#she hulk wallpaper

[peter3crackmyback]

new fancier versions! same link as above ☺️

just having a go at these types of wallpapers, hi-res here:

[heylolita00]

[projectohxh]

She-hulk 💚

[comfortless]

The way you write König makes me cry and dry heave cuz you balance his loser unhingeness and his heartbreaking tenderness is✨ ART✨

Now I feel like you would be able to EAT this prompt up but imagine König as Frankenstein’s creature that is this big ass hulking mass of body that immediately makes the town grab their pitchforks but he can DESTROY them in seconds. But inside he is just a little guy who just wants somebody to hold and love (and other activities if ya know what I mean

Keep doing what you do❤️

A Place For Us

Frankenstein’s creature! König x fem! horologist reader

content/warnings: 18+. minors do not interact. discrepancies!, reader is implied to have anxiety, angst & fluff, non-malicious stalking?, loner/loner dynamic my beloved.., brief mentions of previous murders and religious imagery, codependency, smut; masturbation, unprotected piv.

notes: receiving this ask was so funny to me because @melancholic-thing and i have been bouncing this idea around forever (i simply could not have brought this any justice without ghost’s input— if you see this please know that ily dearly). thank you, anon for your kind words and finally giving me the push that i needed to write it! 💘

wc: 10.6k

You’re good at fixing broken things; tinkering with them with a set of well-polished tools until they begin to tick, or chime, or cuckoo.

Some take longer than an afternoon sat before the wooden desk, weeks or months— a year, once. Oiled parts and small cogs, the three arms that jerk and glide over a face riddled with numbers that all lull you into feeling that your work is not just some monotonous service only the rich buzzards could afford, but as if you were a healer of sorts; a little cleric stationed to bring life into whichever jagged, broken thing has been dropped or kicked at her doorstep.

This one, however… you’re convinced it’s as good as dead.

No matter how many times you take apart the little, gray pocket watch, the arms refuse to move. Its ticking sounds less like that of the beating of the heart and more like the grinding of dry teeth, a corpse begging, pleading to let this attempted resurrection come to an end.

Your tweezers wrench the face free, and all at once it proves too much— bending and warping beneath the metal grip until it cracks, a split right through it, down to its very center.

“How…” Your voice fills the void of ticking, pseudo-silence surrounding you. A word slipped out in frustration and unknowing before you finally toss the wretched little thing onto the desk with a clatter and step aside.

The house is as dark and brooding as always, too large for a woman on her own and a workshop that hardly counts as a proper business. Shelves of broken clocks serve as decor where potted plants and well-loved photographs should sit in their stead. Books of study for modern devices such as these in place of the poetry and worn love letters other women seemed to have in abundance.

This place was starved out of light, even with the flickering glow of candles and the electric humming of the unnatural yellow one above.

The sun is no stranger, either, your curtains neatly pulled aside to allow for it to filter through like an invited guest. Only it doesn’t, not on such a melancholic gray day.

You need a walk, a distraction, or this hungry home would be certain to rip away your work from the shelves and swallow you whole instead.

Isn’t it such a tragedy that, someone who pours her creativity and all of her love into time, all she seems to do is waste it?, the gaudy wallpaper seems to taunt, all the colors of filthy maroon and darkened blue flowers seeming to make it feel more imposing and less of a comfort.

Your hand curls around the handle of your umbrella, a sturdy thing, but just as drab as the rest of the home. Then, the package you’ve been putting off delivering to the elderly woman in town. Best to get it done with now, maybe upon your return the hands that fix could do so once again.

Shame about the clock face though. You would certainly have to patch together another and pray the pocket watch’s owner wouldn’t notice.

The wind is not what you had anticipated.

Outside is different. The howling of it past the windows and shuddering through the attic felt perfectly at home in your shoddy little house, but as the door swings shut behind you, it feels entirely alive. Cold and bitter and angry— the things you keep repressed that nature lacks the tact to.

The trees bend and sway from its invisible yet incessant pushing. The hand containing the package falls down to the lap of your skirt to keep it from flying up just as your other clutches the umbrella ever tighter to keep it from billowing out into the air to be left discarded miles away.

It isn’t a short walk to town, but with the wind and the drizzling rain, it almost seems as though you’re in more tender company than the lumber and the ticking clocks.

The path through the forest is overgrown as always, branches are pushed aside and your skirt is lifted to avoid burrs and thorns.

You should have had the sense to bring along a coat, because when the thunder does strike up and the rain finally begins to fall in heavy, hurried drops, you find yourself shivering terribly with the package guarded against your chest.

Lamplight would have done well, too.

You would have almost happily allowed yourself to toss aside the umbrella and be battered by the rain if you could only see. The forest is dark on days like this, with the canopy of thick branches and their dense leaves blocking out any sliver of light cast down from overhead.

It’s only by sheer luck that you don’t manage to trip, toss your delivery into the shadow of a tree and lose it entirely before you do make it out. When the trees finally part to the barren hill overlooking town you breathe a sigh of relief, a quiet thanks for the grayed light above.

Your steps are hurried as you make your way through the quiet town. The shop windows are all lit aglow with the silhouettes of people inside, strangely dancing like shadows through a fog. A place you can not be, can not touch.

The stares the townsfolk give you make your skin crawl, as though they are so close to being what you are but not, only tied down to your world when they think themselves lofty. Their eyes always seem to question, scrape under your skin with sharpened arms, ticking and flaying, always asking: Why?

You face forward as your skin begins to prickle, not from the wet or the chill but a subdued sort of fear that nestles burning into your chest, sets your heart rushing like a rabbit.

The streets are silent enough, a small blessing; any passing strangers are hurriedly skittering through the rain and muck to hide away in their homes, children ushered with a hand to their back by flustered looking mothers, complaining in hushed voices about the rain. You only smile at them and step aside when your paths cross.

They never smile for you.

It’s why the broken clocks are delivered to your doorstep rather than brought inside, addresses and names from muffled voices calling out beyond your thick wooden door, coins and bills pushed through the mail slot to lie cold on the welcome mat. The bell above the door never chimes, and you only make your deliveries on days like this, when the rain or the dark blanket you up to keep you safe and eternally somber.

You leave the package on the doorstep, covered from the rain by a small, vermillion awning. One sharp knock is given and you’re back on your way, back to the old house, to the simplicity of the ticking, the comfort of the old cobweb on the vaulted ceiling and the drab gray of the bleakness.

There are puddles now, glistening with any light they can suck into their depths, threatening and taunting as the dull stares and that rickety old desk you really should fix. You think for a moment, that perhaps no one would even notice if one of those dark pits of rain water pulled you in entirely, only to splash through it with ease, dirtying the ends of your skirt.

The rain lessens when you crest the hill, the forest less a tangle of clattering limbs and now only a gentle sway reaches the tops of the trees, light filtering through them, as if to guide you on your way. It doesn’t lessen the bushels of thorns, the tree limbs downed and scattered over the path. In some small blessing, you’re able to scramble over them without having to plan a visit to a tailor to repair a ripped gown; scrubbing the mud from it would surely be tedious enough.

The droplets splatter against the dirt and fallen leaves in hushed bursts, the forest alive as always with the cooing of nesting birds in spite of the rain. The only thing that seems out of place is a sudden, soft thud, the snap of a branch underfoot. Just one footfall, and things return to a placid state amidst the sky’s tears.

You raise your head to glimpse in the direction, gaze sweeping over the figure of a man some paces off to your left. Beneath the shadow of a broad, twisting pine layered in thick branches, his details are mostly obscured, a thin trail of silver light only casting aglow the glimpse of a blue eye.

He’s only large enough to notice, shoulders slumped and chest rapidly rising to fall like a frightened animal; as his silhouette shifts just so you even consider that he’s shivering.

There’s something in that stare of somber blue that splinters at the wall of discomfort; it is not accusing, not bitter, worn and cold. Curious. Something akin to your own.

Damn your sweetness, your inability to simply let things be even as that ache twists around in your chest, clawing at a cage of bone and hissing that you keep silent. Be on your way. Don’t look back.

Instead, you extend your umbrella outward, toward him.

“Awful rain, hm?,” you chime.

The figure visibly tenses, seems to shrink into himself for a moment before straightening and giving one solemn nod.

“You can take my umbrella. I’m almost home, anyway.”

That seems to spark something, not much, but the stranger does take a step forward. Your eyes catch on the wet, matted hair clinging to his head, cascading down to shroud a face you still can’t quite make out.

The poor thing stirs something in you, a deep sympathy that clouds even the judgment of that flighty, skittish thing resting deep inside.

Even from such a distance it’s clear that he’s been neglected, likely cast off by the town even less favorably than you have. His scent carries on the breeze, like dirt and wood and misery.

You extend the umbrella again before realizing he won’t come any closer with you being there. So, you lower it to the ground, avoiding the mud as best you could and leave it. If he took it, fine. If not, you travel this path so often it would be collected in time.

The figure mutters something as you rise, a low string of foreign words that you can only interpret as being spoken out of surprise, perhaps even gratitude.

You smile toward him as you wipe fat, slithering raindrops from your brow.

“You don’t want to catch a fever.”

With that, you’re back on your way, thoughts of the rugged stranger weigh heavy on your mind as the roof of your home comes into view, stilted and in the same drab navy as the flowers on the wallpaper.

You could have done more. It had been instilled into you to not to open the door for someone you did not quite know, yet a part of you longed to take care of something not simply fed by oil, something only capable of telling you how much time you’ve sat alone as thanks.

Surely it was best not to let it distract you.

This was good enough.

The key is produced, the door opened, and just like the many times before that you have forced yourself from this place, the house seems less unsettling upon your return.

As what little daylight remains fades away into night, you find yourself seated, toying with the old pocket watch once more. It’s the only one that doesn’t make a lick of sense, a puzzle that can not be solved. For all the polished parts and meticulous tinkering, it still won’t work properly.

It grates and growls as though rusted, the cogs shifting inside with each movement of the arms are well-polished yet seem to do little but hiss and spit.

This is the fourth time you have taken it apart only to put it back together with no improvement.

There was little to be known about the man who owned it, some pompous, arrogant creature that you had only seen in passing. He had turned his nose up to you, you were sure of that, only to deliver this dying thing to your door the following day.

Your work had always been compared to your father’s. Though you possessed a similarity in skill, you were not what the townsfolk had deemed to be respectable. An unwed lady out on her own, biding her time repairing what they had broken rather than feeding hungry mouths delivered from her very womb, how terribly scandalous.

The pocket watch is set aside as you busy yourself tailoring a small sheet of metal for it. The graduations are carved in with a sharp razor, impeccably angled. Then, the Roman numerals, just before it’s slotted back into place.

The likeness to the former face is nearly uncanny, it’s only sturdier and less susceptible to ripping from the mere touch of tweezers. The rust s gone from the casing, and at long last— it ticks; no grinding growl as the second hand begins its revolution. The fickle thing just needed a touch up, you supposed as you flick off the desk lamp and rise to your feet.

The curtains are drawn as they always were when you step into the bedroom. The muddy dress is finally peeled away as you change and slink into the covers, and just for a moment, you almost think that you feel the animal between your breasts begin to settle too.

———

There’s a letter stuffed into the mail slot: crumpled with no postage stamp, scrawled across some scrap of paper that surely was plucked from a garbage bin.

You marvel at the lack of care for a moment before your fingers do find themselves pawing at it, unfurling the worn edges to find the words: Thank you.

Written in thick black ink, there’s a clumsiness to it, the dance of a quivering hand holding pen. You think back to the elderly woman you had made that delivery to only yesterday; had she trudged through the mud and muck just to bring you this?

Her thanks was only needed in the blessing of payment, and she had already generously done just that when she left her little humming wall clock at the door.

You flip the note over, inspecting it carefully. There’s a line there, too, hastily scratched out in the same black ink, the lines crossing and digging leaving little pinprick holes in the paper.

Holding it to the light, you can just barely make out the words: I have been alone.

Your mouth dries at the sentiment, tongue flicking out to try and force a wetness to your lips. The animal begins its keening howl, a chain rattling as claws sink into your innards; the very same agitated fear that starved you out of comfort day in and out.

The man in the forest, perhaps. You were sure that you would have remembered seeing someone so disheveled and tall about town, and if not for a certainty that he had not followed you home, you would have assumed it was him. Gratitude finally said, and well on his way to someplace else.

There’s nothing here for him or anyone else, surely he could see that. Even you could.

The walls around you seem to bulge, the room shrinking once again as every little thing held within begins to taunt and yowl. Safety was only a temporary luxury, it always has been.

The letter is discarded onto a table, as you opt to hazard a peek out of your curtains instead. The gray from yesterday remains as thick clouds crowd above, threatening another storm. The treetops and tall grass dance in the breeze, freeing leaves and breaking flower stems. There’s no one standing there to greet you, to explain themselves for the strange message that they had left.

The town had probably already driven you to madness, picturing things that were not there while old fools jab you with ominous letters and jeering stares to see just how long it would take to watch you fall apart.

Another delivery day it would be, then; best to get it out of the way before the rain begins to fall.

Maybe you could even retrieve the umbrella along the path, discarded, battered from the rain and likely unused.

You don’t bother packaging the pocket watch, choosing to hastily stuff it into the pocket of your coat instead. Courtesies be damned. Tea and a warm bath would do well when the house was sated by your absence, when you were finally given time to breathe.

In your haste, you nearly kick over what’s been left on the uppermost stair leading to your door.

You find a table clock covered in a thick black fabric, a little note attached to it giving the owner’s name and address, and a small bag containing payment.

It’s all securely placed inside, next to the ugly letter on the table.

Your umbrella doesn’t wait on the path, but you’ve hardly the mind to care. Your hand tightens around the pocket watch as you cord your way down the path and back into town, rushing amidst the foliage until the sounds of your footfalls are dulled by the street.

Reaching the house, a towering narrow building that smells like tobacco even from outside, your hand curls to knock at the door in the same breath taken as the chain is plucked to place it on the knob, intent on scurrying away immediately to avoid the disgusted gaze of the man that waits inside.

You don’t quite make it far enough before the door swings open and you’re greeted by a round face, nose upturned and lip curled into a sneer.

That isn’t imagination.

There’s a genuine hate in this man, seeping down into his bones that makes him almost seem to reek like sulfur through the cloud of cigarette smoke that wafts around him. It’s the face of someone who would love nothing more than to see your own damnation, watch the earth suck you in until your wails fall silent and a fire roars upward in your wake.

“This isn’t my watch, dear.”

“Parts needed to be replaced,” you explain, voice tight and keening like a wolf in a trap, “I assure you that I—“

“It’s shoddy work. Any clocksmith up north would have done better for half the price..”

It goes on like this for what feels like at minimum thirty revolutions, but it must have only been five or so. His droning voice makes it hard to keep track, buzzing as he examines your work, hours wasted upon aiding such an awful creature.

He only seems to grow bored of his chiding when you fall to silence. He wants a reaction, not a wide-eyed fretful stare and pursed lips caging in any sound that may bubble up from your throat.

In one final act of detestation, the watch is tossed to the ground, stomped in repetition until the hands snap, the ticking quiets, and you see months of your work brought to ruin in a mere seven seconds.

He storms back inside and slams the door shut as you stoop to collect the little, broken thing, cradling it in your palms. Maybe it wouldn’t be fixed again, but you’ve hardly the mind to let anything be left abandoned like this.

Though the anger builds, white bitter smoke billowing through your veins, it remains tucked away inside eventually communing with the animal, all but entirely snuffed out when your steps lead you to the front door of the house.

The window to the right is open, not broken. The curtains were pushed aside as though to allow a breeze to enter. A muddy footprint, vast and long scales the siding, but there’s no exiting one to join it.

You stare and listen, taking one quiet step towards the open window to strain your hearing. Nothing. Inside, it’s quiet, only the sound of the breeze rattling that note left on the table, the ticking and the familiar creaks and groans of the house settling.

So, you enter.

With the poker from the hearth in tow, the rooms are investigated one by one. Each and every one of them clear of any intruder. Even the attic, for all of it’s imagined ghosts sits empty, stale and silent. There’s no one here, nothing out of place or broken that hadn’t already been cast out from the world and delivered into your hands.

Strangely enough, it’s more peaceful like this; the leaves could be heard rustling outside, birds calling, even the chirps and strumming of crickets too late to flee the onset of chill seeping through this purgatory, filling the mundane void with sounds of life and peace.

You leave the window open.

The pocket watch is left on the desk, the kettle filled with water and placed upon the stove to heat, all before your eyes trail over to that little table beside the front door.

The only thing amiss is there, your intuition roars at you: “Look, look. Just look.”

The table clock from this morning sits there, the wood casing dusty and the hands perpetually stuck to sit at six o’clock, easy to enough to break, and easier still to fix. An overworked battery and a little oil would be its saving grace; if only things could be so simple for yourself, for the thousand or so others that surely must feel the same— clawed, fretful little rabbits.

Your eyes narrow momentarily, vaguely recalling that the damned thing had been covered when it was dragged inside. Something sable and thick, a scrap of a heavy dress shirt perhaps, verily stained. Odd that someone would have broken in merely to steal something so useless, but stranger tales have been told. For all you cared, the perpetrator could keep it.

You entertain the idea of the wild man in the trees, thick and sturdy as one. Perhaps he left the note, stole warmth from your home and found comfort in that useless old shirt after leaving that roughly scrawled note. Though the idea would horrify others, it only sets your ceaselessly racing pulse at ease.

Toying with the idea that someone so very much like you lurks the hills, found a home in your eyes and paid a visit, kind enough to wait until you were in town as to not scare you… and the kettle begins to whistle.

———

You had forgotten to close the window last night. Or maybe it was left as an invitation, a silent offer of your companionship for the unknown thing that occupies your already haunted mind these days. Something in your subconscious dared you to simply forget, see what happens, and you’re not entirely disappointed to find out that yes, something has happened.

There are three flowers laid out there in a row, smushed by the weight of a heavy palm: a daffodil left golden and proud despite the way her petals fray and wither, and two others wild and unnamed with blue and white colors leading to vibrant green stems. And roots. He hadn’t the time to pluck them proper, nor had a sense of gentleness to his touch in doing so.

It’s the first time you’ve laughed in months, a giggling that makes your chest ache from a sudden mirth through all of this wretchedness. Who knew it would only take three flowers and the appearance of someone so disconnected? You take them and place them in a vase in the same spot, careful to add just the right amount of water to keep them living for a time.

Someone brought you flowers— actually brought you a gift, not a job. You remember those eyes, too. His hands may not have been gentle, but that look was.

Though darkness still creeps internally, you’re resolute in what you must do when you prepare for the day. You’ve never really worn this dress— a soft, white thing with billowing sleeves and tight cuffs that brings a swell to your breasts and cinches your waist. One of the women about town had given it to you in lieu of payment for repairing her husband's watch, left a note prattling onward for three pages about how a woman should dress to find a man. Three!

You’ll find him, thank him for the flowers, bat your eyelashes just a little and retrieve your umbrella. That’s all. The rain would be back, more deliveries would have to be made, and if you could manage a friend from all of this well… surely things could work out for you, just this once.

Your steps are less hurried and more tentative this time around. You don’t barrel through the woods like a galloping mare, mindful of your dress as you lift the fabric at the hips to avoid thick, slickened mire. There isn’t much to do about the thorns nipping at your ankles, leaving little scratches like cat’s claws in their wake.

The thought that maybe this was a ridiculous idea only settles in your mind after an hour of searching. You don’t even have a name to call him by, not an idea on just where he may be or what his intentions truly were, all further punctuated by the fact that you’ve found yourself in the midst of a wild orchard, the yellowing grass nearly reaching your knees as you reluctantly allow your dress to flow free. Thick clusters of apples hang above your head, each nearly ripe, some even fallen to leave a fragrant sweet smell in the wake of their rot.

Thunder roars above, distant but loud, cruelly threatening the wake of a downpour that would so easily sully the delicate thing you wear. Your chest aches from exertion, from whichever horrid fear it's settled on today, and you’re nearly fully convinced of your own madness when something does finally catch your eye.

There’s a cabin, nestled between the trees, old and lacking glass panes for the windows. The roof is covered in moss, walls creeping with the old green of vines and nearly hidden away entirely by the tall grass that rises above its face.

You could wait out the storm in the dark there, rethink your steps until you find a way back home and the prospect of actually entering a building that wasn’t the very picture of your own agony stirs something within you.

You don’t bother to knock, only waltz right in and let the door shut softly behind you. It creaks as it goes, whining from the rust laden over its hinges. As expected, the cabin is mostly barren; a set of dust laden chairs sits on opposite ends of a table missing a leg, a large bookshelf housing only a torn copy of Paradise Lost and a journal, a few dirtied dishes are left on the floor, and in the corner…

There are a lot of things that make you feel small.

You couldn’t live up to your father’s name in town. The thought that you were not an equal to the other ladies with their fine jewelry and dresses, rings wrapped around their fingers, that was a sore spot despite the way you refused to admit to it. Even the hounds lurking about the butcher’s shop on lonely night deliveries, baying and growling when your feet carried you too close.

None of those things could even compare to how you felt now.

The rug he lies beneath is large on its own, but your flower-giving, grateful titan seems even more so. It’s as though walking into a bear’s den and expecting a mere squirrel. Even curled into himself in sleep, he seems impossibly huge.

You couldn’t see much of him that first night, but now… where the rags that make up his clothes reveal a series of long scars along his legs, the hairy arms that seem far too thick: all of him, all of him is massive.

Your rabbit heart does not claw or fight you now, it only flutters, placated by the sight of something so… was there really a word for it? The idea that someone so imposing could strike the match of attraction within you. Feelings were strange, each comes sharp and new like the deliberate twist of a knife through a body, soft like warm bread.

You smile as you wander to his side, recognizing the cloth he wears over his head immediately as the one stolen from your house. Your dress is smoothed at your rear as you lower yourself to sit on your knees at his side, quiet and slow.

“Hello,” you whisper, placing a hand on a shoulder that dwarfs it entirely, feeling the bulge of muscle beneath the ripped shirt, the ridge of keloid scars from deep cuts laid into his skin.

The titan’s eyelids flutter for a moment as he begins to stir, staring up at the ceiling, teetering on the edge between waking and dreaming. Then, those cold blue eyes lock onto you. A flash of disbelief crosses them, just for a moment before something flips and from the holes ripped into that makeshift hood you see an expression that seems almost agonized.

“Hello,” he rasps after a long moment, shifting onto his side to prop himself up and raise his head to level with your own.

His breathing is shallow, almost panicked and you finally think to bring your hands to your lap instead, avoid touching him and potentially startling the poor man further.

“I wanted to thank you… for the flowers. They’re beautiful.” You pause as you study what little of his expression you can make out through the mask, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners only giving a glimpse of a smile. All teeth, probably, an excited one that even the imagination of warms your heart. “I put them in a vase. I didn’t want them to die.”

“I should not have…” His voice is softer than you ever imagined that it could be, well-spoken as the words are pulled from his throat. You find yourself transfixed, almost, praying that he continues if only to hear the delicate strumming of his tone, the soft sigh of breath that leaves him afterward.

“Es tut mir leid.”

The apology is followed by a low sweep of his gaze, slowly crawling from the peek of your cleavage to your hips to rest where your hands lay clasped in your lap.

He hardly seems to know what to do with himself, what to say, and all at once the realization dawns on you that no, he isn’t merely paying his thanks and seeking conversation. Perhaps that was part of it then, but now… he seems almost entranced.

You recognize those looks, from men in passing when they leered, but from him… from this weary, haunted stranger. It only seems a silent sort of reverence; as though longing for something he’s been deprived of.

“No, it’s fine, it made me happy.”

“Happy?”

“Yes, it was sweet.”

He falls silent at that, conflicted if the pinch of his brow were anything to go by. Then, sudden, he takes your wrist and jerks your hand toward his face, thumb brushing over the small calluses over each pad of your fingers. There’s dirt beneath his fingernails, even more scaring along those massive hands and you shiver. It’s not fear it’s… something akin to it, opposite by the way it dances and writhes in warmth rather than the cold.

“You have the hands of a maker.”

Strange, sweet Goliath.

His words are spoken somberly, as if there is more to say that he holds back. A part of you warns that you’re not prepared for it anyhow, so you let him continue that motion, brushing over your palm with a featherlight touch until it begins to tickle.

Your giggle prompts him to raise his head, watery eyes threatening tears when he hears that sweet sound bubble up from within you. His hand curls over your own, trapping you in his grasp as though little else matters to him more than the need to touch you in some way.

“You have kind eyes.”

“I am not kind.”

You shake your head at that, flicking your thumb across the top of his burly hand, marveling at the smooth skin of his scars and the rough texture of the hair that dots his knuckles.

“You’re sweet to me, and that’s all that matters.”

It could have been a mistake, how easily you’ve taken to this bizarre titan. Any lady with proper regard for her standing and womanhood assuredly wouldn’t have said something like that to a beast that has the stature and the scent of something wild.

Still, the words leave your lips far too quickly to draw back; he responds with an urgency.

You find yourself pulled ever closer by the iron grip on your hand, tugged into the rug-turned-mattress by this man as he cages you in to meld against his chest. He’s everywhere, warm and burning against the chill of your skin with flesh touched by hellfire.

You only sigh pitifully when his arm wraps around your waist. When was the last time you had even felt an embrace? You couldn’t recall, and even if you had, it would have paled in comparison to one such as this. You breathe him in like a summer’s breeze, tasting a hint of the apple orchard beyond on your tongue when you open your mouth to speak once again.

“See..?”

The tension in his muscles seems to melt away; if your heart is like a hare then surely his must be more akin to a bull. It takes some time before he softens entirely against you, despite his initiation. His breath is almost a pant when his hand trails upward along your back, feeling every ridge and dip and curve, breath catching in wonder as you allow it.

“You are soft like…”

His head dips to press into your shoulder, breathing you in, humming his approval at the mingling scent of clock oil and tea leaves that lingers on your skin. Even from beneath the hood, you can feel the way his lips brush over you, his mouth parted in a voiceless plea.

“… like one of the flowers.”

It’s almost torture really, how someone could be so comforting, so endearing.

His hand trails further, drifting over the backside of your dress to curl against your thigh threatening something if you don’t conjure the sense to stop him. It stokes the fire within you, glowing ember in place of a brain, it seemed. You feel weak, lost in a foreign touch and sweet, clumsily spoken words.

If the townsfolk could see you now, herded up in this stranger’s arms, surely they wouldn’t dare to cast any disapproval your way. Not one of those meek little devils would have a word to say… not now or ever again.

“You’re like… a tree then,” you whisper as you finally will yourself to twist away from the grip, already mourning the loss of warmth as a cold wind filters through the openings in the cabin.

He doesn’t sulk as you pull away, only seems content to have been blessed with that much. That mist remains in his eyes before they shut again, willing himself to rise to sit up just as you do.

“Will you stay?”

You glance over the cabin again, with all of its dust and cobwebs. Your umbrella sits in the corner, propped upright with its handle leant against the wall, out of place amidst the dilapidation prevalent here.

This wasn’t a home at all, just a quiet, cold purgatory. Though the halls of your own may mock your solitude, this place seems to echo his very being: alone, broken, rotting and so, so very cold.

Your heart bleeds as you weigh your options, expression growing sullen and torn. He notices, tentatively takes your hand again in an almost practiced way of providing comfort. Had he ever even…

Your thoughts begin to drift again, and you force yourself to settle on a choice. It’s not your heart that should be damned, but that horrid seed of doubt constantly burdening, stealing from, and clawing at you.

“I should get home, before the rain.”

“Verstanden.”

“You can come too.”

There’s an audible hiss of breath through his teeth, that peculiar look of agony crosses his face again… and finally, he weeps.

———

König, you think to call him.

He teaches you German from time to time, in turn for you allowing him to watch as you work away at the clocks. It feels fitting in a way. Not because he harbors the self-importance of a noble figure, nor his stature; he’s simply become something impossibly important in the week long span you’ve spent together now.

You’ve decorated the guest room properly for him, and in turn he’s brought you firewood, foraged and hunted so that neither of you have had to bother with the town. The fire raged in the hearth as the cold continues to set in, and your walks to town have been enjoyable now. He accompanies you to the hill on some nights, draws you a bath when you come home, even cooks.

So… maybe a king was not entirely appropriate, but calling him a servant certainly wasn’t either. Even with the way he seems to melt and become docile at the slightest brush of your hand, the way you know with a certainty he would die for you if you spoke the word.

And still, you call him König: the king of your heart.

There are flowers at your windowsill each morning, still clinging to their roots. You bake the bread while he cooks stew with herbs gathered from the little garden just beyond the walls of the home, one he’s graciously told you he’s wanted to expand for you. Books you’ve overlooked for years have been read end to end by him, and he especially seems to like those with art of flowers drawn into their pages, always seeking you out to show you, explain their meanings, expressing the beauty that he sees in them and within you.

You don’t know where he’s come from, what his life was like before this, and with the same respect that he gives to you… you don’t ask.

“We’re starting a new story,” you had said the first morning over a breakfast of hastily made apple dumplings. To which he had agreed, with a somber hum, nodding his hooded head.

Though you do wonder about his secrets, his face. Seeing him now is all it really takes to make you smile.

He comes through the door, hauling in the massive grandfather clock that a carriage had left only this morning. The bob and the lyre both appeared broken at a glance, but your heart sinks when you read the name on the note left attached to it.

The same petulant little man that had stomped that poor watch to pieces right in front of you, no doubt he had broken this one too in some sort of tantrum. What was it now? Had the poor clock chimes a bit too loudly during the night? Was that deserving of a foot lodged right into its heart?

“König, do you mind just leaving it there?” You gesture toward the middle of the room, watching as the muscles beneath his shirt don’t even seem to ripple from exertion.

“Natürlich.”

As you set to work, pulling away parts, straightening out bends and replacing what’s broken, he kneels at your side watching with rapt attention. There’s no fixing the pendulum bob entirely, it’s far too bent and scraped, but you wouldn’t be replacing that with work of your own either. The bastard gets what he gets and that will do.

In truth, your work since having König here has only improved, and perhaps you’re showing off a bit, but the way he watches you tinker with the dusty old things as if mesmerized fills you with pride. You could fix anything, yes, with him at your side you wanted to.

The house doesn’t echo wasted time anymore, only that crowding feeling of something buzzing and chirping, budding up in the spaces where shadows should crawl: love. You wouldn’t trade it for the loneliness to return, not ever. A new sort of fear that stings just as much as it does caress.

So you work in silence, only breaking it to answer the sparse questions that he throws out.

When the clock is shoddily finished, you wipe the oil from your hands on a rag, and take König’s own large arm as it’s offered out to you to stand.

“I will carry it for you tonight,” he suggests, delicately brushing a bit of dust from your sleeve. His touch does linger, always lingers, trailing up to massage at your shoulder and cup at your neck. The swell of heat that arrives at your face then, the press of your thighs beneath your skirt… it’s always the same.

“I thought that you didn’t want to go into town?”

Your shoulder meets his chest as you press against him, doing very little to calm your body’s frustrations. The blood within you stirs like a violent wave feeling him this near— cleaned up and dressed in some patchwork conglomerate of your father’s old clothes. He smells like a union between the earth and sea, salt and alder leaf, a hint of thyme and lavender.

His eyes glitter when his gaze roves from your face to chest, hand skittering down to curl at the small of your back. To anyone else, you would look the picture of husband and wife perhaps.

“I would go anywhere with you.”

A fresh normal, like the rise of spring, those words and touches that suggest more: threatening while you plead in silence for him to just give you a push, unlace your dress and finally feel and see him properly.

“Then… yes, let’s get the cursed thing out of here tonight.”

His grip tightens around you just for a moment, fingers curling and flexing into the soft linen covering you, bunching it up just so at your back before he relents, draws away.

“You dislike this one?” König sounds almost hurt, perhaps he favored it, being tall and similar to him in some way. Another odd thing, hard to place, but he’s never seemed to like you talking down about your own work, a habit that needed breaking.

“No,” you begin to explain, curling your arms around his middle as you both stare at the thing, ticking quietly before you, “its owner is just a pain.”

“I can tell. You seem nervous, meine geliebte.”

“You haven’t taught me that one yet,” you point out, not playing coy, despite the look he gives you that suggests you know.

There’s always that ache when his eyes narrow and that playful glint reaches them. How someone could look as though they’ve suffered dozens of lifetimes of pain and still have that look, you did not know, but it excites you. A furious, needy excitement.

“Beloved,” is all that he says.

The stare relents as he heads back out into the garden, leaving you to sort yourself out.

———

“You’re sure that you can carry it the entire way?”

It’s not that you could help, really. The thing must have weighed as much as yourself, strung up over König’s back with a rope he had found lying someplace in the garden.

“Ja, it’s fine.” He’s not out of breath in the slightest either. You realize then that if you put on all your charms bending, arching and delicately maneuvering your hands to fix the clocks, the assuredly this was his way of doing the same. You try to reign yourself in from staring at the damp spot on his shirt, clinging to his broad expanse of chest, the way that his thighs seem to tense with each step forward.

You can’t— you merely trail behind him until you take the lead to bring him right to the other man’s doorstep. Your hands find the ropes that keep the clock saddled to König’s back, carefully untying them as he stoops down to let its wooden legs rest against the ground below. It scrapes, the consequence of being so heavy and forced to stand on those four tiny legs, and only then does it decide to make a cacophony of noise signaling the new hour, a trilling sort of bong that makes even your ears ring as it breaks up the silence of the night.

You don’t even need to knock, because the door flies open immediately. The man stands proud, unperturbed by your giant companion as he shoves past you to inspect his clock. There are no greetings, no pleasantries, and if you were just a bit more careless with your reputation, smacking him would have only brought you satisfaction.

“Not good, but it will do,” the little man huffs, knocking at the glass casing over the clock’s face with his knuckle. “Be a dear and have your friend bring it in for me.”

You’ve no doubt that König senses your annoyance as he cocks his head at you, but when you give a curt nod in response, he does what’s requested. The clock is set in a large den. It’s not as opulent and gilded as you had expected, just a simple home housing a very infuriating man. You watch from the doorway, swaying on your feet as König rights the clock and pushes it where he’s directed. Just a few more seconds and the two of you would be well on your way, and perhaps he would even teach you a new curse for a man like that.

He comes uncomfortably close to König’s side, a smug look plastered over his face that only seems to exaggerate just how greasy and mousy that you know him to be. Something is whispered that you can’t quite make out, a dare, a mocking taunt, something that pisses you off even without the knowledge.

The hood is pulled off by thin fingers, cast aside to the floor beyond the pair.

The man’s face goes pale before you even get a glimpse of König at all. He backs away, mouth gaping as König calmly moves to retrieve the cloth. You think you hear the word “monster” mumbled amidst a slew of incoherent babbling, but when your companion turns to face you, you feel no fear.

König’s face is like patchwork, scars connecting all together. They run like small streams up from his jaw and over his chin, splitting his lip at the corner of his mouth and dancing up to his eye. The nose is broken in places, several times over likely, crooked with a bump that only seems strangely cute. The unkempt hair lining his jaw should be trimmed, but… there’s no monster here. Only a man who has seen and felt pains that you could not bring yourself to imagine.

His head dips when he notices your wide-eyes stare, a sort of shame hidden away behind strands of long, black hair. He shuffles out of the house and shuts the door behind him, standing rigid as he expects the worst, for you to wail and sob and gather a group of townsfolk to herd him far away with fire and stones.

You only take his hand.

“Let’s go home.”

He doesn’t bother to hide himself away again during the walk back, his hand remains in your hold, trembling every now and then and gripping you tighter as he struggles with the thoughts no doubt raging in his skull like a storm. You offer your comfort as you lean toward him, head pressed against his arm even as you turn the knob and step inside.

You warm a bath for him then, a task that is no easy feat. König does not offer his help, resigned to some belief that this is only a temporary pity.

He allows you to peel away his clothes, graze your fingers over his body, over the scars all with a barely contained creature scraping out from inside: the untamed bull that you can not see. You press a kiss there, over his heart, feel it’s beating against your lips, pulling away only when his thumb strokes your cheek.

Each new sight of him is just as wonderful as they have always been. It’s not that you take pleasure in seeing the way he must have suffered; the now healed bullet wound over his abdomen speaks volumes of just what people are capable of when met with the sight of something that they do not understand.

The questions burn at the back of your skull, bitten back as your jaw tightens.

You help him wash with soap and a soft cloth, carefully removing any patches of dirt and dust that have lingered despite his near-daily bathing since living beneath your roof. The rough beard is trimmed in full, until all that’s left is a trail of dark stubble lingering along his jaw, broken up by scars like thin spider silk that make up the entirety of his body.

His hair is a mess, too, matted and clinging to his skull in wild clumps. You’re gentle with the brush as you free the tangles, clipping at what can not be saved with sharpened scissors, and massaging at his scalp as he murmurs his approval. It’s such a subdued, gentle cooing from his chest, a purr almost that shatters your heart and forces it back into place instantly.

Whatever he was or was not, you were certain this stray had never felt a touch like your own, if he had ever been touched by human hands at all.

König seems to settle greatly once you’ve tended to him and it does seem to finally dawn on him that you’re not repulsed, you’ve touched most of his damaged body, and have only brought him the gentleness that should have been commonplace by now. This isn’t some elaborate torture method— it’s only tender.

“Your turn, hm?”

That, however, brings you pause. Your hands rest on his shoulder, carefully trying to loosen a stubborn knot when you abruptly still. As if that were all he needed for encouragement, his hands cinch your waist, pulling you up and over the rim of the tub as you whine your protests in hushed little hisses. All for naught, as you find yourself submerged below the waist.

“I’m still dressed,” you sulk as the water dampens your dress, now seated between his parted thighs.

König only gives a laugh in response as his arms encase you in another embrace, his head resting against the dip between your shoulder and neck as his chest is brought to press against your back.

“And you’re still mine.”

His fingers trail further down to the wet fabric billowing amidst the soft, lapping waves of the water, pulling it up until it rests just above your hips. There’s no tact, only a clumsy sort of desperation rarely seen upon men, especially not of his stature.

You allow him to loosen the strands of lace at your back, bring your clothing up and over your head to leave it resting and dripping over the rim, pooling below onto the boards of the wooden floor. Your undergarments follow to join the flooding pile of soaked linen and lace.

You’re flustered certainly, grateful for the water surrounding that conceals the warmth that echoes your fondness for this titan between your legs.

You even considered that he would be more shy, not… as eager to begin to wash you, and not with the cloth but with his own hands, nimbly moving over every dip and curve coating you in the slick residue of soap, leaving suds in its wake. He starts at your shoulders, breath growing heavy the more you soften and relax against his chest.

It’s only a matter of time before his hands find and cup your breasts, and you swear that you can feel the grin that splits his face as you melt further against him. König gropes at and massages you there, eager fingers deliberately stroking at your hardened nipples until you quiver and sigh.

You find purchase moving your arms to your sides to grasp at his biceps, muscles flexing as he works his way down your trembling abdomen to your mound, kissing at your shoulder as you purr your encouragement.

The praises that leave your lips come tight and barely restrained as a finger trails against your slit, moving up to circle your clit before diving back down to prod at you.

Your head is gently tilted back by his free hand, your face peppered in clumsy, messy kisses as a digit sinks into you. It’s lazy work, trying to find a rhythm with your squirming. He only seems satisfied when it presses further, curling against the spot that makes you mewl sweetest, and finally, he kisses you full on.

It’s delivered as sloppily as his fingering, any trailing thought left in your skull dims, fuzzy with sheer bliss as his thumb begins to pet at your clit in tandem with each push and drag of his index. It doesn’t help that you feel his own growing need, hard and hot against your lower back, throbbing with each sound pulled from your mouth, his hips jerking on occasion to drag his shaft against your backside.

“König, we should get out,” you murmur through a flood of heat that curls and urges and presses at your lower half to seek some satisfaction, have him bed you proper. “We can go to—“

His mouth meets yours again, hungrier and more determined than before, the water rolling with each flick of his thumb. In a mere moment you feel that heat stoke to an inferno, blazing from your stomach to cause your feet to kick out, water sloshing over the side of the tub as you ride out each passing wave of paradise crying openly into his mouth.

When your trembling does subside, he kisses your cheek and pulls you up from the water, wrapping you up in his arms. His stare remains ever burning, pupils blown to a coal black, dreamy in the way he slinks back just to drink you in further. You can’t keep track of all of the places his eyes seem to dart, which touch to settle on and relish as he paws at you from chest to rear, as if mesmerized that you are no mere illusion.

You’re giving him everything; no longer the king of simply a beating organ tucked beneath your breast, but your body, bed, wherever he chooses to conquer next, of all the things that he’s been deprived of.

“We will go to bed, beloved,” he rasps, sounding more present than ever. The nightmares lurking behind his eyes have long past now: all focus is turned to you. You’re the only thing that’s ever loved him in return. “We will… become one.”

“Have you ever…” Your own voice fails you now, the evident want between you two incapable of making this any less… tedious. It was tedious, a flighty feathered thing that seems keen on slipping out of your grasp at any moment. If it were to be his first, surely it should be special, somehow, someway. If it were not… you dreaded that thought, a bitter envy sours on your tongue until it’s shaken off.

“No,” he states simply, shrugging.

Though a sense of relief seems to flood you at that, you dare not show it. You will take him to your bed, climb atop him and show him how these things work, a slow sort of love and the rest could wait.

It was foolish to believe that König would settle for such a thing, wild and only temporarily tamed by your sweetness: he is entirely different the moment you’re herded into the bedroom. The desperation of his touches has faded out entirely, replaced with what feels almost like a rage.

He wouldn’t take out humanities sins on you, no, but he would years of brutal neglect have left him starved and it just so happens that you’re an outlet for it, something to feed from by way of spilling his soul and his seed all into you, taken back with the kisses and praises that would surely come after this union.

You’re unceremoniously pushed onto the bed, lying at your side as he climbs in behind you. He whispers his requests into your hair, even as his hand wraps to pull your thigh up before you can bless him with a nod in response. He struggles for a moment, parting your labia with the obscene, ridiculous thing that hangs between his legs. It drags over you in repetition, oiled like the clock cogs before the head of his cock finally finds the opening his finger explored only minutes earlier.

You almost expect him to break you right then, force you to take what your body— no body- had surely been made for, but he only thrusts the tip inside and gives you some time to adjust, roll your hips down centimeter by agonizing centimeter.

“You are… Does it hurt you..?” His voice is a breathless pant, trying to hold himself together despite the daze he’s found himself in, buried not even three inches into your cunt.

“No… you can move,” you breathe out, eyelids fluttering as you tilt you head to look at him over your shoulder.

König clings to you as he sinks further, grasping at your waist to pull your further down, sharp breaths hissed between gritting teeth as he delights in the way your womanhood grips at his shaft.

Just as before, there’s no rhythm to him, he takes the sounds that leave you as a direction, huffing into your ear words that your mind could not hope to translate. There’s an indulgence to it, shared between you both as his hand curls tighter against your thigh, spread open and accepting of the brutal pace he takes to have just a taste of what it feels to be a normal man.

His words falter at a point, when you feel your body tightening around him, sucking him in, closer, nearer as your head lolls back. The inferno from before pales in comparison to the blaze that overtakes you now, his voice strained with bliss as you begin to moan for him. With each drag and soar of his cock spearing you open, you’re only brought further to a glimpse of Eden. If this were the fall of man, you find you couldn’t question Eve for relishing in it.

“… you gave me a name,” he rasps, “A home…”

All at once that glimmer of heaven crashes down around you, bathes you in the glow of something lofty and holy as he pulls you close and drives himself to the hilt within you. The throbbing and pulsing of his length pulls you over just as his seed spills within, drips thick and flooding as your own sex drools in tandem, sharing a perfect rapture both clandestine and sacred. He gives you another generous thrust, ensuring that he’s carved a space inside no other man could ever hope to fill.

You fret when you find him weeping, quiet tears rolling down his pale cheeks to spill over your shoulder, but the gentle smile on his face is pacifying as you twist around to face him. “And now you have my love.”

“I’ll cherish it,” he murmurs, voice broken and pitiful as you’re maneuvered upward to rest against the feather-stuffed pillows against the headboard.

You curl against him, head resting on his chest, an arm draped over his waist. He takes your hand into his own, appraising it like the first time you properly met. Hands of a maker. Your mind wanders to significance in that statement, the things that needn’t be told are finding ways to curtain you anyhow when he speaks again.

“Could you fix me?” He asks, tracing over the calluses on your fingertips, still bathing in the afterglow.

The question, though you felt it coming, still hurts to hear him speak it: breathing life into a thought that should have never existed to begin with.

“There’s nothing to fix.” Though you speak true, though you know he feels your sincerity, his eyes are heavy when he looks to you again. “Why would you ask me that?”

The story that he tells you then is one of horror. From his maker down to the things he’s done, seen, felt: hated from the moment he woke into this strange world, the horrible loneliness that pushed and bedded down inside of him like acceptance never would. The people that he’s throttled in some desire to finally have someone like him; men, women, it made no difference. All of it is bared with only one message eternally prevalent: he has only ever wanted to be loved.

In truth, he was a monster. Not because he was given the instinctual urge to be, but because it was all he knew. Gnashing teeth from demons hurling that word out with every stone they threw, every shot and stab at his heart.

You listen, despite the way it hurts, pull him a little closer when he ends his tale with your meeting, how he knew you were the only blessing he would ever receive in his lifetime— however long that may be.

You were good at fixing broken things, but König never needed to be fixed. Only found.

———

“Now you’re supposed to say it,” you hum, as his hands reach to the hem of the hood— his- covering your face. They rove beneath the fabric, curling against the skin of your cheeks, tracing small patterns there, some rotations like the clocks, others the childish hearts scribbled into books.

“I vow to take you as my wife.”

“You’re bad at this.” You giggle when he does finally push the cloth up past your nose, above your eyes and further until it’s pulled back like a veil.

“I will love you endlessly,” he continues, returning your noise of elation with a huffed laugh of his own. “I already do.”

“I love you, too.”

No one in town would ever properly marry you two, not if one look could make a weak man fall to his knees in horror, but here, beneath the roof of a home once echoing the same voice that haunts him… it was good enough. The moon seems to echo your vows with dancing rays, stars twinkling in approval as the calls of night birds carry through the open window.

There are no rings, no written formalities to be stored away with dust-ridden papers, preyed upon by mites. It’s far more sacred, genuine than the flippant affairs and arrangements that go on with those that would so readily cast the both of you aside. In truth— the thought of them rarely comes; doesn’t even rile up that intense fear inside of you any longer.

Everything only seems easier with the blooming garden outdoors, and the man who gazes upon you like he sees divinity itself behind your eyes, in the softness of your flesh.

When you kiss, it’s something from a fairytale, flowers strewn at your feet and the veil removed from your hair by a gentle hand.

Eden doesn’t seem so much like a memory lost to time, after all.

[gremlinmodetweeker]

You're A What Now?

Just some silliness and then angst with Ghostbusters König because I can't commit to one genre.

TWs: Discussion of Nazi occupation of Austria, Nazis, Graphic Descriptions of Violence

Wordcount: 1.75 K

Story Below the Cut

Visuals [1] [2]

You're A What Now?

“DUCK!”

You dropped to the floor with a thud as the phantom screamed overhead.

“SHOOT”

ZAP!

You could see the electricity arcing overhead in great bright branches of lightening, scouring the wallpaper a charred black as Horangi wrangled the proton blaster under control.

“Nikto she’s coming your way!” Roze screamed over the sound of crackling lightening.

“On it,” a heavy Russian accent called back as a hulking machine of a man barrelled down the hallway, “south entrance clear!”

Horangi spit and hissed like a barn cat as he leaped over a broken chaise-lounge to dart after the phantasmal spectre, nearly tripping over you in the process. He looked down at you and barked, “On your feet, recruit!”

You scrambled to get your limbs under you as you watched the posse careening down the hall. You leaped to your feet and ran up behind them.

Okay, so, as of your first day on the Ghostbusters team, you can officially say that you believe in ghosts. Damn your lifelong skepticism, you weren’t going to fuck around and figure out just how bad a possession was gonna be on your first day.

You slammed into the wall before crashing into the kitchen where Roze, Nikto and Horangi were all running around like they’re heads were lopped off. You nearly missed it, but König was ducked in the corner with a screwdriver in his hand, cursing under his breath in his other tongue as though he could peel wallpaper with his venom.

“König where’s the trap at?” Horangi ducked under a piece of antique china being thrown his way.

“I-Verdammt-There’s a problem!” he called back.

“We don’t got time for problems, big guy,” Roze bellowed as she zapped the ghost with another blast.

“Then make time!” he spat before turning back to his tech.

“I thought Germans were great mechanics!” you yelled as you joined Roze with your own proton stream.

For just a brief moment, everyone in the room stalled. A plate crashed against the side of Horangi’s head, breaking the tension.

“Did you just call me German!?” König rose up to his feet as though he were a wraith himself.

“No no no not the time König!” Roze growled as she wrestled with the ghost.

“Now’s the perfect time!” König crossed his arms as he widened his stance, “I will not tolerate this clear display of intolerance and xenophobia from our newest recruit!”

Nikto took the opportunity to snatch the trap from König and got to working on it himself.

“I am not a German! I am not of such inferior breeding!” König crowed proudly as Horangi jumped over a flying chair.

“I thought you said the recruit was the xenophobe over here,” Horangi ducked behind an overturned table.

“Germany is a country of thralls and ignoramuses! The entire nation is devoted to blood and genocide!” König stamped his foot for emphasis, “I will not allow such a people to overrule my homeland any longer!”

“It was a brief occupation during Nazi Germany,” Nikto was barely legible over the sound of the spirit being slammed into a wall.

“And we will never forget!” König pumped a fist into the air defiantly.

“I’m sorry!” you wailed as you threw yourself behind the table with Horangi.

“Sorry is not enough! What, do you think I am some sort of Nazi!?” König spat.

“Your grandfather nearly was,” Horangi drawled blithely as he ducked behind the table to avoid a flying toaster.

You, Roze and Nikto all stopped what you were doing to look at König. Even the spirit stopped her struggling to watch the 6’10 scientist turn redder by the second.

“YOU SWORE TO NEVER SPEAK OF THAT.” 

And with that, König vaulted the table to lunge at Horangi.

“Get off me fatass!” Horangi growled as he hoofed König in the gut.

"Shut up you slimy little shit!"

"Tasty," Nikto drawled sarcastically.

Seeing an opportunity, the ghost quietly phased through the back wall of the kitchen while Nikto and Roze were distracted. You only noticed because you were watching Nikto drop the trap to try and haul König off Horangi, only to trip on the slime left behind and fall face forward onto the others in a cluster-fuck of legs and arms.

“Get off of me you commie bastard!” Hornagi howled as he thrashed at the bottom of the pile.

“Stop your squirming, I can’t get up!” Nikto snapped back as he tried to extract himself from the group.

Roze dropped her proton blaster back into its sheath before lumbering over to help Nikto get back to his feet while you stooped to extract Horangi from König’s grasp.

Once the group had all gotten to their feet, Roze sighed and stepped back before tapping the side of her headset, “Okay so, we lost track of the ghost.”

“What?” Hutch’s voice came through the static, “how? You were right there.”

“König had a shit-fit,” Roze grumbled as she stalked down the hall, “can you follow the readings through the house?”

“I’ll get right on it,” Hutch replied before the line cut.

You watched as Horangi wiped himself down as he shook the dust from his back. He looked at you, one of his spectacles cracked but somehow miraculously intact. He looked at König, who was doubled over wheezing while the adrenaline left his system and the pain from Horangi’s kick sunk in.

“You owe me a coffee,” Horangi joked, clapping your shoulder before following Roze and Nikto to the next room.

This, of course, left you alone with König.

You awkwardly nudged over to the door, worried that the man would clobber you next but he stopped you with one raised hand.

“Ah, recruit, I’m sorry you had to see that,” König huffed and puffed as he slowly drew himself to his full height again, “Gott in Himmel I’m getting too old for this.”

“I mean, you still seem pretty young,” you offered him politely.

“You’re too nice,” König hacked and heaved, “mein Gott, I thought he was a physicist, not a damn kickboxer!”

“Yeah, it looked like it hurt pretty bad,” you chuckled.

“I think I might need a minute,” König righted a fallen chair and plopped down onto it. Without a word, he pulled up a second and patted the seat, leaving it empty for you. You tentatively took the seat, a bit concerned the man beside you might keel over any minute.

“Sorry about getting so upset,” König sighed, “I just… Ever since coming to America, everyone here calls me German! Everyone! It’s not too hard to notice the difference, is it?”

“I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever met an Austrian before,” you told him.

“Really?” König sat up to look at you, “how long have you been in this city?”

“Long enough to know there’s not many Austrians here,” you laughed.

“Well, then consider me your first,” König determined, “but yes, um, I’m sorry about making such a fuss. I just… I cannot stand being called a German. Those damned Germans…” he shook his head, “never forget.”

“Never forget what?” you asked.

“The occupation,” König said, “Austria used to be a part of Germany, but it separated in 1866. Then Hitler comes around and he drums up all this Nazi support and tricks my people into falling for his lies. Then, he comes and steamrolls my country.”

“So there’s still a lotta tension, I’m guessing?” you tried to make a joke, but it fell flat on its face.

“Like you wouldn’t imagine,” König said, “but I guess I don’t hate them that much. I just hate how everyone calls me German! I’m not a damn German, I’m an Austrian! My family’s been in Austria for generations! It’s like no American knows how to look on a damn map.”

“Maybe,” you shrugged.

“And how would you feel being called a citizen of a country that once tried to crush you beneath its boot? My poor Opa… Well, you heard Horangi,” König spat.

“He was a Nazi?” you cringed despite yourself.

“Nearly a Nazi,” König swiftly corrected you, “he was a good soldier once, but he didn’t respect the Germans or what they stood for, so he broke his own leg to stop Hitler's men from sending him to war.”

“Wait, really?”

“Oh ja, but he was worried that might not be enough. So, he took on a new identity and moved across the country,” König explained, “he first tried to be an accountant, but he couldn’t do math so good so he went to go be a mechanic in my village. He used to be a panzermensch, so he was able to take some of those old skills he learned to get by.”

“Did anyone ever figure out who he was?” you asked curiously.

“Only one person,” König shrugged, “my Oma.”

You chuckled, “So he married her to keep her quiet?”

“Not then and there, but he did promise her that he would one day,” König snickered, “so they stayed low until Austria became independent again. Then my Opa took back his old name and married my Oma.”

“That’s really cute,” you smiled brightly.

“They were very cute,” König agreed, “but ja, if it weren’t for the Nazis, my Opa could have been a much richer man. The work in the village did not pay well, but he could have earned good money in the army. Mein Vater did not grow up with much, and he didn’t make much more for us when he married meine Mutter.”

“So Germany really fucked up a lot of your life,” you concluded.

“And then people go and call me German! It’s…” König sighed, “I do not like it very much.”

“Makes sense,” you nodded and leaned forward on your knees.

The silence between you stretched on forever, but a part of you never wanted it to end. There was something comfortable about being able to just enjoy the quiet with a man like König. Something about how he filled the space of the room left little space for conversation to try and shake the solid grounds you both stood on. It wasn’t like you often had a chance to talk, and when you did it normally was curt and strained in tone. This moment was a welcome break.

“Alright you two,” Hutch’s voice crackled through your headset, making you nearly jump a good five feet out of your seat, “the other guys need some help setting up that trap.”

“On it,” you replied as you dusted yourself off.

König stretched up beside you, hitting the ceiling with his hands before slumping back down.

“You ready?” you slipped the safety off your proton blaster.

König nodded and pulled his goggles back over his face.

“Alright,” you grinned, “let’s go bust some ghosts.”

AU Masterlist

[deepobservationninja]

HOMICIPHER | well reader here has two babies (twins)and powers plus she kinda of found herself in the ghost Appartaments randomly when she was returning home after buying groceries.

After finding herself in these ghost Appartaments she witnessed MC (a family adashino-killer-) murder one of her victims..

warnings idk I am not a fan fictioner.

*:..｡o○○o｡..:*⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ✾✿❖※※✥★

The air was thick and cold, heavy with the scent of decay. The dimly lit hallway stretched endlessly before her, the peeling wallpaper and creaking floorboards a grim reminder that this place was far from normal. She hadn’t meant to stumble into the Ghost Apartments. One wrong turn, one misplaced step, and suddenly she was here—with her two newborns strapped tightly to her chest in a baby carrier, their soft breathing a stark contrast to the eerie silence surrounding them.

She clutched the straps of the carrier as if her life depended on it, which, in a way, it did. The bags of food she had brought with her were slung over her shoulder, weighing her down. She hadn't even realized she’d entered a place this cursed until she saw the first ghost. Mr. Crawling. He’d slithered across the ceiling like a spider, his elongated limbs clicking against the wood. Her heart froze in terror, but her instincts kicked in—she ran, keeping her babies as still as possible, muffling her own ragged breathing.

Now she stood in the hallway, listening to the silence that wasn’t really silent. Something was always moving in the background. She just didn’t know where. She turned a corner, praying she’d find an exit, but her prayers were answered with horror instead.

The sound of a blade slicing through flesh tore through the quiet. Blood splattered against the wall in thick, crimson streaks. Standing over a lifeless body was her—a woman, clad in a tattered hoodie, her eyes cold and calculating. The Killer. The one everyone feared. The MC of this twisted game.

Reader froze, her breath hitching as the Killer’s head snapped toward her. Those eyes locked onto hers, narrowing as if deciding whether she was next. The babies squirmed in their carrier, sensing her fear, and she knew she had to move. But her feet were rooted to the spot, her body paralyzed by terror.

“Run,” the Killer said softly, almost mockingly, as she tilted her head. “I like it when they run.”

Reader didn’t need to be told twice. She turned and bolted, her legs carrying her down the hall as fast as they could. Behind her, she could hear the steady, deliberate footsteps of the Killer. Not rushing. Never rushing. She didn’t need to.

But it wasn’t just the Killer. The ghosts were here too, drawn to her as if sensing fresh prey. Mr. Stitched loomed at the end of the hall, his sewn-together form blocking her path. She swerved into a room, slamming the door shut behind her. Her hands trembled as she held the doorknob, praying they wouldn’t come in.

The room was dark, but she wasn’t alone. A shape moved in the corner—a hulking figure with a butcher’s apron stained in blood. Mr. Butcher. His cleaver glinted in the faint light as he turned toward her, his movements slow but deliberate.

She backed away, clutching her babies tightly. "Please," she whispered, knowing it was useless. But just as the Butcher raised his cleaver, the door burst open, and the Killer stepped inside, her knife gleaming.

“What are you doing here?” the Killer snarled, her voice sharp and venomous. Her gaze darted to the babies, then back to Reader. “You don’t belong here.”

Neither did she, but that wasn’t the time to argue. “I didn’t mean to come here!” Reader said desperately, her voice trembling. “I’m just trying to get out!”

The Butcher swung his cleaver, and the Killer moved fast, her knife meeting the blow. Sparks flew as metal clashed against metal. The two figures fought, and Reader took the chance to run again, her legs carrying her blindly through the maze of rooms and hallways.

She didn’t know how long she ran, but eventually, her luck ran out. Another ghost—Mr. Scarlatella—appeared in her path. His scarlet eyes burned with malice as he slashed at her with sharp, skeletal fingers. She dodged, but the Killer wasn’t so lucky. The ghost’s claws raked across her arm, blood splattering the floor.

Reader should have kept running. She should have left the Killer to her fate. But something inside her wouldn’t let her. The Killer fell to her knees, clutching her wound, and for a moment, she didn’t look like a murderer. She looked… human. Vulnerable.

Reader hesitated, then knelt beside her. The Killer’s eyes widened in confusion as Reader placed a hand on her arm. Warmth spread from Reader’s palm, the wound closing as golden light enveloped them.

“What… what are you doing?” the Killer whispered, her voice cracking.

“Healing you,” Reader said simply, though her hands shook.

The Killer stared at her, something unreadable flickering in her eyes. When the light faded, her arm was whole again. She flexed her fingers, testing it, before standing up.

“Why?” the Killer asked, her tone softer now, almost unsure.

“Because… no one deserves to bleed like that,” Reader said.

The Killer’s lips twitched, almost forming a smile, but it vanished as quickly as it came. “You’re a fool,” she muttered. “Healing me won’t save you.”

“Maybe not,” Reader said, cradling her babies closer. “But it’s the right thing to do.”

The Killer turned away, muttering something under her breath. “Follow me,” she said, her tone brusque.

“What?”

“I said follow me. You’ll die here if you don’t.”

Reader hesitated but had no other choice. Together, they navigated the cursed apartments, the Killer cutting down anything that got too close. Reader didn’t know if she could trust her, but for now, she had hope. Maybe, just maybe, they could survive this nightmare.

◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇♤☆■◇◆

Skibidi I didn't kind of write this I just told my thoughts and told chat gpt to write this fan fiction that's it.

[outtheoiseaux]

The Blue Room

(An excerpt from a story)

Celine’s grandfather- along with the help of a young, spry and altogether cooky intern he hired fresh out of her masters degree at the Oxford school of Anthropology- manages to uncover a previously unknown storage room buried beneath the ashy ruins of Pompeii in the summer of Celine’s first year of middle school. Nicknamed the “blue room” for its cerulean wall paintings which feature profoundly vibrant frescoes of scantily clad female figures, The Blue Room is a true gem of history in that it is not only believed to have once served as a sacrarium- an ancient Roman room in which sacred artifacts would be stored for future use in rituals- it was also filled with stacks of hulking amphorae -massive vases used by slaves and artisans for artifact transportation- and sloping piles of discarded oyster shells which Celine’s Grandpa and his yellow-bellied intern believe to have been discarded by onsite workers who happened to have been using them in local renovations when the eruption occurred.

Much of this information Celine can readily skim from the crust of her mind solely because of the sheer amount of times she has heard the words repeated when her older cousin- an awkward and altogether bumbling seventeen year old boy from Cambridge who had been living with her and her grandfather for the last three or so years since his grandmother suddenly and tragically perished- would turn to her grandfather with his great, big, buggy black eyes prewet with wonder and stutter out yet another line of inquiry into the stoic old man’s exploits as an adventuring archeologist.

Grandpa Haber’s miraculous discovery of The Blue Room was of course the most miraculous in that it bolstered his reputation so thoroughly and impressively in his field that not even two years after the initial find, Celine found herself, her cousin and of course, her grandfather’s oddball of an intern-turned-assistant soaring across the globe from the quaint and sunny beaches of Punta Gorda in southwestern coastal Florida to the mild-climated, kitsch and colorful college town of Ann Arbor for his brand spanking new position as a professor with the University of Michigan.

“You know, it really does remind me of when my gran first got her position at Cambridge.” Joey whispers to her from behind the navy blue canvas veneer of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. “It really is bloody wonderful for the ego to come from a family like this; I mean, if we’re both descended from professors in their respective fields, it’s probably safe to assume we might have inherited some of their hereditary IQ.” From her window seat, Celine watches fat, slimy clouds spin lazily below, growing larger and larger with perspective as the plane makes its descent. If her great aunt’s intelligence is hereditary, she thinks to herself privately, then she really does hope that the woman’s fatal heart issues aren’t.

Their new home, Celine learns as her grandfather moseys up the winding paths of a spacy suburban sprawl in the rental car, is located in a sleepy, lightly forested town in the residential garden hills of northern Ann Arbor. The house itself is a beautiful thing; a historic unit with delicately patterned Tiffany windows, a charming, oaken porch which cuts into the first floor and wraps around the front, thick, wooden beams, charmingly kitsch vintage furniture, art deco wallpaper, wrought iron window decorations, a series of increasingly aged light covers hanging from the center of the Victorian ceiling moldings and a tasteful exterior which has been (to Celine’s admitted delight) painted entirely in a warm, dusky purple. Celine decides to call it The Purple House.

“How in the world do you think Mister Haber managed to afford a beaut like this?” Joey, entirely bug-eyed, marvels at the rows of inlaid bookshelves that wrap the walls of what appears to have once been an office room but must have been transformed by the previous residents into their private library of collector’s editions. “I mean, he’s not hard-pressed for funds by any means but for heavens’ake, you don’t make this kind of money in his sort of research, and the man isn’t a socialite!”

“A socialite?” Celine wrinkles her nose. “Why would he need to be a socialite?”

“This is a socialite’s house.” Her cousin dutifully informs her. “The only thing you could think to do with a parlor this dreadfully impressive is to host equally impressive gatherings.”

She would never let the poor thing know it, but Celine sometimes thinks that her cousin enjoys needless frivolities with a suspiciously intense sort of vigor. So suspiciously intense, in fact, that she’s starting to suspect he would benefit more from finishing school than a university education. Out of the corner of her eye, the gold inlaid label of Antigone flashes from a handsome, red, hard-cover canvas binding.

“You wanna go check out the rooms?” She bites out through an oh-so-innocent grin. Best to distract him before he can get his hands on some old tome from the previous tenants' personal collection.

“That depends,” Joey throws his head back in a hearty guffaw and his unit of a fringe flops around in earnest, “on whether or not you’ve got the guts to race me for first dibs?”

The Purple House, Celine eventually learns, is actually called the Hallisbury House- or at least was upon its construction by a couple of Nouveau-Richie gilded age socialites years ago. All of this she gleans from a series of tastefully arranged picture frames hanging along the walls in such an order that, if one were to trail slowly down the halls and view each image in order, she would witness the building of the home, the renovations over the years and the process of the lives of the original owners. Morbidly, the last hanging image in the series- an exorbitantly decorated framed print hanging over the fireplace as a centerpiece to the already elaborate mantle- depicts an artistically framed black and white shot (clearly taken on a modern, digital camera) of the original owners’ gravestones. Whoever lived here last had, she thinks, a very strong sense of humor.

Beneath the photograph, on a gilded, silver plaque, an engraving reads:

A beautiful photograph from a beautiful Daughter.

Celine’s new room is on the second floor, directly above the kitchen, and is the only bedroom in the house with a window that faces out to the front yard and driveway. These three facts are perhaps the only ordinary thing about the place. Much like the house’s exterior, Celine’s new room is almost entirely made up of various tasteful shades of purple. There’s a lilac shag carpet and a stained-indigo oak closet and a painted-plum oak dresser and a violet bean bag and a mauve mattress and byzantium tasseled pillows and an eggplant duvet. Everything from the floor to the baseboards to the walls to the Victorian ceiling moldings is painted in the color, so much so that Celine begins to wonder if the visual fatigue will make her see yellow the second she steps out. Everything from the floor to the baseboards to the walls to the Victorian ceiling moldings is painted the color purple- everything, that is, except for the bright, blood red velvet curtains draped in theatrical arcs and ruffles over the ostentatiously gothy bedside window. The other rooms in the house are perfectly normal looking, if a little antique. She checked every last one of them, and this is the outlier.

“A beautiful room,” Celine giggles out to the empty room, “for a beautiful daughter.” She takes great care to adopt a disgustingly thick Oxford drawl when she says it, then she giggles even more because it makes her sound a little too much like her cousin who used to live there.

[elizadushkudaily]

Poll results - Favorite Eliza voice project!

Our voice project poll is now closed. (Numbers correspond to the poll options.)

The winner at #1 is Faith in the BTVS Chaos Bleeds video game (with 19%). Followed by #2 the trio of video games Yakuza, Saints Row 2, and Fight Night Champion (with 17%), and #3 as She Hulk in the Hulk and the Agents of Smash series and the Ultimate Spiderman episode (with 14%). Only one vote each separated first through sixth place.

Since Eliza does not appear in the voice projects, we won’t have gifsets of the winners. (We have other poll gifs.) If you want a longer watch, try Hulk and the Agents of Smash (at 52 episodes) or Torchwood: Web of Lies (10 episodes). Eliza's character is in most of them!

poll 8 / all polls //

// Eliza filmography // gif req // Faith masterlist // Dollhouse masterlist //

Did you know that Eliza has 5 video game voice credits? Some posters are below, with bonus Wet the video game wallpaper. (Wet is special because Eliza voiced the main character Rubi.)

Did you know there is a video game strike? After over a year of negotiations, on July 26th, 2024 the Screen Actors Guild union (SAG-AFTRA) began a video game strike. One issue is the lack of worker protections around the use of A.I. technology.

(Wet the video game wallpaper thanks to ifrit)

What can I do as a fan of video games? They are not asking fans to stop playing or streaming games. (The exception is if you were paid to perform in a struck video game.) Learn more about the strike at: http://sagaftra.org/videogamestrike

[fictionisthebetterreality]

Shepard wakes up. Earth is in ruins. The Citadel is in pieces. The Alliance Navy is trying to put it all back together.

No one has seen the NORMANDY, or its crew.

-

She searches.

Days turn to weeks. Weeks turn to months. Or, she assumes they must. She stops keeping track.

Catalyst was right, as it turns out. Their tech is reduced to sparking heaps of metalwork; glitching at best, unresponsive at worst. Their surviving engineers get to work with a familiar, frenzied, desperate sense of purpose, and she doesn't mention Catalyst's promise, that everything should be salvageable.

She tries not to think about the Geth.

She won't let herself think about EDI.

The engineers are heralded as heroes when the first starship takes to space again, and she does nothing, says nothing to contradict it. She tells no one that their survival now, is not due to their humanity.

Her humanity.

Fallen Dreadnoughts litter the sky above Earth, their hulking carcasses blotting out the sun like clouds made of steel and death. Deadened Reaper ships float alongside them, tentacles forever frozen in a final death-spasm. Several are already establishing themselves in Earth’s orbit, visible as daytime stars. People start naming them in the style of constellations, complete with myths that are nowhere near as horrifying as the truth.

There are only a few intact ships left. The Alliance fleets are limping and crawling into dock at the Citadel, and every ship that is repaired to barely workable condition is snapped up, sent to search the debris for survivors, for resources, for anything useful. Their scans are breathtaking, thousands of wrecks already breaking down, breaking apart as solar wind and radiation whirl around planets and blast the broken hulls into pieces.

They’d thought Space was quiet once. Peaceful, even.

There are too few working ships to spare even one, certainly not for a personal mission. There are hundreds of thousands of people missing loved ones, family and friends disappeared in the chaos of battle. She prefers it, seeing the endless wallpaper of MISSING that covers every available surface; glitching holographs alongside crude hand-drawings, sometimes just a name carved into rock. Anything to find those missing.

It is so much easier to see that, than to catch sight of a sudden reunion in the street, to hear the surprised shouts and inevitable tears of relief and joy that follow. To hear the familiar litany of "Have you seen...?" and to see a person nod the affirmative, point their hand towards a building or some other destination that is undoubtably reachable.

There are too few working ships to spare even one.

Not even for a soldier gone AWOL.

[arrthurpendragon]

MY ANGEL <3 Thank you for the opportunity to infodump about my current muse lol. Right now my girl is Lydia Forbes (played by Katie Cassidy.) She has a vampire diaries verse but right now I’m all about her Marvel verse (bc ofc I am.)

Ive wanted to make a Scott Lang OC for ages but could never think of a good story to go along with it (aside from my emo Scott/Leila AU which is not MMCU canon). But recently I finally figured out how to work Lydia into the story organically!

So basically: Lydia is the daughter of a former family friend of the Pyms. She actually is introduced in a Steve/Leila centered fic (still pre-relationship) as a member of the Trust, the superpowered gang that Leila used to run. She has the power of sonic screams (very apt use of faceclaim lmao.) 

Basically, either during the Battle of New York in the Avengers OR the Harlem Incident in The Incredible Hulk, Lydia’s younger sister died in the chaos. What also happened is that the stress caused Lydia’s powers to manifest. But because of her sister’s death, her parents became vehemently anti-superpower. Lydia was afraid of what they’d do if they found out, so she dropped off the grid and eventually became a part of the Trust because she didn’t know where else to go. 

Her first arc actually takes place in the Daredevil corner of the universe. Unsure exactly what happens, but the Trust is working for Kingpin (how the Trust works is basically, larger crime bosses will pay the Trust for their members to perform certain illegal or sketchy tasks–heists, bodyguards, whatever. Kingpin has hired a few Trust members, including Lydia, for reasons I’m unsure of currently.)

Lydia has qualms about this and ends up in a precarious alliance with Matt. They have a kind of almost-thing, not unlike Matt and Claire, but Lydia ultimately ends up fully turning good and leaving the city for San Francisco instead to start fresh. 

She gets involved in the Pymtech heist in two ways. One, she ends up living with the X-Con squad in their shitty apartment (telling them she’s also an ex-con, which she is not) and when Hank reaches out to her, she recommends Scott as the new Ant-Man, kicking off Hank baiting Scott into robbing him. 

Then later she ends up robbing her mom’s house–her mom used to be the head of security for Pymtech, way back in the day, and Darren has become paranoid enough to bring in some legacy security measures, so Lydia and Scott have to break into her mom’s house to get schematics from when she ran Pymtech security. 

There’s a running gag up to this point that none of the X-Con squad knows anything about Lydia or where she came from or what she did to go to prison. So during this heist, with Scott and Lydia in the house and the rest of them listening over comms, Lydia’s mom comes into the room and flips the lights on and they turn around and Lydia says, reluctantly, “Hi, mom,” and the boys lose their fucking minds about it. Lydia and her mom start arguing (I think they are still estranged, but her mom does know about her powers atp) and Scott is trying to become one with the wallpaper and over the comms the guys are like “Scott stop breathing so loud we are trying to hear what’s going on”

Also at some point prior to this, Kurt hacked into the prison records to try to find out what Lydia was in for, and said he couldn’t find a reason she was in prison. So eventually everyone finds out that she’s not, actually, an ex-con (“When I break the law, I don’t get caught.” –Lydia) And Scott’s like that’s not true, Kurt found your records in the [prison name] system! And Kurt’s like actually I never said that. 

So Scott’s like ??? And Kurt’s like “She is young women who choose willingly to live with three older–how say…sketchy, men. I assume she have reason.” And Scott’s like “Hey, we’re not sketchy! We’re not sketchy, right?” And Luis is like “I mean…” and Dave is like “eh.”

ANYWAYS. Hank does make her a suit with a collar that helps her control her sonic screams and allows her to shrink. (I’m trying to do research on How Sound Works(™) to know what her screams would be like when she is tiny.) And she, Hope and Scott become a team (I’m thinking of her superhero name being Cicada around this time, although she was Scream Queen in New York) and Lydia and Scott start dating around this point. 

In Civil War, Scott actually does ask Hope and Lydia to go with him. Hope refuses but Lydia agrees, and they both get arrested and put on the raft. Steve frees them, and as in canon Scott turns himself in and gets house arrest, but Lydia is worried about what they’ll do when they find out her powers are hers and don’t come from the technology, so she chooses to go on the run. 

While Scott’s under house arrest, Hope and Hank are also on the run as in canon, and during that period of time they make their peace with Lydia–they reach out to her because they need her criminal contacts to be able to find the things they need to build the quantum tunnel. So by the time Scott gets involved again, Lydia’s cool with them but they’re still mad at him, and Lydia has to kind of mediate for a lot of the Ant-Man and the Wasp plotline. 

(Also Lydia’s “on the run from the law” makeover look is Katie Cassidy with the platinum pixie cut she had in later seasons of Arrow.)

Anyway, at the end Lydia gets snapped so she can’t pull Scott out of the Quantum Realm, then comes back for the End Game battle, etc. There’s a lot of gaps here that I’m still working out but overall I’m really excited about her right now! (I also feel like she has a complicated history with Hope somehow, but I’m still figuring out what that is–regardless, they make peace during the first Ant-Man movie and are close friends after that.)

(I want to give Hope her own OC love interest, I’m just not sure who right now.)

(I’m also excited because Katie Cassidy and Paul Rudd would look so good together like why lie)

One element I really like about her relationship with Scott–I characterize Scott in my fics as having a dark side. I rewatched all his movies the other day and everything and I really do think that looking at canon, you can make a good argument that Scott struggles with anger issues and impulse control issues. Meanwhile, I think Hank and Hope know that Lydia was involved with some shady stuff in new york, but they don’t know the full extent of what she was complicit in. 

So I like the idea of them kind of being able to show that side to each other that they aren’t necessarily proud of and kind of understand each other on that level. Alexa play Dark Side by Kelly Clarkson. 

Anyways thank you for letting me ramble about her and them I love you <3 Also sorry if some of this didn’t make sense lol 

The "Scott stop breathing so loud" broke me! lol. This sounds epic! I think you have more planned out for an OC in one ask than I do for all of my OCs combined! lol. (I'm exaggerating, but you're thorough)

All the kudos going forward creating!

Love you!!!

[teslacoils-and-hubris]

D.A.N and Lab Rat sound cool, do u have any more abt them?

D.A.N. is a Digital Assistant Network AI made by Lab Rat to act as basically an alexa, but he got corrupted and is now a glitchy snarky evil but highly ineffective asshole who enjoys tormenting LR. He desperately wants to take over the world but due to very basic cyber security checks put in place by LR the worst he can really do is overheat her laptop until it crashes and change the wallpaper.

Lab Rat is a top researcher working for the Global Hero Company. Her official job is researching powers and their effects on the body. Very little is actually understood about powers, from who has them to the external signifiers to how they work. Her real passion lies in accident based powers-think your struck by lightning or fell into toxic goo- but she basically has to look into what the higher ups tell her to to keep her job, and currently that's powers effects on the body. Her power isn't anything flashy, her antenna allow her to feel vibrations and tap into broadcast signals.

She really doesn't care for heros as a concept, and is extremely bitter about how society views powers which has only gotten worse since she started working at the glorify-cool-powers company. She only took the job because she wants to figure out if there's a way to kick start powers late in life- something like an organ transplant maybe? She needs to find the genes that causes powers before she can get to that part and the best way to do that is to have access to super DNA, and this was the best job for it.

If you look at LRs refs she has two color schemes, normal and neon blue with a visible skeleton. The alternate blue skeleton one is the result of a botched attempt at giving herself powers. Instead of anything new or useful it just upped her current power and made her turn blue when she gets angry (or any very strong emotion, but usually angry). No hulk powers, just blue and flourescent.

LR does have contact with Doc, mostly because Doc is one of the rare people who managed to give himself powers by accident, and she's desperate to figure out more on the phenomenon. Strangely, almost everyone who accidentally gives themselves powers ends up in the villain business...

[iron-niffler]

I posted 3,355 times in 2022

111 posts created (3%)

3,244 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@shipskicksandgiggles

@whotheheckitheheck

@kurara-black-blog

@somethingscarlet13

@thebadwulff

I tagged 1,250 of my posts in 2022

#moon knight spoilers - 70 posts

#nwh spoilers - 28 posts

#no way home spoilers - 26 posts

#spiderman no way home spoilers - 25 posts

#toh spoilers - 24 posts

#the owl house spoilers - 22 posts

#moon knight - 18 posts

#mood - 17 posts

#i love them - 14 posts

#she hulk spoilers - 14 posts

Longest Tag: 124 characters

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My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

hi its me a sleep deprived engineering major with a horrible sense of humor and no graphic design skills

behold my new desktop wallpaper

7 notes - Posted October 22, 2022

#4

AAAAH LEGO MARVEL SUPERHEROES IS OFFICIALLY TOO MUCH FOR ME (affectionate)

so peter tony and thor were breaking into magnetos flying base right? and doom's jet was parked there so this is how the cutscene went:

tony: ugh DOOM got preferred parking?!

peter: we should tow him

*tony and peter pull the jet out of the airlock, drop it down to earth and then do a fist/chest bump combo*

thor: ಠ_ಠ

7 notes - Posted August 14, 2022

#3

WHY IS TUMBLR ALLOWING ME TO SCHEDULE POSTS OVER 200,000 YEARS IN THE FUTURE??

11 notes - Posted April 26, 2022

#2

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16 notes - Posted July 17, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

so i found a jurassic park parody musical...

rating: ♾️/10, absolute masterpiece

highlights include:

the singing/parodies of famous songs with hits such as pure imagination but the songs are about dinosaurs

the dancing dinosaurs

mr. dna, the actor was super into it and played that role to perfection

john yelling FINE WE'LL GIVE THE DINOSAURS SKIRTS

alan and ellie taking things somewhat seriously and their little science talks

ian. just his whole character was fantastic, he was chaotic, had a solo and was almost always in the background flirting with...something (there's this one scene where muldoon and alan are having a Serious Conversation about how This is Bad and it looks like ian is...trying to chat up a tap dancing velociraptor in the background? at the end of the scene one looks at him and makes a "call me" gesture) and im just ???? this man will try to date anything that moves he can also be seen flirting with extras

THE DANCING DINOSAURS (they're so good they deserve multiple mentions)

the scene with the t rex, there was no flare instead ian just burst out of the car and started dancing with the t-rex AND IT WORKED they sang a whole little song together. it was fantastic.

so y'know the famous dr malcolm pose™️ well in this play they had him lying on a wheeling table and whenever he had something to contribute to dialogue or needed to come on/offstage one of the people offstage pushed his table out and pulled it back in it's one of the stupid little things in this musical but i laughed so hard and had to rewatch this sassy man being pushed on/offstage on a table with his arm in the air several times

THE RAPTOR'S SONG was awesome

*tim hyping up lex* alan: KID THE GUN GIVE ME THE GUN *tim continues hyping up lex*

the t rex. everything. she was iconic

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133 notes - Posted January 15, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[projectohxh]

Green or lilaf 💚💜

[ere-the-sun-rises]

Jonathan knew them city types. Scoffin' at dirt and leery of corn fields, lookin' at rusted out bumpers on old trucks like it was an offence. Even one who worked alongside his son in his nightlife ain't got his trust just 'cause he do. However fake or contrived Bruce Wayne's reputation may be, there's a teaspoon of truth in every lie - it's the only way to make it go down right. But he promised Martha that he'd be good, so good he'll be.

Bruce is a kittenish thing when he arrives on the doorstep, a hulking man who's body was made of raw workable power but lookin' like he was left out in the rain. He's big, but pale and shy, talkin' soft to Martha and kneelin' to pet Krypto. Martha had said Bruce was sweet when she went to Metropolis to visit their boy for a week, so Jonathan wasn't skeptical about that. Lotsa people can be sweet, even sweet all the time. It was Bruce's honesty that Jonathan doubted - no city man so rich could get by without being a talented liar, and no man in Clark's line of work could do the job without a dark edge to him. 'Specially not a human man, mortal as everybody else.

So Jonathan's a bit surprised when he gets up with the rooster in the cold pre-dawn with the dew on the grass creating a hazy mist, and seein' the barn light on. He squints and walks over all quiet like, peering in through the open door. Kneelin' there on the barn floor in jeans that cost more than his plow is Bruce, hummin' as he cleans an old part in the ancient tractor, staining his hands with black carbon. With a thoughtful sound, Bruce re-installs the part and tries the starter. Ol' Bess sputters to life, then dies.

"Hmm. The ignition spark is completely dead then." Bruce mutters. He pulls out his phone, pressing a number. "Good morning, Tim. I have a favour to ask. I'm going to send you a picture and specs, could you make a 3D printed version of the piece then have a cast mould for it made? The part needs to be steel, but not welded."

Some garbled response.

"Yes, the Kent tractor. I gutted the engine and cleaned it out, including replacing all the fluids but the ignition isn't sufficient. The metal's too corroded and air gets in."

Another pause.

"Sure. Send it back with Conner when he comes to visit. I should still be here by then. Thank you."

Another response.

"Thank you. I love you. See you soon." Bruce hangs up the phone and slides it carelessly into his pocket. He kneels to remove one of the wheels - Martha had mentioned an axel was acting funny - when Amanda, their oldest sow, snuffles her way under his arm. Whatever Jonathan was expecting, Bruce chuckling lowly and petting her was not it. "Ah, Damian would adore you. Are you curious, lovely lady? I can show you, if you'd like."

She snorts and lays down, still watching him. He scatches behind her ear and begins narrating his process, laying the tools on the ol' girl's belly to make her feel involved.

"He snuck out as soin as he thought I was asleep."

He turns to find Clark behind him, smile on his face and hands in his pockets. "Did he now?"

"Yup. Saw it spark in his eyes as soon as Ma mentioned the tractor."

"Why go to all this trouble? I'm surprised he didn't just buy a new one."

Clark shakes his head. "He's much too sentimental. He still has every personal effect Thomas and Martha Wayne owned when they died, right down to a swatch of the original wallpaper. He can tell what that tractor means to you, Pa, and it's his way of showing he cares about you. He's not so hot with words when he actually means them, but he likes to take care of people."

"Hmm." He glances back in the barn, finding that the barn cat has found his way onto Bruce's lap.

"There's a reason all the kids love him." Clark sighs wistfully and Jonathan knows that sound - it's the same one that comes out of Martha's mouth when he gives her wildflowers on a rainy morning.

"Alright." He says, grouchiness more pretend than anything. "He can stay. As long as you make sure he doesn't smear carbon inside the house."

Clark laughs. "I'll make sure."

I know Bruce and Ma Kent meeting is an obligatory trope, but Bruce and Pa Kent?

Majorly underrated, supremely adorable concept.

Guys. There's something extremely endearing about Batman, a symbol of brutality, -- mercy, hope, forgiveness, yes, but brutal all the same, - shaking in his versace emo boots in front of his boyfriend's dad...

" Now listen here, city boy. You best treat my Clark with respect, cause Lois told me where you sleep,--"

And Bruce focuses, really, really hard, to sit through this (surprisingly graphic) threat session.

But some baby birds are about to fall from their nest, right past John's shoulders. No, -- one is pushed by mama bird. He charges, runs, damn near knocking Clark's dad off his feet.

Pa Kent watches Bruce Wayne, Gotham darling, dirty his luxurious designer clothes in filthy mud, and decides maybe he does like city folk after all.

"Did he just...Hiss at the mama bird?"

Clark, adoring, more than a little in love, sighs, " Yeah, he did. That's my boy."

Pa Kent is still on the lookout, thought. It's his parental obligation to regard Bruce with protective, mild glaring. Southern hospitality, sure. But protective glaring first.

The fact that he covers Bruce with a blanket when he falls asleep cuddling a batch of ducklings in his barn means nothing.

"Not a word, you two,"

Martha and Clark don't need to look that smug.

In conclusion: Bruce is the cat Pa Kent pretends he didn't want.

[corky-the-gluttony-demon]

DMC: An Absurd Comedy (A Devil May Cry Fanfiction) - Haunted by Dreams Arc - Chapter 3

The story so far: After surviving a cursed artifact that put them to sleep, Felix, Corky, Nero, and Nico arrive at an old mansion owned by an enigmatic woman named Vivian. She directs the group to two key locations where Belphegor’s power is strongest: the Somnus Institute, a sleep clinic, and the Elysium Lounge, an opium den.

Before splitting up to investigate, the group decides to fortify the mansion to protect Vivian from demonic attacks. Nico successfully revives the mansion’s generator, giving them light and power, while the others reinforce the defenses.

With the mansion secured, the group prepares to confront the demons and destroy the artifacts amplifying Belphegor’s influence.

Location: Somnus Institute, Snowfield

January 6th, 2:51 PM

The Somnus Institute loomed ahead of Nero, a hulking mass of cold stone and shadowed windows that seemed to absorb the afternoon light rather than reflect it.

Nico pulled up to the entrance, the van’s tires crunching on the icy ground. She glanced over at Nero, her expression half-serious, half-amused. “You sure about this? Place looks like it’s straight outta one of those haunted asylum movies.”

Nero gave her a tight-lipped smile, already unbuckling his seatbelt. “Dealt with worse.”

Felix leaned forward from the back seat, his tone dripping with his usual bravado. “You sure you don’t need Cork and I? if you get in over your head, you could just scream for help. I’ll come running.”

Nero glared at him. “I’ve worked on my own for how long. I’ll be fine.”

Corky, wedged between Felix and the pile of gear Nico always carried, shrugged. “It’s a lot of back-and-forth, Nico. Wouldn’t it make more sense for us to tackle one place at a time? That way, we’re not stretching ourselves thin.”

Nico pointedly looked over at Felix but didn’t say anything.

Nero stepped out of the van, glancing back as Nico and the others drove off towards the Elysium Lounge.

He turned back to the building, gripping Red Queen’s hilt for reassurance as he approached the entrance. The heavy wooden doors creaked open with a sound that set his teeth on edge, revealing a dimly lit lobby that smelled faintly of antiseptic and something sour underneath.

The tiles were cracked, the wallpaper peeling in places, and the air was stale.

Nero stepped inside, the door swinging shut behind him with a dull thud that echoed through the empty halls. His boots clicked on the cold tile floor as he moved cautiously through the lobby, eyes scanning the area for any signs of life—or unlife.

The first room he entered was the reception area, a long-abandoned desk covered in dust, papers scattered about as if someone had left in a hurry. A faded sign on the wall read "Welcome to Somnus Institute - A Place for Rest and Recovery." The irony wasn’t lost on Nero.

The silence was suffocating, the kind that made you hyper-aware of every creak and groan of the building.

The first sign of trouble came in the form of a low, guttural growl that reverberated through the walls. Nero’s hand tightened on Red Queen as he turned towards the source of the sound, his senses on high alert.

From the shadows at the far end of the corridor, a figure emerged—a twisted, grotesque creature that looked like it had once been human but had long since lost any semblance of humanity. Its skin was a sickly gray, stretched tight over a gaunt frame, with patches of hair hanging limply from its skull. Its eyes were sunken, glowing faintly with a dull, yellow light, and its mouth was twisted into a permanent, eerie grin.

This was no ordinary demon. It was a Fiend, one of Belphegor’s twisted creations, designed to torment the minds of those it hunted. The creature moved with a jerky, unnatural gait, its limbs twitching and spasming as if it was barely in control of its own body. It carried a long, rusted scalpel in one bony hand, the blade dragging along the floor with a high-pitched screech.

Nero grimaced, raising Red Queen as the Fiend advanced on him. “Guess you’re my welcoming committee, huh? Not exactly the warm reception I was hoping for.”

The Fiend let out a garbled hiss, its grin widening as it lunged at him with surprising speed. Nero was ready, swinging Red Queen in a wide arc that connected with the creature’s torso, the blade cutting deep into its flesh with a spray of dark, foul-smelling blood. The Fiend shrieked, a sound that seemed to pierce right through Nero’s skull, but he didn’t let up.

With a powerful thrust, he drove Red Queen into the Fiend’s chest, the engine roaring as he revved it up for extra power. The demon convulsed violently, its body twitching and spasming as it tried to wrench itself free, but Nero held firm. With one final twist of the blade, he tore the Fiend apart, its body collapsing into a pile of ash and bone at his feet.

Nero took a step back, wiping the sweat from his brow. “One down… probably a lot more to go.”

As the ashes settled, the eerie quiet of the Institute returned, but Nero knew better than to let his guard down.

He moved deeper into the Institute, the corridors narrowing and twisting in ways that seemed impossible, like the architecture itself was warping under Belphegor’s influence.

Nero’s footsteps echoed as he entered a large, open room that appeared to be some sort of therapy area. Rusted metal chairs were scattered haphazardly, some overturned, others piled against the walls.

He approached a mirror cautiously, Red Queen ready at his side. As he peered into the shattered glass, his own reflection stared back at him, but it was wrong—twisted, like something was hiding just beneath his skin.

Suddenly, the mirror shattered, sending shards of glass flying in all directions. Nero instinctively raised his arm to shield himself, but when he lowered it, the room was no longer empty.

A group of demons had materialized out of the shadows—more Fiends, but different this time. They were larger, more grotesque, with long, twisted limbs and faces that were a horrifying amalgamation of different creatures. Their eyes glowed with a sickly yellow light, and their mouths were filled with rows of jagged, rotting teeth.

“Great, just what I needed—more ugly bastards to deal with,” Nero muttered, tightening his grip on Red Queen.

The demons didn’t waste any time. They lunged at him from all sides, moving with an unnatural speed that made them hard to track. Nero swung Red Queen in a wide arc, slicing through the first demon that came too close, but the others were already on him. One of them grabbed his arm, its claws digging into his flesh, while another slashed at his back, leaving deep gashes that burned with pain.

Nero gritted his teeth, pushing back against the assault. He kicked one of the demons in the chest, sending it crashing into the wall, but the others were relentless, clawing and biting at him with savage ferocity.

“Alright, you asked for it,” Nero growled, feeling the familiar surge of power building within him. He reached deep inside himself, drawing on the demonic energy that was his birthright, and let it flood through his veins.

With a roar, Nero activated his Devil Trigger.

The transformation was immediate. His skin darkened, taking on a blue, almost metallic sheen, while his eyes burned with a fiery golden light. Ghostly wings unfurled from his back, and spectral energy crackled around him, giving him an aura of raw, terrifying power.

That moment was all Nero needed.

He lashed out with Red Queen, the blade now glowing with demonic energy. The first demon was obliterated in a single, devastating strike, its body disintegrating into ash before it even hit the ground. The others tried to regroup, but Nero was already on them, moving faster than they could react.

He grabbed one of the demons by the throat with his spectral arm, lifting it off the ground with ease. The creature thrashed and screeched, its claws scrabbling against his armored skin, but Nero just squeezed harder, crushing its windpipe with a sickening crunch before tossing it aside like a ragdoll.

Another demon came at him from behind, but Nero was ready. He spun around, delivering a powerful roundhouse kick that sent the creature flying across the room. It hit the wall with enough force to crack the plaster, and before it could recover, Nero was there, driving Red Queen into its chest with a roar of fury. The demon let out a final, pitiful wail before it was consumed by the energy coursing through Nero’s blade.

The last demon, seeing its comrades decimated, tried to flee, but Nero wasn’t about to let it go. He raised his spectral arm and fired off a blast of energy that slammed into the creature’s back, sending it crashing to the ground. Before it could even attempt to crawl away, Nero was on it, driving his boot into its skull with enough force to cave it in.

As the final demon dissolved into ash, Nero stood in the center of the room, his chest heaving with exertion. The demonic energy still crackled around him, but he forced himself to calm down, letting the Devil Trigger fade. His skin returned to its normal tone, the ghostly wings disappearing, and the room fell silent once more.

Nero wiped the blood from his face, breathing heavily. “Well, that was fun,” he muttered, though there was no humor in his voice.

He glanced around the room, noting the destruction left in his wake. The mirror was shattered, the walls cracked and splattered with blood, but there was something else—a faint, pulsing light coming from the far corner.

Nero approached it cautiously. The light was coming from a small, ornate box, half-buried under the rubble. As he reached out to touch it, he felt a wave of nausea wash over him, the air around the box shimmering with a sickly green glow.

“An artifact,” Nero muttered. He could feel it trying to worm its way into his mind, to take control, but he shook it off

With a grunt of effort, Nero brought Red Queen down on the box, shattering it into pieces. The light flared bright for a moment, then fizzled out.

“First one down,” Nero said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Now to find the rest.”

He turned away from the shattered remains of the artifact and moved deeper into the Somnus Institute.

Nero found himself in a long, dimly lit corridor, the walls lined with more of those unsettling portraits—faceless figures with empty eyes that seemed to follow his every move.

As he reached the end of the corridor, he came upon a set of double doors, the wood splintered and worn. A faded sign above the entrance read “Sleep Study Lab.” Nero pushed the doors open with a creak, stepping into a large, sterile room filled with rows of hospital beds. Each bed was outfitted with various medical devices—monitors, IV stands, and strange headgear that looked more like torture devices than anything used for healing.

He was halfway across the room when the temperature dropped sharply, his breath fogging up in front of him. The monitors on the beds suddenly sprang to life, their screens flashing erratically as the machines began to emit a high-pitched whine. The air grew thick with static, a low rumble vibrating through the floor.

Nero instinctively raised Red Queen, ready for whatever was coming. “Alright, let’s see what you’ve got.”

The answer came in the form of a shadowy figure materializing at the far end of the room, its body shifting and writhing as if it was made of smoke. The creature was tall and spindly, with elongated limbs that ended in razor-sharp claws. Its face was a twisted mass of darkness, with two glowing red eyes that pierced through the gloom. The figure let out a low, guttural growl, its presence sending a wave of nausea through Nero’s body.

“Great, more nightmare fuel,” Nero muttered, stepping back to create some distance.

The creature lunged at him with blinding speed, its claws slashing through the air. Nero barely had time to react, swinging Red Queen to deflect the attack. The force of the impact sent him stumbling back, the power behind the creature’s strike far greater than he’d anticipated.

Nero regained his footing just in time to dodge another swipe, the creature’s claws slicing through the air where his head had been a second earlier. He countered with a slash of his own, but the blade passed through the creature’s body as if it was made of mist.

“What the—?” Nero started, but he didn’t have time to finish as the creature reformed and lashed out again, forcing him to dive out of the way.

The creature’s attacks were relentless, its movements erratic and unpredictable. It would lunge forward, then dissolve into smoke, only to reappear behind him with a new angle of attack. Nero’s usual strategies weren’t working—the thing was too fast, too slippery.

“Alright, you wanna play dirty?” Nero growled, feeling the demonic energy surge within him again. “Let’s see how you like this!”

He activated his Devil Trigger, the transformation immediate. His body pulsed with energy, and his spectral wings unfurled as he charged at the creature with renewed strength. This time, when he swung Red Queen, the blade connected with solid force, the demonic energy slicing through the creature’s form and causing it to screech in pain.

But the creature wasn’t done yet. It reared back, its body splitting into multiple shadowy figures that swirled around Nero like a tornado of darkness. The shadows lashed out at him from all sides, their claws raking against his armor, each strike sending jolts of pain through his body.

Nero gritted his teeth, refusing to be overwhelmed. He slashed through the shadows with Red Queen, the blade glowing brighter with each strike. He could feel the energy of the Devil Trigger fueling his attacks, each swing more powerful than the last.

The shadows shrieked and twisted around him, their forms becoming more erratic as they tried to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. But Nero wasn’t backing down. With a roar, he unleashed a powerful shockwave of energy, the force of the blast scattering the shadows and sending them crashing into the walls.

The room shook with the impact, the lights flickering wildly as the shadowy figures dissipated, leaving only the original creature standing before him. It was weakened, its form flickering like a dying flame, but it still had enough strength to make one last desperate lunge at Nero.

Nero met the attack head-on, driving Red Queen straight into the creature’s chest. The blade pierced through its smoky form, and with a final, agonized screech, the creature disintegrated into nothingness.

Nero stood there, panting heavily as the Devil Trigger faded, his body returning to its normal state. The room was silent once more, the machines around him shorted out and sparking, but no longer emitting their eerie whine.

“That was too close,” Nero muttered, rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to catch his breath.

As he looked around the room, his eyes fell on a small, unassuming cabinet in the corner. It was half-hidden behind one of the beds, almost as if it had been placed there deliberately to be overlooked. But Nero’s instincts told him otherwise.

He approached the cabinet cautiously, his senses on high alert. With a deep breath, Nero opened the cabinet, revealing a small, ornate box similar to the one he’d destroyed earlier.

“Another one,” he said. “Alright, let’s end this.”

He raised Red Queen and brought it down on the box, shattering it into pieces. The room was briefly illuminated by a flash of green light before the artifact’s power was snuffed out, leaving behind only silence.

Instead, it grew stronger.

The temperature plummeted, and the air seemed to thicken, pressing in on him from all sides. Nero’s instincts screamed at him—something was wrong. Very wrong.

“Okay, that’s not normal,” he muttered, tightening his grip on Red Queen as he scanned the room. The shadows in the corners seemed to grow darker, more solid, twisting and writhing like living things. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as the shadows coalesced into a single, massive form.

From the darkness, a grotesque figure emerged—Hypnos, a Nightmare Demon whose very presence seemed to warp the air around it. The creature was more shadow than substance, its body an ever-shifting mass of darkness with tendrils that snaked out and retracted in a hypnotic rhythm. Its face was a twisted parody of a human visage, with hollow eyes that glowed a sickly green, and a wide, toothless mouth that seemed to stretch endlessly, as if ready to swallow the world whole.

“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Nero quipped, his voice steady despite the unease prickling at the edges of his mind. He’d faced down his share of nightmares before, but Hypnos was something else entirely.

The creature let out a low, echoing laugh that reverberated through the room, shaking the very walls. “Nero…” Hypnos hissed, its voice like the scraping of a thousand nails on a chalkboard. “You think you can destroy my master’s influence so easily? You cannot escape your dreams, hunter.”

Nero felt a cold shiver run down his spine as Hypnos spoke. The demon’s voice seemed to burrow into his mind, scratching at the edges of his consciousness, trying to pull him under. He shook his head, trying to clear it. “I’m wide awake, you freak. So how about you come at me and see how that works out for you?”

Hypnos grinned wider, its shadowy form rippling with dark energy. “Oh, but you are not awake… not fully. Even now, I can feel your mind slipping, your thoughts growing sluggish. Soon, you will be mine to toy with, as all who have come before you.”

Nero growled, but the demon’s words were starting to take hold. His vision blurred, the room seeming to shift and distort around him. He could feel himself getting drowsy, his eyelids growing heavy despite his best efforts to stay alert.

Hypnos moved closer, the tendrils of shadow reaching out to him, seeking to drag him into a waking nightmare. “Rest now, Nero… Let me show you the true depths of despair.”

Nero gritted his teeth, fighting against the pull. He knew if he succumbed to the demon’s influence, he’d be lost in a dreamscape of Hypnos’s making, trapped in an endless cycle of nightmares.

“Not… happening…” Nero growled, forcing himself to focus. He could feel the power of his Devil Trigger still coursing through him, but the haze was making it hard to concentrate. He had to act fast.

In a last-ditch effort, Nero slammed Red Queen into the ground, the blade sparking as it connected with the floor. The shockwave of energy rippled outwards, momentarily disrupting the shadows around Hypnos and giving Nero a brief window of clarity.

With a roar, Nero activated his Devil Trigger once more, the transformation surging through him like a bolt of lightning. His body crackled with power, the spectral wings unfurling. The haze lifted slightly, enough for him to see Hypnos for what it was—a creature that thrived on fear and weakness.

“Guess what?” Nero snarled, his voice reverberating with demonic energy. “I’m not afraid of you.”

He charged at Hypnos, Red Queen glowing with fiery intensity as he slashed at the demon’s form. The blade tore through the shadows, dispersing them with each strike, but Hypnos was quick to recover, reforming its body almost instantly.

“You cannot destroy what you cannot see,” Hypnos hissed, its form becoming even more insubstantial, like smoke in the wind. It lashed out with its tendrils, wrapping them around Nero’s legs and arms, trying to pin him down.

Nero struggled against the bonds, feeling the tendrils tighten like a vice. “You talk too much,” he spat, forcing himself to concentrate. With a surge of energy, he broke free of the tendrils.

He unleashed a devastating punch, sending a shockwave through the air that ripped through Hypnos’s form. The demon let out a guttural scream as it was thrown back, its body flickering wildly, struggling to maintain its shape.

“Time to end this,” Nero growled, his voice a low rumble. He charged at the disoriented demon, Red Queen blazing with power. Hypnos tried to retreat, but Nero was faster. He swung the blade in a wide arc, the edge cutting through the shadows with a searing light.

Hypnos shrieked as the blade connected, its form unraveling like a loose thread. The demon’s body twisted and contorted, its hollow eyes wide with terror as it realized its end was near.

“Sleep tight,” Nero snarled, delivering a final, devastating blow that cleaved the demon in two. Hypnos’s form disintegrated into nothingness, the shadows dissipating like smoke in the wind.

As the last remnants of the demon faded away, the room fell silent once more. The oppressive energy that had filled the space was gone, leaving behind only the faint hum of the fluorescent lights.

Nero stood there, panting heavily, the Devil Trigger receding as he regained control of himself. The battle had taken more out of him than he cared to admit, but he wasn’t about to let that show.

“Nightmare’s over, asshole,” Nero muttered, wiping sweat from his brow. He glanced around the room, making sure there were no other surprises waiting for him.

Nero took a deep breath, letting the tension ease out of his muscles. “Well, that was easy,” he said to himself, though the sarcasm was clear in his voice. Easy compared to what could have happened, at least. He sheathed Red Queen and looked around, trying to figure out what to do next. Nico wasn’t due back for a while, so he had some time to kill.

He wandered back out into the hallway. The place was still a dump, and the flickering lights didn’t do much to help the mood. But after the chaos of the last encounter, the silence was almost welcome.

Almost.

With a sigh, Nero found a decrepit lounge area, complete with old, cracked leather chairs and a coffee table covered in dust. There was even a vending machine in the corner, though he doubted it had been stocked. He plopped down in one of the chairs, the leather groaning under his weight, and leaned back, staring up at the stained ceiling.

“What now?” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. He didn’t feel like sitting idle, but there wasn’t much else to do but wait. Patience wasn’t exactly his strong suit, and the quiet was starting to grate on him.

His eyes drifted to the vending machine, and he smirked. “Well, worth a shot.”

He got up, strolling over to the ancient machine. It was one of those old-school models with rows of snacks behind glass, the kind where you pressed a button and hoped whatever you picked didn’t get stuck on the way down. Most of the snacks were unrecognizable, wrappers faded and discolored, but a few were still vaguely intact. Nero pulled out some change from his pocket, mostly out of habit, and tried to feed it into the slot.

Of course, the machine rejected it immediately.

“Figures,” he muttered, giving the machine a light kick. He could probably just punch through the glass, but that felt a little excessive, even for him.

Fuck it. Smash!

He pulled out a bag of what he assumed were potato chips. “Who needs quarters?” he said with a chuckle, ripping open the bag. The chips were stale, as expected, but edible. Barely.

As he munched on the chips, Nero wandered back to the lounge area, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. He flipped through some old magazines that had been left behind, most of them long out of date. The covers featured faded headlines about celebrities he barely remembered and scandals that had probably been forgotten by now. He tossed the magazines aside with a sigh.

“So this is what it feels like to be bored,” he muttered to himself, finishing off the last of the chips. He crumpled up the bag and tossed it across the room, watching it land perfectly in a trash can in the corner. “Score.”

He checked the time—still a while before Nico was supposed to return. He debated trying to get some rest, but this place wasn’t exactly conducive to napping. Plus, after facing down a Nightmare Demon, sleep didn’t seem like the smartest idea.

Instead, he decided to explore a bit more. Maybe there was something useful to find, or at the very least, something interesting to pass the time. He got up from the chair and made his way back into the hallway, choosing a random door to investigate.

He found himself in what looked like an old staff room. There were lockers lining one wall, most of them hanging open, revealing forgotten belongings—old jackets, shoes, a few personal items. A faded photograph was pinned to a corkboard, showing a group of people who had probably worked here, smiling like they didn’t have a care in the world. Nero found it a bit eerie, considering what had happened to this place.

He rifled through the lockers, not expecting much. Most were empty or contained nothing of interest, but one caught his eye. It was locked, which was odd considering the others were all wide open. Nero frowned.

“Let’s see what you’re hiding,” he muttered, and easily broke into the locker.

Inside was a small, dusty box. He pulled it out, setting it on a nearby table. The box was unmarked, just a plain wooden thing, but it felt oddly heavy for its size. Nero opened it carefully, half-expecting another artifact or some other demonic trinket, but what he found was… unexpected.

A flask. A plain, metal flask, dented and worn from years of use. He unscrewed the cap and took a sniff—whiskey. Old, strong whiskey.

Nero stared down at the flask, the smell of whiskey lingering in the air. He’d never been much of a drinker—in fact, he’d never touched the stuff. It wasn’t like he had some moral high ground against it; he just never saw the appeal. And considering the circumstances, this probably wasn’t the best time to start.

“Yeah… probably not,” he muttered to himself, screwing the cap back on and slipping the flask into his coat pocket. He could always pass it off to Felix later. He would appreciate it more.

Just as he was about to settle back into the chair, he heard the unmistakable rumble of the van pulling up outside. The timing couldn’t have been better. He stood up, brushing some dust off his coat, and made his way out of the Institute.

The cold air hit him as soon as he stepped outside. The van was parked near the entrance, its headlights cutting through. Nico was already out of the driver’s seat, leaning against the hood with her arms crossed, a look of surprise etched on her face.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Nico said as Nero approached, raising an eyebrow. “You worked fast.”

Nero shrugged, his usual nonchalance in place. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

 “I was gone for, what, an hour? And you already cleared the place?”

“More like forty minutes,” Nero corrected, a smirk tugging at his lips. “What can I say? These demons aren’t exactly sending their A-team.”

Nico gave him a once-over, noting the scuffs and bloodstains on his coat. “Looks like you had some fun, though. You alright?”

“Never better,” Nero replied. He pulled the flask out of his pocket, holding it up. “Found this in one of the lockers. Thought about breaking it in, but…”

Nico’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “You? Drinking? Now that’s a sight I’d pay to see. What stopped you?”

Nero shrugged, capping the flask and tucking it back into his coat. “Didn’t think it’d mix well with demons. Besides, I’ve got a rep to maintain.”

Nico snorted, shaking her head. “Yeah, wouldn’t want the Good-Boy Nero showing up drunk to a demon fight. The others would never let you live it down.”

Nero chuckled, the tension from earlier finally easing off. “Exactly. Speaking of which, how’d it go with Felix and Corky?”

Nico glanced over at Nero with a raised eyebrow. “I literally just left them there.”

Nero blinked, realizing he’d lost track of time in that hellhole of an Institute. “Right.”

 “They’re probably still knee-deep in demons and nightmares. You should just sit tight. They can handle an Opium Den without you playing babysitter.”

Nero frowned, his thoughts drifting back to Felix’s cocky grin, the way he seemed to take every opportunity to push his buttons. “I should go meet up with them. Make sure they don’t screw anything up.”

Nico rolled her eyes, taking one hand off the wheel to rummage around in her coat pocket. “Take it easy, cowboy. Felix and Corky are more than capable. Last I checked, you hired them for a reason.” Nico shot him a sideways glance, pulling out a slightly crumpled pack of cigarettes. “Alright, what’s your problem with him? You’ve been on edge since this morning. And don’t tell me it’s nothing—‘cause I know when you’re lying.”

Nero’s scowl deepened. “It’s just… what happened earlier. He thinks he’s better than he is. Acts like he’s the one running the show.”

Nico sighed, pulling a cigarette from the pack and lighting it with a flick of her Zippo. She took a long drag before speaking. “Nero, Felix has always been an asshole. You knew that when you hired him. Hell, I knew that when you hired him. Don’t let what he says get to you.”

Nero crossed his arms, staring out the window as the snowy landscape blurred past. “He’s more of an asshole than usual. And now he thinks he saved me back there. Like I owe him something.”

Nico exhaled a plume of smoke, watching Nero with a knowing look. “Is that what’s eating you? The fact that you got caught off guard and he had to step in? So what? Corky and I were also knocked out cold, not just you.”

 “He doesn’t have to rub it in.”

Nico leaned back in her seat, the cigarette dangling from her lips as she gave Nero a long look. “Let him think what he wants. You’re in charge, not him. He’s just trying to get under your skin—and looks like it’s working.”

Nero’s grip on his arms tightened, but he didn’t respond. He hated that she was right, hated that Felix was getting to him. He was better than that. But damn if it didn’t bother him more than it should.

Nico took another drag from her cigarette, then casually blew the smoke out the window. “You know, I could drop you off if you’re that worried about them. But honestly? You need to let this shit roll off your back. Felix is a dick, but he’s good at what he does. So are you. Just don’t let him make you doubt that.”

Nero turned to her, watching as she took another drag, her eyes focused on the road ahead. “You done with that yet? You’re stinking up the van.”

Nico chuckled, shaking her head as she flicked the ashes out the window. “Relax. I’ll air it out before we get back to the mansion.”

[the-firebird69]

This is quite a deal he put it as a wallpaper and he did it with the hulk they turned into like a human color a little and smell like bronze but okay you couldn't change it enough he couldn't change enough damn it and it's starting to work and him growing started to work and it's a good idea you're standing living is way too low you look like pigs and when I dial location is closed this kind of house and why not die like pigs is what you're doing this kind of house is going to help people build smaller ones like the one that is for Disneyland it's a very famous one even with men because he made the car and the car inspired a lot of different vehicles to be made. And it's true a woman inspired it and she had go-kart racing years before they turned into a small Indy car racing and started a whole new circuit and actually BG is in that circuit and so is George Stephanopoulos. And our son says I can't go back at all I can't do it and it'll affect me thinking just had a really big head and a small body and people don't want me to do that so he says it's okay we can get bigger dammit since you might want to if you have a big house like this and the ceilings are about 14 ft high by the way there's just not bad for our son and he probably won't need one bigger but okay cuz that's what all recessed lighting in at one point

Thor Freya

Olympus

Zues Hera