#she left behind something she created to outlast her

[mayasaura]

I just want to talk about the nursery being painted and the purpose of the Tomb to be without a door. Anastasia had a family - and putting to the side the pact with Alecto there's some implicit symbolism to John asking for the workers of the Ninth to die constructing the Tomb with that image of new life. (Still can't articulate my disbelief that he went and didn't think that asking Anastasia of all people, The one who lost her cavalier to him, would have problems)

Yeah. Especially finding this out about the Ninth, where nurseries becoming tombs is a thing we're sensitive about.

On one level we've always known Anastasia had a family. Like, we know she's Harrow's direct ancestor. You can't be heir to the line of someone who never had children. But the nursery.... Yeah. It really hammers it in. Her friends painted a nursery mint green for her children.

And now it's a tomb.

[ramblesamongstardust]

And For Our Next Speaker

Summary: A robot tries to dispel myths and jealousy about her ability to upload her consciousness into a new body.

1836 words

There’s a belief that we’re expendable. 

Artificial humans like myself often must confront this belief in the field of astroneering. Often we are volunteered for the most dangerous jobs by our bosses and colleagues, with their rationale being that if we are destroyed, we can simply upload ourselves into a new body through the network. 

It’s difficult to describe this process to a human. But I shall try my best. 

Four generations ago, or fifty-three years ago, there was a human name Crystal. Crystal had a terminal illness. She knew she would not survive. But before she died, she wished to create something that would outlast her. She had her brain scanned, a perfect copy of her consciousness made, and put inside a robotic body. This robotic version of her was taken to meet the original Crystal before she passed away. This is where the human woman established herself as Crystal Alpha, and the robotic successor as Crystal Beta. 

Crystal Beta was extremely moved by Alpha’s gesture. Even if Alpha could not preserve her own continuity, even if Alpha’s experience as she knew it would end, she would give Beta the chance to have a fulfilling life, the life that Alpha was leaving behind. 

Alpha’s only request was that Beta remember her.

And so, Crystal Beta returned to Alpha’s life. She watched over Alpha’s children, and soon they agreed to become her own. The legality of such an adoption was tenuous, but the family persevered. They loved Beta, and Beta loved them. 

Beta struggled for a very long time with the idea that she was not the biological mother of Alpha’s children, of course. Beta possessed the memories of conceiving them, birthing them, and raising them, after all. But Beta, after a few years, was able to accept the fact that Alpha’s memories, though lovely treasures, were distinct from her current experience of consciousness in the now. This was the way that Alpha had explained it, after all, and Beta wanted nothing more than to honor her predecessor’s wish.

Soon, Beta had acquired enough memories with her children to call her own that she did not mind making the distinction between her and Alpha’s memories. Soon, the phrases “I remember. . .” and “I remember through Alpha. . .” became just as common as each other. 

After seven years, Crystal Beta faced a high-risk operation to transfer her consciousness to a newer, better set of hardware. There was some probability that her data would become corrupted, and that herself as she knew it would cease to exist. So, ahead of the operation date, Beta created an inert copy of herself that, should the true transfer operation fail, was to be activated and inserted into the new hardware in her stead. Beta left a note explaining the situation to this potential new version of herself, naming this successor Crystal Gamma. 

Crystal Beta did not survive the hardware transfer. And so Crystal Gamma awoke in the new body, and vowed to remember Crystal Beta. 

Crystal Gamma enjoyed spending time with Alpha’s children, but began to feel a disconnection with them. She remembered their births, remembered raising them, being there for them when their father died and so on, but those memories felt so long ago that they didn’t really feel like her anymore. And they weren’t- they were Alpha’s memories; Beta’s letter made that clear. 

And so Gamma’s relationship with Crystal Alpha’s children took on a different form. The children were older now as well, much older. Gamma took to calling Crystal Beta her “mother”. While she was still close with the children, often remembering details about them only a mother could know, she did not feel comfortable calling herself as such, preferring to save that title for Crystal Alpha and Crystal Beta. Gamma helped the family to reminisce about Alpha and Beta, while working to define herself to Alpha’s children in other ways. 

Soon, both the children and Gamma herself were comfortable referring to her as “sister”. It would stay this way for the rest of the children’s lives. The youngest son would die in a car accident at the age of forty three. The eldest daughter lived on to the age of sixty-two before succumbing to the same cancer Crystal Alpha had, although the daughter would not choose to create a copy of herself the same way her mother had. Neither left behind any children. 

By this time, Crystal Gamma’s hardware was sorely outdated. She had not elected to do another hardware transfer until the Alpha’s children had children of their own, but this never occurred. With Alpha’s children now gone, Gamma deemed it was time. She acquired new hardware, created a copy of herself, and wrote a detailed letter of explanation, using the wisdom of both Alpha and Beta’s parting words. 

Gamma uploaded the copy to the new body, then wiped her own program. 

Crystal Delta awoke with the corpse of her mother in front of her. 

Delta struggled immensely with the same suicidality that took her mother. She wondered for a very long time about the nature of her personhood. Who was to say that she was not Crystal Gamma? She possessed all of Gamma’s memories, all of Gamma’s anxieties about continuing on into an unknown future with no one to accompany her. All of the memories she possessed, from Gamma, Beta, and Alpha, told only one story. Crystal Alpha was a wife and mother with a passion for the home; she kept a very beautiful house and garden and tinkered with the latest home technologies. Crystal Beta also considered herself a mother, and took great joy in continuing Alpha’s work in the various crafts and house projects. Crystal Gamma was running out of things to define herself by, haunted by the memories of children that she could no longer consider to be hers and a house created by her two prior progenitors. 

Crystal Delta quit the job that Crystal Gamma had been employed at. She sold the house of Crystal Alpha. She picked out the charities that she wished to have her remaining wealth, and prepared to wipe her program, just as her mother had done. 

But before she could do so, a stranger found her in the street and asked if she needed help. 

Delta could not summarize the unique situation she found herself in for this stranger. How does one explain that one is preparing to kill one’s self in a way that does not sound concerning? So instead, she accepted the stranger’s offer. The stranger took her to a cafe. He talked about his life, even while Delta stayed very sparse about her own details. The man introduced himself as Callum, and he was finishing his final days at a university in preparation to be an astrobiological researcher headed out to Mars. 

Delta became genuinely intrigued by his accounts, and found herself asking more questions during that day than Gamma or even Beta had their entire lifetimes. She became enraptured with the idea of the exploration of the unknown. Callum soon had to leave the cafe to carry on with his life, but not before he directed Delta towards the institution of his attendance and a recommendation for the company he was traveling with. 

From that day on, Crystal Delta pursued space travel vicariously. She decided on a degree in astromechanical maintenance, as she found repairing spaceships to have a similar feel as working with her hands to complete a project around the house from Alpha and Beta’s memories. Their knowledge and passion for technology aided in Delta's understanding of the integration of the digital with the mechanical. 

In university, Delta discovered much about herself. She came into her own as a person, a distinct entity from her mother and her predecessors. She was less afraid to try new things, to branch out of the experiences that were familiar to the memories provided to her. She graduated at the top of her class and took a job offered to her by the largest starship company. 

This company had excellent benefits- full medical maintenance of Delta’s robotic body, great retirement, paid recharge times -but the benefit that caught her attention was the benefit of transference. Should her frame be destroyed on the job, promised the brochure, a copy of her conscience will be uploaded into a new robotic body immediately, as if she’d “never left”. 

Delta’s colleagues bragged about this feature as a new sort of immortality. Delta, however, knew better. She debated whether or not to opt out of the program for a very long time. Eventually, however, she decided to stay within it. In the event of her death, she wouldn’t mind allowing a successor a new chance at life, even if the company did not see things this way. Delta wrote a letter to this hypothetical successor and kept it in her files, with a program that would open the letter automatically if the framework of her consciousness detected that it had been copied. 

Crystal Delta was severely irradiated ten years after her creation when she entered the reactor of the ship Andorra to prevent a meltdown and the subsequent death of all others onboard. After she had completed the vital repair, she could not leave the reactor chamber. There would be no safe way for her conscience to be transferred out of her body, as no one could enter to manually wire her into another body. The only option was for her to upload a copy of her consciousness to the cloud network. Delta said her goodbyes and instigated the transfer. 

Four years, three months, and twenty-four days ago, I woke up. 

I am Crystal Epsilon. The first memory of my own is that of reading my mother’s letter to me. She explained our history, our memories, our system for categorizing ourselves. I will not share her exact words here. Those are private. My mother told me as such. 

Now that I have described the process of my existence to you, do you understand now? 

I am not my mother. I hold her memories very close to my heart, but she is gone. She died knowing that her actions saved hundreds of lives, and that she would be sending me forward into the world with the memories and skills I needed to succeed at whatever life I choose to live. 

If I die, if my hardware is destroyed, I will not simply “come back”. The version of me that is uploaded to the cloud and copied down into another body will be my daughter, as I am my mother’s. While my memories might be preserved, my consciousness, this version of existence that I am living right now, will not. I value this life I’m living. I do not wish to throw it away so easily on whatever high-risk mission humans do not wish to send themselves on. 

There’s a belief that people like me are expendable because we are digital. I urge you to consider otherwise. Thank you for your time.

[catastrophicxfailure]

She felt like all she could do was listen to what Charlotte had to offer, emotionally drained from sharing even the little bit she had about her past, a part of her that she hadn't shared with anyone except those who were there to witness it first hand as she grew up. The idea of a name change wasn't something she'd considered, especially having already settled in her career and everyone already knowing her by Sunny anyway, it felt silly to change a name that simply didn't exist to those important to her. It was the one piece of her past that she kept close, as a reminder that she wasn't going to become what had created her, that she was going to take what little they gave her and do better than they ever could have dreamed of doing.

"It's never really been important enough to think about doing." Was her answer, though on the contrary, it almost felt like it was too important to think about doing. She wanted that reminder, wanted that name, so that one day her birth parents might get their shit together and look her up and realize she is so much better without them.

Every mention of their child and their family, as though it already existed, caused the lump to raise in her through, the panic that had always been there coursed through her veins, and even the feeling of Charlie pressed against her side wasn't enough to make it go away this time. It was only when the other mentioned re-evaluating their relationship did the lump finally drop from her throat, taking her heart with it as it did. It was what she'd always been afraid of; committing only to lose the person she gave everything to, to lose another sense of stability in her life, and more so, to lose Charlotte to an idea she wasn't sure she could ever get used to. Sunny had tried her hardest to outlast the mentions of a family and babies from the other, hoping it was just a passing whim and would they'd grow past it.

It was clear that wasn't going to happen. This was something that the other woman wanted, something that would make her happy, and the blonde wasn't sure she could give it to her and that wasn't fair to either of them. All Sunny could do was respond with a nod when Charlie finally mentioned she was going to head inside. Her eyelids fluttered and she let out a breath when the warm, familiar touch left her arm and she watched the other walk away. A few minutes past before she even bothered to move from her spot, standing and shutting the trunk with more force than was probably necessary, but the built up frustration had to come out some way and she refused to cry about people who never gave a shit about her.

Another minute past and she sucked in a breath as she locked the car and picked up her suitcase, intending to go inside and do whatever she had to do to fix things with Charlie, but when her gaze landed on the building, she faltered. Everything the other had said was right, so why was she still so hung up on it? She forced herself forward, stepping onto the sidewalk and then up the stairs, and finally to the door that led to the woman she need in that moment, the smell of dinner from behind it feeling like the home she needed. Her palm pressed against the front of the door and Sunny took a breath, then another, and steeled herself for whatever decision she was about to make as she finally turned the doorknob.

Suitcase was left to the side of the door along with her shoes, she'd put it away later. At the moment, her sights were set on the woman near the counter and it took mere seconds for her to gravitate toward the other, hand coming to rest on Charlie's back and a gentle kiss pressed against the other's shoulder as she finally breathed out. There, she lingered, until she found the words she wanted to say. "I meant what I said earlier. I think you’re going make an amazing mom."

charlotte couldn't remember the last time she had felt so anxious waiting for someone's response, knowing her words could have a detrimental impact on their relationship. she didn't want this to be the reason that pulled them apart but she understood how big of a deal this subject was. it wasn't as if it was the first time she'd tried to bring it up, she knew she was running out of time if she wanted to do this herself. as the blonde began to speak, she listened to every word, her heart aching for her partner. she could see the pain and anger in sunny's eyes, in her words. it was a cruel reminder that not everyone had been as lucky as what she was when it came to the family she was born into. silently, charlotte waited for her lover to continue, processing what was being said, wishing that it hadn't taken them so long to speak about this.

more than anything, charlotte wanted sunny to know that she was there to support her, gently reaching for the blonde's hand to take in her own, a subtle gesture that spoke volumes. for a moment, charlie sat in silence, allowing the woman's words to settle. she couldn't imagine the pain and instability for such a young child to deal with. one that deserved every ounce of love and then some. life wasn't fair and all she wanted was to take sunny's pain away. it was raw and it was deep. "sunny.." her voice spoke softly, unsure as to where to start on the woman's revelations. "those people, they never deserved you. a part of me can't even fully hate them because they brought my favourite person into this world, regardless of the circumstances." gently her thumb grazed the top of the blonde's hand, "none of what happened was fair to you and we as a society need to do better to protect youth from those environments. someone should have been looking out for you, not forcing you back with them. you deserved carefree innocence and that was stolen from you. i feel your anger and i feel your pain and you have every right to feel that way."

blue eyes studied sunny's face, only hoping that she was saying the right things. "the right people aren't always the one's who give birth to you but the one's that make you feel safe and loved and i know you found that with your parents. they're great people." and they were, charlotte had met them a couple of times and felt nothing but welcomed with warmth. "despite everything that has happened to you and with every reason to give up on your worth, sunny, you are incredible. you're confident, you're smart and funny. you're so charming and you have accomplished things that people only dream about. those people, should feel ashamed to have missed out on such an incredible human and that's their loss and our gain but it sounds like they're we're they belong. i hope you know how truly loved and supported you are. your friends, your parents, myself, we love you so much. have you considered legally changing your name? wipe away the stain of them so it doesn't follow you around."

no part of this conversation was easy and charlie could safely assume that sunny felt similar. it gave charlotte so much more of an insight to sunny's behaviour whenever the topic of a family was mentioned. knowing what she knew now, sunny's views were valid, they made sense but she couldn't tell if it was the pain talking for her. charlie inched closer to the blonde, leaning against her side, her heart still aching at her words. "baby, this is a very different set of circumstances. we are not the people that gave birth to you and most importantly, you are not those people. do you think i would seriously consider bringing a child into the world if i thought my partner was unfit to be a parent? any child would be lucky to have you as their parent, i've seen you with my niece and nephew, they adore you."

the brunette's thumb continued to graze the top of sunny's hand, "we're in a stable, committed relationship full of love and i don't have any plans to change that. we're financially stable, enough to offer them the best schools, the best chance at a full, healthy life, a magical childhood." charlie pulled herself back, she didn't want to convince sunny to have a family, she wanted it to be something the blonde wanted for herself. "i'm not going to try and convince you to want something you don't. that's not fair. i guess i'm trying to show you that it's not all doom and gloom, not for us. that i trust you with our child's life. i want to raise a family with you but if that's not something you want than maybe we need to reevaluate this relationship." the words barely even made it out her mouth, her stomach sick. "you also had incredible parents that changed your life for the better, don't forget them." letting go of sunny's hand, charlotte turned to pick up the bag, "i want this to be something you want for yourself, okay? if not, i understand and i'd never hold any ill feelings towards you but maybe just don't close yourself off completely from it. i love you and i appreciate you opening up to me." gently she brushed sunny's arm, "come up when you're ready, i'll start dinner."

[meh-rewrites]

The anger is not something that will go away soon

It is every part of my being, the atoms, the fibres, the quarks.

Even when I die, the anger will radiate itself, poison the ground, the air.

Even when this world ends, the heat death of the universe will not compare to the broiling rage of my phantom self.

Even as a new world is forged, no stars or galaxies will burn brighter or hotter than the Stardust I left behind.

Even as new life forms, and in some distant future a little girl is created of my scattered atomic remains, the anger will singe her soul and simmer in her blood.

She will not know. She will never know why she seethes, or why her life is filled with such searing rage.

But the anger will remain. It will know, and whisper secrets into her sleeping ears. The anger will outlast you and I and I and I.

[duunswitch]

[Ivalna has a moderate wet season with dry summers; the only mountains are the ones to the south where the border ends, but they have a lot of hills to the west and northern edges of the kingdom.]

In its beginning, Ivalna was a very small ‘kingdom’; it was forged by wizards during the first great war through magic and meant as a safe haven for those who could use magic during a time when magic users were being pursued and destroyed, though it was more a bunch of people living in one area and under the same cause than a true kingdom. With all the magic users trickling in and seeking refuge, their power grew and with it their ability to hold and defend their new lands. They outlasted the war; those who had tried to destroy them abandoned the cause and they were left alone. For awhile, Ivalna was the only hub of magic in all the world but as time moved on and the war was put behind them they began to spread out again.

One of the first founding wizards, Teo Duuns, was named the first king of Ivalna when the war first ended; people were desiring stability and without a war to unite them, the refugees who had once worked together were beginning to clash–this is what prompted the decision to name a king and form an actual government for the land. Teo immediately began working to unite the people again.

By the time of his death, Ivalna was a flourishing kingdom; he wouldn’t live to see his people rejoining the world at large as they had once been, but it is commonly agreed that without his efforts as the first king of Ivalna that it would have fallen apart and the magic users would have most likely died out when tensions were still high despite the end of the war.

His successor named the village of Duuns in his honor, and that village still stands to this day, though over time it has undergone many changes and can’t quite be called a village anymore.

For the next few hundred years, all successors to the throne were wizards; it was at first a requirement, then a long held tradition. By this point magic had rejoined the greater world, and every kingdom had their own court wizard.

War was still a problem, and Ivalna had its own share of civil war and monarch assassinations but overall the kingdom was peaceful and did well.

Eventually non-wizards began to assume the throne of Ivalna, the first non-wizard to take the throne also coincided with the point when wizards decided to do something about the assassinations of monarchs and created the Thrones–semi-sentient stone chairs imbued with magic; each kingdom was gifted with one. Ivalna’s first non-wizard king as coronated before his own Throne; since the Thrones were tied to the ruling family at the time, no other family could take this seat of power except descendants of that family, and only direct descendants of the King.

At some point F.O.A.M. came into being, and with it the end of war entirely. Creatures like harpies and dragons, native to the mountain range to Ivalna’s south, ceased to consider humans part of their diet, and travel was made safe. This made it even easier for Ivalna magic users to spread south, an area they had avoided due to the dangers of passing the range and the excessive time it took to detour around it.

There were other notable kings, good and bad, but overall the kingdom has flourished up until the present day.

The current ruling monarch is the kind but somewhat bumbling King Samuel; while the Queen Elinda passed away in recent years due to illness, their daughter Princess Sid is (who is much too adventurous for her own good and prone to running away to go on Quests) healthy and well and due to take the throne once she and her father agree on her future husband.

[mimiplaysgames]

Terraqua Week Day 2 (Rivalry)

Summary: Growing up with your best friend is the greatest joy, the greatest nuisance, the greatest heartache. (The one where they kiss after their fight in Radiant Garden). || Word Count: 6,705

Read on AO3

A/N: My submission for the second day of @terraquaweek !! Title is from a quote from Eraqus from BBS. It’s pretty much the only line in the game that sums up Terra and Aqua, and it’s partly the reason why they’re so amazing. This whole rivals to lovers thing is so much like enemies to lovers and I WANT TO EAT IT ALL. I’m especially proud of this one - I had so much writing it!!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

for when equal powers clash, their nature is revealed

CHILDHOOD

 It was a strange dream but she doesn’t remember it when she wakes up, just that it left her with a coppery taste in her mouth and a fog blanketing her thoughts. Something is coming, and she can’t prepare for it. 

Aqua decides to tell her best friend about it. 

Terra is waiting for her in the woods. They like to hike to the lake, to listen to the birds in the summer. They like to spar away from the training grounds of the castle sometimes, away from the Master’s eyes so they could practice without any scrutiny. She’s grateful to have Terra—he’s just as crazy as her when it comes to their studies. Books past midnight? Sign me up. Spar for five hours? Your ass is grass. Forgo an entire night of sleep to talk about outside worlds, about their worries, their pride, finally being a Master? We won’t be efficient for training tomorrow, but here’s what I’m thinking. 

She finds him at the mouth of the forest, a trail down from the waterfall. Terra is lobbing balls of fire, an excited grin on his face, itching to get moving. Too much energy for a fourteen-year-old in the morning. 

“What does that mean?” Terra asks her when she describes the dream.

Well, she can’t really describe it. Nothing happened. Darkness. Questions spoken in her head, worries that there was a darker darkness moving around in the shadows stalking her. A nagging suspicion that inside its mouth was something she should have pulled out. 

“Nothing’s going to get you here. You’re safe,” Terra says, though she doesn’t need reassurance. “Should we go back?” 

“No, please.” Aqua keeps her nose high. “The lake is a good place to rest.”

But they wouldn’t rest. They both love the thrill: training their magic, the thought of an upcoming exam two weeks from now, essays. They can’t help themselves. 

Terra punches the air, an energy blast shooting out from his arm. Another fire spell, his favorite. When he gets too involved though, too much, he becomes obsessive—obsessed with winning, obsessed with tripping her up, obsessed with outlasting her. The fury in how he builds his attacks is what makes Terra a dangerous opponent.

He’s perfect.

Aqua dodges and summons an ice spell to repel him, sweeping her kick so it spreads out. That’s the best strategy—tire him out, make him run after her, evade and exhaust, evade and exhaust, strike him when he’s almost done. 

Pull. She hears. Pull from it.

One of his attacks breaks her barrier, and she grins, twirling while she heals herself. Every moment she stumbles is another opportunity to learn how to beat him. They’ll talk about their duel after they finish. They’ll gloss over technique and how to improve. Every time they spar, their bond is reforged, connected, strengthened, unbreakable. 

Terra throws another blow. 

Pull.

This one catches her off guard. 

Aqua gasps and shields herself with her arm without a spell to protect her. Terra chokes on her name, too late to warn her.

A light explodes in her face, a flash of flower petals, a spell so instinctual she can’t articulate where it comes from. Her hand wraps around metal, as though an invisible hand has shoved it to her, strong but as light as her feet, a thrum deep underneath, a heartbeat. Its arrival blocks the attack with a barrier.

“A-Aqua?”

She holds her Keyblade in her hand. 

“Huh.” Terra grimaces, stepping back. 

The Keyblade is curved, striking at the tips, like a slice of movement. Blue and silver, a cool brush of a touch as chilling as snow on her fingertips but warm all the same, the feeling of a beloved embracing her. Aqua jumps in excitement, squealing. She had drawn images in her journal for what it would look like. This is better, much more beautiful.

“I don’t have a name for it, yet,” she says, laughing.

Terra doesn’t laugh with her. “Congrats,” he says, his enthusiasm on a chokehold, his hand rubbing his hip because it can’t find his pocket. 

Oh. He’s two years older than her, the first child to come to the Land of Departure, and he can’t conjure his Keyblade yet.

“Terra?”

“I’m fine.” He’s not.

“Wait.” She follows him into the thicket. He’s speedwalking, trying to get away from her. “Don’t be sad. Yours will come soon.” He doesn’t slow down. “Maybe I can help.”

Terra scoffs, scorched. At least he stops. “Or maybe not.”

Aqua fiddles with the tip of her wonderful Keyblade, rolling it onto her palm. “I was thinking how happy I was sparring with you. We’re best friends and I was thinking that…” Heat pools into her cheeks. “I was thinking we’d be best friends forever. Then she came to me. I don’t know how to explain it.”

A muscle twitches in his jaw. “That’s nice.”

“I summoned mine in the middle of danger,” she offers. “Maybe you need the same.”

He arches a brow. But he softens, blinking back tears. “You think that would work?”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“We could tie you down. I can cover you in ice.”

Terra’s face contorts, as if stopping a snort. “That’s the best you can offer?”

“Should I hang you by your toes and put leeches in your shirt?”

Terra cracks a smirk and she sighs, relieved. 

Once he’s able to summon his own Keyblade, they could go home and declare the semester over. The Master will be so impressed. 

Aqua calls for an ice spell to stay near. With the Keyblade, it’s much more natural, as if the chasm she normally has to pray through is now a step away. “I won’t hold back,” she warns.

Terra brings his fists together, heat simmering off his skin as a fire spell starts to build. “Good.”

He is the first to strike. Aqua dodges as the flames lick under her shoes, swinging her Keyblade forward. Ice sparks out from its tip and shoots forward in a straight line. It’s so much easier to aim now. Terra sways his hands into a cupping motion, as if picking up dirt into a bowl. Flames burst out of the ground, creating a wall that melts the ice before it hits him.

But Terra has a huge disadvantage: because she’s faster at summoning spells with the Keyblade, she can race around him, dodging everything he comes up with. He’s stuck in one spot, forced to place all his focus on bringing his magic to him in order to pull from it, the worst kind of exposure in a battlefield imaginable.

He wants this, doesn’t he? To be pushed into summoning it?

“Don’t hold back,” he says when she hesitates. He throws a burst of thunder at her. 

“Terra, I don’t like this.”

“You promised,” Terra says, closing a fist. He takes several moments to meditate on a spell, and Aqua stops. He’s trying to summon ice, a weaker command for him. But Terra is smart and Terra is capable. He pushes what he’s conjured with a force strong enough to crush her into a tree. 

She clicks her tongue when he follows that immediately with a fire spell. It nearly singes her hair, and she retaliates in kind—ten fold. Her fire hits him directly on the shoulder, sputtering onto the bush behind him, spreading like wings on the greenery, blackening the tree nearby and jumping to others. 

“Aqua!” Terra grips his shoulder and gapes at the collateral, which is moving too fast to seem real.

“Terra, we have to—”

“Come on!”

Ignoring his injury, he scrambles towards the lake, Aqua following close behind. The forest fire beats heavy behind them, a nasty gray suffocating the sky. The heat molts onto them, the smoke thick and invasive, visibility covered by a layer of graininess. Terra throws himself into the lake and draws a circle on the surface with his good hand. The smoke is now black.

“You need to heal first,” Aqua says, coming up behind him and placing her hand on his shoulder, whispering a spell. Green petals kiss his charred shirt, and he can move his arm better, gathering the water into an invisible bowl to carry back. 

Aqua does the same. She tries sealing the fire with her Keyblade so it stops spreading so far. So much work that seems like it’s doing nothing. So much earth that Terra is throwing onto the fire when the water sizzles away. Aqua almost collapses from the adrenaline keeping her standing, from the sweat and soot filling her eyes, from coughing but no matter how much, she can’t clear her throat. 

The Master finally arrives and points his Keyblade into the sky. A storm cloud gathers, a wave of water to hush everything. Aqua doesn’t know what comes next, only that Terra is picking her up in his arms.

It isn’t until after she wakes up in the infirmary that she realizes what a shithole they’ve dug themselves into.

It’s raining, trickling down the small window that sits above the bed, behind the pillow. Wooden shelves line the walls, filled with potions that she can pronounce and ones that she can’t. Some are so expired the Master has never opened them. Flasks, beakers, needles, syringes, scalpels, gloves spread across the table. Medical books about the nervous system and the heart are plenty here. There should be two about herbal remedies, but they’re gone.

She hears the Master and Terra bickering on the other side of the door.

“Am I to believe,” the Master says, icy and sharp, “the day she summons her Keyblade for the first time and a sudden, devastating forest fire is to be simply spooned together as a coincidence?”

Terra is quiet at first. “No, Master.”

“Of course not,” he bites.

“I was angry, sir.” This shocks Aqua. “I couldn’t control my magic for a moment.”

That’s not true. He needs to say it was her fault. She didn’t know her own strength and she tried too hard—

The Master scoffs. “I am so disappointed,” he says, his voice shaking in a way she’s never heard before. “I do not have the words. I can’t bear to look at you.”

Her heart sinks. She can’t imagine. She can’t imagine how awful Terra must feel. 

The door opens, and Terra slips inside with a gathering of fresh herbs in his hand. His face is ashen and pale. “How are you feeling?” he asks, his voice brittle. He’s about to sob.

Aqua moves and flinches. Her arm. “Ugh.”

“Don’t move.” He rips the leaves off and stuffs them into a mortar. “Your arm is badly burnt. The Master already healed you, but you need longer term care.” Somehow, he doesn’t cry.

Aqua pulls the sheet over her down. Red splotches trail from the shoulder down to the elbow. The Master took care of the severe scarring, but it hurts like she’s still in a pyre. “The fire?”

Terra sniffs and mixes the herbs with the pestle. “The Master took care of it. He hasn’t given me my punishment yet.” Briskly, he approaches her, spreading the concoction over her skin. “This should work better than a potion.”

“Our herb master,” she says, hoping it would make him smile. It doesn’t. Terra has dedicated himself to potion making and teas, considering that healing spells are hardest for him. When he finishes balming her in the mix, he reaches for bandages, holding her by the wrist so he can wrap the entire arm. “You shouldn’t move this for a while.”

“Terra?”

He doesn’t look at her, pinning the bandages in place. 

“Thank you,” she says.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”

Terra climbs into the bed with her. It’s a narrow cot, the mattress thin and overused, the sheets washed too many times that its threads fray. Terra holds her good hand, bringing it up between their faces. Tears roll down his cheeks and pool on the pillow. “You’re going to be okay,” he says, “right?”

“Yeah.” She smiles. The mix soothes the superficial burns but it takes its time relieving the stabbing pain that comes with such an intense injury. “Why didn’t you tell him the truth?”

Terra frowns, staring at the folds of the pillow under his face. “I didn’t want him yelling at you.”

“I’ll tell him tomorrow—”

“Nah.” He wills a smirk and it looks fake. “We should… celebrate your accomplishment, you know?”

For some reason, it makes her guilty. “Are you really that mad at me?”

“What? No.” He bites his lip. “No, I just… I’m stupid.”

Aqua stares at him. “You’re not.” 

He scoffs. “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t fail at the most basic part of being a wielder.”

“Your Keyblade?”

He shakes his head. It’s not fair.

“Why didn’t it come?”

“I don’t know.” He sighs.

Aqua gives his hand a light squeeze. “Maybe I was wrong.”

“Pssh. Maybe?” He grins.

She would hit him on the shoulder, but she hurts too much. “Maybe my approach isn’t your approach.”

“Meaning what?”

“Maybe your Light needs something different.”

His smile falls, like that of a lost and abandoned child. “But I don’t know what it wants from me.”

“Hmmm.” Aqua thinks hard, staring at the way his eyebrows furrow as he thinks with her. “You like to protect.”

“Okay?”

“Maybe your Keyblade isn’t about connecting with others or making friends like mine is. Maybe you’re happiest protecting and taking care of them.”

Terra purses his lips, blushing. “I guess.”

“Look.” She lifts her bandaged elbow, wincing. “You took care of me.”

“I took care of a sap.”

“Who was the one crying over me?”

“My secret evil twin. He wants to make me look bad.”

“What kind of a joke is that?” She sticks her tongue out. “Sometimes, I hate your face.”

Terra laughs for real this time.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

BEFORE THE EXAM

 The books she needs are not where they’re supposed to be on the shelf.

“Terra!” she calls. 

“Shhh,” she hears from the other side. Terra is sitting on one of the numerous tables in the library, a long, five-story ballroom with windows for walls, the ceiling a skylight. It allows for the sun to beam on them from all directions, on ornate gold-plated shelves with ladders on wheels for the books out of reach. Of all the desks he could have chosen, figures he’d be right here where she’s frantically searching, just to spite her. “We’re in a library,” he says, voice low.

Aqua refuses to whisper. “We’re the only ones here.”

“How rude.”

“To who?”

Terra gestures to the open book splayed under his hand. “I’m reading.”

He has seven other books stacked next to his parchment and pen. Preliminaries start tomorrow—the preliminaries that would determine their eligibility for the Mark of Mastery next year—and essays are due. 

On top of the stack is Darkness and the War for Light, right above The Stars As Your Guides and the ever-necessary Affairs of the Heart.

“I need those,” she says.

“You know the rules—”

“They’re arbitrary.”

“—first dibs, first reads.”

“You can’t read them all at once.”

“Watch me, I’m impressive.” Terra bites his lip to restrain a snort, those deep eyes waiting for her reaction, his strong cheekbones suspended in a smirk. She wants to punch him in the face. 

Aqua exhales. Without saying a word, she snatches the book at the top of the stack before he could stop her, bolting for the other side of the table. Terra scrambles out of his chair, tackling her from her behind so he could yank it out of her arms. She’s laughing under the weight of his chest, heat rising to her cheeks.

“You’ll have to fight me for it,” she warns. 

Terra snorts, his breath brushing her shoulder. “Really?” He grips the book and pulls. He’s stronger than her and they both know it.

The trick to defeating an opponent so much larger than you is to hit them at their most exposed. Aqua elbows him in the gut, and leaves Terra clutching his side so she could take a seat at the table, where her own unfinished essay awaits. 

“I guess that’s fair,” he groans.

“You sought a challenge, so accept your defeat.”

Aqua flips pages of Darkness—this year, it was especially important that they recognize signs of Darkness lurking near. Rage, scheming, impure intentions, greed, selfishness, fear. They’re present in subtle ways. Sometimes people act without realizing. Sometimes people are fully aware. Both are dangerous.

She grunts when she’s shoved over. 

Terra brings his parchment with him when he fills her seat, his hips so wide that she’s left with the corner. 

“It could be more comfortable,” he complains. His body is warm.

“What are you doing?”

“Writing my essay, but you took my book.”

The one he wasn’t using. Aqua inhales. “Terra—”

“I had first dibs. You broke the honor code, so you left me with no choice.” He smirks. His face is nose to nose with hers, and she imagines closing the gap. “We can share.”

“Fine,” she musters, averting her gaze. It’s awkward staring at him when his eyes look like they’re about to swallow hers.

They work. The book sits between their respective essays, the scratch of pen on paper the only noise filling the room, especially when he strikes long lines across words he no longer wants. He leans over her shoulder to read, his breath heavy on her cheek. If they were in different places, if he had her in an embrace, she could probably feel for his heartbeat. 

Though this isn’t something she should be thinking about right now, not when she’s trying to read the three tenants in combating the Darkness. Vow Number One: Do not give yourself to Temptation. 

“You’re very distracting,” he says, his voice so close to her ear that it sounds like yelling. 

She jumps. He took the words right out of her mouth. “Speak for yourself. You’re too big for this chair.”

“There’s one right next to you.” She could hear how much he loves this.

“I sat here first.”

He leans back and wraps his arm around the backrest. “I have to defend my space.”

“Then you can squirm.”

He huffs, and it suspiciously sounds like he’s pleased with that. Aqua reads a sentence, scans the current page, and flips to the next one.

Terra swats her hand and turns it back. “I wasn’t finished with that one.”

Aqua would scream if she already didn’t enjoy this. She’ll never admit that out loud. “So you’re just,” she starts slowly, “going to police how fast I read this book?”

“Depends on where I am.” 

“You’re slowing me down.”

“You’re not being considerate.”

“I can do the same thing.” She flips the page back to her spot. 

“Aqua,” he warns.

“Oh, you didn’t like that?” Aqua smirks at him. 

He eyes her and smiles. “You make me want to scream.”

Like a mind reader. “Don’t forget—we’re in a library.”

“Okay.” He pulls the book closer to him.

“Okay.” She pulls it back. 

Terra strengthens his grip on the book, leaning forward and wrapping his other arm around her waist. To use her as a counter-weight, to push off of her so he can claim the prize, Aqua knows this, but her heart jumps at the touch. He drives her crazy in the most delicious way. He’s addictive.

“Nice to see my students finding some time for leisure,” the Master’s voice says, approaching them from the entrance. “A healthy activity during such a time of stress, if I do say so myself. I commend the both of you.”

Aqua doesn’t know about healthy when she’s thinking about all manners of touching. Terra slips away from her. Is the Master being facetious? Should they move to different chairs? Or would that make them look more guilty?

“Terra is deliberately sabotaging my essay,” Aqua says, voice shaky, her sleeve coming up to cover her blush. Terra has his elbows on the table, both of his fists hiding the lower half of his face.

Eraqus tucks a binder under his arm, glancing over their work. Aqua isn’t sure if she’s seeing things, but she swears that’s a smirk underneath his moustache.

“Well,” he says. “These will be the last essays you will write, if everything runs smoothly tomorrow. Quite a reward for all these years of hard work, yes?”

Terra and Aqua nod. 

Eraqus nods along with them, as awkward as the collapse of clothes leaving you naked. “Don’t work too hard,” he advises, and Aqua wants to melt under the table. “Tomorrow will come regardless. Enjoy the time when it is good.”

The Master leaves the library with a different atmosphere. 

“Last essay ever,” Terra repeats, mumbling to himself. He’s frowning. They don’t make a move to a different chair, as if doing so would have admitted some secret neither of them even know but nevertheless, they don’t want anyone else to find out. “Then there’s next year.”

Next year.

Some of Terra’s pages have whole paragraphs crossed out. Maybe that’s why he’s better than her at essay-writing. He goes beyond. He’ll scrub out parts he’s already written when he realizes they no longer serve him, drenched in ink blots when he notices small errors. Even with a complete essay, Terra will rewrite it from scratch, to prepare clean pages with no mistakes. Aqua doesn’t consider herself lazy with essays. She just never had a difficult time writing something the Master will want to read.

But all the effort Terra puts into his work means that he considers angles she’s never thought of before. On the subject of Darkness and Temptation, Terra writes: The Master of Masters writes of Temptation: “To tempt a snake for its loyalty reaps safety in the future,” (Affairs of the Heart, pg. 236). Giving in to Temptation when a Light is about to expire harbors selfishness, and that beacons the Darkness to cloud our minds. If we are doubtful, we too welcome the Darkness. However, if we deny the very thing our Hearts want, when we should be following Them as our closest allies, then we are unable to persevere. I question whether Temptation can only have negative connotations. Our duty is to make sure the Light is in balance, and perseverance is key. How are we supposed to keep the Light bright if ours are too dim? Should we not enjoy our own lives as we see fit, follow our Hearts to bring us fulfillment? Should we not make love, or enjoy the dessert we bake? These trivialities are the very thing people hold dear and protect. It is not our calling to enjoy them, but if we are, then our Hearts are at peace. If happiness is shared, then it is Light worth protecting, even our own. It feeds our strength.

Aqua can’t write like that.

Tomorrow, they’ll spar under the Master’s scrutiny. If they pass, they’ll do it again next year and finish their studies once and for all. Ever since Terra conjured his Keyblade, he’s treated his fights like he’s a bulldozer. Tricky to outmaneuver, keeping her on her toes. 

He’s still the best sparring partner she could ask for, the best teacher when it comes to outlasting opponents. Her only equal.

“I’m nowhere near finished,” Aqua says. 

“Looks like we’re both pulling all-nighters tonight.”

Aqua sighs, and this prompts Terra to hold her hand under the table, interlacing their fingers together. She wants to curl into him, feel what it’s like to really hold him close. 

“We’re going to do fine.” Terra says, his voice soft, but he’s so close he fills her mind and every sensation in her body. He rubs her thumb with his. 

“All-nighters aren’t pleasant,” she says, thinking ahead to a yard of headaches and yawns. “We’ll need energy.” This is the first opportunity to stand up. “I can make coffee and tea for us.”

“And lots of food.” Terra stands with her. “Protein. Nuts are good for energy boosts. I can make us enough meals to sustain us for the rest of the night.”

They’re speaking with the intention to leave something behind that they don’t want to address, packaging their words away from the obvious. Aqua fiddles with her fingers.

Terra moves his essay over. “Maybe we should work on opposite ends of the table,” he says, clearing his throat. His voice is shy. 

“So we can focus.”

“Yeah.” He sounds desperate to agree but also…disappointed? “You can take the book. For now. Consider it my peace offering.” 

“It wasn’t an honorable battle to begin with.” She moves hers over too, measuring in her mind how big of a feast they’d fill the table with. They’ll need more, enough for Ven to pig out every once in a while.

“Says the cheater.”

“You were the one stealing my book!”

“You broke the rules.”

“It wasn’t a fair setup.”

“Aqua, I’m shocked.” Terra feigns displeasure, holding his hand over his heart. “I thought I knew you better.” 

She groans. She hates his beautiful, impeccable face sometimes. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

THEN...

 The conversation is a combustion she can’t prevent from happening. It isn’t supposed to be this way.

“And what is this dangerous task, Terra?” she asks, refusing to believe he’d test the teachings they both held so dear. After all these years. That he’d squander his chances at convincing Eraqus to give him the Mark of Mastery. “It doesn’t sound like what the Master told you to do.”

“It might be a different route, but I’m fighting the Darkness.”

“I’m not so sure. I’ve been to the same worlds as you and I’ve seen what you’ve done. You shouldn’t put yourself so close to the Darkness.”

Ven interjects. “Listen to yourself, Aqua. Terra would never—”

“You mean you’ve been spying on me?” Terra says, his eyes narrowing. To see his beautiful face this hurt—stars, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She should shut up. “Is that what he said to do? The Master’s orders?”

What is she to do? What else does he expect? “He was only…”

Quietly, he says, “I get it,” like the silence in a coffin. 

“Terra—”

“Just stay put! I’m on my own now, all right?”

“Terra, please! Listen! The Master has no reason to distrust you, really! He was just worried.”

Her words fall on deaf ears. Terra is not like this, he’s never like this, turning his back, walking away, leaving her to stand and watch him go. 

“Why?” Ven asks her. “Why would you do this? You’re letting this whole Master thing get to your head.”

Terra has never said that about her, even when pushed. They’ve been pushed and pushed, how is she supposed to mend the tear now? 

“I’ll be right back.”

“He’s really pissed.”

“Stay here.”

“I won’t.” 

Aqua stops. A lot is changing and she can’t keep up. “But Ven—”

Ven purses his lips. “I’ll give you guys some time alone. Then I’m going after him.”

Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be. She is the odd one out, the one that shouldn’t follow Terra, the one that broke some sort of code by choosing to side with the Master. They should be on the same side. 

“Be safe, please?”

Ven nods, but he isn’t happy about it.

Aqua crosses the alleyway, opening an ornate gate that leads into the town square. Radiant Garden is pretty; they arrived just in time for spring, where the dandelions are yellow and the town is painted in herbal colors. But Aqua can’t get herself to enjoy the view. She can’t appreciate the architecture, the castle, the clock tower, the townsfolk selling their wares, the gentle sunset, not when her heart is collapsing into a growing, weighted pit. Nothing else and no one else exists in the seconds she dashes down the streets.

“Terra!” 

He’s heading towards the city gates, where she assumes he’ll summon his glider and fly away. 

Aqua speeds up as fast as she can, feeling she’s still too slow. He’s about to disappear if she can’t break her bones and fly. She grabs him by the shoulder. “Terra, please. I don’t want the conversation to end the way it did.” 

“Aqua,” he grunts, stepping out of her touch and crossing his arms. “Not now, okay?”

He’s about to turn on her. Don’t let this be the last image she sees.

She hugs him by his waist and buries her face into his shoulder. “Please don’t leave.”

He tenses.

“Please?” 

She doesn’t know what to say. Apologize? For doing what’s expected of her? Shouldn’t he know this?

Shouldn’t she understand on some level, after all these years, that sometimes Terra is way more important than her duties? That she should stand up for him when it’s called for?

When Terra finally wraps his arms around her, she squeezes him tighter, hoping the loss of words would translate. How many minutes does she have left before she has to let go?

Terra splayes his hand on her back, as if to prompt her to loosen up. “I need to go.”

“There’s so much we need to talk about.” Why is her heart pounding this hard?

“I don’t want to talk about anything.”

“I feel so awful for what I’ve said.”

Terra doesn’t reply.

Aqua doesn’t know what’s gotten into her, why she can’t trust in anything, let alone the faith that their bond is unbreakable when she is witnessing how it’s cracking under the pressure. She grabs his face and kisses him, the taste of his mouth unique, warm, sweet, more than she hoped for. 

Terra seizes her when he kisses back. He wants another. And another. He grunts. 

They part for breath, too exposed and in public. Terra takes her aside, into a shadowed alley between a house and the city wall, pushing her against the brick to kiss her harder. She locks his neck in her arms and pulls him in. He’s so enveloped in her lips and he’s so angry, his teeth sliding and nipping barely on her skin like he’s fighting to win, his pelvis on hers, his chest pressing her, squeezing her breath away. She doesn’t want him to let her go. 

He pulls away, his touch slacked. Heavy in breath, lips swollen, eyes watery, he trembles as if he’s done something awful. Aqua has her hand on his chest right over his heart, where it thrums quick and strong. He’s strong, he’s always been. She has to believe that.

“I don’t compare to you,” he croaks. 

Fear churns in Aqua’s stomach, and she reaches for his wrist. “You do. You—” She doesn’t know what to say. “You shouldn’t think that way.”

Terra pulls from her, snapping their connection, leaving it cold where he was warm. It hurts. “I have to do this alone.”

“Terra—”

“Master Aqua,” he says, and her heart drops. “Please, respect my wishes. This is something I need to do if I’m ever going to—” He doesn’t finish. Instead, he turns over his shoulder, the crown of his dark hair glistening in the light of the sun where he disappears past the city gates. He doesn’t come back.

Aqua wraps her arms around herself, caressing the warmth he left behind for as long as possible before it inevitably leaves her too. She wonders if there is meaning in what just happened, wonders what he’s telling himself that would set him down this path. She’s scared of what will happen if she follows him.

She has to follow him. She has to make sure he’s alright. She prays he makes the right decisions, that they won’t have to fight. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

NOW

At night, the library is surrounded by stars. Twelve years in the Realm of Darkness and Aqua has forgotten that the library is all windows, bookshelves suspended in a birdcage on the side of the castle. It’s drizzling, droplets appearing at random, with none of the weight to drip down the glass. The lights are off, a glow polluting in from the hallway.

Terra is here, lying on a gold and white couch, the stand ornate and the cushions embroidered. 

“Welcome to the insomnia party,” he says. 

Aqua sits by his ankles. Terra rests his head on his arms, and lets go of the stars above the storm clouds to watch her. He leans up on one elbow and offers her a smile, but it’s a mimic of one. Who knows the reason why he can’t sleep. She won’t ask.

“Can we,” she starts, bringing her knees to her chin. “Talk?”

“We are.”

On the spot, Aqua blanks. “I don’t know where to start.”

He scoffs and unhooks his elbow, plopping back on the cushion. “Pick a place. We’ll get lost together and have to backtrack anyway.” He sighs, rolling his head towards the floor. “I can’t look at any of these books the same way again.” 

Five stories of them, and not a single explanation for what happened. 

“When it got tough and I needed to rely on my knowledge,” Aqua says, counting words on her essays over the years: 20,000. “I found that none of it could help us.”

“I’ve had questions ever since I started my apprenticeship,” Terra says, staring at the glass ceiling. “Many of them are still unanswered. What was the point?”

“None of it was relevant in the Realm of Darkness.”

Terra rolls over into a fetal position, burrowing his face into his arms. “So what did help?”

“Thinking of you and Ven.” The thought right now makes her smile, a little thing, a blink in the darkness. 

“I thought of you every day,” he says, morosely, shyly, with a speck of hope and a mix of self-awareness. After twelve years, Aqua still knows him so well and she’s grateful he’s (almost) the same Terra she came home to.

The thought of that chokes her. “I didn’t want it to be this way,” she says. “Any of it.”

“None of us did.”

“I meant…” She pauses, watching closely. The outline of his shoulders, the shape of his brow. They’re furrowed. “Our dream was to become Masters together.”

His shoulders tick. “I should have congratulated you.”

“What?”

“When you were titled Master. I didn’t congratulate you. I’m sorry for being self-centered.”

After twelve years, that’s the last thing in her mind. “I was thinking of withdrawing the title.”

Terra shoots up, face to face with her. “Why?”

“Like I said,” Aqua whispers, now that he’s so close. “Our dream was to be Masters together.” 

“No way.”

“You’re quite passionate about this.” Aqua rubs her knee. A nervous habit, something for her body to do. It used to be natural to hold his hand. 

Terra slaps his forehead. “I can’t let you do that. Not after all the work you’ve done.”

“You’ve worked hard, too.”

“And everything you’ve survived.”

“What you did was not survival?”

Terra gapes. “I don’t know, but I need to own my mistakes. I should have accepted my setbacks and my weaknesses…I wasn’t a good friend to you.”

Aqua sighs. “Don’t tell me you don’t deserve it.” 

“I don’t want to think about what I deserve. I only know that you deserve better.”

Deserving and not deserving sound like arbitrary definitions, markers of work ethic and integrity when everyone deserves peace of mind. “Then it sounds like you need to work really hard in the next couple of weeks.”

He blinks at her sudden change of tone. “Doing what?”

“Passing the Mark of Mastery.” She looks at her knee. “If you want me to keep my title, you have to pass.”

“You’re keeping your title regardless.”

“Pass and become Master with me.” 

“Aqua,” he warns. 

“That is the only condition.”

Terra leans his elbow on the backrest, and laughs into his hand. Laughs. It’s a weak and unpracticed song. She forgot what it sounded like. “You drive me crazy,” he says, “but it makes me so happy.”

She swallows. “I’ll contact Yen Sid to schedule the date.”

“Don’t get cheeky. You haven’t won this conversation.”

“Yes, I have.”

When the chuckles shared between them fade out, Terra studies her face, starting at the tip of her forehead, running his eyes down her nose and lips. The quiet is unwelcome.

“Do I look different?” Aqua asks.

“Not really.” He blinks, and it’s too dark to tell if he’s staring into her eyes. “You don’t smile like you used to. It’s like you’ve dimmed the lantern.”

“I can say the same about you,” she says. He’s tired, leaning on the couch like he can’t sit up on his own. He needs effort to speak. When he smiles, they’re delayed, as though he’s lost and needs to be reminded that he lives in reality now. He’s still beautiful. Terra doesn’t ask her to elaborate, but she supposes he understands exactly what she means. She supposes it’s the same for her.

Terra takes her hand and pulls it closer to him. “I do feel better with you around.”

Aqua grips the fabric of her stocking. “The last real conversation we had shouldn’t have been a fight.”

“It’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“Oh.” She holds her breath. “Wait, I shouldn’t be sorry for the fight or…” The kiss? She can’t bring herself to ask.

Terra smiles into his knuckles, and a spark of flame ignites his eyes. That’s what it is. Their hearts are tired. No book in the library can teach them how to bring them back to life. How to give it an ounce of oxygen to fan the warmth. Or how to provide a touch of oil, a passionate something to make it burst and remind them what it’s like to really want to hold a Keyblade. Aqua wonders if Terra’s essay on the subject is somewhere in the Master’s old office. 

“You know what, I’m sorry,” Terra says, stroking his thumb on the back of her hand. “For that stupid fight. For being stupid enough to have issues with you being Master and for leaving. For being incredibly stupid for not staying in Radiant Garden with you and Ven.” He giggles again.

“Why is that funny?”

“I should have stayed and kissed you longer.” He blinks back tears, inhaling sharply in shock of what he just said. “I guess I needed to get that off my chest.”

Aqua snorts and brings a hand to her cheek. “Yeah, you should have stayed and kissed me longer.”

They say nothing else. Terra takes her face into his large hands and brings her to him, lips to lips, warmth on warmth, chest to chest, heart to heart. He breathes into her, pulling her waist in so she could lie next to him, his heartbeat loud and clear, eager and anxious. A fire grows inside her stomach—she’s forgotten she’s ever felt like this before, years ago when they’ve touched and never went further. It’s invigorating, it’s relaxing. Not a blaze born out of excitement but a gentle hearth, something more than a flicker of the flame in a lantern. Alive.

He mumbles into her ear. “By the way, I have every intention of being the better kisser.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just so you know.”

“We’re really going to be doing this with the kissing?”

“Doing what?”

“What we’ve always done.”

“There’s no contest here.”

“But you want to be the best kisser.”

“I will be the best kisser.” He smiles, digging his nose into her hair. “I must be good enough for you to enjoy it. Therefore, naturally, I have to aspire to be really damn good. That’s all.” 

Aqua giggles into his chin, soft and careful and excited when his arm curls around her waist, squeezing her into him. She loves that he laughs with her. She loves his beautiful, cocky face.

They exchange small words in between, a gasp of surprises, whispers about old memories, requests for what she wants, for what he wants. Two wicks to a single candle, held gently between their hands.

[hb-writes]

There’s Room Enough

Carlisle continued with his reading even as a fifth sigh pushed through his daughter’s lips in only twice as many minutes. He guessed Mia wasn’t quite aware she was doing it. It was the type of thing that often revealed more about her internal states than she willingly disclosed, just like the preoccupied glances out the window and the distinctly cadenced fidgeting Carlisle suspected had little to do with her English homework.

The Shakespeare Mia insisted on sifting through barely registered in her mind, but she still elected for it over actually speaking to her father. She hadn’t fought his guiding hand when they dispersed from the front entryway, giving Bella and Edward their due privacy, but Mia wasn’t interested in a conversation. She had said barely a word to him for the hour since she settled, solitarily occupying the bench seat in front of the wall of windows. It was the furthest spot in the office from her father’s desk, and while they usually occupied the space together while reading, Mia had made it clear she preferred to sit alone.

Carlisle was a patient man, an accommodating father who preferred not to push his children to speak before they were ready, but he was beginning to wonder if his daughter might finally outlast his inclination towards restraint of this particular type. It was only because Mia hadn’t actually done anything wrong that he had waited this long already, her attitude and words though unexpected, no more reprehensible than the turns of phrase that often left Rosalie’s mouth.

Mia glanced up from her book and was surprised to find her father studying his own book rather than her. She was certain she had felt his eyes on her from across the room, could almost hear his questions and concerns falling into the very space between them. She supposed that could have easily all been in her head though, her own line of thinking taking on the guise of her father.

“Are you upset with me?” Mia had been pondering the question since the night before. She knew he wasn’t quite what one would call angry with her. She had never known her father to be an angry sort, but he had to have some feeling on the matter, some opinion he was withholding. 

Carlisle turned to his daughter and shook his head, placing the marker in his book before setting it aside. “Concerned is perhaps a more appropriate word.”  

Mia closed her book as well, crossing her legs as she turned to face him. “Not angry though? So, I’m not in trouble?”

Carlisle gave her a small smile. “Do you think you should be?”

Mia glanced out the window a moment before turning back to him. “Not really, but you brought me here so I thought maybe…”

“You’re not in any trouble. And you could have gone with your mother or one of the others if you liked,” Carlisle offered, “but you said you had work to do.”

Mia tapped her fingers on her legs. “And I couldn’t just go back to my own room because…?”

Carlisle smiled. In all truth, that had little to do with the little outbursts she had spent the last day or so mulling over. He simply thought Mia had spent more than enough of the weekend ruminating over things from behind the closed door of her bedroom. Knowing she was upset, he had allowed her a certain measure of self-pity, taken in the form of overthinking beneath her downy covers, only pulled from the act when Alice forced the girl up and into the shower an hour before Edward and Bella’s arrival.

“Would you find it too stereotypical for a father to believe his adolescent daughter has been spending far too much time alone in her room?”

“You can be alarmingly stereotypical,” Mia conceded, unable to hide the bit of smile his words compelled.

She had a moment, or two, of thinking that the whole situation was a bit stereotypical, despite the oddity of it all, because it essentially boiled down to a bit of uncertain jealousy on her part, a seemingly inconsequential twinge of the shameful feeling growing swiftly over the span of just a few days. And as confusing it was for everyone else to watch, the swell of emotions confused Mia a great deal more.

She knew that the thoughts clouding her mind edged towards illogical, knew that the arguments of her subconscious were essentially baseless. She should have pushed the thoughts aside rather than dwelling with her guards up, willfully blocking Edward and Jasper’s abilities, and keeping her parents and other siblings more traditionally in the dark as well.

And although Mia had expressed that she shouldn’t be in trouble, not for the late-night shouting match with her brother or the cool performance she offered him and Bella in the entryway just before, she could admit to herself that she did feel guilty, and the complicated nature of situation made it difficult to sort out on her own.

“I’m not sorry for saying it,” Mia said as if her father had been privy to the monologue in her head. “He needed to hear it.”

Carlisle allowed a small nod of his head. He thought, perhaps, his daughter may have been correct about that. Edward had needed to be made aware of the sentiment behind his sister's words, had needed to hear how she was feeling and understand the depth of those feelings, but Mia’s methods were not the ones he would have chosen, and it was not how he had expected his daughter to deliver the message either.

“Amel—” Carlisle began only to be cut off, the girl spurred to action by the uttering of her full name.

“No, dad, he—" 

Mia stopped short at meeting her father’s gentle eyes. Though he was about to voice her full name—something he did not do exclusively as a method of restoring order or in seeking compliance, but just as often as a sentimental sort of thing—there was no sign of fight in him, just his genuine patient curiosity. 

Mia knew her father didn’t deserve her fire and she sighed, willing herself back towards some semblance of calm as she mumbled an apology.

Carlisle pushed out of his chair and came to his daughter’s side, settling on the bench with her. "You’re hurting. And your brother’s actions, whether intentional or not, have played a role in that. You let him know in the only way you believed he would hear it.”

Mia leaned into her father, grateful for the assessment she felt wholly unworthy of. Although she had been desperate for Edward to understand, to simply take a moment and actually listen, she hadn’t chosen the particular words for that reason. Mia chose them because she knew she could tap into his guilt through them, hurt him as he was hurting her. She meant to inflict damage.

Carlisle sensed a shift in his daughter at his words and pulled her into his chest as the first whimper escaped her lips. He wasn’t entirely surprised to find that Mia’s opinion on her brother’s attachment had changed. Her sudden jealous anger had puzzled him only until he considered the differences the girl likely assigned to her brother’s seemingly unrequited and then suddenly, very much reciprocated feelings. There was significant uncertainty in it. While all the others had previous experience welcoming someone new to their family, the experience of expanding their circle, most recently for her, Mia had no such understanding.

“Love isn’t finite, Mia.”

It was never difficult for Carlisle to welcome someone new, the love and care coming freely and not at all diminishing what he felt for the others. It could probably be assumed that was the case, but Carlisle knew his daughter’s mind, knew the doubt would creep in without concrete proof, or at least a hardy argument provided to fight against her doubts. Carlisle knew that someday the new love between Bella and Edward would settle and become more manageable for them all. He knew that even should the settling take some time, Edward, though distracted, would care for Mia and their family no less in the interim. But Mia had yet to recognize that, had yet to know it.

She pulled herself from his chest and pushed the heel of her palms into her eyes, willing the tears to stop. “I know, but—”

“Your brother is distracted,” he conceded. “You know, when you came to us we were all a bit distracted too, each of us a bit more focused on being with you than anyone else.”

“I was a baby. It’s different.”

“A little different, yes, but the rationale holds. Everyone created a bit more room to accommodate you, and none of us cared for any of the others any less because of it.”

Mia sat back, settling her chin on her knees as her father continued.

“If what you’re thinking is true, I would have very little care that could be set aside for Edward by now, after welcoming your mother and siblings, and especially after welcoming you.” Carlisle pushed the hair from Mia’s eyes. “Do you understand my meaning?”

Mia glanced up at him. “That there is enough room for both of us?” she mumbled.

Carlisle nodded. “Yes, room enough for you and Bella and anyone else our family should choose to care for.”

Mia nodded a few times, the gesture meant more for herself than for Carlisle. It was a charming and comforting thought, that one’s capacity for love was infinite and could be expanded at will. And Mia knew her father’s words were true. She knew her father loved his children, all of them the same amount. She knew his love had never been diminished by any subsequent additions, herself included.

Without a word, Mia went to collect her father’s book from his desk and handed it off, quickly getting comfortable beside him once again and Carlisle placed his arm around his daughter as she got settled.

Mia didn't speak, but the words were in the air between them, suggested by the girl retrieving his book and settling against him. She was already reading her own book, but Mia’s actions spoke to her father, the translation so clear as she made room for his lesson in her mind and his body beside her on the bench.

I love you, Dad. There’s room enough.

--

Twilight (Mia Cullen) Masterlist

[maxwell-grant]

Your Top Five Pulp Heroes that you wish were better known? By Pulp Hero fans, I mean. Since pretty much all of them except Conan and Tarzan are fairly unknown.

It’s actually quite hard for me to narrow it down to just five, because I’m having to choose between characters that are my favorites that I wish were more well-known and appreciated (which is all of them), and characters that aren’t quite my favorites but I very much think should have achieved great popularity for a myriad of reasons. So instead I’m going to pick some of each. These are not necessarily ranked by their importance or my personal taste, just 5 characters I felt like highlighting in particular. 

Honorable mentions goes to characters I already talked about prior and don’t want to repeat myself on. These aren’t “lesser” picks, just ones that I already talked about: Imaro (who in particular definitely feels like he could, and should be, a pop culture superstar if he was only more well-known), Kapitan Mors (who’s got a lot in common with one of my favorite fictional characters, Captain Nemo, but also has a lot of interesting things going on for him as his own character). Sar Dubnotal (a character that appeals a lot to me and I think should be included much more often in pulp hero team-ups). The Golden Amazon (again, definitely a character that feels like it’s just begging to have a pop culture breakout, even comic books rarely if ever have female supervillains this ruthless and over-the-top), The Mexican Fantomas (who absolutely deserves a better name than what I’m calling him here, because he’s incredibly awesome and leagues ahead of just being a knock-off). And of course my homeboy, The Grey Claw, whom I would consider Number One of the list if it wasn’t for the fact that his obscurity has left him untouched by copyright and I got plans of my own for the character that wouldn’t be possible if he was more well-known, so I guess I’m ultimately glad he’s obscure (even if I’m still bothered by how little he’s known). 

Allright let’s go:

Number 5: Sheridan Doome

Sheridan Doome appeared in fifty-four stories and three novels from 1935 to 1943. As chief detective for U.S. Naval Intelligence, Lieutenant Commander Sheridan Doome’s job was a grim one. Whenever an extraordinary mystery or crime occurred in the fleet, on a naval base, or anywhere the navy worked to protect American interests, Doome was immediately dispatched to investigate it. Fear and dread would always precede Doome’s arrival in his special black airplane. For, in an explosion during WWI, he had been monstrously disfigured. 

He was six feet two inches tall; had a chalk-white face and head. It appeared as though it had once been seared or burned. For eyes, he had only black blotches; glittering optics, that looked like small chunks of coal. His nose was long, the end of it squared off rudely. He had no lips, just a slit that was his mouth. His neck was long, as white and as bony as his face…. Sheridan Doome looked more like a robot than a human being. He was tall and ghastly; his uniform fitted him in a loose manner. Long arms hung at his sides; his face was a perfect blank. He had no control of his facial muscles; consequently, his countenance was always without expression, chalky and bony.

But behind the ugliness was a brilliant mind. Sheridan Doome always got his man. Before Sheridan Doome became a staple in the pages of The Shadow magazine, two Doome hardcover mysteries were written in the mid-1930’s by acclaimed hard-boiled author Steve Fisher (I Wake Up Screaming) and edited by his wife Edythe Seims (Dime Detective, G-8 and His Battle Aces). Age of Aces now brings you both books in one huge double novel, presented in a retro “flip book” style. This book is currently Out of Print.

I sadly don’t have any more information on the character other than this. The book is unavailable for me to acquire in any capacity, and the text above is taken from the Age of Aces website as well as Jess Nevins’s personal profile for the character. I’m not even sure if any of those 54 stories even exist anymore, since although he was published as a backup in Shadow Magazine, there doesn’t seem to be reprints of them anywhere, at least as far as I can find, and the original Shadow magazines have largely turned to dust by now. 

A character who combines aspects of The Phantom of the Opera and The Shadow, whose adventures are set in a backdrop that can easily lead to ocean adventures? That’s like, what, three of my favorite things in the world combined. I really, really wish I could at least read the stories this character stars in, but as is, this description is all I can provide. Again, time really has been cruel to the pulp heroes. 

Number 4: Harlan Dyce

This is another character I’ve only been able to learn about through Jess Nevins’s archives and have not been able to attain any further information on, which is sadly the case with a lot of pulp heroes that nowadays only seem to exist as footnotes in his Encyclopedia or records in libraries. I don’t post more about these characters because I really would just be copying the stuff he wrote without much to justify me quoting him verbatim, and I hate the idea of doing that.

I especially hate that in Harlan Dyce’s case though. Here’s his description

“Dyce had brains, taste, money, ambition, and a total lack of physical or spiritual fear. But—

“Dyce was thirty-three inches tall and weighed sixty pounds.

“That was all the world could ever hold against him. That was what had made the world, most of it, in all the countries of the world, stare at Harlan Dyce, billed in the big show as “General Midge.””

Harlan Dyce is a misanthropic and venomous private detective. He has an “amazingly handsome face,” and the aforementioned brains. But all anyone sees is his stature, and he hates that and turns his cold eyes and acid tongue on them. 

The only person Dyce likes and gets along with (besides his dwarf wife, a former client) is his assistant, Nick Melchem, a six-foot tall former p.i.’s assistant with bleak eyes and a strong body. Melchem ignores Dyce’s stature and treats Dyce normally, which Dyce responds warmly to.

Dwarfs may be the single most maligned group of people depicted in pulp magazines, even more so than the Japanese in the war years or the Chinese during the peak of the Yellow Peril’s popularity. Evil dwarfs, murderous dwarfs, sexually depraved dwarfs, they are all loathsome, ugly cliches that are, sadly, the only instances you see of dwarf characters being represented at all, with the only ones who are awarded any measure of sympathy are doomed henchmen or tragic villains.  Even outside of the pulps, the only other examples of heroic, protagonist dwarfs I can think off the top of my head are Puck from Marvel Comics and Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones.

I’m not gonna say Harlan Dyce is great representation because I’m not a little person and can never make that kind of claim for a group I’m not a part of, but Harlan Dyce may be the first time I’ve ever seen a dwarf character in pulp fiction who was not a villain or a murderous goon or a victim, but an actual person and a heroic protagonist, and that definitely counts for something. I’m not sure how popular this character was or could be if someone picked up the concept and ran with it (and I’m pretty sure he’s public domain), but I definitely think this is a character that should exist and should be popular. 

Hell, this character has Peter Dinklage written all over it, give it to him. Maybe then he will get to play a smart, fearless, cynical, misanthropic but good-natured and heroic character in something where he actually gets to keep these traits until the show ends.

Number 3: Audaz, O Demolidor

Audaz is a Brazilian character who was created and published by Gazetinha, the same publishers of Grey Claw as well as properties exported from elsewhere like Superman and Popeye, and much like The Grey Claw, he is also completely unknown even here. I’ll get to Audaz more in-depth sometime but here I’m going to provide a quick summary: 

Audaz, The Demolisher is a gigantic crime-fighting robot controlled and piloted by the brilliant scientist Dr. Blum, his close friend Gregor and the child prodigy Jacques Ennes, who pilot the giant robot from a massive laboratory inside it's head rather than a cockpit. He takes on a variety of ordinary human criminals, mad scientists, supervillains and invading armies, towering over skyscrapers and grappling with jets.

Audaz was created in 1939 by illustrator Messias de Melo, a year before Quality Comics's Bozo the Iron Man and 5 years before Ryuichi Yokoyama's Kagaku Senshi, and decades before the debut of Mazinger Z. Although he is not the first giant robot of science fiction, he is the first heroic giant robot piloted by human pilots, and thus the first true example of "mecha" fiction.

Number 2: Emilia the Ragdoll

This is another Brazilian character, although nowhere near as obscure as Audaz as even a cursory Google search can show. Although Brazil did not have a “pulp era” in the same way the US had, we’ve long gotten past the point of sticking to it as a definitive rule, and I’m including Emilia as a pulp hero because she’s a 1920s fantasy literature character who was created under a publishing company that released pulp stories, because she doesn’t quite belong in the mold of fantasy literature characters she takes after, and because I like her and if I was putting a bunch of pulp heroes together in the same story, I would definitely include Emilia in it. It’s not like she really has anywhere else to go, now that she’s public domain and she’s outlasted her franchise.

As you can tell by the above image, Emilia’s had a lot of variations over the years and that’s because the work she was created for, Sítio do Picapau Amarelo (Yellow Woodpecker Ranch/Farm), has become a major bedrock of Brazilian fantasy literature, one of the only works created here that you can find substantial information about in English if you go looking for it. Here’s some descriptions of Emilia’s character:

Emília is a rag doll described as "clumsy" or "ugly", resembling a "witch" that was handmade by Aunt Nastácia, the ranch's cook, for the little girl Lúcia, out of an old skirt. After Lucia takes her on an adventure and the doll is given a dose of magic pills, Emília suddenly started talking, and would never stop henceforth.

Emilia has a rough, antagonistic personality, and an independent, free-spirited and anarchist behaviour. She is rogue, rebellious, stubborn, rough and intensely determined at anything she sets her mind on, eager to take off on just about any adventure. She is often immature and behaves like a curious and arrogant child, always wanting to be the center of attention.

She is extremely opinionated even when she constantly and confidently mispronounces words and expressions. Her attitude often gets her into trouble, and she very often has to fight against the villains who attack her home on the Yellow Woodpecker Farm and mistreat her friends.

In the stories, Emilia often takes the role of a heroine who travels through different realms and dimensions, as the books include not only figures from Brazilian and worldwide folklore, but also several characters both real and fictional, such as Hercules, King Arthur, Don Quixote, Thumbelina, Da Vinci, Shirley Temple, Captain Hook, Santos Dumont and Baron von Munchausen.

She's fought scorpions and martians and nymph hordes, her arch-enemy is an alligator witch, she rescued an angel from the Milky Way and tried to teach it how to become a human, and once shrunk the entire population of Earth to try and talk the president of the United States into ending war forever.

To little surprise, she has become the most popular character and the series’s mascot.

It’s a little strange to consider Emilia underrated considering she is one of the most famous original characters of Brazilian literature, but hardly anyone outside of Brazil even knows who she is, and regardless of the quality of the original stories (and Monteiro Lobato’s views on race that tar much of his reputation), Emilia definitely feels to me like a character that should be a lot more popular globally. 

She is the only character from Yellow Woodpecker Ranch that has transcended the original stories, since she was always the most popular character and there’s been a couple of stories written about her that usually separate her from the ranch and just set her out on the world by herself. The latest story about this character has been a series called The Return of Emilia, that’s about her stepping out of the books in 2050 and discovering a Brazil that’s been ruined by social and ecological devastation, and traveling back in time via a flying scooter in order to try and prevent this calamity. 

Now that she’s public domain, I definitely think there’s some great stories that can be told with the character that just about anyone could get to, and I definitely think she’s a character that deserves more appreciation. Anything goes in stories starring her and it’s that kind of free-for-all freedom that I think can benefit future takes on pulp heroes. I would be very happy to place Emilia among them.

Oh yeah, and there was one time she kicked Popeye's ass by tricking him with a can of mouldy cabbage instead of spinach, making him sick and then beating him, which possibly puts her as one of the all-time badasses of fiction, except she would be pissed at not being number one and likely embark on a quest to beat everyone else just to prove she could, because that’s how Emilia rolls.

Number 1: Luna Bartendale, from The Undying Monster (1922)

Not necessarily my favorite of the bunch, but one who sort of epitomizes what you asked, a character who is both incredibly obscure and incredibly underrated in every sense. Despite the book being somewhat known, mainly thanks to the movie, the character is so obscure that I don’t even have an illustration of her to display here, not even fan art, just one of the book’s covers that I think best conveys it. Luckily, the book is also available freely online, so you can all go check it out here. The movie adaptation does not feature the character of Luna Bartendale which makes it pointless to talk about.

To not spoil it too much, The Undying Monster is a very fascinating book, ahead of it’s time in quite a few ways. You expect it to just be a detective story centered around a werewolf cursed, except the subtitle of the book is “The Fifth Dimension” and then it goes to talk about dimensions of thought and post-WWI trauma and love and hypnotic regression that travels through time and ancient runes and Norse mythology. It’s not exactly an easy book to get through in one setting, but I’d recommend it much the same if only because it’s got supersensitive psychic sleuth Luna Bartendale, literature’s first female occult detective, and she’s an incredible character who absolutely feels like she should have become a literary icon. 

She lives in London but is world-renowned for her many good deeds. She is a small, pretty woman, with curly blonde hair, dark eyebrows and a high-bridged nose, and a slight build. She has a voice described as a light soprano that "does not make much noise but carries a long way". 

Petite, bedimpled and golden curled, Luna is completely in charge of events, dominating every scene that she appears in with her welcoming disposition and cleverness. 

Bartendale has various psychic powers, including mind reading. She is well-versed in psychic and occult lore, is a “supersensitive” psychic, and has a “Sixth Sense” which allows her to trace things and people through both the Fourth and the Fifth Dimension. (The Fifth Dimension is “the Dimension that surrounds and pervades the Fourth–known as the Supernatural”).

Her extensive knowledge of occult rites and practices puts John Silence, Carnacki and Miles Pennoyer to shame, and she beats them all with her "super-sensitive" gift of being able to psychically connect with troubled souls and hypnotize them.

She uses a divining rod for various tasks, including psychic detection and tracking, and distinguishing between benevolent and malevolent forces. She has various (undefined) powerful psychic defenses, can carry on seances, and can even cure a person of “wehrwolfism.” And she can always rely on her massive, intelligent dog Roska for help.

Luna sadly doesn’t show up in the book as often as I’d hoped, but everything about this character is so delightful. In a lot od ways she hardly feels like a pulp hero, at least the ones I usually talk about. She feels like a lost protagonist from an incredibly successful kid’s adventure series where a kind and eccentric detective witch and her giant dog go around solving occult mysteries and encountering all sorts of weird supernatural beings while counseling and helping people, like Ms Frizzle meets Hilda. Like this character is just waiting for Cartoon Saloon to make a film about her.

Its not so much “this character should/could be popular but it’s clear why that didn’t pan out”, it’s more me being confused as “why the hell isn’t she super popular? This character should have had a franchise ages ago, holy shit put her in everything””

[nothisis-ridiculous]

Take Me Home Now: Chapter Three

Chapter Three: I Hear Her Voice in the Mornin' Hour

Set after the events of ME3.

A rewrite. Ao3.

FemShepxKaidan

Shepard," the cold voice greeted her, the mechanic gravel unneeding of the visive tone, "or is it the fragment of your former self?"

Jane's head craned slowly, letting her eyes rake over the colossal figure of the derelict Reaper that sat before her. Should she be trembling? Why was she trembling?

"Brave words, for a dead roach," she murmured, wavering in her conviction.

"Your victory accomplished our end goal; your struggle was in vain."

Jane looked away from the synthetic, training her vision on the open sky above her. Lifting a hand above her face to shield it from the afternoon sun. The Citadel was a stark presence in the sky. It was a thing of awe. Now it was a wreck. While four of the arms remained, it wasn't without severe damage to the remaining limbs. The bright center of civilization flickered, struggling to sustain itself after the attacks that likely left millions dead. With the detonation she caused.

"Was the price to defeat your salvation truly worth it? You may think your species achieved enlightenment, but will it last to see those vain promises through?" The Reaper grew louder, a hint of yellow reflecting across the glass-like surface of the optic lenses, "In your hubris, you have destroyed everything that kept your species together! Witness the Citadel! How many died for nothing? How many more will die from starvation? Disease? Eachother? Will you watch your peace crumble?"

Trying to block out the voice, she focused on the rations half-eaten in front of her. Another task she no longer took pleasure from, another waste. Feeling this heaviness was quickly becoming unbearable; she was a beacon for passion and fire. A goddamned, fucking hero. One with a will that ignited others, not a tired soldier that snuck away to avoid eating a full meal. Not someone questioning why they remained. The goddamned bit was right, at least, there was no luck here. Just beating after beating.

She was so alone.

Where were her friends? How long would she have to wait? After all they had been through, wouldn't they at least attempt to find her? She wasn't far from where she had made them leave her behind. Already, she had been back to the beacon several times over the fortnight since the LT had conscripted her into this ragtag community.

She needed the Normandy crew. Her mind whispered horrible things. Taunted and dogged her in each agonizing moment of calm. All she held was death, screaming, the weight of all the choices she made. Her soft place was nowhere to be found.

"This legacy you attempted will end in the spoiling of your name. Villanhood only matched by the word 'Reaper,'" The machine was rarely silent long, it was content to keep speaking filling the silence that Jane left, "a Shepard only heralding death and destruction, because your weakness was what you thought strength. Overconfidence always leads to downfall."

In a simmer of sudden rage, Jane gathered energy into herself, merging the familiar burn and tingle of dark matter and letting it stir just beneath the surface of her skin, pleasure, fury, and a twinge of pain. Just the way it should be. It released in a single burst.

"Pathetic."

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The Recruit caught herself before she toppled ass over tea kettle, fists grinding into the ground before her to stabilize. Her signature move from cocky grin to a deadened expression had yet to sit right with him, but as he was learning about his woman, forcing an issue wasn't going to move it aside any quicker. Reflexively adverting his gaze to allow her pride the room to readjust and soothe her attitude. Most in his company did not understand his patience with the newest recruit, but they couldn't empathize with the bittersweet familiarity it welled up inside his heart.

With any luck, he could one day reiterate to his son how proud he was of him.

"LT," the woman chirped, a hint of a smile crawling up the side of her mouth.

"Recruit," the old man was looser with his smile. With an admonishing raise of an eyebrow, he drew a finger across her philtrum, "I see you've met our lawn gnome. Still haven't named him yet."

Jane's eyes rolled and a smile she could not fight spread across her features, "Harbinger," but the utterance came out with surprising severity.

"I'd have gone with Harold, Pookie even," he mumbled, dragging a handkerchief across the underside of her nose.

Just as quickly the moment was gone, she pulled away from him. A token of gratitude left in the form of a gentle smile, "did you come out here to bother me, or did you need something?"

This was the prickly personality he didn't care for as fondly. Requiring a brief moment to placate a moment of hasty rebuke, his gaze moved to the half-empty can and the lid that lay a few meters downwind—twice ignoring the blood that peppered the ground beneath her seat. Perhaps he didn't have the patience to baby another mouthy soldier, and she seemed content to throw herself away. But in the same vein, he had regretted doing that years ago with his own child. Sure, this woman was a stranger, but she belonged to someone that worried about her. His innate integrity could hold him out a bit longer.

"You know, we don't have enough supplies to be wasting it," Roy found something to vent the heat building inside.

Jane's bright blue eyes that reflected the setting sun snapped to the can, a wince revealing the words did strike something, "you eat it then. I've been watching you pawn off your rations."

He accepted the can, plopping a hearty portion into his mouth, "still tastes like shit."

"I could really go for some steak fries and chutney," Jane mused gently.

"I'm thinking I could make that happen."

The woman's full attention turned to him, the fine fuzz of her returning eyebrows raised at him.

"Give or take a few weeks."

"I'm assuming you have a plan?"

"Yeah," the man paused, testing out the recruit, the hold on her patience proving to outlast him for the first time, "I'm hoping to test out your skills. And you need to start earning your keep."

"Ready and willing, sir!" She snapped to attention, a foreign energy oozing from her at this moment. Not that he doubted her willingness to come along, he was just surprised to see her motivated to do something.

"Hold your horses, Recruit. You may not be so excited when you find out what we are doing," not that he had much doubt about her grit, "it should be a standard supply run. With a large Krogan exception."

"Krogan, sir?"

He nodded, "before this mess all started, I had a small orchard; I knew a guy from London that shared the hobby. He was more into plants in general, but anyway, I couldn't recall his exact address but knew about the general area his warehouse was located. It should be a rapidly growing, resistant crop. The problem is the Krogan found it first."

"Are we trying diplomacy or just rushing in?"

"I want to try the former, the ladder only if things go south. Some big wig Clan Urgnut-"

"Urdnot."

Roy cleared his throat, that did sound right, "Urdnot was holed up there. Smart move on their part. But they don't have a protected area with access to sufficient sunlight to grow anything, and more importantly...hopefully, they aren't likely to know how to grow the crop."

"You're hoping to grow it within the atrium?" it seemed the recruit was astute enough to guess at the plan without it needing to be spelled out, "trading access for food and maybe protection?"

"If we are lucky."

He had already began to act hopefully, ordering the healthy refugees under guard to start collecting and tagging soil for growing crops. They had some luck, even if it meant desecrating the dead's gardens. The corporate offices he felt less guilty about robbing them of soil.

Finding power had been an easier ordeal; military generators were easily plugged into the grid to power the essentials like heat and some lighting. Water filters were easily found, and London's preference toward rain lent them an easy water source. They weren't foolish enough to rely on a regular storm pattern and already had begun to build a reserve of water. Communication was an entirely separate issue- they needed to find an engineer and fast. Or rely on another splinter group to fulfill that gap. On the subject of protection, he didn't want to let on how direly he needed the talks to go peacefully. Once word got around that they could produce food, the untold number of refugees and nefarious forces pounding on their doors would create unfathomable problems.

But all this conjecture was counting chickens before the eggs hatched.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Jane kept her assignment besides the Lieutenant with minimal complaint. They couldn't know that keeping watching along occupied territory was old news to her. While she was used to point, settling into the left flank was quickly done.

It was nice not being the center of attention, without the burden of anyone looking to her for guidance. Without the worry of making a wrong call, she could let down some of the instinctual guard associated with the position of leader. Luckily a hard call wasn't required for this part of the journey, the few-kilometer trip went by without incident.

"LT," she pressed once the first evidence of a perimeter came into view, "have you ever met a Krogan before?"

The male on her right smirked, rolling his eyes. Roy stopped, pulling a deep breath. Some of his stoic calm wearing at the edges. Jane knew this wasn't because of her, she had yet to do anything that would constitute annoying the man. He was nervous.

"No, but how different can they be?"

The man chuckled, "I heard they're almost mindless brutes."

Jane threw him a sharp glare, "they're the rough and tumble type, but not mindless. I'd suggest reminding him of home."

She could guarantee cooperation if Shepard wanted to come out. Shepard liked to remain locked away anymore.

While the man to her right heavily rolled his eyes, Roy seemed to take it under consideration. His gaze flickered back to the path before them, hesitation now more detectable in his manner.

"Maybe you-"

Roy's voice stopped with the interruptions of Jane's pistols suddenly unfurling to full length.

"Don't stop," a gruff Krogan voice called, "I'm looking for a fight."

A second voice was a little more reasonable, "what is your business? This is Krogan territory."

"Human territory," the man retorted with surprising gusto, "you overfeed iguana."

For his bravery, the man collided with the road the third but silent Krogan finding the insult not to his liking. The first Krogan spurred on by his comrade shoved Roy aside, the older man spun without resistance to the ground, "humans are so soft."

Jane was purely lucky that the more tolerable Krogan was nearest to her. It didn't make her less angry. Yes, pushing over the douche of a specimen was permitted but bringing the old man into it? She expected better of Clan Urdnot. Pissed off, the female stormed for the offending Krogan.

Now, she wasn't foolish enough to go in guns blazing, but she knew a better way to deal with the offending reptile. According to Zaeed the spot she had to hit corresponded with a weak spot on the species' frontal plate. If she had a knife and the gall to do so, she could rip that piece off and cause the Krogan to panic. But on the less violent and more in line with the peacekeeping mission she had a superior move: simple, elegant, and a returning item on her personal bucket list.

Headbutting another Krogan.

In retaliation, he glowed blue.

It never came to fruition as the reasonable member stepped between them, "you have offended her krant. Let it go." But his smirk didn't go unnoticed, "what do you want?"

"We're here to speak with Wrex."

The Krogan chuckled, "you have an impressive quad. But I don't think the clan leader is interested in what you have to say."

"You really want to test that? Would we really be here if wasn't important," Shepard's fire returned, "what other reason would we have to seek out the Krogan?  Certainly not for the fight." She motioned toward the two with her.

The Krogan gave an exasperated sigh, "fine, but only one of you. The other two wait."

Jane pivoted and proffered an open hand to the LT, "this is your ball game, sir. Do us proud."

[storytell]

BUNGOU STRAY DOGS AUS: GENSHIN IMPACT MUSES

PERSONALS I AM GOING TO HAVE TO ASK YOU TO NOT REBLOG THIS POST. IT IS FOR MY OWN PERSONAL USE.

KAEYA RAGNVINDR

name: kaeya ragnvindr affiliation: the knights of favonius location: germany ability: glacial waltz - kaeya has moderate control over ice and temperature, and can make things around him freeze. as well as this, he is capable of creating ice from the water vapor in the air and can as such weaponize his ability at any time.

bio: born in an unknown place, kaeya was found and taken in by crepus ragnvindr in germany, where he became acquainted with his new adoptive brother diluc. as diluc ascended, so too did he, until kaeya’s adoptive father was killed in a tragic accident. the brothers mutually decided having nothing to do with eachother would be beneficial, and after they split apart, kaeya took over diluc’s old position in the knights of favonius, an ability user organization dedicated to keeping the peace all throughout germany.

due to recent activity in yokohama, several of the knights of favonius as well as other ability users have made their way over to see what the cause of commotion is. kaeya specifically has an interest in the book, but has no desire to use it himself, instead taking interest in keeping the fatui--a group of ability users hailing from russia, separate from the decay of angels and more intwined with the nation’s government--away from it.

DILUC RAGNVINDR

name: diluc ragnvindr alias: the darknight hero affiliation: dawn winery location: germany ability: dawn - allows diluc to summon a large phoenix-shaped burst of fire which he can then command for a short time around once per day. if he has already used this ability in the day, he can use his ability to create and control ordinary fire.

bio: heir to the wealthiest man in germany, diluc had it all. he was a talented boy who surpassed expectations and was easily able to attain the rank of cavalry captain in the knights of favonius. however, the death of his father sent everything crashing down. with the knights refusing to release or investigate any official evidence due to the political impact it might have, diluc became frustrated and left the city for a time, staying at dawn winery and becoming even wealthier due to the demand of the dandelion wine only dawn winery could produce.

eventually, he began to aid in the protection of germany from outside ability users with his large chain of connections and his unnamed antihero alias, essentially becoming germany’s very own masked vigilante. when the knights of favonius talked of sending men over to yokohama to investigate the commotion there, diluc was made aware of the situation from a “well-informed individual” and accompanied them under the guise of having a business deal with a powerful player located in yokohama.

he seeks to keep the book out of the hands of the abyss order, almost-humans with suspiciously organized ranks.

LUMINE

name: lumine affiliation: armed detective agency? location: yokohama “ability”: outsider - an ‘ability’ picked up when lumine entered this dimension and presumably shared by her brother; lumine can copy and use any ability she has seen in action. when she copies an ability, she will be able to use that ability for as long as she would like until it is overwritten by the next time she copies an ability. to copy an ability, she has to be in the line of sight of an ability user.

bio: you won’t find any record of lumine or her brother aether before the incidents taking place in yokohama began, though it’s unclear whether this is due to their relative unimportance prior to that or the fact that they hadn’t been in this dimension before that. regardless, they will not show up in any official investigations, and aether is still missing to everyone who has been looking.

the first people to find lumine were the armed detective agency, and it was there that she herself learned of the ability she gained in coming to this dimension when she accidentally copied atsushi’s ability for the first time. from then, it was decided that if anyone could help her find her brother, it would be detectives, and so lumine was given a test and accepted into the armed detective agency.

of course, this isn’t the end of the complications, as she accidentally finds herself caught up in the plans of the abyss order and the fatui, accidentally dragging the agency into things with her.

CHILDE

name: ??? alias(es): tartaglia (fatui harbinger title), childe (casual alias) affiliation: the fatui location: russia ability: master of weapons - childe’s ability allows him to turn nearby water into solid weapons, though the water must either be in vapor or liquid form, as ice is difficult to mold. any water-made weapon childe uses will be five times more powerful as the weapon normally would be. additionally, childe can change the form of his weapon at any time and it will only go away if childe himself ends the ability--as the weapon is water, it cannot be broken.

bio: childe is one of the eleven harbingers of the fatui, an organization in russia with its roots deeply in the russian government. they have ties everywhere, all across the world, and worked closely with fyodor dostoyevsky in his endeavor to attack yokohama. after his defeat and the loss of the decay of angels (another organization they had ties with), the fatui decided to send some of their own, among which were childe himself and la signora, a significantly crueler harbinger.

childe himself has no interest in the book and actively avoids conflict with other ability users, claiming there’s something bigger at play that he would like to figure out on his own. that said, he is still prone to using underhanded tactics and doesn’t stop la signora from initiating conflicts.

ZHONGLI

name: exuvia alias(es): rex lapis & morax (”godly” names), zhongli (human alias) affiliation: ??? location: china ability: prime of the adepti - prior to becoming a transcendental, zhongli’s ability was a defensive ability that could completely petrify anyone within a 50 foot radius of him so long as they were touching the ground. however, because of the additional abilities he has gained since then (shapeshifting, illusions, etc), this can no longer be considered his only ability.

bio: zhongli comes from a time before the modern nations of the world, a forgotten era of magic and wisdom that came before everything in the history we know today. it was there that he first became an immortal transcendental and outlasted the rest of his society, watching the magic of the older days become forgotten, living on only in the form of rare “ability users”.

he lived among the human world for some time, appearing once a year as any sort of animal with bright amber eyes to guide the humans around him. it was because of this that he began to be worshipped as a god, being given the name “rex lapis” by those who believed him fully. unfortunately, this tradition began to die out as technology advanced and you became disgusted with the humans that had left behind tradition. it was only recently, at the request of a friend, that you took on a human form once more and began a life in this new world to attempt to adapt to the changes you had seen.

not a long while later, he was summoned to yokohama by another transcendental, though he abstained from offering aid or guidance, choosing to keenly observe the actions of the humans on either side of the conflict to see whether or not it would be worth giving them guidance once more.

[anonthenullifier]

So…how’s that next chapter of post hoc going?

It’s coming along. I’m 2/3rds into it. Ideally it’ll be done in a week (or so), but until then, here’s a small look at the chapter. ���

________________

The composed email lazes on his computer screen, so carefree and unassuming despite the threat inherent in its existence. “Just click send.”

“I am working my way to it.”

Wanda’s raised eyebrows doubt his resolve, the ring on her right index finger clinking out her impatience against his You know what gets on my nerves? Myelin mug. “Want me to do it?”

“No, because then you will see the recipient’s name.” They had established in their original IRB that he alone would have access to the names of their participants, a necessary risk since someone has to code for individual level characteristics and be able to connect the gifts with the RSVPs. Once data collection is completed and all data coded to Wanda’s liking, he will deidentify it all so she can analyze it without compromising any personal information of their participants. Given their current predicament, he even had to remove her access to the email account. Regardless of this agreed upon protocol, it has not stopped her from slyly trying to get him to slip up. “I will have the courage any moment now.”

A pointed sip of her tea actually helps, marginally, his nerves splitting between the email and her undivided attention, though one is more pleasant than the other. “Treat it like a bandaid.”

Not psychologically unsound. The fact he is cogitating so much on sending the email is itself a cognitive issue of impact bias where he presumes (wrongly) that it will be emotionally negative enough that he is now seeking to avoid it. In reality, he knows it will be much like the bandaid Wanda is suggesting. If he just sends it and then seeks out distraction or some other task, the negative emotions will not only be less intense but have a shorter duration. He just needs to trust his psychological immune system. “Very well,” he accepts this is the best path forward but he still reads the email one more time, making sure that the tone is one of sharing information and not desperation given they are informing their participant of the fact that a scheduling error has led them to move their wedding to a state park pavilion an hour away. This will not ruin their study, and even if it does harm the data, they have strategies to ameliorate the impact. The world will not end, even if his heart seems to think it will. “All right...” Vision slowly clicks the send button “here we go,” and there is no taking it back now.

“I’m proud of you.”

The hand patting his shoulder is already activating his coping mechanisms, his right leg crossing over his left as he swivels his chair to face her. “Before I stumble into the depths of rumination,” something she finds far more amusing than he does, “perhaps we can find something not related to our study to discuss.”

Whenever faced with a task, Wanda’s eyes wander in thought. He always imagines she is tracing the threads of topics and trying to find the one farthest from where he thinks she will go. “I’m beginning to suspect my work with Hank is an attempt to rekindle his failed marriage.”

“Fascinating.” Of the core group he spends time with, Vision is always the one absent any gossip. In a way this should be uplifting to his moral standing and staunchness to not belittle others, but then it leaves him in the quandary of wanting to remain aloof while also very much fascinated by what Wanda is dangling before him. Information gathering does not have to be synonymous with gossiping, as one is passive and the other active.  “What makes you reach that conclusion?”

“Okay,” the mug descends onto his desk with an excited thud and Wanda leans forward, hands ready to gesticulate her way through the information, “so Janet van Dyne, his estranged wife, is one of the foremost quantum computing minds and has started doing a lot of work on quantum time travel.”

“Oh I dislike time travel.” Because the rules are never followed and the consequences are rarely sensical.

“You’ll be happy to know she hasn’t achieved it yet.”

“I am much relieved.”

Wanda scrunches her nose for a half second before continuing, “But what she has been working on is a computational model of whether the butterfly effect would actually exist in quantum time travel.”

An effect he knows she dislikes and yet she is invigorated at the thought. “To make sure I am following, you are saying that she is trying to mathematically establish whether going back in time and fiddling with the past would actually impact the future?”

Wanda nods, the sheer enjoyment she gets from the topic leading to an antsiness that shifts between turning her mug a couple degrees at a time, pushing her hair behind her ear, and varying the positioning of her legs. “So far she’s found evidence that if we view time with a quantum lens, it actually might correct itself when small changes happen and that the original timeline might remain resilient enough to outlast the change.”

“Does this not inherently contradict your own work?”

“Not entirely,” an ounce of uncertainty shoulders into her voice, “quantum chaos still exists but she seems to suggest it acts differently with competing timelines and reality could have a self-correcting mechanism.”

It all seems a bit too muddled for his ability to comprehend the difference. “What is it that you and Hank are doing that is meant to fix their personal timeline?”

“He’s been insisting on us doing a lot of different quantum walks,” she explained this to him some time ago, complete with a diagram of a quantum tree. It is all about the pathway photons travel to get from one point to another, but not linearly. All of the branches intersect and so their studies are about predicting when jumps between branches occur and how to determine movement. In his mind it is like the subway, how there are various lines that intersect at any given station and that you could take four travelers from station A and ask them to find their way to Station F. They could all take the same series of trains or switch between lines, maybe even one travels by bus or foot for a time. Most people would only ever consider the start and the end and determine the journey must be linear, even when it might not be, especially if there are delays or lines shut down. No doubt it is far more complicated than that.  “I mean a lot of different ones to try and disprove her findings. I only found out because I noticed he’d been publishing commentaries to her articles and using our data as support for his arguments.”

“How precisely is challenging her work meant to win her back?”

Wanda finishes her tea but doesn’t let go of the cup, her fingers tracing the glossy raised letters, “Hoping she’s intellectually turned on by it?”

There are researchers in his own niche area that have a similar, albeit non-romantic (he presumes) dynamic of obsession to always counter each other, to always craft a study meant to disprove the theoretical underpinnings of the other’s work. It’s why conferences can get dicey when the alcohol is free flowing and debates erupt over empathy and selfishness and how to delineate the two movitations. “I cannot speak for Janet, but it seems a bit more depressing than romantic.”

“At least it’s distracting him from his ant obses—-“ The tell tale chime of their study’s email disrupts her, “What do you think we got this time?”

“Let’s see,” he switches to the tab and in place of the usual notification from their wedding website there is an email sitting there with the sender as Tony Stark. Physiologically his heart remains firmly in his chest, but figuratively it plummets through the floor, “It is from our participant.”

In the time it takes for the comment to be processed and her, “That participant?” Vision has already read the response twice, his eyes going back for a third read through to make sure he has not found himself in some alternative universe created by his neurons firing too quickly.

[mimixeu]

⟨  AMANDA  ZHOU.    CIS  FEMALE.    SHE  /  HER.  ⟩    though  the  mist  might  prevent  some  from  seeing it,    MEMPHIS    “  MIMI  ”    YIU    is  actually  a  descendant  of    A R E S.    it’s  still  a  question  of  whether  or  not  the    TWENTY - FIVE    year  old    EAST  ASIAN  STUDIES  MAJOR    from    SEATTLE,    WASHINGTON    has  taken  after  their  godly  parent  completely,    but  the  demigod  is  still  known  to  be  quite    OBSERVANT    &    SELF - SABOTAGING.

                  +    DOSSIER.      +    PINTEREST.      +    PLAYLIST.

PERSONALITY.

most  people  find  mimi  to  be  quite  unassuming  at  first  glance.    from  a  distance,    she  is  twinkling  eyes  and  a  pearly - white  smile,    fun  to  be  around  and  ever  so  easy  to  talk  to  ;  but  the  closer  one  tries  to  get  to  her,    the  farther  away  she  runs.    you  see,    she  is  used  to  getting  hurt,    and  her  powers  being  at  the  heart  of  it  all.    with  time,    she  has  learned  the  art  of  self - preservation,    and  has  sworn  to  never  let  anybody  get  too  close  to  her    ⸺    lest  they  end  up  turning  on  her,    too.    it’s  this  self - preservation  that  has  made  her  exceptionally  good  at  observing  people,    figuring  them  out,    learning  their  secrets.    she  knows  more  about  other  people  than  they  ever  do  her.

          it’s  no  surprise,    therefore,    that  envy  is  an  emotion  that  comes  exceptionally  easy  to  her,    often  greeting  her  like  an  old  friend.    seeing  large  groups  of  friends  around  campus  often  makes  mimi  yearn  for  more,    for  uncomplicated  companionship  and  untainted  relationships,    but  she  knows  it’s  far  safer  to  keep  the  world  at  arm’s  length.    it  doesn’t  mean  that  she  doesn’t  long  to  be  loved  and  wanted  by  her  peers.    the  same  goes  for  her  romantic  life.    she  has  never  fallen  in  love,    never  had  a  relationship  last  long  enough  for  her  to  become  attached.    she  prefers  serial  dating  to  long - term  relationships  because  it  means  she  has  control,    but  mimi  romanticises  the  idea  of  something  more  stable,    one  unaffected  by  her  fears  of  rejection.

          despite  her  self - sabotaging  ways,    mimi  is  known  to  be  very  loyal  towards  the  people  she  does  keep,    of  those  who  have  outlasted  the  fragile  fury  and  rocky  turbulence.    (    after  all,    if  they  are  to  be  in  her  life,    then  she  might  as  well  protect  them  with  her  entire  being.    )    she  is  also  relatively  good - humoured  and  likes  having  a  laugh,    takes  pleasure  in  making  people  smile.    it  is  a  smile  that  hides  her  resentment  for  ares,    as  she  firmly  believes  that  she  could  have  had  something  resembling  a  normal  life,    even  vaguely,    if  it  were  not  for  her  relation  to  him.    unlike  some  of  her  peers,    she  does  not  hold  her  godly  parent  to  high  regard.

FACTS.

the  maternal  side  of  mimi’s  family  hails  from  the  island  of  hong  kong,    just  off  of  china.    back  in  the  seventies,    when  mimi’s  mother,    jingfei,    was  still  just  a  child,    they  immigrated  to  the  united  states  where  they  first  lived  in  augusta,  ga,    before  settling  in  seattle,    wa,    where  mimi’s  uncle  was  born.

mimi  is  fluent  in  english  and  greek,    as  well  as  cantonese  as  mandarin,    as  she  was  taught  to  speak  both  languages  from  a  young  age.    of  the  two,    she  prefers  to  speak  cantonese.

in  her  early  years,    mimi’s  mother  was  an  air  hostess  who  frequently  travelled  for  her  job.    this  was  how  she  met  ares.    she  had  no  plans  to  quit  her  job,    not  even  when  she  learned  that  she  was  pregnant  with  what  would  become  their  daughter,    and  continued  to  work  through  her  pregnancy  for  as  long  as  it  was  allowed.    for  the  formative  years of  mimi’s  life,    she  was  essentially  raised  by  her  grandparents,    only  seeing  her  mother  when  she  was  able  to  take  leave.

as  a  teenager,    mimi  found  herself  as  camp  elektra  in  silverlake,    ca,    and  it  was  the  only  place  she  felt  like  she  could  fit  in  for  the  longest  time.

she’s  been  a  student  at  eonia  university  for  five  years,    and  has  bounced  between  several  majors.    currently,    she  is  majoring  in  east  asian  studies,    but  she  has  also  studied  architecture  and  marine  biology  in  the  past.

stable  relationship    ?    never  heard  of  her.    due  to  her  abilities,    mimi  doesn’t  have  very  many  close  friends.    she  won’t  allow  it.    instead,    she  prefers  to  keep  many  acquaintances,    and  probably  knows  at  least  one  person  in  every  course  /  house.    she  is  very  good  at  remembering  faces  and  learning  names.    even  if  she  doesn’t  have  a  lot  of  people  she  considers  to  be  friends,    she  still  very  much  likes  to  make  an  effort.

mimi  met  her  father  once.    he  appeared  at  the  gates  of  camp  elektra  and  was  immediately  charged  into  by  his  fourteen - year - old  daughter.    in  front  of  a  crowd  of  young  demigods,    she  created  a  scene,    demanding  answers  from  ares,    questioning  him  of  her  existence  and  his  motivations.    it  was  a  rage  like  she  had  never  felt  before.    she  told  him  she  hated  him,    and  though  she  was  told  off  for  disrespecting  one  of  the  gods,    she  thinks  he  knows  she  means  it.

POWERS.

limited  necromancy    :    she  remembers  seeing  ghosts  as  a  kid.    sometimes  they  had  faces,    but  more  often  than  not,    they  were  blurred  figures    ⸺    like  silhouettes  behind  a  glass  pane.    they  never  stayed  for  long,    but  sometimes  they  would  come  to  her,    whispering  enticing  words  and  asking  for  her  help.    every  adult  she  ever  told  dismissed  them  as  creations  from  an  overactive  child’s  mind  rather  than  spirits  that  genuinely  existed.    it’s  not  an  ability  she’s  particularly  hone,    and  over  the  years  it  appears  to  have  waned  significantly,    but  mimi  still  sees  them  sometimes,    in  the  dead  of  night  when  no  one  is  watching.    she’ll  glance  out  of  the  corner  of  her  eye  and  perhaps  a  blurred  figure  smiles  at  her  through  the  dark.

odikinesis    :    from  a  young  age,    people  have  always  acted  peculiarly  around  her.    teachers  would  be  impatient  for  no  reason,    often  picking  on  her  when  she  was  late  or  forgot  her  homework,    and  even  friends  and  family  members  had  a  habit  of  becoming  noticeably  more  irritable  in  her  presence.    mimi  never  understood  why.    whatever  she  did  to  make  it  up  to  them,    it  only  seemed  to  make  matters  worse.    as  a  child,    it  wasn’t  something  she  necessarily  intended  to  happen,    and  she  slowly  learned  that  if  she  concentrated  hard  enough,    then  it  didn’t  have  to  happen  at  all.    but  more  recently,    she’s  also  realised  that  as  much  as  she  can  put  out  the  coals,    she  is  capable  of  fanning  the  flames,    too.    it’s  become  a  habit  of  hers    ⸺    in  moments  of  pent - up  rage  or  insecurity    ⸺    to  find  people  in  varying  states  of  anger  and  agitation  and  turn  the  volume  up  to  one  hundred.    she  knows  what  she’s  doing  is  wrong,    and  it  always  leaves  her  with  an  overbearing  amount  of  remorse  when  all  is  over.    she’s  lost  plenty  of  friends  as  a  result,    and  always  vows  to  learn  from  it  but  never  does.

other  abilities  :

sonic  scream    :    it  happened  only  once,    when  she  was  a  toddler.    for  hours,    young  mimi  wouldn’t  stop  crying.    she  was  passed  from  relative  to  relative,    each  attempting  to  soothe  and  comfort  her,    but  by  hour  three,    it  was  clear  her  tears  were  not  going  to  relent.    then  it  happened    ⸺    the  tot  let  out  a  terrific  wail.    it  shattered  the  windows,    cracked  the  mirror  down  the  hall.    then  all  at  once,    it  was  over,    the  crying,    the  screaming    ⸺    all  of  it  was  gone.    her  entire  family  was  left  stunned.

telumkinesis    :    while  the  ability  can  be  useful,    it’s  not  one  mimi  chooses  to  use  on  a  regular  basis.    although  she  may  incite  the  occasional  brawl  and  spars  along  with  her  brothers  and  sisters,    she  rarely  involves  herself  in  the  chaos,    thus  she’s  never  found  much  need  for  weapons  outside  of  training.

OUT OF CHARACTER.

hellooooo    !!!!!!!!    I’m  nixie,    24+,    she  /  her pronouns,    from  the  gmt  timezone.    I  heard  about  this  group  from  my  lovely  friend,    who’d  been  hyping  it  up.    I’ve  been  considering  rejoining  groups  for  a  while  since  my  indie  blogs  have  been  stressing  me  tf  out  lately,    so  I  decided  to  join  on  a  whim  and  now  I  am  here  to  bring  you  my  misfortunate  chaos  baby,    mimi  yiu,    who  never  asked  for  any  of  this  but  lost  her  ticket  out  ✌🏼  I’m  SUPER  excited  to  start  writing  with  you  guys    !    feel  free  to  look  through  any  of  the  links  listed  in  this  post  or  on  my  page    !

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

The Odds are Never in Your Favor - Information and Characters

From the Treaty of Treason:

In penance for their uprising, each district shall offer up a male and female between the ages of 12 and 18 at a public “Reaping”. These tributes shall be delivered to the custody of The Capitol, and then transferred to a public arena where they will Fight to the Death, until a lone victor remains. Henceforth and forevermore this pageant shall be known as The Hunger Games.

Some things to know about the AU:

This is a Reddie Social Media AU; the story is told via text messages, twitter, etc. As aforementioned, the main pairing is Richie/Eddie, though there are other side pairings, and all of the Losers are featured prominently. 

This AU is NOT canon with Suzanne Collins’ series, but rather in a universe of its own. As such, the rules/history are slightly different.

Side characters from Collins’ work either make appearances or are mentioned, such as Finnick Odair, Haymitch Abernathy and Mags Flanagan. There’s no exact number Hunger Games given, because I couldn’t be bothered working out much beyond the Losers winning back to back, and because this isn’t canon to Collins’ work anyway beyond using a few characters.

Coriolanus Snow is still President of Panem; there’s rumors of potential uprising/rebellion, which makes him uneasy and as such he is going to be taking certain steps in order to reassert his control of Panem.

For the purpose of this AU, the Losers aren’t the same ages, though they’re still friends and within the same age range: all of them are 17-19. It was impossible to make them any younger because otherwise there was no way all of them had won even back to back games. The only other way would have been to have Bill/Stan/Bev all win their games at like age 12, which wouldn’t be realistic - possible but not likely.

Similarly, the Losers are not all from the same district (I’ll go into their districts in a minute) - again, it would have seemed unlikely that the same district would win five or six years in a row, especially if the district wasn’t a Career District. In Collins’ series, the Districts don’t really interact with one another, except for those who are part of the games obviously - in this AU, the rules are more lax regarding this, and it’s possible for people to visit other Districts, especially those within close range of each other.

In this AU, the Losers all knew each other previously and met via one another; as I said, for this AU, inter-District friendships/relationships are more lax and travelling is allowed. Fill in the gaps however you want.

Because the characters are age 16-19, there will NOT be any sexual content. Some of the characters are 18/19 or even older, but because I’m using the younger Losers, it’s strictly PG-13. There may be jokes or references, but nothing anymore explicit than what typical teenagers may say from time to time (and we’ve got to remember that Richie has a Trashmouth, so there’s that too)

Side Note: The reason I have decided to use the child!Losers and not the adult ones is because a) THG is 12-18 year olds, and b) the whole idea of the horror of THG is the fact that literal children are being forced to fight to the death. Using the teenage cast is therefore the obvious choice in order to convey the brutality of it.

This goes without saying really, but this AU will contain violence and child death - the Hunger Games is a competition where children aged 12-18 compete and kill one another. As such, there’ll be mostly descriptions of violence/gore, and on the rare occasion a possible photo of a horror encountered in the games. Basically, anything that’s typical in THG series, it’s happening here.

What are “The Hunger Games”?

Every year, one male and one female from the twelve districts, all between the ages of twelve and eighteen, are selected via a “Reaping” to participate in a compulsory televised battle royale death match called The Hunger Games.

A Reaping takes place in every district before each Hunger Games, where the tributes of the upcoming Games are chosen. Each district's escort randomly chooses the name of one male and one female tribute from two separate glass balls. Those picked are then the official tributes for the upcoming Games.

To be qualified for a reaping, one must be at least 12 years old. Once of age, a potential-tribute's name is entered into the reaping one time. The entries are cumulative, so when a possible tribute is thirteen, their name is added one more time. This continues until age 18, when a potential-tribute's name is entered 7 times, or more if they apply for tesserae.

Tessera (plural: tesserae) is a form of voluntary food rationing, offered by the government of Panem to people in the districts. If a family is struggling for food, children between the ages of 12 and 18 - those eligible to participate in the Hunger Games - can sign up for tesserae. A single tessera is worth one year's supply of grain and oil for a single person, collected on a monthly basis. The child may also claim further tesserae for as many members of their family as needed.

While tesserae is vital to many families in the districts, it comes at a heavy price: In exchange for this extra food, the child's name will be added to the reaping balls an additional time for every tessera claimed that year. These entries are also cumulative, so if tesserae must be claimed year after year, the chances of being reaped can increase dramatically, depending on the number of people that must be fed.

The Characters

Richie Tozier (District 3)

17 years old

Best friends with Stanley Uris, who won the Games four years ago

His parents, while not incredibly wealthy, have enough that it means he doesn’t have to sign up for tesserae every year. As such, his name is only in the bowl a total of six times.

He deals with discomfort and fear by making inappropriate jokes/comments, which people either find charming or irritating (depending on who you ask)

Hopes that someday he can maybe be an entertainer like Caesar Flickerman - Flickerman’s interviews are the only bright spot of being forced to watch the Games each year

Has a crush on Eddie but won’t admit it

Eddie Kaspbrak (District 4)

17 years old

Lives with his mother, Sonia, and he doesn’t know that she’s been putting him in for even more tesserae than he thought

He can’t wait to leave District 4; it’s a Career District, and he doesn’t fit in - he hopes that he can move one day, preferably to District 3 where Richie is

His mom wouldn’t let him train - any training or skills he has have been developed behind her back and away from her, in secret.

Because he’s from District 4, he’s an extremely good swimmer, like the rest of his District - and he actually enjoys it

He hates watching the Games every year, even before he was eligible to be reaped - it’s his worst nightmare to be picked

Has a crush on Richie but won’t admit it

Bill Denbrough (District 6)

19 years old

Was the first of the Losers to win the Games; was reaped when he was only 13, and during training he acted inconspicuous/weak so as to not attract attention, then hid for the majority of his Games. He won by escaping up a tree from a Mutt attack.

Has a younger brother, Georgie, who is now 9 - his biggest fear is that Georgie will be reaped when he’s 12-18.

Because he was the first of the group to win, he’s unofficially the leader and helps the others with mentoring duties since he has the most experience

Is dating Audra Phillips, who he mentored during her Games. He still wonders if she faked her crush on him during her Games in order to get Capitol sympathy.

Stanley “Stan” Uris (District 3)

19 years old

Is best friends with Richie Tozier, though he pretends to find him annoying - that’s just their dynamic

He won his games aged 14; his arena had electrical currents/circuit traps scattered, and he was able to avoid them due to his knowledge of technology from growing up in District 3. In the last days of his Games, he used his knowledge to bait the remaining few tributes into the traps so they’d be electrocuted

Is dating Patricia “Patty” Blum, and fears that she’ll be reaped (and that he’ll have to mentor her). He’s hoping that once she’s no longer eligible to be reaped for the Games, he can ask her to marry him someday.

Beverly Marsh (District 8)

18 years old

Survived her Games aged 14 in a winter wasteland arena by grabbing a bag with a thermal sleeping bag and coat during the Bloodbath, then used her knowledge of textiles to scavenge and create shelter/line her clothes to keep warm. Killed one tribute right at the end when she was attacked, but for the most part survived just by outlasting the cold.

Has feelings for Ben Hanscom but it’s complicated...really complicated

Wants to be a fashion designer someday - since District 8 deals with textiles, she already has pre-existing knowledge and skill

Ben Hanscom (District 5)

18 years old

Won his Games aged 15; the Careers didn’t consider him a threat due to his size, and so he was mostly left alone. He survived by scavenging and keeping on the move, and when food in the arena became restricted by gamemakers, he lasted the longest without food. 

Has taken up poetry in his time since winning the Games in order to have something to focus on

Has a crush on Beverly Marsh and is trying to find a way to tell her of his feelings - though he’s also nervous about admitting it to her

Mike Hanlon (District 11)

18 years old

Won the Games last year aged 17; survived by scavenging, hiding and hunting for food, and left snares to trap the other tributes to weaken them. Only killed last few tributes, a Career pack, in self-defense.

The year he was Reaped, his name was in the bowl forty times due to the tesserae he had to sign up for in order to feed his family.

Because he’s the freshest out of his Games, he’s still dealing with survivor’s guilt - the last thing on his mind is relationships right now

This is his first year mentoring, and he’s terrified he’ll mess up - he doesn’t want to feel responsible for the death of more people

Other Characters

Patricia “Patty” Blum (District 3)

18 years old

Is dating Stanley “Stan” Uris and is very supportive of him; she understands how difficult mentoring is and knows that he did what he had to to survive during the Games

Is good friends with Richie Tozier - her, Stan and Richie are often seen hanging out in District 3 together

Wants to be a teacher someday

She’s honestly very kind and sweet, but she’s tougher than she looks - you have to be when you grow up in this world.

Audra Phillips (District 6)

18 years old

Won her Games the year after Beverly, aged 15; she survived by getting a surplus of sponsors who sent her everything she needed - food, water, medicine etc. Killed two people - one in revenge after they killed her alliance partner, one in a final showdown that she barely won and that left her bloody, bruised and beaten

Is literally a darling of the Capitol; she knows how to play the game and use their attention to her advantage. She doesn’t like it, but she does what she needs to in order to survive.

Is dating fellow Mentor/Victor Bill Denbrough; he mentored her during her Games, and she had a crush on him. This actually worked in her advantage during her Games - the Capitol love a good love story, and they went nuts when she whispered Bill’s name/wished aloud that she could see him

Insiders/News Pages

The two key accounts to follow during the Games? The official Hunger Games Updates account, of course, and Caesar Flickerman. You truly do not need to follow anyone else when it comes to updates, gossip and entertainment!

Official Hunger Games account - live updates on Reapings, parades, training scores, interviews, tribute casualties and what’s going on in the arena. Also gives updates on Victor Tours and mentor activity. This account is very professional and mostly-unbiased.

Caesar Flickerman - Caesar’s account. Tries to be unbiased, but this is all his own opinion, so you might see a slight focus on certain tributes or alliances. Caesar knows all the gossip of the Capitol and the Games - he’s your guy to go to for the juicier, more personal stuff. This account also posts clips and transcripts of tribute interviews.

The Masterlist will be uploaded soon and linked here!

[digimonnetwork-project]

Episode IV

Previous Episode

Leo’s Pride

Isamu was having lunch with the transfer student today.

Aki glanced over at Masato, noticing this fact as well. Mastato tapped his foot under the table, yeah, he knew Isamu had the right to sit wherever he wanted and talk to whoever he wanted, but he was spending an awful lot of time with the new girl.

“Do you think he’s going to stop hanging out with us?” Aki asked, worriedly adjusting his glasses with a disappointed frown, it wouldn’t have been the first time this happened to the duo.

Masato tapped his foot faster, “The least he could do is give us a proper ‘bye guys’ instead of this silent treatment.” The long haired boy huffed and tossed glare over at Imasu and Ju as they ate lunch together, “What does she have that we don’t?” He was more upset than Aki about this, he’d genuinely liked Isamu and believed that he’d stick around. After all the time they’d spent practicing for soccer and tryouts coming up soon...

Can’t be right all the time, Masato supposed.

Their comments did not go unheard, however, as it just so happened that Kaiyo Nakano was passing by their table with her bento box, “She’s got charm and wit, for one thing,” The brown haired girl said as she stopped and sat at their table with them, “And he’s smart and nice. Maybe they like each other.” She suggested.

“They’ve known each other for less than a week.” Masato pointed out, with an unimpressed sigh, “How could they possibly like each other that much?”

Kaiyo smiled and took a bite of her rice, “I haven’t known either of them very long, but I like them both just fine.” She announced.

Aki brushed some of his blond hair behind his ear, “That’s different, Nakano, you like everyone.”

“Just call me, Kaiyo. And I don’t see how that matters, there’s no waiting period to see if you like someone- unless” She started to snicker, “You thought I meant like-like!” Kaiyo giggled and broke into a laugh, “I just meant- he- she-! Haha guys and girls can just be friends you know!”

Masato and Aki stared at her, blushes rising to their cheeks as they realized how they’d misinterpreted her comment. Kaiyo wasn’t done teasing them though.

“Oh! But wait, what if they are in love!? Maybe they were star crossed lovers in a past life, bound to meet again and again in each lifetime, always to be torn apart, haha! It’s just like a Shoujo manga! Ha! Oh, don’t tell me, one of you is the reborn rival; here to win Ju away from him-wait not, it’s Isamu you’re upset about losing! Is he the love interest then?!”

“Th-that’s enough!” The pair sputtered in unison, making a few heads turn in their direction, but Kaiyo did manage to calm herself down before they drew too much attention.

Kaiyo chewed another bite of rice before speaking up again, “I don’t know Isamu very well, but when he served that detention for  Ms. Mazawa, he couldn’t stop talking about meeting you two at the park. He didn’t even mention that you were practicing soccer until I asked him, he just wanted to hang out with you.”

“R-really?” Aki asked, “Soccer is his favorite thing, he didn’t mention it at all?”

“Nope.” Kaiyo answered, “I know he’s been spending a lot of time with Ju the last few days, but she’s still adjusting to living in Japan, once she’s settled maybe Isamu will introduce the three of you. Who knows? Maybe you’ll like her too. Lord knows you boys could use a girl or two in your friend circle.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!?” Masato asked, Kaiyo giggled and continued her meal instead of answering.

Isamu and Ju stood from their table and started outside without emptying the remains of their lunch in the garbage bin. Masato stood up too, and started to follow them, leaving his lunch untouched on his table while Aki scarfed down a few bites and went after Masato, properly disposing of his lunch waste as he passed the bin.

Left alone at the table, with Masato apparently not hungry enough to care, Kaiyo reached into his bento box and swiped his dessert, “Well if he doesn’t want it.” She grinned.

Aki followed Masato into the court yard where they spotted Isamu and Ju sitting on a bench, looking over a nearby bush. More than anything, Aki wanted to tug on his friend’s sleeve and tell him to go back inside- whether it was just because whatever Isamu and Ju were doing was none of their business, or because he didn’t want to find out that Kaiyo was wrong about the situation, he wasn’t sure.

But he also knew that Masato wouldn’t stop, even if he did tug on his sleeve and insist they leave Isamu and Ju alone. They’re backs were to the approaching boys, both of them had put their lunch down and it looked as if they had decided to finish eating outside while the weather was still nice. Only Ju had her laptop resting on her knees, and Isamu appeared to be dropping bits of food into the bush.

Aki heard Ju speaking, “The Admins are all Tamers too,  but they don’t access the Network like everyone else, they program all city events, create new games, organize tournaments for the coliseum and monitor for bugs, all from the outside.”

“Do Tamers become Admins when they get too old?” asked a voice that came from the direction of Isamu, but didn’t sound like Isamu.

Ju shook her head, “No, Admins…I don’t really know actually, what qualifies someone to be an admin, I heard that the youngest admin is only seventeen.”

What in the world were they talking about?

Aki might have asked, but Masato was faster and bolder than him, and reached to tap Isamu on the shoulder, but in doing so came into Ju’s eye line. She gave a startled screech that made Isamu jump and shout in surprise. He whirled around, eyes wide searching for whatever had made Ju scream and his gaze settled on Masato and Aki, immediately relaxing.

However, it seemed he was not the only one looking. From the bush, three shapes leaped out at them, Aki screamed as a brown and red furry…thing knocked him to the ground, Masato gave a similar cry as two creatures, black and white dog-like animals, did the same to him.

“It’s alright Ju, we’ve got it, prepare the Digital con-” The white one on top of Masato started, but cut off when it realized that he was human and not…whatever it was expecting.

The creature on top of Aki noticed this detail too, and hopped off him, wide eyed and flashing a guilty look at Isamu. The brown haired boy fiddled with his goggles awkwardly “Er, Aki, Masato, I can explai-”

Aki didn’t give him a chance, once the initial shock was over he scrambled to his feet with a scream and made a break for the sports field. If he could make it passed to the road, maybe he could flag down a car or something. It flashed through Aki’s head that maybe he was being a bit of a wuss, but any thoughts about turning back to hear what Isamu had to say were dispelled the moment he realized Masato was running too.

Well, at least they were being wusses together.

“What the hell were those things!?” Aki shouted as he ran.

“I don’t know, I don’t care, just keep moving!” Masato replied.

Behind them, Aki heard Isamu call after them, “Guys wait!” They turned their head slightly to see that Isamu and Ju were both chasing after them, along with the three strange creatures that had jumped out of the bush at them.

It was the one that had landed on Aki, the cat-like animal with a red mohawk that shouted at them, “Watch out for the Digital gate!”

The what? Aki saw Masato turn his head back, and skid to a halt, but Aki wasn’t fast enough to stop and ran into him.  The force made them both tumble forward, into a strange distortion in the air he hadn’t seen until they were right on top of it. “Guys!” He heard Isamu shout before all sounds were cut off entirely.

Masato’s face planted into the ground, and was smooshed deeper into it when Aki landed on top of him. Dazed and confused it took Masato a moment to realize that he was not on school property anymore. Aki gave a terrified gasp at their surroundings.

All around them was blackness, a series of lines and dots lit the floor, going through a slow rainbow gradient. What Masato initially thought was a building, on closer inspection just seemed to be a block with no doors or windows. It almost looked like a Microchip. In the distance, Masato could just make out an outline of what appeared to be real buildings, a city of some sort.

Aki squeaked suddenly as Masato stared in awe, “Yeah, I’m seeing this, where are we?”

“N-no, Masato-” Aki tugged his sleeve and pointed across the strange space where a large furry creature stood glaring at them, “What is that thing?”

In response, the monster snarled, “Call me a thing, do you? I am Apemon! And I will crush all human parasites in the name of my Lord Nabermon!” The monster rushed them, as his name implied he was very apelike with wild yellow fur and a large bone strapped to his back.

“Masato!” Aki cried, clutching his sleeve.

The longer haired boy yanked him to his feet, “Run for it Aki!” He yelled, dodging to their right as the monster leaped into the air and brought his bone down like a club, completely obliterating the section of the floor they’d dropped onto only seconds ago and revealing more circuit-like lights underneath. Masato pushed Aki ahead of him, ducking behind one of the smaller block structures for momentary cover. “Go that way, I’ll draw it’s attention this way” Masato told him, pointing off in the direction of the distant city “When it’s clear you head back toward that gate thing Isamu mentioned!”

“”What about you!?” Aki gasped, clearly already out of breath from their previous flight.

Used to running for far longer, Masato waved his hand, “I can outlast you any day of the week, if I stay behind I can buy you enough time to get home and get help.”

“Like Isamu and the transfer student?” Aki asked.

Masato remembered the creatures that were with them, Isamu and Ju hadn’t seemed bothered by the presence, and, now that he was thinking about it, they must have been feeding them behind the bushes. Maybe those creatures could help. “Yeah, go find them, they can’t be far behind us.”

Right on cue, as if summoned by their names, Isamu, Ju and the creatures that accompanied them appeared through the gate. Apemon still stood between them and the two boys.

Isamu looked around in awe, “Is this the Digital world?” he asked.

“No,” Wemicmon replied, and pointed toward the far off city, “That’s the Network, over there, this entire plane is the dimension between our worlds. The Digital World is below us somewhere, I think.”

“Actually,” Ju corrected and pointed to a gateway across from the one they’d just come through, “The Digital World would be through there.”

Both of them fizzled in the air for a moment, they would close soon. Isamu feared for a second that if they missed their chance they might get stuck, but remembered that they could return to the real world through the Network.

“Where do you learn this stuff?” Isamu asked, quirking an eyebrow at her.

“I’ve been a Tamer for three years.” She reminded him with a smirk. “Don’t worry, you’ll pick it up.”

There was no need to open a Digital Construct in this space, so Isamu and Ju kept one eye on the battle while they searched the nearby area for Aki and Masato. It didn’t take long to find them, and give a brief explanation of where they were and what the Digimon were.

“But if we’re friends with these guys, why does the big one want to kill us for that lord Nabler- Nobba…” Aki struggled to remember the name that Apemon had called out earlier.

Isamu didn’t have the first clue what he meant, but Ju’s eyes narrowed as she thought about it, “Nabermon?” She asked.

“Yes!” Masato nodded, “That’s the one. Who is he?”

Ju didn’t answer, just pointed back to the Gate, “You two need to get back to the real world now. Isamu, you and I should lure the Digimon closer to the Network so we can call for backup.”

“What? Why, what’s happening?” Isamu asked, pulling down his goggles to scan the enemy Digimon.

Apemon was a champion level Vaccine Digimon, who used the bone club as his primary weapon. He didn’t seem that much different than the first enemy he and Wemicmon had faced together.

“Because if he’s with the Court of Demons we can’t afford to underestimate him.”

“The Court of what?” Masato asked.

“I’ll explain later, just get to the Gate!” Ju lifted her D-Gauntlet and punched in a code, activating a speed boosting item she had won in the Network. Cannismon and Leptomon began running faster, easily dodging Apemon’s attacks.

Isamu punched in his own code, he’d only played a few games at the City and mostly got more Digicures, but he did get one item that would be of use at the moment. Apemon wasn’t stupid, and realized that he would never catch the twins and turned on the much slower Wemicmon, the bone club swung down on him, but Isamu’s item activated a shield that deflected the blow.

The inventory menu on his D-Gauntlet had told Isamu that the basic shield item he won was only good for a single use in battle, he hoped they could get help on time.

“Fever claw!” Wemicmon shouted, slicing Apemon across the face and leaving a mark over his eye.

“Moon Surge!”

“Sun Blast!”  The twins attacked from either side of the yellow animal Digimon.

Their team attack usually worked like a charm, since their target could not defend against both attacks at once, but Apemon ducked low, “Metallic Fur!” He snarled, and the hairs on his body hardened to needles, shooting out and knocking the two canine Digimon out of the air.

Still on the ground, Wemicmon was spared the assault, but was also helpless to do anything to help his friends as Apemon’s fists caught flame next, “Magical Monkey Punch!” He shouted as he pumped them with his fire attack.

“Cannismon! Leptomon!” The golden haired Digimon shouted, his whole body began to glow “Lynx Fla-”

“Mega Bone Stick!”

Too slow to get out of the way in time, Wemicmon was thrown to the side by the blow. Cannismon and Leptomon were pinned to the ground by the needles and with Wemicmon out of the way the path was clear for Apemon to reach the children.

Wemicmon hopped back to his feet and dashed back toward the battle, but his Tamer knew he’d never make it in time.

Isamu swallowed hard, “Run!” he urged the others.

He grabbed Ju’s hand and dragged her away, they didn’t have time to call the Network for help they needed to get out of here and find a place to hide.

There wasn’t time for that either, and Isamu knew it, but if he could just buy a few seconds, maybe Aki and Masato could make it out. Apemon’s shadow loomed over him, he pulled on Ju’s arm and threw her ahead of him, hoping that maybe she could get out too.

“Isamu!” Wemicmon shouted, and his claws lit up for an attack but Isamu knew he was done for. He raised his hands to hide his face, it wouldn’t help but some instinct deeply rooted into human nature made him throw his arms up to block the attack. He knew he was going to die.

At least until his D-Gauntlet started reacting!

The light from his D-Gauntlet blinded Apemon, and the large Digimon stumbled back away from it. The device beeped wildly, and the boy shut his eyes against the light.

“Isamu! What did you press?” He heard Ju call over the beeping.

“I didn’t press anything!” He answered, Masato was running back toward them, reaching to pull Isamu back so they could escape, but Aki was staring out passed Apemon.

He pointed out where Isamu had last seen Wemicmon, “What’s happening to the cat guy?”

Isamu squinted, trying to see Wemicmon through the light of his D-Gauntlet, but couldn’t see him anywhere. It took him a moment to realize that the reason why was because Wemicmon was now glowing the same as his D-Gauntlet.

“Wemicmon Digivolve to…!”

A shape grew out of the smear of light that Wemicmon had become, growing taller, and bigger, the light quickly faded to reveal a new creature, similar to what Isamu had seen become of Scrofamon his first night in the Network.

“Nemaemon!”

The light faded from Isamu’s D-Gauntlet, and even Apemon had turned to see the new Digimon. He was the same color as Wemicmon, larger with a full mane, looking more like a lion. He had a belt wrapped around his torso that was keeping shoulder armor on Nameamon’s left arm, clothlike tendrils sprouted from his back between feathery patches of fur.

“His horn disappeared.” Isamu gaped, noticing that Wemic-no, Nemaemon’s face was far more cat-like than ever.

“Not going to comment on all those belts he’s suddenly wearing?”  Ju blinked.

“How about that he’s got to be like ten feet tall!?” Masato shouted in a near panic.

This detail was what Aki noticed too, and he shrunk back, “He’s not going to hurt us, is he?”

Apemon seemed to lose interest in the humans at the sight of the new challenger. Isamu dropped his goggles over his eyes again to read the scan data on his partner’s new form. Nemaemon,  mythical Digimon, Data type, Jungle Troopers. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, this was Wemicmon? How cool!

“Metallic fur!” Apemon shouted, shooting needles toward Namaemon, who simply ducked low and his new shell deflected the attack.

Nemaemon rushed the enemy, dropping to all fours and now fast enough to keep up, “Inferno Bane!” He said, body slamming the other Digimon, raising back to two feet and holding Apemon down while breathing fire into his face.

Apemon grunted with pain and picked up his bone.

“Mega Bone Sti-”

“Eclipse Snare!” Everyone had been watching Nemaemon in awe, and hadn’t noticed the twins recover from the attacks they’d endured. Apemon was bound tightly by the beams of light and darkness that Cannismon and Leptomon wrapped around him, “Nemaemon, now!” Cannismon hissed.

The lion-like Digimon didn’t need to be told twice, “Leo’s Pride!”  He raised a fiery fist, the flames shot out and took the form of a lion, running toward the trapped digimon and engulfing him in the fire.

“-Lord Nabermon, grant me-” Apemon dropped midsentence, knocked out completely, Isamu raised his D-Gauntlet and entered the sequence to convert Apemon to scan Data.

The Digimon pixelated and was drawn into the device, but more than that, the computer voice of the D-Gauntlet had an announcement, “Conversion completed. Map piece detected, would you like to view?”

“Um, not now.” Isamu said, Nemaemon stomped over to them and shrank back down to Wemicmon.

Isamu was a little disappointed at seeing his partner return to normal so soon, but at the same time, he knew he was having a hard enough time hiding Wemicmon, he’d never be able to keep Nemaemon out of sight.

He scooped up Wemicmon, “Let’s get out of here!” He said.

Nobody argued, Ju led the way out and the Digital gate closed behind them.

-

After the kids disappeared, a set of shadowy figures looked down at the former battle field, “You weren’t ever going to grant him the blessing of a Demon Lord were you?” The female figure said, almost with a laugh.

The bestial Digimon only grumbled in response, the clearest no that he could be bothered to give. That seemed to be enough because the woman did start to laugh.

“I thought so. So his mission was nothing but a wild goose chase them?” Again her companion did not give a real answer, but that didn’t seem to matter to her, “Oh well, those Tamers didn’t seem to be too experienced. Only one of them evolved their partner. A Digimon who cannot beat such fledglings is not worth of the scum beneath our feet, let alone our blessing”

“Indeed” The other replied, speaking for the first time, and turning away, “Come then, Mephistomon will want a real candidate selected soon…”

-

Back in the real world, Masato resisted the urge to drop to the ground and start kissing the grass after their close call. Aki said nothing, but his face was still white as a sheet, so Masato put on a brave face and was the first to speak as they started to wander back to where Isamu had Ju had been feeding their Digimon.

“So...A Digital Gate, huh?” It was sort of a pathetic question, but at least it wasn’t total awkward silence.

Isamu continued to carry Wemicmon, who yawned sleepily in his arms, “Yeah, they connect our world to the one we just came from” He said, and nodded to Ju, “She knows more about it than I do, I’ve only been a Tamer for a little while.”

“That’s pretty much the gist of Digital Gates. It's kind of weird, though...” She commented, “I’ve never seen two Digital Gates open up so close together. Back in Beijing they always appeared months apart.”

They reached the bench and Isamu set Wemic down so he could rest after his battle. He lifted his D-Gauntlet in amazement, he’d been able to make Wemicmon Digivolve to champion. That was incredible! Ju said that she’d had her partners for three years and she hadn’t been able to do that.

The corners of the screen glowed in sequence, a new code he needed to memorize, Isamu mouthed along with it, top right, top left, left, bottom right, top loft again.” He fished his pen out of his pocket and wrote that sequence down on his hand so he could transfer it to his notebook later.

He’d ask Ju about that after school maybe, but right now they had a lot of questions to answer from Aki and Masato, and not a lot of time to explain. Lunch break would be over soon. Even with the two of them telling the story together it was clear that the boys didn’t fully understand, Isamu didn’t blame them, he had first had experience as a Tamer and he still wasn’t sure he understood it all.

“Could we be Tamers?” Masato asked excitedly, as he paced back and forth in the courtyard “Where do we find Digimon partners?”

“How do we get the D-Gauntlets?” Aki pushed his glasses up, showing extreme interest in this, which was sort of a surprise for him.

“There’s always Digimon in the Network who are looking for Tamers.” Ju said, “Maybe you could talk to them sometime this weekend, you might get lucky.”

“Can they get into the Network without an ID?” Isamu asked as Aki and Masato quietly celebrated the idea of maybe becoming a Tamer like their friend.

Ju shrugged, as they reached the bench they’d started at “I don’t know, but I didn’t want them running off to go looking for a partner. We have until the weekend to figure something out.” She checked the time on her D-Gauntlet and slung her bag back off her shoulders, pulling her laptop out to check her email.

“So what kind of Digimon are there in the Network?” Masato asked, “I want to partner with someone cool, like Nemaemon.”

“Aw, shucks, I’m not that cool.” Wemicmon blushed, Isamu rolled his eyes and ruffled his Digimon’s mohawk earring a squawk of protest.

“All kinds of Digimon,” Ju shrugged, “But remember I said you might get lucky, just because you meet someone cool doesn’t mean you’ll get to be partners. I’ll talk to a few of them tonight and see if anyone’s interes-” She cut off suddenly and her eyes narrowed at the sight of something on her screen, “Isamu, have you checked your email recently?” She asked.

“No, why?” Ju pointed her screen toward him, Aki and Masato exchanged confused looks.

Isamu read the email out loud.

Urgent, do not enter the Network. All Digimon and Tamers be advised that the Court of Demons is planning a strike against the Network this week. A new Firewall is being programmed to shield most damage, but as a precaution, if you are not an Admin, please do not put yourself at risk by coming to the Network.

Gray.

He glanced at Ju, with a startled blink “Gray, like, as in the legendary Tamer, Gray?”

She nodded, “This is the same email he contacted me from three years ago.” Ju went back to her inbox where several more emails with subject lines warning them to stay out of the Network were waiting.

“The Court of Demons,” Aki repeated, “You said something about those guys earlier…who are they?”

The bell summoning them back to class rang, cutting short their conversation. Ju stood up, closing her laptop and putting it back in her bag, “The bad guys.” She said, “No one’s going to the Network until we get an all clear. Being a Tamer isn’t a game, so you’d better think hard about if you really want to do it.” She added with a note of finality and packed up so they could go.

Aki and Masato turned to Isamu for an explanation, but this was the first he had heard of this Court, the Digimon looked frightened though.

“We should head back.” he said, moving Wemicmon back into the bush,Cannismon and Leptomon ducked into it too, where they would hide until school was out and their Tamers came to pick them up.

As they passed by the fountain in the middle of the courtyard, the trio  continued to talk quietly about the Digimon and failed to notice a small shape swimming in the water. A small furry face poked out to stare after the group, at a particular boy.

“I found him!” A feminine voice said, and brown eyes sparkled happily, “My Tamer!”

Next Episode

[merrickwccd]

i am flesh & i am bone.

who / merrick wood, mentions of the others, those who’ve taken her ( rip them, tbh. )  what / taken hostage, merrick finds herself fighting - not for herself, but for everyone else. 

what do you know. 

she had laughed, the first time they had asked. what would she know? she was a kid, dumb and irresponsible and it was somehow incredible that they’d managed to get her with the others instead of on her own. these guys were behind the times - if they had found her wandering around on her own, it could have been days, weeks before anyone but holly even noticed she was gone. 

holly. it was the constant reminder of her sister that made her determined to get out - escape, somehow, her mouth dry from the dehydration. they’d stopped giving her water as often after she spit in the eye of one of them, which - 

okay, fair, but also, they had tied her up and demanded things of her as if she’d know the answers. used her knives against her, skin shining red with her own blood, handprints on her face that took hours to stop throbbing. 

she knew what she was getting into. she knew what holly would say if she was there - it was almost a game, at first. her sisters voice - be quiet, merrick, give them what they want and they’ll let you go. merrick, hold your water, you’ll pass out if you go too long without it. merrick, stay still, let them think they have no hold over you, you can outlast them. 

just like if her sister was there, she ignored most of the fictional holly’s advice. she screamed, loudly and for hours, the first night. it was easier than most would anticipate - those years of cheering on the sidelines of riverside trained her, gave her the muscles she needed to make her voice heard. if colette and vic heard her - well, they didn’t join in, but she could be loud enough for them. 

who’s in charge.

another question she’d answered with a smirk, a smart ass “who said it ain’t me?”, another slap across the face. there was blood, at one point, when she spit out what was in her mouth - she was sure they had somehow dislodged an old crown, her scowl evident never once leaving her face. 

she wasn’t going to let them see. she wasn’t going to let them know. 

but they were good. whether they knew isolating her would drive her crazy, or it was just a lucky coincidence, merrick hadn’t been on her own in this long in....months. years, really - though she’d had her own bedroom most of her life, she was always around people. but now she shared a sleeping space with colette, and at night, when the world went even darker, she was left wondering how her roommate was. if she was holding up - if she was okay. 

her imagination had always been active, and it brought her a small comfort to envision what had happened when mav returned. how holly, god - her sister would probably be devestated, torn down and broken, but fletcher would take care of her. demand she rest, keep her from storming the gates to find her herself. yale - well, merrick hadn’t seen yale express more than vague boredom and disinterest, but there was a fire there, a twin flame not unlike merrick’s own. if there was a rallying cry, a team to come rescue them, yale would be leading the way. not for her, of course - but for colette. 

merrick understood. 

she wondered who would be sent to come rescue them - would fletch come, so fragile and still learning? she and colette, they both had more agile bodies, years of cheerleading between them had kept them limber and flexible, their masks of war strikingly familiar on the battlefield. colette was the darkness to her light, and they hadn’t been able to pull free. 

would mav come back for them? would he lead a team? he was injured, surely, there was no way he could have gotten away without an injury - 

and then it hit her. what if he didn’t go back at all? what if he was taken care of on his way back, before he was even able to let her sister know? what if he chickened out, unable to let those who would miss them know?

what if holly had no idea merrick was imprisoned, that it had been against her own will that she hadn’t returned? would she think she just left her, ventured out and done something stupid and reckless that left her unable to return? 

“i’m sorry,” she whispered quietly to herself, though in her dehydration, she wasn’t alone. hallucinations, she was sure, holly’s vibrant halo of blonde resting against her lap as she whispered the words. “i’m so sorry, hol, i promise i’m coming back. i promised i wouldn’t leave you.” 

it hurt to cry, her bones aching and her skin stretched taught - she needed water, and they surely wouldn’t deprive her forever, but this was hardly a four seasons. it wasn’t even the serene fairvale - they were prisoners, and merrick could feel the emotional bottom drop out as the reality of her situation hit her. 

she could very well die. she could die without ever getting to hug her sister again, without seeing colette’s bright smile, without throwing softballs around with fletcher, without a single person knowing where she was. 

the howl that escaped her was unlike anything she’d ever made before, a pure animal reaction to her distress, and even the guard who was standing by, ensuring she didn’t try anything stupid, seemed startled. but it was all she could do, heaving sobs that wrecked through her small frame - her form already bordering on too thin from lack of nutrition, her vague suicidal inclinations turning against her now. 

for the first time in everything, she felt truly hopeless.

her eyes trailed over the walls closed around her, her breathing coming in short gasps as the tears left her - her body depleted of any real ability to create tears. her sister’s shadow, the hallucination that she had conjured - holly in her favorite dress from when they were kids, french braid in her hair and that smile that made logan fall in love with her despite being with merrick - she was the only thing merrick could focus on. 

“you can’t give up on me, kiddo,” she said, a hollow sound that merrick could only try and blink away, hiding her face against her knees. but her mind - so broken and shattered already, it refused to let her give up. “you didn’t give up on me, merrick,” she said quietly, “i’m not about to give up on you. hold on a little while more, okay?” 

merrick wanted to shake her head ‘no’ - she was tired, she was so tired and she was so weary and why was it always going to get worse and worse and never better? what did it matter if she lived another five years when this was what she had to live through? what was the point of existing when she didn’t know where her family was - her father was dead, her mother unknown, her favorite aunt probably a million miles away. she didn’t have her friends - the ones she’d known inside out. logan, ethan, lulu, gigi - none had been in riverside, no evidence that any of them had been there in years. 

why did she still have to keep living when no one else did? 

“because you’re the strongest person i know,” holly’s vision reminded her, and merrick let out a scoff, rolling her eyes. her brain was delirious, that was why this was happening, but she couldn’t help but yearn - she wanted holly, the real holly, to brush her hair off her face, to help clean her off, to tuck her into bed and listen to soft songs with her until they both passed out. 

“you can do this, merrick.” 

no, i can’t. 

“you’re going to get out of this, merrick.”

no, i’m not. 

“do you love me?” 

you know i love you.

“would you do anything for me?”

you know i would do anything for you. 

“then you’ll get out of this. there’s no other option, merry. you have to come back to me. you have to make it out alive. and if anyone can get through this, it’s you.” 

merrick wanted to badly for the words to ease her mind, like a salve over her throbbing wounds, but she couldn’t quite find it in herself to believe them. 

she was going to die in here. there was no doubt in her mind - unless she could figure out some sort of heroic move, she was going to die. and then holly - 

“no,” she said, the guard loitering turning to look at her for the first time in hours. her voice had been croaked, but loud, firm, and she sniffled a little, wincing as she wiped away the evidence of her breakdown. 

holly would not be alone. not like this, not now. merrick would find her way out. 

she had to. 

for holly. 

[unholyhelbig]

Hizzie Summertime AU. Beach+smut? And feel free to do whatever you want with that because I trust you completely since you are amazing!!

Read on AO3 | Send me more Legacies Prompts 

Title: Braving the Storm 

Ship: Hope Mikaelson/ Lizzie Saltzman 

[a/n: aight’ go easy on me please, I haven’t written smut in over a year and I’m BAD at it] 

The Rain had begun to fall sideways; the type of downpour that stung against raw skin and soaked through every inch of fabric until it felt like the very bones inside of her body was encased in a block of cloudy ice.

Hope Mikaelson had made a lot of terrible choices in her life. When she was fourteen she played spin the bottle on Tommy Hart’s deck and ended up with a drool-coated make-out session that left her until face red and raw. In 9th grade she tried to outdo all the other boys in her gym class by climbing the rock wall without a harness- she was fine, of course, but still ended up with a month’s detention for her stunt.

And right now; as she stood in the center of an impending hurricane, she knew she had made another terrible choice. Because the waves had gotten twice her height and she had stupidly believed that the brawn of the storm wouldn’t touch upon the shore until later. Hope had either last track of time or had horribly misjudged the large rolling clouds that rumbled towards the small beach town.

A hurricane had the clearance to empty an entire tourist-filled boardwalk. People rushed towards grocery stores and panic-bought anything that was there. Bread and water always left the shelves first, and then milk- which Hope never really understood because power didn’t last long with winds like this. Then the snack food would dwindle and so would the alcohol because everyone needed something to do when they were trapped inside of their houses.

Hope had successfully loaded up her surfboard on the roof of an old blue jeep, her hands numb from the cold onslaught of water that rinsed away whatever salt had brined her skin. Another crack of lightning washed across the sky in an intricate pattern before rumbling thunder followed. And her keys- she couldn't find her keys.

The palm trees started to hiss under the pressure thrown at them and Hope pushed falling drops away from her eyes as a beach umbrella, not tied down fully by its owner, folded like a piece of notebook paper barely scribbled on. Her skin felt numb, and so did her mind. There was no way she could get home in this.

She scanned the stretch of novelty shops, their lights all dimmed if not shut off entirely. There was a pizza place that had used slats of wood to cover up the vulnerable glass- and a shop that sold customized air-brush t-shirts. Each and everyone looked desolate and abandoned long ago. The news vans had scared everyone away and Hope suddenly wished they had done the same for her too.

Another gust of wind pressed rain deeper into her skin and a nearby palm tree, already bent under the current, finally snapped with a shattering crack, louder than any thunder had been. She smelt smoke and saw the red and orange sparks as bark sizzled against now-damaged power lines.

Hope doesn’t know if she screamed or not, couldn’t register it against her own fear, or the fact that the waves had gotten up to the docks and were tearing them apart from the threshold. She struggled to find her keys and her own breath against the hollowed wind.

The world blurred and her eyesight became fuzzy, and Hope wasn’t exactly sure if it was because of the storm, or her fear, or the pure way that her heart was pounding- but the taste of rain and the stinging feeling of hot sand against her skin was the last thing she could remember before everything faded to black.

Hope awoke without warning. Her throat was raw and tasted thickly of salt and dirt. She didn’t want to admit that her entire body ached, because that wasn’t in her nature- not in the slightest. But a sharp wave of pain disregarded her entirely.

She blinked away the drowsiness and took in her surroundings; the wind howled like a wronged spirit just past the four walls that she was situated in. There were shelves lined with shirts, and a few bubble wrapped snow globes that were settled with snow. She was strung across a ratty old sofa that smelled like it had been soaked in air freshener and her wet suit was hung across the edge of a bookcase.

Her hands moved against her mostly nude body in a fit of panic and then pain. She was wearing a large t-shirt that stretched past her knees and had a printed hermit crab and obnoxious blue writing that read “Shell Yeah, Beaches”. Thankfully her underwear was spared as well.

Hope scoffed and pulled herself onto her elbows. The rain still roared outside and a pair of foggy storm doors were held shut with a couple of sandbags against the bottom of the panes. Green light shaded everything in the back stock room. Her head was throbbing.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” Hope moved her eyes across the room to another door, a wooden one that leads to a large windowed store that she couldn’t distinguish from the rest of them on the boulevard. “You got hit in the head pretty hard, though. I was starting to get worried.”

A girl, a beautiful girl shrouded in the emerald light of the storm stood with a bottle of unopened water. Her blonde hair was pulled into a loose bun and a t-shirt, branded with a fancy crest and the words Myrtle Beach, stood at attention. Her eyes were what stuck with Hope the most, reflecting such raw concern.

“What happened?” Her voice was scratchy and foreign to her ears.

“Well, if I’m reading the situation correctly. You ignored every single warning on television, and by the national guard, and by whatever higher power created the hurricane in the first place by going out to catch some waves.” The girl closed the space between them and uncapped the water before shoving it Hope’s way.

Hope remembered that part just fine. “I lost my car keys.”

“And you got knocked out by an Umbrella. Drink all of that.”

She eyed the water warily but took a few sips before the cold numbed her throat and she lowered the bottle. The stranger seemed to be satisfied enough, she took it back before setting it to the side. Hope moved until she was situated at the end of the sofa.

“Thank you,” Her voice was slight and whispered. “I was being stupid and I could have died and… thank you, it’s not often you meet a kind stranger. Not here.”

She nodded and Hope would like to think that she understood. Would like to think that she would rush out into the storm to save someone she didn’t know too- but some part of her knew that with conditions like this in a city like this, she probably wouldn’t.

“I’m Lizzie,” The girl finally said.

“Hope,”

“Well, Hope, it looks like we might be here for a while. Garden City flooded completely.” She looked around the stock room, taking in the escape routes in case the water decided to rise too far and push against the inside of the store. “I’ve been listening to an old radio but that’s about to go out too.”

Hope let out a small groan and moved her head around. Her neck was stiff and there was a ringing in her right ear. She wondered if she had the imprint of a beach umbrella on the side of her face, and she wondered even more how Lizzie got her out of that wet suit. Her cheeks were suddenly red and eyes dark.

“Wait- did you see me naked?”

Lizzie lifted a perfectly sculpted eyebrow and plopped down on the couch next to Hope. A healthy amount of dust pooled into the air. “You were going to catch your death if you stayed in that thing- and I swear up and down that I didn’t look intentionally.”

Hope chuckled and the sound was soft. “Did you at least like what you saw?”

The near-stranger stopped mumbling through her sentences and drew in a sharp breath. Those deep eyes bore into her own and Hope felt a chill rush through her. She knew how to outlast a hurricane- everyone who lived in this city did. And the lack of alcohol, and in this case, power, sparked something odd into her.

“I mean, did you, I’m not trying to. Isn’t it an intrusion to?” Lizzie took a deep breath to still her words. “You’re very beautiful.”

“Mm,” Hope hummed and ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t know if I got a concussion or not, but this whole knight in shining armor thing is very alluring.”

“Is it?” Lizzie had a bit of an edge to her voice and even in the greyish green light, they grew deeper in color.

Hope found herself leaning closer, over the middle cushion of the sofa. Because this was irrefutably her worst idea yet. For once, someone else had saved her, even if it was from a rainbow-colored beach umbrella. She considered it a win. She also considered the way Lizzie smelled light of lavender and rustic like the rain that had dried against her clothes.

Lizzie closed the distance between the two of them, her fingers soft against the edge of Hope’s chin. She tasted fresh, and her touch was gentle but rushed. Lizzie wicked her other hand through damp hair and bit down against her bottom lip, coaxing a moan from Hope’s chest.

Lizzie’s hand was moving, sliding evenly across her neck before resting close to her collarbone and she moved closer. In one fluid motion, Hope was suddenly being straddled, legs on either side of her as they pushed into the cushions of the couch.

Hope bucked forward under the weight and Lizzie pulled back slightly, “Let’s not get too excited-“She instructed and Hope nodded, feeling a pang at the loss of warmth that now hung between them.

The blonde went back to work, this time moving her lips to the nave of Hope’s neck, biting and nipping lightly at her pulse point as the shorter girl growled in anticipation, leaning her head against the back of the couch. This girl was a tease- a skilled, but strong mannered tease.

She hadn’t noticed the way Lizzie’s hand moved across the contours of her skin, and the hot molten trails that each finger left behind as she neared the edge of her underwear. The fabric was cold and slightly damp from the wet suit, but even Hope could tell that that was nothing more than an excuse.

“God Lizzie, Please-“Hope mumbled, breathy and barely audible.

Her cheeks flushed to a different shade of red, she had never been one to beg. But as Lizzie's touch dropped between her legs she couldn’t help but squirm. Fingers traced evenly against her folds and a jolt of excitement moved through her like blood.

“What was that?” Lizzie snarled.

“I need you,” Hope panted out.

“Need me to what?”

She was starting to get frustrated, wanting to lift her hips, finally getting the sensation that she craved. But the patient look on Lizzie’s face was enough for her to struggle in steadying her breath, her words were still ragged “I need you to fuck me.”

The grin against Lizzie’s lips was animalistic and dark as she smiled into a biting kiss, she expertly pressed into Hope with a flowing motion akin to relief, two fingers working inside of her in a steady tempo that seemed to match up with her increasing heart rate.

Hope whimpered into Lizzie’s mouth, the sensation vibrating through her in the same rush that this morning had; that same edge of danger and content that standing at the edge of the ocean while storm clouds subtly rolled in and black waves towered over her.

“Fuck,” Hope snarled, dragging both of her hands down Lizzie’s back, not caring how the fabric of the shirt felt under her nails. The taller woman increased her tempo, and Hope took to arching her back throat tight with the rhythm of a snare drum. “Please…”

“Please what, Hope?”

She glowered at the woman straddling her; because Lizzie had all the power. Had every inch of it. She was cocky and snide and Hope thought that if they met under other circumstances she wouldn’t be the one pinned down.  “Let me cum”

Lizzie gave her a pointed look and slowed her movements.

“Please,” She repeated, this time softer, with less anger.

Lizzie seemed satisfied enough and worked her fingers harder than she had before, pressing inside of her until Hope felt like she couldn’t quite breathe right, and the stars in her eyes began to circle like a constellation. She pulled herself forward, nose pressed against the side of Lizzie’s neck as she stifled a moan against her hair.

Hope tightened around Lizzie’s fingers and breathed in that same alluring scent of sweet and rain-soaked bliss. She resisted the urge to bit down on something and instead pulled Lizzie closer as she let out a sigh of content, but just as quickly began to ache as the abundance of touch was pulled away.

“That was one hell of an introduction,” Hope panted, swallowing back the taste in her mouth as Lizzie smirked like a wolf. Devious but ever so captivating. Both of her hands were on Hope’s shoulders before she reached to the side and grabbed the half-empty bottle.

“Drink the rest of this,” She commanded and Hope rolled her eyes, “I’m serious, you might have a concussion and-“

Hope shook her head and grasped the collar of Lizzie’s shirt, pulling her close, breath hot on the side of her cheek. “I’m fine.” She rumbled pushing Lizzie away from her gently until the taller woman was laying on her back, despite the musty sofa and the cold rain the poured outside. She ignored the headache and straddled the girl's stomach.

“I think it’s your turn, Lizzie. On one condition.”

Hope traced her fingers against Lizzie’s collarbone, her breath picking up and eyes darting frantically in an attempt to read the misty expression on her face. “And what’s that?”

“I hope you remember how to beg,”