#put under read more because it MIGHT be considered sensitive material?
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whispersofdeceit · 1 year ago
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2. the time they were most scared  (Satoshi)
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angsty headcanon q’s
@kitxkatrp
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...The easy answer would be to say when he was a child, when they still lived in Orochimaru's hideout. But no, that couldn't be it. There was something worse, at least to him.
No, it came later than that, even after they made it to Konoha. A time when Karin had finally entrusted him to walk around by himself, without her or without Hiroki at his side. A grand mistake she would never learn about if he had any say in it.
Satoshi had been told he could trust the people of Konoha--at least, his uncle told him that. Karin never muttered a word similar. Yet, he'd found himself in the arms of one of the shinobi officers; a man whom was part of the interrogation unit. Assumptions was all they were going on, whether he had the same ability as his mother...and he was brought in front of a half dead man, barely clinging to life.
You'll be fine
You won't die
It's for the sake of the village
Each bite to his skin hurt worse than the last; was more desperate. All to keep the man alive, torture him for longer, get more answers out of him, in front of someone who hadn't experienced any horror much like this.
...He didn't want to be here anymore, but he couldn't tell his mother. His family was here. Hiroki was doing better, Hiroki was learning, Hiroki was growing.
He couldn't tell anyone. He was supposed to trust them. He was so alone, ever since then.
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stitchlingbelle · 2 months ago
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Why Lucy?
Ok, other people have probably come up with this already, but: we speculate about the Harkers being something supernatural by the end of the book--
--have we considered that Lucy might have been something supernatural from the beginning?
Leaving aside the inevitable Doomed By the Narrative foreshadowing she gets, Lucy begins sleepwalking and more before the Count arrives in Whitby. It is strongly implied that her sleepwalking is something beyond the usual: "there is an odd concentration about her which I do not understand; even in her sleep she seems to be watching me..."
Also before her first encounter with Dracula, her dreams and moods are uncertain--and significant-- enough to feature heavily in Mina's diary: "Lucy is more excitable than ever, but is otherwise well..." And again, it is stated that she is unusual: "She was restless and uneasy all the time, and I cannot but think that her dreaming at night is telling on her. She is quite odd in one thing: she will not admit to me that there is any cause for restlessness; or if there be, she does not understand it herself."
Mina ascribes Lucy's problems to her innate nature: "Lucy is so... sensitive that she feels influences more acutely than other people do..."
Lucy seems more aware of her attacks than Mina later is. (Or that Jonathan was, if you subscribe to that interpretation.) She reports not just the material things she witnesses (hearing the flapping of Dracula in his bat form, as Mina saw his mist form), and not just the fear and nightmares all experience, but "distant voices which seemed so close to me, the harsh sounds that came from I know not where and commanded me to do I know not what..."
And her recollection of her first attack while sleepwalking is neither a blank, like Mina's first, nor a grounded account, like Mina's last-- instead, Lucy reports an out-of-body experience: "my soul seemed to go out from my body and float about the air. I seem to remember that once the West Lighthouse was right under me... and I came back and found you shaking my body. I saw you do it before I felt you."
Finally, Lucy's struggle against her impending transformation is different from Mina's. When Mina begins to turn into a vampire at the end of the book, she can't abide garlic, but Lucy quickly grows fond of it and says "there is peace in its smell". Seward reports that "whenever she got into that lethargic state [in which Dracula controls her]... she put the flowers from her; but that when she waked she clutched them close." Lucy somehow feels and responds positively to the garlic's powers, even as her body transforms (her wound healing and teeth growing, and her vampiric nature attempting to ensnare Art).
Finally, Lucy herself, at the beginning of the novel, believes herself to be unusual: "[Seward] has a curious habit... as if trying to read one's thoughts. He tries this on very much with me, but I flatter myself he has got a tough nut to crack. I know that from my glass. Do you ever try to read your own face? I do... He says that I afford him a curious psychological study, and I humbly think I do."
I think there's an argument to be made that Dracula picked Lucy because she was the easiest for him to reach-- that she was sensitive, not in the emotional sense, but in the sense of being clairvoyant. She can hear him, and therefor be compelled to obey him, before anyone else. The strangeness around her before the Count's arrival isn't just foreshadowing for us-- it's Lucy's own second sight warning her that doom is at hand, and giving her the power to struggle against it for as long as she possibly can.
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fantasticalleigh · 7 months ago
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Hey, I love your work, esp your Dramione stuff! I noticed the tags on some of your posts and I was wondering: are you planning on turning Sweet Sacrifice into original fiction? I would be interested in seeing more genre romance in the mainstream
Aw, thank you! I've had the intent of adapting Sweet Sacrifice away from Harry Potter lore and into its own original work for a while now. (I talk about it some on my writing blog here and here.)
I sort of started on this already by working on an AU comic loosely based on Sweet Sacrifice since last year. It covers some of the same ground but the plot has been reduced down to mainly just being about Caius and Isolde (formerly Draco and Hermione) because if I cover anything else from the actual fic plot this comic would be like a hundred pages long. I'm working on chapter 2 of the comic right now and it's at 13 pages currently and about to get very NSFW, but I don't know if I plan to make a chapter 3 to the comic because it's really intensive work, but we'll see. This is mostly for fun but it's also helped me consider how the story might go now that I've stripped the HP elements from it and am trying my hand at world building and developing these characters further into something of my own and not relying on someone else's lore.
(I'll post more of chapter 1 of the comic but I don't think I'll post it here. So far what I've shared of it has been mainly on WordPress and DeviantArt but the full pdf is up on my Patreon.)
As for writing, I would really love to give Sweet Sacrifice a do over and make it a proper horror novel starting at a point before D + H/Caius and Isolde meet. I really want to flesh out the doomed village better and really delve into life before/during the werewolf's haunting before we get into the whole mated life thing.
I like the idea of doing it on my own and just compiling it into an ebook and "publishing" it on my own site. If I did it any other way I'd probably have to change specific/significant aspects of it to keep it from getting flagged or rejected or something, considering the themes running throughout the fic. I don't want to buckle on it remaining horror/dark romance (and the romance is questionable, at that). I don't see my type of work ever hitting mainstream (and I don't think I'd want it to either, to be honest). I don't like the idea of having to really water down the things I write to appeal to a larger audience when I already have you and many others as an audience (who already know what you're in for)!
I'm sort of taking a break from writing it right now because I've been feeling burnt out at how long the chapters have gotten and I still need to figure out the rest of the plot but the intent is absolutely there so I'll get to it soon, I hope.
TLDR: Yes, absolutely this is something I want/plan to do! I've got this story shredded between my teeth and I'll rearrange these letters to tell it in as many ways as I can, and make it my own.
(This was a really long answer to your question I'm sorry T-T ) but thanks for asking!
bonus: i don't think i've posted these here yet but bottom left is a WIP shot of the SS ch. 2 cover and image on the right is a pre-background/text flats layout of one of the final pages from chapter 1. Putting this bit under a read more bc of the sensitive material.
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ciyapaofficial · 2 years ago
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5 Suitable Fabrics for T-shirt Combos
While it might seem like a mouthful, choosing the right fabric for your t-shirt combos is easier than it may sound! There are so many variations of fabrics to choose from when making your special combo. This blog post will take you through the best fabrics for your t-shirt combos and why they are great for a stylish wardrobe. 
So if you're looking for a unique and fashionable look, check out what we have to say! There are a variety of fabrics that can be used for t-shirts, but some are better than others. The best fabrics for t-shirt combos are breathable, lightweight, and comfortable.
Cotton
Cotton is the most popular fabric for t-shirts because it is all of these things. Cotton is a natural fiber grown in warm climates, making it ideal for t-shirts. Cotton is also very absorbent, keeping you cool and comfortable in the hottest weather.
Linen
Linen is another good option for t-shirts. It is made from flax plants and is also very absorbent. Linen is a bit heavier than cotton, but it is still a light and airy fabric. Linen is a good choice for t-shirt combos if you want something that hangs nicely and drapes well.
Silk 
Silk is another option that can be used for t-shirt combos. It is a bit more expensive than cotton or linen, but it has a luxurious feel. Silk is also a good choice for sensitive skin, as it is very gentle. However, silk can be difficult to care for, so read the care label carefully before purchasing silk t-shirts.
Polyester
Polyester, a synthetic fabric frequently used for sports apparel, is a popular option for t-shirt combos. It is due to the fabric's quick-drying properties and comfort. With repeated washings, it maintains its shape and is not prone to shrinking or stretching.
Tencel
Tencel is a synthetic fabric that has many of the same properties as cotton or linen. It is soft, absorbent, and breathes well. Tencel is also eco-friendly and easy to care for & can be an amazing choice for your next t-shirt combos.
When it comes to finding fabrics for your t-shirt combos, the options are endless. From light and breathable materials such as linen and cotton to more structured ones like corduroy, each one offers something unique that will make any outfit appear put together. 
With a little creativity and experimentation, you can create looks that will make heads turn while remaining comfortable in what you wear. Next time you plan an outfit, don't forget to consider the suitable fabrics available – they might be just what your wardrobe needs!
Solid t-shirt combos from Ciyapa are a must-have for both men & women under an affordable range. Buy your eye-catching hundred percent cotton t-shirt combos from this brand today!
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So I (finally!) bought a pair of really good noise cancelling headphones, and it has changed my life! It's the fanciest thing I've bought in years, so to recoup some of the cost, I’ve researched & written a little essay based on my experiences with extreme noise sensitivity.
Hypersensitivity to sound is something I’ve dealt with all of my life, but I only recently found out it's medically known a Hyperacusis. (Please note this is a separate condition from Misophonia.) If you consistently struggle to cope with noise, the info below could be helpful! I’m including a link to my ko-fi, and I will be answering questions in the notes.
(skip to the bottom to read fun facts about my tax return and/or street organs vendettas!)
DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional, this is based solely on my experiences as a patient, and on what I have read and been told by professionals. Please notify me if you have corrections or concerns about accuracy!
BACKGROUND: Sensitivity to sound is a common type of sensory issue. While anyone can experience such issues (most people, for example, might be bothered by loud music in a crowded restaurant), some people are more sensitive than others, to the point it becomes a quality-of-life aka a medical issue.
If you consistently struggle with environmental stimuli that other people aren’t bothered by (background noises, bright lights, certain textures and tastes, etc), to the point it causes daily discomfort or limits the environments you can be in, I recommend reading about Sensory Processing Disorder.
SPD and sound sensitivity are both super common in autistic folks (like me!), but allistic (non-autistic) people can experience them too. Weep, ye prisoners of mortal coil, for none are safe, nothing sacred, not in this thy most accursed tomb of human flesh!
Anyway.
SOUND SENSITIVITY or HYPERACUSIS: Noise issues are particularly difficult to navigate in a world that is increasingly...noisy. The relatively new phenomenon of constant overhead music in restaurants, grocery stores, shopping malls etc—all of this means that public spaces are increasingly inaccessible to people with auditory issues.*
As a kid, nothing quite triggered sensory overload/meltdowns for me like the constant exposure to noise I couldn’t control—the background chatter of other kids in the lunchroom, the constant noise in public spaces, being trapped in the car with the radio on.... I had so many fights with my siblings about the car radio, and who got to choose the music.**
But it’s not just loud sounds that are the problem. As an adult who lives alone and works from home***, I’m lucky enough to be able to avoid loud environments most of the time. This does wonders for my general levels of anxiety and discomfort. But even in a mostly controlled environment, I still experience problems. Because part of sound sensitivity is that even normal or quiet sounds can feel loud and intrusive. Here are some “normal” sounds that can cause me discomfort (ranging from annoyance to outright pain, depending on the day):
refrigerator/AC/ceiling lights humming
dishwasher/washing machine noises
ceiling fan making that damn ceiling fan noise
faint sounds of traffic
riding in a car
other people having a normal conversation in the background
someone talking to me in a perfectly normal inside voice
Unfortunately, even in a “controlled” environment, many triggering noises can’t be controlled. And many parts of life can’t be lived in a controlled environment. This presents...some incredibly freaking annoying problems. Luckily there are solutions!
Sorta.
There are sorta some solutions.
They are imperfect, but they help.
TREATMENT: And now I have something rather shame-faced to admit. In all the years of managing my symptoms, it never once occurred to me to see a hearing specialist for my issues with sound. I wasn’t even aware that treatment options exist, because none of my other doctors mentioned it. Instead, I’ve spent years finding my own coping mechanisms and tools, with help from therapists and psychiatrists, but without ever consulting an audiologist/ENT. It was only while researching this post that I found out that was even an option, holy shit.
So it turns out I am going to be making an appointment with my local ENT practice. shit.
Apparently treatment options include sound/acoustic therapy, systematic desensitization/exposure therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, sound machines, and other options that I had no idea even existed, goddammit.
MANAGEMENT: In the meantime, here are my current coping mechanisms. I’ve relied rather heavily on hearing protection, which is very useful when used in moderation. Unfortunately, it can cause its own problems: it’s important not to overuse hearing protection, because in the long-term this can increase your sensitivity. So again: a useful tool, but be careful not to overdo it.
With that in mind, here are some of the coping strategies I’ve used over the last decade to manage my symptoms. This is not a perfect system and you should contact your local ENT clinic for better, long-term solutions, but in the meantime here are some tips I use to just get myself through the damn day:
Regularly spending time in a quiet controlled environment, to allow my nervous system to decompress.
Wearing earplugs, (I use two different grade, depending on the level of noise prevention I need), and always carrying an extra pair in case I need them unexpectedly. I bought a 50 pack for $7 and put spares in all my bags and jacket pockets.
(I mostly use Mack’s Ultra Soft, but there are so many types and materials and brands, including foam, silicone, wax, custom moldable etc. Even if you have trouble wearing things in your ears, you might be able to find something comfortable.)
Similarly: hearing protection earmuffs, the kind used in gun ranges and on construction sites. I bought mine online for $10. they look like normal wireless headphones, so I've never gotten comments when wearing mine in public (other than “cool heaphones” bc i added skull glitter stickers).
Sometimes I wear the earmuffs on top of earplugs, when life is just too damn LOUD.
Listening to music w/ earbuds or headphones is a great way to balance out background noises, especially if you can find soothing playlists that help you concentrate. Also useful to put in just one earbud when you need to pay attention in class/at work.
Pro tip: if your hair is long enough you can wear wireless earbuds without anyone knowing.
White noise, rain noises, ocean noises etc can be helpful! Some people like whale songs although personally this activates my primal fear response
Active noise cancelling headphones: the reason I wrote this post to begin with—I finally bought a pair! As in, a really good pair! As in, a depressingly expensive pair with noise cancelling technology that actually WORKS, holy shit. I probably need to wear them a little less at home (bc overprotection causes problems in the longterm) but they have absolutely transformed my ability to go out in public and i never ever want to take these suckers off again please take a power screwdriver and nail these to my head, bury me in the sweet sweet shroud of silence. holy canoli and cream puffs I want to marry form a civil partnership with these headphones. Plus they have a bunch of features, like being able to control the level of noise cancellation, so I can hold a conversation or be aware of some ambient noise for safety reasons.
Oh, and also they play music I guess?
Sorry sorry I promise this post wasn’t supposed to be me shilling for Big Electronics. I’m just excited, I’m an excited flabby little ball of expired flubber. ANC headphones aren’t a perfect solution, and I still sometimes wear earplugs underneath, and I will always be uncomfortable some of the time, but for me it’s been a big step.
Unfortunately the cost of good quality ANC technology means this isn’t an option for everyone, and the (much cheaper) gunshot protection earmuffs I mentioned earlier still provide an impressive amount of protection and bang-for-your buck (maybe even an equal amount of protection, if you can find ones that fit well). But if noise consistently prevents you from enjoying public space and life in general, and you’ve already tried earmuffs & earplugs and find they don’t offer enough comfort/convenience/protection, and if you’re in a position to save up for a one time non-necessity purchase of $150+, noise cancelling headphones are an option to be aware of. (Please always check the return policy so you can try before you buy. I ended up buying and returning 2 pairs before finding what worked best for me. And please look for a retailer that offers an extended warranty. You want those motherforkers to last).
There are cheaper options available, including some under $50. The ones I tried didn't work as well as my hearing protection earmuffs, but some people report good experiences, so that is something to consider. it's always good to know your options! Passive noise canceling is another affordable alternative.
Medication: A final tool in my toolbox, which for me personally has helped as much as every other method combined. Like, a lot, it’s helped a lot. It turns out some anti-anxiety medications can also help sensory issues. There’s not much research on this, and I only discovered it firsthand when a medication my doctor prescribed for anxiety ended up significantly helping my sensory issues. I no longer need medication for anxiety, but my psychiatrist still prescribes that same medication off-label for my sensory stuff. Ask your psychiatrist to research your options (they will probably have to do some digging to find relevant research, but you deserve to know all your options, even the obscure ones). Fyi, the medication I use is in the benzodiazepines class, but there are other options for those concerned about dependency or side effects.
(I'm also told anti-anxiety supplements may be helpful, though I haven't tried this yet. If you're on prescription meds, always talk to your doctor about contraindications before taking anything over-the-counter.)
So there you have it, my main coping strategies for sound sensitivity! They are not a replacement for medical treatment (except that last one which is in fact...medical treatment), but I find them helpful and I hope some of you will too! I’ve struggled for a long time, and I’m very pleased to have reached the point where I can just do things in public. Eating out in loud restaurants? I can do that now, and even enjoy it, holy shit! I can comfortably travel in cars for hours at a time, and walk around shopping malls and grocery stores with overhead music, and, and —and just exist. It is so so freeing, to feel like maybe, after everything, you are actually allowed to just exist in a world that wasn’t really designed for you.
Again, be careful not to overuse hearing protection—the goal is to allow you to be less uncomfortable and to function better, but if you find you are becoming more sensitive to noise, it is time to dial it back a notch. Or maybe consider listening to music (at a reasonable volume) to block out background noise instead.
*(This also includes people with hearing loss and related issues, btw. While that’s not my area of knowledge, I would welcome it if any of my HoH followers want to share their experiences.)
**A sign of sensory issues that parents often miss is when a child complains about music being too loud—but has no problem listening to their own music at high volume. This is because music that is already familiar to the listener (and that the listener enjoys) is much easier for the brain to process, since it knows what pattern of sounds to expect. Loud music that they get to control can be soothing for people with sound issues, especially when it blocks out background noise and sensations. This is why repetitively playing the same songs can be a helpful form of stimming.
***(working on this blog, actually. since it’s my only source of income, my 2020 income tax return literally lists my occupation as ‘Tumblr Blogger.’ Oddly, my parent didn’t feel this achievement was worth including in the holiday family newsletter.)
bonus fun fact: Charles Babbage aka “father of the computer” may have been autistic and hypersensitive to sound. He definitely had a huge problem with public noise pollution, and spent his later year waging a war on street musicians (and organ grinders in particular).
(bc like, yeah. screw organ grinders.)
Sometimes when I’m out in public and the overhead music is particularly unbearable, I’ll take a moment to look up to the sky and scream out: “HE TRIED TO WARN US! THE FATHER OF COMPUTERS TRIED TO WARN US!!! we should have listened, sweet heaven we should have listened!”
except i don’t scream it, i say it very quietly under my breath
(i have issues with noise)
so yeah that is my short essay. and here is the ko-fi goal
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k ciao i gotta go pick out glitter stickers for my headphones
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danidrabbles · 3 years ago
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OCTOBER 1: KNIFE PLAY
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Notes: Kicking Kinktober off with the following. Thank you as always @javier-pena for reading this over for me!
Pairing: Dave York x f!reader
Rating: Explicit (18+!)
Word count: 1.9k
Warnings: SMUT, established relationship, romance???, sexy use of knives (...i hope), sliiiiightly dub-con but that’s Dave for ya, dirty talk, gags, 1 **** (dedicated to Kelli and Cris 😘) If I forgot anything important, please let me know!
The slam of the door startles you awake. Sitting up in bed, you listen to him rummage around downstairs, trace his path through the kitchen, the living room, and up the stairs. Usually, he’s more quiet, at least attempts to not wake you, but the fact that he doesn’t must mean that today is one of those days.
You know what Dave does; your darling husband by day, something else entirely by night.
It hadn’t started off like that, is what he told you once he came clean. He really had been a CIA operative before becoming what he is now. But this suited him better. He had tried to explain what that meant, careful not to scare you; that people paid good money to eliminate other people, that it sometimes got messy.
But you weren’t scared. You tried to explain that to him, and that mutual understanding, that you were the same on some level others might consider fucked up, it deepened your bond, your marriage, in a way you never expected.
The bedroom door sweeps open, his silhouette dark in the deep of the night, painted in shadows, but the little light in the room does allow you to take note of the blood that has dried on his face. It makes you inhale deeply, fisting the duvet under your hands and waiting for him to make the first move.
It’s one of those days, after all.
Dave reaches you in two big steps, his boots heavy against the protesting wooden floor, but waits at the end of the bed, gnawing at his bottom lip and balling his fists like he has to physically hold himself back.
“It’s okay,” you say, and as soon as you do, he’s on you. Sheets discarded, he crawls over you, pushing you back against the mattress. His eyes roam your face, and he seems to be looking for more than that, so you give him more affirmations. “You can take what you need.”
Wordlessly, he straddles you, a thigh on either side of your body, and you’re trapped below the weight of him, your arms pinned to your side, the fabric of your nightgown stretched across your frame. There’s a barely-there roll of his hips, and he’s unmistakably hard as he seeks out the friction against you. He reaches behind himself, then produces his knife from his back pocket. With a click, the blade reveals itself, glinting like a promise and fuck, it shouldn’t make a burst of arousal flare up inside of you, but it does.
“You would let me do anything to you, wouldn’t you, sweetheart?” Dave asks as he turns the knife over in his hand once, twice, before giving you an expectant look.
“Yes,” you answer, obedient, eager, honest—because you would.
The cold blade—phosphated carbon steel, as he once explained to you—presses against the skin at your collarbone, the tip just hitting the side of your neck, and you swear you can feel your pulse racing against the sharp steel.
You know exactly what he can do with it, what he has done with it, and yet you trust him, literally with your life.
“You won’t hurt me, not unless you know I want it.”
You don’t miss the way he grins, or grinds down against you, or how he inspects your body under his. In a flash, he hooks the knife under one of the straps of your nightgown and pulls, the fabric parting easily around the top of the blade.
An eager hand pulls at the flap of fabric until he can fill his hand with the soft, plump flesh of your breast. With a gasp, you arch up against him, crying out when he pinches your nipple and twists.
You expect him to go for the other strap, expose your tits to him and play with them until you’re begging him for more, but instead, he fists the torn fabric and pulls it away from your body, bringing the knife up to begin cutting a slit right down the middle. With each rip-rip-rip of fabric, the throb between your legs gets more intense, and an actual moan escapes your lips when he fists the last bit of it and pulls, tearing the garment in half and pushing it to the sides of your body.
His finger dips under the waistband of your underwear, grazing just where the soft curls on your mound begin. He toys with it, pulling it from your body and letting the elastic snap against your skin, before hooking his finger back under it.
“Want me to tear this off, too?” he asks, focusing not on your face, but on the task at hand.
You take a deep breath. “Use the knife.”
That earns you his attention, something akin to pride flashing across his face before he looks back down. In one rapid move, the blade slides over your hip bone and under the fabric of your underwear. With a tug, it tears, the elastic snapping and the material folding back, exposing you to his hungry eyes.
Your head falls back against the pillow, and you moan as he repeats the action on the other side, again when he rips the fabric from between your legs.
“Open up,” he orders.
You try to move your legs, open them for him, but with his thighs still on either side of yours, it’s impossible. Just as you’re about to protest, he leans over you, grabbing you by the chin.
“Open. Your mouth.”
His fingers find your face, and the pinch to your cheeks borders on painful, making you open your mouth with a wet gasp.
Even in the dark, you can see him smile, before he tilts your head back just a tick and spits. His smile only grows when you welcome it with a moan, eyes fluttering and body surging under him before you swallow. “That’s my good girl,” he praises, kissing your open mouth before stuffing your ruined panties inside of it.
The blade is back at your throat, and the pressure of it against your voice box abruptly cuts off your answering whine. With a rough exhale Dave sits back and begins dragging the dull side of it down your body. Still, you find yourself holding your breath, your chest jutting out with the effort. Chin to your chest, you watch as he circles your nipple, once, twice, until it begins standing to attention, hardening at the cold, gentle touch. He brings it back to the centre of your chest and slides it over to your other breast, flicking at your nipple. Satisfied with how your body quivers under his, he slides the blade further down your body, following the bump of your ribcage to your belly button and down.
He shuffles back, and despite the fact that his body is no longer keeping your arms incapacitated, you keep them pressed against your torso while he crawls between your legs. With his free hand, he pulls one over each of his thighs, spreading you open for him to look at, to take you.
The knife kisses the sensitive skin of your thighs, and he keeps teasing you while he opens his trousers and takes his cock out. His eyes fix themselves on your cunt, no doubt glistening with want, even in the dim light of the night.
“You get so fucking wet for this shit, it’s depraved, sweetheart,” he grits out, and despite the fact he says it like he’s scolding you, you know he loves it. Dave is a dark man in more ways than one, and he loves that you’re like this. Like him. For him. With him.
He proves you right when he begins stroking himself, a ragged sigh sailing past his lips as he throws his head back, exposing the thick, strained tendons in his neck. He allows himself a couple seconds of relief, before he stops himself with a long exhale, a hand trailing up your thigh to touch you where you’re more than ready for him.
He fills you with two thick fingers, curling and stroking at your slippery walls, and it’s so much at once, making you cry out against the makeshift gag in your mouth.
“This sweet pussy is going to feel so perfect around my cock,” he says, eyes only leaving yours when he slowly pulls his fingers free, groaning softly at the way your body pulls at him, working to keep him inside. “Would you like that?”
You nod in the dark, unable to help yourself from bucking your hips to chase his touch. The hand that still holds the knife is quick to push you down, the blade glinting dangerously close to your hip bone.
“Want me to put it in, baby? Want me to put it all in? Push all the way inside until you can’t think about anything else but how deep you can feel me inside you?” He slides himself over your mound, pushing until the head of his cock can smear wetly under your belly button, showing off just what that would mean.
There’s so much you wish you could tell him right now. That yes, you want it. That you want him so badly to just take what he wants from you, here, like this, between the shreds of your clothes where you’re spread for the taking. That this ‘depraved shit’ does make you wet, it does when it’s him, when he uses you, when he makes it hurt.
But your affirmation is suppressed against the fabric in your mouth, nothing but incoherent, muffled babbles filling the bedroom.
And yet, it’s like he can tell exactly what you’d been thinking, because the knife hits the floor with a clatter, and if he gave you any time, you might be able to analyse the sudden surge of emotion that flows through you at the idea.
But he doesn’t give you that time. The sound of the blade startles you almost as much as the fat tip of his cock notching at your entrance, as the slide of him inside, as the sharp thrust that makes his thighs slap against the back of yours. He pushes you up the mattress with the force of it, and your hand flies up to press a palm against the headboard to keep your head from knocking against it.
“Fucking Christ,” he sighs, stilling for a second to revel in the tight squeeze of your pussy before he draws back and spears himself through your slick walls - again, again, again.
“I’m gonna make this pussy come,” he promises, voice strained. “I’m gonna make it flood my cock and then I’m gonna cover you in my come,” he adds, a hand dragging over your torso, thumb and pinkie catching on your hardened nipples before he settles his hand on your hip to pull you down against him.
The head of his cock knocks against the button of your womb with each thrust, and at your silenced keens, he falls down to a forearm, eyes boring into yours as he continues to fuck you. “I’ve got you, baby,” he assures.
Your hand curls around his bicep, fingernails digging into the fabric of his long-sleeved top. It’s wet, warm, no doubt evidence of his successful mission, and that thought, your body’s response to it, eases the glide of him inside you.
“I’ve got you,” he repeats, his hand leaving your hip to slide between your legs, to draw maddening circles around your slippery, puffy clit, and with the way he’s been working you up, you already know it will take no time at all. “You know that, right?”
You nod with a muffled groan, focusing on the way he stretches you open and plays with your clit, tears leaking from the corners of your eyes with how hard you squeeze them shut as it builds—as it all builds.
You know.
--
Thank you for reading! I hope to see you all tomorrow for October 2: Stripping. Anyone who guesses correctly which character I’ve written for will get a sneak peek at the fic in their DMs😌
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164 notes · View notes
Note
do any of the mercs play board games?
Mercopoly (Board Game
Headcanons)
Scout:
You think he has enough of an attention span to play something that doesn’t involve sweating out his energy drinks?
Hell no!
He gets very bored very quickly, especially with something complex like chess.
He’ll play cards sometimes, but only Crazy Eights and Go Fish - that’s all he knows how to play.
However, there is one true board game he plays occasionally: Candy Land.
It’s one of the few board games that you don’t really have to read the rules for, and there isn’t any writing on the cards.
However, he only asks to play it when he’s not feeling very well.
Medic even has a page in his medical journal for the mercs that says, and I quote:
“The Scout has an extremely short attention span, and if an activity isn’t active or immersive, he will not stay long. If at any point he chooses a sedentary activity, a check-up is in order.”
As sad as it is, a request to play Candyland is a good way to know if Scout needs a little extra reassurance or support.
By the end of the game, Scout usually feels more himself, whether he wins or not.
Engie is especially good with Scout when he’s this way, being the one of the most emotionally sensitive of the group. But he also knows Scout would never admit straight-away how he was feeling, so he usually has a more fun way of getting answers.
“You feelin’ more like a King Candy or a Lord Licorice?”
“...Fudge Monster.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Yeah...”
Spy:
If you ask him, he will most likely go off on a tangent about chess, and how it’s a game of strategy, deception, and crushing your enemy with your wit.
He scoffs at any other game, and constantly makes fun of several of his more intelligent peers for finding interest in them.
“You are mercenaries. Blood-thirsty killers of men. And you are playing ‘Hungry, Hungry Hippos’ like a hoarde of kindergartners?”
But one thing he cannot resist is Sorry.
He considers it above normal board games because it has strategy - or at least that what he says.
He actually just likes it because it’s a game of revenge, which is like a drug to him.
He’s gotten so good at it that if he asks you to play Sorry with him, it’s almost guaranteed that he’s mad at you and just wants to let off some steam by giving you a horrendous loss. However, occasionally, he’s the one who loses.
Spy isn’t a poor sport, exactly - he’s too cultured for that - but sometimes his pride outweighs his manners and he convinces himself that the other player cheated through made up signs of deception.
He simply “allows” them to win because he “doesn’t want to make a fuss.”
But god help the unfortunate soul who decides to rub their win in his face.
Sniper had won five games in a row, and it was clear Spy was getting hot under the collar.
Sniper ended their games with a mischievous, “You’ll get ‘em next time, tiger.” and a small pat on his shoulder.
Spy immediately saw red, grabbed Sniper’s hand, and before the aussie knew it, he was against a concrete wall with a butterfly knife to his throat.
“I could kill you right now. Your final cry for Medic will be drowned in blood, and I would leave you here to die a painful, dramatic death. You’ll be replaced with a rusted trash can of a bot until they could grow another clone of you. Every memory will be gone. The team will be shrouded in grief, not because of losing you, but losing what the clone can never have. And I shall bide my time, ask the clone to play the same game, and kill them when they win. Another clone, another kill. And again. And again. And again. You think the Manns give a damn as long as their work is getting done? You will never be able to form a single thought before I spill your blood - caught in an eternal prisoner’s dilemma where you always lose.”
After gathering his bearings, Sniper finally spoke.
“Is this about your takeout?”
Spy scoffed.
“Do you really think - !”
“Tonight, my treat if you don’t kill me.”
Spy squinted.
“Egg rolls?”
“And an extra order of crab rangoon.”
“Your treat?”
“Yep.”
“How do I know you won’t poison me?”
“Chemical test before and after the food arrives.”
“How do I know Medic isn’t in on it?”
“Miss Pauling as a witness and Scout as an overseer. Pauling’s main objective is to keep us alive, and Scout can’t do bloody anything subtle, even if he wanted to. You can also play back the cameras in the lab, if the mood really struck ya.”
Spy held Sniper against the wall for a minute or two while he thought it all over, then let Sniper fall to the ground.
“I don’t need your sympathy, bushman. But you had better keep your end of the deal. I am the only backstabber around here.”
Demo:
Can’t even stay awake long enough to play most board games.
On the rare chance that he’s sober, he, Engie, and Medic like to play Monopoly.
Here’s the thing: you should never ask a drunkard, an engineer, and a sadist genius to play Monopoly together. It will not end well.
They have been playing the same game for years, with new rules in place and physical extensions to the board in order to try and end the game. Every other Friday, they take the weekend to try and finish it.
However, it all ends up fruitless.
Demo is usually the one keeping the peace, since he is the least competitive out of the three. That isn’t to say he isn’t clawing for the win as much as the other two, but he is definitely the least invested. He’s mostly staying out of principle.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, ‘s ta ne’er give up, e’en when the goin’s gettin’ tough. Roll the dice, doc.”
Despite his confidence, he’s not even sure what he would do if he or anyone else won. It would seem more like a relief than a celebration.
Medic:
He’s the one who started the Eternal Monopoly game, which has led to some theories that the game itself came straight from hell, and is one of the many punishments used on sinners. The box does smell a bit of brimstone…
He seems to enjoy the chaos that each round brings and the challenge of coming up with new rules to the game. To any outsider, his commentary and directions are complete nonsense.
“According to zhe ‘Calvinball Rule,’ as stated by Engineer, and the ‘Double Kill,’ as stated by myself, since the current time ends vis a three and ve all received at least two kills zhis veek, ve need to double every other roll and whomever loses zhe resulting game of ‘Bim Bum’ vill have to go to zhe Purple Jail.”
The rules and mechanics are like an unholy amalgamation of Monpoly, Sorry, chess, D&D, Bluff, and poker.
However, when Medic isn’t stapling pages of rules together, he likes to play a nice, relaxing game of checkers with Heavy.
Both of them are excellent checker players, but neither of them care who wins.
In fact, they usually talk over the game, taking the other player’s pieces as one of them shares a story from that day’s battle.
They’ve even played while Heavy was in surgery - leading to many unfortunate times when Medic had to fish a piece out of Heavy’s intestines.
One would think that a genius doctor would also have a passion for chess, but he expresses his disdain for it almost every time the checker board is brought out.
“Ach, people think chess is such an intelligent sport. Let me tell you, liebling, it is terribly overrated. If zhe devil can play chess, anyvun can. He might as vell just give souls avay, vis those shaky claws of his.”
Engineer:
Being the engineer, he is usually the one to add to the Eternal Monopoly.
Pieces, board extensions, cards, trivia - it gives him a nice break from all the weaponry.
He’s usually the one who remembers all the mechanics and rules, and serves as the judge if rules contradict each other.
“Alright, now let’s see here…we’ve got the Infinity Loop over here, but now you’ve got the Time Travel card…how many years? Infinite? Ho boy…looks like I’m gonna have to add a Hilbert’s Hotel square somewhere. Hold on…”
Despite his affinity for Eternal Monopoly, Engineer will play almost any board game. He learns new rules and figures quickly, and enjoys the challenges that brings.
However, if he’s particularly burnt out, he likes to take a break by playing Jenga. He and Spy have a friendly rivalry, since Engie can tell which blocks are supporting and Spy has quick fingers.
Spy, oddly, is a lot more amiable losing in Jenga - he knows Engie won’t think less of him - but Engineer hates when the bricks fall over. Not because it means he lost, but because, to him, it’s a failure on his part…even if it was someone else that knocked it over.
He’s made several blueprints for the perfect Jenga game, but has concluded that no human hand could put it into practice.
During one particularly bad day, Engie bumped the table, causing the whole column to come crashing down. Spy had already recovered from the noise, but Engie was still standing there, stone-faced.
His eyes were covered by his goggles, but it was clear he was crying.
Several of his machines had broken on the job, and to him, this was just another egregious mistake.
Spy carefully put the blocks back in the container, and Engie came to his senses.
“I’m real sorry, Spy. Maybe another time…?”
Spy only nodded. He was thinking.
The next time they played, Spy brought out a different container.
Instead of wood, the bricks seemed to be made of a sturdy foam.
“They fall a bit more…quietly,” Spy explained. He dropped one, and it only made a small bouncing sound. “Pyro uses these, but they allowed me to borrow it.”
Engie was a bit skeptical at first, since it was a new material, but he got the hang of it rather quickly. He was almost ecstatic the first time it fell - the blocks barely made any sound at all!
After a few games, Spy had to leave for an assignment. Engie put a hand on their arm.
“Thank ya, Spy. Maybe you ain’t the cold-blooded backstabber I thought you were.”
Spy chuckled, but said little else. He didn’t want to admit that noise sensitivity plagued him as well.
Pyro:
Pyro loves board games, and has quite the collection in their room.
Each plastic piece is at least a little melted, and all the boxes have two or three scorch marks.
Hungry Hungry Hippos, Candyland, and Uno are among her favorites.
He is an absolute beast at Uno, though.
They take each game very seriously, especially when they can convince the whole team to play.
As you can imagine, it’s pure chaos - it even led to a rule in the Merc Guidebook: “When playing Uno with three or more players with the inclusion of a Pyro, at least one Mann Co. representative and/or a mediating Medic must be present.”
Pyro has been known the hide cards, bribe players, or even try to set flame to competition. Playing Uno is almost like a mission, with weapon preparation and Spy posing as other players.
The mercs even have a betting stand that Sniper runs. All parties have lost a lot of money that way.
It’s pretty much the only time outside of battle that the team remembers how cruel and malicious Pyro can be.
Sniper:
Conventional board games aren’t exactly his forté, but he does enjoy a bit of cards every once in a while - Solitaire being his favorite.
He even has a pack of cards in his Sniper Square for that exact purpose. It allows him the pass the time without having to look away from his targets too often.
On occasion, he could be pressed to play poker, but only if the stakes weren’t monetary (i.e candy pieces, crackers, duties, etc.).
His favorite part of every match is shuffling the cards. Pretty much every merc could shuffle cards, but Sniper could make them almost float with how quick his fingers and wrists moved. He always began the game with a new trick he learned, which delighted his fellow players (usually Spy, Engineer, Medic, and Demo).
You could always tell if he had a busy day because he would avoid tricks with too much movement, which would be murder on his sore fingers and hands.
Pyro is currently learning card tricks from Sniper, and show off what they learn at the beginning of every Uno game.
Heavy:
He isn’t a huge fan of the bright, plastic-y board games that Pyro has, although he will play them if asked.
It’s mostly because of how complicated the rules are and the fact there are almost never a Russian translation for the directions.
He always prefers checkers, cards, or mancala, which he almost exclusively plays with Medic because he’s the only one who speaks fluent Russian.
Heavy can play a mean game of mancala, though, and it’s the only game he can beat Medic at.
Soldier:
The only games he will play are Battleship and Uno - but only after Miss Pauling convinced him it was “American enough” because the game had red, white, and blue cards.
He prefers the electronic Battleship because of the sound effects and voices. However, if it’s out of batteries, he’ll make his own sound effects.
Miss Pauling is the best at pretending to be a commander, so she’s usually the one playing with him - but, sometimes, Demo gets in on the action, too.
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thetriggeredhappy · 3 years ago
Note
recently rediscovered your blog and read the fic from your dad spy au where scout starts out as the "guard" and then becomes scout from there and lemme tell you that shit put me on some s-tier brainrot. like a cranial decay type beat.
i had a concept in my head that instead of being hired as a guard, he could have been hired as a right hand man to the administrator like pauling, because i think hed be awesome in that position. like imagine having a personal merc who can get in fast and out even faster. but maybe he would stay in the base like the rest of them, sort of like a secret on call intel gatherer, who also maybe sometimes has to dig a couple graves. and also like, nobody on the team expects anything from him at first because its this 20 year old newbie kid. hes dressed in his formal clothes and he talks like somebody from relatively around boston but not quite. i can just imagine one day he comes back during a team dinner with his shirt half untucked and stained with blood, hair disheveled as he asks soldier if he can borrow his shovel, or him debriefing them for a mission when miss pauling is busy. same vibe as the fic i mentioned before but scout gets to have a job as cool as miss paulings. honestly id write it myself if i didnt have the attention span of a fly
anyways your scout content gives me life thank you
scout teamfortress but 20% more competent standing next to miss pauling teamfortress while she's doing her job and doing like silly quips and otherwise contributing nothing like it's a buddy cop film is literally my fucking ideal
(warnings for some canon-typical violence)
-
“Oh, Pauling, it’s good to see you again,” greeted the chairman, smiling in an imitation of a grandfather and clasping her hands perhaps too-kindly considering she barely knew him. “Young as ever, and still so stylish, I see. And who’s the new fellow?”
“He’s just here to help with transport, Mr. Montgomery, nothing unusual,” Miss Pauling replied, returning his smile and adjusting her glasses. “Heavy cases, you know how it is.”
“Of course, I remember you almost toppling clean over last time we made a trade!” Montgomery agreed, frowning at the memory. “You’ll pull a muscle that way, better to be careful. It’s a pleasure to meet you, young man. And your name?”
“Mr. Normandy, sir,” the new kid replied easily enough despite his slight East Coast accent, giving the man a firm handshake, expression neutral and stony, the picture of professionalism. Internally, Pauling breathed a sigh of relief.
“Firm grip there, young man,” Montgomery praised, nodding approvingly. “Tennis player, perhaps? Or golf?”
“Baseball, sir,” he replied, still evenly. “First baseman.”
“Ah! Of course! Were you any good?” Montgomery joked.
“At everything but playing in front of the crowds, otherwise I’d be in the major leagues,” he replied, tilting his head just slightly to imply that he was joking, his sunglasses glinting at the movement, and Montgomery barked a laugh.
“I like this one, Miss Pauling!” Montgomery said, and Pauling just barely caught herself from physically relaxing at it.
“We do too, Mr. Montgomery,” she agreed. “I was under the impression that you’re very busy today, so we won’t keep you for too long, we just wanted to sort out the final details surrounding the manufacturing rights for the—“
“—Pacific Northwest branch, up into British Columbia and Alberta, of course,” Montgomery agreed, nodding faintly. “Of course, of course.” He turned to regard his own man in a dark suit, the one standing to the right, who appeared to be unsuccessfully trying to stare down Normandy, who was completely ignoring him. “My briefcase, please.”
The man handed over the briefcase, and Montgomery put it on his desk, opening it and pulling out a sheaf of papers. “All our requests are submitted and approved, at this point we just had a few dustbins to take care of regarding initial percentages and making sure everything is wired to the correct accounts, which names are undisclosed, things like that,” Pauling explained as he glanced through the papers.
“Right, right, everything looks good here,” the man murmured, nodding to himself, sending his long-white hair just ever-so-slightly out of place. “I’m assuming these more sensitive documents should be sent some way besides through the mail?”
“If you finish them today I can take them with me, otherwise either me or Mr. Normandy can return to pick them up at your convenience,” she replied, to which Normandy gave a singular nod.
“Oh, it would only take me a short while,” Montgomery said, waving a hand. “We have a lovely lounge just down the hall from here if you’d prefer to wait there, it should only take me ten, fifteen minutes at most. In the meantime, I do believe there’s also the manner of payment for services rendered.”
Miss Pauling tilted her head just slightly to one side, confused.
“I arranged with Helen already,” Montgomery explained, not looking up from where he was initialing a few things. “The payment, rather than being wired, she asked to be made in material investment. A venture of mine from years ago that she’s willing to sit on. Rather than gold or bonds, she agreed to take some old currency of mine that my family collected, from early 18th century New Zealand and Australia. Monetarily it’s worth around the same, and I’m quite a bit attached to it to be entirely frank, but it was at her request to buy the whole collection from me, and after years of the work we’ve been doing together, well, I’d never trust it with anyone else.”
He gestured to the other man, the one on his left, who stepped forward to hand him a manila envelope, which he passed to Pauling.
“Inside is both keys, the door alarm codes, and all other security information for the building where the collection is being stored. They’ll ask for a few codes and confirmation of identity, only because several other art collections and artifacts are being stored there by other affluent individuals such as myself.”
“Thank you, Mr. Montgomery,” Pauling said, taking the envelope gratefully.
“Think nothing of it, my dear. Helen talked me into it all her own,” he said easily enough. “Now, gentlemen, if you would let Miss Pauling and Mr. Normandy into our lounge? I should have these wrapped up before any of us can even think about lunch, eh?”
One of the suits showed the two of them through the doors and down the hallway, through two doors bracketed by similar suits who simply nodded politely at Pauling and ticked their chins at Normandy as they passed them.
Normandy posted up beside the door for all of three seconds before they shut and Pauling pulled her glasses up, rubbing at the bridge of her nose and making a vaguely distressed noise. He then promptly relaxed, instead leaning his hip against an armchair probably worth the same amount as a small car. “So, uh, we’re glad that he’s giving us a bunch of commemorative coins from when dinosaurs still walked the earth?” he asked just below normal speaking volume, eyebrows raised.
“Yes. Very glad. Because unlike about six people total on the planet, he hasn’t figured out yet how valuable those are.”
“What, is a picture of a kangaroo on some copper really gonna make up for a couple hundred thousand American dollars?” Normandy asked, sounding doubtful.
“Not copper. Something else,” she replied. “I can’t tell you much more about it other than that, but these coins are made of something priceless to us. And to the Administrator.”
“…Love? Memories? The magic of family?” he joked, cracking a smile, and she rolled her eyes, moving to open the envelope and start reading the papers inside. “Hey, uh, not to question whether my job should exist, but what the hell am I doing here, exactly? Besides carrying a briefcase. Like, chivalry isn’t dead but I really don’t think you need me carrying your bags and holding the door for you.”
“You’re helping with security, basically,” she replied, adjusting her glasses to squint at tiny handwriting about the collection. “Mr. Montgomery is trustworthy, but he mostly hires out to… well, people like us. His security detail is mostly people we’d rather have screened, freelancers, stuff like that. A lot of people we contract out to are like that. Most of them have heard about me and know better than to try and pull something, since I can hold my own pretty well, but if they haven’t, seeing a second person might persuade them to think it over again.”
“Oh, so I’m like, uh, when it says ‘tow zone’ next to the no parking signs even though nobody checks, or when they’ve got a camera in the corner of the store that isn’t even plugged into anything,” he said, and the looked up at him, confused. “Like, uh, what’s the word… I’m a casual deterrent.”
“Sure,” she said, because it sounded like he knew what he was talking about, shuffling the papers back away and closing the envelope again, making a note to ask the Administrator if she should change their current containment procedures to be closer to Mr. Montgomery’s. “Just… if there’s a fight, you deal with it, otherwise you just stand there and look like you’re paying attention.”
“That’s what the sunglasses are for,” he agreed. “I was blinking morse code at the guy across from me literally the whole time.”
“You know morse code?” Pauling asked, surprised.
“Just the alphabet, ‘S.O.S.’, and ‘ass’.”
She rolled her eyes again, and that’s when the door opened.
She expected Mr. Montgomery, not one of the men in suits. “Excuse me, both of you, if you don’t mind,”the man said, accent having the slightest English tilt to it, a Londoner if Pauling had to guess. “You’re Miss Pauling, the Mann Co. affiliate, yes?”
“That’s me,” she agreed, hesitant, and glanced at Normandy.
“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. Mr. Montgomery have you the wrong envelope on accident,” the man said apologetically, extending a hand forward. “We apologize for this unfortunate mix-up, it’s really quite embarrassing, but those documents are sensitive and we’ll be needing to see them back now.”
Pauling looked at him, and within a moment, shifted her expression. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she agreed, nodding. “No, right, of course. These aren’t the papers for the currency collection?”
“I’m afraid not,” the Brit agreed, head tilting just slightly, hand still extended, moving a fraction further forward.
“Well, thank goodness we figured out now and not with us halfway back,” she joked, and moved to hold the folder closer to her body. “I’ll take this right back to Mr. Montgomery, then.”
“He’s sent me to correct the error,” the man explained simply.
“Right,” she said, and saw in her periphery that Normandy had already started sneaking a hand in towards his primary, clearly having pieced together something she was only suspecting. “We can bring this to his office, then, right down the hall.”
“You misunderstand,” the man said, taking a step forward again. “I’ll be taking it to his office myself.”
“That’s funny,” Pauling said. “I didn’t realize you had clearance to be in there. Or to be carrying a semi-automatic instead of a standard handgun.”
The Brit reached for the semi-automatic, and before he could even get it out properly, Normandy hit one clean shot to the side of his head and another to his thigh, sending him crumpling to the ground.
Pauling had only as far as pulling her own handgun free, thumb on the safety, and breathed a sigh of relief, glancing over at Normandy, shifting to more comfortably hold her gun. “Quick reflexes,” she noted.
“Just noticed a lot sooner, maybe,” he shrugged, stepping forward to glance over the body, tucking his gun back away.
“What was your hint?”
“He’s here to give us the right folder, yeah? Well, why were his hands empty, then?”
She was just starting to nod and realize that as well when a second man shouldered through the door, holding a gun at the ready. Normandy scrambled to draw his own, but Pauling fired a shot into his knee, shoulder, and neck to send him dropping before he was even close. “There’s quick on the draw, and then there’s prepared,” she said pointedly. “Gotta think of if there’s more than one, new guy.”
He nodded, and drew his gun again, bending to hit the guy on the ground at the temple hard enough to knock him out if he wasn’t unconscious already. He then glanced up at the sound of a shout from the other side of the door, two men shouldering through, guns drawn but lowered. It was only the firm eye contact they made with both her and Normandy that made her pause the millisecond it took to realize these ones weren’t trying to kill them.
“Pauling, what on earth is going on here?!” Montgomery demanded, entering the room and staring with wide eyes at the bodies on the ground. “What could’ve possessed you to—“
“He was trying to run off with these documents,” she explained quickly, gesturing with the envelope. “He knew whatever was in here was valuable.”
“He drew his gun, sir,” Normandy added, tipping his head down towards the body, and Pauling glanced down as well and found herself a little surprised. He’d rearranged the man just slightly, apparently, adjusting the arm to be holding the gun a bit further outward. “Other one was aiming to kill.”
“My, my,” Montgomery tsk’d, shaking his head as he surveyed the scene. “What a mess. My apologies, Miss Pauling, Mr. Normandy.”
“It’s alright, but you need to start doing more thorough checks on your staff, Mr. Montgomery,” Pauling stressed.
“He’s only been here two weeks, sir, he was one of the men we hired in a hurry after the incident last month,” one of the bodyguards said, and Montgomery shook his head.
“Thank goodness nobody was hurt,” he sighed. “Mutiny, and besides that, they’re bleeding on my carpet. Here are those papers, Miss Pauling—what a day, eh?”
“It’s really alright, we handled it,” Pauling assured him, giving her bravest smile, a little exasperated now.
“Right, right, you and the first baseman,” he agreed, and Normandy fought back an actual smile.
“If you’d like, we can take care of those for you,” Pauling said, gesturing at the bodies. “To pay you back for the carpet and the scare.”
“Sounds fair to me,” Montgomery agreed, clearly relieved.
-
“My dad’s gonna be pissed, by the way,” Normandy was so helpful as to say on the way back up the path to the base. “And you’re fielding that.”
“About the suit, or the fight?” she asked, glancing at his clothes where he was somewhat covered in a fine dusting of mud and grime from the gravedigging, shovel still in his free hand.
“Both. Mostly the fight. Your fault for saying it’d be an easy one to start with,” he said.
“If it was going to be that much of a problem, you wouldn’t have gotten this job. I’d just have made you go do dishes all day or something,” Pauling replied.
“Point taken,” he said, walking ahead to get the door, holding it open for her. “Wait, we’re allowed to mention what we do, right? Just not names?”
“Or locations, even with travel distance. Round up to the hour if it comes up,” she replied.
“Sure, sure,” he agreed, trailing a step behind her as she led the way through the base.
In the common area, there was a bit of a ruckus happening. Soldier, Heavy, and Demo appeared to be having some kind of arm wrestling competition on a rapidly-toppling table, the Engineer was on a stepstool trying to fix the ceiling fan, and Sniper appeared to be half-watching the beginnings of an argument between Pyro and the Spy regarding use of the oven as Medic patched up a burn on his arm.
“Hullo,” Sniper greeted the two of them, sounding a little bored, Medic giving them a brief, polite nod. Normandy’s eyebrows were raised pretty far as he surveyed the room.
“Hi, Sniper,” she greeted in return, then cleared her throat, raised her voice. “Team meeting in five minutes! New mission for next week!”
Groans from the room at large, the eight mercenaries starting to finish up what they were doing and filing out. Spy moved over, glancing over Normandy and starting to talk to him in rapid-fire French, picking smaller bits of gravel off of his suit as they walked.
“Alright,” she addressed the room, Normandy peeling off from getting mother hen’d by Spy to stand next to the blackboard with her. “Monday, you’re all going on a transport mission. Getting the truck from point A to point B with everything in the boxes intact. Already we’ve had to put up with some people trying to get ahold of these things, so bring your guns.”
“Oh, our guns, you said? Lads, this is a serious one, keep your heads on a feckin' swivel, she’s sayin’ we might even need guns, can you believe it?” Demo faux-gasped, and chuckled when Spy bopped him on the arm, rolling his eyes at the Scot's theatrics.
“Yeah, yeah,” she waved off, flipping through the papers a bit. “So Engie, I’ll need the keys to the truck, me and Normandy are going to be loading those tomorrow, all of you need to be at this drop point bright and early.”
“How early?” Heavy rumbled.
“Six. Hour and a half of drive from here.”
Some complaints from the room that she sighed at.
“Hey, hey, calm the hell down,” Normandy cut in, and she glanced over at him where he had his arms crossed and a stern look on his face. “You chuckleheads get to have all eight of you to unload the damn thing, me and Miss P gotta do all the rest of this on our own and probably kill twenty guys on the way there and back. She had to be up at 6 AM, workin’ since 7 AM, lunch break at noon and nothin’ else, and we just got back now at, what, fuckin’, 10, 11 PM? Any of you work her shift and then see if you even got the energy to complain about wakin’ up early, how about that?”
The room went utterly devoid of complaint or backsass. “Thank you, Normandy,” she said politely, and he just nodded once, glancing off to the side. “Anyways, anything new on this end? Spy, how are you adjusting?”
“Very well,” he said simply. “I have nothing pressing to say. Once I’ve been updated from the stock weaponry provided here to my requested preferred weaponry, I believe I should do just fine.”
“I see you already have Herr Normandy digging graves,” Medic chimed in. “Straight into the hard labor, ja?”
“Eh, hey, y’know, it’s why they keep us young people around,” he shrugged, grinning, and there was a brief uproar to drown out Medic’s entirely offended scoffing and Spy’s snort-laughing.
“Get ‘im, lad!” Demo cheered, and Normandy indeed looked fairly proud of himself.
“Monday, transport mission,” Pauling noted over the noise, writing it up on the chalkboard to hide her own smile from the room. “Normandy, you and me are doing the boxes tomorrow. Everyone on the same page? Good. Dismissed. Oh, and Pyro—stop taking the fire alarms down when they beep. They’re beeping because you light things on fire in the base. Do that outside.”
“Oh, hey, uh, helmet guy, All-American Beef,” Normandy called, and Soldier straightened up. “Here’s your shovel back. Gettin’ my own tomorrow.”

Soldier walked directly over to him, clasping a hand on his shoulder. “That’s a high honor, Cadet,” he said, tone grave. “Do not take this responsibility lightly.”
“I, uh, I won’t?” he said hesitantly, and blinked a few times as the shovel was carefully taken from him before it was promptly marched from the room in double-time. Only then did Normandy look over at her. “So he’s always like that?”
“You’ll get used to it,” she assured, dusting chalk from her hands. “You should get to sleep soon, we have to be up early.”
“Sure thing, Miss P.”
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mybg3notebook · 3 years ago
Text
Gale: Hypothesis and Analogies – Part 1
Here, I compile several hypotheses that are pretty common to find around, expressing my opinion on them and showing what EA has given us so far to justify them or not. 
Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.
Disclaimer about interpretations of Real Life concepts: I’m not a fan of bringing real life issues into plain analogies/allegories in a game which intention in doing so was not made explicit, but the fandom seems to like this aspect and therefore I would like to share those opinions here as well since some seems reasonable despite not being of my taste. This topic may be sensitive for some people. Be aware of it.
Hypothesis: Gale was groomed
Concept
Grooming is building a relationship, trust, and emotional connection with a child or young person (and sometimes their family as well) to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse. Grooming allows offenders to slowly overcome natural boundaries long before sexual abuse occurs. On the surface, grooming a child can look like a close relationship between the offending adult, the targeted child and (potentially) the child’s caregivers. The grooming process is often misleading because the offender may be well-known or highly regarded in the community. As a result, it’s easy to trust them. Although grooming is more common among children, it may happen with adults too, especially in work environments.
Stages: First, perpetrators may target and exploit a child’s perceived vulnerabilities: emotional neediness, isolation, neglect, a chaotic home life, or lack of parental oversight, etc. They work to gain the trust of parents/caregivers to lower suspicion.
Once the perpetrator begins to fill the child's needs, they may assume a more important role in the child's life. Perpetrators utilize tactics such as gift giving, flattery, gifting money, and meeting other basic needs. Tactics may also include increased attention and affection towards the targeted child. The perpetrator uses isolation tactics to reinforce their relationship with the child by creating situations in which they are alone together or by cultivating a sense that they love and understand the child in a way that others, even their parents, cannot. 
Once emotional dependence and trust have been built, the perpetrator progressively sexualizes the relationship. When sexual abuse is occurring, perpetrators commonly use emotional manipulation; they make the child believe they are the only person who can meet their emotional and material needs. The child may feel that the loss of the relationship, or the consequences of exposing it, will be more damaging and humiliating than continuing the unhealthy relationship. 
Behavioural consequence
The consequences on victims of grooming tend to be very different depending on the victim's age, personality, and psychology, but some broad leftover traits or behaviours can be summarised as:
They are too eager to please and have a great avoidance of angering others.
Big desire for privacy: they know others will not understand what they lived.
The victim becomes withdrawn, or they may seem troubled by something but unwilling to talk about it. Alternatively, their emotions might become more volatile.
They tend to be unaware of the abuse for a long while even after the relationship ended. 
If they are aware, they tend to display shame and embarrassment for what happened.
They can suffer abandonment issues depending on the way this relationship ended. 
They tend to develop difficulties to maintain relationships.
This situation tends to be particularly invisible or dismissed for men and boys due to social norms about masculinity.
Inside the context of BG3
First, it's important to estimate Gale's age. More or less the fandom agrees he is currently (1492DR) in his early 30s. Mystra returned in 1479DR (read the post about "Mystra and her Chosen ones" for details), so Mystra may have lured Gale into serving her as Chosen when he was around 17 years old (this depends on every player’s perception of Gale’s age)
This gives us a good estimation of the context: When Mystra returned thanks to Elminster—who gave her most of his Silver Fire—she immediately started to strengthen her network of Chosen ones and to work on repairing the Weave to its original state. Due to this unique context, Gale may have been observed by Mystra as a precious asset: a very young wizard who could not only control the Weave but compose it: a great skill to repair a still weak Weave. Furthermore, in the novel Dead Masks (1491DR), it is stated that the best way to cast a spell with a weakened Weave is to "twist" it instead of using it for tapping into the Raw Magic. In this book it is not clear if this is a skill that only Chosen ones have, but it has a strong similarity with Gale's skills.
Although we don't know much about Gale's childhood, if he was neglected or not as a child to be more easily lured by the Goddess, we can agree that it's most likely that Mystra has been watching him as a potential candidate since a child. Gale explicitly says: "I’ve been in touch with the Weave for as long as I can remember". And as far as Forgotten Realms lore goes, Weave and Mystra are the same. We also know that this is a common behaviour of Mystra who has been watching precocious, skilful wizards before choosing them for her goals: for example, Midnight. 
When Gale reached an age that could be considered a "(very) young man", she seduced him, using his passion and love for Magic to lure him. She offered him a deep connection with her and with the Weave: with Magic itself. After seeing Gale's passion for magic, it is understandable that he—as a teenager or a young man—must have been dazzled by her and her proposal. We know that, in the novel Elminster: a mage in the making, she offered to Elminster exactly what he wanted the most: power to make his revenge possible . By the end of the encounter, Elminster became “charmed” by her despite hating her throughout all his life, turning into her devotee. This situation can be interpreted as another example of how Mystra works: she seems to lure her potential Chosen with the promise of giving them what they are most passionate about.
Once Mystra slept with her Chosen, and imbued her divine essence on them, she left them to their own devices, making them wait for her commands. In Elminster’s and Sammaster ‘s case, both were put under tests, being forced—by their own drive to please the Goddess—to develop more magic and personal skills to serve her. In the process, both developed an obsession for her. Elminster's seems to be less self-destructive than Sammaster's, but the latter could be understandable since he always suffered from madness. My point is, the pattern continues with Gale: driven by this obsession of wanting Mystra close, to please her, Gale tried to control an ancient magic, and failed, being abandoned by Mystra due to this mistake.
Gale, according to this interpretation as a victim of grooming, is still stuck in the process: he wants to please Mystra, wants to right his wrongs, even though in some scenes he seems to have been over her, in others he still seems to be very attached to her (it's hard to know which is the most accurate since it's EA and Gale was rushed), he keeps all this trouble in private because he knows nobody will understand.
Unlike an adult who realised he was victim of grooming, Gale seems to be still not over that relationship, showing many of the behavioural consequences: 
Gale is a person who is always eager to please and avoid confrontations. If there is no choice he will use violent means, but he will always push for diplomatic approaches [1,2]. This trait seems to favour this interpretation.
He has a strong sense of privacy to the point that he is considered "shady". A lot of that desire for privacy may come from the fact that he knows no one will understand the unique relationship he had with a bigger entity. This can be seen by choosing the meanest options during the Weave and the Loss. Despite his many troubles, he remains secretive, acknowledging that "some things can't be spoken". 
He is completely unaware of having been a victim of such power imbalance. He doesn't see abuse in it, and he is not performative about this fact, since he is very private on the topic until very late in game.
Nobody can deny his abandonment issues (which are even explicitly pointed out in the dev's notes) [20]
We can infer, by all the information given, that Mystra has been his first (and presumably only) relationship so far, giving a possible hint that he may have decided not to enter another relationship again or may have felt apprehensive about it (even though I personally think this impediment is mainly caused by the “orb”).
I don't completely subscribe to this interpretation because I don’t think Mystra’s main goal has been sexual abuse, but the creation of servants and devotees that allow her to expand her power. To do so, she uses sex as part of the “ritual” that transforms certain mortals into Chosen Ones. The way in which this is indirectly explained in the novels makes me remember the concept of Zeus and his abuse of mortals: he spreads part of his divinity in the form of demi-god offspring. In Mystra’s case, she seems to leave part of her divinity in the Chosen one that slept with her: the “seed” of semi-divinity. 
However, it’s not clear if sleeping with her Chosen ones is a procedure she always does. Her daughters may have inherited her divinity when she conceived them while possessing a mortal body, but other female Chosen Ones seemed to be out of this process. Ed Greedwood also has a constant discourse in his novels where he explains that magic is “better” understood or much easily wielded by females because “they are connected to their emotions” and another stereotype of this kind. What seems to be clear is that Forgotten Realm lore hides as much as possible its queerness, and when it comes to Mystra, this habit of sleeping with her Chosen seems to apply (or at least make it more explicit) only to male mortals. So in short, her main goal was to catch another useful mortal to her group of Chosen Ones, and to do so, she lured Gale with all what she could offer. I also believe gods are gods, and they are immensely overpowered and entitled to do whatever they want in this fantasy world. They don't follow mortal rules, so they may have little scruples to do anything they see necessary to achieve their own goals, no matter if the consequences of their actions affect children, teenagers, or adults. 
Mystra in particular has been a very neutral goddess (due to her many rebirths), not particularly cruel as an evil deity could be, but not completely selfless either: she has conceived her daughters using a mortal vessel who previously gave her consent but without knowing the consequences of giving birth each year for a decade while containing a goddess inside. Mystra also profited off of Sammaster's madness (some Harpers who wrote Sammaster’s reports suspect she could have been able to cure him): she may have actively decided not to in order to let his genius madness increase her realm of power/magic. Therefore, Mystra may have had little scruples to use a very young Gale enamoured with magic to turn him into another Chosen whose skills could fix the Weave given the context that it had been severely weakened after the Spellplague. So the grooming is not completely misplaced in my opinion.
Gale's Chosen selection process is not different to what we can read in the book of the Cult of the Dragon, where Sammaster became obsessed with Mystra after sleeping with her and developed metamagic as a consequence to impress her. Or in the novel Elminster, the making of a mage, where Elmister originally despised Mystra and every magic user. However, after being in her presence, he fell for her charm, and never could get over his "love" for her, suffering a lot of painful circumstances to just be a "good devotee" and serve her.
Mystra is written in most novels as the living allegory of the beautiful "mean" woman who will always ask for more from her poor captivated men, but she will never be completely satisfied, no matter how much they sacrifice. She acknowledges the effort, but she is always asking for more. Only with Elminster she actively tried to save him from the Hells, showing, for a change, that her Chosen can be a bit more than mere pawns in the big game of divine power. However, it's important to highlight that the last rebirth of Mystra has changed her: in the novel Dead Masks some of the Seven Sisters explicitly say that Mystra has turned paranoid, asking each of her Chosen to do missions that the others cannot know. She has become more secretive and cryptic than ever. 
Mystra's actions seem to have worse connotation if we think that she can have visions of the future, as she had when she decided that Sammaster had to be her Chosen: she had foresaw the death of another Chosen and she wanted him to fill that vacuum before the event happened. So she may have foreseen Gale’s actions in his naive way to impress her. Maybe she wanted him to do it, so she could have a new piece of magic in her realm. But this is mere speculation, we will need the full release of the game to have the answer.
As I explained, despite not being a fan of it, the interpretation of grooming is not a bad one. It fits mostly if it's applied to a teenage boy, and probably it would have been taken a bit more seriously and less prone to jokes inside the fandom if Gale were a female character and Mystra a male God. 
Hypothesis: Gale has abandonment Issues
Concept
Abandonment issues arise when an individual has a strong fear of losing loved ones. A fear of abandonment is a form of anxiety. It often begins in childhood when a child experiences a traumatic loss. Children who go through this experience may then begin to fear losing other important people in their lives. Some individuals continue to fear abandonment as they grow older. Although it is less common, abandonment issues can also sometimes begin in adulthood. 
The loss often stems from a trauma, such as a death or divorce. Emotional abandonment, where a parent or caregiver is physically present but emotionally absent, may also give rise to abandonment issues later in life. It is not clear what makes one person develop this fear, since not all humans who have experienced similar losses do it. Trauma — potentially from abuse or poverty — may play a role, as may the level of emotional support that a person receives following a loss. These issues can have a significant effect on a person’s life and relationships because they fear that the other person will leave them at any moment. 
Behavioural signs/consequences
Being overly eager to please ( a “people pleaser”) 
Pushing others away to avoid rejection
Jealousy of the partner or the others when in a relationship.
Trouble trusting their partner's intentions.
Feeling insecure about their relationships.
Codependency
Need for continuous reassurance that others love them and will stay with them
Persisting in unhealthy relationships
Inability to maintain relationships: or moving quickly from one relationship to another or sabotaging them
Inside the context of BG3
I'm not going to explain this in great detail since it's spread in most of the posts I’ve done about Gale's analysis. What it's clear is that Gale has a constant fear for abandonment once he starts caring for Tav as a friend or/and lover, and this fear makes him prone to do things of poor taste. This fear seems to make him look for acceptance that only through a night of intimacy can give him. This information is apparently in the book he read, making us guess that his experience with relationships is rather poor if nonexistent. Dev's notes also reinforce the idea that Gale fears abandonment:
Gale: It is my truth, finally revealed. It is this folly that led Mystra to abandon me completely. I can only hope you won’t abandon me as well. After all we’ve been through. After the night we spent together. Surely we can brave even this side by side Dev's note: Solemn. Full of yearning, his news will not lead to him being abandoned by the player. 
Gale: Loyalty is such a… such a very rare commodity. Dev's note: The reference to loyalty foreshadows Mystra leaving him. 
So far in EA, we can see that Gale checks some behavioural consequences of this fear: he is always eager to please, approaching Tav with courtesy and jovial manners, only displaying his most acidic side to a Tav whose actions are evil. In that case, Gale cares little if Tav leaves him. With the Loss scene we can see that it is hard for him to give his trust to others, pushing them away because they would not understand the grave mistake he made. His trust demands constant progression from the Stew scene, to the Weave, to the Loss scene. If he is romanced, he asks several times if Tav is thinking of the Weave moment. When Tav asks him this question, Gale will deflect, always asking back to have Tav’s answer first before giving his: it could be interpreted as Gale looking for constant reassurance in the blooming relationship. 
However, in my opinion, the best situation that shows his abandonment issues is during our meeting with Gandrel. Gale disapproves of handing over Astarion, by telling Tav about an anecdote of a dog turning old and mean: how his friend got rid of the animal just because it was an inconvenience. This is very curious since Gale's mistrust for Astarion is not a secret: he stated many times that Astarion is a danger to the group, and his wickedness causes him to strongly dislike him. The reason for this is quite obvious if we see both lists of approvals: mostly what one approves the other disapproves. Despite all this, Gale strongly judges Tav for handing Astarion over, and his disapproval for doing it shows that Gale is not lying on the matter: the meta-knowledge is trustworthy information. 
This can be understood better when Tav defends Astarion against Gandrel: Gale approves twice of defending him. If Astarion is not in the group when meeting the monster hunter, the first approval happens when Tav recognises that Astarion is part of their companions/friends (therefore, Tav is showing care for their group). The second approval happens when Tav reinforces their loyalty to Astarion insisting that they won’t give his location (this is a clear display of loyalty that Gale acknowledges as rare. See the post of "Gale Hypotheses- Part 2", section: "Proposition to Cheat" for more details). Although Gale will explicitly question this decision, he secretly approved it (the approvals we saw are meta-knowledge: only the player sees them). Considering the undeniable context that Gale deeply dislikes Astarion, we may interpret this as Gale seeing in Tav a loyal person who will not abandon someone they care for, even if that person endangers them. Loyalty is something that resounds deeply in Gale due to his abandonment issues. 
 Another detail on this matter can be seen during the party. If Tav arranges spending the night with a companion and then asks (non-romanced) Gale the same, he will answer:
Gale: You are all too quick to abandon the one you promised yourself to. It’s not a quality I admire.
This line shows that first, Gale is not interested in casual sex; he needs the connection that the Weave provides and Tav’s explicit, previous romantic interest in it. Second, when Gale is romanced but Tav sleeps with someone else, Gale will not interfere in that affair, but he may not like it (due to his, I suppose, jealous comment since he doesn’t display an approval penalty for this). However, he seems to equate loyalty with commitment, understanding that affair as a fling but believing he still holds the romantic interest of Tav, hence his proposition the next day. More details in the post of "Gale Hypotheses- Part 2", section: "Proposition to Cheat".
---------
Sources for both parts:
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( 5V)
Some concepts were summarised from: https://melcrowecounsellor.com www.d2l.org/child-grooming-signs-behavior-awareness/
This post was written in June 2021. → For more Gale: Analysis Series Index
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itsclydebitches · 3 years ago
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Hey Clyde, did you check out Wonder Egg Priority at all? The first ep is super promising, but the series as a whole is one of those real fascinating disasters from a story and a production standpoint that might be up your alley as a thing to pick apart haha.
I’d warn that it’s also reeeeal offensive and this generally gets worse as it goes though.
Hi, Phoenix! How are you and Cube doing?
Okay, I hadn't watched Wonder Egg Priority when I received your ask this morning. Now I have. In a fit of intense curiosity I settled down for a rare binge session and tore through all twelve episodes + OVA in a single sitting. It is now nearly 3:00am as I write this because I, oh so clearly, make fantastic life choices.
A question for you: what did I just watch?
The rest is going under a read more partly for spoilers, but more-so because WEP—and the summary I'm about to give, because I feel like I need to try and explain this to tumblr's faceless void for my own, dwindling sanity—comes with about every trigger warning under the sun. Seriously, if you are triggered by anything that we might think of as a "standard" trigger (meaning, not unique to you and your own experiences), best to proceed with caution.
Right! What the ever loving fuck happened in this show? Well, let's work through this chronologically. Two genius, frat boy brothers (I get their names mixed up so I'm not even gonna bother) are locked in their apartment and closely monitored because of Super Secret Science Research. Even though, I think, they're the ones who created this company. Not important! What is important is that they're bored enough to create an AI for funsies, thinking of her as their daughter and letting her name herself Frill. Frill is the perfect, cutesy, also genius child who has a habit of popping her lips — which the camera focuses on in an incredibly creepy fashion. One day Brother #1 (the hot one) falls in love with a random woman we know nothing about and Frill gets jealous.
"Jealous in a general sense?" you ask, thinking this show is in any way normal. "Like, just of her Dad giving attention to someone else?"
"No," I respond, patting your hand. "Jealous because she's in love with him." Which, beyond the subject matter itself, comes completely out of nowhere. Frill has a line about what you'd do if some woman stole your husband away. I, fool that I was, briefly considered that these two guys were lovers, not brothers. Oh no. They're brothers. Frill just considers Dad #1 to be her "husband."
So, in true evil AI fashion, she murders the wife, leaving only her newly born child behind. Who is a daughter.
Uh oh.
Dad #1 locks Frill in a coffin-esque hole in the basement and goes on with his life. Things are great! Until years later when the daughter reveals that she has fallen in love with her uncle (Dad #2 to Frill). She knows (somehow??) that both her dad and her uncle loved her mom, so if the loser uncle will just wait a few years he can marry her instead! He brushes her off, but the next day she’s found dead of an apparent suicide.
Realizing that this was somehow Frill’s doing, he marches down to the basement and confronts the murderous child they’ve had locked up for years. She’s now surrounded by screens in, again, true creep AI fashion. How did she get all this while she was locked up? Oh, just the three bug girls she created as friends prior to killing the wife. They’re devoted slaves, I guess. So the uncle says enough of this insanity and seemingly sets Frill on fire.
OH and Frill’s subtitled dialogue also puts “uncle” in quotation marks, implying that the daughter was always Dad #2’s??
Anyway, both brothers are now super obsessed with death and claim that they think Frill has had a hand in lots of girls’ suicides, even now after her own death. This is brought into question later when it’s revealed that they might have just concocted this scheme to try and bring back their daughter. I’m really not sure. Regardless, they use hand-wavey science to create eggs that I guess contain the souls of young girls who have committed suicide, then they sucker in other young girls who have lost people to suicide to try and rescue their loved ones in a dream world, saving others along the way. A tomboyish girl, Momoe, lost a classmate who admitted to loving her, but who Momoe rejected. Rika, a former junior idol, used and rejected an overweight fan only to learn later that she’d starved herself to death. Neiru, the 14yo president of some science company (yup) was attacked by her sister before she jumped off a bridge. Finally Ai, our protagonist, is a victim of bullying who managed to make friends with a single girl, Koito, who then jumped from their school building for unknown reasons. They’re all given the chance to bring these individuals back to life, provided they protect other victims of suicide by defeating the monstrous traumas that drove them to that act in the first place.
And you know what? That concept was great. However, the execution ranges from “Okay, that was pretty good for an anime. Kudos there” to “That’s the most offensive thing I’ve seen in my life.” Needless to say, unpacking all the battles they fight would take a lot more than this already absurd summary. Basically, if you can think of something horrible to happen to young girls (and one trans guy whose existence in that egg undermines the whole message of the episode), there’s an attempt to tackle it here.
During all this the four girls become friends and Ai works through her suspicions about Mr. Sawaki, a teacher at her school. What’s going on with Mr. Sawaki? Uh… everything! He’s somehow connected to Koito’s death, he’s dating Ai’s mom, and Ai apparently loves him too because her friends say so, even though this is never actually addressed and she barely interacts with him. It’s all quite the complication.
In time though the girls complete their “mission” of bringing their loved ones back to life. Rika and Momoe manage it first, only to find that Frill’s bug-girl lackeys have arrived to kill them. Why? Because that’s what Frill does, I guess. Momoe’s crocodile familiar (cute animals the girls were gifted to help them fight) takes a killing blow for her and the bug-lady then proceeds to carve up his corpse and force feed it to Momoe. Fantastic!! Building off of that, the next bug-lady who Rika encounters kills her turtle too, following in the footsteps of her bug-sister by, presumably, forcing her to eat parts of its head. Ai refuses to sacrifice her familiar to stay alive, but luckily the suicide she was protecting turns out to be herself from a parallel universe (that's a thing now!) and she takes the killing blow herself, which is done by pulling out the eye she’s sensitive about (she has heterochromia.) So parallel Ai passes on (again?) and the three girls don’t work through this trauma at all, instead becoming more traumatized through the realization that the loved ones they brought back no longer remember them. They’re alive, but the relationship they all had with them is dead.
It’s about this point that the main storyline wraps up and I’m relieved that there’s an OVA to finish things off. Surely they can somehow bring this all together in 45 minutes.
…25 minutes of that OVA is recap.
So with only about 20 minutes left, we learn that Neiru, the only one to not complete her mission yet, has mysteriously gone missing. It turns out she was an AI/clone/something all along, made to replace her sister and, presumably, that’s what caused the whole stabbing-suicide incident. She successfully brings her sister back, but stays behind in the dream world because Frill promises her she can become human. How is Frill here when she’s dead? How will Neiru become human? Isn’t Frill the “temptation of death” or whatever? There are no answers. A flashback finally reveals that Koito was having a relationship with a teacher at another school, he committed suicide, she transferred, she tried the same thing with Mr. Sawaki, he kept refusing her advances, and finally while threatening suicide to get his attention, she accidentally fell.
(So why was she in the suicide egg if it was an accident??)
Except, all this information comes through Mr. Sawaki himself, there’s a whole subplot about whether he’s really a villain, or if Ai is just making him into one, and this show might as well be titled How Much Pedophilia Can We Put into One Anime? So make of that what you will.
A dead character randomly shows up, but it's fine because she's actually just a version from a parallel world. How did she get here? Why is she here? Lol, it's cute that you think these are answered.
Rika, the character who cuts and almost committed suicide halfway through the show, breaks down saying how much she misses her dead loved ones, right after her friends refused to let her go on another mission that would surely end in her death and… that’s it. That’s all we get about her.
Momoe too, though she’s hopefully just vibing somewhere with that longed-for boyfriend.
Ai transfers schools and then one day randomly remembers that she loves Neiru and rushes back to start cracking eggs again because that will? Somehow?? Let her see Neiru???
When I say there are too many unanswered questions to possibly list here I really, really mean it.
Finally, in a personal attack on me, the protagonist with a name that is literally AI is not in any way an artificial intelligence.
And that’s it! Congratulations, you now “understand” WEP. And see, the funny thing is that the off-the-rails, bat-shit crazy aspects kind of catch you off guard? Yeah, the first episode is fantastic. In fact, I think I got through about six episodes thinking that this was a solid, if at times really messed up anime, but I was willing to shrug off a lot of stuff due solely to the amount of sensitive material they were attempting to cover (which is always quite difficult to do). Probably the only reason I was able to binge so fast was because the first half of the series was so engaging. The characters are charming. The animation is GORGEOUS. There's actually a ton of good here that is also worth yelling about. But then the plot comes in like a freight train and I was left staring dumbfounded at my screen as more and more insanity kept happening. Having watched the "explanations" I am now more confused about the show I just saw.
Phoenix, if you’ve bothered to read this rambling, 3:00am rant: thank you. I think? Idk if I should actually be thanking you or cursing you for tuning me into this, but it was definitely an experience, that’s for sure lol.
I'm off to bed now RIP the chance of having normal dreams ✌️
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five-rivers · 4 years ago
Text
Long Night in the Valley chapter 12
The scene shifted the moment Tempest woke up. They were outside, on a street in the middle of the city.  Storm clouds circled overhead.  
Tempest stood in front of them, hands in her pockets, a bland expression on her face.  
“So,” she drawled.  “You’re Nine’s friends.”
“Uh,” said Ochako, taken aback.  Right after Four had said she wouldn’t talk to them, this was disconcerting.   “Yes?”
“I’m his teacher,” said Aizawa, stepping forward.
“Yeah?  You think you’re doing a good job raising up little child soldiers?”
“Excuse me?” said Aizawa.  
“You heard me.”  She shifted her gaze to Ochako, then to Todoroki and Iida.  “I bet Souma told you I wouldn’t be talking to you.”
“He did say something along those lines, yes,” said Iida, even as Ochako worked very hard to elbow him.
“I can follow why he’d think that,” Tempest said. “I spent most of my life fighting against the government.  Lord knows I wouldn’t have approved of him choosing a ‘pro hero’ to follow after him.”  She took her hands out of her pockets to make air quotes.  She was wearing brass knuckles.  “Whatever a pro hero is supposed to be.  Government lackeys.  Cops and war criminals with a different name.  I’m shocked he pulled a halfway decent person from the muck.”
“We’re not war criminals!” protested Iida.  
“Oh, yeah?  I forgot, the Geneva convention was nixed, wasn’t it?  They had this big meeting and decided none of it applied to metahumans, and then, bam!  Everyone’s a metahuman, so it doesn’t apply at all, huh?  Neat, right?”
“What we’re doing now might not be what you’re used to,” said Ochako, “but it’s the way society works, now.”
“And we’re not killing people, like you did,” said Iida.  Ochako winced at his combative addition.  
“I did what I had to, to get people out of the torture camps,” said Tempest.  “People like my little sister.  You know what they did to her?  They thought her power was just controlled by her voice.  So, they cut out her vocal cords.”
“They don’t do that anymore,” said Todoroki.  
“You think a government like that is just going to stop doing things?  Without people making them?  Without being forced?”  Tempest laughed and looked up at the swirling sky.  “Maybe you do.  You’re just kids, after all.  But tell me this, do you think they didn’t know exactly what was happening to your family, Todoroki Shouto?”
Aizawa cleared his throat.  “What’s your point, here?” he asked.  “What do you want from us?”
Tempest looked back at Aizawa.  The coldness in her brown eyes made Ochako shiver.  “We could have kept you out,” she said. “That Suzuki idiot, too.  Do you know why we didn’t?”
“Enlighten us,” said Aizawa.  
“Because the way we do it would cause irreparable brain damage.  We know, because we’ve done it before.  I thought it was worth it, but the others didn’t want to hurt ‘Nine’s friends.’”
“Are you implying that we aren’t Midoriya’s friends?” asked Todoroki, frowning.  
Tempest huffed and wind whipped down the road, making Ochako cover her face.  
“No.  To be honest, I’m not completely sold on Nine, either.  He wanted to part of the system so bad, and that’s not to mention—” she huffed again.  “At least he knows what it’s like to be on the other side of the equation.  You four, though… I’m stuck with Nine.  I don’t owe you anything and you’re causing all these problems.  What I want from you—”
Behind her, lightning snapped down from the sky.
“—is to prove to me you’re worth it.”
.
“Vlad, the police were able to find your car,” said Powerloader, holding his hand over the receiver of the staff room telephone.
“Oh, thank goodness,” said Vlad.  “I hate taking public transportation.”  He paused.  “I mean, uh, did they find Yagi?  Is he alright?”
“No, they didn’t find Yagi.”
“Great,” said Vlad.  “So, ask them when I can pick it up.  Why are you making that face?  Did Yagi total it?  I bet he did.  ‘Symbol of Peace,’ my—”
“No,” interrupted Powerloader.  “Yagi didn’t total it.  Or crash it.  It was parked in an alley near the Musutafu entertainment district.”
“Where Midoriya had that fight with Hawks,” said Vlad, putting his head in his hands.  “It got wrecked by one of them, didn’t it?”
“No,” said Powerloader.  “It was parked in an alley.  They found it on a security camera.  It isn’t there anymore.”
“They took it again?”
“The League of Villains took it.”
“You’re joking.”
“I wish I was.”
.
The bus felt empty with half the class missing. The remaining 1-A students (plus Shinso) were all huddled together at the front, mooching off of the teachers mobile hotspots.  
“Did my email go through yet, kero?” asked Tsuyu, leaning over her seat to look at Denki’s computer.  
“Not yet,” said Denki.  “I’ve got all the pictures you guys sent arranged, but I wish we had more video material.  Ashido was the one with the most…”  He sighed. “Ashido, gossip queen, when you wake up I will apologize for all my comments about your hobbies.”
“I have some videos of Midoriya.”
“Trust us, Mineta, no one want your videos,” said Yaoyorozu.
“Huh?  Why not?”
“Tell us this.  How many of your videos are actually of Midoriya and don’t just have him incidentally in the background while you try to film girls.”
“None of them,” said Mineta, obviously not seeing why this was wrong.  “Why would I film Midoriya?”
“Mic,” said Midnight, “please remind me to sign up the walking lawsuit for some sensitivity classes.  How did Eraser miss this?”
“Unfortunately, Shouta is about as sexual as the average rock, so…”
“Remind me to sign him up for some training, too, then.”
“Will do.”
“Walking lawsuit?” asked Mineta.  
Everyone else sighed.  Then Denki’s laptop pinged.
“Huh.  I just got an email from Principal Nezu.”
The adults, including Green Light, the bus driver, blanched.  Adults were bothered by the weirdest things.  In the end, Nezu was just a guy with a quirk, right?  A hero, even!  Principal Nezu, the Education Hero!
Okay, he’d scared Denki (Mr. Terrible Grades) a lot in elementary and middle school, but really.  
(Okay, the crane thing at the Final Exam had been high-key terrifying, but he was trying to get past that.)
“Huh,” repeated Denki, having read the email. “That’s interesting.”
“What is it, my electric friend?” asked Aoyama, drapping himself sideways across his seat.
“Aoyama-san,” said Midnight, “don’t put your feet on the windows.”
“Principal Nezu sent me a link to an ‘All Might adopt a kid’ fanfiction, and it’s by—”
“Midoriya writes fanfiction?” asked Shouji, evidently surprised into using his real mouth to speak.  
“That’s cute, kero,” said Tsuyu.  “It must have been before he met the real All Might, though.”
“No,” said Denki, “it was last updated just a couple of weeks ago, and, well… Midoriya didn’t write it.”
“So, who did?” asked Yaoyorozu.  
“Not Nezu, right?” asked Jiro, winding her earphone jack around her finger.  
“There’s no way, right, Kaminari-san?” asked Present Mic, nervously.  
“Uh, no, no, it’s, uh, it’s All Might. According to Nezu.”
A beat of silence.
“What?”
Denki inserted his pinky into his right ear, trying to clear it.  Man, if the Bakusquad had been here rather than the quiet half of the class…
“Yeah, it says here that this serves All Might right for working on this during school hours?”
More silence.  
“Green Light, the road!”  
“Oops, sorry!”
“Hey, guys, are we sure that All Might didn’t, you know, kidnap Midoriya rather than the other way around?  Guys?”
.
Gran Torino, also known as Torino Sorahiko, was an active hero.  That meant late nights and late mornings.  He was also an old man.  A very old man.  Late mornings often turned into noons and afternoons.  
Sometimes, during those noons and afternoons, he liked to ignore technology and the outside world for a good long while.  Maybe read the paper a little bit.  Or one of those terrible romance novels Nana had left him in her will.  
Still, he was a hero, one wrapped up in something best described as a two-hundred-year-long shadow war, so eventually he did turn on the news.  
Only to see Toshinori’s boy fighting Hawks on live television.  
Not to mention Toshinori hanging out in the background with a shaved head.  
And the ticker said UA student Midoriya Izuku kidnaps Symbol of Peace.
(Which was the dumbest thing he had ever heard, and under other circumstances, he would have been rolling on the floor laughing.)
Gran Torino was an old man, but, luckily, he only felt like he was simultaneously having a heart attack and a stroke.  His body was more than functional enough to place a not-at-all panicked phone call to one Tsukauchi Naomasa.  
.
Tsukauchi Naomasa was incredibly busy.  That busy-ness was divided mostly evenly between desperately trying to find his best friend (who had evidently decided to make a hopefully brief foray into kidnapping teenagers) and trying to figure out what the commission was taking, because it had to be illegal.  Oh, and putting together a complaint that the commission was infringing on police prerogatives.
Honestly, he wasn’t sure how much traction that last would get, since pro heroes had been steadily gaining more and more responsibilities even as the police were losing both them and the power that came with them. ��Not to mention Midoriya’s stunt with Hawks… Which… Naomasa just wanted to know why?  What had the point of that been?  On either side?
(Sometimes he wished he were friends with normal people.  Like… he didn’t know… an accountant, maybe?)
(Not that he would give Toshinori up for the world. Just, some normalcy would be nice, too.)
He took a deep breath, remembered what he always told Toshinori about stress, and took a mouthful of room-temperature coffee.
In that thirty-second period, two more problems presented themselves to him.  
One, his cell phone began to ring, displaying the contact information for Gran Torino.  
Two, his email softly pinged, and a message from Principal Nezu asking for any images or videos Toshinori might have sent him slid into his inbox.  
Briefly, Naomasa considered ignoring both of them, but that wasn’t a realistic option and was irresponsible besides.  Contrary to his character.  
He picked the lesser of two evils and answered Gran Torino’s call.
.
Garaki was going to have a mental breakdown.  This was fitting because his car had broken down.  Midoriya Inko was asking him if he thought that his ‘friend’ might come pick them up, if it was safe.  If his ‘friend’ had a car.  
This last had almost sent him into hysterics. Gigantomachia in a car oh-ho!
Except it wasn’t funny at all, as this was almost certainly going to result in his death at the hands of All for One.  No matter that he considered the man his very dearest of friends, he was under no illusions about what All for One would do to him over this inexcusable error.
Perhaps he should just cut his losses and get one of the remote-activated noumu to come for them.  
Then, inexorably and inevitably, things managed to get even worse.
.
“Stop the car!” shouted Tomura.  
“But you said not to—”
“I know what I said!  Stop the car!”
Tomura twisted to see out the rear passenger window. Everyone else turned to follow his gaze, effectively blocking his view.  
“Get out of my way!” demanded Tomura.
There was some awkward, half-hearted shuffling.
“Does that look like anyone to you?” Tomura hissed.
“Yeah!  Like the doctor!” said Toga.  
“I’ve never seen him standing up, though,” said Spinner, dubiously.  “It seems out of character.”
“I didn’t know he owned a car,” mused Compress, rubbing the bottom edge of his mask.  
“Not him!” snapped Tomura.  “The woman!”  He pointed angrily at the rapidly approaching woman with green hair, narrowly avoiding dusting Mr. Compress’s top hat.  
“Eh?  What about her?” asked Spinner.  
“Doesn’t she look familiar to you?”
“To be honest, everyone without mutation quirks looks kind of the same to me.”
“Someone without face blindness.”
“Oh!  She looks like Izu-kun!  Do you think that’s his mom?”
The woman knocked on the window of the car.  Twice, unhelpfully rolled it down.  
“Thank you so much for stopping, we—Oh!”  She took a step back.
She apparently recognized them.  Joy.  He was going to unpack his feelings about this woman later.
“Hey, doc,” rasped Tomura, annoyed.  “What the hell have you been doing?”
“Ahem,” said Garaki, finally stepping out from behind the car.  “I didn’t expect to see you here, Shigaraki Tomura.”
“Because you blew us off and stranded us in the middle of Musutafu?”
“No,” said Garaki, in a way that absolutely meant ‘yes.’  “I knew you were resourceful enough to safely make it out of the city.”
“Oh, yeah?  Really?  You—”
Compress chose that moment to slam his face into the back of Tomura’s head.  Tomura steadied himself automatically on one of the car’s uprights, which cracked dangerously under his hand.  He pulled back as if burned.  
When he looked up, the gremlin’s mother was halfway to the tree line with – What was that in her hand?
He looked back over his shoulder.  
That was Twice’s goddamn mask.  
Compress, for some reason, was also missing his stupid mask (and covering his face like the dramatic weirdo he was), and Toga basically had hearts in her eyes.  Spinner was being Spinner, and therefore ninety percent useless.  He was lucky he was fun to play games with.
How to make her stop?
“Hey!” he shouted.  “We have your son!”
This was a lie, as far as he knew (unless Dabi had snatched him on his way back; it wasn’t impossible), but, he was a villain.
The green-haired woman stopped and turned back, allowing Tomura a full view of her expression.  
He decided that he regretted everything.
.
“Okay,” said Izuku, multitasking by letting Two pick the lock on the League’s safe, “considering Gigantomachia’s ability to track by smell and the questionable running water, we can’t just sneak out.  He’ll find us.  So… I think our best play is getting him to attack Shigaraki, and then when they’re both distracted, we run for it.”
Toshinori nodded and sighed.  “If only we had a giant jug of perfume.  We could throw it at his face and disrupt his ability to smell us.”
“I mean, I found a whole bunch of garbage a way back.  That isn’t perfume, but it does stink.”
“No, no, your plan is superior.  We’d draw too much suspicion if we attacked him like that. Perfume could be written off.”
“Yeah, I can see that.  Because perfume is a ‘nice’ thing.”
“Indeed.”
“It isn’t actually very nice to have it all over you, though,” said Izuku.  
“No,” agreed Toshinori.  “It isn’t.”
The safe popped open.
“I won’t ask if you don’t.”
“Deal.”
“But, anyway, assuming we do get away, what then? Where do we go?  And—Wow.  The League of Villains is broke.  I almost feel bad.”
“I was going to say Deika, but that’s too far, now, and we don’t know if Gigantomachia will come after us,” said Toshinori.  “Drawing him to a place full of civilians would be irresponsible.”
“Yeah,” said Izuku.  He frowned, pulling his head from the safe, and glanced out the window. “What about the Wild Wild Pussycats?”
“What about them?” asked Toshinori.  
“They’re near here, aren’t they?  And they’ve got that whole complex, so, I mean…  I don’t know how they feel about us right now, but it wouldn’t be a terrible place to hide.  Would it?”
“I’d hate to bring all of this down on them as well,” said Toshinori.  “But… That being said, I don’t believe they’re actually there.  They were taking some time off because of what happened to Ragdoll.”
“That makes sense,” said Izuku.  “Should we take the risk?”
“I’m unsure if we have a choice, my boy.  We could try roughing it, but that puts us in a very vulnerable position.”
“And we can’t stay here, with the League.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Okay.”  Izuku sighed and started to thumb through the League’s collection of fake IDs, looking for something he could use.  “Wild Wild Pussycats it is.  We’ve got to convince Machia to attack Shigaraki, and… then we sneak out the back while they’re fighting.”  He shook his head.  “It sounds really unheroic when I put it that way.”
“Under these circumstances, I think heroic is the set of actions where no one dies.”
His mentor was right.  Izuku still felt weird about this, though.  (The pettiness was completely different.)
Not to mention…
He put the last of the fake IDs away and massaged his temples.  “They’re doing something weird in there,” he said.  “I’m going to check on them.  I might be out of it.”
“Don’t worry,” said Toshinori, patting Izuku on the shoulder.  “I’ll keep an eye on things out here.”
(Perhaps all of this could have gone unsaid, what with their connection, but saying things out loud made them easier to organize.)
.
“Hey!” shouted Izuku over the roaring wind. “Stop that!”
“Are you going to fight me, Nine?  All by yourself?”
“No,” said Izuku, somehow contriving to look down his nose at her despite the height difference and the fact that Tempest was floating several meters in the air.  “I won’t have to.  Because I have a secret weapon.”
Ochako could almost see Tempest roll her eyes.
“And,” shouted Izuku, “do you seriously think I just wanted to be part of the system?  Are you serious?  I wanted to help people.  People the system failed.  It isn’t like they’re responsible for the system either!”  He waved his hand to indicate Ochako, Iida, Todoroki, and Aizawa.
“I’d argue about your hobo teacher.  Is this your secret weapon?”
“No, this is, Great-Aunt Miranda.”
Tempest opened her mouth, then closed it again. The wind began to die down.  “I’m – I don’t know what the point of that was—"
“Neither do I!  What’s the point of this?”
“The point is determining whether or not you have people you can rely on, or a bunch of backstabbers who’ll hand you over to a government lab as soon as it’s convenient!”  She stabbed a finger at Ochako.  “She’s just in ‘heroics’ for the money!”  She pointed at Iida.  “He’s only here because it’s traditional for his family.”   She gestured at Todoroki with her other hand.  “He’s doing it mostly out of spite.  And who knows what your hobo teacher is doing this for!”
“There’s nothing wrong with any of that!” protested Ochako.  “You must have your own motivations, too!”
“She does!” shouted Izuku.  “Considering what they are, you have no room to be criticizing Iida!  Besides, you don’t even like me!”
“This isn’t about liking you or disliking!  You’re the—” Tempest visibly cut herself off, then took a deep breath.  She set herself down on the street.  “Knowing what we do now about certain things, a fourteen-year-old would not have been my first choice.”
“Excuse me!  We’re all sixteen!” said Iida.  
“You’re sixteen now, it’s – The fact of the matter is that you’re children.  Naïve children.”
“Oh my gosh, you were younger than I was when you—”
“I was kidnapped and tortured—”
“I know, but why are you taking it out on—”
“By the government that you are trying to lick the boot of—”
“Did you see what they did to Suzuki?”
Ochako felt like she was spectating a very passionate tennis match.  
“If it means anything,” said Aizawa, dragging himself out of the pile of rubble he’d been thrown into by the wind, “I’m just trying to keep my kids alive as long as possible.”
“Then expel them!  Stop them from becoming literal child soldiers!”
“I do,” said Aizawa.
“He does,” confirmed Ochako, who was well acquainted with Aizawa’s reputation.  
“He really does,” seconded Todoroki.  
“I used to see Tensei’s group chat, and every time he expelled someone…”  Iida shivered.  
“Huh,” said Todoroki.  “Is that why you’re so… insistent about rules?”
“Of course not!  Rules are important regardless of why so many students were expelled during the first month of school!”
“So, why didn’t you expel these ones?”
“If you honestly believe the problem child wouldn’t have flung himself at the first villain he saw after that and dove straight into vigilantism, you don’t know him very well.”  He sighed, standing, and brushed dust and pebbles out of his tracksuit. “That goes for these three as well. They’re insane and it’s not my fault.”
“Isn’t saving others what heroes do?” asked Izuku, walking closer to Tempest.  Ochako wanted to run out and grab him, but this whole ordeal had just shown how useless that would be.  “No matter what?”
“Not no matter what.  This is why I…”  She shook her head, sighing.  “Not no matter what.”  She leaned forward, her hands on her hips.  “Don’t die. You do realize what will happen if you die, right?  I don’t have to spell it out for you?”
“N-no,” said Izuku.  
“Besides which, I’m not a hero.”
“You saved people,” protested Izuku.  
“And, as your friends pointed out, I’ve killed, too.”
“I know,” said Izuku.  “But you aren’t a bad person.”
“Lots of people kill during wars,” said Ochako, going to stand by Izuku, “and that’s what you were fighting in, wasn’t it?  I mean, I don’t know a lot about that time, but…”
“You wouldn’t.  It’s been over a hundred years.”
Izuku nodded.  “This fight isn’t doing anything, though.  None of us want them here if the vault opens.”
“The what?” asked Iida.  “The vault.”
“Hopefully,” said Izuku, “you won’t have to worry about it.”
“The fight did do something, though,” said Tempest.
“What?” asked Izuku.  
“For one,” said Tempest, “it made you think. For the other…”  Her eyes flicked over Ochako and the others.  “Everyone you fight will have their own reasons. Remember that.”
.
As they walked down the street, storms still brewing overhead, Ochako kept catching glimpses of children in the alleyways and cross streets.  
“Who are they?” she asked, unable to help herself.
“My sister and I,” answered Tempest, brusquely. Ochako, watching the back of the woman’s head, saw her twitch slightly towards one of the alleys.  “About the time we were taken.”
“Taken by who?” asked Todoroki.  
Tempest laughed.  The sound was entirely humorless.  “That government you’re so eager to serve.  You’ve noticed, I hope, that my sister and I aren’t completely Japanese?”
“Yes?” said Todoroki.  “I’m not blind, after all.”
“Todoroki,” said Aizawa in a warning tone.
“Good for you.  Our mother was Japanese.  Dad was American.  We went back and forth to see the family.  Problem was, everyone on Mom’s side quirks.  We didn’t even realize it.  The government tracked the weather disturbances to our movements and raided our family reunion.  Never saw my parents again.  Never saw anyone, for that matter, except my sister and my aunt – Dad’s side – who tried to smuggle us out and got shot for it.  We spent four years in that hell before Ryuji rescued us.”
“You’re more open about this than I would have expected,” said Aizawa.
Tempest sneered.  “Why wouldn’t I be?  I’m a terrorist, and people only become terrorists if they want to make a statement. Which I did.  Trust me when I say this, Nine, if the hero commission took you into ‘custody,’” she spat the word like it was dirty, “you’d be in the same boat. What do you children think they do to all those high-profile criminals in Tartarus?  The ones that are held indefinitely in a private prison without even a show trial?”
“I know, Three,” said Izuku, far more calmly that Ochako would have been able to.  “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to be a hero.  It’s easier to change systems from the inside.”
“Not this system.”
“No,” said Izuku, “but then I had no idea this part of the system even existed.  They do a lot to hide it, after all.”
“Hm,” grunted Tempest, skeptically.
The buildings began to thin out, interspersed with wilderness.  The road rapidly graded narrowed into a one-lane road, then gravel.  
“Is this normal?” asked Ochako.  
“We have more control over our environments than the other ones.  You’ve noticed that only Eight and Nine had multiple versions of themselves running around and being confusing.”
“I didn’t do that on purpose,” said Izuku.  
“Exactly.  Any of us could send an army of ourselves against you.  Only those two don’t have a choice about it.  Amateurs.”
“Shouldn’t they have had the same amount of time as—” started Ochako.  She broke off as a series of concrete walls topped with barbed wire rose up in front of them, scraping at the surrounding trees, shedding clumps of dirt.  
The trees fell away, leaving a clear, baren space between the walls and the trees.  Slightly beyond the structure moonlight glinted off the surface of a lake.  
“Well.  Welcome to Jinoshi Lake Camp, kids.”  Tempest turned, putting her hands on her hips.  “This is where I met Ryuji.  And…” She glanced up at the walls.  “This is as far as I go.”
“You aren’t going to show us where to find this ‘Ryuji?’” asked Aizawa.  
“I promised myself I’d never go back there.” She jerked her head over her shoulder. “I’m not revisiting it for you.” She started walking away.  “Have fun.”
58 notes · View notes
itsadamcole · 4 years ago
Text
a very sexy christmas
fem!reader x finn balor
reader waits for Finn to come home after NXT so she can give him his present ....
Tumblr media
word count: 1.5k+
warnings: dirty talk, smut, a little fluff
— this is so late but enjoy it loves —
masterlist || request an imagine here
~ 18+ content below - read at your own risk ~
Finn pulls into the driveway after a long day at Full Sail doing press and cutting promos. He's facing Kyle O'Reilly again at New Years Evil and he's slightly frustrated. He wishes he could be facing Pete Dunne since Kyle broke his jaw last time they were in a ring together.
What he doesn't know is that his wife has a surprise for him. Finn's told you how worried he was about Kyle and Pete's match. He was especially worried if Kyle won.
As soon as Kyle won, that's when you decided to surprise Finn and take some of his stress away and get his mind off the New Year's Evil match.
It's the week before Christmas, and this was supposed to be his Christmas gift, but you want to take his mind off of everything so you're giving him his gift a little early.
With a sigh, Finn grabs his title and gets out of the car. He locks the car door and walks into the house. He puts his title down and kicks his shoes off.
"Y/N!" Finn calls. "Where are ya?"
You say, "Upstairs!"
Your husband walks slowly up the stairs, exhausted from his day at work. He rubs his face as he walks into the shared bedroom that you're in.
His hands drop from his face and his eyes land on you. His jaw almost drops when he sees you.
"What's this?" Finn asks, frozen in his spot, eyes scanning your body up and down as you lay in a suggestive position on the silk blankets.
You say, "I know how stressed you've been recently, and how worried you are about the match you have with Kyle in three weeks. So I'm here to help take yourj mind off of everything."
You wear a red lingerie bra and pantie set. It's almost completely sheer and see-through. You wear a short sheer robe that ties around your waist. The bottom of the robe and the bottom of the sleeves are lined with red fluffy material.
Finn doesn't move as he says, "So, ya are wearing this to take my mind off of things?"
You get up off the bed and walk over to your husband. You look up at the taller man and say, "I wasn't planning on wearing it for that long. My plan was for you to take it off of me."
His eyes widen as they scan your nearly exposed body. You smirk and pull off the robe, leaving you in the bra and panties. "I, uh," Finn stammers. "I wasn't, uh, expecting this when I came home."
"I decided to give you your Christmas gift a little bit early because I know that you were worried about Kyle and I wanted to take your mind off of it," you explain. "So Merry Christmas and let me finish giving you your present." 
Finn says, "God I love ya."
You smile and run your fingers down his chest and you say, "I bet you'd love me even more if I was naked and kissing you." Your fingers reach the bottom of his shirt and you grip onto the fabric.
He says, "Ya know me too well, Y/N."
As he talks, you push his shirt up and you say, "So let me show you just how well I know my husband."
Your hands are on his abs and you're gently pushing him to the bed as he asks, "Who's this husband ya are talking about?"
"Well, he's very funny, very athletic. He's currently NXT champion and he looks sexy as hell with that belt around his waist," you say as the back of his knees hit the bed. He sits back and looks up at you, well he looks at what’s in front of him. His eyes are on your breasts, which he can clearly see because the bra is very sheer.
Finn smirks and his eyes finally move up to your eyes. You crawl onto his lap, straddling his thighs, and run your fingers through his hair. “He sounds like a nice guy,” your husband says.
You lean down and leave a kiss to his neck as you mumble, “He’s an amazing guy. I love him very much.”
A sigh leaves Finn’s lips and he says, “I’m sure he loves ya very much too.”
“I hope so,” you giggle. “Considering I’m kissing his neck right before I take my clothes off for him.”
Finn laughs and his hands slide to your bare back up to the clasp on your bra. You leave a few marks on his neck and Finn sighs softly.
You reach behind you and unclasp the bra. You let the fabric fall from your body. Finn cups your breasts and massages them gently. You sigh before you take his wrists and push him back, pinning his wrists to the bed.
Shaking your head, you say, “I don’t think so, Mr. Balor. This is your Christmas present.”
Finn stares up at you, almost shocked. He’s not used to this, and a part of you isn’t either but you’ve always wanted to be like this. You’ve always wanted to be on top of Finn as he finishes. He never lets you top.
When you know that he won’t move his wrists, you let his wrists go and start to unbutton his pants. You pull them off of him, pulling his boxers off with his pants.
You stroke his semi-erect member before moving down to your knees and taking him in your hand. You smirk up at him before swirling your tongue around his top. Finn groans softly as you begin to take his length in your mouth. You bob your head, humming softly and occasionally sucking.
He growls softly and your eyes widen. That sound goes right to your core, and you can feel yourself getting wet in your panties. “That was the hottest thing I’ve ever heard from you, Finn,” you say, pulling away from his member.
Finn looks down at you, biting his lip. He says, “Get up here and give me my present before I treat myself to my own present.”
After you stand up, you pull off your panties and crawl on top of Finn. You kiss your husband hard, and his tongue finds its way into your mouth. You sigh softly as you take his member into your hand and position him at your entrance.
You kiss him passionately for a few moments before you lower yourself onto his length. You moan softly as you take him. Finn’s hands are on your hips and you pull back from the kiss, sitting up. Your hands are on his chest, keeping you balanced as you begin to move your hips.
Moans and groans fill the room as you move faster. Finn’s thumb finds its way to your clit and he begins to rub the sensitive nub. You gasp and moan loudly.
“Oh, Finn,” you moan softly, closing you eyes and throwing your head back.
Your nails dig into the skin on his chest as your movement get faster. Groans escape Finn’s lip and he resists the urge to flip you over.
His hands slide up your body to your breasts and he plays with them as you ride him.
Finn sits up and wraps his arms around your waist. He kisses your neck and you moan his name. You bounce up and down on his length, both of you moaning each other’s names and a few profanities.
“Finn, baby,” you gasp as a knot forms in your stomach. “I’m about to come.”
Your husband says, “Come, mo ghra. Come all over me.”
And you do. You almost scream Finn’s name as you come around his member. He releases his sees into you and you both collapse back onto the bed.
His lips are on yours and you messily make out with him as you both catch your breath.
“Thank ya, my love,” Finn says, looking at you. “This was an amazing Christmas present. Can I come home to that every week after NXT?”
You giggle and say, “Maybe. I’ll have to see. Maybe you’ll even come home to me completely naked.”
Finn smirks and says, “Don’t mess with me, baby. Ya know how much I would like that.”
Laughing, you kiss him again before you both get settled into bed. Your back is pressed against Finn’s as you lay in his arms. Neither of you wears clothes as you lay under the blankets.
He leaves soft kisses on your shoulder and neck. He does this until he says, “I get to top ya next time. I loved it but I love making ya come too.”
“You can do whatever you want to me next time,” you promise him. “Literally whatever you want.”
Finn smiles and says, “Ya might regret saying that to me.”
You turn your head and peck his lips before you say, “I can handle anything you throw at me, Finn.”
“We’ll see about that,” he says before he attacks your neck with kisses, making you laugh.
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starculler · 3 years ago
Text
Whumptober 2021: Day 6
Word Count: 2271 || Read on AO3
Tags/Warnings: Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Emotional Hurt
No violence. Only ✨emotions✨
Obi-Wan woke in a room not his own with the smell of blaster-fire and charred flesh in his nose, tasting it on his tongue so clearly that it nearly made him sick. He exhaled one long, slow breath that did nothing to purge the lingering traces of his nightmares, and opened his eyes to thick, black darkness. His brows furrowed, frowning as he struggled to clear the sleep-haze from his mind, a task that had grown considerably harder over the years. He spared a brief, token effort on remembering what he might have done, or where he’d gone, the day before to find himself in a stranger’s home, but only shrugged it off when nothing came to mind.
Perhaps, he mused with only a touch of sardonic humor, the suns’ heat had finally gotten to him and he’d broken into some poor farmer’s home. Whose, he hadn’t the faintest idea considering he only really visited one and this was, most certainly, not the Lars’ farmstead. He would know, he’d been inside once after all — a week spent in a guest room as he’d delivered little Luke to his aunt and uncle. Any subsequent visits had been … difficult.
Luke looked so much like his father sometimes.
He sighed, shoving the thought forcefully away, and focused once more on the room, straining see a little better. The walls, he noticed first, were bare except for a few occupied shelves whose contents he couldn’t even begin to guess at. A single window peered out into the world, tinted black by a light-blocking feature he remembered using … Before. The floor was much the same: spartan, with only a low table in one corner with a cushion to sit on and the bland bed roll he’d woken on. A bitter tang of nostalgia crawled up his throat, lodging there like a bottle’s stopper, and he struggled to swallow around it.
Shoving that away too, he clambered inelegantly to his feet — noticed he still wore the rattier robe and tunics he hadn’t been able to bring himself to eschew along with everything else — and made his way to the room’s singular exit. The door opened with barely a brush of his palm over the panel next to it. He made to move out into the home proper with a steadying hand laid on the frame’s cool metal. And froze.
“Anakin?”
His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, almost too soft to carry across the larger living space to the spitting image of the little boy he’d raised, failed, and left behind, burning on a bank of churning magma on Mustafar. He couldn’t breathe, lungs seizing and stuttering as they refused to work. He gripped the door’s frame harder, knuckles white and fingers little more than pricks of insignificant pain where they dug into the sharper edges. Anakin’s screaming roared in his ears, violent hatred and pain alike with faint echoes of the single plea he’d let slip from his lips somewhere in between before Obi-Wan had turned his back and waled away.
Anakin — oh Force it was Anakin — twisted around on his cushion, one hand braced on the long, low table in front oh him while the other lay flat on the floor, when he heard his name called. Obi-Wan’s gaze caught on his Padawan-braid, so short still that it barely brushed the boy’s — a boy. He was just a boy now, younger than twelve and a picture-perfect replica of the child who lived only in Obi-Wan’s memories and Luke’s shadow — shoulder.
“Master!” Anakin flashed him a bright grin, his blue eyes practically glittering with the strength of his joy. “You’re awake! Finally,” he said, excitement turning to a familiar teasing tone that tore Obi-Wan’s heart to shreds. “I almost thought you’d sleep for forever, and then who’d help with my lessons?”
The boy’s nose scrunched, his distaste for his lessons made clear in the way the word dropped from his mouth like a particularly foul piece of rotted food. Obi-Wan swayed where he stood, mouth suddenly drier than Tatooine’s desert as he stared. Then, faintly and feeling all too much like the very words he spoke had stolen free from him without permission, he said:
“Master Windu would, he’s told me so many times himself. He does so enjoy your company.”
It was a joke, one of several he’d indulged in often after having noticed Anakin’s distrust of the Council. A reassurance as much as something to make the boy laugh. Mace Windu had never told him he’d help with any of Anakin’s lessons, but Obi-Wan had never once seen the Master turn a youngling down when they asked him for help. Oh, he thought with a painful pang in his chest, Mace had loved the younglings, from the tiniest initiates in the Crèches all the way to the padawans, no matter what his severe countenance might have portrayed. He’d tried so hard to show that to Anakin, to teach him that Jedi — even and especially the Council — were, at their core, kind and compassionate. Had his Padawan ever truly known that, or was it another failure to be laid at Obi-Wan’s feet?
Anakin scoffed and rolled his eyes, still grinning. “Yeah, and I’m a heard of Bantha,” he said with a snicker. Obi-Wan’s mouth twitched despite how he wanted to be sick.
“You certainly smell like one,” Obi-Wan replied by rote, more of a murmur than the steady sarcasm he’d once thrown at his Padawan. Anakin squawked regardless, all faux-offense as he puffed himself up for a comeback, but deflated suddenly to squint at him instead.
“Are you feeling alright? You look…” Anakin floudered for a moment and settled on a bland, hesitant, “not good.”
“I,” Obi-Wan started. Stopped. Swallowed. “No,” He admitted, slow. Reluctant. “No, Padawan, I don’t think I am.”
The trembling in his hands hadn’t stopped and his chest still hurt and his stomach had managed to twist itself into nauseating knots as he stood there, still in the open doorway to the room, he realized, that had once been his at the Temple. Anakin’s eyes widened and he shot to his feet, anxiety flowing off him in sharp, erratic waves that only further soured the bitter, ashen taste in Obi-Wan’s mouth.
“Do you need a healer? Are you hurt? Kriff, uh, should I— I mean— I’ll go grab someone, Master, I’ll be right back, okay? Real quick, I—”
“No!” Obi-Wan winced. He hadn’t meant to shout. Hadn’t meant to put that hurt, wide-eyed look on his Padawan’s face. He’d just —
Obi-Wan watched Anakin’s familiar, blue lightsaber cut through another Jedi, horror curdling in his stomach. It was all he could do not to be sick, but he forced himself to continue looking at the security feed Master Yoda had found. He couldn’t look away. Couldn’t be blind to this any more than he could turn back time and undo it. So he watched, ill, as his former Padawan, his friend, his brother, cut down Jedi after Padawan after Initiate until none at all remained in the place they had both called home.
“No,” he croaked, softer, blinking back the stinging heat in his eyes. He lifted the hand not helping keep him upright, clammy and shaking much more obviously than before, and made as if to reach out but stopped short. “No,” he said again, so low he barely heard himself, pulling his hand back to clutch at the fabric over his chest and wondered if he’d suffocate on his feet.
“Master?”
Anakin sounded so scared even as he took a tentative step forward, his hands fisted into the hem of his tunic. Obi-Wan wanted to rush to his side, to comfort him as he’d once done so many years ago. He wanted to run, to flee from the face of this apparition — the ghost of a boy who’d chosen to become a monster because he’d failed as a Master. He wanted to fall to his knees and weep: for this boy, for himself, for the scores of Jedi massacred to mark the end of an unjust war. For the galaxy being crushed under a Sith’s oppressive thumb. For the children of his former student, who would be called upon one day. Who would lose friends and family alike as they worked to dismantle the bloody legacy left to them.
He almost didn’t notice when his legs gave out, choking on his own ragged, wet breaths as Anakin cried out, alarmed, and ran to his side. Obi-Wan flinched away from those small, calloused hands when they reached for him, curling into himself as he struggled to breathe, but his Padawan was nothing if not determined.
He gasped when Anakin’s fingers brushed his arm, searing his skin through three layers of worn fabric. Whined when they traveled up to his shoulder, and hissed, a pained and wounded sound torn from him when Anakin pressed the palm of his hand to the nape of Obi-Wan’s neck. Slowly, with a care he’d rarely seen in his Padawan, Anakin maneuvered himself in front of him, hunched and twisting as the hand on Obi-Wan’s neck pulled until he’d knocked their foreheads together.
How long had it been since he’d sat so near another sentient being he trusted? Since he’d been touched so familiarly? Kindly? Luke, perhaps. Little more than a toddler, freely affectionate with the man who’d carried him across the stars and sands to the home he’d remain in.
Obi-Wan didn’t settle. Didn’t calm. His breathing hitched and every inch of him shook so hard he thought his bones might rattle right out of his skin. The stinging bite of fresh tears lingered in his eyes and every limb was weighed down with the same deep exhaustion that had dogged him since he’d left Luke with the Lars’ and lost the only source of immediate responsibility he might have distracted himself with. He did, however, reach forward. Brushed his fingers over the front of Anakin’s tunic and felt the rough material, caustic and abrasive against the suddenly sensitive digits.
“Are you—” Obi-Wan swallowed painfully, his own saliva turning to grains of coarse sand. “Is this real?” he asked, whisper soft and broken. “Are you real, Anakin?” His padawan pressed harder against him in response, puffing out an incredulous breath.
Obi-Wan wondered if he’d melt from the heat of his brother-friend-Padawan’s touch, as skin-crawling as it was a burning, aching comfort for all it seemed to set him further on edge.
“I’m real,” Anakin said, voice strangled. Obi-Wan could taste his fear. Felt it soak into his skin and curl around his heart. “I’m real, Master, I promise. I’m here. I’m real.”
“Anakin.”
Obi-Wan’s voice cracked on the name as a sudden desperation washed over him, urging him to reach out further. To pull and clutch and hold his Padawan as close as he could, breathing raggedly against his short, brown hair as Anakin hid his own face against his neck, letting a few tears soak into the collar of Obi-Wan’s tunic. He rocked them both, letting Anakin hold on to him as to him as fiercely as he did his Padawan.
An eternity might have passed there between them as Anakin cried and Obi-Wan babbled — apologies and reassurance and a half dozen other words he’d meant to tell his Padawan over the years tumbling clumsily from his tongue — until the intensity eased, leaving them tired and tangled up together against the room’s cool wall. Obi-Wan let his eyes slip closed, just for a moment. Let himself soak in his brother’s presence, young and bright and much too old to be held like this, half asleep and slumped over him. But he didn’t let go.
He brushed his fingers over Anakin’s hair, short and bristly except for the bundle tied back into a short nerftail, and breathed in the citrus scent of the hair products his Padawan had favored those first few years in the Temple. Leaning his head back against the wall, he let himself drift into his thoughts. Into the Force. Out past the confines of the room, through the halls, and across the Temple, jaw clenching as he felt the bright, living presence of hundreds of Jedi. Thousands. So many his head spun.
His breathing hitched, and he wrapped his arms a fraction tighter around his Padawan. Strained to squeeze his eyes closed harder until he saw blurry, red shapes dance across the darkness behind his lids.
It felt so real.
This. His Padawan. The sights, smells, sounds, even the taste of the Temple’s chill air. Anakin had said he was real. Obi-Wan had squeezed him, had him currently in his arms safe and close and whole. He shuddered, exhaling a wavering, wet breath.
Perhaps, he let himself hope as he drew back to himself, it had been a vision. A warning from the Force — a life lived in the span of a few hours’ sleep. He let the thought comfort him, burying his nose in his Padawan’s hair as sleep slowly claimed him.
Obi-Wan woke in a room he recognized, the sweet, tangy scent of citrus thick in his nose, so vivid he could practically taste it. He exhaled one long, slow breath, letting himself savor it for a moment longer, and opened his eyes to bright light, sandy-colored walls, and the sweltering, suffocating heat of Tatooine’s long, dry days. His fingers curled into the rough, thin, ragged bedroll he’d all but tossed himself into the night before. Alone. Utterly and completely alone.
For the first time since his family were slaughtered at the hands of his student,
Obi-Wan wept.
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pepperpills · 3 years ago
Text
The Harvest - RE8 Fanfic
The Harvest
A Resident Evil 8 fan fiction by Joana
Karl Heisenberg x Female Reader
Notes: heey guys, thanks everyone who has been reading this series, it was fun writting this story, but as i said a couple of chapters ago, it has come to an end. I am currently writting a new Heis x Reader story, focusing more on wordbuilding and their relationship. I guess The Harvest, as my first try on this, has been a great experience and I hope the next one turns out better. That being said, please enjoy this piece and I will see you all later on a new begginning, thanks!
Warning: NSFW content
Part I - Destiny (1) Part I - Destiny (2) Part II - The Lord Part III - The Hunt Part IV - Soft Torture Part V - Cry Baby
Part VI - The Encounter
It wasn’t a particular sunny day, but the weather was cooler than usual. It was enough for Karl to decide to work outside, once the heat inside the factory was overwhelming his sweaty body. He was shirtless, but still had his hat and spectacles on to protect him from the sun and the light.
Heisenberg was in the middle of something. Ever since you two inaugurated the new wing, he has been working to the bone on a new project. You understood he was trying a new set of armour to make the Soldats tougher. Unfortunately, for you, this was a task you couldn’t help him with. It was still on project, but he was already trying to find the material and that was why he had been searching the factory’s yard all morning, coming and going, absolutely focused.
You were getting bored, though. Once you couldn’t adventure the factory by your own anymore – neither wanted to, having in mind what happened last time –, you chose to sunbath at the yard in the early hours. It was still kind of chilly, because no matter what, the Village was always like that, and you obviously didn’t have any bikinis, once you really didn’t need a set living where you lived. In that manner, you bathed in your panties, wearing no bra.
You gave Karl a major distraction, because of this. First, he was jealous of your boobs exposed like that, but you managed to convince him no one could see you, once the factory was only accessible by the bridge and it was a considerable walk from the allowed parts of the Village. He chilled, but something in his pants was feeling encaged.
Not long after, you got bored. Then an idea crossed your mind causing you to smile. You quickly went to the bedroom to change, grab a few things and then went to the kitchen. Karl had been so long under the sun that he might as well be thirsty. Considering that, you prepared a juice with lots of ice, leaving the building to meet him outside caring a glass of it.
“Hey, Karl.” You called him, his body half inside one of the tanks. “What about a quick break?” You offered, rising the glass once he looked at you.
His countenance showed interest. His mouth was indeed dry, almost causing him chapped lips. Heisenberg walked towards you, the scene glowing in your eyes. The man’s chest was shiny with the sweat. Without his shirt, you had a great view of his body, enjoying the sight of his strong arms. Karl was a Renascence painting for you and the thought of it made you smile, which only invited him nearer.
“Thank you, buttercup.” He said, taking the glass you offered him.
He drank it almost entirely at once, causing some drops to roll down his bearded chin. When he was done, you came closer, resting your hands on his shoulders, not being able to resist a stupid idea that came through your mind. Heisenberg was a bit confused, but accepted your approach, placing his free hand on your hips. Instead of kissing him, you licked his chin, retracing the juice line. He wasn’t expecting it. You finished with a kiss, looking for his tongue, willing to make yours dance with his inside your mouths.
“You’re full of tricks, aren’t you?” Karl laughed when you let his lips go.
“Just some.” You shrugged, smirking back at him. “But I will let you work for now, I know you’re busy.” Now he had a sorrow expression, your kiss had awakened something in him, but you were right, he needed to find at least one metal piece to try on the model.
“It is okay, I will meet you later.” You comforted him, playing with ones of his rebel hair locks.
“I will make it up to you, Y/N.” Karl promised, pressing you harder against his chest, not wanting to let you go.
“No need to, just be there.” You planted a soft kiss on his lips to which he couldn’t help but smile.
“Ok, I will be, kitten.” Heisenberg kissed you once more, eager to taste you, he was intense.
After a couple more kisses, you managed to soften his grip around your hips and he decided that if he could finish the work earlier, it meant more time with you. With that in mind, he returned to the tank. You excused yourself, telling him you were going out to hunt to try the improvements you made on your bow.
You started walking towards the forest behind the factory. As soon as you reached the firsts trees, you noticed a change in the lighting. Clouds were now hiding the sun, bringing in new winds. You puffed, your plans of a cooler hunt probably spoiled because of this change of weather. Neither way, you were already there.
You took your usual path, going down to the stream. Not long after you noticed the absence of Lycans in the surroundings. You use to listen to their roars and sometimes even footsteps, but this time the only sound heard was the birds chanting. An odd atmosphere took over the forest, making you a bit tense.
Maybe they were occupied somewhere else, you thought that they could be on a hunt of their own, chasing a poor villager. This didn’t relax you, though. You kept looking around, searching for Lycans and other animals.
This happened half way to the stream, so fast you weren’t able to process the entire thing. You got distracted with a noise coming from your right, you looked over a fallen trunk, but saw nothing but a mild movement on a bush. It could be the wind, but you wouldn’t take your chances on a silly thought.
The aura was so tense you were about to make up your mind on coming back to the factory, leaving the hunt for another day, scared again of the creatures of the forest. You didn’t have time to decide, though. On your left, a wet thud caused you to jump. Your attention rapidly turned to the source of it.
A body had just fallen from one of the tree’s highest branches. For all you knew, that was a Moroaica, judging by its clothes and grey skin. This wasn’t the work of a Lycan. They would only eat other creatures when they didn’t have a different flesh and, before opting for this alternative, they would feast on the Village’s cattle. This must be something difference.
Only to confirm your suspicions, the culprit land in front of you. It came out of nowhere. Well, from one of the branches above your body. You instinctively screamed, not even noticing it, even though it was pretty loud. This thing wasn’t like anything you have ever seen in your life, but it resembled a lost tale from the cabins.
The story was about a pale creature, one that inhabits the dark, but would go out of its hiding places to hunt when starving. It was described to have sharp fangs for teeth and a blood thirst. On the folk’s tale, the thing wouldn’t have much reason, it would only know two things: the hunger and the instinct of reproduction.
However, this one, standing in front of you, had a human malice written in its red injected eyes, a beauty in its traces. It smirked at your thunderstruck face, feasting on your fear before feasting on your blood. The creature, which resembled a woman, approached your form elegantly, not rushing, having everything under its control.
She extended a hand full of sharp claws to your cheekbone, putting away a hair lock. She dug one claw into your skin, causing the red liquid to flow. Then she licked the blood from her nail, moaning to your sweet taste.
“You are too pretty to spoil.” She made up her mind, giving you a Cheshire cat smile.
The next movement was a blur to your human perception. You believe the thing attacked you, because you remember feeling your back meeting the soil with a thud. She was on top of you, pressing fangs on your neck. You passed out, regaining a faint consciousness some time later when you were being cared on someone’s shoulder when, before passing out again, your sensitive nostrils perceived a scent of oil.
-x-
Karl was worried out of his mind when he found you. He thought he heard your scream, but it was really the Lycan’s roars responding to it that enlightened the situation to him. He had just found the perfect metal piece when it happened, leaving the factory in a rush, panting already, only thinking of bringing his hammer that flew to his hand as he passed through the grid.
He used the Lycan’s flair to find you. No sign of whatever made that to you, it was only your body lying cold on the dead grass. He almost panicked, imagining you were forever lost. The relief the man felt to feel a weak blow of air on his hand when he placed it close to your nose was indescribable.
Heisenberg didn’t think twice before putting you over his shoulder, his hammer being held by his other hand, and take you back to the factory, cursing himself he let your go earlier, thinking he should have joined you or, at least, sent an escort of dogs with you.
You didn’t wake up for a long time. He laid you on his bed, watching as your chest went up and down with your breathing, this being the only thing that calmed his nerves down a little. But not so much later, he had to leave for a while, afraid he would throw everything metallic on the room.
He put on a real tantrum on a room nearby, not knowing the noises came to you on dreams as much as his enraged screams. Karl almost lost it there, turning himself into a beast on the sight of you hurt. Managing to stop only so he could really analyse your situation.
It was bad, but how bad he wasn’t sure. After being somewhat calmer, Karl quickly noticed the marks on your neck. He wasn’t a moron, specially when being “raised” with Alcina, he knew it was a bloodsucker’s doing. However, Lady Dimitrescu would never do such a messy job and it was even less probable that she would adventure herself on his area. No, it had to be a foreign.
Heisenberg would gladly chase this beast, swearing to tear it apart with his own teeth if it pleased him, but he couldn’t just leave you on your own. He sat on a chair beside the bed, holding your hand on his, focusing on the warmth on your skin. He stood like that for ours, after cleaning your wounds, on the verge of tears. At some point, he rested his head on your shoulder, near your soon-to-be new scar.
“C’mon, buttercup, wake up.” Karl whispered in your ear.
His hot breath was gently calling you out of a paralysis state. Your eyes started to open, your lips unglued, but a fever was commanding your body, making you feel restless. Heisenberg noticed your minor movements, his heart beat accelerating at the sight of your awakening.
“Fuck, Y/N!” He cursed, but a smiled formed on his lips. “Fuck, doll, what a scare you gave me!” Karl held your hand tighter.
“Karl…” You started. “I don’t feel so well.” You told him, seeing that perfect smile faint.
“I know.” He agreed. “I guess I know what it is.” An unpleasant expression formed on his brow. “Wait here.”
Karl didn’t wait until you responded, knowing you wouldn’t let him leave the room, but he had to test something and he really believed it would make you feel better. For fucks sake! It was the only way to make you cure. He went down the factory, to a part of it you didn’t yet know, but was going to get used to soon enough. He grabbed a bag of liquid and left, heading to the kitchen.
He poured the liquid in a glass and came back to you. You were now sat, trembling like crazy, wrapped by the blanket, but even that wasn’t enough to stop the cold. Seeing this, he didn’t mind sitting down on the chair again, extending the glass to you.
“Here, drink it.” He told you.
“What is it?” You asked, but the strong scent didn’t leave any doubts, you were just playing dumb.
“I guess you know what it is, Y/N.” Karl raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you hungry?” In response your stomach rumbled, making the man smirk.
“I-I can’t.” You sounded disgusted.
“You have to, kitten. It will make you feel better.” He took your hand on his, passing you the glass and guiding it to your lips.
You opened up just a little, resisting your new instincts, but as soon as the smell got more intense being that close to your nostrils, you gave up and drank it voraciously. The iron flavour making you salivate as the liquid calmed you down, stopping the trembling, washing away your fever, more potent than any medicine. When you emptied the glass, you proceeded to lick every last drop of blood reminiscent.
“That is a wild kitten.” Karl mocked, relieved at your reaction.
“Karl, what happened to me?” You wondered, not sure if he could answer.
Before telling you, he got into bed, taking off the blanket that was hiding your form. His fingers reached your marks, the sore region aching with the contact, causing him to retreat his digits. He sighed.
“You are not human anymore, Y/N.” Heisenberg told you, heavily.
“What?” You voice was a lot lower than your expected. You looked down to your lap.
“You encountered a thing back in the forest, right?” You only nodded. “Well, that thing bit you and… Well, transformed you.” He clarified.
“I feel… Better.” You moved your hands, stretching the fingers. “I mean, it hurts, but somehow I am more disposed.”
“You know…” Karl started, setting himself against the headboard, pulling you to rest in between his legs, your head resting on his chest as he played with your hair. “It isn’t ideal, but at least, now we can be together for a long time.” He kissed the top of your head and glanced down at you, care written all over his grey abysms.
“Forever?” You softly asked.
“Forever, kitten, forever.” Karl answered.
THE END.
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smutty-ki113r · 3 years ago
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hi there, i hope you’re having a great day :-) i’d love a romantic matchup!
i’m 18, bisexual, and i use she/her pronouns. i’ve had the same few insecurities for years now—i’m insecure about the quality of work that i produce and whether or not i deserve love that i’m given, not to mention unimportant things like my stretch marks :P i’ve struggled a lot with my self-confidence and various mental health issues in the past, but i genuinely believe that i’m doing better now than i have in a long time <3 i try to be kind to myself and others, but at the end of the day i’d like to think that i still have a backbone and can stick up for myself
likes:
* cooking & baking
* all kinds of movies! everything from comedy to horror :-)
* video games, specifically ones that don’t require much skill (stardew valley, legend of zelda, animal crossing… y’know the drill lmao)
* writing, art, and reading!! i’m really big on writing poetry and making art as romantic gifts for my partner whenever i’m in a relationship
* ALL SORTS of music genres. i’m very into alternative, rock, and even 80s music
dislikes:
* people who act like they’re better than those around them >:-(
* feeling lazy and having a lack of motivation to do things
* hot weather
* excessive intelligence… kind of weird to admit it but i’m not into brainiacs in the slightest
one weird thing that i do is move from interest to interest pretty quickly. i’m not always vocal about it to those around me but i find myself hyperfixating on niche subjects for weeks at a time, only to inevitably moving on to something else. as someone with ADD, i like to keep my mind busy!
i’m generally an introvert who prefers to stick with herself, but on some occasions i can be INCREDIBLY outgoing and easy to chat with! i try to be friendly while simultaneously respecting my own social boundaries :-)
i’m a taurus sun and a pisces moon, but admittedly i don’t know much about astrology lmao
i consider myself to be somewhat of a romantic, so i have plenty of different ideas for dates. i think cooking together is a fantastic couples activity, but i’m also sort of a control freak in the kitchen who prefers to take the reigns :P i’m more than happy to have quiet nights at home spent watching movies or curling up together, but for my ideal date i’d prefer going somewhere! whether that be something like a picnic beneath the stars or a romantic walk in the woods would be completely up to my partner… what’s most important to me is the quality time that i spend with them. hope this was enough!! thank you so much :-)
I match you with…..💖MASKY💖
Alright a lot of reasons for this one, and I promise it’s not just cause you like to bake. (DONT @ ME PLEASE).
Insecurities, yall have the same ones. Masky is so so overwhelmed with work, but for some reason he feels like it’s not enough. He might complain about it and nag but he will. Not. Stop. It’s not that he’s strong or whatever, but he feels guilty if he dosen’t do as much as he did the week before. He’s really sensitive about that too so. You would pretty much be a great match for him, if you reassure him and let him know it’s ok to take breaks he will do the same for you. He cares so much for you that one day he will understand the toll it is on his partner when they overwork themselves.
I think if you wrote Masky a poem he would faint. Sitting him down and reading it to him, he would make an expressionless face and then make gruff noises under his mask (if he wears it), it would be to cover up for his crying. He will deny it, but you have to go and give him a hug, he won’t let go.
The man likes to listen to music with you, a nice night by the chimney with you. He also hangs up all the artwork that you make, and he loves looking at them during the day. They are these wonderful reminders that he has the best partner ever. On another note, he’s not a brainiac, and around you especially he treats you like his all. This your body is perfect regardless of your stretch marks and because he had slender sickness he gets the mental issues. Very very supportive about that.
I do not KNOW if you are a minor or not, if you are not then you should definitely read CAKE, if you are stay THE FUCK AWAY. He’s literal hubby material (AGAIN DILF ALERT), and he accompanies you in the kitchen. Whipping up some batter he will get up and stand behind you, giving you a hug and putting his hands on his. Nuzzling up to you and giving you all the love in the world, if he’s in a playful mood then put some batter on his nose and get into a food fight with him, he needs to relax. Walks in the woods with you are his favorite :)
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drivingsideways · 3 years ago
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Seunwoo + Seunghyo sick
Hi anon! Thank you for this ask, and sorry it's taken me a while to write!
This one is, in my head, set in my Where Your Treasure Is 'verse, but you don't need to read that to make sense of this. The premise here is that Seon-woo and Seung-hyo are in a romantic relationship and have been living together for a while, and they also run a company together.
"You better take something for that," says Seon-woo at breakfast.
"For what?" Seung-hyo croaks at The Korean Herald, which has decided, on this fine spring morning to lead with an editorial on wealth redistribution that looks like it's been written by a twenty-year old who gets her news on Instagram. Pulling their advertising for the next six months seems overkill, but surely something should be--
"For the flu you've been having for the last two days," says Seon-woo, wheeling his chair around the table toward the kitchen counter. As he passes Seung-hyo, he reaches out to place an inquiring palm against his forehead. Seung-hyo jerks away.
--ah, he has it, yes, wasn't there an interview scheduled today with the Seoul Business News--
"Hmm," says Seon-woo, "Nothing some paracetamol and rest won't cure. Take it."
He moves away, and the coffee-maker whirs loudly.
"Is there something wrong with it?" he asks, "I'll call the company. Didn't they promise noiseless?"
"They did not."
He turns in his chair to look at his partner.
"I'm the one who ordered it."
"I'm the one who read the manual and set it up. This is the noise it makes every day. You're just extra sensitive today because-"
He turns back to his eggs and toast, and the horrifying state of the world.
The problem with living with a medical professional was that they always thought they knew everything about everything. Alright, maybe that wasn't a problem with medical professionals in general. Seung-hyo is willing to acknowledge that the problem, in this case, might be more localized, viz, the man across the table who's judgmentally sipping his coffee , while a bowl of oats congeals into goop in front of him. Why he doesn't wait to finish his coffee before pouring out the cereal, Seung-hyo has never understood. And he's tried, oh, he's tried, to get him to view this logically, but Seon-woo will insist on eating the cold slop every day.
"Did you get a chance to review the Australian distributorship deal?" he asks, swallowing a bite of toast. The bread feels scratchy going down his throat. Had Madam Ji switched to a different bakery?
"Yes, I've made some notes and sent out an email," Seon-woo replies. "I'm quite sure we can do better. I've asked Kim bujang to look into it."
"Oh," he says, picking up his phone, "I didn't see it…when did you send it out?"
He'd been working late last night, how had he missed—
"After you fell asleep at the desk," Seon-woo says, coolly.
He has a vague memory of Seon-woo waking him up, and shutting his laptop for him last night. This was why he hated medication, which he had taken, he wasn't entirely irrational, despite what Seon-woo liked to imply.
It just interfered.
"Well," he says, taking two large gulps of his own coffee, "I better get going, I have a day."
"I bet," Seon-woo mutters, and then gives him a sweet smile when he gives him a look. "Have a good one, hyung."
His expression says that he thinks the probability of that is negative. Seung-hyo's never met anyone as petty as the love of his life, and that's a fact. Well, maybe Ye Jin-woo, which just went to show you—
"I will, thank you," he says, "Shall we have lunch together?"
Seon-woo nods, and this time the smile is genuine, and alright, he didn't care that the love of his life was a petty fuck, he especially didn't care that his head felt a bit like a block of wood, life was good, and he was going to have a good day.
"Bad cold?" asks the make-up professional at the TV studio, her voice sympathetic. "I'll get you some warm water with salt to gargle with, it'll clear up your throat before you go on air."
"Thank you," he says, "That's very kind, but unnecessary."
She pauses.
"It's really no trouble Gu daepyo-nim."
"No," he says, "Thank you. Again. But no."
At lunch, Seon-woo says, calmly, "I'm sure the ten people watching KBN at 11.22 am this morning would have been convinced by your argument, if they'd been able to hear it. Why did they cut you off so quick?"
"A glitch in the sound system," he says, "The sound engineer was profoundly apologetic. I didn't think it was worth making a fuss about."
"Uh-huh," says Seon-woo. "You mean the fact that he forgot to mute your mike properly, so we could hear you hacking up a lung off screen? I think he should be fired."
"Where's your sense of proportion?" Seung-hyo asks. The hot chicken broth feels good going down his throat, warming his chest.
"Left it in our McMansion this morning," Seon-woo says, and sets his chopsticks down.
"Hyung," he says, "Take the rest of the day off."
"I can't," he replies, "There's too much to do."
"Rescheduling a few meetings is not the end of the world."
"It's discourteous to the people who are giving me their time," Seung-hyo replies, "Besides, I'm fine. The soup was delicious. Thank you for ordering it."
Seon-woo waves a hand, "You can thank Kyung-ah-ssi on your way out."
"I'll buy her flowers," Seung-hyo says, because there's no way he's going to face her without even that much of a defense.
Seon-woo says, evenly, "You'll be sure to pick them up yourself, won't you? I mean, there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be in a pollen factory- excuse me- a flower shop today."
"You're not as funny as you think you are," Seung-hyo says, rising from the table. "Dinner at 7?"
"Sure," says Seon-woo, "You'll be making crab soup, I hope?"
"Don't push your luck," Seung-hyo says, with dignity and calm, and runs away.
He comes to groggily, in his bed, with no memory of how he got there. The lights are dimmed, and he's sweaty under the quilt. There's movement beside the bed, and when he opens his eyes, bleary, Seon-woo is placing a food tray on the bedside table.
"What time is it?" he asks.
"Past 9," Seon-woo says, quietly. "Ready for some food?"
He sighs, turning on his side to face him.
Seon-woo's expression is fond, even though there's a trace of exasperation beneath.
"I'm feeling better," he announces.
"Astounding," Seon-woo murmurs, taking the lid off a steaming bowl. "Considering you weren't, at any point, sick."
Petty, petty.
"I bet that's rice porridge," he says craning his neck. "Ugh."
"Special from eomeonim," Seon-woo confirms. "She's put me on a deadline to feed you this tonight. So chop-chop."
He pushes himself up, resting against the pillows, as Seon-woo arranges the tray for him.
It does taste good- like childhood, and home, he acknowledges, as he swallows the first mouthful.
Seon-woo is taking off his prosthetics, heaving a sigh of relief. Despite all the advances they've made in the material technology, wearing it for several hours at a stretch and the kind of life Seon-woo led, did make it a bother. At home, Seon-woo often preferred to get around in the wheelchair like he'd done for most of his life. Sometimes, when Seung-hyo thinks of how much pain Seon-woo has borne, he can barely comprehend it. Compared to that—
But that's a thought he'll keep to himself, he's not a fool.
"You're such an idiot about these things," Seon-woo says, as he maneuvers himself across the bed. He raises a hand to brush away the sweaty hair sticking to Seung-hyo's forehead. "You realize being ill isn't a character flaw, right?"
Seung-hyo puts his spoon down.
"So you're a psych now too?" he cribs, picking up his spoon again.
"Don't need to be," Seon-woo says, yawning, and turning away. "You're not that complicated, hyung."
God, the man was so annoying.
It really was a disaster that Seung-hyo was crazy about him.
"Sleep well," he says aloud, as Seon-woo settles down, "See you in the morning."
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