it’s about on par with leading an army. Maybe a little less.” Honestly, maybe even a little more stressful. If a monster had decided to attack the convention center and interrupt his presentation, he probably would have been relieved.

He’d been worried for a moment that he’d undone all those years of work in making Annabeth’s dad like him. And that he’d be charged with some sort of academic fraud, for the whole “I have a boat” thing without proof. Thank the gods for Annabeth, as always.

She’s looking at him now through narrowed eyes. She at least can’t be surprised--that was far from the dumbest thing she’s ever seen him do. At least his “I spent most of my time at magic greek mythology summer camp” covers are normally better than hers. As someone who spent his formative years in the real world, he’s usually pretty good at keeping the demigod thing under wraps. 

“Come on,” she says, grabbing his hand. She pulls him off, through the dispersing crowd, lacing their fingers together, sweet and intimate, out of the hall and then down another one, and through a smaller corridor. Bringing them up to a little door, with a shake of her wrist, she pulls out her Estruscan keyring bracelet. About several of the keys have found themselves used in various misadventures, vanishing once their purpose is fulfilled, but her favorite key is still there. And, just like a clever child of Hermes, it can pick just about any lock. 

Inside is just an empty room, a little staging area surrounded by tiered desks going up, no more or less remarkable than any of the other conference rooms they’d visited before. 

“What--?” His question is cut off by Annabeth’s mouth on his. 

Surprising, but definitely not unwelcome.

It's a while before they separate again. “You’re so good at this,” she tells him, unbuttoning his shirt.

He runs his hands along the lines of her flanks. “I’ve had a lot of practice,” he grins. He’d practice kissing her all day long if he could. 

She smiles, shaking her head. “No, not this,” though she does lean in for another kiss, pulling at his lower lip with her teeth. “I know you’re good at this.” They break away, Percy pulling her shirt over her head, Annabeth shucking off his. “But history. Presenting.” She runs a finger over his chest, kissing his cheek, headed towards the sensitive spot on his jaw. “Gods, you’re so smart.” 

Something about the praise vibrates through his chest. She doesn’t sound surprised, or anything, just--turned on.

“You had all those crusty academics eating out of your hand. Just, so impressed by you, knowing you know way more than they do about naval history. When you were explaining the--” Her compliment is cut off with a moan, as he leans down and starts sucking on her throat. Her blouse has a high neck, so he feels no guilt for using his teeth.  

“Watching you today, gods.” Her breath is labored as his fingers play at the waistline of her skirt. “And then thinking of you defending your dissertation.” He bites at her jugular, and she lets out a long, deep moan. 

“I don’t know what that means.” Do academics fight each other? Like, with weapons? He’s pretty sure he can take most of the people he met today. 

“It means you get to show off how smart you are,” Annabeth says, grasping his shoulders, pulling him in for another kiss. “I was born the day my dad defended his. Gods, it's going to be amazing to watch you go.” She yanks his belt out of his pants, tossing it to the floor. 

They miss the panel on recent translation efforts. But Percy can’t say he minds one bit. 

And when Annabeth presents him with a positive pregnancy test two months later, Percy definitely knows he made the right decision. 

4) 

He almost doesn’t realize he’s having a dream-vision at first.

It has been literal years since he’s had a demigod dream. Hell, it’s been a long while since he’s had a dream, period--being a new dad to a one-and-a-half-year-old saps too much of his energy to even think about dreaming. Once Junie is put to bed, when he’s out, he is fucking out, and he does not have the brainpower to spare to manifest any messed up subconscious fears.

Which is why when he blinks open his eyes, taking in the too-bright colors of the Parthenon and the gleaming shine of the bronze statues which are somehow all looking at him--also, you know, how the Parthenon is complete, standing as it did thousands of years ago, and not crumbled into ruins--he knows, immediately, he is being contacted by a god.

And only one god in particular would bring him to Athens.

Without even checking, he heaves himself up off the ground, folding into a kneel. “My lady Athena,” he says, “can I ask for what quest you’ve brought me here?”

“Impertinent as ever, Percy Jackson,” rumbles the goddess, but Percy doesn’t think he can sense any ill will towards him. He hopes, anyway. “Perhaps I have summoned you here for a social visit.”

“Perhaps,” he says, choosing his next words as carefully as possible. “But I assume you have too much to worry about to randomly check up on your daughter’s boyfriend.”

He lifts his head, catching her expression--stoic as always, but maybe with just the barest hint of a smile. “You assume correctly. You have become, contrary to my initial expectations, very wise in the time that I have known you.”

“Thank you.” He knows better than to do anything but accept the compliment for what it is.

“I have observed your work as a scholar in recent years, and I must say that I am surprised, yet pleased, that you have chosen to pursue such a path. I had not thought you to be suited for a world of old men and dusty papers.”

He grits his teeth. Don’t rise to the bait, don’t rise to the bait, don’t rise to the bait--

“I understand, as well, that though you and my daughter have,” and here her careful composition cracks, just the slightest, the tiny lift of her lips falling, “made a child together.”

Percy swallows. He figured, you know, in the abstract, that Athena would know about Junie, but hearing her say it out loud is… well, he’s just glad that Dr. Chase has always liked him. “Yes, my lady.”

“It is customary in your time to marry prior to childbirth, is it not?”

“It is.” Oh, fuck, is she going to smite him for that? “I--that is to say, we, Annabeth and I, we, um, we definitely want to get married, but, Annabeth kind of…” 

He trails off. He can’t tell Athena, goddess of war, that his daughter pissed off the queen of heaven! And if he does, he definitely can’t imply that it was because she was being too stubborn!

“I know well of my daughter’s history with my father’s wife,” Athena says, smoothly. “I come to you now with an offer of peace.”

Percy straightens his back. Peace?

Raising one graceful arm, Athena turns, indicating the structure behind her. “Look upon my temple,” she intones. The white marble shines even more powerfully against the blue and red paint, intricate scenes and figures ringing the top of the columns. “In the time of Pericles, it was built to commemorate the victory of Hellas over the armies of Xerxes the Great. It was to be the shining beacon of our world, a triumph of our power and influence over the race of men.”

The race of men might have had something to say about that, he thinks to himself.

“But it was not to be,” Athena says, mournfully. “As our influence waned, so too did our temple, until its might was all but forgotten.” 

Before his eyes, the paint fades away, ceilings and columns collapsing, the destruction of the Parthenon playing out in front of him. 

“Some two hundred years ago,” she says, her voice taking on a darker, more dangerous tone, “a grave insult was paid to the ruins of my ancient sanctuary.” Like curtains falling on a stage, darkness swallowed up the structure, swift and impenetrable. “Many treasures were taken from my temple, stolen, by foolish, greedy men, spirited away far to the north, where they have languished in unworthy hands.”

He narrows his eyes. She can’t possibly be talking about--

Athena turns back to him, her eyes blazing, somehow twice as tall. “Retrieve my treasures,” she commands, war personified, “return the prizes of Athens to their rightful place, and I shall give you my support against my father’s wife.”

“You…” Percy leans back on his haunches, staring dumbfounded up at the goddess. “You don’t happen to mean the Parthenon Marbles, do you?”

“Yes.”

“The ones in the British Museum.”

“The same,” she says, imperious as ever.

Fantastic. “Welp,” Percy says, slapping his thighs, scrambling up. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to decline. Nice seeing you, by the way. I’ll tell Annabeth you stopped by.”

Her sharp gazes pierces him, full of fury. “You dare to refuse my support?”

He snorts. “When it means trying to get the UK to give the marbles back, absolutely. Do you know how stubborn they are about this?”

Lightning flashes behind her, nearly blinding him. “You will regret this,” Athena says, dark and foreboding. “You may have your father’s goodwill, but the queen of Olympus is clever and cunning, her displeasure swift and merciless.”

But Percy still shakes his head. “When Annabeth and I get married,” and it’s definitely a ‘when,’ it’s just a matter of when precisely, like after Junie can sleep through the night maybe, “I’d rather take my chances with Hera than try and untangle that particular can of olives.”

A growl, and a snap of her fingers, and Athena disappears.

With a start, Percy wakes up. Junie had gotten her chubby little hands around his nose, and had decided to pull.

“Ow, ow, Junie, hey,” he squawks, attempting to dislodge her grip from his face. “Hey, I’m awake, it’s okay.”

She laughs, illegally adorable, her grey eyes sparkling, squeezing harder. 

“Okay, okay,” he laughs along with her. “You got my nose, you win.”

As if she were waiting for him to admit defeat, she lets go, clapping her pudgy toddler hands together. 

“That’s right,” he picks her up, raising her above his head. “Barely sixteen months old and you already know how to take me down, don’t you? Just like your mommy.”

She smiles, waving her little fists.

Gods he loves this little monster.

Junie really is the best parts of both of them. She’s got her daddy’s hair but her mommy’s brain, quick and sharp and painfully adorable. She’s already learning to read Greek, Annabeth sitting her in her lap and sounding out vowels together, Annabeth taking her finger and tracing it over the letter shapes. This kid absorbs information like a sponge, which Percy can only assume is the natural conclusion of taking a son of Poseidon and a daughter of Athena and mixing their DNA together. 

Thinking about his dream, he frowns. “What do you think, Junie,” he asks his toddler. “Should I take her up on her offer?”

The baby says nothing.

“I mean,” he tilts his head, “Greece has been trying to get the marbles back for two hundred years. UNESCO has top lawyers on this. What does Athena think I can do?”

Junie blinks at him.

“On the other hand, I do really love your mom,” he admits, “and I really want to marry her. You’d like that, right? To have your parents be married?”

There’s no way she can understand what he’s saying, but she moves her head like she’s nodding. Or maybe she does understand. She is Annabeth’s daughter after all. 

Percy sighs. Dammit.

Time for a new project, he guesses.

***

Several months, a college graduation, and one relocation to Boston later, Percy growls, hurling his pencil at the wall. Mother fucker. Fuck the British Museum, fuck his tiny laptop screen, and fuck the Italian prick who decided to have the least ADHD-friendly handwriting of all time. 

Why the hell is he doing this again? Like, seriously. Why in all of Hades is he, an inexperienced, snot-nosed, first year master’s student deciding to tackle the return of the fucking Parthenon marbles of all things. Like, what is wrong with him? 

Roughly scrubbing his fingers through his hair, Percy stands up. He has to go for a walk, clear his head, or he might actually explode. 

Then he catches a glimpse of the photo pinned to the fridge.

Percy’s mom had taken it, a candid of Percy and Annabeth and Junie on a sunny day in Central Park. There, in perfect 1080p, Junie is laughing, at what he can’t even remember, her pudgy fists yanking on Percy’s hair, while her mother and the love of his life does nothing to extricate Percy from her grip, her face screwed up so hard she had tears in her eyes. 

Percy had talked a lot of shit to the goddess of war’s face, but truth be told… Hera still terrifies him a little. Which, he assumes, was her goal all along, but it would be nice to marry Annabeth without fear of something going terribly wrong--or, gods forbid, something happening to Junie. That simply was not a risk he was willing to take. Percy is content to spend the rest of his days as Annabeth’s life-partner and roommate, if it means that the queen of the heavens won’t have a reason to take out her issues on his children.

Even if the engagement ring in the back of the pantry is gathering dust. 

Sunlight, wan but warm, falls in from the window, landing perfectly on his pile of open books. “I know, I know,” he growls, speaking to the air, rubbing his face so it doesn’t get stuck in a permanent glare. “I just--I just need a few minutes, okay? Let me go down the block and get a coffee or something. Two minutes, Lady Athena.”

The light fades. Percy takes that as an acquiescence, angrily scribbling a note. He’s not sure when Annabeth and Junie will be back, but even angry as he is, he doesn’t want to worry them.

Snatching up his jacket, he slams the door shut, stomping out of his apartment building and down the streets of Boston. He must be accidentally doing his wolf stare, because people are practically flinging themselves out of his path as he hurtles down the sidewalk. Literally--some girl is walking her husky, and the poor dog actually whimpers, cowering as Percy rounds the corner. 

Coming to a stop, Percy slaps his hands over his face, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath. 

He might be in over his head a little.

Sighing, he looks to his right. He’s standing outside of a Starbucks. 

Percy doesn’t drink coffee, Annabeth does. And he knows exactly how much of a coffee snob his girlfriend is. Starbucks? Overpriced, overrated, over-sweetened garbage.

He pushes the door open, sliding up to the counter. “I’ll take a… iced mocha, I guess,” he says. “Large.”

“No problem,” chirps the barista. “I’ll have that out for you in a minute.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

One thing Starbucks does have going for it, though, are really good napkins for doodling.

Slumping down in his uncomfortable metal chair, elbows resting on the hard, faux-wood table, Percy takes out his pen, and doodles aimlessly on the brown napkins. No, not that pen. Just because it can write doesn’t mean that Percy wants to risk slicing his face open every time he has a stray idea. Completely out of the blue, Annabeth had gotten him a nice set of pens, and ever since then, Percy always keeps one on him. Now, if he could just remember to use the little notebook she had gotten him, too.

Percy is not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. He doesn’t have an image in mind, just lets his pen move, drawing endless chains of triangles and stars, nebulous shapes which form themselves into Greek letters. After he catches himself writing γλαυκῶπις for the eighth time in a row, he sighs, dropping his pen, and picks up the cup, taking a sip.

Yuck. At least the chocolate outweighs the coffee taste a little.

Gods, and their cups are always, like, drenched from condensation--not that Percy can feel it, but there’s practically a whole other drink on the outside of the plastic, dripping all over Percy’s pile of doodle napkins. That must be why they give out so many.

Grumbling, he mops up the mess, ink smudged into a blue-brown slurry.

He stops. 

He squints at one of his doodles. 

Not that anyone else could tell, but Percy had apparently been trying to recreate the signature of Ottoman sultan Selim III, the guy who had supposedly authorized the Earl of Elgin to take the Parthenon Marbles. Percy had been staring at copies of his signature all damn day, trying to tell if it had been forged or copied, but classical Arabic was just so far beyond anything he could even begin to wrap his head around. It was gorgeous work, but even looking at it made Percy’s eyes swim.

This particular doodle is not his best attempt. It looks nothing like the signature. It’s smudged, blotchy, but in a way that’s… weirdly familiar. 

Snatching the napkin up, Percy bolts from the Starbucks, leaving his mocha behind.

Taking the steps of his apartment building two at a time, he bursts into his kitchen. His set up is exactly how he left it, books spread out all over the table, laptop shut and laid askew, the dry, half-eaten remains of his morning muffin on a plate on top of his encyclopedia of illuminated manuscripts--except for one book, the one on Ottoman history of the nineteenth century. It’s been opened, its pages facing the door, in the exact opposite direction of all the other books. 

“Hello?” he calls into the apartment. “Anyone home?”

No response. 

Percy approaches the table. 

From the pages, Selim III stares at him, his portrait rendered in black and white, sitting just above a figure of his signature, his tughra. 

Percy picks up the book, squinting. 

The signature is crisp, clean, a work of art all by itself. 

He looks at his napkin drawing. Blurry and smudged.

Opening his laptop, he pulls up the scans of the documents in the British museum, zooms in on the letter’s seal.

Blurry and smudged.

Percy stares. 

It… can’t be that simple, can it?

In a daze, he fires an email off to his new grad advisor. Hopefully he won’t mind Percy sticking his nose in where he doesn’t belong. Hey Dr. T--was looking at the Parthenon marbles docs in the BM (don’t ask) and I noticed this weird smudge on the tughra. Lazy scribe, maybe?

And he closes his computer.

Later that night, while he puts Junie to bed, he gets a response. not sure. sent it to a colleague for a closer look. 

He can’t even be bothered to really think about it though, not with Junie looking up at him with Annabeth’s eyes, and asking for another book. “Alright, kiddo,” he acquiesces, settling in beside her. All her story books are in ancient Greek, and at age two, she’s starting to recognize the letters. “Which one are you thinking?” 

“Daw-fins, daddy,” she says, smiling.

“Dolphins, eh? Getting Mr. D on your side early, I see. As smart as mommy.” He leans down and kisses her forehead before he starts to read her the story of the sailors and their sudden dolphin madness. 

***

“Huh,” Percy says to himself a few weeks later, as he and Annabeth are chilling on the couch, watching some Netflix.

His advisor has forwarded him an article from the BBC (New evidence suggests Elgin documents to be forgeries) with an accompanying note: Amazing catch! 

“What is it?” Annabeth asks, nudging him with her elbow--a feat, since she also has an armful of a squirmy Junie to deal with.

“Update in the Parthenon marbles thing.”

That gets her attention. Anything Parthenon-related does. “Really?”

He shows her his phone.

Her eyes go wide as saucers. “Damn.”

“Yep.” He doesn’t realize he’s smiling until he feels his lips pulling at the sides of his mouth. 

“My mom is probably your biggest fan right now.”

He starts. “What did you say?”

Turning back to the TV, she still manages to cast him a weird look. “I said, my mom will probably love you for this.”

A beat, then Percy practically somersaults over the couch, darting into the kitchen. Wrenching open the pantry door, he shoves his hand behind their collection of flours, fingers grasping for--

“If you’re looking for any more sacrificial cookies,” Annabeth calls after him, “we burned them all when Junie got a cold.”

“Remind me to make some more,” says Percy, pulling out his prize. It’s a little dusty, streaks of flour clinging to the blue velvet. “I have a feeling we’ll need them.”

“Oh yeah?” She chuckles. “What, did Olympus put in a special order?” 

Percy slides back down next to her, ring hidden in his closed fist. “Can I have the baby for a sec?”

Eyes fixed to the screen, Annabeth passes her over. Junie’s hands automatically reach for his nose, ready to grab, but Percy places the ring in her grasp instead, kissing her forehead. “Hey, babe?” he asks Annabeth, handing her back. “I think our daughter has something for you.”

Annabeth takes her without a second glance. 

Then she does take a second glance.

Ring closed in her pudgy toddler fist, Junie holds it out to her.

Annabeth gapes. 

“So,” Percy says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, “quick confession: I wasn’t just working on the marbles for fun.”

Annabeth just stares. Junie babbles.

“Your mom told me that if I helped get the marbles back, she’d back us against Hera if we ever got married. So…” He trails off, waiting for her response. As close as he is, he can see the tears start to well up in her eyes--a good sign. “Shall we?” he prompts.

“Oh thank all the gods.” Annabeth is crying, because she's Annabeth. And because she's Annabeth, she also wastes no time in transferring Junie to her other side, and holding out her hand so Percy can slide the ring on her finger. “I was so worried I'd have to have Chase on my Masters’ diploma, too.”

5)

Percy is making sauce when his phone lights up. He hits speaker. “Hey.”

“Hey man,” comes the tinny voice of Magnus. “Sorry I missed your call earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Percy says, “I figured you were dying or something.”

Magnus’ eye roll is almost palpable. “Very funny. What’s up?”

Bringing the spoon to his lips, he blows on it, taking a taste, before reaching for the salt. Needs way more. “Do you happen to have any Varangian guards in Hotel Valhalla?”

“Varangian guards? Uh, maybe. Probably. Why?”

“I’m doing a thing on the attempted reconquest of Sicily,” he says, lowering the heat a little to a simmer, “and I’m having some trouble piecing together the Battle of Montemaggiore. Know anyone who was in it?” 

Magnus hums. “I’ll ask around. Anyone in particular you’re looking for?”

Rifling through their little spice cabinet, he makes a mental note to get a new thing of hot sauce, tipping the rest of it into the pot. “If you have anyone who fought under Harald Hardrada, that would be great.”

“Hardrada? I’m pretty sure he lives on the fifth floor.”

Percy nearly drops the bottle. “No shit?”

“Big dude, long mustache, writes poetry?”

“Yes!” He picks up the phone, grinning from ear to ear. “Do you think I could come up and talk to him sometime?”

“Sure, but I thought you were doing something on Homer’s identity?”

He groans. “Backburnered for now until she stops driving me crazy.” No matter how many times Percy tells her, he can’t just drop the “Homer was actually an Egyptian woman” bomb without some serious evidence backing that up. And forgery is not one of his strong suits. Hence the need for a different topic for the time being.

“Has everyone ever told you your life is weird?”

“No, why do you ask?”

His phone suddenly vibrates, shocking him so badly he nearly drops it into the saucepan. Almost home, texts the love of his life, a shot of serotonin directly into his bloodstream. V hungry

“Sorry, Magnus, but I gotta run. Thanks for your help.”

“No problem. Say hi to my cousin for me.”

“Can do.”

“And make sure you pick a date soon! Sam needs to know so she can schedule her flight home.”

“Soon as I can.” You know, when his brain isn’t melting from grading undergrad papers. And making sure Annabeth and Junie are fed. And that Annabeth doesn’t lose herself in graduate school. And finding Junie a new preschool after she destroyed a classroom last month because of a monster. His toddler is a badass. But he’s a little worried she’s gonna follow Mommy and Daddy’s example as far as school goes. 

Sometimes, he thinks that their wedding just won’t ever happen. With Athena on board, he figured it would happen sooner or later, but time just… keeps getting away from them. Which isn’t the end of the world. A lifetime at Annabeth’s side is all he really needs, Mrs. Jackson or no. But he’s seen the silver fabric she weaved for her wedding dress. It would be a shame for all that hard work to go to waste.

And, yeah, he wants to see his little Junie dancing down the aisle flinging seaweed before her mother. He wants his mom to cry a little and he wants all his friends to be there to celebrate with them. Is that so much to ask? 

Speaking of his two favorite girls--”We’re home!” Annabeth calls from the hallway. “Junie, go say hi to daddy!”

Her bare feet slapping against the floor, his daughter comes toddling in, making a beeline for him. “Hey, kiddo,” Percy says, scooping her up. “How’s my best girl?”

“She’s just fine, thanks,” Annabeth says, setting her work bag down on the table. “Tell me I don’t have to wait for dinner--Margie kept me for the entirety of my lunch break, and I am starving.” 

“Just gotta make a salad and we should be good to go.” But he makes no move to finish chopping vegetables, entirely too enraptured with the way Junie smiles when Percy sticks his tongue out at her. “Let me guess,” he says. “Does my best girl want some olives?”

“Peas,” Junie says. 

“Oh, you want peas instead?”

She giggles, waving her arms. “Elaia, daddy!”

“Fine,” and he kisses her nose. “Extra olives for you.”

“Chip off the old block,” Annabeth says.

Handing her back to her mother, Percy sighs. “When am I going to get a kid who likes anchovies?”

“I’m doing my best here, okay?”

***

Hardrada is… not what he expected.

“Reputation isn’t that bad.” Hardrada is saying. “The production isn’t what it should be, but lots of her lyrics are still on point.” 

“The production ruins it,” Percy insists. “And as a follow up to 1989? It's just bad.” 

“And what about Lover?”

“What about Lover?”

“You can’t argue with the genius of that one.”

“It is terribly inconsistent,” Percy shoots back. “Yeah, ‘The Archer’ and ‘Daylight’ and ‘Miss Americana’ are sublime, but ‘ME!’? Come on!”

“Are you one of those people who thinks she peaked at Red?”

“Red is a bop from start to finish,” Percy fires back. “But she definitely peaked at folklore.”

“Thinking she peaked at folklore is just pedestrian when ‘tis the damn season’ exists!” Hardrada yells, drawing his axe, which is then promptly flung over Percy’s head. 

As the only mortal in a room full of armed, excitable, undead Taylor Swift stans, Percy beats a hasty exit, Magnus and Jason covering him as he flees, because they’re just so thoughtful like that. Percy’s pretty sure he saw Magnus take an arrow to the knee, going down in a heap, before he shuts the door to the hotel, finding himself in a Forever 21. 

Looking over his notes later as he gets back to his apartment in the North End, he frowns. They had spent… approximately twenty minutes talking about Sicily before getting solidly off track. Who knew an eleventh century viking would have such intense feelings about pop music? 

And now he’s singing “seven” to himself as he unlocks the apartment door, because it's a good song, and because it made him think of Annabeth. And he always wants to think of Annabeth. 

“Hey, babe,” he calls into the apartment, toeing off his shoes. “I’m back!”

He gets no response.

Percy looks up, confused. “Annabeth?”

“In the bathroom,” he hears, faintly. 

“Everything okay?”

“Yep! Totally fine!” she says, unconvincingly. 

“Alright,” he calls back. “Let me know if you need something.”

Moving Junie’s toys out of the way, he drops down onto the couch, grabbing his laptop. Hopefully he can make some sort of sense of the… notes… that he got from Hardrada. Though he’s probably going to have to trek out to Beacon Hill again, which, while not really out of his way, does mean he has to hike a bit from the Park Street station through the Commons, which makes him super sweaty and out of breath. It’s just embarrassing, walking into a hotel full of the greatest warriors of Valhalla, and Percy can barely handle a hill. 

However, he’s not so out of practice that he can’t sense Annabeth coming up behind him. “You good?”

“What do you think about getting married by the end of the month?”

“Sure,” he says, pecking at his computer. Damn autocorrect ruining all the Norse names. He keeps forgetting to download the right language package he needs. “But I thought you wanted to wait until after you turned in your portfolio?”

“Well… I might not be able to fit in my dress if we wait much longer.”

That gets his attention.

Percy turns around, slowly. Annabeth is grinning, holding a thin little piece of plastic with a circle on the end. She wiggles it. 

“Is that…?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.”

Her smile falls. “Are you mad?”

“What? No!” Percy slides his computer off his lap, twisting around to face her, up on his knees. “No, no, not at all. I’m not mad.” She slings her arms around his neck, pregnancy test warm against his skin. “I just…” 

Eyes warm, she looks into his, unafraid. “What is it?”

“It’s…” It’s silly, is what it is. But this is Annabeth. If he can’t tell her, who can he tell? “I just feel bad that I’ve gotten you pregnant twice before getting married.”

“Well, at least I’m not nineteen this time,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “But maybe we wouldn’t have this problem if you weren’t such a horndog.”

Percy snorts. “Me? What about you, Annabeth ‘3 AM anal before my first lecture’ Chase.”

“Jackson,” she corrects.

“Huh?”

“It’s Annabeth ‘3 AM anal before your first lecture’ Jackson.”

Grinning, he presses his mouth to hers. After all this time, she still smells like lemons, her lips soft and warm. “Not yet it’s not.”

“Then let’s make it happen.”

And, well, Percy can’t think of a better plan.

+1

Jamie hisses. “Fuuuuuck,” she whispers, the sound dropping like a stone in the dead lecture hall. “Goddamn shit fuck ass.”

And the worst part is, she’d actually spent a lot of time preparing for her Latin midterm. She’d made flashcards, she’d drilled noun endings, she’d even slept with the textbook under her pillow for fuck’s sake. 

Typical--the moment she sits down to take the test, it all goes out the window. 

“Legistne carmen longum de Troiano,” she reads under her breath, as though saying it out loud will unlock some hidden secrets of the cosmos. 

Nope. Nothing. The multiple choices remain as inscrutable as ever.

“Psst.” 

Jamie looks up. 

There’s a four year old staring at her. 

“Hi,” Jamie says. 

“Hi,” says the four year old. Junie, her name is, she thinks. 

Mr. Jackson, Jamie’s Latin TA, will bring his kids to class with him sometimes--his wife works full time, and Jamie guesses that they can’t afford a babysitter. She’s a cute kid, quiet, usually sitting in the corner of the lecture hall, drawing or even knitting, sometimes with her little sister playing with toy ships next to her. 

Now, she���s still staring at her. “What’s up?” Jamie asks.

“Bello,” says Junie.

Jamie blinks. “Sorry?”

“Legistne carmen longum de bello Troiano.” 

She squints down at her test sheet, attempting to visualize her flash cards. That’s… “Bello” is the right answer.

The fuck? The fucking four year old can speak Latin? “Thanks,” she whispers. 

Junie beams at her.

Darting her eyes to the front of the lecture hall, Jamie spies her professor, Buck, completely conked out at his desk, his chest rising and falling with his snores. Percy is nowhere to be seen, his laptop open at his chair. “What’s the next one?” Jamie turns her paper so that Junie can see better.

“Pluto Proserpinam infelicem cepit,” she announces, perfectly accented.

Jamie points to the one after that.

“Rex qui pontem fecit erat Ancus Martius.”

“Awesome.” 

The door to the lecture hall opens. Jamie whips around in her seat, startled, and sees her TA, walking down the steps. From the corner of her eye, Junie disappears, booking it to her dad, who scoops her up without missing a beat. “Hey kiddo,” he murmurs, smiling crookedly. “Were you bothering my students?” Then he glances at Jamie. “Sorry about that--hope she wasn’t too annoying.”

But Jamie shakes her head. “It’s fine.” Dammit. 

Still smiling, Percy makes his way back down to his seat. Junie grins at her over his shoulder, her arms wrapped tightly around her dad’s neck.

At the beginning of the semester, Professor Buck had droned on and on about Mr. Jackson, about how he was one of the best up-and-coming classics scholars in the world, how he could have had his pick of PhD programs, and how NYU was lucky to have him. He got first pick of assistantships this semester, apparently, but had volunteered to teach Latin 1001, and they should all be grateful, because he had done some beautiful new translation of Virgil for his Master’s thesis, and they were all going to learn a lot from him. 

Turning back to her exam, Jamie snorts. Of course a guy like that would have a kid who could speak perfect Latin. 

She really should have just stuck with German instead. 

[bestiesenpai]

Hostage - Okkotsu Yuta

At first when I saw this my internal response was that there was nothing that I really wanted to write, no scenario that would warrant answering such a question. But I’ve given it time and well...what better thing to write than a horny for love delusional yandere? Gender neutral and Okkotsu in this has graduated from the school, I imagine him to be mid-20s 4.8k words

Content warnings: yandere shit(which in this context includes kidnapping, past stalking and being really fucking creepy), manipulation, noncon hand job

How long had you been here in this dark basement with only a red couch and a TV that wouldn’t turn on? There wasn’t a single window to tell you if it was day or night, no clock on the wall to say if it had been ten minutes or ten hours since you were kidnapped. You didn’t even know who could have taken you, knocked out from behind after hearing a mysterious voice.

There wasn’t a single lead to go on except for the fact that you would pass out from time to time and wake up to food on the low coffee table, hot meals that helped to soothe your otherwise empty mind and body for however short a time it allowed. Sometimes there would be candy stuffed into your pockets as well, candy that you never ate and let pile up in one of the corners of the room.

The door at the top of the stairs leading down to where you were stayed locked at all times and no amount of banging and screaming and trying to break it down worked. All your efforts were for nothing, you didn’t even make a scratch in the wood.

Whoever put you down here seemed too hesitant to show you their identity. You never heard anyone outside the door and whenever you thought you did, you would wake up however many hours later with food and no recollection of what happened before then.

Until today, when the door silently swayed open and there was the barely there tap of footsteps coming down to greet you. Scurrying behind the couch and crouching down, you were scared to finally meet your captor.

“Hello there.” He wasn’t at all what you imagined. A young man with noticeable bags under his eyes, hair with a few strands that fell into his face and an otherwise unassuming and slim build. His voice was soft and gentle like he was talking to a baby as he roused them from slumber.

He immediately noticed the way you were trying to stay away from him, making sure to keep the couch between you as he rounded it. A sad sigh left his lips, a short sound like he was already getting frustrated with what you were doing.

“Darling, why don’t you sit down? There’s a lot to discuss.” Gesturing toward the couch, he took a seat at the end. It was then that you noticed the sheathed sword he had on his back as he took it off and laid it on the table.

Your mouth hadn’t been used to speak to anyone in a long time, tongue heavy and foreign in your mouth. Having given up screaming for help a long time ago, you didn’t speak to anyone unless to yourself, and even then it had devolved to being just thoughts in your head.

So you shook your head no, trying to keep your sudden anxious breathing down to a minimum. You’d waited for this day to finally see who took you but now that he was here in front of you, just his presence brought you great stress.

“Are you feeling okay?” The man asked again, brows furrowing slightly. The look of genuine concern on his face is what caused you to speak, spiking anger in your heart.

“No!” You shouted, surprising both him and yourself.

“Why don’t you sit down, hm?” He patted the cushion next to him and you shook your head harder.

“No, no. L-let me go!” Tears were already beginning to collect in your eyes, some spilling out the sides. Were they from anger at being held captive? From how concerned he looked when he was the one who put you there? Was it from fear of what he could do to you? Perhaps hopelessness at the whole situation was starting to set into places you tried so hard to keep it out of.

“You shouldn’t yell, (Y/N), it’s not good for your throat.”

“What the fuck would you know.” Now anger was truly taking residency inside your chest, making it tighten with each pounding beat of your heart. This man had the nerve to call you by your first name as if he was a friend, the syllables rolling so smoothly off his tongue it sounded as if he had said it a hundred times.

“Don’t swear at me.” He snapped, face immediately going hard as he stared you down. The look made a shiver go down your spine, the anger quickly making space for fear to come as well. He sighed again, glancing at his sword before looking at you again. “Now please, won’t you sit down?”

This time when he asked, you listened. Hovering on the very edge of the cushion farthest from him, your entire body was painfully stiff and unyielding even to your own breathing. It was different when you were standing and he was sitting, it felt like there was a level of control that you still had.

But this felt like you were just a pitiful little rabbit with their neck caught right in a lion's mouth.

“Oh darling don’t cry, don’t cry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.” His tone immediately shifted back to the soft and gentle one from earlier. Reaching his hand out, he stopped short of touching your arm when you curled yourself away. Putting his hand into a fist and tucking it back into his lap, he let out a sharp exhale. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t touch you, should I? You must be nervous now that I’m here.”

Sniffling and nodding were all you could do to answer him. Maybe there was a logical reason he might have taken you, there had to be a solution to whatever problem he had that involved you.

“It’s funny, I’d say. We’re soulmates and yet we’re still so nervous with each other.”

What?

“Why, it took me almost two weeks just to do this much! I finally stopped having Inumaki put you to sleep and-”

Huh?

“Before you know it this will all be a distant memory, we’ll be living together-”

“Wh-what the fuck.” Your voice was meek and trembling and there were fat tears streaming down your face that couldn’t be stopped now. Listening to this man go on and on about this life he’d made for the two of you all in his head was going to drive you insane.

“What was that?” He paused, a hopeful smile on his face. Glancing at him, you set your bleary eyes on the sword.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” As the swear left your lips, you flinched at his sudden inhale. “I-I don’t- I don’t know you. We’ve never met.” Burrowing your face in your hands was probably a bad idea, it was probably best to keep him in your line of sight, but you just couldn’t face him.

“Physically we’ve never met, but our hearts have. Our souls are connected, we just had to find each other.” There was a dip in the cushions and the ghost of his knee brushed yours.

“I don’t even know your name!” You croaked, further curling in on yourself by dropping your head to your knees. At this rate you were set to fall off the couch and onto the floor and you welcomed the reprieve not being next to him would bring.

“I’m Yuta. Yuta Okkotsu.” The first touch of his fingers on your shoulder made you yelp and jerk away, and you could imagine his hand hovering in the air. “But you can just call me your boyfriend, okay?”

“You’re fucking crazy.” Getting up from the couch the second time he touched you, you pressed yourself against the furthest wall next to a chess table with no pieces.

“Darling-”

“No, don’t fucking call me that!” Stamping your foot on the ground, you ignored his warning tone.

“(Y/N), I told you-”

“I don’t give a damn! I don’t want to be part of whatever bullshit you said earlier! Just- just let me go!” You were getting hysterical at this point, your whole body was hot and sweaty and your face was on fire. It was hard to hear anything over the ringing and pounding in your ears giving you headache.

Except you were able to hear the sound of a knife going through the air and feel it graze your cheek before sticking into the wall behind you. Everything fell away as you looked at the silver blade glinting in the harsh fluorescent light above you. There was just the tiniest hint of red at the edge, further proof that what you felt was real.

“I don’t mind you getting upset, I don’t mind you yelling and screaming at me. It’s a normal reaction to such a new situation.” Yuta’s low voice cut through the sudden silence and he stood up slowly, swaying slightly on his feet before planting them firmly on the ground. “But what I won’t have is such ugly words coming out of your mouth. That type of language doesn’t belong in a mouth as pretty as yours.”

He walked over to you slowly, building the tension with every step he took. It was then that you noticed, when he was only a foot away, that the silver of the knife matched the silver buttons on his shirt.

“If I have to remind you again, I promise I won’t miss.” Letting the sentence hang in the air, Yuta gave you a once over before grabbing onto your wrist and upper arm tightly and dragging you back to the couch. His strength was much more than you first assumed, there wasn’t a chance in hell that you could ever hope to wiggle out of his hold.

Sitting down with a huff, he pulled you onto his lap, forcing you to straddle him. Putting your hands on his shoulders, he settled his on your hips, making sure you were properly seated on his outstretched legs. Staring at the buttons on his shirt, you tried to avoid getting too close - keeping at least some semblance of an arms length between you and making sure your sex was far from his.

“This isn’t so bad, is it?” It was amazing how easily his mood shifted from one to the other. What had just been a quite heavy and intense moment was washed away by a little uptick of his lips and the tilt of his head to the side.

The things you wished to say were lodged in your mouth, waiting on the tip of your tongue for you to open up and let them fall out. But you couldn’t afford to keep testing his patience like this, not after what just happened.

“I suppose.” So you bite your tongue hard and say what you think will get you closer to getting out. Whatever it is he wants you can give him so long as it keeps him happy and lets you walk free.

“I knew you’d come around.” The smile on Yuta’s face takes proper form, pushing the apples of his cheeks up and wrinkling his eyes. One hand on your hips dares to venture further onto the small of your back. The warmth of his palm would be comforting in another setting.

“Y-yuta.” It almost makes you sick to say his name.

“Yes?” It makes his eyes light up.

“When will I get to leave?” Somewhere along the line you’d stopped crying and now only your eyes burned with the memory of the tears.

“When I know you’re ready, (Y/N).” He said softly, rubbing a hand on your back.

“Ready how?”

“I just want to make sure of a few things before we start our new life together. Is that okay?”

Did you really have a choice?

“What things?” You pushed, your fingers digging into his shoulders.

“Don’t worry about that right now. We’re together now and that’s all that matters.”

“Please tell me, I really want to know.”

“(Y/N).” He sang your name but it was anything but cheery. “I don’t want to talk about that right now, so drop it please.” Even though he was speaking his mouth barely moved, jaw locked tight in hardly hidden frustration.

“Okay.” You quickly let the subject go.

“Now darling…” Yuta brought a hand up to your face, trailing his fingers down your cheek softly. “Won’t you smile for me? You have such a pretty smile.”

The question of how he knew what your smile looked like cropped up in your head but you quickly stamped it out. Now wasn’t the time to worry about those things. Doing as he asked, you gave him your best smile.

“Absolutely gorgeous.” Skimming his thumb along your bottom lip, Yuta grasped your chin in his fingers. “I’ve been missing your smile so much lately, the recent missions I’ve been on have really put a damper on my mood.”

“I’m- I’m sorry to hear that.” Extending an olive branch wouldn’t hurt, right? It was clear he wanted your compliance in this scheme of his, desperate to have you love him. Your words shot straight into Yuta’s heart, making him bite his lip in to stop a shy giggle from coming out.

“It’s okay, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I have my darling with me.” A light blush went over his cheeks and Yuta let a sliver of the giggle out. “But there is something that would make me feel even better.”

“What’s that?” It didn’t take a genius to figure out what he meant when his thumb touched your lip again.

“A kiss. Just one, I promise.” Licking his own lips, Yuta grabbed onto your jaw more firmly. “I swear I’ll be gentle.” Weighing your options, the inkling that it wouldn’t be ‘just one’ was in the back of your head. But as long as it stayed just kissing, maybe you’d be okay.

“One.” You repeated, allowing him to pull you in and close the gap between you. Kissing Yuta was something that, once again, would feel nice in any other circumstance. The texture of his lips wasn’t bad, his breath didn’t smell and he seemed to know what he was doing. Maybe in another world, you really could have been soulmates.

Breaking the first kiss to take a short inhale, Yuta immediately went in for another. The hand that was on your jaw slid up to the back of your head, holding it firmly in his calloused hand to make sure you didn’t move.

“Y-yuta!” Whining against his lips, you tried to push away from him.

“Just one, I know! I know but-” He mumbled back, the tip of his tongue daring to touch your pursed lips. “I can’t help it, I love you so much.” Crushing you against him, Yuta got his tongue into your mouth when you gasped for air. The urge to bite him arose and you almost did, but he pulled away right as you made the decision to.

“You said only one!” Giving his chest a hard push, you wiped the spit off your lips in disgust.

“I know, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Putting his hands on your back, Yuta grimaced at you. “I’m sorry darling, I just got excited! I’ve been dreaming of kissing you for so long, can you blame me for wanting more?”

You could blame him for that and a few other things. Wiping your mouth off again, you huffed angrily and avoided his sorry eyes.

“Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t lie to you anymore, I promise.” Yuta mumbled, already forcing you closer again. “Let me make it up to you.”

“Yuta, no.” Shaking your head, you put a hand over your mouth. The blush that was on Yuta’s cheeks got darker and a hand gripped the back of your neck.

“It may be a bit soon, but there are other places where I can kiss you.” Latching his lips onto the side of your neck, Yuta sucked on the skin lightly. He didn’t want to leave any unseemly marks on you and he wouldn’t dream of using his teeth.

“Yuta, get off.” Tugging on his collar, you squirmed at the feeling. “P-please, Yuta, get off.” You were getting more desperate by the moment, accelerated by his lips going down the column of your throat and to the collar of your top.

“I just want to kiss you, (Y/N).”

“No, no I don’t-” As his head nudged your chin up, you started to sweat and really yank at the fabric in your hands. “I don’t want you to kiss me there, Yuta!” Your voice reached a crescendo and the soft sound of his kisses stopped. Pulling away slowly, Yuta kept his head ducked down.

“I’m sorry (Y/N), I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” Releasing the hold on your neck, Yuta smooths his hand down your back once more and threads his fingers together at the base of your spine.

Struggling to catch your breath, you force yourself to relax and let your head dip down, uncurling the fingers fisting the fabric of Yutas shirt and letting the blood naturally flow back to them.

As the silent seconds tick by, there’s something that comes into your consciousness that can’t be ignored. There’s already a good amount of heat built up between you and Yuta from the kisses you shared and the struggle that ensued.

But was he that much of a repressed man that just kissing your lips and neck had his cock standing at half attention? It seemed so, because when you made a face at it, he chuckled sheepishly.

“Sorry.” Yuta wasn’t sorry for what was happening. He didn’t feel remorse for any of this, especially not the thing that was causing you distress now. It was only natural for such a reaction to occur! You were squirming so much on his lap while he kissed you that it was like you were begging him to get hard.

Gently raking his nails up and down your back, Yuta stared hard at your lips. His gaze almost pierced right through you and he wasn’t subtle about wanting another kiss. Another slurry of apologies left Yuta’s lips as he once again grabbed the back of your head and forced you to kiss him. His words got mushed together, spoken against your lips as he tried to work his tongue into your mouth.

Whatever screams of protest you had didn’t matter in this moment, Yuta was a man on a mission and desperate to take what was his. He felt bad about pushing your boundaries and ruining the chance of growing an actual relationship any time soon, but those were things he was willing to sacrifice.

And after all, good boyfriends help their partners grow in uncomfortable situations.

Moaning in a high pitch when your crotch just barely grazed his, Yuta took advantage of the fact you were too busy trying to push him away to focus on your lower half. Grabbing you tightly at the hips, he dragged you forward and fully pushed you against the front of his pants.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He panted as he moved your bodies in tandem, getting bolder and bucking his hips like a sad teenager dry humping for the first time. This continued for a while and you were sure he was going to cum when he suddenly stopped and flopped his head back against the couch.

Fervently wiping off your lips, the urge to slap him came over you in a blinding rage, and you quickly swiped your hand down. Fully expecting to make contact with his face, you put all the strength you could into the motion only to be stopped by Yuta grabbing your wrist.

“Hitting isn’t very nice, (Y/N).” He sounded like a disappointed preschool teacher and when you raised your other hand to try and slap him he caught that one as well. Holding both your wrists tightly in his grasp, Yuta stared at your heaving chest as he thought about what to do.

“Let me go.” You said, trying to tug yourself free.

“Sshh, I’m thinking.” His eyes wouldn’t leave your chest and he licked his lips. “I think I know a better use for your hands.” Letting go of one of them, Yuta was quick to go to the button on his jeans and undo them.

Your fingers were touching his clothed cock before you had a chance to protest. The speed Yuta moved at was dizzying and you seemed to be about 10 seconds behind him, left to scramble and catch up on whatever he’d done.

“Just a little, please?” Yuta whined and gripped your fingers around his cock, digging into the fabric of his dark underwear and outlining the shape of his cock.

“Yuta…” Back were the tears, a light misting this time that blurred your vision. It was gross touching him, even as the scent of a minty body wash rolled off him. This was gross, the heat from his cock and the way the skin moved beneath your fingers all felt horribly off.

“Just be good for me, (Y/N), I know you can do that.” Giving your lips a quick peck, Yuta let out a shaky exhale. His hand was holding yours so tightly your hand pulsed, throbbing from lack of circulation.

Touching him through his underwear quickly became not enough for Yuta and he hurriedly pulled his cock out, shoving his underwear down his thighs a bit to make more room. Unbuttoning the large overshirt he had on, Yuta let out another exhale as the sweat evaporated off his body.

“Are you shy? Here, touch it like this.” Gingerly now he wrapped your hand around his shaft, squeezing with just enough pressure to make sure you were really holding it. You tried to avoid looking at it, staring at the tanktop Yuta had on underneath his other shirt.

Tilting your head up, he kissed you gently as he worked your hand up and down his cock, slowly loosening his hold the longer he went until he was able to let go and you were still stroking him.

“I love you so much.” He whispered, breaking the kiss to press his forehead against yours. “So, so much.” You whimpered in response, keeping your eyes tightly closed to avoid looking at him. “I’ve followed you for so long now, it feels amazing to finally be here with you.”

“Followed?” You didn’t want to know, you didn’t want to know, you didn’t-

“Six months. For six long, agonizing months I watched you from the shadows. Making sure you were safe, following you home from work to make sure no one messed with you, going into your home when you weren’t there to make sure you didn’t have the stove on-”

“Stop.” Sniffling back another wave of tears, you shook your head. “I-I can’t, please-”

“You’re right, I’m killing the mood.” Chuckling softly, Yuta kissed at the corner of your eye. Putting his hand back on yours, he sped up the pace and bucked his hips up. “A-and I really don’t want to do that.”

Kissing you again lest he start rambling again, Yuta moaned freely into your mouth. He had dreamed of this moment and so many others, staying up late at night just fantasizing about you touching him and finally being in his arms.

To say he was pent up was an understatement. Ever since he saw you, Yuta vowed not to touch himself, wanting you to be the only one that gave him such pleasure. It was a painful wait, but every time he saw you he knew it was worth it - and it was. He was already nearing an orgasm and it hadn’t even been that long.

“Oh darling-” His face started to screw up and Yuta broke the kiss, putting his head on your shoulder and making your hand go faster. “God I love you, (Y/N)! I lo-love-” He was babbling now, unable to focus on any full sentence coming out of his mouth. “Say it- tell me.”

“Say what?” You asked, struggling to keep your breathing even as you felt him get closer to the edge.

“You love me. Tell me you- tell me you love me, even if it’s not true yet.” Yuta was so close it hurt, but he refused to cum unless you said those words.

“I-I-” The desire to not say it was strong, keeping you from really forming the words. It wasn’t true right now and it would never be true. You would never love Yuta for as long as you lived.

“Say it, say it please!” Yuta wailed, his other hand gripping your waist so hard you were afraid he was going to break something. “I love you so much, just say it back!”

“I love you! Yuta, I love you, okay?” His hold was really starting to hurt and as soon as you said it, he let go. “I love you, I love you.” You repeated over and over until his body locked up and he came with an almost sobbing moan.

“Oh god, darling, I love you.” Yuta wasn’t crying but he might as well have been. His hand stopped for a brief moment before continuing, coating the back of his hand and your fingers in his cum. He kept going until he was able to squeeze the last drop of cum out of him, swiping at the tip with his thumb until the sensation began to hurt.

It was too quiet now in the room without Yuta’s frantic breathing and mindless babbles. Taking deep, gasping breaths, he forced himself to calm down and let go of your hand, letting his softening cock fall down against him.

“Here.” In his pocket he had a handkerchief and Yuta wiped your hand clean, diligently going between the digits and getting every last pearly drop. Throwing it onto the coffee table, Yuta collapsed back onto the couch with a heavy sigh.

His face was impossibly blissed out, a dopey smile stretching his face and showing off his teeth. He couldn’t be happier in this moment, the weight of your body on his lap a constant reminder that this was real life, the reality that he had been dreaming of and striving for for so long.

The door he had entered from creaked open much faster than when he entered, and there were thundering footsteps descending the stairs quickly. Yuta immediately perked up, hugging you close to his chest as he turned over his shoulder to look at who came in.

“This is a surprise.” There was a tall, lanky man standing at the bottom of the steps, his white hair sticking up in all directions. You wondered how he could see with a blindfold on and Yuta seemed happy to see him.

“Gojo, hello!” Rushing to fix his pants, Yuta helped you off his lap and stood up.

“I see you’ve finally made yourself acquainted.” Gojo grinned, his head flicking towards you for a moment.

“Mhmm! We uh- we’re having a great time getting to know each other.” Yuta flushed, trying to not make it obvious that his pants had just been undone and that you’d just been jerking him off.

“Well I hate to break up a happy couple, but there’s a visitor here for you. I think you’re going to have another mission soon.”

“Really, so soon? I just-” Glancing at you, Yuta bit his tongue. “I’ll be back soon.” Grabbing his sword and the knife still stuck in the wall, Yuta gave you one more look before walking past Gojo and up the stairs. As soon as the door clicked closed, you shot up from the couch and walked around to Gojo.

“Please, you have to help me, get me out of here!” Clasping your hands together in front of you, you pleaded as hard as you could. “H-he’s absolutely crazy, please help me!” Unable to look Gojo in the eye, you could only assume he was looking back at you from the way his head moved.

“That’s not very nice, now is it?” He questioned, quirking a brow and crossing his arms. “Yuta loves you so much, you shouldn’t say those things about him.”

“Sir please, you don’t understand!” Shaking your head hard, you let out a frustrated groan. “I don’t belong here! He kidnapped me, don’t you understand?!” It felt like you were the only sane one left in the world. Gojo chuckled and sighed, placing a large hand on the top of your head and leaning forward.

“Actually, Yuta wasn’t the one that actually kidnapped you.” A soft ‘no’ escaped your lips and Gojo laughed again, drinking in the sinking feeling in your gut and the way it twisted your face in agony. “It was me.”

[bringbackthebastard]

Bring Back the Bastard Daily Prompts

Hello, folks! I'm posting these two weeks before we begin our fest, on September 1st, to give folks some inspiration on what to write each day as we celebrate Severus Snape's pettiest, most dastardly moments. I specifically picked out moments Snaters always harp on, that Snapedom personally enjoys--from any moment with Trevor to bitching at Lupin at Sirius, to the moments that Lily turns away and Dumbledore's face flashes with disgust--sure, he's a bastard, but he's our bastard, and that's what we like about him. You don't want him? Good. We'll keep him. Here are 30 scene prompts for 30 days--it's a long list, pulled chronologically from all seven books, but I found that it reminded me of everything I love about this character. The moments where he's called deranged, the moments where he slips into all-caps, the ugliest moments of the soul. Hope yall enjoy. Excited to kick off the fest starting September 1st, and absolutely excited to see what Snapedom will do. Let's Bring Back the Bastard! The prompts are below the readmore.

Day 1: The Scar Professor Quirrell, in his absurd turban, was talking to a teacheer with greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin. It happened very suddenly. The hook-nosed teacher looked past Quirrell's turban straight into Harry's eyes--and a sharp, hot pain shot across the scar on Harry's forehead. "Ouch!" Harry clapped a hand to his head. "What is it?" asked Percy. "N-nothing." The pain had gone as quickly as it had come. Harder to shake off was the feeling Harry had gotten from the teacher's look--a felling that he didn't like Harry at all. "Who's that teacher talking to Professor Quirrell?" he asked Percy. "Oh, you know Quirrell already, do you? No wonder he's looking so nervous, that's Professor Snape. He teaches Potions, but he doesn't want to--everyone knows he's after Quirrell's job. Knows an awful lot about the Dark Arts, Snape."

Day 2: Bad Impressions Snape, like Flitwick, started the class by taking the roll call, and like Flitwick, he paused at Harry's name. "Ah, yes," he said softly. "Harry Potter. Our new--celebrity."

Day 3: Potions Class "Potter!" said Snape suddenly "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?" Powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of what? Harry glanced at Ron, who looked as stumped as he was; Hermione's hand shot into the air. "I don't know, sir," said Harry. Snape's lips curled into a sneer. "Tut, tut--fame clearly isn't everything."

Day 4: A Horrible Sight Snape and Filch were inside, alone. Snape was holding his robes above his knees. One of his legs was bloody and mangled. Filch was handing Snape bandages. "Blasted thing," Snape was saying. "How are you supposed to keep your eyes on all three heads at once?" Harry tried to shut the door quietly, but-- "POTTER!" Snape's face was twisted with fury as he dropped his robes quickly to hide his leg. Harry gulped. "I just wondered if I could have my book back." "GET OUT! OUT!"

Day 5: Maybe He's Ill "Hang on..." Harry muttered to Ron. "There's an empty chair at the staff table...Where's Snape?" Professor Severus Snape was Harry's least favorite teacher. Harry also happened to be Snape's least favorite student. Cruel, sarcastic, and disliked by everybody except the students from his own House (Slytherin), Snape taught Potions. "Maybe he's ill!" said Ron hopefully. "Maybe he's left," said Harry, "because he missed out on the Defense Against the Dark Arts job again!" "Or he might have been sacked!" said Ron enthusiastically. "I mean, everyone hates him--" "Or maybe," said a very cold voice right behind them, "he's waiting to hear why you two didn't arrive on the school train."

Day 6: Slytherin Takes the Field "But I booked the field!" said Wood, positively spitting with rage. "But I booked it!" "Ah," said Flint. "But I've got a specially signed note here from Professor Snape. 'I, Professor S. Snape, give the Slytherin team permission to practice today on the Quidditch field owing to the need to train their new Seeker.'"

Day 7: No Quidditch For You! "I suggest, Headmaster, that Potter is not being entirely truthful," he said. "It might be a good idea if he were deprived of certain privileges until he is ready to tell us the whole story. I personally feel he should be taken off the Gryffindor Quidditch team until he is ready to be honest." "Really, Severus," said Professor McGonagall sharply, "I see no reason to stop the boy playing Quidditch. This cat wasn't hit over the head with a broomstick. There is no evidence at all that Potter has done anything wrong." Dumbledore was giving Harry a searching look. His twinkling light-blue gaze made Harry feel as though he were being X-rayed. "Innocent until proven guilty, Severus," he said firmly. Snape looked furious.

Day 8: Expelliarmus! "Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape," said Lockhart, flashing a wide smile. "He tells me he knows a tiny little bit about dueling himself and has sportingly agreed to help me with a short demonstration before we begin. Now, I don't want any of you youngsters to worry--you'll still have your Potions master when I'm through with him, never fear!" "Wouldn't it be good if they finished each other off?" Ron muttered in Harry's ear. Snape's upper lip was curling. Harry wondered why Lockhart was still smiling; if Snape had been looking at *him* like that he'd have been running as fast as he could in the opposite direction. Lockhart and Snape turned to face each other and bowed; at least, Lockhart did, with much twirling of his hands, whereas Snape jerked his head irritably. Then they raised their wands like swords in front of them. "As you see, we are holding our wands in the accepted combative position," Lockhart told the silent crowd. "On the count of three, we will cast our fist spells. Neither of us will be aiming to kill, of course." "I wouldn't bet on that," Harry murmured, watching Snape baring his teeth. "One--two--three--" Both of them swung their wands above their heads and pointed them at their opponent; Snape cried: "Expelliarmus!" There was a dazzling flash of scarlet light and Lockhart was blasted off his feet. He flew backward off the stage, smashed into the wall, and slid down it to sprawl on the floor.

Day 9: Only Bite Him A Little Bit, Please "Don't move, Potter," said Snape lazily, clearly enjoying the sight of Harry standing motionless, eye to eye with the angry snake. "I'll get rid of it..."

Day 10: Poisoning Trevor The end of the lesson in sight, Snape strode over to Neville, who was cowering by his cauldron. "Everyone gather 'round," said Snape, his black eyes glittering, "and watch what happens to Longbottom's toad. If he has managed to produce a Shrinking Solution, it will shrink to a tadpole. If, as I don't doubt, he has done it wrong, his toad is likely to be poisoned." The Gryffindors watched fearfully. The Slytherins looked excited. Snape picked up Trevor the toad in his left hand and dipped a small spoon into Neville's potion, which was now green. He trickled a few drops down Trevor's throat. There was a moment of hushed silence, in which Trevor gulped; then there was a small op, and Trevor the tadpole was wriggling in Snape's palm. The Gryffindors burst into applause. Snape, looking sour, pulled a small bottle from the pocket of his robe, poured a few drops on top of Trevor, and he reappeared suddenly, fully grown. "Five points from Gryffindor," said Snape, which wiped smiles from every face. "I told you not to help him, Miss Granger. Class dismissed."

Day 11: Insufferable Know-It-All Everyone sat in motionless silence; everyone except Hermione, whose hand, as it so often did, had shot straight into the air. "Anyone?" Snape said, ignoring Hermione. His twisted smile was back. "Are you telling me that Professor Lupin hasn't even taught you the basic distinction between--" "We told you," said Parvati suddenly, "we haven't got as far as werewolves yet, we're still on--" "Silence!" snarled Snape. "Well, well, well, I never thought I'd meet a third-year class who wouldn't even recognize a werewolf when they saw one. I shall make a point of informing Professor Dumbledore how very behind you all are..." "Please, sir," said Hermione, whose hand was still in the air, "the werewolf differs from the true wolf in several small ways. The snout of the werewolf--" "That is the second time you have spoken out of turn, Miss Granger," said Snape coolly. "Fire more points from Gryffindor for being an insufferable know-it-all."

Day 12: Your Saintly Father "I would hate for you to run away with a false idea of your father, Potter," he said, a terrible grin twisting his face. "Have you been imagining some act of glorious heroism? Then let me correct you--your saintly father and his friends played a highly amusing joke on me that would have resulted in my death if your father hadn't gotten cold feet at the last moment. There was nothing brave about what he did. He was saving his own skin as much as mine. Had their joke succeeded, he would have been expelled from Hogwarts." Snape's uneven, yellowish teeth were bared.

Day 13: Don't Talk About What You Don't Understand "KEEP QUIET, YOU STUPID GIRL!" Snape shouted, looking suddenly quite deranged. "DON'T TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!" A few sparks shot out of the end o his wand, which was still pointed at Black's face. Hermione fell silent. "Vengeance is very sweet," Snape breathed at Black. "How I hoped I would be the one to catch you..." "The joke's on you again, Severus," Black snarled. "As long as this boy brings his rat up to the castle" --he jerked his head at Ron-- "I'll come quietly...." "Up to the castle?" said Snape silkily. "I don't think we need to go that far. All I have to do is call the dementors once we get out of the Willow. They'll be very pleased to see you, Black...pleased enough to give you a little Kiss, I daresay...."

Day 14: A Great Disappointment "He must have Disapparated, Severus. We should have let somebody in the room with him. When this gets out--" "HE DIDN'T DISAPPARATE!" Snape roared, now very close at hand. "YOU CAN'T APPARATE *OR* DISAPPARATE INSIDE THIS CASTLE! THIS--HAS--SOMETHING--TO--DO--WITH--POTTER!" "Severus--be reasonable--Harry has been locked up--" BAM. The door of the hospital wing burst open. Fudge, Snape, and Dumbledore came striding into the ward. Dumbledore alone looked calm. Indeed, he looked as though he was quite enjoying himself. Fudge appeared angry. But Snape was beside himself. "OUT WITH IT, POTTER!" he bellowed. "WHAT DID YOU DO?" "Professor Snape!" shrieked Madam Pomfrey. "Control yourself!" "See here, Snape, be reasonable," said Fudge. "This door's been locked, we just saw--" "THEY HELPED HIM ESCAPE, I KNOW IT!" Snape howled, pointing at Harry and Hermione. His face was twisted; spit was flying from his mouth. "Calm down, man!" Fudge barked. "You're talking nonsense!" "YOU DON'T KNOW POTTER!" shrieked Snape. "HE DID IT, I KNOW HE DID IT--" "That will do, Severus," said Dumbledore quietly. "Think about what you are saying. This door has been locked since I left the war ten minutes ago. Madam Pomfrey, have these students left their beds?" "Of course not!" said Madam Pomfrey, bristling. "I would have heard them!" "Well, there you have it, Severus," said Dumbledore calmly. "Unless you are suggesting that Harry and Hermione are able to be in two places at once, I'm afraid I don't see any point in troubling them further." Snape stood there, seething, staring from Fudge, who looked thoroughly shocked at his behavior, to Dumbledore, whose eyes were twinkling behind his glasses. Snape whirled about, robes swishing behind him, and stormed out of the ward. "Fellow seems quite unbalanced," said Fudge, staring after him. "I'd watch out for him if I were you, Dumbledore." "Oh, he's not unbalanced," said Dumbledore quietly. "He's just suffered a severe disappointment."

Day 15: Haven't You Heard? "Blimey, haven' yeh heard?" said Hagrid, his smile fading a little. He lowered his voice, even though there was nobody in sight. "Er--Snape told all the Slytherins this mornin'....Thought everyone'd know by now...Professor Lupin's a werewolf, see. An' he was loose on the grounds las' night...He's packin' now, o' course."

Day 16: I See No Difference "And what is all this noise about?" said a soft, deadly voice. Snape had arrived. The Slytherins clamored to give their explanations; Snape pointed a long yellow finger at Malfoy and said, "Explain." "Potter attacked me, sir--" "We attacked each other at the same time!" Harry shouted. "--and he hit Goyle--look--" Snape examined Goyle, whose face now resembled something that would have been at home in a book on poisonous fungi. "Hospital wing, Goyle," Snape said calmly. "Malfoy got Hermione!" Ron said. "Look!" He forced Hermione to show Snape her teeth--she was doing her best to hide them with her hands, though this was difficult as they had now grown down past her collar. Pansy Parkinson and the other Slytherin girls were doubled up with silent giggles, pointing at Hermione from behind Snape's back. Snape looked coldly at Hermione, then said, "I see no difference."

Day 17: The Dark Mark Snape strode forward, past Dumbledore, pulling up the left sleeve of his robes as he went. He struck out his forearm and showed it to Fudge, who recoiled. "There," said Snape harshly. "There. The Dark Mark. It is not as clear as it was an hour or so ago, when it burned black, but you can still see it. Every Death Eater had the sign burned into him by the Dark Lord. It was a means of distinguishing one another, and his means of summoning us to him. When he touched the Mark of any Death Eater, we were to Disapparate, and Apparate, instantly, at his side. This Mark has been growing clearer all year. Karkaroff's too. Why do you think Karkaroff fled tonight? We both felt the Mark burn. We both knew he had returned. Karkaroff fears the Dark Lord's vengeance. He betrayed too many of his fellow Death Eater to be sure of a welcome back into the fold."

Day 18: If You Are Ready...If You Are Prepared... "Severus," said Dumbledore, turning to Snape, "you know what I must ask you to do. If you are ready...if you are prepared..." "I am," said Snape. He looked slightly paler than usual, and his cold, black eyes glittered strangely. "Then good luck," said Dumbledore, and he watched, with a trace of apprehension on his face, as Snape swept wordlessly after Sirius.

Day 19: Obviously "Now...how long have you been teaching at Hogwarts?" she asked, her quill poised over her clipboard. "Fourteen years," Snape replied. His expression was unfathomable. His eyes on Snape, Harry added a few drops to his potion; it hissed menacingly and turned from turquoise to orange. "You applied first for the Defense Against the Dark Arts post, I believe?" Professor Umbridge asked Snape. "Yes," said Snape quietly. "But you were unsuccessful?" Snape's lip curled. "Obviously." Professor Umbridge scribbled on her clipboard. "And you have applied regularly for the Defense Against the Dark Arts post since you first joined the school, I believe?" "Yes," said Snape quietly, barely moving his lips. He looked very angry. "Do you have any idea why Dumbledore has consistently refused to appoint you?" asked Umbridge. "I suggest you ask him," said Snape jerkily. "Oh I shall," said Professor Umbridge with a sweet smile. "I suppose this is relevant?" Snape asked, his black eyes narrowed. "Oh yes," said Professor Umbridge. "Yes, the Ministry wants a thorough understanding of teachers'--er--backgrounds...." She turned away, walked over to Pansy Parkinson, and began questioning her about the lessons. Snape looked around at Harry and their eyes met for a second. Harry hastily dropped his gaze to his potion, which was now congealing foully and giving off a strong smell of burned rubber. "No marks again, then, Potter," said Snape maliciously, emptying Harry's cauldron with a wave of his wand. "You will write me an essay on the correct composition of this potion, indicating how and why you went wrong, to be handed in next lesson, do you understand?"

Day 20: Very Like His Father "How touching," Snape sneered. "But surely you have noticed that Potter is very like his father?" Yes, I have," said Sirius proudly. "Well then, you'll know he's so arrogant that criticism simply bounces off him," Snape said sleekly. Sirius pushed his chair roughly aside and strode around the table toward Snape, pulling out his wand as he went; Snape whipped out his own. They were squaring up to each other, Sirius looking livid, Snape calculating, his eyes darting from Sirius' wand-tip to his face. "Sirius!" said Harry loudly, but Sirius appeared not to hear him. "I've warned you, Snivellus," said Sirius, his face barely a foot from Snape's, "I don't care if Dumbledore thinks you've reformed, I know better." "Oh, but why don't you tell him so?" whispered Snape. "Or are you afraid he might not take the advice of a man who has been hiding inside his mother's house for six months very seriously?" "Tell me, how is Lucius Malfoy these days? I expect he's delighted his lapdog's working at Hogwarts, isn't he?" "Speaking of dogs," said Snape softly, "did you know that Lucius Malfoy recognized you last time you risked a little jaunt outside? Clever idea, Black, getting yourself seen on a safe station platform...gave you a cast-iron excuse not to leave your hidey-hole in future, didn't it?" Sirius raised his wand. "NO!" Harry yelled, vaulting over the table and trying to get in between them, "Sirius, don't--" "Are you calling me a coward?" roared Sirius, trying to push Harry out of the way, but Harry would not budge. "Why, yes, I suppose I am," said Snape.

Day 21: Wormtail's Whine "We...we are alone, aren't we?" Narcissa asked quietly. "Yes, of course. Well, Wormtail's here, but we're not counting vermin, are we?" He pointed his wand at the wall of books behind him and with a bang, a hidden door flew open, revealing a narrow staircase upon which a small man stood frozen. "As you have clearly realized, Wormtail, we have guests," said Snape lazily. The man crept, hunchbacked, down the last few steps and moved into the room. He had small, watery eyes, a pointed nose, and wore an unpleasant simper. His left hand was caressing his right, which looked as though it was encased in a bright silver glove. "Narcissa!" he said, in a squeaky voice. "And Bellatrix! How charming--" "Wormtail will get us drinks, if you'd like them," said Snape. "And then he will return to his bedroom." Wormtail winced as though Snape had thrown something at him. "I am not your servant!" he squeaked, avoiding Snape's eyes. "Really? I was under the impression that the Dark Lord placed you here to assist me." "To assist, yes--but not to make you drinks and--clean your house!" "I had no idea, Wormtail, that you were craving more dangerous assignments," said Snape silkily. "This can be easily arranged: I shall speak to the Dark Lord--" "I can speak to him if I want to!" "Of course you can," said Snape, sneering. "But in the meantime, bring us drinks. Some of the elf-made wine will do."

Day 22: A Loving Caress Snape set off around the edge of the room, speaking now in a lower voice; the class craned their necks to keep him in view. "The Dark Arts," said Snape, "are many, varied, ever-changing, and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible." Harry stared at Snape. It was surely one thing to respect the Dark Arts as a dangerous enemy, another to speak of them, as Snape was doing, with a loving caress in his voice? "Your defenses," said Snape, a little louder, "must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the arts you seek to undo. These pictures" --he indicated a few of them as he swept past-- "give a fair representation of what happens to those who suffer, for instance, the Cruciatus Curse" --he waved a hand toward a witch who was clearly shrieking in agony-- "feel the Dementor's Kiss" --a wizard lying huddled and blank-eyed, slumped against a wall-- "or provoke the aggression of the Inferius" --a bloody mass upon the ground.

Day 23: Better People "What does it matter?" said Malfoy. "Defense Against the Dark Arts--it's all just a joke, isn't it, an act? Like an of us need protecting against the Dark Arts--" "It is an act that is crucial to success, Draco!" said Snape. "Where do you think I would have been all these years, if I had not known how to act? Now listen to me! You are being incautious, wandering around at night, getting yourself caught, and if you are placing your reliance in assistants like Crabbe and Goyle--" "They're not the only ones, I've got other people on my side, better people!" "Then why not confide in me, and I can--" "I know what you're up to! You want to steal my glory!" There was another pause, then Snape said coldly, "You are speaking like a child. I quite understand that your father's capture and imprisonment has upset you, but--"

Day 24: Revulsion and Hatred Etched on His Face "Severus..." The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading. Snape said nothing, but walked forward and pushed Malfoy roughly out of the way. The three Death Eaters fell back without a word. Even the werewolf seemed cowed. Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face. "Severus...please..." Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore. "Avada Kedavra!"

Day 25: Don't Call Me Coward Mustering all his powers of concentration, Harry thought, Levi-- "No, Potter!" screamed Snape. There was a loud BANG and Harry was soaring backward, hitting the ground hard again, and this time his wand flew out of his hand. He could hear Hagrid yelling and Fang howling as Snape closed in and looked down on him where he lay, wandless and defenseless as Dumbledore had been. Snape's pale face, illuminated by the flaming cabin, was suffused with hatred just as it had been before he had cursed Dumbledore. "You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? It was I who invented them--I, the Half-Blood Prince! And you'd turn my inventions on me, like your filthy father, woudl you? I don't think so...no!" Harry had dived for his wand; Snape shot a hex at it and it flew feet away into the darkness and out of sight. "Kill me then," panted Harry, who felt no fear at all, but only rage and contempt. "Kill me like you killed him, you coward--" "DON'T--" screamed Snape, and his face was suddenly deranged, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling dog stuck in the burning house behind them-- "CALL ME COWARD!"

Day 26: The Guest Voldemort raised Lucius Malfoy's wand, pointed it directly at the slowing revolving figure suspended over the table, and gave it a tiny flick. The figure came to life with a groan and began to struggle against invisible bonds. "Do you recognize our guest, Severus?" asked Voldemort. Snape raised his eyes to the upside-down face. All of the Death Eaters were looking up at the captive now, as thought they had been given permission to show curiosity. As she revolved to face the firelight, the woman said in a cracked and terrified voice, "Severus! Help me!" "Ah, yes," said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again.

Day 27: I Regret It "All this long night, when I am on the brink of victory, I have sat here," said Voldemort, his voice barely louder than a whisper, "wondering, wondering why the Elder Wand refuses to be what it ought to be, refuses to perform as legend says it must perform for its rightful owner...and I think I have the answer." Snape did not speak. "Perhaps you already know it? You are a clever man, after all, Severus. You have been a good and faithful servant, and I regret what must happen." "My Lord--" "The Elder Wand cannot serve me properly, Severus, because I am not its true master. The Elder Wand belongs to the wizard who killed its last owner. You killed Albus Dumbledore. While you live, Severus, the Elder Wand cannot be truly mine." "My Lord!" Snape protested, raising his wand. "It cannot be any other way," said Voldemort. "I must master the wand, Severus. Master the wand, and I master Potter at last." And Voldemort swiped the air with the Elder Wand. It did nothing to Snape, who for a split second seemed to think he had been reprieved: But then Voldemort's intention became clear. The snake's cage was rolling through the air, and before Snape could do anything more than yell, it had encased him, head and shoulders, and Voldemort spoke in Parseltongue. "Kill." There was a terrible scream. Harry saw Snape's face losing the little color it had left; it whitened as his black eyes widened, as the snake's fangs pierced his neck, as he failed to push the enchanted cage off himself, as his knees gave way and he fell to the floor. "I regret it," said Voldemort coldly.

Day 28: You Hurt Her! "Tuney!" said Lily, surprise and welcome in her voice, but Snape had jumped to his feet. "Who's spying now?" he shouted. "What d'you want?" Petunia was breathless, alarmed at being caught. Harry could see her struggling for something hurtful to say. "What is that you're wearing, anyway?" she said, pointing at Snape's chest. "Your mum's blouse?" There was a *crack*. A branch over Petunia's head had fallen. Lily screamed: The branch caught Petunia on the shoulder, and she staggered backward and burst into tears. "Tuney!" But Petunia was running away. Lily rounded on Snape. "Did you make it happen?" "No." He looked both defiant and scared. "You did!" She was backing away from him. "You *did*! You hurt her!" "No--no I didn't!" But the lie did not convince Lily: After one last burning look, she ran from the little thicket, off after her sister, and Snape looked miserable and confused....

Day 29: Save Your Breath "I'm sorry." "I'm not interested." "I'm sorry!" "Save your breath." It was nighttime. Lily, who was wearing a dressing gown, stood with her arms folded in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. "I only came out because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here." "I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just--" "Slipped out?" There was no pity in Lily's voice. "It's too late. I've made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends--you see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?" He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. "I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine." "No--listen, I didn't mean--" "--to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I any different?" He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole....

Day 30: Anything "If she means so much to you," said Dumbledore, "surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for the mother, in exchange for the son?" "I have--I have asked him--" "You disgust me," said Dumbledore, and Harry had never heard so much contempt in his voice. Snape seemed to drink a little. "You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?" Snape said nothing, but merely looked up at Dumbledore. "Hide them all, then," he croaked. "Keep her--them--safe. Please." "And what will you give me in return, Severus?" "In--in return?" Snape gaped at Dumbledore, and Harry expected him to protest, but after a long moment he said, "Anything."

[screamingatanemptyroom]

Please Fix the Story pt 26 - The Higher Realm

The Higher realm continues. So close to the end!

Master post linked here

Enjoy!

______________________________

Time passed, but it was difficult to tell how much. Time worked so differently in the different realms. How long did we really spend trying to save one lower realm? Minutes? Decades? It felt like no time and forever. Adonis and I traveled to lower realm after lower realm, fixing the stories, stabilizing the world before heading back to the higher realm.

Some lower realms were easy, if a bit annoying, such as the high school dramas. In those I would often play the “average” new girl at a school. I would meet new people, and was supposed to go on to have romance, betrayals and coming of age realizations. I quickly realized that befriending all my supposed romantic leads instead of dating them, reconciling with my rivals instead of humiliating them, and pushing towards success all together was a much more satisfying strategy. Fortunately, graduating valedictorian with a happy and psychologically healthy group of teenagers often stabilized worlds that had been torn apart by half-baked character design or infighting between rivals.

I took calculus so many times that I could recite lessons in my sleep, but at least the worlds were saved. Despite our success, however, Adonis was often frustrated. He had his own vision of how we were to save these realms. His plans almost always involved us dating, making the high school romance “successful”.

I refused.

He had been a lot more likable since our first meeting, and I was able to consider him a close friend and ally… but I felt uncomfortable at the idea of even pretending to have a romantic relationship. It was definitely a more difficult route to stabilize the world without a romance, but I chose it every time. Adonis pouted and complained, but couldn’t argue with success, and I was successful.

Some lower realms were more difficult. In particular, zombie apocalypse stories were my least favorites. The worlds often couldn’t be stabilized until a cure was found or humanity’s survival was assured. This meant that Adonis and I sometimes spent decades within these realms, working to build armies, or teams of scientists. There was hardly ever any running water, which meant showering was few and far between.

My unwashed self was made even filthier by my absolute failure at using anything with range. Bow and arrow, guns… anything that would keep me out of the gore, I couldn’t hit even the largest of monsters. Fortunately I picked up a sword with relative ease, which allowed me to fight… but this also meant I got covered in rotten blood and guts.

I hated zombie worlds the most.

Realm after realm. We worked constantly, spending very little time in between in the higher realms. Adonis would often try to use those moments to push his ideas regarding fate and the higher realm’s story, but as soon as I rejected him, which I did every time, he would simply scowl and pull us into the next lower realm to save.

It was getting old.

“How many lower realms are there?” I asked one evening as we recovered from our latest mission, rubbing my sore shoulder where I had taken a blow in the last sci-fi alien battle. The wounds disappeared with the realm traveling, but my mind still could feel the wound, projecting the pain long after I had left that form behind.

Adonis leaned back in his chair, his grin a little too bitter to be a natural expression. “How many unfinished stories are there? Infinite, Bel. There are infinite lower realms. We will never be able to save them all. Not like this.”

“It’s not like there’s a lot of options.”

“There are options. You just don’t want to hear them.”

“What, this fate you keep talking about?” I sighed, closing my eyes, tired. “ It sounds like a terrible idea.”

“It’s not.” His voice was quiet, but the intensity shown through all the same. “It’s our duty. Everyone’s survival depends on it.”

“But what you’re saying is: we follow along some sort of script…”

“Fate.”

“…fate… here, in the higher realm. And that is somehow supposed to fix the lower realms?”

He chuckled. “You’re oversimplifying it, but pretty much. We follow our fate, and the heroes of the lower realms will find their happiness tied to ours.”

“What if they don’t want that ending? What if they don’t want that happiness?”

“Of course they do! Everyone wants a happily ever after with their destined one.” He snapped. My eyes flickered open to study his enraged expression.

“I don’t.”

“You’re selfish!”

I shrugged. “Am I? If you’re right, we submit to fate here, everyone in the lower realms gets an automatic happy ending… but most of those worlds aren’t breaking because they don’t have a happy ending. They need a wider world, different ideas… and what about the side characters, even the villains… what about their happiness?”

“They don’t matter.”

“Why not?” I raised an eyebrow. “Just because they’re the villains?”

“They’re evil.” He stood up, trying to tower over me. An intimidation tactic, one that might have worked before we’d spent countless years fighting in life-or-death battles together.

“Have you met the heroes and heroines of some of these realms?” I laughed. “They’re not much better. I don’t think these roles are as clear as you would like them to be. And I don’t think you and I having a happy ending together, and forcing a simplistic ‘and they lived happily ever after’ on all the lower realms will actually fix them. In fact…” I stood up, and he stepped back slightly at the danger in my tone. “I bet we would break them all the more. Are you really so foolish as to think that saving a universe of worlds would be so simple?”

“…” Adonis was gritting his teeth, his hands clenched so tightly the knuckles were white. But I didn’t back down. Didn’t step back. I knew he wouldn’t hit me. He wouldn’t dare step out of the role he imagined himself to be in. Wouldn’t dare cross a line that might ruin his chances at the happy ending he seemed to crave so desperately.

“…” The silence stretched on between us. We were at an impasse. He wanted to follow fate. He wanted clearly defined roles and rules to follow. And I?

I wanted freedom.

*** Soul transfer 11% complete. ***

It’s been forever since I last saw those words… I thought it had disappeared. For some reason, I felt a deep sense of relief at the glowing blue sentence. Something within me had frozen during these many trips to the lower realms, but finally it was growing again.

“The next world is waiting.” Adonis spoke up, his tone flat. I noticed an odd shifting of his gaze, a reluctance to meet my own, and felt a sense of unease.

I won’t like this next world. I cracked my knuckles and gave him a thumbs up. Well, no sense running from a challenge.

We left.

______________________________

I woke up in a luxurious canopy bed. Staring up at the fabric , I raised my arms and have a cheer.

“YES! NOT A ZOMBIE WORLD!”

On the downside, the setting appeared to be a more primitive era, medieval at best, which meant no running water, but at least I appeared to be noble or wealthy.

At least if I suffer, I’ll be clean while I do it!

“Princess?” A young woman dressed as a servant entered the room, seeming very confused. “Are you all right? I heard you yelling.”

I smiled brightly at her. “No worries. It was just a nightmare.”

She visibly relaxed. “Even so, you seem in a much better mood, if I may say so.”

“Really?”

“Yes, you haven’t broken a single thing this morning.” She, unfortunately did not seem to be kidding. “I’m so glad you’ve accepted your father’s decision.

I didn’t have my character’s memories yet. I needed to accept the mission first. In the meantime, acting too out of character could destabilize an already poorly functional world.

“I’m still… thinking it over.” I spoke up cautiously.

“It’s not so bad, your highness.” She smiled at me. “Most young girls feel a little uneasy when their father arranges their husband. But you’ll be happy. I just know it.”

Arranged marriage?

“After all, Prince Harold is reported to be a true gentleman, a might warrior, and a handsome young man!” She sighed dreamily. “Any woman would be thrilled for a chance to be his bride.”

“I’m. Sure.” I spoke through gritted teeth, the satin sheets crumpling in my grip. Adonis, when I find you, I’m going to make you regret every life decision you’ve ever made… and the ones you’ve only considered making. What kind of lower realm did you land us in? As I plotted my revenge, the mission screen popped up.

**** NEW WORLD: A Divided Kingdom****

This is a romance fantasy story featuring a prince and a princess from different kingdoms, putting aside their differences to save the world.

“I already don’t like this.” I muttered.

The Princess Alaire of the Yenlar Kingdom was a clever, independent woman, horrified at the idea of an arranged marriage. Prince Harold of the Bestion Kingdom felt differently. He fell in love at first sight and vowed to woo the young maiden. The couple was different in almost every way, and seemed destined to bicker and fight.

“Then how about we don’t get married?”

But fate had other plans…

“Of course it did!”

A terrifying beast threatened to destroy both their kingdoms, and to survive, the political marriage had to go forward. Uniting the kingdoms, and therefore their armed forces, was the only way to save their people.

However, despite the happy ending, the first book was not well received by readers and the trilogy was abandoned due to poor sales. The reason given was that the romance was “forced” and unbelievable.

Your mission is to bring a satisfying end to the story, while making ensuring the survival of both kingdoms.

**** DO YOU ACCEPT THIS MISSION? ****

YES? NO?

“Quick question.” I spoke quietly to the glowing words in front of me. “Do I have to marry the prince to ensure an ending?”

The kingdoms will not unite without the political marriage.

“That wasn’t what I asked. I asked if I HAVE to marry the prince. What if I can save both kingdoms without a political marriage?”

The stability of the world is all that matters.

“No lecture on the necessity of fate?”

**** DO YOU ACCEPT THIS MISSION? ****

YES? NO?

I grinned. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

As the words faded away, I jumped out of bed. My head spun slightly as I accepted the memories from the poor princess of the original story.

She had not been happy.

She had dreams, ambitions. The Kingdom of Yenlar allowed for women to inherit the throne, and as the firstborn she was ready to take over from her father, to rule her nation. She had spent her entire life preparing. Studying law, economics, warfare…

And all of it had meant nothing in the end.

She had begged for a political treaty. One that did not involve marriage. The Kingdom of Bestion had refused to even discuss it. They stated that there was too much distrust between the kingdoms to move forward without some sort of permanent assurance. Even the threat of annihilation from the ancient beast of legend wasn’t enough to have them reconsider. That wasn’t the full story, though.

Later she discovered that Prince Harold had seen her at a party. He had supposedly fallen in love with her at first sight, and became determined to marry her. He had learned of her plans to marry a minor noble, one who would support her position on the throne without causing an imbalance of power within the nobility. He had no chance, as far as she was concerned. The threatened destruction of their people was just the perfect opportunity to force the matter.

She had lost all power. Becoming a figurehead, a beautiful statue beside the true king, Harold. He ruled over both nations with an iron fist, treating her own people more harshly, much to the approval of his staff. She slowly became bitter and deranged, watching the destruction of the people and the nation she loved so dearly.

Beyond the end of the first book, when the realm’s story ended, she had attempted to poison him and failed. Harold had been disappointed, but felt that she still had use as a figurehead. They faked a stroke, and kept her mute and weak with poisons. A lovely doll. A perfect figurehead.

…is this a fantasy or a horror? Sheesh, no wonder the trilogy wasn’t going to sell. I shuddered, still standing awkwardly next to the beautiful bed that had belonged to a lovely young woman.

I will change this story. I spoke silently to the memories, feeling a sense of relief that didn’t belong to me as I did so.

First, let’s try to reason with Adonis. He and I had worked together in multiple realms, side by side. We were friends. We may not see eye to eye when it came to our approach towards fate and the lower realms, but he had never forced me to do something I didn’t want. He had always respected me and backed off when I said no, even if it made him unhappy.

Hopefully this time will be the same. I thought uneasily. Hopefully he will listen.

______________________________

“No.” His tone was gleeful, but his face was calm, towing with a silver goblet rather than meeting my gaze.

“Are you joking?” I leaned forward, keeping a gentle smile on my face to fool the guards and our fathers who sat on the other end of the enormous dining table.

“I’m perfectly serious, Princess Alaire. Our kingdoms face certain doom at the hands of the ancient beast. The only way to survive is to work together. We can only work together if we trust each other. The only way the Kingdom of Bestion will trust the Kingdom of Yenlar is with a marriage alliance. It’s out of my hands.”

I reached forward and took the cup from his hands, forcing him to look at me. “Why are you forcing this, Adonis? You know it didn’t work out so well for the originals.”

“Careful Princess.” His eyes glanced over at the nearby guards. “You don’t want anything to destabilize the situation further, now do you? Better to act as a proper princess should.”

“Answer the question. This plan already failed. Why do you think it will work?”

“Simple.” He leaned forward and plucked the goblet back from my hands. “We’re different. You may not want to admit it, but we have spent lifetimes at each other’s side. Growing up, going to school, facing enemies, fighting together… we could make this work. It would be a wonderful ending.”

“You know what happened to Alaire after the first book.”

“I would never do that to you.”

“But you are.” I growled, wishing I could punch him. “You are trying to make me a beautiful figurehead, just like Harold did to Alaira.”

“We would rule side by side.”

“What use is that promise, if you are already ignoring my wishes and forcing me to do this in the first place?”

He shook his head. “You have to trust me. This is the only way we can defeat the monster, and stabilize this realm. We’ll save this world. Together.” He smiled. “It’s our fate.”

I threw a plate at him, forcing him to fling himself on the floor to avoid injury. Walking out, I ignored my father’s shouts of rage. Picking up a bag I had packed ahead of time, just in case, I changed into some light armor, grabbed a sword, and headed out into the forest.

If I couldn’t win by a political alliance, I was going to find another way to save the world.

I was going monster hunting.

I searched Princess Alaira’s memories of the legends and stories, going out in a northern direction towards the area known as Death Valley.

As I marched onward, my thoughts wandered over the time I had spent since I had woken up in the Higher Realm. I couldn’t help but feel disappointed with Adonis. He might truly think that he was saving the world by insisting on going through with the marriage, but his lack of willingness to even consider other options was frustrating. He was the only person consistently by my side through every one of these worlds, someone I considered a friend, and being unable to rely on him served to make me feel all the lonelier.

My mind briefly touched on the assassin of the first realm, Liam. I had thought with his comments and actions that he had known about my mission… that he might be from the higher realm too. But no matter how much I looked for him, no matter how much I hoped to see him again, I never did.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was someone from the lower realm, and I’ll never have the chance to see him, to thank him.

I felt a sense of despair. How long can I keep doing this? Is this why Adonis preaches following our fate so much? Is he as tired of traveling, tired of the missions and the different lives? Is he just hoping to end all this?

I sighed, keeping moving. I’m not that tired, not tired enough to sacrifice my freedom. Not yet, anyways.

It took several days of traveling. Fortunately from my years of experience in zombie worlds, I was well prepared to survival in the wilderness. At least here the rivers were clean, allowing me to bathe occasionally. Finally I was at the entrance of the valley, staring up at the pillars on either side.

There were ominous words carved deeply into the stone.

Only death lies ahead.

I stared at the words silently for a few moments, and then shrugged.

“Still better than marrying Adonis.”

I moved forward.

______________________________

The valley was dark, a deep fog settled in permanently, apparently unaffected by the weather beyond its borders. Dark twisted purple trees rose all around me, their roots tearing through the earth desperate searching for nutrients. The valley was quiet, suffocating in an unsettling silence. My presence there felt like an intrusion, my instincts screaming at me to run away, to escape.

I kept moving.

There were no other signs of life. But I knew at least one other being lived here, the reason why nothing else dared to.

The Ancient beast.

There were no descriptions of it in the legends. Just that it was deadly, enough to take on entire armies. And that it was terrifying.

I feel like I should have seen something by now, if it was so large. I sighed, sitting on one of the trees, staring up at the mountain ahead of me. Shouldn’t it be easier to find an enormous beast that terrified an entire world?

…

Wait.

I looked up, struggling to see the top of the mountain in front of me.

I’m in a valley…

The mountain moved up and down, with regular motions.

There shouldn’t be a mountain here.

It was breathing.

I drew my sword, inwardly despairing. I had underestimated the sheer scale of the monster. I had thought it would be the size of a house, an elephant. Instead it towered stories above me, unimaginably large.

I was doomed.

There was a rumble as the beast in front of me shifted. I couldn’t tell the shape, just an impression of scales and spikes. Slowly, something lowered down in front of me, stretching forward in all directions, filling my vision. I saw teeth larger than my own body, the white of them contrasting with the dark fog around us. As I prepared myself for my death, an eye opened to stare at me.

It was a beautiful dark blue.

“…”

Suddenly, I felt relief. It was incomprehensible. I was standing in front of an ancient beast, enormous and terrifying, and instead of fear and dread… I felt safe.

I raised a hand, almost despite myself. “Hello there.”

The eye blinked. I comforted myself that it hadn’t eaten me yet.

“I think you look awesome. I’m Princess Alaira from the nearby kingdom of Yenlar. I actually came here to kill you, to protect my people… but now I realize that you could crush me like an ant, and that was a bad plan.”

The eye blinked twice. It seemed more confused than anything.

“I have a much better plan, if you would be willing to listen to me.” I let out a laugh, slightly startled at how… villainous it sounded.

*** Soul transfer 20% complete. ***

The creature let out a sound like thunder. I felt that it was laughing too.

______________________________

The wedding was this morning.

I was surprised as I drew near to see the party going. You would think that after I disappeared, they might have canceled or delayed it. I assumed that Adonis had felt sure that I would agree with him in the end. That I wouldn’t be able to let the world end just because I didn’t want to marry him.

Well too bad, buddy. This princess has a different plan in mind!

I could see him, standing on the elevated stage before two thrones, waiting. I couldn’t see his expression from this distance, but I imagine he was barely hiding his worry. Alaire’s father and Harold’s father were also waiting on the platform, their postures betraying their impatience.

“Let’s get this party started!” I yelled.

ROOOOOOOAAAAAAR!

The ancient beast let out a triumphant roar as he flew closer and lowered his head, letting me jump down onto the platform before landing behind me, a large, threatening mountain of a creature.

“Alaire?” The king called out, confused. “What are you doing?”

“Hello, Father.” I also nodded to Adonis, who stared back.

“What is this?”

“Your daughter is a witch!” The King of Bestion shouted, drawing his ceremonial sword. “She betrayed us!”

“Hold on, father.” Adonis held out his hand, stopping his attack. “I’m sure it’s not what it looks like.”

I grinned.

“Nope. It’s exactly what it looks like. I’ve teamed up with the Ancient being. We’re friends now.” I gestured at the monster high above us, who let out a grim chuckle, shaking the ground. “So now I make the rules, got it?”

“…”

“I’ll take everyone’s stunned silence as happy agreement! Now, first rule: Wedding canceled.”

“What?”

“What?”

“You can’t do this!”

The three other royals on stage shouted simultaneously. I simply pointed again at the enormous creature.

“I can do whatever I want. The big scary monster behind me says so. Next, the kingdom of Bestion will surrender to me, as will the kingdom of Yenlar.”

“You want to rule the world?” Adonis’s gaze was… disappointed. I grinned shamelessly. “Nope. But here’s the thing: Our kingdoms face certain doom at the hands of the ancient beast. The only way to survive is to convince the monster not to kill us. The monster only trusts me. So I have to rule both kingdoms.” I shrugged. “It’s out of my hands.”

I threw his words from earlier back at him, and felt satisfied as he winced in recognition.

“We… surrender.” His words were quiet, defeated.

“You unruly child!” My father tried to shout, but a roar from the monster above us silenced him. He quickly surrendered too. I accepted both surrenders, quickly organizing the meetings to bring our governments together under one rule. Fortunately, the princess’s years of study served me well, guiding me smoothly through the process.

______________________________

I had one more confrontation with Adonis, the night before the coronation. He was escorted to my rooms by guards, saying he had a request. I hesitated briefly, but allowed him in, waving the guards behind the door so we could speak freely.

“What was that?” He shouted as soon as they had left.

I stayed sitting, forcing myself to be calm. “I fixed the story.”

“You ruined everything! Even if it stabilizes this world, it will ruin it in the long run.”

“Says you.”

“Trust me.” He threw up his hands as he paced back and forth. “Everything will go a lot smoother if you STOP CHANGING THE STORY.”

“I thought that was why we were here, though?” I sighed, leaning back in my chair and cleaning my nails with a blade. “To fix the lower realms, to save these worlds? That requires change, right?”

He paused in his movements, glaring at me. “Stop acting stupid. These worlds are broken because they didn’t follow the rules. We have to follow them perfectly.”

“I don’t want to though.” I shuddered. “No offense, but if the story is going to require us to have a romantic relationship, I’m finding an alternate solution.”

“That’s what the story requires, you have your role to play. You know the consequences of not playing the right part.”

I sighed. “No, there’s always different paths to take. You’re a good friend, and I’m glad to have you by my side, but that’s different than love.”

“…”

“You clearly don’t love me either, so why are you making such a fuss about this? As long as we complete what we came here to do, that’s all that matters, right?”

“…”

“Right?”

Adonis stepped closer to me, his atmosphere slightly threatening. “Why are you so different from what you are supposed to be?”

“What are you…?”

“Why can’t you just accept.”

His hand grabbed my wrist, the grip painful.

“your.”

He pulled me closer until our faces were inches apart. His bright blue eyes were blazing with anger as they stared into my own.

“fate.”

Letting me go, he walked away, putting some distance between us, before turning back to face me.

“This lower realm is stabilized. We should return.” His smile was cold. “The next mission is a little different from our previous ones. We’ll talk about it later.”

“…”

“And next time…?” He laughed, a bitter sound. “You’ll play your part whether you want to or not.”

THUD.

The blade in my hand threw through the air, stabbing into the wall inches from his face. I smiled cheerfully as he looked back at me, shocked.

“Try touching me again, and I’ll cut off something you’ll miss. We’ll discuss missions and roles again in the higher realm, but for now?” I rang a bell and guards came in, escorting him out. “I have a coronation to plan.”

______________________________

My coronation was held outside so that the Ancient beast could stand behind me. It seemed cheerful, letting out victorious roars and swaying from side to side. The people cheered as well, seeming a lot happier than I expected them to be. I guess they’re relieved that they won’t be eaten by the giant monster? I wondered idly how I was going to incorporate the creature into the day to day life of a monarch. For an odd reason I had very little doubt that the monster would stick around.

However, all my plans came to nothing. As the crown was placed on my head, bright blue words formed in the air in front of me:

100% complete.

**** You have finished the mission! ****

It was time to go.

At little sad, I looked up at the ancient monster above me. “Thank you, friend for your help. I wish I could stay with you longer.”

A mournful cry echoed through the world. It seemed to understand that I was leaving. Before I could say anything more to reassure it, the world around me shimmered and disappeared.

Only to reveal a furious Adonis standing in front of me.

“Happy now, Your Majesty?” He sneered.

“Oof, someone’s still a little angry that I used an ancient monster conquer the world. Believe it or not, I’m sorry that I’ve hurt you. But you know why I did what I did. Let’s talk about it in the morning.”

I walked away, feeling his glare on my back long after I was out of sight.

______________________________

When I woke up, I realized that I couldn't move.

I panicked, struggling to move my arms and legs, only managing to turn my head slightly. Enough to see Adonis’s smug expression as he sat by my bed.

“It’s time for our story to progress, Bel.” His smile was strange, twisted. I couldn’t talk back, I shook my head slightly side to side.

“I’m the hero, you are the heroine. If the relationship between us can’t be advanced by working together, than it must be forged in adversity." He reached down and picked me up, carrying me out of the small cottage I had arranged for myself and into the castle courtyard. Whatever drug he had injected me with was slowly wearing off, and I struggled in his arms, finally able to shout.

“Put me down!”

To my surprise he did, and although I struggled to stay upright, I kept my balance and glared at him.

“What are you planning?”

He sighed quietly. “I’m tired of always being the one to compromise. It’s time for you to make a sacrifice, Bel. I’ve avoided this so far, worried that progressing our story this way would kill you, but it seems that it is our fate that we take this risk. It’s… unfortunate. I do very much hope you don’t die.” He paused, trying to smile at me. “Don’t worry. It’s only temporary. I’ll come and rescue you soon.”

“A sacrifice?” I felt cold, even as I stood in the warm afternoon sun. My thoughts were slow to form, possibly a side effect of the medication. “Why?”

He shrugged. “There’s an order to everything. Rules. Law. They are all that stand between us and pure chaos. No one can ignore them. Not you. Not even me.”

“Then sacrifice yourself, asshole! Why send me?”

He shrugged. “It’s your role to play, not mine. Your fate.”

“Screw fate! I don’t care if you say it’s temporary or not! Friends don’t sacrifice friends!” I was furious, still weak and feeling helpless.

His hand reached out and brushed my cheek, the touch freezing my skin. I wanted to move away but I could still barely move, only managing to glare at him. “Don’t look at me with those eyes. It’s not my fault. If you want to blame anyone, blame the story.”

“Ad…”

“Sorry, you must accept your fate.” I felt a pinch in my arm, the stick of a needle as he injected something into the muscle. Immediately darkness overwhelmed me.

“We all do.”

Everything faded into darkness.

______________________________

When I woke up, I was in a strange world, surrounded by forest. I lay on my back, still feeling weak, fury coursing through my veins.

Adonis and I had worked well together, despite arguing multiple times in the past. But now… any goodwill I had towards him was gone. He had betrayed me. Knocked me out and sent me to somewhere dangerous, somewhere I could be killed, just to follow his precious fate. To get the story he wanted.

“Are you lost?

I looked over at the source of the voice. It was a tall young man with dark hair, wearing grey, non-descript clothing. He kneeled down next to me, and I found myself staring into dark blue eyes.

“Seems a good description for my current situation.” I smiled despite the dizziness. “Nice to meet you, Stranger.”

He grinned, reaching out a hand to help me up. “Call me Liam.”

Liam? Could he be…?

“…Nice to meet you, Liam.” I laughed. “Or should I say: nice to see you again?”

*** Soul transfer 25% complete. ***