#scary or like nice monsters cause either way we could fight a bear together

[mymelodyisme]

I appreciate your kind words hon as always, and yea im trying to...keep my head up but I'm mainly doing okay. Its just some...bad actions I've done and also weird nightmares been hitting me aswell. I've been saying to myself to never repeat what I did and just don't focus in on it cause if I do it's just gonna be worse and keep going back to it. Be kind to myself as you say, sometimes thats...very hard to do you know? But right now I'm managing and just focusing on other things to keep my mind steady and calm.

Once again i...I appreciate your sweet words and kind personality(also your rants is a bit fun to read too)

Also for your blister I really hope that goes away soon for you cause goddamm does that sound like a pain, I didn't even know you could get a blister like that.

Oh and also I love the forests despite rarely ever going in one in my life...I fantasize about living in one while being a big fluffy scary fantasy monster. I sometimes wish i was one. well I better get going now I'm at work, I'm just going to imagine my face/head is in your hands and on your chest while we're in the middle of a forest...its comforting and soothing.

-❄️☕️

My love!!! Okay. Idk what you’ve done or how bad your actions have been, but we often give ourselves a harder time than other people around us. You might just be being your own bully and you should think about that!!! Being kind I get it, sometimes you hate yourself, be honest about that too. It’s okay to look in a mirror and be say the truth. It can make you cry, and it’s brutal when you realize you’re saying it back to yourself, but I think it’s the first step. And sometimes being kind to yourself is just that. Being honest. And maybe it’s just buying something small like a coffee or a candy bar because you’re at the store anyways!

Maybe I’m just shallow!

I have a very strong worldview obviously, and I think I lean way more in the positive direction, but I guess you could just say I have faith in you, yeah? Also also also I have nightmares too! I, actually, love them! I keep a dream journal on my phone that you can read on here!! Its my tag: dreams as I wrote them. But the weirdest dream I’ve ever had was a pikachu who cut itself that I named emochu 😭

Oh oh and, telling yourself to not focus on something makes it worse. So when I was… 14? I was. A big fan of black butler. I could tell you anything and everything about it. Well because I was such a fan I made my own character who was a half human half demon girl named Melody! For people familiar with me, she’s still around she just exists in new forms, but anyhow, because she was a demon she had her own pentagram I drew. WELL come one random day my mom saw a pentagram where the ciel plushie’s eye should be right? And she had a major freak out. She said I invited the devil into our home and just it wasn’t bad. 🙁 I had to throw out my doll. And it stuck with me all day this idea that I brought evil into our home and when everyone was asleep I took the drawing I made, ripped it u pans threw it away. But I was panicked because !! You have to set it on fire right?? Well I didn’t have fire and I couldn’t do that so I 😭 I poured water all over the paper shreds and then tossed it, because the trash would be going away from our home in the morning. I ended up trying so hard to avoid thinking about what I’d done that it was the only thing I could see even when I closed my eyes. The more we tell ourselves not to think about the things we’ve done, the more our brain feels the need to process it. So, all I can really recommend is keeping busy or just try facing it! 🥺 maybe just think about me thinking faucet water can scare away the demonsTM 😭 the thought process was there. I’ve never told that story before so you’re the first! Consider that an honor. I’m a broken record I’ll tell the same stories over and over again. Also crying helps a bunch of writing down the awful feelings. I wrote my own sadness down in here and I feel better if only for a moment 🥰

Okay but anyways you’re probably tired of me preaching at you. I can’t help it 🗣️ I just try my best to be everyone’s cheerleader. Maybe it’s my own bad habit I can’t just ever be normal but 💅🏽 we push on anyways. My mom says I’m very “dulce” very sweet and candy like. And you know, you are what you eat 😭 but no actually everyone tells me I’m very sweet and don’t get it wrong I am but I’m also human I can be mean grouchy and awful like anyone else. But I am very nice too :) and it’s okay to admit when we do have good qualities (I’m practicing my preaching)

THE BLISTER IS AWFUL AND I WISH FOR ITS ABSENCE. 😭😭😭😭😭😭 maybe it’s feeling a little better today I can stretch my mouth again and tap the spot without too much pain but I also just woke up briefly to pee so who know what it’ll be like she I wake up wake up. (Update as I was writing this i can FEEEL iT)

I almost died in a forest once! 😂 so where I live there’s this conservation camp that kids get to go to when they’re like 12. And I went, obviously, and we finished our hike and activity really early so our leader asked if we wanted to go to one of the last day hikes since it was nearby. Well we went on this steep mountain side and I almost fell off, twice! Onto the running water below. Mm 🤔 that wouldn’t have been ideal so it’s great I didn’t die. And I got to see a waterfall at the end ♥️ you should meet me there, maybe we should be wearing bug spray but.. MEH even the bugs have to eat (I WILL cry if they touch me). We could hold hands and close our eyes while the water fall makes splashing sounds 🥰

They also had this hike (it was 4 special hikes for the last day you could only choose one) where you could collect quartz at the end and we were only allowed to take what fit in our hands and 🥹 I have big hands so I was able to fit like 4 or 5. One was super sharp and I lost it when we lost our house and moved, but it was my favorite and I think about it a lot.

ALSO WHAT TYPE OF MONSTER WOULD YOU BE

[rahneii]

Apollo has friends surprisingly ( interactions with the VALORANT agents )

i am bored and i've been wanting to write some of these down for a while so yes have my content, this is also really long so bear with me. Apollo is usually a lone wolf but he loves interacting and socializing with other people if it weren't for her curse.

Controllers

Brimstone Ugly boomer

Apollo and Brimstone are like old friends with a silent grudge between each other. Brimstone was the first person for Apollo to meet in the Valorant Protocol but was hired by Viper instead.

Apollo likes to counter any of Brimstone's plans or ideas by either calling it stupid, old, already done it and 'Maybe we should do what I said instead' proceeds to say the same thing but with curse words and slangs and some dramatic posing.

They don't talk too much but whenever they talk its like Apollo just heard something offensive argues with him.

The way they bond is in the field, though Apollo hates him, she still protects him from any harm. Its the only reason why Brimstone ever respects the false saint.

"Apollo, stop glaring me with you two eyes open. I'm still getting used to your 3rd eye." "Are they too distracting for you? Here ill give both of them for you to confiscate."

Viper

Apollo absolutely hates this woman with a burning passion, and refuses to speak to her or give any satisfaction of a bond.

Viper was the one who removed his wings, though there were other doctors, he only remembered Viper being there.

Viper could care less if Apollo hated her but what she wanted was for him to work with her and the protocol and cause no trouble whatsoever. She still feels guilty about it sometimes.

"Mad scientist down."

Omen "We are both traumatized"

Apollo and omen surprisingly relates together in some way except for eating people and stuff.

Omen teaches Apollo how to knit, garden, cook etc. So that he can learn how to calm herself instead of being isolated in his room 24/7.

They both like to share their experiences in Kingdom, body changes and radianite. They also made inside jokes that only they could understand. "Apollo, isn't it funny how Kingdom keeps this good reputation up just for Monsters like us to be in the background"

Astra "She teaches me how to fly sometimes"

There's this one incident at HQ where Astra tried to teach Apollo how to float with his small wings and accidentally dropped him off the second floor. Apollo forgave her for the effort but they were banned from floating around HQ again.

"Apollo, my friend! We are finally out in the field together. Lets spread our wings and fly!"

Duelists

Reyna "Scary hot woman"

Reyna and Apollo share a mutual agreement on having a desire for bloodlust, Apollo sometimes even envies how Reyna handles it so well.

Apollo likes to get tips from her as well sometimes

"Reyna! you were amazing back there! You truly are a goddess!"

Yoru "Who? oh that guy"

Apollo tends to forget that he exists just because he teleports everywhere it makes Apollo have a brainfart.

Yoru only asks random stuff about him like his form and abilities. He also takes down notes about it sometimes so that he could flex about knowing an angel in real life.

"Killed the uh, blue boy..."

Pheonix "If he touches my wings again i will bite him."

Pheonix always asks the question everyone usually has when they meet an angel. And sometimes repeatedly...

Apollo tries his best to avoid the questions by letting him get distracted by something or changes the subject. Apollo loves his determination but he can do that from afar.

"Pheonix PLEASE stop trying to touch my wings. They're attached to my ears and its hard enough to take care of them."

Jett "She's very talented for sure"

Just like Pheonix, she has a lot of questions but she learns quickly.

She sometimes likes to run with Apollo and would most likely ask Apollo if he could fly.

"Apollo, could you promise me a race if you get your wings back?" "For sure that's something I would keep to heart."

Raze "She's fun to be around, but I also have a lot of questions "

Apollo likes talking to her and looking at her tech since she was always interested on how this stuff worked even back on the church days since his priest prohibited tech like this.

Raze mostly chats with Apollo a lot because of him and KJ meeting up a lot. She has also has a lot of questions to ask but keeps it simple.

"Damn Apollo! You are.. Scary. In a good way of course! It was badass"

Sentinels

Killjoy "She still has never told me if she made KAY/O or not, or I haven't been listening"

Killjoy has enough of Apollo's bullshit most of the time but also has been "threatening(?)" him to make mechanical wings that can fly like the jet.

Apollo has asked a lot of weird requests and Killjoy would just shame her about it.

Apollo is always seen with Killjoy and Brimstone whenever he has to go with Brim.

"Fine.. you win this time, ill think about making your request."

Sage "She's the calm to the storm and I admire her for that"

Apollo admires Sage's hard-work and personality, he'd hang out with her a lot too.

Sage gives her advice and sometimes help as well. She is one of the few that wasn't really scared of Apollo

"Apollo, You worry me as well. Find your inner peace in the battle."

Cypher "A charming fellow, he sometimes concerns me though."

They both know a lot of stuff about the other agents and would share that info together sometimes. They even have code names, inside jokes and etc.

Apollo thinks the guy needs a rest and made a lot of promises for this guy and has no clue if she'd ever make those true.

"Apollo, Promise me you'd be the one putting the knife to my throat *chuckles*"

Initiators

KAY/O "The robot is TOO human for his own good to be honest with you. How charming"

KAY/O is seen with Apollo outside of HQ, the living spaces, outside and almost everywhere since Apollo was being monitored after the incident (which was eating a whole ass chair and almost eating the person on the chair too). Every week of the month at least.

Apollo is funnily enough is allergic whatever KAY/O's electric fluid that creates fragments and supressor has. But She chooses to stick with him since that's the most "safest" option there is.

Their relationship is strange, you see they both share sarcastic jokes in a room and the next thing you know the robot has random makeup marks on his body.

"You fragile humans sure like to put up a fight." "snort"

Sova "I could steal his eye for... personal purposes."

Apollo would usually, try to steal his eye. And Sova would always try to stay away from him. He's a little scared of her but he can handle being in a team with him.

Apollo is also usually nice to him most of the time, and also kept a promise for him.

"Apollo, you are a saint. Please stay that way."

Skye "I love her hawk, it would sometimes bite me though"

Apollo. Loves. Animals. I mean who doesn't? But Apollo always wanted a pet so he'd go to Skye just to pet her animals.

Skye enjoys the company of the Angel but she intimidates her, The whole 3rd eye thing and all

"Skye please please PLEASE can you let me hold the bird?" "Last time you did that it exploded on your hand mate"

Breach "He's...interesting."

They both are scared of each other. Apollo with his intimidating eye and Breach's personality. All you can hear is awkward small talk if you make them talk to each other.

Breach accidentally hit Apollo with his arm once and has never stopped thinking about it. Apollo just promised to herself that he'd stay away from him now.

[miraclesnail]

1000 Ways and I Can Name One

Series summary: A thousand ways to tell the Stoll brothers apart and I can name you one. Travis and Connor centric oneshots featuring characters from PJO/HOO. Chapter 31: Miranda - Smiles

Work Summary: Bold. Brazen. Boisterous. Brash. That’s who Miranda is. She kinda has to be like that when bloodthirsty monsters lurk every corner, haunt her every waking thought, cause her to be somewhat of an okay killer by the age of 9. She also likes to think the monsters are the reason why her dad is scared of her, but she knows better. That part was sorta on her.(A 16k one-shot of how Miranda finds Camp Half Blood based entirely on my own wish fulfillment.)

AO3 Link

FFN Link

My thoughts: ... I realized now... I hate, hate, HATE, HATE editing long works. It’s so tiring. But it’s finished. It’s been almost 5 months but it’s finished :D The entire work is under the ‘keep reading’ but guys, it’s 16k long and Tumblr missed up the formatting. Please let me know what you think though!

Miranda — Words

Miranda’s earliest memory is when she was three and it was of her dad.

Of dad grinning with his genuine, crooked smile and a finger on his lips, shushing her as they wait for Clara to come home and fall for their prank. 

Of dad smiling and helping her spell her name, letter by letter. 

Of dad saying, “it means worthy of admiration,” as he ruffled her hair.

Of dad laughing and pointing at the T.V. as they watch Spongebob together. 

Of dad laughing as their homemade cookies had salt added to it rather than sugar. 

Of dad laughing as they played charade and she tried to imitate what an elephant sounds like. 

Of dad taking the little heart-shaped blocks she made with her powers and hanging them up next to her drawings.

Of dad telling her it’s okay to be a little different, that she’s smart, that she’s unique, that she’s so, so, so, so very talented. 

Of dad hugging her and telling her, “It’s okay. The house is safe. No scary monster will get in while I’m here. Just because you started seeing the monsters when the Gardner’s move into our neighborhood doesn't mean they’re haunted. That’s not a really nice thing to say, especially to our future friends.”

Her earliest memory is of her dad and it’s of him being happy. 

  Then when she was four she met Katie, the girl who moved into their neighborhood last year. Katie is a year older than her, but so much shyer and so easily frightened. 

The playground was where they first talked, Miranda remembered. 

Right by swings where Katie clung to the chains. Two girls were surrounding her, tugging on Katie’s ponytail and mocking her backpack and shoving her by the shoulders. 

Always do the right thing, her dad always says. Don’t ignore bullying . 

So she walked up to the bullies and hit one in the arm and kicked the other in the shin. They both ran away crying, screaming they will tell on her. 

Now that did worry her a bit even as Katie clung to her and proclaimed her undying loyalty and friendship. (Little, red flowers pop up at their feet.)

Will dad be mad? Will she be scolded? Did she do the wrong thing? But dad just laughed and said not to worry. She did the right thing. He’s proud of her. 

He’s proud of her!

“But, maybe, before going to fists, you should try using your words first, yes?” he said with a chuckle, ruffling her hair with a hand.

  When she was five, Mrs. Violet, their next-door neighbor, died. 

‘Mauled by a bear. Body in pieces. Chunks all over the floor. Not a quick death. How scary. How sad.’

The bigger words buzzed over her head as she tried to understand them with her limited vocabulary. She asked her dad to tell her what the words mean, but he just picked her up and held her close, saying not to listen. 

So she listened and didn’t listen anymore. 

“This isn’t your fault,” he whispered and that’s weird. She didn’t think it was her fault either. But does that mean it could be? Should she be thinking about what she did? But dad said it wasn’t so it couldn’t be.

  She was six when her father’s love started to crumble. 

Another neighbor died. This time, no bodies. Just blood splatters on the wall. She’s old enough to understand some of the whispers now. She’s old enough to see the furtive glares the adults sent her way as she and dad stood behind the yellow police tape at Mr. Dingleberry's house.

She held onto her dad’s hands, tugging on it until he looked away from the blaring sirens to her. 

“Is it my fault?” she asked.

Dad bent to his knees to be eye level with her and smiled, but it’s weird. Ingenuine. His eyes don't crinkle the way they always do when he’s really happy.

“It’s not your fault, Randi.” 

His words didn’t sound as strong as it did last year.

  She’s seven when Dad stopped being proud of her. 

Monsters existed. She understood that now. They’re real. She saw them with her own eyes with Katie. One-eyed monsters. Many-toothed monsters. Dog-like monsters. Fire-breathing monsters. Seal-like monsters. 

They’re real. 

And they’re dangerous

Dad said they couldn't come into the house. They’re safe as long as they’re indoors with the lights on and the doors locked. 

And she believed him. 

Well, when Miranda was seven a monster tried to eat her and Katie at a friend’s birthday party. 

It broke inside the house, snapping the door in its hand like it’s nothing. It snapped her friend’s dad’s, Mr. Lotte, neck like it was nothing too. 

His body hit the floor limp with his head at a weird angle. His vacant eyes stared at her. Miranda couldn’t remember much of what she saw after that. Her tears blurred everything to just unrecognizable shapes, unreliable distances, and untruthful reality. 

But she recalled everything she heard with crystal clarity. Char’s high-pitched scream, Mrs. Lotte’s choked inhale, a chair falling, the ground rumbling, a man’s voice — one she doesn’t know — chuckling, “Yeah, they’re demigods alright.”

Mrs. Lotte ushered Katie and Char to her, stepping between them and the monster. She’s holding a kitchen knife. She’s pressing a phone into her hands. She’s talking to them — her — “Miranda, you’re the only one calm enough. Call 911. Take Katie and Char with you. And run . I’ll be right behind you.”

Run. I’ll be right behind you.

Miranda thinks this was probably the last time she trusted an adult.

But Miranda did run, dialing 911 and taking Char’s hand in hers as Katie ran beside her. Char resisted, clawing and digging her nails into her wrist. 

“We can’t leave my mommy and daddy! Let me go. Let me go right now!” 

“She’ll be right behind us,” Miranda remembered saying as she stared straight ahead, desperately looking for the exit, with the phone pressed to her ear. 

‘She’ll be right behind us.’ 

You didn’t even check to see if Mrs. Lotte was following us. 

Right when Miranda spotted the backdoor,  Char jabbed her elbow into her stomach. 

“Stop fighting!” Miranda yelled, struggling harder to hold onto Char, to hold onto the phone still connecting to the emergency services, and to open the backdoor with her elbow. 

It opened easily enough. But that was because she didn't open it. 

A monster did. 

Katie screamed for her to get back a second too late as the monster grabbed her by the wrist holding the phone. Miranda pushed Char away, scrambling to grab anything to hit the monster with. A table. A lamp. Katie’s outreached hand. But the monster lifted her into the air, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing until Miranda felt something snapped. 

The rumbling beneath her became unignorable, shaking harder and harder. Deep below, she heard just the barest of pipes breaking. The framed photos on the wall fell and shattered. The polished hardwood creaked and splintered.

Katie cried for her to be let go as she hit the monster’s legs with her tiny fists. The rumbling grew louder and louder. The hand lets go of her and Miranda dropped into a puddle of sewer water. 

The monster — later she would know was a cyclops — struggled in a binding of wood, screeching and spewing words of hate as the wood constricted all together and crushed its organs. Katie gasping is what made Miranda looked up. Katie was … horrified, stepping back and shaking her head in disbelief. She’s mumbling apologies, trembling all over. 

Looking back, she wasted those few seconds staring at Katie. It could have been used better. She could have done better.

Char ran back to her mother as soon as she was free. 

Miranda didn’t hear a scream. Maybe Char died quickly then. 

“What… what is this?”

Miranda’s head shot towards the voice. The first monster, the one that snapped Mr. Lotte’s neck, stood by the doorway with a knife stained in blood. 

She can see the growing fury in that single eye as it stomped towards them, screeching, “ What did you do?!”

Katie squealed, backpedaling and raising a hand. “G-Go away!”

The same wood sprouted from the ground and wrapped around the monster’s chest, neck, arms, and legs. 

Miranda waited. For the same thing to happen. For the monster to meet the same fate as it’s brethren. For the wood to tighten and crush the monster. But that didn’t happen.

Miranda glanced at Katie, who’s hesitating, who’s hand is quivering, who’s pleading for the monster to stop fighting and give up, who’s crying, who’s begging even harder for the monster to not make her kill him too, who’s face hardened in resignation at what must be done.

She remembered thinking… she hated seeing that face on that normally kind face. 

The tears dried as Miranda walked to the monster, ignored Katie’s cry for her to step back, touched the wood, hesitated for a second, — but remembering Katie’s stricken face made the decision easy — closed her eyes, and focused. 

Her dad and Katie’s came to pick them up five minutes after the deed was done.

The police came fifteen minutes later. 

Miranda stared at the house speared through the middle by a pine tree and at the monster (“A serial killer,” a passing policeman said) she speared through the chest carried out in a bag. 

She didn’t want to ask but asked anyway, “Is this my fault?” Could I have done more? Could I have saved them?

Her dad didn’t answer.

He just watched the bodies of her friend’s parents be carried outside in the bags. 

Miranda wanted to ask again, but when her dad started weeping she didn’t. 

Maybe if she hadn’t cried… maybe if she hadn’t listened to Mrs. Lotte… maybe if she had just fought first… 

Then Katie wouldn't have feared her powers and a family wouldn’t be gone.

  She’s eight when her father stops smiling at her.

Ever since that day, they saw a lot more monsters. Katie still couldn’t control her powers all too well, frequently popping up pine trees while she slept. But Miranda didn’t mind. She could practice her powers a lot more freely now, no longer bound by the small blocks her father would buy for her. No, the trees Katie made were humongous and full of wood she could manipulate once she scraped away the bark. 

Into a sword. Into a spear. Into a hook. Into a bat. Into a shield. Into a bracelet. Into a cuff-style bracelet. Into a spiral-style bracelet. Into a Wonder Woman-style bracelet. Ohhh! She likes that. 

Katie watched her do it all with a pout, legs swinging from the bench Miranda made. “I want your control, Randi.” 

Miranda smiled and leaned against Katie’s arm, fingers tapping on the book in her lap. “I can’t do any of this without you. You can grow anything. My powers only work if I have wood.”

“What’s the point of power if you don’t have control?” Katie scowled. 

“And what’s the point of control without power?” Miranda shrugged. “Even with all the control in the world, what does it matter if I can’t — he’s coming.”

Miranda flattened the bench into a board, muttering a quick sorry when Katie squeaked, before the backdoor slammed open. Katie caught on though and grass grew over the board, effectively hiding their activities for the past hour. 

Miranda steeled her heart as she watched her dad run to them. Come on, Randi. You've done this a dozen times now. 

She condensed the wood she was toying with earlier into the smallest size she could and shoved it inside her pocket. 

“Miranda, what were you doing?” dad said, eyes narrowed in suspicion. 

And with practiced ease, Miranda smiled and held the plant encyclopedia up. “Trying to find flowers again. Why?”

And just like the dozen of times she done this, it didn't fool her dad. “Don’t lie to me. You were using your powers again, weren’t you? How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t play with your powers!” dad scolded, scowling. 

Miranda stomped down the shame and raised her chin. “ We weren’t using our powers.” Technically not a lie. Katie wasn’t.

Dad stared at her for a second more, sighing and ruffling her hair. “Look, Miranda, I need you to understand it’s dangerous to use them so freely. Stop it already.” 

Miranda watched him head back to the house, making sure he’s inside before pulling the wood out and practicing the speed at which she can change the bracelet into a spear. 

  She’s nine when her father stops looking her in the eye.

The monsters were becoming bolder and bolder. Before a single pebble slingshotted inches from the monster’s neck was enough to scare them off. But now it took snaring them in bear traps and pitfalls to make them go away.

Another thing she learned was that some monsters could teleport. (Which, if you ask her, is highly, highly unfair. She wanted teleportation powers too.)

Did it worry her? Yeah, a little bit. But she couldn't let Katie know that. 

Miranda had a theory about the monsters and why they started showing up the day Katie moved into their neighborhood. Katie’s powers were probably acting like a blow horn, drawing every monster to her. 

But was she ever going to tell Katie this unproven theory of hers? No. Never. Katie wasn’t doing this on purpose and besides who knows what the guilt would make Katie’s already unstable powers do?

So her solution for now was just to covertly train Katie how to control her powers. 

But she should have realized, if the monsters were drawn to Katie’s powers, then there’s no reason for them not to be drawn to hers too if she flexed them enough.  

Like now. 

As they’re eating dinner. 

A dog, the size of a school bus, burst through the kitchen window and took part of the wall with it. 

Glass shards scattered all over the floor. The dog (no, too big to be a dog. Wolf? No, wolves don’t break into homes like this) shook the glass off its coat, unscathed. 

It stared at her and she at it.

Something buzzed in her blood. Maybe fear. Maybe confidence. Maybe the gummy bear she found wedged in the couch and still ate like a dummy. Whatever it is, she didn’t hesitate turning the wood bracelet encasing her wrist into a spear. 

It’s hard not to think back to two years ago. To the parents who fought the monsters in her place and died for it. To three years, four years ago, those neighbors that died because of them. Not this time. This time she’ll take the monster down before anyone could die. 

She took a step towards the monster, but her father snapped at her to run away.

“I’ll handle this,” he growled, pulling the shotgun hanging on the wall down.  

Miranda didn’t argue, but she didn’t run away either. 

She desperately wanted to believe her dad got this. She desperately wanted to believe her dad will be okay. She desperately wanted to believe her all-knowing dad will be right again. But — torn to pieces, someone was screaming, not a quick death, I’ll be right behind you , all her fault — adults were liars. Adults weren’t reliable.

But he's your dad. Don’t you trust him? 

“Miranda, get out of here now!” 

Dad fired the gun. The monster leaped forward, high into the air. A single paw knocked the gun right out of his hands and onto the ground. One stomp of the same paw and the gun was in pieces. 

It felt too cliche to say her heart froze. More like it fell in realization. Adults really couldn’t be trusted. 

“Dad,” she said, inching forward as tears started to well but she rubbed the heel of her hands into the sockets. Don’t cry. Don’t ever cry again. 

“Miranda, stay back!” 

Only she can do something. 

“Call 911.”

Do something, Miranda. 

“Run!”

If you don’t… if you don’t, do something

“Hide!”

Then your dad is going to die. 

And that will be your fault. 

“Miranda, listen to me and run!”

Come on. 

Her eyes cleared. 

Do something. 

The tears dried. 

Do something. 

She could see everything clearly. The monster leering over her dad. The open maw, seconds away from snapping over her dad’s head. The gleam of its teeth. The size of the monster. The red of its eyes, bright and gleaming. 

Focus.  

Aim. 

Breathe.

Throw.

It pierced true through the eye. 

The monster’s shrieked, a sound she’ll never forget. It made her hesitate, but then she remembered the scream of a father crushed to death, a mother’s scream of rage as she gave up her life to protect them, her friend’s scream of grief over her parents, and Katie’s scream of terror, of concern when that monster broke her tiny wrist all those years ago. 

There was no sympathy as she shifted the bracelet on her other wrist into a spear and threw again, piercing through the open maw to the back of the throat. The monster screeched and thrashed, disappearing back out into the night from the hole it made.

Miranda stared out into the darkness (it teleported… so unfair.) before turning to her dad, happy that he’s okay, happy that the monster is gone, happy that no one got hurt, happy that she’s strong enough to fight off the monsters. 

But the way dad looked at her, scrambling back rather than embracing her, face’s frightened rather than relieved. 

She thinks this is the moment that the slow crumbling became a fast disintegration. 

  She’s ten when her dad stopped caring.

He stopped asking her to not use her power, giving her free reign to do whatever she wants. 

Miranda handled most of the monsters that come their way now with Katie by her side to grow more trees. 

Some of the monsters have really tough skin. Some of them have powers like her. All of them are really smart. The few minutes the monsters had before she killed them were spent cursing her in the English and Greek language. Really creative stuff, if you asked her. 

The monsters were clearly smart enough to talk and know what their mistakes were. Unfortunately, they’re not smart enough to take her seriously. She wondered if she would be dead by now if the monsters stopped seeing a little girl. 

“Miranda, you need to stop with the monster hunting,” Auntie Ceres begged of her, wiping the blood — not her blood, never her blood — from her cheeks with a hand towel. “What happens if you get hurt?”

“I’m way too strong for that,” Miranda said with a victory sign and a bright smile, “But on the off chance I do get hurt, as long as you and dad and Katie don’t, then I’m fine with that.” 

It always made Ceres cry whenever she said that. 

“Brian, make her stop! She’s your daughter for Pete’s sake!”  Ceres would turn to her dad and Miranda wanted to tell Auntie that dad won’t do anything, haven’t done anything for months now. But she lets Auntie say it in the end, wondering if this time it would be different. 

As always, dad just looked away. 

  She’s eleven when her dad gave up.

“I don’t want to stay with Clara for the weekend,” she begged, voice high-pitched but no tears leaking. The tears never came since that day when she was 9. “Please don’t make me.”

But her dad just simply packed her belongings to go to her ex-stepmom without ever looking at her. 

“I have joint custody, Miranda. There’s nothing I can do.” 

“You didn’t even fight in the courts!” she wailed, for the first time in a long time feeling despair, “You just give her whatever she wants! She doesn’t care about me! All she cares about is the child support you’ll give her. We both know she’ll abuse it. Please, dad. Don’t make me go.”

And again, again, again, again, just like he has been doing for months now , dad just turned his back on her. 

  Then when she was twelve, she ran away. 

The day when Katie was supposed to come back from camp whatchamacallit, she got out of Clara’s home and took the bus to the Gardner’s house. 

She can’t wait for Katie to tell her everything about the camp! The lava wall, the pegasi, the crafting building. Oh god the crafting building! 

She saw the car sitting in the driveway and the excitement increased tenfold. Katie was back! Grinning with evil thoughts, Miranda climbed up the tree that’s beside Katie’s window. She shimmied the always unlocked window open and rolled inside, intending to scare her friend. But Katie isn’t in her room. Maybe she’s downstairs still. 

With care, Miranda tiptoed her way down, still intent on scaring Katie but the only voices she heard were Mr. Gardner, soon to be her step-dad, and her dad’s but no Katie’s. 

Is she not back yet?

Miranda thrummed with excitement. She could go with them to pick Katie up then! 

With just as quiet footsteps, she went to where her dad is talking with Mr. Gardner. If she couldn't scare Katie, then she would just scare dad and his fiance. 

But her dad’s voice, more labored than she had ever heard before, spoke.

“I don’t know what to do. Every second I’m with Miranda, I feel like I’m going crazy. ”

She froze in the shadow, socks peeking just centimeters from the doorway. 

He’s probably talking about another Miranda, she reasoned. There’s lots of people with her name. 

“She’s battle-crazy. She has unnatural strength. She doesn’t show sympathy for what she does whenever she kills those animals. She doesn’t even cry! What child doesn’t cry?”

A coworker. He got to be talking about a coworker. Not her. It can’t be about her. 

He can’t be talking about her. 

Dad knows why she doesn’t cry. Dad knows she can cry.

She just can’t cry as much as she wanted, because crying blurred her vision. She can’t see what’s coming if there’s tears in her eyes. She can’t defend Katie if there’s tears in her eyes. She can’t protect anyone if there’s tears in her eyes. 

Dad knows this. 

… Right? 

She told him, didn’t she? 

“It’s like she’s a sociopath! If I didn’t know the Greek Gods existed, I would have thought the devil possessed my little girl. Wait, if Greek Gods are real then the Christian God must be real too right? Oh lord, what if a devil is possessing Miranda?”

Sociopath.

Devil.

“Maybe you can send her to camp with Katie? They’re bound to have experience with this.”

Mr. Gardner didn’t defend her. Does he think she’s a devil too? A monster? Does Katie think so too? Does Ceres? 

“I’m thinking about that. But Jesus Christ, she doesn’t want to leave my side ever. She made such a big fuss even when she had to go to Ceres’s.”

But she had a reason. That was before Katie left to rein her powers in, back when the monsters would come everyday. Katie can’t fight. Katie can’t protect Mr. Gardner and her dad. And Katie doesn’t know the monsters are drawn to them because her powers flickered uncontrollably. 

She had a reason. 

“You already said the camp was understaffed and underpaid. I can’t give someone like Miranda to them.”

Someone like her… 

She wondered if this is how it feels to drown. 

“She scares me. I’m scared of my own daughter.”

She wondered if the shattering she hears is her heart breaking. 

Even still, her eyes remained dry. 

Maybe her dad is right. Maybe she is a monster.

Miranda took a breath — it’s shaky. Come on, Miranda. Keep it together —  and stepped around the corner, coughing once as she stared at her socked feet, not daring to look up at their faces. She heard two gasps. Dad’s voice is frantic as he said, “Miranda! W-what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at your mother’s!”

She doesn’t bother to answer. 

“If I change, will you love me again?” she asked. 

“Wh-what? Miranda, sweetheart, look. Whatever you heard was, um. It wasn’t about you. It was my co-worker at… at… uh… my… volunte — look, this wasn’t about you!”

“If I change, will you love me again?” she asks again, throat clogging but the tears that dad so adamantly thinks makes her human refuse to come. 

“Miranda, I— you— of course, I love you. How about we just talk about what you heard just now and —”

They’re not answering her, but she’s smart enough, observant enough, seen enough over the years to know that was a lie. 

It all started that night she killed the hellhound. 

She scares me.

She squeezed her eyes shut, willed the tears to come, but nothing.

Sociopath, devil.

Her father’s face, scared and terrified, — of her — kept popping up. 

Someone like her.

Miranda turned around and ran. Voices yelled after her but she didn't listen. Didn’t stop. Didn’t look back. And just ran.

  She’s twelve when she runs away from home. 

And she’s twelve plus a couple weeks older when she meets Lee. 

  Miranda (12) - Travis (13) - Connor (12) 

April

Pre The Sea of Monsters

“So.”

“So.”

“This is it?”

“This is it.”

Miranda stares at the old overarching sign, rickety and swaying in the wind, possibly seconds from toppling over. 

Camp Half Blood. 

She doesn’t know what she expected, but underpaid and underfunded definitely seems to fit the bill. Even so… 

“Just so you know if anything sounds sketchy or cult-like, I’m out of here,” she warns. 

But Lee just gives a blinding smile and says, “You’ll love the place. Come on, I’ll show you around.” 

Miranda walks up the hill after Lee, up to where that humongous pine tree is. He’s still talking in that peppy tone of his, relaxed and unguarded. It sounds genuine nut she’s careful to keep him in her sight at all times. Maybe three-fourths of the way up, she hears screaming and she thinks the worse — torture camp, slave camp, Aeron, army, battalion, crazy cult people.

It makes her stop and shifts her bracelet into a sword, backing away. 

But then another person screams and after a second listen, she realizes they don’t sound fearful. If anything they sound — 

“I got it! I got it! I GOT IT! Ack!”

“Travis, you idiot! I’m over here!”

“AH! Lee, look out! The volleyball—”

A volleyball is hurtling towards them at remarkable speed, towards Blondie who has his back turned, towards Blondie who’s facing her because she had to pull her sword out. He’s not going to turn around in time to dodge. So Miranda takes a running leap and whacks the ball back to the volleyball court at the base of the hill. 

It, unfortunately, hits a boy right on the face and now there is new, different, not as benevolent screaming as the boy hunches over with others gathering around him.

Miranda winces as she drops back to her two feet, shifting the sword back into a bracelet behind her back.

Whoops. 

  “No. She didn’t. She couldn’t have.”

“Yes! She did!”

Miranda laughs — it feels so strange to laugh genuinely — and leans back on the infirmary chair. “Katie really did that?” 

“Yeah, except she just barely grazed my shoulder with her suitcase,” the boy, (“I’m Travis,” he had introduced with a crooked grin as he bleeds on the volleyball courts), says with his head high. His identical twin, Connor, (“they’re not twins FYI,” Malcolms says) readjusts the bag of ice cubes over his brother’s nose. 

Connor thwacks Travis’s on the forehead with a newspaper. “I didn’t need you to protect me then. I could have taken that suitcase.”

“Everytime someone new comes in, we get hurt,” Travis continues to say, “This is all too big of a coincidence. First, Will with his ear-piercing whistle that nearly made me deaf. Then Katie with her suitcase. Malcolm and his backpack. And now Miranda with a volleyball. Maybe we’re bad luck. This never happens when Luke was the uh… This never happens with anyone else,” Travis stammers towards the end, eyes darting to her and Malcolm then to Connor. Miranda piques at that. Luke? Luke sounds familiar. 

Connor snorts, but eyes fond. “You’re the bad luck. I haven’t gotten hurt yet.” 

“Maybe it is a curse,” Malcolm, a small guy with round glasses sitting next to her, says. He pushes his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “We should have Chiron check it out.”

A curse. 

Maybe Chiron can check her out and see if there’s any curses on her too. 

Connor readjusts the ice pack and Travis squeaks, pushing Connor’s hand away to hold the pack himself. 

Guilt coils in Miranda’s stomach when Travis grumbles lowly, you’re pressing too hard . 

“I really am sorry,” she apologizes again for maybe the fiftieth time 

“It’s fine,” Travis says with a thumbs up.

“It was an accident,” Connor follows. 

“Still…” Miranda mumbles, tinkling with her bracelet.

Travis’s eyes crinkle the way her dad’s used to back when he smiled all the time at her. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. I had worse.”

“It’s true,” Connor says with the same smile Travis has, though the worry on his face seems to say something different. Or maybe that’s just how Connor looks 24/7. A perpetually worried brother. Kinda like Katie. She misses Katie. “Annabeth broke his arm once during judo practice.” 

“That definitely hurt a lot more than a broken nose. On the plus side Annabeth felt so guilty, she did all my chores for me for a full month. So chin up. You’re not the worst thing to ever happen.” Travis laughs. 

Miranda’s heart aches. Not the worst thing to them maybe. But to her dad…  

It must have shown on her face because Travis says softly, “Hey. Seriously. This is nothing.”

She nods but makes a mental note to herself. Get a better poker face.

The door to the infirmary opens and a new boy, no older than 12 at most, comes racing in. He looks like Lee’s little brother with his blond hair and blue eyes and sun-kissed skin.  

“I found the hymn for bloody noses! Travis, hold still.”

“NO! Wait, wait, wait, Will. I don’t want to—”

Will didn’t listen, going ahead to move the ice bag into Connor’s waiting hands. Placing his hands on the bridge of Travis’s nose, Will closes his eyes and chants. 

Miranda watches, mesmerized, at the way Will’s hands glow a soft gold, the way no one is bothered or excited at this display of power, and the way Will so very calmly just let his power be known in front of a complete stranger. (But you kinda did the same in that cult and lo and behold, look what happened.)

Travis squeals and pushes Will’s hand away, but it seems Will’s trick done its job. The nose is no longer bleeding, though Travis doesn’t seem any better with the tears pricking his eyes.

“That stung!”

Will’s face droops and Miranda swears that expression rivals that of a sad puppy. “Oh. I'm sorry. Maybe I mispronounced a word ...”

“Will, I’m done being your test subject,” Travis whines, wincing and rubbing his nose, “If you’re going to practice your powers, do it on Lee or Karen. They’ll both be happy to help.” 

Will offers an apologetic shrug. “They don’t get hurt nearly enough for me to practice. You, on the other hand, get hurt every other day. Plus, you’re right here and Karen is in California.”

“The curse,” Malcolm mutters under his breath. 

Travis pouts, turning to his brother and nudging him in the ribs. “Defend me, Connor.”

And in a show of utmost support, Connor smirks and slings an arm over Will’s shoulder. “Hey, if it heals you then I’m not complaining. Oh, I know! Think of it as an incentive to stop getting hurt.”

“It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose! Quick, someone Iris-Message Annabeth and have her defend me.”

Connor tosses the ice bag into the restroom on the other side of the room with pinpoint accuracy, the bag landing in the sink. He checks Travis’s nose before clasping his hands together and smiling. “Now that Travis is all good, it’s time for the tour. Welcome to Camp Half Blood, Miranda! Or as what I like to call it around these parts, the Gods’ dumping grounds. And you, Miranda Gardiner, are a demigod.”

  Travis and Connor lead her around the camp and give her a tour.   

The amazing lava-sprouting rock wall she read about months ago. She’s part god. The cool pegasi and their stalls. She’s a god’s child. The magical, food-popping pavilion. A child that was dumped on her father’s doorsteps . The infirmary. A cursed child. The cabins. Her real mother abandoned her. Cabin 11 which she will be staying in. Nobody loves her. Her new bed. She misses Katie. Her nightstand. She misses her dad. Her chest box. 

What’s the point of life with her dad hating her?

“Miranda!” 

“Yes?!” she exclaims, just stopping herself in time from colliding her head with (Travis, Connor?).

One of the brothers is staring at her with worry. The other is also staring at her with worry. She wishes her dad would stare at her like that too. 

She forces the smile and asks again, “Yes?”

“You’re doing okay?” one asks. 

And Miranda flashes a grin. “Never better. So what’s next?”

The one who asks her frowns a little but breaks eye contact with her to nod his head at the bed. “This will be your bed. Our policy for beds is first come, first serve.”

“Before, the policy was ‘oldest and wisest get the bed’” the other brother snorts, “We would have to sleep on the floor whenever the summer people came. It was so unfair. Anyway this bed is yours. And this chest box is yours too. It has a lock.” 

“But the lock doesn’t really work,” says the other with a shrug. “Don’t keep anything valuable in there.” 

“No problem,” Miranda says as she slinks on top of the bare mattress, sighing as she sinks into the springs. This is a thousand times better than the hard benches of New York City. “I don’t have anything valuable with me.” 

“You don’t have anything?” her counselor asks with a frown.

“Nope!” she answers, looking at the bed frame above hers. She wonders if it’s made of wood. She wonders if she can manipulate this.

“Not even a backpack?” says the other.

“Nah-dah. When I ran away, I took nothing. I just hitched onto a train and rode it wherever it took me.” 

Travis and Connor share a look before they go to the cabin’s closet and take out a couple clothes and a comforter, holding it out for her. She stares at the offering between them and up at their honest faces. 

It’s just like Lee said, huh?

Free food. Free clothes. Free bed. And all she has to do is just go to the classes Chiron holds and do a few chores. It sounds too good to be true. 

It is too good to be true. 

She guesses it’s time to put a stop to this grand fairy tale before she gets too attached. 

“What’s the catch?” she says, smiling and standing back up. 

“The what?” 

“The catch. The price. What do you want from me?” she bites out, a hand sliding to hold a bracelet with the tips of her fingers. 

“We don’t want anything from—”

“I know what’s going on,” she says. “You’re fighting against somebody, right? And in return for all these commodities, you want me to fight them for you. Well, I’m telling you right off the bat I don’t want to fight. Nah-dah. Zilch. Will not do. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200. So if you want to kick me out, go ahead.”

“Oh that.” Like this is a joking manner, they both kind of chuckle. “We only want willing people to fight. It’s bad for morale to force people to fight. And we have Annabeth and Clarisse. Combined they’re like an army.”

“So don’t worry about the fighting! It should be over before you even knew it.”

Miranda’s eyes narrow, but she doesn’t sense any ill will from them. The brothers offer the bedding and clothes again and she takes them into her own hands.

“Okay, I’ll hold you to it,” she says, not really believing them. 

They’re going to lie to her just like dad and Mia did.

  After selecting a couple towels and socks and tucking them into the chest box, Travis and Connor introduce her to the other residents. 

Malcolm, a taciturn bookworm who is giving off major ‘I am a genius at everything’ vibe.

Clarisse, totally a future gym buddy once Miranda breaks past her grumpy exterior. 

Will, camp’s rising healer with the biggest heart and possibly the sweetest personality who doesn’t take shit from anybody and oh my god why is he a yearrounder? What parent could turn this child away?

Silena, a nice, sweet girl who she will undoubtedly become friends with because of the connection this girl has with the pegasi stalls but there’s something about her… something wrong about her…  

Beckendorf, a kind, genius mechanic that seems to have some kind of feud going on with the Stolls if the glare is anything to judge by.

Lee, an instrument enthusiast.

Chiron, the otherworldly supervisor.

And Mr. D. An actual god.

He doesn’t seem like a god, but what does she know? 

  The daily routine is like this: wake up at 6, eat breakfast at 7, school lessons at 8, recess at 10, lessons again at 11, lunch at 12, then training at 2. 

She’s fine with archery. She’s fine with hitting dummies. She’s fine with even just running mindlessly for an hour. What she won’t do is fight against a person. 

She refuses to. 

Fighting a living being… having to anticipate movements… having to make active decisions… there’s no guarantee she won’t use her powers out of reflex. She knows she has great control but in the heat of battle, her reflexes, her instincts, her want to win the competition, Miranda scares she’ll reveal her powers by mistake. 

And besides, it’s her powers that made dad scared of her, it’s her powers that drew that freaky cult to her. It’s her powers that ruined every good thing she has in life. She can’t let it ruin this too. 

Chiron obliged, stating that he will respect her wishes and nearly everyone is okay with her decisions except for Clarisse. But Clarisse always picks a fight with everybody so Miranda doesn’t let it bother her. Travis says not to let it get to her. Someone dear to Clarisse left and the daughter of Ares has never been great at coping.

  With the comfort that her needs will be met and a lessen need to stay vigilant, it seems like the nightmares come back with a vengeance.

Of dad tossing her outside, face cold and empty as he orders her to leave and never come back. Of dad laughing in her face as she begs for him to take her back ( “I’ll change! I promise, I’ll change!”)

Of Katie turning her back on her. Of Katie looking at her with disgust. Of Katie looking at her with fear. Of Katie wrapping her in her vines and choking the life out of her, face giddily with relief as —

Good thing she always wakes up before it goes too far. 

Miranda wakes up and lays there in the soft warmth and cushion of her new bed, listening to the crickets and the tic tic of the clock and someone’s soft snoring and someone’s restless turning and tossing. 

Guess she isn’t the only one having a bad dream. 

Miranda turns to the side to find either Travis or Connor, one of them, whimpers and whines in the dark. Just as she wonders about waking him up, they did it by themselves. 

She listens to his ragged gasps, watches him move his blanket away and climbs the stairs, listens to him asking his brother if he could sleep in his bed, and hears a body shuffling to the side to make room. 

She smiles bitterly into her pillow. Dad used to let her snuggle in bed with him after a nightmare too despite Clara’s protest she’s getting too old for that. 

It all stopped though the day Char’s parents died. 

  She’s never alone. There’s always someone with her. Mostly Travis and Connor, but sometimes they’re busy and Will would be her companion for an hour or two. 

She doesn’t mind. Will can be surprisingly fun to listen to as he talks about the hymnals and his aspirations and what he’s working on learning today. It’s just that there are only so many things to do at Camp and without fail, consistently actually, the brothers leave her at Will’s hands at 4 pm. 

She tries not to let it bother her, especially since she declared she wants nothing to do with the fights, but, man… she really needs to get a better poker face because the 7th time the brothers pass her on to Will, Will says, “Do you want to see what they’re doing?” 

She scrutinizes his honest, good-natured face, finds no lies, and nods. 

Will leads her to the forest, signaling for her to hide behind a tree and to be silent. 

“They’re training,” Will whispers as they crouch behind the tree.

Miranda watches the brothers fall into a fighting stance in a clearing that seems well-used if the wide patch of dirt is anything to go by. They fight first with a sword, then a sword and a shield, then a knife, a spear, nunchucks, bare-handed. 

She still can’t tell them apart yet without help but there’s always one clear winner judging by the dirt stains. 

“Good match. Good match. But Travis I think you’re still having trouble actually striking, you know, the only way you can win for sure. Running and dodging only prolongs the battle,” Connor says as with a knee grinding between Travis’s shoulder blades and arms pulled back by the wrist. 

Travis huffs with his cheek pressed to the dirt, trying to throw Connor off and failing. “I’m trying .”

“You always hesitate,” Connor lectures, “The enemy won’t hesitate.”

“I know . I’m not stupid ,” Travis whines, hips buckling but Connor remains unphased as ever. “It’s just… just…arghhh, get off! I get it. You won again.”

“Just what?” Connor asks, getting off Travis and helping him stand. 

Travis stands with a red face, patting his dirt-stained camp shirt. “It’s just…you know what happened with Mrs. Elliot that one time. I’m scared of going too far again. One time was enough. One time was way too much. I can never look at milk again without being reminded of that incident.”

“Oh.” Connor frowns, rolling his shoulders. “Do you want me to stop eating cereal then?”

The way Travis smirks… crooked and mischievous and so obviously done to move the subject forward… Dad used to do that all the time back when she doubted the righteousness of her powers. “Nah. I know how much you love your cereal. You’ll probably go through withdrawal without your daily gallon of milk and honey nut cheerios.”

Connor pouts and nudges Travis in the arm. “You should talk. You eat your weight in strawberries every morning, you ass.” 

Their conversation devolves into ribs and jabs at each other's diets. It sounds like they both need a nutritionist to set their diet straight. Watching them bickers though… it makes her yearn for her dad again and she can’t be having that. 

“Come on, Will,” she says, backstepping. “Let’s go.”

Just before she turns around she sees Connor’s face softening, voice becoming far more gentler. “Don’t worry about going too far. Let me do all the fighting and you just watch my back.” 

  On day 14, the conversation finally happened. She’s surprised it took this long. 

They’re all children of gods. They all should have some kind of skill. Travis and Connor pick up on languages really quickly. Malcolm is a master crafter. Clarisse has a solid grip on all weaponry. Will is obvious with his penchant for healing. And Katie, Katie with her remarkable power, Katie with her flashy power, Katie, a sure sign she’s a daughter of Demeter. (Does this mean her mom is Demeter too? Since she can control wood?)

“What about you? What’s your power?” One of the brothers asks, “Please tell me you aren’t like Katie and can make freaky deeky trees grow.”

Miranda grasps her bracelet in a hand and smiles. “Me? I don’t have any powers.”

The one who asked her frowns, like he doesn't believe her, like he thinks she’s lying, but that's nothing new in her life. 

“Not even passive ones?” the other asks, “I don’t have a lot of active powers like Travis but we share the passive ones.”

Miranda frowns. “Passive? Active?”

He goes on to explain, “Passive as in it’s on all the time and doesn’t take energy. Like I can understand most languages. Percy can talk with horses. Malcolm can do any kind of craft. I guess active powers would be like what Katie and Will have.”

Miranda stares at her socked feet for a few seconds, debating what to say. They’re like her and Katie. They shouldn’t mind. right? But Aeron and Mia were like her and look what happened to them. 

“No,” she says, fiddling with her bracelet. “I don’t have any active powers.”

  Life’s a goddamn joke for allowing this to happen exactly one hour after that conversation about powers. 

She doesn’t quite understand what is going on with the barrier. All she knows is that the massive pine tree is dying and that is somehow correlated with the monsters getting through. 

Beckendorf, Connor, Travis, and Clarisse normally handle it. Usually, in tag teams too. It’s amazing to watch them fight and take down the monsters. The way they don’t even talk and somehow work in cohesion reveals the years they been working together. It’s so cool. 

And so very infuriating to have to sit back and do nothing. It makes her hands itch in a way it never has before. Those four are strong and Miranda has no reason to worry. But she has been the main protector of her neighborhood for years. See a monster, kill the monster. It’s a conditioned response. And one that’s proving a hard habit to kick apparently. 

She jinxes herself though because now there’s a shadow dog (“hellhound!” Will shrieks) standing before them on the volleyball field. They’re pack animals at some point in their life apparently as Miranda stares at the hellhound in front of her. Camp’s main fighters are each dealing with their own shadow dogs. Clarisse is taking on three and it seems she’s struggling. 

Don’t worry about Clarisse right now , Miranda thinks. Worry about Will and Silena first.

The three of them are by the Big House, their game of volleyball long forgotten as Miranda watches the hellhound break into a sprint towards them.

Miranda doesn’t sit in on their training session, instead spending the time climbing the rock wall but she thought this camp trains them how to fight. If Chiron is that good at teaching math and science, he must be great at teaching monster-killing techniques too, right?

But the way her two companions stare at the coming hellhound with wide eyes, the way they’re frozen in terror, the way they don’t even budge when Miranda yells for them to fucking move , it’s obvious the camp has a poor training regiment. Or maybe Will and Silena are new like her. Or maybe they’re slack off when it comes to the training sessions (the former seems more likely. Will is a crazy hard worker. She can’t imagine him skipping anything. )

Either way, the hellhound was coming towards them and Will is frozen, Silena too, and she couldn’t just not do anything. As easy as breathing, as easy as thinking, Miranda transforms her bracelet into a wooden spear. She pulls Will back from the snapping teeth and jabs the point into the eye, twisting and grinding it down into the socket.

The hellhound howls and backs away, remaining red eye glaring at her with an intelligence no wild animal has. It bares her teeth at her, some painted red with blood dripping from its destroyed eye. This one is a lot smaller than the ones she normally deals with. Maybe it’s an adolescent? 

It snarls, blood dripping in rivulets now.

Miranda squeezes her spear. 

This is it. This was the moment her father thought of her as a monster. If she continues this, the other will think she’s one too. 

But then if she hadn’t acted back then, her father would be dead. If she doesn't act now, Will will be dead. 

She’s hesitating too much. The demon snarls again and lunges towards her and Will. 

Years of fighting monsters help her evade the snapping maws, pushing Will off to the side. A claw just barely scratches her forearm though, but it itches and burns like it has been dunked in burning oil. 

“M-Miranda!” Will cries.

Hey, come on, Miranda. What is better? To have dead friends who won’t ever know your secrets? Or to have alive friends, safe and sound and able to live another day? Stop stalling. Stop playing around. Stop doubting and just finish this.

Miranda readjusts her grip on her weapon, shifting it into a pebble. The hellhound is charging towards her again. She meets it halfways, pulling off to the side at the last moment and angling her fist to be diagonal. 

Time it. Hellhounds aren’t that bright. Time it. Stay calm. You can do it. raises her fist with the pebble and waits, counting down the seconds. 

Right when the hellhound’s jaws are over her fist, right before it could snap its jaws close and take her arm, she shifts the pebble into a spear. The jaws snap and the spear embeds into the roof of the palate, clean through the snout. 

The hellhound shrieks are so, so familiar. 

Miranda pulls out the celestial weapon she received, a harvesting sickle, and brings it down into the thigh of the monster, the awful screams fading away as the monster poofs into literal gold dust.

 (Wow, Lee wasn’t kidding about that part either.)

The following silence is overwhelming. 

She doesn’t dare look at her two companions as she retrieves her bloodied spear, instead looking at the bloody mess that is her spear and the ground. 

“Well, now that’s over with. How about we continue our game of volleyball?” she says with that airiness of cheer she’s so used to drawing up.

Nobody responded like she expected. 

Someone is vomiting like she expected. 

Someone is walking towards her like she expected.

Any second now. They’re going to call her a monster and tell her to stop and go to therapy. Then when she evidently cannot be normal, cannot listen to orders, cannot sit by and just hide from the monsters that come, they will kick her out. 

Well.

It has been good while it lasted.

She’s going to miss them. 

Some of them had actually grown on her. 

A hand touches her arm. 

Yes. Any second now.

There’s a small inhale.

This was bound to happen. There’s no way she could ever hide it. 

Will is chanting and a cool sensation is flooding her arm, like pressing it against a cold pillow, soothing and soft and — wait.

Miranda steps back from the hand and stares at Will with his kind eyes, at the spear bloodied from the hellhound’s tissues, at the pile of dust, and at Silena who just now stops vomiting and is looking at her with the same look in Will’s eyes.

It’s not fear. 

She doesn’t understand what it is.

But she knows it’s not fear.

  “Show us again. We all want to see it again!” Travis exclaims, eyes twinkling in a way she wishes her dad would as well.

Let’s not think about him .

Miranda presses her palm on the trunk of the tree, bark scraped away so her fingertips rest on the wood itself. She doesn’t need to concentrate much to shift the wood into a sword perpendicular to the tree trunk. There’s a wave of gasps and admiration as she pulls the sword clean from the trunk of the tree to be passed around. 

Clarisse twirls it in her hands, impressed. Lee isn’t as impressed. He looks more pained than impressed. Maybe because she tried to crush his head with it when they first met. “Where did you learn to make something like that?” Lee asks as he examines the sword in his hands. 

Miranda takes the sword back. “There’s a lot of monsters in my neighborhood.” 

Lee’s face becomes more pained but before Miranda could dwell on it more, Clarisse shoves her way forward to stand directly in front of her. 

“That’s really impressive,” Clarisse says, eyes sparkling. “But how well can you fight with it? I’ve been looking for a new training partner after Annabeth left. All these wimps here sucks ass.”

Miranda smiles and brandishes her sword. “I say pretty well.”

In the end, her confidence isn’t unfounded. She’s equally matched with Clarisse. Her techniques and forms may be a little unorthodox but it garners the approval of Clarisse and henceforth she is now Clarisse’s new sparring buddy! 

The horn sounds for lunch and Miranda follows the others to the dining pavilion. Clarisse stays behind though, tossing a coin into a birdbath. (“She’s Iris-messaging someone. It’s a monster-free method of communication,” Malcolm explains.) The daughter of Ares talks to the fountain, saying how she “found a new sparring partner” and “she’s so much better than you” and “are you jealous, Annabeth?” all with a smug smile.

Miraculously, a voice flits up the bath, “I miss you too, Clarisse. Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a month and a half.”

Miranda stifles a grin as Clarisse’s face flushes and the daughter of Area screeches, “I DON’T MISS YOU AT ALL, CHASE. EAT SHIT.”

  Nothing good lasts for long. 

Happy times are soon banked by tragedy and sorrow. 

The euphoria brought on by getting the lead for the school play, learning about Clara and dad’s divorce, finding out about dad and Mr. Gardner’s wedding was all ruined when she found out dad can’t come to play or that Clara will have dual custody over her or that she isn’t loved. 

That last bit, discovering she wasn’t loved, definitely put a damper on her mood for a while, but she’s over it now. She got over it. She had to get over it because how can she think about something as trivial as having a dad scared of her when she has bigger things to worry about? Right now, it’s worrying about the monsters coming through the barrier. Back then it was surviving with no money, no food, and no shelter. 

That little time she spent on the run was definitely hard. 

Hunger took her mind off dad more time than she can count as she takes to the garbage cans in search of edible food. The many monsters that lurk in the cities’ corners also took her mind off her dad. And the biting cold did a great job of taking her mind off her dad as well! 

Then meeting Aeron in Memphis after she fought off a cyclops also proved to be a great distraction even though something was off about Aeron. Something dangerous…

Still, it dulled the pain and she went along with the strange boy and devoured the food she was given. Met a boy some years older than her with a kind face whose name is Chris. Met another kind girl named Chevette who healed the poisoned bite she got from the shadow dog. Met a girl named Mia who said she understands as she cups her hands in hers with a smile that’s kind of deranged. 

Aeron said they’re revolutionaries. They’re going to change the world, the entire infrastructure. They said they were going to make sure no child goes neglected. No child will suffer. No child will ever feel unloved. Which sounds nice and all and when Miranda asked how they were going to achieve that goal, Aeron said they’re going to climb to the heavens, destroy the gods, and replace them with titans.

Which… okay. Miranda thought they might be a little crazy because after all, God isn’t real but they have food and shelter and people who say they understand so she stuck with them for a little while.

Nothing good ever lasts. 

The group she found, while kind enough to provide life necessities, are also off the rocket insane . 

‘We need you to fight.’ ‘We need you to kill.’ ‘We need you to infiltrate camp something something.’ ‘We need you to be a spy.’ ‘We need you to kill this boy named Perc something something.’ 

Espionage, murder, assassination. 

It’s absolutely insane. And the way everybody didn’t blink an eye? They’re definitely a cult. So she left in the middle of the night without telling anyone. 

But she wasn’t sneaky enough. Someone must have seen her left and tailed her. 

They’re oddly persistent, following her wherever she goes. No matter how much she threatens them to leave her alone, that she will hurt them (no, she won’t), that she will kill them (no, she won’t), that she’s getting tired of this (scared, really), that she isn’t going to join whatever evil cult they have going on (Katie, please help her), they persisted. 

And persisted and persisted and persisted. 

Miranda was seconds away from giving in and going to the police to help her take her back to Texas.

That is, until she met Lee. 

She was so, so certain Lee was with them. 

But he said Katie sent him after her and she so desperately wanted to believe that Katie loved her, doesn’t fear her like dad and Mr. Gardner does. Lee seems to be an honest, good man. She doesn’t sense any warning bells. So she got into the car with him (windows down and no seatbelt in the backseat just in case. Just in case…) 

But everything works out in the end and here she is, swathed in a warm blanket with fresh clothes, food in her tummy, and weirdos who aren't freaked out by her. 

But all good things come to an end.

“Hello, Miranda.”

It’s so bullshit.

“It’s so nice to see you again.”

Why can’t nice things last?

“Let’s all be friends.” 

Then like the viper she is, Mia smiles innocently and sweetly, standing on top Half Blood Hill with a suitcase.

  Miranda doesn't like asking outright what’s going on with the Camp (Travis becomes 100x more talkative with this painful longing in his eyes and Connor seethes quietly as he tears open into a bag of Cheetos. Miranda decides she doesn’t like those looks), but she gets just enough to understand the main picture.

Luke, a former counselor, went full crazy and joined an evil god to destroy the world. (“Titan,” as Chiron likes to correct her so often). 

Before going AWOL, Luke recruited almost all of the Hermes Cabin. 

A simple investigation of the cabin’s closet reveals a lot of belongings — a photo of a boy and girl, a stuffed bear, a Canon camera, a locket —  carefully stacked in the corner of the closet in a large box labeled ‘just in case they come back :)’ 

And an even simpler check of the belongings reveal names written in sharpie. Chris. Chevette. Holden. Aeron. 

Aeron. 

The pieces are falling together now. 

“Miranda,” Mia says lightly, like they’re old friends. “You look like you want to punch me.”

I do.  

“What are you doing here?” Miranda asks instead, hand gripping her bracelet as they stand under Thalia’s Pine. They’re the same height with close to the same build. If it comes to blows, Miranda won’t have trouble overpowering her. Mia’s ridiculously long, knee-length hair with all the ridiculously large ribbons and bold hair clips is also an easy target. The weird, shimmering cerulean hues of her eyes is no less creepy than it was all those weeks ago. 

Mia’s eyes follow her hand, her smile saddening. She tucks a strand of her straight, brown hair behind her ear. “I see you’re more open to using your powers. Shame you won’t use it for us.”

“What are you doing here?” Miranda asks again. Warning bells pulse through her. Danger danger danger, they scream. What were Mia’s powers? Do you remember? Did she ever used them? 

“Travis and Connor,” Mia says, Miranda’s blood going cold. How does she know them? “I need to talk to them.”

“What do you want with them?” Miranda asks, transforming her bracelet into a pebble. 

“I just need to talk with Travis and Connor. There’s matters I—”

“You’re working with Kronos, aren’t you?” Miranda bites out. 

The smile widens. “So you know that name. Yet you’re still here.”

“What is your goal?”

No answer. 

Miranda thinks of Will and Silena who can fight but not that well, who keeps facing death’s door every time a monster comes because the barrier is deteriorating. She thinks of Travis and Connor and how they liken this camp as their home, of Lee who calls this place a sanctuary, of Clarisse and Beckendorf who found their place in this world thanks to the camp. 

And she thinks of Katie. This is the place where she finally, finally, after years and years of trying and failing, learned to control her powers. 

It’s precious to them. 

And they’re precious to her.  

“Are you going to destroy the camp?”

No answer. 

Miranda takes a step towards Mia who smiles wider. 

“Tell me!” 

She hears footsteps behind her, someone running to them. She doesn’t turn around. She knows better than to turn the back to the enemy but she hopes, she prays to every gods there are that it isn’t—

“Hi there. Are you new? Do you two know each other?” her head counselor asks, coming right up beside her with what she knows is a lax grin. 

“Get back,” Miranda snaps, leaping back herself but it’s too late. 

Mia’s smile widens even more. The hand in her pocket twitches and suddenly Miranda and her counselor are flying through the air. The back of her head hits a shoulder. An elbow digs into her ribs. Her knees are pressed into her chest. 15 feet below the metal chain net she’s trapped in, Mia is pulling out a gun from the back of her pants. 

“Gun!” she yells, shaking the net with her hands. Panic settles in her as she twists to see who followed her counselor. His brother, most definitely. They’re never apart, but Malcolm is there too. They both stare at her— no. Her other counselor is looking at Mia now, eyes widening as he steps back with a hand on Malcolm’s arm. 

“Shit. Fuck. Malcolm, duck, duck, duck!”

“Connor, run!”

“She has a gun!” Miranda cries, “Malcolm, look o—”

The gun fires.

Malcolm falls forward flat onto his face and Miranda sees Char’s parents before her. Ms. Violet. Mr. Dinkleberry. Dead and in pieces. 

No. no no no no no nonono nonoNO

She shakes the chains with all her might, tries to break the chains by fitting the pebbles between the gaps and expanding but they hold strong. All she can do is yell and rattle the chains. 

She hasn't felt useless in such a long time. Not since Char’s parents gave their life for her. She forgets how awful losing friends is as she watches Malcolm curls in on himself undoubtedly in pain (he isn’t bleeding), forgets how much it hurts to hear others as Connor cries out and sinks to Malcolm’s side, shaking unmoving shoulders, (why isn’t he bleeding?), forgets the sheer grief that comes with situations like these. (He isn’t bleeding. Something’s wrong!)

Even with all that is happening, the tears haven’t come and she sees everything that unfolds in crystal clarity.

Malcolm continues to curl in on himself until his hands and feet are beneath him, then he’s pushing himself up until he’s kneeling, until he’s standing, until Miranda can see that glassy, distant hinge to his normally sharp eyes. (Something’s wrong.)

“Malco…?” Connor starts and he sees what Miranda does too, scrambling back from his cabinmate with alarm. 

Malcolm takes a step to close the distance and socks Connor in the cheek. 

Travis shrieks in concern, chains rattling as he throws a fit beside her. 

From what she saw during training, Malcolm is a very efficient fighter, wasting no movements, wasting no energy. He just does his thing without any hesitation. It’s no surprise to her when Malcolm restrains Connor before he has time to think. In mere seconds, Connor went from standing to nursing his cheek to kneeling to having his arms pinned behind his back, Malcolm gripping the appendages in a fashion that if need be he can just apply pressure and break the bones. 

“That had gone swimmingly well. Just as planned,” Mia sighs with relief and this blind rage, this boiling fury coils in Miranda’s stomach.

“Why are you doing this, Mia?” Miranda asks, unable to keep the shake away from her voice as Mia stands over Connor’s vulnerable form.

“I’ll kill you! Fight me fair and square, you ugly punk!” Connor screeches with his cheek pressed against the dirt. He didn’t flinch or even showed discomfort as Malcolm pressed on his arms to their breaking point and that’s impressive. Once they’re free, Miranda has to get Connor to teach her to keep a game face. “I’ll kill you! What did you do to Malcolm?”

“Who? Oh, Him?” Mia says, like there could be any others. “He’s simply brainwashed. Whoever the gun hits becomes my personal slave for a couple minutes. So, I’m guessing you’re Connor? Aeron always said you had a potty mouth.”

Travis beside her bristled and that all but confirmed it. Travis and Connor knew Aeron. Aeron was originally from Camp Half Blood. 

Connor screeches and twists, trying to throw Malcolm off him but the smaller male has him locked in place. With gusto Clarisse would be proud off, Connor curses, “Aeron is a filthy liar. Let Malcolm go and I’ll show you how shitty my mouth can become.” 

Mia still looks unfazed. “Hmmm. You don’t seem as scary as the others make you out to be. I expected more. But I suppose this is the result when you overestimate your enemy.”

The chains rattle once to draw Mia’s attention. When Travis spoke it’s all calm and gentle words, but there’s a layer of coldness, of frigidity, that put her on her toes. It… it reminds her of her dad. “Hey. Mia, right? Nice to meet you. I’m Travis. Welcome to Camp Half Blood. Quick question before we start the tour, what do you want with my brother?”

Mia hums, tucking a strand behind her hair. “Luke wants him for some reason. He asked me to infiltrate the camp and kidnap you, Travis, to bring back to our base. We’ll use you as a bargaining tool to have Connor do whatever we want. Of course, my initial plan of pretending to be a camper was all ruined when I saw Miranda but I have to say this improvisation turned out to be better.”

Travis’s hand slinks into his pocket, the elbow jabbing into her ribs. 

“That’s it? You think kidnapping me is enough? Like, come on. I am an escape artist. There’s nothing I can’t break out of. Luke and Aeron should have known that. Do you seriously think keeping me hostage will work?” Travis says with a small laugh, voice still cold. 

“We thought about that and we came to the conclusion that if you proved to be too much of a hassle to contain, we’ll just have a child of Apollo mess with your memories a bit. We found him a few days ago. Apparently he’s well versed in the medicinal qualities of his powers. He can make memories, lock memories of his patients, even change existing memories by messing with the neurons of the brain. It all comes at a cost, of course. It’s rather draining for him so we rather not use it so freely.”

“Touch Travis and I swear I’ll cut you up into quarters and feed you to the pigs!” Connor shouts, struggling with renewed vigor as Travis laughs. 

“That sounds so villain-y and super, super fake. Do you know how crazy you sound right now?” Travis says but the hand in his pocket pulls out and Miranda can see the celestial Swiss Army Knife gripped tight in his hands. 

“I assure you I am not lying.”

“Sure you aren’t. Oh by the way, how many of those mind-control bullets do you have?”

Mia didn’t look away as she shot Connor in the back with the gun. “Enough for everyone here.” 

Travis’s jaw twitches, but he remains composed. The knife moves closer to the chain. 

“I rather not fight. My orders are to bring you back unharmed. But if I have to cut off your limbs, then so be it,” Mia warns, readying her gun.  

“You’re fibbing,” Travis says with hearty laughs, but under his breath, for her ears only, he mutters, “Make a cushion and then go get help,” before she’s freefalling 15 feet back to the ground.

A cushion , she thinks. Something to cushion their fall and not break their bones.

She extends the wood pebble in her hand to become thin wood shavings. Not the best but it’s something. She hits the pile feet first and flinches from the shock of the drop. 

Travis didn’t flinch though. 

He lands feet first and starts running immediately for Mia. He dodges Malcolm coming for him, leaps over Conner with that same glassy stare in his eyes, and — Travis crashes face first into the dirt from Connor tripping him. 

Travis groans and kicks Connor in the shoulder, yelling a quick ‘sorry’ as he scrambles to his knees. But Connor surges on and wrestles Travis back onto the ground. Either the kick was too soft or Connor’s brainwashed state dulls the pain. Probably the former. 

Miranda recalls the shavings back into a block of wood and charges at Mia. She grabs the hand with the gun first, pulling it off to the side first. A little twist and pressure and the gun drops from Mia’s hands. Then Miranda pins both wrists above Mia’s head and wraps it together with the wood in a makeshift handcuff. 

“Make them stop,” Miranda hisses in Mia’s face. 

To her infuriation, Mia smirks. “And if I don’t?” 

“I wasn’t asking. Do it. Now.”

“What will you do if I refuse? Kill me? I don’t think your father will be too happy with you.”

Miranda’s heart stutters even as she grits out, “You don’t know my dad.”

Kill her? Dad would understand why she has too. Dad will… no. No, he won’t. He barely understands why she has to kill the monsters. He thinks you do it out of fun, not out of necessity. He won’t understand this either . 

Travis makes a pitiful whine and Miranda’s head whips around to see Travis tossing his brother over his shoulder towards Malcolm. 

“Come on, Connor, dude. I’m trying to save your life. Stop being a nuisance and take it easy for once,” Travis whines, as Connor stands back up and koala hugs his brother while Malcolm takes out a dagger. 

“You always hesitate. The enemy won’t hesitate.”

All that time the two of them spar, Travis never won once.  

Unless… maybe… hopefully… Travis was holding back?

Connor is wrestling Travis into the ground, stomach down, just like in their practices. 

Nows a great time to stop holding back, Travis. 

Connor is straddling Travis on the back just like their practices. 

Come on, Travis . 

Connor now has Travis pinned just like their practices.  

Time to show your true strength . 

Connor has effectively rendered Travis immobile. Just like their practices. 

Who is she kidding? Connor is his brother. Travis won’t do anything to hurt him. So it’s up to her to get them out of this mess

Kill Mia . Kill her and everything will be solved . 

It should be easy enough. Humans don’t have nearly as thick a skin as monsters do. 

But her dad... Mia will win if you don’t do this. Her dad will never be able to talk with her again. Stop lying to yourself. Dad will forever hate her. He never loved you in the first place. She can never face him again if she does this. 

He’s a lost cause. Give up on him.

Her other bracelet starts shift forms. 

Mia‘s eyes dart to it.

Travis.

Connor. Malcolm. Will. Silena. Beckendorf. Lee. Clarisse. 

They don’t fear her like Katie doesn’t fear her, that has been established. She won’t lose them the way she lost her father. Now to not lose them to death. She can control that. 

Focus. Just kill Mia and this will all be over.

Just go one more step further. 

Save your friends. 

Kill. 

“Miranda.”

Focus.

“Miranda!”

Focus.

“MIRANDA!”

She snaps to attention, loosening up the wood block crushing Mia’s neck and there’s a cacophony of guttural gasps from the girl beneath her. 

Travis somehow got himself free and is now holding Connor in a bear hug while shoving Malcolm to the ground, kicking the dagger away. Even busy, the smile Travis gives her is genuine. She wonders if her heart should be swelling the way it is now. 

“Oh thank god, you finally look this way. It’s going to be — OW, Connor, you donkey!” Travis yells as Connor flings his head back, hits Travis’s scare in the forehead, and escapes, going for Malcolm’s dagger. “It’s going to be okay. Just go get Clarisse or Lee.” Travis rips the knife out of Connor’s lunging hands and tosses it aside. “I’ll handle this.” Travis blocks a roundhouse kick from Malcolm. “You don’t have to fight.”

I don’t have to… fight? I don’t have to? 

I don’t want to. 

But… but… 

Mia smirks but it’s tinged with the slightest of fear. “Lee, Clarisse, and Silena are at Karen’s funeral. Our intel tells us Will and Beckendorf are at the armory around this time. And Chiron is talking with the Olympians. Leave and by the time you get back, I would be long gone.”

Travis groans as he leans away from Connor trying to eviscerate him with a new knife. “The spy? The spy is a yearrounder? It’s one of us?”

Mia only smiles. 

A spy? Among them? What? How? Why? 

No. There’s no time to think about it. Later. When the time is better. When Mia isn’t— crap she shouldn’t have looked away from her. A shoe connects with her stomach, knocking the wind out of her and pushing her off. She’s aware of Travis crying her name but there’s bigger fish to fry. 

How could she let herself be distracted? 

Mia is standing back up with the gun in Mia’s still locked hands and crap. Miranda is shifting the block of wood into a shield but she can tell she isn’t going to make it. 

Crap. Crap. Crap crap crap crap crap . 

Mia aims the gun at her. Miranda can see the barrel. The shield is still nowhere wide enough, just barely the diameter of a basketball. But it’s better than nothing and with a little prayer to Mr. D, the only god she knows for sure is real, she tries to tuck her body behind the teensy-weensy shield.

  Except. 

There is no bang. 

The gun never goes off. 

Instead there is a howl, a high-pitched shriek she mistaken for hellhounds so many times back in Texas.

Follow directly by a stampede.

And shortly after a human’s screams.

“You always hesitate. The enemy won’t hesitate.”

She had asked them how long they had been at camp. “Almost 6 years,” they had told her proudly. “We came to camp when we were 7 and 6.” But then right after they said a lot of them here understand being homeless. A lot of them ran away from home. Did they too? Did they run away when they were so young?

“ I’m scared of going too far, you know? I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

That was what Katie used to say too, all those times she asked if Katie wanted to help kill the monsters. 

When Miranda lowers the shield, there’s a coyote biting at Mia’s ankle. Another coyote gnawing on the wrist. Several pigeons pecking at Mia’s face. A Holstein cow — a cow , where the heck did this cow come from?? — running in and butting Mia in the abdomen hard enough for her to fly back and hit the ground with a sickening crack. The cow stomps on Mia’s legs, her hips, her stomach and — oh god, she thinks she hears ribs cracking. Another coyote darts in and grabs the gun, crunching it in it’s jaws. Connor and Malcolm collapse in a heap. 

Miranda stares at the animals stomping, biting, pecking, tearing the girl apart. It’s hard not to think of Katie and how, on that fateful day, her powers crushed the living goo out of that cyclops. That miserable resignation that was on Katie’s face is the same on Travis. 

Miranda doesn’t like that face. She doesn’t want to see them ever again.

Travis kneels by Connor and Malcolm unmoving bodies and checks their pulses. The relief on his face tells her all she needs to know. 

“That’s enough. Thanks, guys,” orders Travis. 

The animals stop immediately, obeying without a second command and running off to who knows where. Complete and total control. Dang… Travis can do this kind of stuff? 

“You okay?” 

It takes an embarrassing five seconds before Miranda realizes Travis is talking to her and she nods quickly.

Travis sighs a hasty, “That’s good. Great. Cool. Amazing. Okie dokie, time to get this over with.” Then he stands with a grunt and limps towards Mia, his calf bleeding from a cut. 

For anyone else, being stomped on by a 1000 pound cow would be enough for death to hurl them off into hell but Mia isn’t just anybody. She splutters weakly as Travis nears but her voice still holds conviction. “Stay away from me.” 

Travis pauses for a second before going again. 

Mia turns her head and glares, face ridden with lacerations from the pigeons. “I said stay away.”

“You’re going to die if you don’t get help,” Travis murmurs, voice quieter than Miranda had ever heard it. 

“Good.”

“Good?” Travis says lowly, “Are you really going to die for Luke’s revenge ploy? Come on. You can’t be serious.” 

“Yes. I—” Mia coughs, blood spluttering from her lips. She’s dying, but her eyes are enraged, burning with hatred that she sees sometimes in Lee’s and Connor’s when they don’t think anyone is looking.

“Yes, I am willing to die if it means my godly mother will suffer even a bit of the humiliation and pain she inflicted upon me.” 

“Dying isn’t the way to get stuff done though,” Miranda says, staring at the corner of the shirt that’s still relatively free of blood. But there’s something… Miranda rubs her eyes. Is it her or is Mia’s hand glowing?

“You think you hold the moral high ground, don’t you?” Mia rasps. Yes, her hand is definitely glowing with a reddish light. “But you’re just allowing the gods to do whatever they wish, to continue their millenia long abuse. Your inaction makes you just as bad as them.”

“The world is going to end if we follow Luke,” Travis says mechanically, like he says this a thousand times.

Mia just laughs. “That’s what the gods told you to keep you fools fighting for them and you all fell for it.” 

Travis stares at the ground for a few, contemplative seconds before pulling out a bottle of nectar from his pocket. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I like to think my dad really cares for us. I can sleep at night that way. Besides, the Olympians are keeping the world running. It would be selfish to expect them to be there for us 24/7.” 

The glow is spreading from her hands up her arm and it’s shining even brighter now. Does Travis not notice?

Mia in return just laughs harder, even as more blood trickles past her lips. “Unbelievable. You’re so blinded. It’s actually rather sad.”

“I can say the same about—”

“You know, Luke had told me if you ended up resisting too much to just kill you. If we can’t add to our forces, then it’s better to cripple the enemy. I was so looking forward to my mother’s despair but I suppose I’ll just have to wait until she’s tossed into Tartarus.”

The light settles in the chest area, growing tenfold in intensity, and Miranda understands the same time Travis does. 

She’s going to explode herself. 

“Are you kidding me?!” Travis screeches before turning tail and yelling for her to get Malcolm.

There’s not enough time. 

Travis grabs her arm and tugs her to her feet, yelling even louder for her to move as he lifts Malcolm and Connor by the back of their shirt. Miranda stumbles to her feet and takes Malcolm from Travis, tugging him in place of the son of Hermes. 

They’re not going to make it. 

They have 3 seconds at most before Mia explodes. That’s not enough time to run. Not enough time to get out of the range. All four of them are going to die. But if she blocks as much of the blast as she can… maybe… it might all work out. 

Miranda looks down at the shield in her hands. 

She can’t change the mass of the shield. This is all she has to work with. A big enough shield to cover both of them means it will be stretched thin. But if she focuses on thickness, their limbs won’t be covered. 

Decide. 

Quick. 

Right now. 

Do it right now. 

“Miranda! Come on!

Miranda passes Malcolm off to Travis, plants herself in front of them, and makes a decision. 

Even if she misjudges the intensity of the blast, even if she gets burned a little (or a lot), even if it hurts, as long as everybody makes it out okay, what’s there to complain about? 

As long as everybody makes it out okay, then she is fine with any outcome. 

Holding up the shield, Miranda clenches her eyes and braces herself.

  But there’s a hand on her shoulder and another hand pulling her shield from her hands.

When she opens her eyes, Travis is in front of her with her shield in his hands. 

He’s protecting her, she realizes.

And wait — no — that’s not how it works. It’s supposed to be the other way around. It’s always the other way around. 

Wait — 

Don’t —

No — 

  It wasn’t enough. 

It wasn’t enough. 

The shield was too thin.  

It wasn’t enough. 

She wonders if she will ever forget the smell of cooked flesh and would ever forget Travis’s unbridled screams before he could restrain himself and would ever forget the burns, the entire arm charred black. 

No. 

She probably would never forget.

  “This is it. This takes the cake. This is the worst pain I ever experienced. I really do have a curse. Quick, check my arm. Is it still there? Am I going to become like Edward Elric? Will Beckendorf have to make me a metal arm? Ah my gods, that would be so so sooooo cool . Ahhhhhithurtssomuch.”

Maybe if she stares hard enough at Will and Beckendorf running towards them, they’ll run faster. Maybe if she does not look at the burns, it’s not as bad as it seems. Maybe if she just focuses on his words and not his tone, his gasps, his whimpers, then maybe Travis is okay. 

“Miranda, tell Beckendorf that in my new robot arm, I want a snack and drink compartment. He can do that, right? Yeah? Yes? The counselor meetings get so boring. You have no idea.”

But this laughable denial of hers is ridiculous. 

“Why?” she says, hugging her knees close to her chest. “I was already in position.”

Travis’s blue eyes fall to her and she hates the hurt she sees in them. Hates hates hates hates hates it. 

But he grins, a bare ghost from his usual dazzling grin, but a grin nonetheless. It makes her heart ache. 

“I’m a counselor,” he gasps brokenly, “It’s my job to keep you all safe and sound. Also, I’m the oldest. Wait, how old are you? Younger than Katie, right? I’m the oldest? Yeah, I’m the oldest and the oldest have the duty of being the punching bag.” 

“You didn’t have to.” Her throat feels knotted. The words are getting harder and harder to force out. 

Travis ruffles her hair with his good hand and smiles just like the way her dad always used to. 

“I wanted to.”

The charred grass blurs a little. Miranda grinds the heel of her hands into the socket but it just made it worse. And worse, and worse, and worse until she gives up and buries her face in her knees. 

This is so stupid…

She got over it… 

Why is she still hung up over it…

She should just let it go… 

But still …. Why couldn’t it be dad who said that to her? 

  “You’re incredibly stupid.”

“I’m going to personally kill you.”

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

Miranda glares at the blonde girl’s back. So this is Annabeth Chase. She heard nothing but good things about this girl and yet... 

She wonders how much trouble she’ll be in if she pummels this girl. 

“This isn’t his—'' she starts to say.

But Connor, fully recovered and sound of mind again, holds her back by the wrist and shakes his head. “This is how she shows she’s worried. She’s not being serious.”

Miranda doesn’t quite get it, but as long as Travis isn’t bothered by it — he isn’t, if anything he seems on the verge of laughing — then she’ll let it go. 

As Annabeth’s rants quiet down, Travis puts down the paper crane he's been making and says, “I’m thinking of starting a swear jar. Imagine all the drachma I can make off you and Connor alone.” 

“This is serious , Travis!” Annabeth sighs, stopping her pacing to face him. “You could have died.” 

“But!” Travis says, waving his healed arm with no scars whatsoever. Will is passed out, slumped on the infirmary bed. “I didn’t. So this is a great, great day and I’m still twinsies with Connor so even better!” By Ng

Annabeth sighs again and picks up Will with ease and lays him on the bed, sliding a blanket over him. 

“What about next time? What if next time you weren’t so lucky? You could lose an arm or leg. Even your life.” Annabeth walks over to Travis and pulls his arm into her hands to scrutinize the healed appendage.  

Still Travis shrugs. “Guess I’ll deal with it when that day comes. But since you’re here right now, how about a game of Egyptian War? Loser buys winner a chili bread bowl.”

It’s clearly an unacceptable answer even to Miranda. Annabeth looks close to having an aneurysm. 

“One month,” the blonde says, “I have one more month of school left and then I’ll be back as a yearrounder again. Don’t get into any trouble until then.”

“One month? Ehhh, doesn’t sound doable.”

“Travis,” Annabeth says smoothly, resting a hand on Travis’s shoulder with a terrifying calm expression. “Seriously.”

The jovialness sloughs off in one second and Travis nods. “Okay. One month of no trouble. I promise.” 

Quick as the soberness came, the quicker it left as Travis grins playfully. “So, Egyptian War? What do you say? Loser buys the chili bread bowl. I want it fresh from San Francisco.”

  Miranda and Connor are kicked out as Chiron checks Travis over again. Something about them being a distraction which she totally believes because Travis keeps asking them to free him. His cry of “Traitors! Don’t leave me with Chiron! Noooooooo,” lingering in her mind as she sits on the porch’s bench with Connor. 

Annabeth is on Half Blood Hill with a man, her father probably. A woman comes up to them and kisses the man on the cheek, the mother. Two boys bounce into the picture too, the brothers. They’re just one big, happy family aren’t they? She wonders if that will ever be her one day. Standing on the hill with her dad and Katie by her side… walking down the hill to go back to Texas… living life like it was when she was four and innocent and ignorant. What a life would that be… 

“Did I hurt him too badly?” Connor says out of the blue. 

Shit. Miranda tears her eyes away from the departing family to Connor, gloomily glaring at his lap. Shit . Miranda looks away. “No. You only just bear-hugged him.” 

“You need a better lying face,” Connor mumbles, slumping on the bench. “What exactly did I do? Did I make that wound on his leg? His shirt was torn too. Did I—”

“Hey! Let’s talk about something else. What is that cool Disney princess power Travis has? The one where he can control the animals?”

Connor’s guilt-laden expression disappears like a dime as he shushes her, eyes darting around them.

“Sh! Not so loud,” Connor whispers furtively, “He used it in front of you? His — his — okay, Disney princess power is one way to describe it — but his animal manipulation skill?”

She nods, Connor paling at her response. He slumps even more on the bench and runs a hand through his hair, muttering about how he can’t believe Travis actually used it. 

“Look.” Connor shuffles closer to her, whispering even quieter. “Our dad is the god of animal husbandry otherwise known as the care, management, and breeding of livestock. Travis and I can talk with animals because of this and if Travis focuses really hard, he can even summon them.”

Miranda shakes her head. “Snakes and coyotes aren’t livestock.”

“Right, but with zoos becoming more and more rescue-focused and helping the species recover while providing environmental enrichment, Hermes’s power extends to wild animals now. What I need you to do now is not tell anyone about this. No one but us and Annabeth knows. It’s our last resort power, our ace up our sleeve, our trump card. Don’t tell anyone .” 

“Then why did he use it?” she asks, puzzled. “He could have summoned the animals after I was mind-controlled.”

Connor murmurs, “Travis probably panicked. He doesn’t do well fighting by himself. I think he saw it was going to become one versus four and he acted so he wouldn’t be alone.”  

Oh. That sounds kind of sad to be honest. 

And a major liability. 

  “We aren’t the spies,” Malcolm announces out of nowhere. Travis, having been discharged by Chiron, wanted to spend the rest of the day on the rock climbing wall. But Will, bless his heart, somehow woke up like he knew Travis will say that and ordered him to only rest and rehab. 

 Connor and she had to drag Travis whining to the cabin. 

Malcolm followed after them. Maybe out of guilt. Maybe out of boredom. Maybe just wanting to get some rest too. Then five minutes into their break, Malcolm said that. 

“What?”

“I said, we aren’t the spies,” Malcolm repeats. “Us four, right here, right now. Mia tried to kill us four so we can’t be the spies.”

“Okay?” Travis says with confusion, continuing to draw in his notebook. It looks like the interior of their cabin. Is he making a bed sign up sheet? “I kinda figured that was the case?”

But Connor seems to get what Malcolm is getting as he scowls, putting down his book about engineering. “In a few more weeks, it won’t just be us four in this cabin.”

“Mia knew me,” Miranda realizes, “She couldn’t infiltrate like she wanted because she knows I will recognize her. But before I left, Aeron was finding demigods left and right. I would see a new face everyday.”

“How are we going to identify Luke’ henchmen from regular campers?” Malcolm asks, nudging Travis in the arm to make him stop drawing.

Travis waves his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. Connor and I handle it.”

“But...” Malcolm starts as Travis goes back to doodling. 

“Trust us,” Connor pats Malcolm on the back. “We got a plan.”

“But…” Malcolm wilts. “I want to do something too. I can help. I want to help.”

Miranda twirls her bracelet on a finger. 

“Malcolm’s right. It doesn’t have to be you two doing everything. We’ll do what we can too.”

   June

She didn’t believe Lee at first about how full this cabin can become. But then the campers start filing in one after another and holy cow. There’s definitely not enough bed to house them all. It’s crazy how many people are coming in… 

And it’s crazy how far people are willing to go to claim a bed. Bags are being thrown. People are pulling out charts and diagrams. Powers are being used. It’s complete utter chaos. And Miranda has to say, she kinda likes it.  

“Mine! I called it!”

“No fair! I was here first!”

“Lukkkkkeeeeee, Johnny is being mean again.”

“Hey, where is Luke?”

“Wahahahahaha! All you little fuckers are too slow.”

“Everybody shut up. I’m trying to study for the SAT.”

“It’s summer. It’s summmeeerrrrrrrrrr! I’m going to do nothing but sleep.”

“Jeremy, give me back my manga!”

“LUKEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Miranda ducks as an 11-year-old hurls a pillow and misses their target. She steps over two 10-year-olds play-wrestling on the ground. She points a lost 9-year-old to the closet. Then finally she stands before her childhood friend looking as uncomfortable as she expected. 

Katie never was one for rowdiness. 

“Kit-Kat Katie!” Miranda exclaims, looping an arm around her friend’s shoulder. 

Katie scowls just as expected too, but doesn’t shove her away. “Please don’t start calling me that too.”

Miranda laughs and presses her cheeks against Katie’s shoulder. “But it’s so cute!”

“It’s annoying,” Katie sulks, lower lip jutting. 

But her childhood friend drops the pout and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Miranda, I—”

“My fault? My fault ? ”

Miranda glances over her shoulder to find two boys — Michael and someone she doesn't recognize — face to face. Well, more like face to chest. Michael is trying his best by standing straighter but there’s only so much one can do. They’re not outright brawling so Miranda lets her attention drift back to Katie. 

“Yeah? What were you about to say?” 

Katie’s face crumbles. “I pestered our parents to tell me what happened.” 

“And?”

Her step-sister shakes her head, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. “They want you to stay here.” 

Miranda pulls Katie into a hug just as the tears start to fall. “There, there. It’s going to be okay,” she says as Katie cries into her shoulder. It’s not fair, I don't understand, what does he mean?, Monster?, you’re the nicest person ever.

Miranda hides her smile in Katie’s hair. She kinda expected this would happen. Huh. It hurt a lot more than she thought it would. But Katie’s quiet affirmations of her character helps dull the pain. Plus, there’s also — 

“I’m going to kill you!” 

Directly after, the screams start. 

Miranda turns around to find the newcomer on top of Michael with hands around his neck. Travis is pulling New Guy off Michael with difficulty, yelling for the others to step back. Connor helps Michael stand and holds him back from probably jumping the New Guy. This is turning out to be a very eventful first day. 

“I’ll be right back, Kitty Kat.”

Miranda bites back a smile at Katie’s indignant squawk at the new nickname and makes her way to Mr. Pushy.

“Hey,” she says, sliding in front of New Guy and planting herself right between Michael and him.  “That’s not a nice way to speak to your future friends.” 

“Future friends?” the guy — Sherman, if the name on his duffel bag is correct — snorts, “What is this, some kind of preschool?”

Miranda smiles. “If you’re a bully, you won’t make any friends.” 

Sherman rolls his eyes and rips his arm free from Travis. “Get the fuck out of my way.”

Travis, the semi-hopeful face he dawns upon her arrival, now looks absolutely miserable as he says, “I can’t do that. And no cussing in my cabin. Both of you are sleeping on the floor. Beds are only for campers who play nice.” 

“Fuck off,” Sherman spits at Travis and tries to shove past her (Michael really helping this situation by screaming, “BRING IT!” behind her).  

Miranda grabs the sleeves of Sherman’s shirt, puts her forearm under the armpit, and tosses him over her shoulder, making sure he lands on the pillow tossed earlier. 

She smiles innocently as she lets him go to address the silent crowd, ignoring the star-struck gaze Sherman has. 

“We are all in the same boat so let’s try to get along, yeah?” 

  Plus, she also got Katie and her new friends so life isn’t all that bad now. 

[forgetspecifics]

Such Sights are Bright - Chapter 6: I Wanna Love Somebody

Yang's incessant teasing and flirting with Blake begs the question: will their friendship bloom into greater things, or wither away?

Other links: Ao3 FF.net

Notes: Hi yes an update within a month hello it's me. DID YOU SEE HOW GAY YANG AND ILIA ARE?? I AM ALIIIIVE and gaaaay

It's a little shorter that the last few, but hey go find out what I've plotted this whole time!

February (Winter)

/

The buzz of a bee rang in her sensitive ears – well, more like the roar of Bumblebee instilled fear into her heart. It was a beast, a mechanical feat; Yang’s pride and joy.

“Why did I agree to this?!” Blake knew she was yelling a little too loudly, but at this point she could be excused. The revving of the overpowered engine did nothing to quell her anxiety, and it attracted the eyes of all the students in the parking lot.

Grinning like a madwoman, Yang bounced on the balls of her feet, itching to finally fulfil her incessant need to have Blake ride with her.

“Because you’re a rebel at heart!”

The cat Faunus, unconvinced she wanted to die this young, couldn’t bring herself to get on the bike – no matter what she’d agreed to. Not even if she was wrapped up in all protective gear that she could possibly bear plus a mile of bubble wrap. Which, by the way, she wasn’t – Yang had handed over her protective jacket; the brown one from Christmas that Blake really liked, insisting she would rather Blake wear it.

Blake would rather they both had a jacket, that was for sure. Yang had promised that she knew what she was doing, and to be fair, she had passed her recent tests and graduated from a temporary permit to an actual license – I can’t believe I’ve been in Ohio for six months already, she’d said. The blonde also explained that she had been riding much longer than she was legally allowed to, having lived on private land, and had experienced rides as a passenger as well as with one.

Not that Blake didn’t trust her, it was simply fear of the unknown. “Are you really sure this is safe?” She tried to imagine what her father would say; he had been protective, but not overbearingly. She wanted to think he would still want her to be safe, no matter where he was.

“Perfectly safe. We’re both wearing jeans, you’ve got good shoes and I’ve got boots, and Bumblebee is a dream to ride. No exposed parts or anything to be afraid of, a comfy place to sit and something sturdy to hold onto.”

Mentally following and checking off the list, keen yellow eyes scanned the purring monster in front of her. “Uh, I don’t see anything to hold onto.”

Yang smirked, her gloved hands forming finger guns. “You’re lookin’ at her!”

Of course, after recent…discoveries, Blake found that to be one of the more acceptable parts of her predicament.

“Lucky me,” Blake said sarcastically, well aware her body and mind were not looking forward to fighting the battle that would come with straddling Yang for dear life.

“Lucky me,” Yang winked, not noticing Blake’s blush, preoccupied with reaching down into her compact backpack.

The bag was severely weighted to the ground by the two helmets clipped to its straps, which triggered a realisation in Blake’s mind – Yang had had every intention of getting her on the bike if she had brought a second helmet along.

“Okay, I got you some gloves, they should fit,” true to her word, Yang held a pair of riding gloves above her head for Blake to take. “And this helmet is specially for you, made with love and consideration for those with a little extra on their heads. The best part is, it’s discreet and sleek!”

Yang stood up, holding the helmet, looking proud. Such a sweet gesture immediately dispelled any thoughts Blake might’ve been having about the impulsiveness of Yang’s invitation – while she’d sneakily planned it, she’d planned with consideration. She’d been reminding Blake every month how much closer she was getting to being able to have a passenger, anyway, so being surprised was no excuse for not expecting it.

In the end, Blake knew she hadn’t been forced. She could have easily turned down the offer for a lift to the public library; utilising her bus pass instead. Really, it was Mr. Port’s fault for assigning the paper that needed hard copy resources. The man was truly living in an era well forgotten.

Slipping on the black gloves that did indeed fit, Blake finally allowed Yang to pass her the special helmet. It was open face, with an attached shield for eye protection; painted matte black with white stripe detailing. Sleek was an accurate description.

“Put it on! The guy at the store said it gets great reviews, and I’ve been dying to see you try it,” Yang said, rubbing her hands together in anticipation.

“Here goes,” lifting the helmet up and onto her head, the Faunus’ mind chanted, please fit, please fit, please fit. It’d crush Yang if it turned out anything worse than okay.

As it slid on, Blake felt cushioning – as well as something she couldn’t quite put her finger on – almost mould itself to her cranium. Yet, the snugness was not uncomfortable, leaving her bound ears enough breathing and wiggle room.

Looking at Yang’s expectant and hopeful face caused Blake to grin, not bothering to verbally confirm how impressed she was.

“Hell yes! You look like a sexy badass, Blake! You should be a biker chick,” Yang was even more ecstatic as she clipped her own bright yellow open-faced helmet on. “Oh, let me clip you up.”

“Thanks,” Blake tried to ignore the blatant compliment and Yang coming closer to do her chin strap as well. It was difficult to forget Yang’s words that black and yellow was a good combination when she said things like sexy badass.

“Um, okay. How do we…do this?”

“Oh, right! There’s only a few things you have to remember. Ready to learn?” Yang began, continuing when Blake nodded affirmation. “It’s important to know that shifting your weight will unbalance the bike, so basically, you should try to sit still. Make sure to pay attention to the road so you can brace when I brake, and support yourself when I accelerate. And when we turn, you’re trying to stay in line with the angle the bike leans at. Looking over my shoulder that’s on the inside of the turn usually helps to get it.”

Blake nodded along. “Sit still, watch the road, look over your shoulder. Okay.”

“Let’s establish signals. I promise I won’t go fast or anything scary, but if you need me to stop, give me a thumbs down. If you’re feeling unsafe, panicking won’t help, and if you grab my arms it’ll probably end in us on asphalt. If you want to talk to me or rearrange your butt, you’ll have to wait till a stoplight.”

“Got it. Because I should sit still, right?”

“Exactly! I’m pretty sure you’re gonna be fine. Now we have to get you on the bike. It’s important to make sure I know when you’re getting on and getting off,” Yang scrunched her nose, snickering at the innuendo. “Heh, I just realised what I said.”

Blake simply stared at her, raised brow asking really?

“Alright, fine, back to serious stuff.” Yang put on her aviators, turning to the bike. “The important thing is that you swing your leg over and then get settled, like this,” the blonde easily got on Bumblebee, her motions well-practiced. Taking it out of its lean with a few manoeuvres, Yang motioned her over. “Your turn, Blake! Don’t use the foot peg as a step, grab onto me for leverage if it makes it easier for you.”

Being a bit shorter than Yang, Blake had to really hoist herself over the seat, but Yang’s offer did help. She let herself sit close to the body in front; they were no strangers to contact at this point, and she did not want to fall off.

“Nicely done! Now, hug me ‘round the waist.”

Once again, a task easily completed – though Blake couldn’t recall a time where she’d clung to someone and felt a bit guilty about enjoying it.

Oblivious, Yang kept the instructions coming. “In front of your hands you’ll find a good place to brace when braking. Just use one hand like you’re patting the gas tank,” she demonstrated accordingly, though Blake was inclined to believe Yang pet her bike in all seriousness.

After their lesson, the school’s parking lot had emptied considerably, and there was nobody around to watch them. Blake felt better already, but still reserved some worries about the dangers. It was probably wise to be vigilant, though.

“I’ll take you around a few laps in the lot to make sure you’re good to go,” Yang pointed at the parking lot; rectangular in shape, and motioned clockwise. “You can practice your leaning in the turns, and on the way back I’ll break halfway for you to try bracing, okay? Put those feet of yours on the pegs, and we’ll start off slow.”

Establishing herself on the seat and pegs, Blake prepared to put herself to the test. “Okay, I’m ready.”

Easing off the brake, Yang walked along the ground as Bumblebee began to roll forwards. Gradually gaining speed, the blonde shouted, “Get ready!” before lifting her legs and accelerating. They weren’t going very fast, but Blake sensed that they were braking slightly to take the upcoming corner, so she did as she was told and braced herself. Remembering the tips Yang had given her, she didn’t lean too much and looked over the blonde’s shoulder (noticing that she was going to have to deal with said blonde’s hair while riding).

They approached the next turn the same way. On the straight, Blake practiced bracing again; for braking and accelerating. Finding that the whole ordeal was not as difficult as she might have assumed, she decided to give Yang a thumbs up to signal that she could do another lap.

Once they’d repeated the process and come to a stop, Yang commended her. “Perfect passenger skills! I think you’re ready for the real thing!”

“To the library, then.”

A short ride later; something Blake (and her rear end) as a first-time passenger was thankful for, they arrived at the North Branch of the Stark County District Library. It was fairly close to Beacon, and not far out of the way of either girl’s usual route home.

Having found a place to park, Yang turned off the engine and set her feet on the ground. “You have arrived at your destination,” she spoke robotically, imitating a GPS. “You are now safe to disembark!”

Blake was eager to stretch her legs more than she was to surrender her hold on Yang. It’d been quite enjoyable to be her big spoon, so to speak. “Thank you. I’m getting off.”

“Ooh, baby,” Yang giggled, gleefully embracing the multiple meanings of the phrase.

Her teasing, however, was hitting much too close to home with Blake nowadays. “Shut up, you idiot,” she blushed madly, still clinging to Yang so she could dismount Bumblebee. Mortified at the thought of such talk between them, she was now much happier to be apart from the girl.

“Was it as good for you as it was for me?” Yang asked as she dismounted, setting Bumblebee into its self-sustained lean (Blake didn’t bother to try and understand the workings of the motorcycle; it was much too confusing).

Blake did not humour her question, giving a nice, normal, not sexual answer. “You’re not dead, I’m not dead, and only half my butt is sore.”

“Half all over, or half like, just one cheek?”

“Yang,” Blake couldn’t help but roll her eyes at such a silly question. Yang looked on, apparently expecting a reply. “The first thing you said,” the Faunus relented, giving in to the urge to have Yang satisfied enough to stop teasing.

“Sorry about your Bellabooty! But, it’s normal to have a sore ass, don’t worry. I’m really glad you let me do this with you, Blake.” The expression on Yang’s face turned from cheeky – pun not intended; she was spending too much time with her – to kind.

Bellabooty? Choosing to not question the nickname for her butt, Blake agreed about being glad. Despite her apprehension, it had been a fresh and exciting experience. “I would be happy to ride with you again sometime. I had fun, after I got comfortable.”

Packing away their gloves and clipping their helmets back onto Yang’s backpack, the two started towards the entrance. “We can go on longer day trips, if you felt up for it. Uh, sometime?” Yang offered lightly, glancing towards Blake.

Eyeing the blonde, Blake thought briefly about how ambiguous the question sounded. Did she intend to sound like it would be a date, or not? She might have been biased, but it hadn’t sounded that casual to her ears.

“Maybe,” Blake eventually answered, not trying to seem too interested or disinterested. There was a part of her that wished she was wrong; she really did not want to have to end up rejecting someone as sweet as Yang. For both their sake, it would be better if it was just a friendly offer.

Walking through the glass doors, they passed the front desk and a few librarians. Blake sent a brief smile to one that looked up to greet her. The displays near the entrance were all white cardboard cut-outs with love hearts and cheesy sayings on them, the librarians playing to the strengths of the current month to promote romance novels.

“Wow, they went all out for Valentine’s day.” Yang started bobbing her head, sounding impressed with the atmosphere.

Being the sarcastic person she was, Blake didn’t share the sentiment. “It’s a shame all the popular and mainstream romance novels are literary trash,” she commented, walking towards the non-fiction section to find a small table to sit at.

Walking faster to catch up with Blake, who had left her behind at the displays, Yang seemed amused at the remark. “You got anything better to recommend, Blakey?”

Watching Yang wiggle her eyebrows, Blake caught onto Yang’s game quickly. “We aren’t here for book club.” She placed her own backpack on an empty table, looking inside for her assignment details. “And don’t think I’ll fall for that, I’m not telling you anything.”

“C’mon!” Yang said, hopping up to sit on the table surface playfully. “I looked up that book I saw in your bag once, it’s quite steamy from what I could gather.”

Blake sent a deadpan stare at glinting lilac eyes. “Dream on, Xiao Long.” She would never admit to such a thing.

“I don’t dream about it,” the blonde defended, “well, maybe there was this one time…”

“As much as I’d love to hear about that,” finding the sheet of paper she was looking for, Blake zipped up her bag. “I have work to do. I want to find the right resources for Port’s assignment.”

“Eh, you worry too much. You manage to get me an A minus in social studies. Me! An A!” Referring to their essay from last semester; Yang had been ecstatic reading her report card. She had improved all around the board in general, but her real pride was the high grade in the class they had met in. Ms. Peach had deemed their essay to be of a high standard and commended the pair – and Taiyang had even passed along his thanks to Blake for working and supporting his daughter.

“Don’t forget you worked for that grade as well, Yang,” Blake encouraged automatically. She had seen firsthand how much of an effort Yang had made; she was more impressed by that than herself.

“I know, but I wouldn’t have wanted to if it wasn’t for you. Don’t forget that,” Yang’s legs swung from the edge of the desk as she smiled at her friend.

Those darn legs, swaying to and fro; they were so distracting to Blake. If she stepped inbetween them to kiss Yang, would they wrap around-

Stop! What are you thinking? You’re fantasising about your best friend in a library for God’s sake. Pull yourself together, Blake told herself. She was glad her imagination hadn’t skipped to something dirty. She needed to stop reading so many adult romance novels.

Turning around to hide her reddening face, Blake quickly spoke. “I have to look up the material I need on the computers. And no, I don’t need your help. Just relax, read a book or something. I won’t be long at all,” she walked away before Yang could get a word in edgewise.

Blake was begging her teenage body to calm itself. Stupid hormones, stupid imagination, stupid attractive Yang – a bad combination for someone that wanted to keep even a remnant of the walls she’d built to protect herself.

Her hopes of her crush fading with time had withered away, just like the Carnation Yang had given to her; the one that never ceased to remind Blake of Yang’s eyes and the twinkle within them. The past month, the flower sat alone in a small vase – for some dumb symbolic reason, Blake thought if she watched it slowly die, she’d get over her feelings because they would die along with it. But as it turned out, she was just like the fading flower; alone, and feeling like she was slowly dying.

Her heart had been locked up, a self-imposed isolation, to keep away from anyone that might take it again only to shatter it to pieces. Yet, Yang had found a way in, like she’d found a master key that Blake didn’t know existed.

After accepting that her feelings were not just a passing lapse in her defences, Blake had tried to keep herself in check every time Yang complimented or smiled at her, or God forbid, casually flirted. Each passing day, instead of appreciating how put-together the blonde was, Blake was finding her eyes wandering down Yang’s curves and admiring the way her clothes accentuated her features.

While her feelings were a problem in itself, the pure attraction she’d felt to the other girl was driving her insane. She’d had no idea that she was that much of a voyeur, but the beauty of Yang Xiao Long was captivating. Figuring that out had been the easy part; the hard part was convincing herself that it was just physical, and the way she felt about her had simply followed along.

It was shallow, yes, but beauty was not everlasting; it had to fade. If the allure of the person was gone, then, her feelings would disappear too.

It was a futile wish.

She didn’t know how badly she wanted to love and be loved. Imagining what it was like to kiss her wonderful lips, she would simply have to be content with dreaming of it while drifting to sleep every night.

Back to work, she thought.

Sifting through the electronic catalogue, there were plenty of references she found to be suitable. Easily drifting through the bookshelves, Blake slid each one out by the spine and stacked them in one arm. This was something cathartic to her, especially after the trip she’d had on the way here; at least she was able to be distracted for a little while.

Praying that she’d be spared from any more torture today, she returned to the table that Yang had made herself comfortable at. Leaning back in her chair dangerously; legs propped up on the table and book in hand, the blonde didn’t notice Blake. But, Blake did notice what novel had her so enthralled.

“Yang!” She whisper-yelled, taking a little satisfaction at the panic that grew on Yang’s face as she jerked in her precarious position. “Where did you get that?”

That being the same steamy romance novel that Yang accused her of reading. While she maintained one hundred percent that she did not have it in her possession, if Yang had happened to look for it in her bag, she could wave that excuse goodbye.

“Jeez! Where do you think? We’re in a library, Blake.”

She has a point. Blake felt like she’d lost her mind. That had been too much worry and suspicion for someone that didn’t own the book.

“What, you thought I took your copy? I’m not that stupid,” Yang chuckled, having put the pieces together.

Blake had far too much pride to give up now, especially when giving up meant more teasing. “My copy? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Pfft,” the blonde stuck out her tongue playfully, but to Blake, it put her on edge. “I forgot you don’t have one. Why don’t you check this one out? Or just check me-”

“Finish that sentence and you’ll regret it,” Blake was almost certain that she would be the one regretting it, but, whatever. She just wanted to check out her books – not Yang – and go home to sulk.

To her relief, Yang said nothing. Gathering her things, Blake went to the front desk with her assignment resources in hand, making idle chit chat with the middle-aged woman as she scanned their barcodes.

An avid reader and library-goer, Blake handed over her library card without prompt before sliding each book into her backpack. The only extra weight she would be willing to carry was one of a book (or as many as she could fit).

“Hey, Blake,” Yang had decided to sidle up to her, leaning on the counter with her elbow. “You don’t even need a library card to take me home.”

Hearing the surprised oh of the librarian that was currently in the process of handing back her library card made Blake’s reaction all the worse; stuttering out her thanks with the face of a tomato, she scooped her bag up and rushed out the door.

Knowing that she’d be in trouble for that one, Yang shrugged. “Worth it.”

“I don’t think your, er,” the librarian addressed her sceptically, “friend will be waiting for you.”

Thinking for a brief moment, Yang realised the woman might be right. Blake still had her jacket, and even if the Faunus hadn’t left her behind, she would rather be safe than sorry. “I better be leaving then, bye!”

Upon reaching the parking lot, one glance at Bumblebee confirmed her worries. Blake was gone, and so was her jacket. Maybe if she hurried, she could catch her – so the blonde took off towards the street, hoping to catch sight of a black bow.

“Blake!” She yelled to high heavens, counting on the fact that cat ears would hear it. To the east, there was nobody to be found, but to the west, at a bus stop, stood a lone figure. Thanking herself for her love of fitness, Yang sprinted down the sidewalk, two motorbike helmets attached her bag slamming into her backside.

“Helmets are a pain in the ass,” she huffed to herself, trying to find some humour in it. “Blake!” Relief flooded through her system when Blake turned to her; nervousness taking over once she saw how pissed off she looked.

“You’re incorrigible, did you know that?” The ravenette said, arms crossed in a standoffish manner.

“I’m sorry, really,” Yang had never seen Blake this upset before, and definitely not at her. She had changed her mind, nothing was worth this. “I went overboard with the teasing. I didn’t think it bothered you this much.”

��It didn’t before!” The Faunus snapped, silence following. “I mean…it’s not you, Yang.” She sounded apologetic, but Yang didn’t feel like she should be. Besides, what she said was kind of unclear.

“Are you okay, Blake?”

Sighing, Blake looked down at the ground. “I’m fine. I’m sorry, it was just a little too much.”

“You don’t need to apologise, it was my bad.” Having run out of things to say, Yang took in their surroundings, trying to come up with something. “I didn’t know there was a park here,” she noticed a street sign pointing north. “Well, of course I didn’t, why would I know that?” Yang rubbed the back of her neck, feeling awkward all of a sudden.

“What?” Blake was looking at her with curious confusion. Maybe she hadn’t been paying attention?

“There’s a park, right there,” Yang pointed up the road to where she could see green grass, and what looked to be sporting courts. She had been looking for parks to visit, and maybe it was as good a time as ever to talk to Blake about her feelings. Reading the street sign more closely, she laughed shortly. “Weis Park, huh? I’ll have to tell Ruby about that. Blake, come take a walk with me.”

Amber eyes regarded her wearily, silently asking, really?

After all her stunts today, she barely earned any favours from Blake. Still, Yang cocked her head, putting on her most pleading face. “Please?”

The black and yellow duo had explored the extent of Weis Park, or as Yang put it, Ice Queen park. The extent of it, well, was not extensive. In fact, it turned out that it was not really the kind of park Yang was hoping to find, but their feet were on autopilot while they experienced a lengthy period of silence.

As a cold breeze picked up, Yang considered just giving up on her courage for now. Blake was probably too polite to say anything about how much she’d been irritated and wanted to leave. Perhaps her extra layer of clothing was the only thing that granted some tolerance to the situation.

The Faunus slowed her steps, turning her head towards the south with mild surprise on her face. “Do you hear wedding bells?” She said after a moment.

Yang didn’t bother to stop, not really sure if she cared. “Do you?” She shot back, not hearing anything other than the wind blowing intermittently. Blake pointed to her bow; her cat ears, which Yang realised was much better at capturing sound than her own.

“Duh, I’m stupid.” She often forgot that Blake was different to herself. Giving her friend some credit, she promptly stopped walking and listened. There was a faint ringing, or at least she thought. “Uh, yeah, I think I can hear ‘em. How do you know they’re wedding bells?” She honestly though it was odd at this time of day, and in winter no less, for a wedding to be happening.

Blake stared wistfully into the distance. “There is nothing like bells chiming so loud the whole town can hear it. It’s announcing love.”

Yang found that to be a thoughtful sentiment – not quite what she was expecting to hear, either. “You know, you criticised little Blake for dreaming about romance, but you know a lot about wedding bells.”

Resuming her staring match with the ground, Blake spoke quietly, “As much as I know now that would be easier to not fall in love, I’m still the same girl that wanted to. Sometimes, you just don’t have a choice.”

That was the understatement of the year. If anybody had asked Yang if she had planned on falling in love with someone in a completely new place, or at all, she would have laughed. It was ridiculous, in a way, that she’d been completely swept up by one person that hadn’t even tried. “That’s a good way of putting it.”

Because she really hadn’t had a choice. She almost felt like they were meant to be.

There was nobody else that had come remotely close to what Blake was to her. Someone that she could miss at any hour of the day, feel so complete with – and she even looked forward to the school bell ringing just because she knew that she would see the Faunus over the course of her day. Whether it was quick exchanges walking between classes, or even sitting with her new group of friends, that were wonderful, but still constantly going back to the fact that Blake was there with her.

“It’s funny you should say, that, actually,” Yang started, not really sure where her words were coming from. But they had already fallen out of her mouth, and there were more pushing their way out; unable to be contained like a dam breaking from the sheer content of what it held within.

“About what happened in the library…I know I can be too much sometimes. I can stop flirting with you, if it’s a problem. I never wanted you to be uncomfortable, or think that I’m just trying to make you embarrassed. I don’t know why I do it, really. I guess the only way to explain myself is that I like it. It doesn’t feel weird, even though I’ve only known you for such a small fraction of my life.”

“You like it?” Blake turned to her, incredulous. Her eyes weren’t wide in shock, but rather bright with…worry? “What does that mean, Yang?”

Realising that she was about to breach a difficult subject, Yang kept herself from getting any closer to Blake; not wanting to risk spooking her with a pushy outward appearance. “I realise that I might like it more than a friend should. I- I’ve…got this thing. About you,” her voice wavered slightly, as Yang found it much harder than anticipated to put it into a few words exactly what she felt; how much Blake meant to her.

Taking some mercy on her poor soul, and at least trying to make sense of the disarray of words she’d just blurted out, was Blake. “You’ve got a thing for me?” She asked slowly, not wanting to take Yang’s words and twist them into something else in case she’d misunderstood. Yet, deep down, somewhere in her heart, she knew that there was not much else it could mean.

“Yeah, that’s what I meant!” Yang nodded, glad that she wasn’t a complete idiot and that Blake had interpreted it much better than her own brain. “I like flirting with you because I’ve got a thing for you,” the statement came out – pun intended – much easier the second time around.

“You’ve…got a thing for me.” Blake, on the other hand, could barely say it. Hearing Yang tell her that; so boldly, so soundly, caused a shockwave within. Fear and elation were born simultaneously, in her brain and her heart. Her mind reeled at the fact that a human was confessing to her, so oblivious to her inner turmoil. But then, her heart went into overdrive in an uncontrolled response that was incited by the forbidden attraction she had to her sunny and kind friend.

Her silence spurred Yang to fill the pause, the blonde not willing to ignore Blake’s possible thoughts. “But I’m not sure how you feel. I want you to know that you can be totally honest with me, though. This isn’t just about me.”

If honesty was the best policy, Blake had no choice but to confront the issue and tell the truth. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to go into this. I didn’t want to get close to anybody when I moved here, but you came along and changed that,” the fact of the matter was that Blake had let Yang in, never having dreamed that one person could change her life that drastically. “But I didn’t think it mattered if there was nothing more to it than friendship. All this time I’ve been pushing the idea away that you’d think about me this way, trying to stop anything before somebody got hurt. Now that I know you’re not just joking around with me, it matters much more.”

“For a long time, I was just joking around. But then you told me I made everything brighter...I realised how good it felt that you were happy. I’d never felt anything like that before. I didn’t know what to do, and I panicked after what you said on New Year’s Eve, too,” Yang didn’t want Blake to think that she had had any intentions of making things so complicated, or had spent longer than two months well aware of her feelings – if only to ease her mind a fraction.

“I know I said the wrong things that night,” Blake once again regretted ever going to Sun’s new year’s party. It had done her no good. “I should have thought about the consequences.”

“Consequences?” Yang asked, not quite sure what she was getting at – what had happened wasn’t a bad thing, or at least not in her opinion. It was more like a learning experience, even if it was an involuntary one.

Blake had started to wring her hands together, not caring about the chill of the air that was enveloping her skin when she was this anxious. “I was drunk and I had my guard down. I said things I normally would have never said, Yang. Clearly, what I said had an effect on you,” the Faunus felt guilty; if she had kept her mouth shut, maybe this wouldn’t be happening to her right now. She wouldn’t have planted these kinds of thoughts in either of their heads.

“Why would you say things you didn’t actually mean?” Yang was staring at her now, her voice laced with concern, pleading for Blake to open up to her. She was holding her breath that maybe, Blake felt the same way that she did, but the Faunus hadn’t even coming close to revealing that.

When Blake answered, it was the answer that Yang had been waiting for.

“Because I was so sure I didn’t want you, that I couldn’t, because it wouldn’t work. But it just…hit me, after we made up after our argument. When I looked at you that night under the stars, the way I looked at you changed,” Blake finally looked up at Yang, tears forming in the corners of her golden eyes. They were Yang’s favourite colour, even when they were sad – nothing would change that.

At that second, Yang’s heart sang, and her spirit felt like it was soaring. Blake felt the same way. Her worries were set free; she hadn’t imagined the last few months of her life and hadn’t been seeing things that weren’t there. In that very moment, it was like the whole world had been made for her just to experience this joy.

Yet, Blake stood there, stock still. It was a stark difference between them; one girl elated and the other so deflated. Carefully stepping towards Blake, Yang was determined to find out what Blake could possibly be thinking for her to be upset.

“That’s why you were so worried about what happened on New Year’s, isn’t it?” The blonde tried to fit the clues together, the ones that were like a myriad of puzzle pieces forming a picture she hadn’t been able to see clearly until now.

“Yes! I was worried that I’d lead you on, and if you liked me, I would have to tell you no,” Blake rubbed at her eyes, tear drops being whisked away before they could stream down her cheeks.

Yang would have done it herself, but the way the conversation was going, it seemed inappropriate. Yes, Blake liked her too – but something was wrong. “I don’t get it,” Yang felt uncertain, her joy morphing to a tightening of her chest. “If you like me too, why would you say no?”

It hurt even more to see Blake turn away from her. Nothing made sense; she couldn’t even look her in the eye?

For Blake, it was easier to say the truth without watching Yang’s reaction. She couldn’t trust herself to say what needed to be said otherwise. “I can’t lie to you Yang, I’m so afraid that this will end badly. For both of us. That’s why.”

Yang was not about to give up. She’d never been a quitter – not when it came to the people she cared about. There had to be a way to convince Blake. “I’m scared too, y’know. I’m scared to lose you, because I love you-”

“What?” Blake instantly recoiled while turning; her body trying to pull her in two different directions.

Realising that she may have worded her reassurance ambiguously, Yang backtracked slightly. “Whoa, I mean, don’t take that as I’m in love with you, that’s a different kind of love. But I feel like I’m falling for you faster than I can keep track of, and I’m scared because I’ve never felt this way about anybody. And I’m most of all scared that I’ll lose the chance to tell you how I feel if I let my fear control me.”

Seeming slightly calmer after the retraction, Blake tried again to reinforce her defence. She would have to tell Yang the real reason why they were incompatible – it was the least she deserved. “People would stare at us if they knew what I am. They’d judge you. You’re human, and I’m…not.”

There was hot air in Yang’s lungs that threatened to become shouts. It was contained, but only to become a scoff that made its way out of her mouth unhindered. “That doesn’t matter at all to me! And nobody else knows that. It makes no difference to the way we feel about each other.”

She thought Blake had accepted their differences, but this was the opposite to her expectations. Maybe she hadn’t experienced things that Blake had, but was she that naïve to ever assume Blake didn’t care she was human?

“But I shouldn’t feel the way I do!” Blake cried, trying to hold back more tears. “You should fall in love with a human and I should be with another Faunus, or alone. That’s what society wants. That’s what I was told, and-”

“Fuck what other people think, Blake!” Yang was unable to hide the bite of rage in her tone, but she’d already worn her heart on her sleeve and wasn’t going to sit down and surrender. “You’ll never be happy if you let other people make decisions for you. Especially people that wanted to control you and lied to you when you trusted them.”

She wasn’t willing to listen to her best friend talk herself down like that, and like hell she would ever let society; that had already driven her to unhappiness before, steal away her or anyone else’s confidence to trust themselves.

“You don’t understand! I’m no good for you!”

Unlike before, Blake fought back against Yang’s fire with her own. Instead of thinking about who was really against her, her body was autonomously pushing away anything and anyone trying to get close to her. “Did you know that Belladonna is another name for the deadly nightshade flower? That’s what I am, I’m dark and poisonous. I hurt people that I care about, and I’ll only destroy your light and happiness.”

Blake believing that was more painful to Yang than the rejection. How badly beaten down had this girl been? What kind of selfish people would brainwash someone into thinking they were worth nothing?

There was more to worth than what other people saw in you – Yang had heard a million times that to love someone else, you had to love yourself first…but that never stopped anybody before. If Blake couldn’t look and see what would make her happy, would she ever find a sense of harmony in her life? Would she ever get the wedding bells she dreamed about?

Yang would not stand idly by and watch her fade away; never to be loved only because of self-doubt. “Blake, without you, I wouldn’t be as bright as I am. You know that light needs the dark to shine!”

Maybe it was a bit sentimental, but she’d grown fond of their contrast. She’d always liked finding the good in people and making sure they knew about it.

“I wouldn’t have had the time to let myself get away from responsibility back home if there was no night to sneak out into. The stars in the sky wouldn’t be there without the dark. I need the dark! Nightshade or not, you’re a flower I’d pick any day.”

There was no response. Just silence in the air. Yang hoped that her words had gotten through.

But, there was a ringing in Blake’s ears – it wasn’t that of bells; it was a blend of a piercing tone like a bomb had gone off, and Yang calling her name.

Finally, the Faunus took a breath, composing herself before the argument was dragged out any longer. “I need to process…all of this,” Blake said, backing down. One of them had to. Yang just stared at her, ironically looking like the defeated one. With no objection, Blake started off to the bus stop to take herself home, forcing a separation.

Metaphorically speaking, a bomb had gone off. One that was planted in the inevitability of this moment – if she rejected her; if Blake left, it could break Yang’s heart. It might destroy their friendship for good…

“Blake, wait!”

“Yang, please.”

“No, I get it,” she muttered. “But I kinda need my jacket back.”

“Oh.” Blake shrugged out of the jacket, gingerly handing it back. She’d forgotten she had it on. “I’m sorry,” and she was.

…but if that was what it took, Blake would suffer the consequences. If Yang hated her for it, all the better.

Notes:

Song: 'Flower'

Did I get any of you with the conflict last chapter? PSYCH, I FOOLED YOU, HA HA HA. HAVE BLAKE AND YANGST.

so, um, yeah. I was and am nervous about this whole chapter. I wanted the bike part to be a trust thing. Safety is important. Plus, I said a long time ago, Yang wanted Blake on the bike. I delivered.

lemme know what you think?