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rosie-b · 1 year ago

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True Blue

Chapter 11: Going for Gold (in the bad luck tournament)

“You’ve decoded the Grimoire?”

Marinette’s face grew warm as she tried to explain. “No, no, but I looked at the pictures in it and I think I managed to isolate the ingredients for a possible cure. M. Agreste didn’t want me to, so please don’t tell him,” she begged.

Nathalie sat down. “But you managed to figure out a solution? How? Listen, I won’t tell M. Agreste, but it’s very important that you tell me exactly what you’ve been doing. I might be able to help you.”

You can read the rest on AO3 or below!

It was becoming painfully clear that making potions wasn’t Marinette’s strong suit.

She’d made several different versions of the rock/gold/feather mixture she’d finally determined was what the Grimoire’s pictures hinted to on several different days. She didn’t exactly have the right ingredients, but then, she couldn’t tell what those were without a written translation of the book. Instead, she’d tried mixing chalk dust or tiny pebbles, gold-colored links from old bracelets, and ground-up pigeon feathers in various combinations.

So far none of her mixtures seemed to have worked, not that she’d had a real way to test them other than spooning a tiny amount into a vial necklace, wearing it all day, and seeing if it did anything to alleviate her symptoms. Which it didn’t.

Marinette wasn’t going to give up! It was just... well, her methodology needed to change. If wearing her hodgepodge brews in a vial necklace wouldn’t work, then maybe ingesting the potions would.

There was only one problem with that theory: Marinette did not want to ingest ground rocks, gold, or feathers. Maybe it worked for the witches of the past, but it just didn’t seem healthy to her modern sensibility.

Well, maybe she could ask M. Agreste for the proper ingredients and get the potion to work that way!

But he hadn’t been exactly supportive of her idea when she’d introduced it to him, and she didn’t want to upset him by insinuating that she knew more about the Miraculous than he did.

Still, he had access to resources (like money) that she did not, and without his help, she honestly doubted that she would ever get her hands on meteorite dust, molten gold, or a peacock feather (although come to think of it, she could always steal one from the zoo).

It was with this storm of nervous thoughts in her head that Marinette made her way into the Agreste mansion on Friday. Nathalie gave her the three pills she took every morning, and Marinette downed them without hesitation. She was used to the routine by now, and though it helped less every day, she was grateful to M. Agreste for his generosity in doing what he could to offer a cure.

“Marinette,” a voice called, faint and far-off to Marinette’s ears. “Marinette,” the voice called again, and she looked up from the dark wood of the desk.

“Hmm?” she asked pleasurably.

Nathalie sighed. “I asked if you were feeling good enough to help M. Agreste with another akuma today. He’s tentatively scheduling it for an hour before Adrien comes back from school.”

Marinette squinted her eyes to keep Nathalie’s features from swimming together like a Picasso painting. “That sounds fine. You know I don’t have any reason to say no to helping.”

Setting her tablet down, Nathalie looked closely at Marinette. “Maybe you’ve committed to helping M. Agreste, but you don’t need to do it at the expense of your health. You aren’t getting better, Marinette. You’ve been getting worse — don’t bother denying it. Don’t feel like you need to be in every fight, either; an irregular schedule keeps Golden Bug and Chat Grise on their feet. I can tell M. Agreste that you need more time to catch up on schoolwork, so you don’t need to worry about upsetting him, if that’s what’s keeping you.”

I wouldn’t be getting worse if I could just get the cure to work, Marinette thought.

It must have been out loud, if Nathalie’s face was anything to go off of.

“You’ve decoded the Grimoire?”

Marinette stared. Was Ms. Sancoeur lying to try to get some kind of confession from her? Was she going to be fired and summarily banned from ever talking to Adrien again for this?

Nathalie held her gaze patiently, looking truly concerned about Marinette’s attempts.

“Fine, I’ll tell you,” Marinette decided. “The ingredients are meteorite dust, molten gold, and an element from the animal represented by the kwami of the broken Miraculous; in this case, that’s a peacock feather. Since I don’t have any of those three things, I’ve been using substitutions. I ground them up, mixed them into a potion, and put them into this vial necklace. I wore it for days and tried different mixtures, but it hasn’t helped. I’m afraid that M. Agreste was right, after all.”

“If you haven’t been using the right ingredients, then we can’t make that jump just yet. M. Agreste and I,” she said, and her voice trembled ever so slightly, “We’ve been trying to find a solution ever since Emilie fell ill. Any idea is a breakthrough worth considering and testing in full. If you could prove your hypothesis to M. Agreste, it would do more than guarantee your health. It could heal Emilie and remove our need for the other Miraculous! You would win the fight without throwing a punch. Well,” she snorted, “With a few punches. But I do think that this is the best possible outcome.”

Marinette hesitated. “Really?”

She wasn’t ready to take hope back into her heart yet. M. Agreste had been against her idea, and he had had a good reason for it. Who was she, a girl who’d only recently learned about the Miraculous’ existence, to advise Hawk Moth himself? To go against the wisdom of a man who had spent years in search of a cure for his beloved wife and son?

But Nathalie, though she’d just looked more excited and energetic than Marinette had ever seen her before, looked solemn as she nodded. “Really. We’ll keep it a secret from M. Agreste for now, but I will provide you with the ingredients and we’ll finish making the cure. Then we can decide if it was a fool’s quest or not. You have found a new path to success, Marinette. That is no small thing.”

Finally believing her words, Marinette let a smile creep across her face. Could she really have figured out the way to end this ongoing fight? Save Emilie, and maybe at least one of the other parents, too?

There was still the matter of Adrien, and the other senti-children, too. But that was more a matter of protection than anything else. And Adrien might call himself her knight, but Marinette was the one fighting as his soldier, secret and steadfast in her mission. She would make sure no one hurt him or used his origins against him, ever.

__*__*__*__*__

The ingredients arrived that afternoon, just before the akuma attack. Nathalie had the Gorilla, who did not know their purpose, deliver them to Marinette’s house, and reassured her that nothing bad would come from her trying to make the cure once again.

Then it was time to face the so-called heroes.

The akuma today, which Marinette had eventually convinced Nathalie to let her help with, was a little boy who had wanted a lollipop. “Gigantitan,” Hawk Moth had named it.

Marinette privately wondered why Hawk Moth had bothered keeping this akuma, when it had been meant for the man across the street, not the literal baby. The butterfly had been diverted from its course by the strength of the baby’s emotions, and the baby had agreed to Hawk Moth’s offer of powers, so she supposed it must be okay. Still, something about it seemed off.

“Hey, Miss Blue,” Golden Bug greeted her as she arrived on the scene of the akuma battle. “Skies been matching your color recently?”

Chat Grise slid under the akuma’s giant foot as it stomped on a playground swing set and wailed in disappointment.

“No, but I think her emotions have been. Look at her face,” she murmured in the same quiet voice as usual.

Golden Bug clucked as Bluewing tried to steel her face and hide her emotions. “Oh, being a villain got you feeling blue? What a pity,” he remarked as he signaled some sort of plan to Chat Grise, who nodded and leapt off. “Maybe switching to the right side would let you feel light as a feather again!”

He tossed his yo-yo towards Chat Grise, clearly intending to make a tripwire to bring Gigantitan down with.

“Turn around!” Bluewing called up to Gigantitan. But Gigantitan must not have heard her, because he kept moving forward.

Mildly desperate and doubting Hawk Moth’s ability to control a months-old baby, Bluewing rushed forward and shoved Golden Bug towards the end of his yo-yo string. The tripwire collapsed, but now Golden Bug was directly in Gigantitan’s path and would probably get smushed in a few seconds.

Realistically, Marinette should be cheering about that fact, because hey, maybe he would give up his Miraculous after this to avoid getting stepped on by an oversized toddler again!

Unfortunately, no one had told Marinette’s heart this. It was crying out in agony that oh, the love of her life was about to be crushed under that oversized toddler’s foot! Wasn’t that awful? How could she just let this happen!? and so she swooped forward, unable to resist the impulse to pull Golden Bug out of the danger zone, not that he needed her help.

Before she could reach him, he was already pushing himself up, and he used his yo-yo to swing over to where his partner stood. They shot Bluewing twin scowls as she belatedly realized (while tripping over her disloyal feet) that she’d played herself, and now, lying on her back where her enemy had just been, she was the one about to get crushed by a toddler’s onesie-clad foot.

Adrien, I’m so sorry, she thought, and hoped that getting stepped on by a baby wouldn’t hurt as bad as getting trapped under the Eiffel tower had.

She never found out.

Golden Bug’s yo-yo wrapped around her waist and pulled her out of the danger zone just before Gigantitan’s foot touched down. Bluewing had a few seconds to feel relieved, but Chat Grise immediately seized her fan and broke it, ruining the moment.

She’d done that during nearly every single battle Bluewing had been in, and Marinette couldn’t blame her, although it was a little bit annoying. She’d finally learned a technique where a fan could be helpful in a fight (from Avatar: The Last Airbender, but who was counting), and losing her fan still made her feel like a failure. Well, more like a failure.

“Lucky Charm!”

Golden Bug’s call snapped Bluewing back into action, and she dove to grab whatever object he’d summoned this time before he could. A giant plastic lollipop smacked her in the forehead, and she fell to the ground, dazed.

“Sorry, Miss Blue,” Golden Bug chuckled as he bent over her to pick up the Lucky Charm, “I’m guessing this means you couldn’t tell the difference between good and evil if it smacked you in the face!”

Bluewing groaned as Chat Grise and Golden Bug struggled to lift the fake lollipop up and wave it in front of Gigantitan. She could forgive a bad pun here and there, but did he have to look so stupidly handsome while he was telling them?

The akuma was defeated before Marinette pushed herself up to stand on wobbly legs. A friendly swarm of ladybugs flew around her as Golden Bug’s Cure healed her injuries, and as they left, she saw the hero her enemy catch the baby who’d been akumatized as he fell from the air.

“Ooh, was that an exciting big fall? Was that fun?” he asked the baby in a playful tone, and the baby gurgled happily. Chat Grise, standing by her partner, dangled a real lollipop she’d asked a vendor for in front of the baby, and he went cross-eyed as he grabbed for it. Golden Bug laughed and held the toddler close to his chest as they walked over to a woman who must have been his mother, and her grateful praise faintly reached Marinette’s ears as she turned to go back to the mansion.

It was just another victory for the false heroes; another failure for the real ones.

Marinette let herself fall along with her transformation as soon as she reached the safety of the mansion.

Hawk Moth, frowning, informed her that she should come back for further training that night.

__*__*__*__*__

It was almost dark when she reached the mansion that evening. The pale pink hue of the clouds was fading from them, and the sky was mostly dark except for a few pockets of blue near the clouds.

Marinette watched the darkness spread and tried to hold onto the courage she’d found that afternoon, after the battle. She’d gone home and begun work on the possible cure with the ingredients from Nathalie; mixed the meteorite dust with the peacock feather and added gold, heated up by the Bunsen burner Nathalie had sent with it.

This mixture didn’t come out looking like the others had. It was glittering gold, and there had been a little blue puff of smoke as Marinette added the final ingredient. After it had cooled down a little, she’d put some of the potion in her vial, whispering a short prayer — was it a prayer? — under her breath as she put the necklace on.

Repair the damage, please repair the Miraculous damage!

She’d felt a wave of relief hit as the vial brushed against her skin, and her legs had strengthened immediately. Suddenly, she wasn’t afraid of falling over at the lightest breeze; she knew that she could run and jump like a kid on a playground and not worry about her muscles suddenly weakening, or that a wracking cough would overtake her as she spoke to her friends.

This time, the cure had worked.

Now, she had to be brave enough to tell M. Agreste that it had.

“I’m disappointed in your work today at the fight,” he began as soon as she stepped into the dojo, not even waiting for her to say hello. “It was sloppy on both of our parts, I suppose.”

“It would have gone better if the baby hadn’t attracted the akuma to himself,” Marinette offered, keeping one hand in her pants pocket.

Gabriel hummed. “It would have. But you should have protected yourself from the menaces better. The cat broke your fan, and you didn’t even make a move to stop her.”

“I was still trying to process the fact that the akuma was about to step on me.”

“And whose fault was that? Why did you bother trying to help Golden Bug? If he’d been crushed, then so much the better for us! We could’ve won the fight! But I know you are still adjusting to the demands of battle. You need more training, and we need a better plan. Have you ever thought about making a sentimonster of your own?”

Marinette felt like she’d been punched.

“What? We agreed that I would never, I mean, Adrien, and the other kids, and that’s too much power! I wouldn’t know how to use it!”

“I could teach you. Not all sentimonsters look like humans, you know. You could have created a stick man out of lollipops, born from the akuma’s frustration, to help win the fight today. I know you’re nervous about abusing the Miraculous, but believe me, you wouldn’t be. Not under my guidance.”

Marinette clutched a hand to her chest, where the Miraculous would rest were she wearing it.

“But, the damage; wouldn’t the Miraculous poison spread faster if I used it to make a senti? And end up like—” she gulped, pleading with her eyes to understand what she was saying.

Gabriel frowned.

“Fine, you have a good point. We’ll table it for now. Back to the point of your visit, I have a new technique for you to study. It is called—”

“I have something to tell you first,” Marinette interrupted, pulling out a second vial from her pocket. “I made it. I made the cure.”

Eyes filling with fire, M. Agreste stared at the gold liquid held by the necklace in her hands.

“I warned you not to do that,” he hissed. “You’ve endangered the entire mission!”

Marinette swallowed.

“Sir,” she started again, clenching her other fist at her side to keep calm, “I know you didn’t want me to look at the pictures—”

“But you did. You went directly against my wishes. You disobeyed me.”

Notgoodnotgoodnotgood—

Marinette took a deep breath and remembered how happy Nathalie had been to hear that there might be a cure. She’d had faith in this solution, the best outcome. Marinette had to stand her ground, for herself and for Adrien.

“I know there wasn’t a translation for the Grimoire. I know the pictures don’t mean much without words to go with them. But they were enough, after all! Sometimes a solution really doesn’t exist, and sometimes... you just need to find a new way to create it. Please listen to me,” she begged, holding out the vial in her hands. “I think that my cure can heal Emilie — it’s already working on me — and then you won’t even need the Miraculous, at all!”

“Won’t need the Miraculous?” Gabriel roared, seething as he looked down at Marinette. “Have you forgotten about the other parents, the ones who have already died from the gruesome poison of your Miraculous? Do you think a witch’s brew is going to bring them back? No,” he spat out, and Marinette flinched. “And what of Adrien, and the other sentimonsters? Do you think some glittering sludge is going to cure them, too? Keep their souls safe from a world bent on destroying them? No, don’t hide it; give me your hand, Miss Dupain-Cheng.”

She extended her hand again, trembling. “Please...” she whispered, unsure what to say.

Gabriel snatched the vial out of her palm. Stuffing it in his pocket, he removed a silver ring from the same pocket, clutched tight in his fingers. This he placed in Marinette palm; folding her fingers around it, he offered her a stern frown.

“This is Adrien’s amok.”

Marinette would have recoiled, but M. Agreste’s firm grasp on her hand kept her standing in place.

“So that you know the true weight of this object, I would like to tell you a story. Follow me, and put the ring on. Keep it safe.”

He led her over to the elevator, down to the basement garden where Emilie’s bed lay, avoiding the stairs so that they wouldn’t disturb Adrien, who was studying in his room and didn’t know that Marinette was there. When they reached Emilie’s place of repose, Gabriel turned to Marinette and began to speak.

“When Emilie created Adrien, she did it out of love. She knew that anyone who holds a sentimonster’s amok may use it to control them, and so in her wisdom, she split his in two. Now, no one can have complete control of Adrien unless they hold both halves of his amok. The ring I gave you holds one half of it. You can use it to control him, give him any order you wish, but I alone know where the second half of the amok is, and so long as I hold it, I can reverse your orders and protect Adrien from your control. Does that sound fair to you?”

“No!” Marinette cried. “No one should be able to control him, ever! Why would you give me this?”

“It is because I trust you,” Gabriel said solemnly. “I don’t think you are losing your battles on purpose. But perhaps you will try harder to win them if I remind you of what’s at stake.

“Adrien’s life is bound to his amok. If that ring is ever damaged, the destruction will be reflected in him. If it is so much as scratched, he will suffer, just the same as he will if we do not win the Miraculous from Golden Bug and Chat Grise. It is our responsibility to do everything in our power to win, Marinette. Everything. Do you understand?”

Marinette looked down at the ring she now wore on her finger.

“I understand,” she said quietly.

“I appreciate your trying to find a cure,” M. Agreste said in a calm tone. “But as far as I’m aware, the Miraculous is still broken, no? You may have healed yourself temporarily, but each time you put your suit on, you will be poisoned again. Your cure only works partway.”

“But, Emilie...” Marinette’s voice trailed off. “Don’t you think it might help her, sir? I understand now that we need to make the Wish, but in the meantime, wouldn’t you like to have her back? You have the cure; won’t you at least try to see if it will help her?”

M. Agreste pursed his lips. “It may have been too long since the poison took effect in her for it to help,” he said bluntly. But as Marinette’s face fell, he added, “I will see what I can do.”

Brightening up, Marinette threw her arms around him in a hug. “Oh, thank you, M. Agreste! Thank you!”

Squealing excitedly, she wiggled as M. Agreste sighed and led her back to the elevator.

“Pay extra attention to the lesson tonight,” he instructed her. “Now that you’ll be back to your former strength, I expect you to be even more effective in akuma battles. Don’t pull any of your punches, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Marinette said, and smiled to herself. Finally, she’d done something to help Adrien!

“Oh,” she remembered. “The ring. Let me give it back to you.”

She started to take it off her finger, but M. Agreste stopped her.

“Keep it. I trust you won’t use it to control Adrien, will you?”

She shook her head, anger flashing in her eyes. “Of course not!”

“Good. Then by keeping it with you at all times, you may do more to keep it, and my son, safe than I could have by keeping it in the mansion. You have my blessing, Marinette. I only ask that you do nothing which could make you lose it.”

__*__*__*__*__

The next day was Saturday, and Marinette was scheduled to help out with one of Adrien’s photoshoots.

M. Agreste wasn’t there, but Nathalie oversawMarinette’s efforts. She’d felt nervous but excited as she laid out the different outfits Adrien would be changing into. So far, everything had gone swimmingly— that is, until the akuma struck.

Nobody had bothered informing Marinette that there would be an akuma that day. Or that Valentine’s had come so early this year! But here she was, running (possibly for her life) from a dark-colored, winged akuma who was shooting arrows at her and Adrien.

“Chloe rejected me for you?” the akuma, who was calling himself Dark Cupid (and possibly used to call himself Kim) squawked. “I don’t know why she wasted the energy! It’s clear where your affections lie... for now, at least,” he finished with a chuckle.

Adrien pulled Marinette behind the bushes in the park the photoshoot was taking place at just in time to avoid the latest barrage of arrows.

“I really did not need this right now,” he muttered, keeping his arm raised as if to ward off another attack that way.

Marinette nodded in agreement. “It wasn’t in my afternoon plans, that’s for sure,” she agreed, holding back a hysterical giggle.

What was she supposed to do right now? Surely, Hawk Moth wasn’t targeting his son and apprentice on purpose! Should she rush back to the mansion, on foot if necessary, and transform? Or should she presume that this was an even worse rogue akuma than Gigantitan had been, and try to take it down before it caused more damage?

She didn’t get any more time to think about her options, though. A winged shadow fell over their hiding spot, and she felt Adrien freeze next to her.

“Did you really think you could hide from me in that scrawny bush?” Kim laughed and shot another arrow towards Marinette and Adrien, who glanced once at each other and ran towards the Gorilla’s car. Adrien pulled the door open for Marinette, who was about to crawl inside when she noticed Dark Cupid notching another arrow in her periphery.

“Adrien, look out!” she cried, leaping in front of him just as the arrow flew home, striking her in the chest. She staggered forward, eyes drooping closed as she wrapped her fingers around the shaft, trying to yank it out. But before she could push past the pain blossoming in her chest, her world faded to black.

__*__*__*__*__

When Marinette opened her eyes, all she could see was green.

The vivid color belonged to a familiar pair of eyes — Golden Bug’s eyes — but the gentle pressure on her lips quickly proved that this was just another dream, just one more quiet moment of bliss before she would inevitably wake up and feel the weight of her guilt come crashing down on her.

But this time, Marinette didn’t want to wake up, so she wrapped her arms around her forbidden love, eagerly pulling him closer, and pressed her lips more firmly to his. His green eyes fell shut as she deepened the kiss, and a shiver ran through his body as she tangled her fingers in his soft, golden hair. She thought she heard a moan catch in his throat, but she was too focused on kissing him to be sure, too wrapped up in this moment of perfection.

It ended, of course. It always ended.

This time, it just happened to be a little worse than it ever had been in the past.

The boy who Marinette had been kissing pulled back, gasping for air, and his eyes blinked open, peering into hers.

Adrien worked his jaw for a little before he pushed the question out. “Marinette, are you okay?”

Ah. Of course, this kind of thing would happen. Of course, she kissed her best friend, thinking that he was someone else. Her friend, who happened to be her boss’ son!

The same green eyes as before were still staring into hers, but this time she recognized them as Adrien Agreste’s, not Golden Bug’s. He was pinned to the ground under her, his back pressed uncomfortably against the wall of the Agreste mansion. When had they gotten there? Weren’t they just at the park?

Marinette backed off of Adrien, giving him the space he needed to sit up and slowly begin to massage the sore spots on his wrists, the deep marks her fingernails had left on him.

No. No, no, no, no, no!

She’d just been entrusted with Adrien’s amok yesterday! She’d sworn not to misuse it, not to hurt him, and now—! Now, she’d done just that! And on top of whatever akuma-influenced scars she’d left on his body, s he’d just kissed him on the lips ! He was probably so freaked out!

“I’m so sorry!” She spat it out, horrified, unable to look away from Adrien’s wide eyes, his reddened lips and hot cheeks. “Adrien, I— I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened, I swear!”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Adrien murmured, bringing one hand up to lightly prod his swollen lips. “We didn’t know what the akuma could do. And it could have been worse.”

How?

This madness had to end. Marinette had to make sure the akuma’s reign ended, and fast. Luckily, she wasn’t that far away from the Miraculous which would give her power to do just that. And poison her. Again.

Marinette, her mouth thinning, reached a hand down to Adrien. “I’m going to go inside,” she told him as she helped him up. “Stay sa— please stay safe,” she begged. Afraid that she’d keep messing up and control Adrien without thinking, she hurried around the corner of the mansion, taking the steps two at a time until she reached the door. As soon as she’d pulled it open and stepped inside, she slid down against the wall in shock.

Oh, what had she done? But she didn’t have time to waste feeling guilty! Adrien needed his wounds to be healed, and that could only happen if the akuma was taken down.

Marinette forced herself to her feet and marched towards the safe where the Peacock brooch was kept. She didn’t hesitate as she punched in the combination and pinned the brooch to her shirt. While the suit was still wrapping itself around her, she was already running to the side door, ready to jump into action.

But first, she had a call to make. Putting in the earbuds that came with the suit, she pressed the button which appeared on the base of her fan and waited for Hawk Moth to pick up.

“Marinette! I’m glad to hear from you. The akuma is—”

“I know what the akuma is, trust me,” she said bitterly. “It’s out of control. It made me hurt Adrien.” Her voice caught in her throat, and she swallowed as she took a break from running to catch her bearings.

“Dark Cupid wasn’t as effective as I might’ve hoped,” Hawk Moth admitted. “Still, the ring is safe, is it not?”

Bluewing ran her thumb over the space on her finger where her— where Adrien’s amok had been when she transformed. She couldn’t feel it now, but she knew it was there, hidden under the suit like her clothes.

“It’s safe,” she confirmed. “Now, where’s the akuma? We need to take it down!”

Hawk Moth coughed. “Hold on, Bluewing. Adrien is no longer anywhere near the akuma. Golden Bug and Chat Grise finally showed up; Dark Cupid is distracted and there’s no need to recall the akuma at this point.”

“Yeah, well, we still need Golden Bug to release his Cure,” Bluewing shot back. “Or did you forget the part where I said Dark Cupid made me hurt your son?”

Hawk Moth was silent for a moment.

“You don’t think I would leave him unhealed in my Wish, do you?”

Bluewing scowled as she spotted the fight a block away and started heading towards it. “Fine. I don’t even know what the akumatized object is, so I’ll let it be for now. But this better be the last time you take risks with who you akumatize. If another akuma gets diverted by an unideal subject, don’t go through with the akumatization.”

She leapt into action, tripping Golden Bug and then lunging towards Chat Grise. She managed to steal half of her baton and toss it away, but that still left her with two enemies to fight. Where did Dark Cupid go?

Across the street, chaos was reigning; lovers, friends, and family were fighting over what seemed to be the akuma’s influence alone.

Just like what I did to Adrien, Marinette thought with a shiver.

“Hey, Bluebird! Good to see you!” Dark Cupid greeted her as he swept back onto the scene, somehow still with a full quiver of arrows.

“It’s Bluewing, actually,” she corrected as she ducked under Chat Grise’s jab. “You didn’t teach him to call me that on purpose, did you, Bug?”

Golden Bug only scowled in response. “Lucky Charm,” he called out. “I don’t have the time for this today.”

Chat Grise kicked Bluewing, sending her flying before she could try to steal the Lucky Charm again.

She was quick to get back on her feet, charging toward Golden Bug while he was staring at the object which had landed in his hands. Dark Cupid was already notching a new arrow, preparing to let it fly. Good. The battle would be over soon.

“Chat!” Golden Bug called out just as Bluewing got close to him, and the cat came flying out of nowhere, grabbing Bluewing’s wrist and sending her flying towards Golden Bug. What? How could that possibly help either of the heroes?

Bluewing caught herself as she stumbled, pinwheeling her arms for balance, which she briefly regained for a moment before an arrow struck her right in the center of her back.

“Come on!” she howled, because really, this was absurd. She’d never been hit by an akuma before, and for it to happen twice in one day was just unlucky.

It was taking longer for the darkness to overtake her this time, a potential weakness of the akuma perhaps. She had time to notice the odd way Golden Bug was looking at her, then back at the candy apple in his hands.

Bluewing swallowed. Could he somehow tell what she’d done to Adrien earlier, when she’d mistaken her friend’s green eyes for his?

But why would she have kissed Adrien (ugh, she’d kissed Adrien) if she’d mistaken him for her worst enemy? Why hadn’t she pummeled him into dust while she’d had the chance? She should’ve ordered him to beg for mercy on his knees while she taunted him for all those stupid model poses he’d taken so much to heart that he was using them everywhere, even at home.

And Golden Bug, how dare he smirk at her like that? She’d show him to curse the world with that disgustingly perfect smile!

Dark Cupid was saying something in the background. He sounded pissed. Marinette was pissed, too.

Stalking towards Golden Bug, she raised her hand and slapped him right across the face, or she tried to, anyway. He avoided her blow and hopped backwards to safety. His sneaky partner stood by him, ready to fight.

“Ugh, you’re both so doggedly persistent!” Bluewing rolled her head backwards and groaned.

“Isn’t that a compliment?” Chat Grise asked in a pathetically tiny voice.

“No!” Bluewing yelled, snapping her head forward and glaring at her. “It isn’t! I hate you! I hate you both! And you won’t stop bothering me!”

“Wait, what? What!?” Golden Bug was talking to her, but she didn’t care.

There was a billboard with Adrien’s face on it behind the bratty ‘heroes,’ and Bluewing wanted to take it down.

“You ugly-pretty model!” she shrieked, looking over and past the two menaces’ heads to address the offending advertisement. “There is no need for your face to be on this many billboards! We’re already plagued with your face from the moment we get up to the moment we go to sleep! I hate you!”

“You hate Adrien, too? How do you feel about akumas?” Golden Bug’s voice interrupted her bloodthirsty thoughts.

“Oh, Bratty Bug,” Bluewing crooned, lowering her gaze back to him and the other menace. “I think they’re the only sane people left on this earth. They can take over control of the place once I’ve watered the ground with your blood.”

Golden Bug took a step back.

“And... Hawk Moth?”

“A terrible person. I’m going to kill him, too. I’m going to kill all of you! The whole planet! I hate everyone except for akumas!” She paused for a moment. That statement hadn’t felt quite right. “And Chloe Bourgeois!” she added triumphantly.

Golden Bug dropped his yo-yo. In the sky behind him, Dark Cupid wheeled about, shooting his arrows and laughing victoriously.

“Giving up already, coward?” Bluewing taunted, stepping forward with a glint in her eye.

Chat Grise moved to stand in front of him defensively, holding her baton out at the ready. But he pushed her arm aside and stepped forward.

“Hey, if you’re so powerful, and if you hate that billboard so bad, why don’t you go do something about it? You want to kill the whole world; why don’t you warm up by killing him?” Golden Bug gestured toward the billboard in a congenial manner.

“Wow, that is the first smart thing I’ve heard you say,” Bluewing said with a cackle. “Stay here, so I can kill you when I get back. You can follow simple directions, can’t you?”

“Sure can,” Golden Bug said, grinning tightly and wrapping one arm around Chat Grise. Bluewing shot her a particularly fearsome glare as she stalked past.

And there he was: her enemy number one, Paris’ favorite golden boy, Adrien Agreste.

Utterly ridiculous.

She started work by hopping up onto the narrow platform and punching his well-lit face a couple times, sending sparks flying down to the streets below.

“Go! Die! You! Ugly! Billboard!” she shouted, laughing when the perfume ad went dark and the metal squealed in agony from her hits.

As she began tearing the billboard apart piece by piece, Marinette grinned to herself. This was good! She was saving Paris from this piece of scum, slowly but surely! And once she finished with this, she was going to kill that super-ridiculous duo! She was going to murder Gabriel Agreste and his son, and Nathalie, too!

Grinning, Bluewing wound up her fist, ready to punch Adrien again, when suddenly a swarm of ladybugs surrounded her, releasing the curse and restoring her senses.

What was she doing?

Bluewing stepped back from the billboard, wondering how she’d gotten there. She’d transformed, headed to the battle to help Hawk Moth, and— oh, no. She’d gotten hit again.

And it was even worse the second time, because she actually remembered some of what she’d done. She’d insulted Golden Bug, Chat Grise, and Hawk Moth, and threatened to kill the whole world! Then she’d tried to kill Adrien, even just a billboard version of him, because of how much she’d hated him!

So much for the loyal soldier.

Bluewing didn’t bother sticking around to watch her enemies celebrate their victory. She headed straight for the nearest empty alleyway and tore off her brooch.

It glittered in the sunlight, proudly displaying its broken feathers and beak and heart. Marinette had to use everything she had to control herself and not dash the Miraculous against the brick road.

Instead, she sank onto her knees and let a bloodcurdling scream tear out of her throat.

#bluewing au #ml fanfic #rosie-b writing #miraculous ladybug #ooh what's this? an adrinette kiss? in my fic?#it's more likely than you'd think #*laughs evilly*

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vexxerveesvoice · 3 months ago

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The Kabbalah of Writing: Chapter Three Writing Exercises

As a Jewish writer, I've been wanting to explore more about how to connect my writing to my spiritual and religious practices. As a first step towards this, once a week I will be responding to each of the writing exercises provided in Sherri Mandell's The Kabbalah of Writing. For the sake of being careful of copyright, I will not be posting the questions themselves. I encourage fellow Jewish writers to follow along.

Instead of including my free writing here, I will state that I've been writing "gunk" pages in my notebook every day for a while now to get the "gunk" out of my brain before sitting down to really write and it's been helping a lot. I've transitioned to having these be more morning pages instead of "gunk" pages directly before writing practice both to spread out my writing time and to allow myself to start the day fresh.

I wish I'd visited you in the hospital. The news of your death came to me as impersonally as it could have - an apologetic email from the school district, probably derived from a form letter for just such an occasion. I wish I'd taken the time to tell you how much you meant to me, how much your love and support and encouragement helped me along my journey as an artist and as a writer. I wish I didn't have to live with the guilt of knowing I never visited you one last time, the fact that I didn't have the courage to face you when you were dying. I wish I could have shared more life with you. I wish I could still go back to the old tech building and see you there, in walking student artwork to your little orange car to arrange at art shows around the county. I wish you were here. I wish you could see how much I've changed, how much I've matured, how much I've grown since you last saw me. I wish I could hear you say you're proud of me. I wish I could hug you one last time. I hope you know how much you're missed. I hope you can see us still and that you know how much we care. I hope you know I see you at every art show and festival, every time I pick up a pencil or paintbrush. I hope you know you are loved and deeply, deeply missed. I just wish I could tell you in person.

What I didn't say was "thank you." Or at least, I didn't thank you enough. Gangly children squashed into blue plastic seats, huddled in on ourselves in our jackets for warmth in the poorly-heated morning ride to school. You handed me a little gift bag full of your homemade cookies, wrapped closed with a ribbon and a beaming smile. I never appreciated you enough. We ended up in vastly different social circles, years later, but you never failed to extend me invitations to parties or conversation. You shined brighter than the meteorites you wanted to watch on that school rooftop. What I didn't say was "I wish I'd gotten to know you better." "You were the kindest person I've ever met." "I'm sorry I wasn't a better friend to you." "I wish I could have told you how much you and your cookies meant to me."

In another life, I would have gone to Kenyon College. I would have pursued writing full time. I would have never lost my voice to you to begin with. I never would have sequestered myself and my heart to a tiny portion of my life and twisted what remained to fit into a puzzle piece beside your own, only to be discarded when I couldn't fit quite well enough. I would have applied to Ivy Leagues, just to prove that I could, that I was smart. I love the friends I gained following the path that I did, but I regret not sticking to myself and what I knew I wanted out of life. I have no one to blame but myself, but I hope you know what I sacrificed to make you even the slightest bit happier. I hope you know what I lost to keep you. Now I question if it was even worth it to begin with.

I wish the cedars grew as wide as before. I wish the salmon spawned in their home rivers. I wish the rain fell as often as it used to. I wish this town didn't grow half so big. I wish I could make even a tiny difference to shift the terrible future we face. I wish I didn't feel so guilty just for being part of the human race.

In my father's other life, he owned a ice cream shop bookstore and wrote children's books on the side. In my father's other life, I started working at the shop as a teenager, learning the ropes to take over when he retired. In my father's other life, he volunteered to teach students how to read at the local elementary school. In my father's other life, he had enough time to sleep more than four hours per night. In my father's other life, he never had to move back to the east coast for his wife. In my father's other life, he had the time, space, and resources to air his grievances healthily, through therapy or journaling or something other than bottling things up forever.

I tore the pencil-scratch letter from my little, child-sized notebook, a plea for help and understanding from parents who couldn't see the intense suffering, confusion, and loss I felt. I slipped it beneath your closed bedroom door, hoped for the best, and turned back to my room, closing my own door. Or did I leave the note beneath a closed door? It felt more like leaving a small offering at a solid stone wall, hoping that a deity beyond understanding, beyond reach, beyond words or touch or anything human, would come down from on high and grant forgiveness, peace, a hug, anything to soothe the brokenness I felt. I see you now, all these years later. I see that your note went ignored. I see that you went ignored. I see that your parents abandoned you at a time when you felt most vulnerable. I see the solid wall standing between you and them, that you still have yet to fully deconstruct. I see your pain, and I want you to know that you are loved.

A writer sits in the corner of the cafe, twirling a pen between their fingers. They've paused in their reflection, mind empty. "What're you up to this time?" The barista smiles, cleaning the espresso machine's milk frother. "Anything interesting?" "Oh, not really," the writer stretches. "The words aren't coming to me today." "That's a shame. Anything I could read this time?" The writer glances down at their barely-scrawled-upon page. "Not really, unfortunately. And what's here is all nonsense anyway." "Well, I doubt that. Your standards tend to be higher than mine," the barista raises an eyebrow. "Care to share a bit?" The writer bites their lip, just a bit, but acquiesces. They read the paragraph or two they've managed to produce, tone hushed so as not to disturb the other patrons, and glance nervously back up at the barista, who hums thoughtfully. "Well? What do you think?" "You've definitely got something there," the barista nods, then walks out from behind the counter. "Let me take a closer look." The writer passes the notebook and pen over nervously. The barista taps the pen against the page, jots a few notes, and hands the materials back. The writer takes in a sharp inhale, reading over what the barista had written. "You just solved my whole problem. Thank you." "Not at all! Glad to be of help. Would you like a top-up?" "Not yet - I've got to get things down on paper before they leave me." The writer beams, twirls the pen one last time, and begins vigorously writing again.

I'm sorry that I couldn't support you as a partner. I'm sorry to have abandoned you when you needed me most. I'm sorry to have hesitated when you asked for my help at your most vulnerable.

Dear S, I'm sorry that I didn't keep in touch with you. You were my strongest friend. I'm proud of the work we did together and grateful for the time we spent by each other's sides. I wanted to stay in contact, but I think somewhere along the line the magic died, even though we didn't want it to. I hope we can reconnect someday. I miss you and hope you're well.

Dear L, I'm sorry that I stopped putting in effort to keep our body well somewhere along the line. You're resilient for staying alive and as well as you have been for so long despite the difficulties I've presented you. Thank you for being patient and forgiving of my missteps. Thank you for surviving. I'm grateful you've given me grace and so many chances to make up for lost time.

I love acting I love swimming I love taking care of my body I love sweet things I love being human I love reading I love writing I love hanging out with my siblings I love volunteering I love caramel macchiatos and london fogs I love colorful pens and fun stickers I love planners and journals I love books I love the mountains I love the Puget Sound I love cedar forests and dear reader I love you.

#jumblr #writeblr #writing practice

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spacewitchqueen · 2 years ago

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(Love Is) A Deadly Game - Epilogue

A/N: The end of this story. Finally. Masterpost will follow soon. As always, thank you for reading!

Snippet: A sudden feeling of dread gripped you. You remembered who you were, your life, your family. So why did you feel like there was something missing? And not just anything, something important. Someone.

Pairing: Chishiya x fem!reader (alternating POV, indicated by ***)

Chapter summary: After leaving the Borderland, who remembers first?

Bright lights. After so much darkness… Everything was too bright. You could feel the white light over you, all around you, even through your eyelids. You were afraid to open your eyes for fear of where you’d wake up. That state of panic lasted minutes, hours maybe. And you drifted back into an uneasy sleep.

Eventually you gathered enough courage to open your eyes and felt utterly lost. You did not recognize the place, you had no recollection of how you’d got there. With your heart racing it was hard to think.

‘Focus,’ you commanded yourself, taking deep breaths. You were lying down, dressed in a hospital gown, tied down. No. Not tied down, your left arm was hooked to an IV bag, that’s why you couldn’t move freely. You calmed down somewhat, fine, you were in a hospital bed. But why?

You looked down, your arms were covered in bruises, your right arm in a cast. Nothing too awful. Good. Next, you looked around. The room was pristine, quiet. Clearly meant for patients that were not in critical condition. There was a girl on the bed next to yours, unconscious, long dreadlocks framing her face. She looked familiar, something in you recognized her as a friend, but you were sure you didn’t know her. Did you?

A sudden feeling of dread gripped you. You remembered who you were, your life, your family. So why did you feel like there was something missing? And not just anything, something important. Someone. Was it her? Maybe, but shouldn’t there be someone else? You forced yourself to remember what you had been doing before waking up here but all you could recall was strange lights in the sky.

The small TV mounted on the wall distracted you from letting anxiety consume you, providing neutral background noise. Your eyelids felt heavy with sleep, you would have given into that drowsiness but the newscast caught your attention.

‘...The strange meteorite event also caused significant material damage in and around Shibuya, where dozens of people died and hundreds of people were injured.’

A meteorite? Yes. Those lights.... Memories came back to you in pieces. You’d been driving, waiting for the traffic lights to change at the busiest crossing. You’d spotted three guys running among the crowd, one of them riding on his friend’s shoulders; a guy with white blonde hair wearing a light gray t-shirt and a white sweater, seemingly lost in his thoughts. He had walked right in front of your car and for a second your eyes had met… your heart clenched at this image. Why?

A nurse came into the room startling you out of that reverie. ‘You’re awake! How are you feeling? Are you up for a walk? You need to get those muscles moving again.’

You nodded and she came over to help you stand up. She secured your hospital gown and gave you a pair of slippers. You did not take her hand at first but the second you were on your feet your balance betrayed you. ‘Take it easy, you were in a coma, you know?’ she said in a soothing voice.

Reluctantly, you took her hand and let her drag the IV stand so you could concentrate on staying upright.

The two of you walked in silence, allowing you to get lost in your thoughts again. You had only been walking for a few minutes when an alarm went off at the nurse’s station.

‘I’ll walk you back to your room now,’ the nurse said.

‘Can I please stay out here a little bit longer?’ you asked, not eager to go back to bed just yet.

‘I can stay with her,’ someone said before the nurse could answer. It was that white-haired guy! But who was he?

‘Doctor! You should not be out of bed either,’ the nurse scolded him.

‘I take full responsibility.’

‘Very well, but no more than ten minutes.’

He took the IV stand in his left hand and offered you his right. Something flashed before your eyes. Did you know him? Had you met before the meteorite?

‘I was wondering when you’d wake up.’

‘Do I know you? Doctor…’

‘Chishiya. You do now.’

‘I am…’

‘I know who you are.’

‘How?’

‘We were somewhere else together.’

‘The meteorite?’

Chishiya considered your question. ‘Between that and this.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You will.’

He walked you back to your room minding the ten-minute limit the nurse had imposed. He looked at the girl with the dreadlocks and smiled. ‘Glad to see you were in good company. I’ll see you around.’

That night, in dreams, you heard his voice.

***

Chishiya opened his eyes and found himself in a familiar place, even if the circumstances were not exactly what he was used to. A hospital room. Only this time, it seemed he was a patient, rather than the one looking after them.

He tried to sit up but pain made him lie back down, his heart monitor showing the sudden jump in his pulse. Alright, he was injured but apparently out of immediate danger.

Whoever was on the bed next to his, had not been so lucky. There was a curtain around it. Chishiya learned later that the man had suffered serious burns on his face and had other wounds as well.

When the doctors came to evaluate him, Chishiya almost asked to be discharged. Almost. He did ask to walk around.

During these unofficial rounds, he came across familiar faces. Why were they familiar?

That night he had a very vivid dream. He dreamed of a place where people had to play deadly games and be willing to kill others to survive. He dreamed of the people he’d met there, the faces he had seen at the hospital. He dreamed about her. When he woke up, he remembered everything.

It was still dark, but he had to know that he wasn’t going insane. He managed to climb out of his bed and go check the chart of the man with the burns. Niragi, just as he had called that man in his dream. So then his memories were real, and if that was the case…

Chishiya was very tempted to go looking for her that second, but he knew he couldn’t just roam the hospital in the dead of night without alarming the nurses.

The next morning he couldn’t wait until the doctor came to check on him. He slipped out of his room as soon as the doctor had left. Not that he wasn’t allowed to. He went room by room and when he thought he might not find her, he saw her walking with a nurse.

He stayed with her, relieved that she had made it out. She didn’t remember him. No, no, she did. She just needed time.

It was fine, she was safe. He could wait.

But maybe not that much. Now that he knew where to find her it wasn’t easy to just sit around. He sneaked into her room that night between rounds to watch her sleep and maybe to tell her the things he hadn’t dared to give voice to while they were awake. He spoke in a whisper about how they had met, everything that had happened between them in the Borderland and the promise they’d made at the very end.

‘I know I’m there, somewhere, in your head,’ he said before leaving. ‘You have to remember.’

***

You woke up with a start and the very distinct sensation someone had been there, by your side. You looked around but there was no one else in the room other than the girl with the dreadlocks, still fast asleep.

Earlier that night you had seen her eyes moving beneath her eyelids, and the nurses had said she was probably going to wake up the next day. Good. Hearing that had stirred another memory, you imagined what her smile would be like, feeling that you already knew.

Sleep claimed you once more. You didn’t hear his voice again, but this time the dream was different, it almost felt real. You tried to wake up, but couldn’t. The cards. The games. So much fear, so much pain, so much death. And in between all of that… him. Chishiya.

You sat up in bed, your heart racing. The first rays of sunshine creeping in through the blinds, still too early to get up and walk around. Besides, you didn’t even know where to go looking for him. Chishiya had walked you to your room the previous day, but you didn’t know where his room was. You had to wait.

Minutes stretched into hours. At long last, you saw the door handle move. As soon as the nurse came in, you asked her to let you go for a walk. She hesitated because the girl in the next bed was finally waking up. You knew her name now too, Kuina.

‘I will be fine by myself just for a few minutes,’ you said. The nurse pursed her lips but helped you stand up.

You wished you could walk faster, as if your memories would fade back into nothingness if you didn’t find Chishiya soon, or maybe fearing he would have forgotten you.

Just as you were losing your patience, you ran into him coming out of his room. He stared at you with a questioning look on his face. ‘Do you remember me?’

You nodded. ‘When we were there… at the end… You said you would find me.’

‘And I have.’

#alice in borderland #aib chishiya #chishiya x reader #chishiya x you #chishiya shuntaro #aib fic #swq writes

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pimento-playing-hopscotch · 9 months ago

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15 and 26 for the fic writer asks!! 🧡

15. How do you come up with titles for your fics/chapters?

I feel like I took a real cop-out with this for my long fic because so far each chapter is a little bit in the future from where the last chapter left off so I figured out ooh, I can just make each chapter the year and month it is which is good, because I don't know how I would have come up with 45 cool chapter titles lol

Although even saying that, I always remember YA books that had fun chapter titles when I was a kid, so I feel I either go kind of descriptive and look at them later and go wow those are STUPID or I'll try and be too clever (like I have a fic with three chapters where each chapter in a line from an All-American Rejects song lol)

Titles are very hit or miss for me; like my long fic for the first say 20ish chapters had a different title and then one day I was like this title is dumb and changed it and was like oh... I can just change it? I can DO that?!

Like there are a couple of finished fics I would like to go back and change the title/chapter titles on now but I woudln't change anything else on the fic so it would seem like a waste... I've been lucking out with the TK and cute animals series that usually while I'm writing them I'll think of the title-

I do have one fic I thought of the title before I had started the fic lol.

Edit- I just realize that I in fact suck and only answered one of yours- I’m so sorry my mind is like cheese at this point- and Pumpkin came up behind me in the kitchen and I stepped on her tiny paw and she’s fine BUT I FEEL BAD NOW!

26. Is there something that you’ve written that you would never want your family to see?

There is! (And this is coming from a weirdo who has shown my long fic to family members- thankfully they lost interest lol)

But I wouldn’t want them to see any of my discipline Tarlos fics- like I enjoy writing those very very much but please don’t ask me to explain why- and the thought of anyone I’m related to seeing those and wanting to talk about it- like meteorite please 🫣🫣

Thank you for the ask bestie 💝💝 And I’m so sorry I didn’t answer both in the first try!!

#answered asks #fic asks #911 lone star

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halothenthehorns · 1 year ago

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Chapter 19: THE GODS VOTE HOW TO KILL US

"Very appropriate, didn't the Greeks invent democracy?" Magnus snorted.

"I hope they at least throw in some variety," Alex said. "Nobody ever talks about death by studying, death by laughter, death by meteorite hurtling down and hitting just one person."

"Now I'm over here wondering which god should I want to be least creative in the killings," Percy muttered.

"They clearly vote about as well as they react to news," Jason said, the saltiness in his voice surprising them. As fidgety as he'd been about Zeus in particular, it seemed strange he seemed so harsh on apparently fixing to get a good glimpse into them doing, well, anything of potential value.

Not that Percy considered his coming death, again, a potential value, but it was a heck of a lot more than sitting on his throne like the last time he'd been in Zeus's chamber.

Unless it wasn't Zeus at all, but that seemed like a slim chance. Clearly they were off to this acclaimed Winter Solstice Artemis was going to be so vital for.

He hoped she didn't vote to kill them after he'd just saved her life, she'd never called him a brave man then!

Flying was bad enough for a son of Poseidon, but flying straight up to Zeus's palace, with thunder and lightning swirling around it, was even worse.

"It's like playing ding-dong-ditch and being surprised when he blasts you out of the sky," Alex agreed.

"Thankfully didn't happen," Percy said, looking a little pale as he closely inspected his arms to make sure of that one.

We circled over midtown Manhattan, making one complete orbit around Mount Olympus. I'd only been there once before, traveling by elevator up to the secret six hundredth floor of the Empire State Building.

"I don't know why I thought you had to get in that way all the time," Magnus admitted. "I thought you three and those pegasi were going to squeeze into that tiny metal box and it was just going to magically expand for you."

"I imagine that guy in the lobby would throw his book at us if we tried," Percy shook his head. At least he got to skip the crappy elevator music and growing sense of inescapable dread. This did not feel any better though.

This time, if it was possible, Olympus amazed me even more.

"It had a pottery table this time?" Alex asked eagerly.

"I mean, I personally would have gone with world peace, but that sounds like a cool second," Thalia said with a twitching smile.

"Knowing Percy, it was flatscreen TVs and they installed a skate park," Will grinned.

"You say that like it wouldn't be amazing to have at camp," Percy grinned.

In the early-morning darkness, torches and fires made the mountainside palaces glow twenty different colors, from bloodred to indigo. Apparently no one ever slept on Olympus.

The twisting streets were full of demigods and nature spirits and minor godlings bustling about, riding chariots or sedan chairs carried by Cyclopes. Winter didn't seem to exist here. I caught the scent of the gardens in full bloom, jasmine and roses and even sweeter things I couldn't name. Music drifted up from many windows, the soft sounds of lyres and reed pipes.

Towering at the peak of the mountain was the greatest palace of all, the glowing white hall of the gods.

Our pegasi set us down in the outer courtyard, in front of huge silver gates. Before I could even think to knock, the gates opened by themselves.

Jokes aside, nobody looked particularly happy the home of the Gods seemed in full party mode. Zoe had just died on behalf of a war none of them even seemed concerned about.

Nico wondered if his dad had already overseen Bianca's passing through his place and moved on by that time to the same old bitter comments about how he wasn't allowed in on the cool god's stuff.

Good luck, boss, Blackjack said.

"Yeah." I didn't know why, but I had a sense of doom. I'd never seen all the gods together.

"That seems like a pretty good reason to me," Jason shivered into his chair for a moment.

"Make sure you mark that one in your diary, finally admitting I had one of those," Percy grinned. Jason rolled his eyes but then theatrically clicked an imaginary pen and scribbled something down just to keep Will laughing an extra second before he continued.

I knew any one of them could blast me to dust, and a few of them would like to.

"Does that finally sound like a good reason why you shouldn't have been making enemies with them?" Thalia asked without any hope.

"I still don't hear how it would have helped me to fake it either," Percy frowned, not entirely convinced even his dad would step in to stop it from happening. Maybe it just would have caused a few extra rainy days and a hundred years or so of annoyance at whoever did it before he was forgotten.

Hey, if ya don't come back, can I have your cabin for my stable?

"Percy, why aren't you sharing with him now?" Magnus chuckled at his very highly raised eyebrow. "I thought you'd be lonely in there without Tyson."

Percy mock considered for a moment before deciding, "he wouldn't hold up his end of the chores."

I looked at the pegasus.

Just a thought, he said. Sorry.

Blackjack and his friends flew off, leaving Thalia, Annabeth, and me alone. For a minute we stood there regarding the palace, the way we'd stood together in front of Westover Hall, what seemed like a million years ago.

Thalia made a soft hum of appreciation as she considered the things that changed and the things that would always be the same. She believed she and Percy would have always become friends, but that quest had solidified it.

If Annabeth had never gone missing though, maybe Percy wouldn't have foisted himself on this quest. Maybe a different Prophecy would have been spewed from the get go, and they never would have crossed the land without rain because Aprohite had dumped them in the middle of it.

There were to many factors, to many threads the Fates were always weaving about, but Thalia still vividly remembered standing on one side of Annabeth in that moment and feeling confident about the direction her life was going for the first time since she'd woken up.

And then, side by side, we walked into the throne room.

Twelve enormous thrones made a U around a central hearth, just like the placement of the cabins at camp. The ceiling above glittered with constellations—even the newest one, Zoe the Huntress, making her way across the heavens with her bow drawn.

All of the seats were occupied. Each god and goddess was about fifteen feet tall, and I'm telling you, if you've ever had a dozen all-powerful super-huge beings turn their eyes on you at once... Well, suddenly, facing monsters seemed like a picnic.

"Coming from a guy who's never been on a picnic, I don't know how to feel about that," Alex said without to much concern as she scratched at her nose.

Percy's mind immediately swiveled to wondering if he and Annabeth had ever been on one and he denied answering.

"Welcome, heroes," Artemis said.

"Mooo!"

"Was that supposed to be Ceres?" Jason asked. He seemed to have developed a nervous tick all his own as he winced over every other word like he still expected to be eviscerated on the spot for hearing of all this. Sacred, not meant for the ears of followers... but he was also smiling like a maniac and drinking in every word like Percy was holding him in place against his will.

"I was personally thinking of Ares, but I don't think that matches either," Percy shrugged all the same, though his mind lingered on Hera for some reason. Hadn't Annabeth once mentioned she liked cows?

That's when I noticed Bessie and Grover.

The collective smile of relief around the room gave Will an extra loud pitch to his voice as he continued. He was actually shouting reading in happiness for a second when he'd known that the whole time, it was just his particular weird joy about everybody being happy of the same thing.

Nico smiled to himself as he watched, the loudness of it right next to his ear not bothering him in the slightest. He wondered if that was an Apollo thing, or a Will thing, before the smile slipped off his face it would never be a him thing. Even if he had somehow managed to make a friend, it already seemed doomed against lasting.

A sphere of water was hovering in the center of the room, next to the hearth fire. Bessie was swimming happily around, swishing his serpent tail and poking his head out the sides and bottom of the sphere. He seemed to be enjoying the novelty of swimming in a magic bubble.

Alex chuckled with particular affection for that description and wondered if she could turn into Bessie, before the concerning reminder again flitted through she couldn't shape-shift in this place. She twitched unpleasantly and wanted to believe it was just a part of keeping the gods away. It wasn't a payoff she'd ever ask for Loki never visiting her dreams, but so long as it wasn't permanent and Oceanus wasn't trying to take away her gender fluidity, she wasn't going to freak out about it.

Grover was kneeling at Zeus's throne, as if he'd just been giving a report, but when he saw us, he cried, "You made it!"

He started to run toward me, then remembered he was turning his back on Zeus, and looked for permission.

Alex, Magnus, Percy, and Thalia all bristled at that, even if they knew they'd have done the exact same thing for fear of being blasted if they didn't. It was a principle of theirs, they didn't ask for permission to leave someone who they didn't respect.

"Go on," Zeus said. But he wasn't really paying attention to Grover. The lord of the sky was staring intently at Thalia.

Grover trotted over. None of the gods spoke. Every clop of Grover's hooves echoed on the marble floor. Bessie splashed in his bubble of water. The hearth fire crackled.

Magnus winced a little at his friend's name casually dropped in there and wondered yet again if he and Blitz were okay. He still felt like a jerk for not going back with him, and he hadn't even gotten to meet Annabeth for staying!

I looked nervously at my father, Poseidon. He was dressed similar to the last time I'd seen him: beach shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and sandals.

Will grinned in surprise and shuffled his feet around in amusement, the fwip-thwap of his shoes making an obvious noise. The next time somebody told him Demigods should wear proper foot attire at all times, Chiron!, he'd just casually mention he was inspired by Percy's dad!

He had a weathered, suntanned face with a dark beard and deep green eyes. I wasn't sure how he would feel about seeing me again, but the corners of his eyes crinkled with smile lines. He nodded as if to say It's okay.

Grover gave Annabeth and Thalia big hugs. Then he grasped my arms. "Percy, Bessie and I made it! But you have to convince them! They can't do it!"

Percy didn't even get a second to be pleased Grover was deferring to him to fix this like Thalia wasn't there, this most certainly wasn't in his skill level!

He was plenty freaked out he was being asked to convince anyone of anything! The last time he'd been there he hadn't even convinced Zeus Kronos was on the rise. He hadn't convinced Zoe not to throw him under the bus as she drove off until he saved her life! He didn't even know how he'd convinced Mr. D not to throw him off a roof?!

Annabeth would be able to do it, he realized with a soothing sense of warmth passing through him.

"Do what?" I asked.

"Heroes," Artemis called.

The goddess slid down from her throne and turned to human size, a young auburn haired girl, perfectly at ease in the midst of the giant Olympians. She walked toward us, her silver robes shimmering. There was no emotion in her face. She seemed to walk in a column of moonlight.

There had been no hint of the tears on her face for her lost lieutenant. All traces of her recent imprisonment might as well have been a figment of their imagination, as cold and impartial as the Goddess Percy had first met.

She didn't have to shrink down to their level to talk to them though. She hadn't needed to leave her throne to address them, and Percy found himself smiling at her the same way he had his dad even if he didn't appreciate the business like manner of it.

"The Council has been informed of your deeds," Artemis told us. "They know that Mount Othrys is rising in the West. They know of Atlas's attempt for freedom, and the gathering armies of Kronos. We have voted to act."

"Finally," Percy said none-to-bitterly. A sentiment shared by everyone else even as they winced and expected Percy to start melting before their eyes for his impertinent side against every immortal at once.

There was some mumbling and shuffling among the gods, as if they weren't all happy with this plan, but nobody protested.

"I would have sacrificed so many lion coats to have been there to see that," Percy said with a vindictive smile. He wanted to know which gods had eaten crow for not believing him in the first place, to watch Artemis tell them where they could shove it if anyone like Zeus himself had still tried to deny it.

"At my Lord Zeus's command," Artemis said, "my brother Apollo and I shall hunt the most powerful monsters, seeking to strike them down before they can join the Titans' cause. Lady Athena shall personally check on the other Titans to make sure they do not escape their various prisons. Lord Poseidon has been given permission to unleash his full fury on the cruise ship Princess Andromeda and send it to the bottom of the sea.

There was still a current of unease drifting about the room at all of these declarations that should have had them celebrating. Annabeth's gruesome confidence Luke was still alive nagged in the back of Jason's mind. The full might of the Gods should have been the most powerful thing, but somehow it didn't feel very impressive coming from these gods.

He tried to shake off such thoughts, but there was something about getting an even stranger taste of California that left him more frazzled than ever having these guys constantly described like somebody was trying to build an essential puzzle from the inside out.

And as for you, my heroes..."

She turned to face the other immortals. "These half-bloods have done Olympus a great service. Would any here deny that?"

She looked around at the assembled gods, meeting their faces individually. Zeus in his dark pin-striped suit, his black beard neatly trimmed, and his eyes sparking with energy. Next to him sat a beautiful woman with silver hair braided over one shoulder and a dress that shimmered colors like peacock feathers. The Lady Hera.

Jason looked very much like someone had taken his face off and put it on backwards. From the very beginning and now more defined than ever, there had been something so, off about these gods. He sympathized with Magnus a lot in this moment, he wanted to rant and scream at the world none of this made sense, even if none of it truly came as a shock to him.

On Zeus's right, my father Poseidon. Next to him, a huge lump of a man with a leg in a steel brace, a misshapen head, and a wild brown beard, fire flickering through his whiskers. The Lord of the Forges, Hephaestus.

Hermes winked at me. He was wearing a business suit today, checking messages on his caduceus mobile phone. Apollo leaned back in his golden throne with his shades on. He had iPod headphones on, so I wasn't sure he was even listening, but he gave me a thumbs-up.

Dionysus looked bored, twirling a grape vine between his fingers. And Ares, well, he sat on his chrome-and-leather throne, glowering at me while he sharpened a knife.

On the ladies' side of the throne room, a dark-haired goddess in green robes sat next to Hera on a throne woven of apple-tree branches. Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest. Next to her sat a beautiful gray-eyed woman in an elegant white dress. She could only be Annabeth's mother, Athena. Then there was Aphrodite, who smiled at me knowingly and made me blush in spite of myself.

All the Olympians in one place. So much power in this room it was a miracle the whole palace didn't blow apart.

Magnus still felt a weird disconnect at moments like this. To know he was, however distantly, related to these primordial beings through his cousin. To wonder vaguely who his own dad was. How none of this should be possible, because if it was the world was an even more screwed up place than he'd originally, bitterly thought it was for his mom being dead. For the countless things he saw every day that literal gods just, didn't seem to care enough to fix.

Percy met his eyes, and a flash of understanding passed between them. The anger and bitterness would linger, but the only 'solution' in sight felt like Luke's way. Magnus made the sign for hope his elf best friend had taught him. He didn't even know what he was hoping for exactly.

"I gotta say"—Apollo broke the silence—"these kids did okay." He cleared his throat and began to recite: "Heroes win laurels—"

"Um, yes, first class," Hermes interrupted, like he was anxious to avoid Apollo's poetry.

"I find myself not hating him for putting you on that Ship of Doom anymore," Alex expressed as if this would be a great letdown on Percy's part.

"I wasn't, really holding a grudge," Percy brushed at his hair in relief it had been any God to have derailed Apollo from that. He would have even said a silent thank you to Ares!

"All in favor of not disintegrating them?"

A few tentative hands went up—Demeter, Aphrodite.

"Disintegration? Really? That's the big vote?" Alex still looked deeply disappointed on their lack of creativity.

"He said not disintegrating them," Thalia cheerfully reminded, "so they're not even doing to good a job on kill votes anyways."

"One of these days I'm going to find a normal person who doesn't think these blasted chapter titles should be discussed every other paragraph," Percy huffed.

"Good luck with that," Will scoffed.

"Wait just a minute," Ares growled. He pointed at Thalia and me. "These two are dangerous. It'd be much safer, while we've got them here—"

Percy was already reaching for his pen, his mouth opening in dire protest that would surely get him disintegrated on the spot, vote or no vote. It was his curse that had sealed Zoe's fate! If Ares wanted another go, Percy was all to happy to give it to him with a live audience!

"Ares," Poseidon interrupted, "they are worthy heroes. We will not blast my son to bits."

"Nor my daughter," Zeus grumbled. "She has done well."

Thalia still felt a proud smile creep across her face and the smallest hint of a blush. This was one of the two times she'd ever met her father. Far be it from him condemning her to Ares or Athena's warning, he had praised her!

It still didn't entirely erase the unease she felt, now stronger than ever as she kept a constant glance on Jason lest he vanish again.

Zeus could just as easily have thrown that bolt on that mountainside and still done an about-face to praise her for not destroying the Gods. She feared what he'd let happen to his own son...but Jason wasn't Zeus's son.

She sighed and traced the links around her bracelet, cross-examining and probing everything she'd thought she'd ever known. How was replenishing Percy's past only dragging her own into question?

Thalia blushed. She studied the floor. I knew how she felt. I'd hardly ever talked to my father, much less gotten a compliment.

Percy gave her a rousing clap on the shoulder though and grinned broadly around the room so that everyone could bask in his good mood for just a minute, and she smiled willingly along. Whatever answers she found, it could only help.

She snorted and shook her head as she looked wistfully beyond Percy to where Annabeth should be. Those two were a bad influence on her punk-rock motif.

The goddess Athena cleared her throat and sat forward. "I am proud of my daughter as well. But there is a security risk here with the other two."

"Ouch!" Magnus yelped. "No help from where I thought you'd get." Annabeth had warned all the way back then though Athena and Poseidon didn't get along, her initial dislike of Percy. Guess they were about to get that in vivid display.

"Mother!" Annabeth said. "How can you—"

Athena cut her off with a calm but firm look. "It is unfortunate that my father, Zeus, and my uncle, Poseidon,

Percy still made a puckering face everybody kept reminding of how they were all related though. He'd be much happier forgetting titles like that.

chose to break their oath not to have more children. Only Hades kept his word, a fact that I find ironic.

Percy winced so hard bubbles made a little exclamation mark of pain over his head and then shot straight into the ceiling, raining more dust and only one chunk of marble down that landed in the middle. Percy kept his eyes solely focused on that, terrified if he even flicked his eyes to the kid that could summon ghosts he'd lose it all over again!

Nico had winced exactly the same, but he went too still, frozen in place like he still expected someone to lunge at his throat.

Thalia laughed and said, "thanks Percy, I'll need that later when I want to break your face instead."

Will made a soft, humming noise in the back of his throat Nico found soothing, it chased the chill away and finally clicked somewhere in the back of his mind how Will kept doing that without healing him.

"Athena is seriously pushing everybody's buttons today," Jason murmured for himself, flipping his coin through his fingers in thought.

Athena, Greek goddess of Wisdom, didn't know. It was possible none of the gods even knew of who Nico and Bianca were.

It was a question that had been on his mind back during the first book, if Zeus had known of Percy's lineage before Poseidon had claimed him, and it seemed not. Half-bloods could apparently go throughout life without even an infallible God really guessing...but the idea left a bad taste in his mouth. Unlike the many feelings and vague notions he had about a handful of names and the state of California, this feeling left him sour and more confused than ever. He still didn't feel like he was getting anywhere close to figuring out what he was like before he lost his memories, and it was really starting to trouble him if he'd even be recognizable to a person he might have left behind when he finally figured out how to get back if he couldn't get a single solid scrap about himself down pat.

He felt defensive of Thalia. Percy, Annabeth, and Grover in particular all weirded him out if he thought about them to long. He loved to ask questions. These gods gave him a splitting headache.

That was it. The four defining things he could share with...he gave a dissatisfied sigh and shook out his head, concentrating on the book for now. It was pointless to keep pestering what he couldn't get an answer to for now.

He felt Thalia's troubled eyes on him though and spared her a brief smile and tried to relax back into his seat. The position felt unnatural, like his spine didn't know how to slouch, but she gave him a returning smile for the effort.

As we know from the Great Prophecy, children of the three elder gods... such as Thalia and Percy... are dangerous. As thickheaded as he is, Ares has a point."

"It scares me a little to hear them agreeing actually," Will shivered. Annabeth and Clarisse were lethal enough on the rare game they decided to team up and get along, their parents would be a frightening thing.

Jason had his face so scrunched up he looked like he was trying to swallow his tongue. Everything about this place always felt like a mirror. So similar, so fundamentally different...

"Right!" Ares said. "Hey, wait a minute. Who you callin'—"

He started to get up, but a grape vine grew around his waist like a seat belt and pulled him back down.

"Never would have pictured Mr. D for that whole safety first thing, but it feels right," Magnus snorted.

"Now if only he would strap in all the gods until they get the wine out of their ears and really listen," Alex nodded along.

"Oh, please, Ares," Dionysus sighed. "Save the fighting for later."

Ares cursed and ripped away the vine. "You're one to talk, you old drunk. You seriously want to protect these brats?"

That was an awkward question that hung around every day at camp. Will fiddled with the page for a moment debating if he wanted to read the answer before he reminded himself it wasn't nice to Percy to skip regardless of his feelings.

Dionysus gazed down at us wearily. "I have no love for them. Athena, do you truly think it safest to destroy them?"

Percy and Thalia exchanged amused looks at that answer, however. Dionysius was an enigma wrapped in a bottle of vintage. For a god who had no love for them, he sure showed it in funny ways by distracting Ares and saving their life.

"I do not pass judgment," Athena said. "I only point out the risk. What we do, the Council must decide."

"I will not have them punished," Artemis said. "I will have them rewarded. If we destroy heroes who do us a great favor, then we are no better than the Titans. If this is Olympian justice, I will have none of it."

"Seriously, favorite goddess though," Alex said, but she seemed kind of annoyed about it still. The bar really wasn't that high in comparison of the others. Like she could trip over it.

"Calm down, sis," Apollo said. "Jeez, you need to lighten up."

"I feel like Apollo always says that before he throws a beam of sunlight at you," Jason said uneasily.

"And you're lucky if he remembers whether your mortal or not when he does," Thalia agreed in exasperation.

"Don't call me sis! I will reward them."

"None of us are arguing the point," Percy promised, but he still had a fidgety unease about him. The fact that she kept having to insist this made him worried what else had been debated before they showed up.

"Well," Zeus grumbled. "Perhaps. But the monster at least must be destroyed. We have agreement on that?"

A lot of nodding heads.

It took me a second to realize what they were saying. Then my heart turned to lead.

"Bessie? You want to destroy Bessie?"

"What did you think was going to happen when you sent the monster that could destroy them into their lair?" Jason tried really hard not to sound condescending.

"That they'd see the cute baby-cow serpent and give him some hay!" Percy yelped. "Maybe a good speech about staying away from the Minotaur until this war is over!" Percy still felt plenty condescended as he mind blanked on anything else he could have done. The local aquarium would probably be a little confused if he dropped off Bessie in a basket.

Jason kept the thought to himself Percy was being rather naïve.

"Mooooooo!" Bessie protested.

My father frowned. "You have named the Ophiotaurus Bessie?"

"The highlight of my day," Alex still promised.

"Your dad's probably just jealous he didn't get to name him, I bet they're buddies and he builds Bessie an awesome barn," Will chuckled.

"Dad," I said, "he's just a sea creature. A really nice sea creature. You can't destroy him."

Poseidon shifted uncomfortably. "Percy, the monster's power is considerable. If the Titans were to steal it, or—"

"You can't," I insisted. I looked at Zeus. I probably should have been afraid of him, but I stared him right in the eye.

Nico's dreams had indulged many a fantasy his waking mind would never allow. A shiver passed through him as he heard the whispers of one of his most recent ones in that. Percy and him uniting with Hades to overthrow this guy once and for all. Percy cutting off Zeus's head as lightning crackled around with no effect and smiling only for him. Creating actual balance for all...

"Controlling the prophecies never works. Isn't that true? Besides, Bess—the Ophiotaurus is innocent. Killing something like that is wrong. It's just as wrong as... as Kronos eating his children, just because of something they might do. It's wrong!"

"Chiron owes you an A+ just for the execution of that," Jason grinned.

"Only took me twelve years to get that on one test," Percy smiled.

Zeus seemed to consider this. His eyes drifted to his daughter Thalia. "And what of the risk? Kronos knows full well, if one of you were to sacrifice the beast's entrails, you would have the power to destroy us. Do you think we can let that possibility remain? You, my daughter, will turn sixteen on the morrow, just as the prophecy says."

"Thank you for the exposition dump nobody needed," Thalia said with an uneasy scowl. He'd just complimented her for not taking that opportunity!

"You have to trust them," Annabeth spoke up. "Sir, you have to trust them."

Zeus scowled. "Trust a hero?"

The fact that this seemed like such a foreign idea to him grated on all of them badly. Were they nothing more than pawns and errand runners? This guy was supposed to be better than Kronos, right?

"Does he not trust his own daughter, the greatest hero in that room?" Percy demanded of the salt around them, fire in his eyes.

Thalia just shook her head in amusement and waved Will on, touched but also pleased he'd held that in back in the throne room. She was worried this room was giving him too loose a tongue, and by the time they got back he'd have some massive brawl with the first god he laid eyes on.

"Annabeth is right," Artemis said. "Which is why I must first make a reward. My faithful companion, Zoe Nightshade, has passed into the stars. I must have a new lieutenant. And I intend to choose one. But first, Father Zeus, I must speak to you privately."

"Did she need his permission before asking you officially?" Jason asked.

"It's polite, and we don't want to offend Zeus if we're sane," she said with a pointed look at Percy who had a shoe propped up on his knee and was fidgeting with his shoelaces in mild boredom.

Zeus beckoned Artemis forward. He leaned down and listened as she spoke in his ear.

A feeling of panic seized me. "Annabeth," I said under my breath. "Don't."

Percy's jaw was locked tight enough to crack whale bones as he kept twisting the aglet on his shoe as tight as it would go and then slowly letting it unwind in his hand, repeating the motion over and over and concentrating on just that. Gods he did not want her to go, but apparently, in her mind he was no better than Luke and he'd never given her a reason to stay...

She frowned at me. "What?"

"Honestly Percy, haven't you learned by now telling someone not to do something just makes them want to more," Thalia agreed in an obnoxiously cheerful tone to Percy's ears. Percy had somehow managed to tangle his laces together into a knot.

Nico bit his lip hard to stop himself laughing she was almost mocking the poor guy, because she knew how it worked out. He danced with the idea for just a split second if he'd ever have had a shot if Annabeth did join and leave Percy broken hearted, but then he remembered he was still down at Camp waiting like a dumbass, probably playing in the mud like a toddler for everyone to come back and tell him the coolest story ever. He didn't know how it would have gone worse than that day, but this turn of events couldn't have made any of it better.

"Look, I need to tell you something," I continued. The words came stumbling out of me. "I couldn't stand it if... I don't want you to—"

Every sappy love song his mother had ever sang to herself, every poem he'd heard snippets of in his life, every flash of seeing her from that first day to this moment raced through his mind in a dizzying, sickening swirl. He wondered if this is how getting punched by Cupid felt.

He loved her. That's what it all boiled down to. He didn't know how or when exactly it had happened, but she was about to run off and never come back again and this time he couldn't save her.

"Percy?" she said. "You look like you're going to be sick."

And that's how I felt. I wanted to say more, but my tongue betrayed me. It wouldn't move because of the fear in my stomach. And then Artemis turned.

"I shall have a new lieutenant," she announced. "If she will accept it."

"No," I murmured.

"Thalia," Artemis said. "Daughter of Zeus. Will you join the Hunt?"

Thalia mock wiped a tear away as Percy jumped so bad he fell out of his seat. "Did you just forget I existed for a few moments there kelp head?"

Percy looked up at her sheepishly. Obviously, he hadn't, he'd just been convinced Annabeth had gone with her. Annabeth was the obvious first choice to him to any question. He still wasn't convinced that hadn't happened and swallowed his stomach full of nerves he was about to blurt all of that out to her any second and she'd laugh in his face.

Stunned silence filled the room. I stared at Thalia, unable to believe what I was hearing.

Annabeth smiled. She squeezed Thalia's hand and let it go, as if she'd been expecting this all along.

"We'd talked about it, before," Thalia admitted to them. "I asked her if the Hunt had ever bothered her in recent times and she admitted Zoe had been around, given her the pamphlet and the spiel just before school started. I wasn't happy and wanted to summon that pretentious princess and tell her where she could shove that pamphlet," the amount of affection she managed to say for Zoe couldn't be denied as she smiled, "but instead, Annabeth and I, talked." She finished with an exhausted sigh. Her little sister had been so terrified of losing her to the Prophecy she'd kept that flier in hopes Thalia would just consider it, and it had been in the back of her mind this whole quest. Losing Luke like that had just solidified everything for her in this moment Annabeth had been right about her all along and what she really needed, as usual.

"I will," Thalia said firmly.

Zeus rose, his eyes full of concern. "My daughter, consider well—"

"Father," she said. "I will not turn sixteen tomorrow. I will never turn sixteen. I won't let this prophecy be mine. I stand with my sister Artemis. Kronos will never tempt me again."

She knelt before the goddess and began the words I remembered from Bianca's oath, what seemed like so long ago.

Nico sniffed quietly beside Will and tried to tell himself one more time it was over. Bianca's life had come full circle and he had to stop dwelling on her doing the very same. Percy wasn't holding a grudge for Thalia abandoning him to the Prophecy.

"I pledge myself to the goddess Artemis. I turn my back on the company of men..."

Afterward, Thalia did something that surprised me almost as much as the pledge. She came over to me, smiled, and in front of the whole assembly, she gave me a big hug.

I blushed.

When she pulled away and gripped my shoulders, I said, "Um... aren't you supposed to not do that anymore? Hug boys, I mean?"

"I'm honoring a friend," she corrected. "I must join the Hunt, Percy. I haven't known peace since... since Half-Blood Hill. I finally feel like I have a home. But you're a hero. You will be the one of the prophecy."

"A few more hours," Percy still griped, just a bit. "Couldn't you have waited just a few more hours to go through with this? Maybe this was the decision that saved Olympus." He looked more resigned and exasperated than truly frustrated with her though.

Thalia gave him a sad, weak smile. Percy had just said it himself, trying to control the prophecy into the outcome she wanted would never have worked. There had been no world of endless sleep on the top of Mount Tam, but really, maybe that line could have applied to Zoe falling to an endless sleep at the feet of her father holding the world. Maybe if she'd hesitated a moment longer Luke would have made the same choice.

She just offered her hand to help Percy back into his seat and shrugged without answering. It was what it was, and they were here for Percy to remember that, not jump down every rabbit hole of what could have been.

"Great," I muttered.

"I'm proud to be your friend."

She hugged Annabeth, who was trying hard not to cry. Then she even hugged Grover, who looked ready to pass out,

"A small reminder dreams come true," Alex raised an unimpressed brow but snorted in delight all the same that had probably been his reward.

like somebody had just given him an all-you-can-eat enchilada coupon.

Then Thalia went to stand by Artemis's side.

Where she never thought she'd want to leave. Thalia still gave a forlorn sigh and shivered in her camo. Artemis would understand her desire to track down which god had done this to her brother, she was sure of it.

"Now for the Ophiotaurus," Artemis said.

"This boy is still dangerous," Dionysus warned. "The beast is a temptation to great power. Even if we spare the boy—"

"No." I looked around at all the gods. "Please. Keep the Ophiotaurus safe.

"Not, no, no if's or ands about killing me after I saved your thrones, again! It's, no, don't hurt the baby cow serpent," Magnus repeated just in case they'd missed that.

"Are you that used to hearing everything twice? You weren't even signing when you said that," Percy rolled his eyes, clearly still not getting why the guy seemed astonished over that.

My dad can hide him under the sea somewhere, or keep him in an aquarium here in Olympus. But you have to protect him."

"And why should we trust you?" rumbled Hephaestus.

"Because he's asking you to protect him rather than using him to kill you all," Magnus said in a supremely, 'duh,' kind of voice.

"Because he named him Bessie!" Alex concluded as if this were the be all of points to make.

"Remind me to bring you two to the next meeting," Percy chuckled.

"I'm only fourteen," I said. "If this prophecy is about me, that's two more years."

Jason, Alex, and Magnus all studied Nico curiously for a few moments. The answer had always felt obvious it would be Percy, and yet Thalia and Nico had been thrown into the mix back to back.

Now with Thalia at forever fifteen, it did make Percy the oldest by default again...but Nico's age wasn't particularly obvious to them. He looked small and skinny, especially always so tucked tight down in his seat most of the time.

Did being pulled out of time, already making him pass his sixteenth birthday long ago leave him disqualified? There still seemed plenty of mystery left what the heck happened up there, or if it had even come to fruition yet.

"Two years for Kronos to deceive you," Athena said. "Much can change in two years, my young hero."

Percy's mind twinged painfully, scattered memories and feelings he yet had even the vaguest impression about. Rachel lingered oddly in his mind as he again looked to where she'd been sitting. He rubbed his temple and already knew Athena was annoyingly right about that.

"Mother!" Annabeth said, exasperated.

"It is only the truth, child. It is bad strategy to keep the animal alive. Or the boy."

"Wouldn't the best strategy be to have a counter in play," Magnus looked vaguely annoyed, and Percy didn't even have to pretend to not know why this time. "He's yet failed a quest, and they can't just keep pretending this prophecy won't happen forever. Wouldn't the strategic thing be to have a demigod on their side as badass as the one who's threatening Olympus?" Did they still not even consider Luke a real risk just because he wasn't a kid of three in particular?

Jason looked queasy. Arguing with a god, arguing with Minerva- Athena, ugh. He'd rather go back to laughing about Percy's hilariously inept ability to confess his undying love to Annabeth.

My father stood. "I will not have a sea creature destroyed, if I can help it. And I can help it."

He held out his hand, and a trident appeared in it: a twenty foot long bronze shaft with three spear tips that shimmered with blue, watery light. "I will vouch for the boy and the safety of the Ophiotaurus."

"Ooh, now we mean business," Alex said with a wild grin.

"Please don't encourage them," Thalia groaned.

"You won't take it under the sea!" Zeus stood suddenly. "I won't have that kind of bargaining chip in your possession."

"Brother, please," Poseidon sighed.

Zeus's lightning bolt appeared in his hand, a shaft of electricity that filled the whole room with the smell of ozone.

"No, no, now business will get done," Magnus chuckled, and Thalia sighed in defeat they were all doomed if Percy did try to smuggle them in.

"Fine," Poseidon said. "I will build an aquarium for the creature here. Hephaestus can help me. The creature will be safe. We shall protect it with all our powers.

"So now if Bessie gets hurt, the gods can all accuse each other and start another war, this doesn't sound like a better idea," Jason shook his head uneasily.

"I'll take the compromise of Bessie not being dead," Percy said with relief.

The boy will not betray us. I vouch for this on my honor."

A breath wooshed out of Percy like his dad had given him a bear hug. This was beyond just a compliment. This felt like something more. Trust.

Zeus thought about this. "All in favor?"

To my surprise, a lot of hands went up. Dionysus abstained. So did Ares and Athena. But everybody else...

"We have a majority," Zeus decreed. "And so, since we will not be destroying these heroes... I imagine we should honor them. Let the triumph celebration begin!"

"Just like that hu?" Alex did not look impressed. Probably because nobody was maimed.

"I'll take the win," Percy promised.

"The only person who got a reward was Thalia though," Will frowned on Percy and Annabeth's behalf. "And Grover, if you count him getting a hug from a Huntress finally, but Thalia gave him that." It really was no wonder Percy so often looked troubled at just the thought of his dad. No matter what he did, he couldn't even get offered a cool new skateboard or something?

"Trust me Will, I am plenty happy with how the day turned out," Percy insisted. Annabeth was okay! They both needed a serious nap, but after surviving, it was all the reward he would have wanted from this anyways.

There are parties, and then there are huge, major, blowout parties. And then there are Olympian parties. If you ever get a choice, go for the Olympian.

"Are you saying the college frat parties with cheap beer don't compare?" Nico snorted. At least there if you accidentally stepped on somebody's toga you didn't risk being blasted to ash.

"I wouldn't know, I've never been to one," Percy chuckled, snapping his fingers to a tune only in his head and looking longingly towards the other rooms again for the fridge and a bed with good arch support. What he really wanted now was this book to be over before anything else bad happened...then he realized who had said that to him and did a double take at Nico and swallowed awkwardly.

He was up on Olympus milling through the crowd to find Annabeth while Nico was back at Camp still waiting. A ghostly wail still made goose bumps across the back of his neck when he looked to long at him and wondered how the hell he'd ever explained all this to the kid back then.

He was at least smiling lightly right now, whispering quietly to Will for just a moment what other cliches that were worth finding and avoiding at parties, so Percy managed to push it away for a little while longer and pretend everything turned out fine.

The Nine Muses cranked up the tunes, and I realized the music was whatever you wanted it to be: the gods could listen to classical and the younger demigods heard hip-hop or whatever, and it was all the same sound track. No arguments. No fights to change the radio station. Just requests to crank it up.

"Please tell me your dad can install that at camp," Percy asked of Will. For some reason he had a Jessie McCartney song in his head.

"He does owe us a good spoil," Will agreed distractedly, he still hadn't even gotten Nico to admit if he'd ever even been to a party.

Dionysus went around growing refreshment stands out of the ground, and a beautiful woman walked with him arm in arm—his wife, Ariadne. Dionysus looked happy for the first time.

"It's a good thing nobody tried to drag that council meeting out longer, he might have voted on that death by homework after all," Thalia chuckled. He'd still managed to look as miserable and bored in the throne room as ever. What he'd really wanted was this time right here, as much of it as he could get before his banishment resumed.

Nectar and ambrosia overflowed from golden fountains, and platters of mortal snack food crowded the banquet tables. Golden goblets filled with whatever drink you wanted.

Grover trotted around with a full plate of tin cans and enchiladas, and his goblet was full of double-espresso latte, which he kept muttering over like an incantation: "Pan! Pan!"

"Good of him to keep his dreams alive," Jason said wearily.

"So long as he doesn't summon any more pigs," Percy agreed.

"I wonder what kind of creamer he thinks will help most with that," Alex chuckled.

Gods kept coming over to congratulate me. Thankfully, they had reduced themselves to human size, so they didn't accidentally trample partygoers under their feet. Hermes started chatting with me, and he was so cheerful I hated to tell him what had happened to his least favorite son, Luke, but before I could even get up the courage, Hermes got a call on his caduceus and walked away.

Percy was getting really good at pretending to himself that conversation was never going to happen either as he gave an uneasy smile and was glad that among the winces, nobody else wanted to linger on that either.

Apollo told me I could drive his sun chariot any time, and if I ever wanted archery lessons—

"Thanks," I told him. "But seriously, I'm no good at archery."

"Ah, nonsense," he said. "Target practice from the chariot as we fly over the U.S.? Best fun there is!"

A burning flare of jealousy lit Will at hearing that and Percy's nervous laugh as he looked wild-eyed at him to keep going. His dad had never offered him that, he hadn't offered it to any of his kids in years.

I made some excuses and wove through the crowds that were dancing in the palace courtyards. I was looking for Annabeth. Last I saw her, she'd been dancing with some minor godling.

Magnus yelped in fear, "gods tell me it wasn't Hercules!"

"No," Percy said forcefully at once, then added a great sigh of relief, he obviously would have dulled him to the death on the spot. That might have made Zeus mad, again, and he wanted that dance with Annabeth first. "I'm not sure who, couldn't guess from the dress, but I think she had something to do with fire? Annabeth seemed to know her," Percy said from the brief glimpse he'd seen.

Thalia smiled, and rolled her eyes at the idiot. It had been Hestia, how had he never stopped to see her at the Camp's hearth?

Then a man's voice behind me said, "You won't let me down, I hope."

I turned and found Poseidon smiling at me.

"Dad... hi."

"Hello, Percy. You've done well."

His praise made me uneasy. I mean, it felt good, but I knew just how much he'd put himself on the line, vouching for me. It would've been a lot easier to let the others disintegrate me.

"I won't let you down," I promised.

He nodded. I had trouble reading gods' emotions, but I wondered if he had some doubts.

Percy was still shuffling around, though now there was no beat in his head to go along. It felt stilted, he'd swear an organ was playing some haunted house music. Maybe with a hint of a light at the end of the tunnel though? Hopefully it wasn't a train.

"Your friend Luke—"

"He's not my friend," I blurted out. Then I realized it was probably rude to interrupt. "Sorry."

"Your former friend Luke," Poseidon corrected.

"You really did luck out with the best dad," Thalia told him with an uneasy sigh. Her dad hadn't sought out her at this party in their honor. He sure wouldn't have corrected himself, let alone not turned her into a flamingo if she interrupted in the first place.

"Seems like it," Percy agreed as he looked around fondly at the ocean floor.

"He once promised things like that. He was Hermes's pride and joy.

Jason shifted around uncomfortably as he wondered what had changed about all that. Had Hermes ever said anything like that to him? Had it been because he failed one quest and Hermes had moved on to another of his many kids? He stared down at the tattoo on his arm and wondered if his parent even knew he was missing, let alone cared.

Just bear that in mind, Percy. Even the bravest can fall."

"Luke fell pretty hard," I agreed. "He's dead."

"Percy, for the literal win," Magnus gave him an only half-sarcastic thumbs up while Percy mustered some kind of smile back. He'd said that explicitly so his dad would agree with him, maybe help Annabeth find some closure rather than her strange denial.

Poseidon shook his head. "No, Percy. He is not."

Percy seethed for several loud moments in his head about this. Looks like everybody got a reward tonight, whether they'd deserved it or not! He forced himself to keep paying attention though and didn't even consider taking back that thanks for his dad. Maybe Poseidon could finally answer why Luke seemed so unbeatable, practically an immortal himself!

I stared at him. "What?"

"I believe Annabeth told you this.

Was nothing sacred? There was an unhappy moment where they all exchanged uneasy looks for the God of the Ocean just, casually knowing that. Unless Blackjack had tattled on Percy, there seemed no good reason why he did.

Luke still lives. I have seen it. His boat sails from San Francisco with the remains of Kronos even now. He will retreat and regroup before assaulting you again.

"I do love his use of the word assaulting," Percy sighed, giving an imaginary thanks to his dad again for correctly pinning that word to his entire life.

I will do my best to destroy his boat with storms, but he is making alliances with my enemies, the older spirits of the ocean. They will fight to protect him."

"How can he be alive?" I said. "That fall should've killed him!"

Poseidon looked troubled. "I don't know, Percy, but beware of him. He is more dangerous than ever. And the golden coffin is still with him, still growing in strength."

"What about Atlas?" I said. "What's to prevent him from escaping again? Couldn't he just force some giant or something to take the sky for him?"

My father snorted in derision. "If it were so easy, he would have escaped long ago. No, my son. The curse of the sky can only be forced upon a Titan, one of the children of Gaia and Ouranous. Anyone else must choose to take the burden of their own free will. Only a hero, someone with strength, a true heart, and great courage, would do such a thing. No one in Kronos's army would dare try to bear that weight, even upon pain of death."

"Luke did it," I said. "He let Atlas go. Then he tricked Annabeth into saving him and used her to convince Artemis to take the sky."

"Yes," Poseidon said. "Luke is... an interesting case."

I think he wanted to say more, but just then, Bessie started mooing from across the courtyard. Some demigods were playing with his water sphere, joyously pushing it back and forth over the top of the crowd.

"The only way I can imagine a beach ball not being a fun and good distraction," Alex sighed.

"I'm just grateful for Poseidon's priorities," Will admitted, he'd want to go rescue the baby cow-serpent too.

Jason looked like he was slowly being crushed to death by the sky next at these inept versions of deities. Bessie had been in their care for mere hours and was already being mishandled like a toy!

"I'd better take care of that," Poseidon grumbled. "We can't have the Ophiotaurus tossed around like a beach ball. Be good, my son. We may not speak again for some time."

"Because once a year if you're lucky was already a luxury," Magnus muttered.

And just like that he was gone.

I was about to keep searching the crowd when another voice spoke. "Your father takes a great risk, you know."

I found myself face-to-face with a gray-eyed woman who looked so much like Annabeth I almost called her that.

"Athena." I tried not to sound resentful, after the way she'd written me off in the council, but I guess I didn't hide it very well.

She smiled dryly. "Do not judge me too harshly, half-blood. Wise counsel is not always popular, but I spoke the truth. You are dangerous."

Percy didn't look very pleased with that assessment and fidgeted on the spot as he imagined his dad now telling Annabeth she should chill out more and maybe drink a pina colada.

"You never take risks?"

She nodded. "I concede the point.

He looked just a bit proud of himself though he'd gotten the Goddess of wisdom to say that. Thalia sighed but let him have that win while he could.

You may perhaps be useful. And yet... your fatal flaw may destroy us as well as yourself."

Percy was aghast as he looked wildly around at Will now for him to scream 'gotcha!' He didn't even know what his fatal flaw was!

My heart crept into my throat. A year ago, Annabeth and I had had a talk about fatal flaws. Every hero had one. Hers, she said, was pride. She believed she could do anything... like holding up the world, for instance. Or saving Luke. But I didn't really know what mine was.

Athena looked almost sorry for me. "Kronos knows your flaw, even if you do not. He knows how to study his enemies. Think, Percy. How has he manipulated you? First, your mother was taken from you. Then your best friend, Grover. Now my daughter, Annabeth."

"Err," Magnus looked very concerned at that summary. "All of those were outside of Kronos's influence though...right?!" He remembered Hearth's guess about Luke somehow setting up Grover's initial escape from Polyphemus and felt miserable his friend wasn't around to be right, but that only made this feel all the more dangerous. If the Titan had really somehow set up, even in the smallest way possible, to influence Hades's taking Sally in that moment and Thorn dipping out with Annabeth meant they had vastly been underestimating just how much control the Crooked One had over every part of these stories.

Nobody answered him, not even Alex as she twisted her fingers into her hair and pulled uneasily, knowing all to well what kind of manipulation was being implied there.

She paused, disapproving. "In each case, your loved ones have been used to lure you into Kronos's traps.

"And the traps have failed every time," Jason reminded as he shifted around uneasily in his seat. That headache was back full force trying to imagine a conversation with Athena. Unlike with Ares, there wasn't a hint of confusion on his part how different she felt to her core, in every word she spoke.

Your fatal flaw is personal loyalty, Percy. You do not know when it is time to cut your losses. To save a friend, you would sacrifice the world. In a hero of the prophecy, that is very, very dangerous."

Will looked appalled those words had crossed his tongue, and he didn't need Percy shouting the book's next line to think it himself. The fine, slippery line of the butterfly effect of who was saved causing other events had nothing on the powers blessed by Apollo. The very defining trait of being a Hero was to stop and help without knowing the outcome. Sometimes that meant a god in disguise would give you immortality, and sometimes it meant you just assisted your worst enemy down the line.

I balled my fists. "That's not a flaw. Just because I want to help my friends—"

"The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation," she said. "Evil is easy to fight. Lack of wisdom... that is very hard indeed."

I wanted to argue, but I found I couldn't. Athena was pretty darn smart.

Alex was more than happy to though. "She helped you rescue Annabeth though. If she's so sure trying your hardest to rescue those you care about has no greater purpose, why show up at all?"

"Because she would have cut her losses if it hadn't worked I guess," Magnus said hoarsely, his hands shaking in disgust. These gods really got worse and worse the more he heard of them, he couldn't imagine a parent trying to paint this in a bad light. He wondered how Athena felt about Annabeth's 'fatal flaw.' Was she proud wisdom's daughter needed to occasionally be reminded she couldn't do everything better than everyone around her?

They were so, alien. He was still dumbfounded over Zeus being surprised that he should trust a hero. These gods were so disconnected from the world, how on earth did they function within it?

"I hope the Council's decisions prove wise," Athena said. "But I will be watching, Percy Jackson. I do not approve of your friendship with my daughter. I do not think it wise for either of you. And should you begin to waver in your loyalties..."

She fixed me with her cold gray stare, and I realized what a terrible enemy Athena would make, ten times worse than Ares or Dionysus or maybe even my father. Athena would never give up. She would never do something rash or stupid just because she hated you, and if she made a plan to destroy you, it would not fail.

Percy's heart froze in his chest. The thrill of fear that lanced through him made any time before seem like a mild, silly fright.

Yet when he tentatively glanced over at Magnus, just daring himself to get it out of the way now so the color didn't shock him back to this feeling again later, he still saw the familiar grey color and smiled. Annabeth's cousin looked miffed at the threat and was signing something he couldn't hope to guess while Alex watched in avid detail and slowly mimicked him.

Annabeth was going to be so annoyed at him for being left out of every conversation that had gone on here, she loved to be involved and would have been happily leading each side's comment no matter how goofy to its best end. He couldn't wait to see her eyes spark on him again as she called him a seaweed brain for smiling like an idiot as Will uneasily cleared his throat and moved on.

"Percy!" Annabeth said, running through the crowd. She stopped short when she saw who I was talking to. "Oh... Mom."

"I will leave you," Athena said. "For now."

She turned and strode through the crowds, which parted before her as if she were carrying Aegis.

"I'd flee at the sight of any Olympian at this point, no magic shield required," Magnus promised.

"And that's how you know it's been a good party," Will snickered.

"Oh, fine, I'll attend one if you promise me at least one blood-curdling scream," Nico finally relented with the silent addendum he wasn't the reason for that happening.

Will gave him a wink, a cheeky little one that Nico had no idea what to make of.

"Was she giving you a hard time?" Annabeth asked.

"I don't know how to answer that," Jason said as he rubbed at his forehead with so much vigor he seemed to be trying to slowly peel off the flesh.

"I do," Percy said confidently even as he rubbed his chest to make sure his heart really was still beating.

"No," I said. "It's... fine."

"The only answer I would expect from you Percy," Thalia sighed. He'd be bleeding to death someday and promise he was fine while they dumped a bucket of water on him.

She studied me with concern. She touched the new streak of gray in my hair that matched hers exactly—our painful souvenir from holding Atlas's burden.

His hand moved, to creep up and brush at it now. He'd always felt tied to her, assuming it was from their very first quest. He'd never wanted their shared suffering to highlight it.

There was a lot I'd wanted to say to Annabeth, but Athena had taken the confidence out of me. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut.

Percy was still rubbing his stomach and well remembered the sentiment. Maybe he should carry a glass of water around with him for an extra shot of courage next time? He was now half convinced Annabeth had laughed herself stupid when she'd kissed him.

I do not approve of your friendship with my daughter.

"So," Annabeth said. "What did you want to tell me earlier?"

"Please don't join the Hunters of Artemis because I'll somehow never be able to get through a quest without you," Alex chuckled.

"I missed you and dreamed about you so much I made a girl who loathes men befriend me," Magnus snorted.

"I love you," Jason said much more plainly with an exasperated look at the pair of them.

"Yeah, none of that, no," Percy was blushing a full neon red and stuttering even over that. He didn't think he'd be able to articulate her name if he even tried, and yet he didn't deny a word of any of that.

The music was playing. People were dancing in the streets. I said, "I, uh, was thinking we got interrupted at Westover Hall. And... I think I owe you a dance."

She smiled slowly. "All right, Seaweed Brain."

So I took her hand, and I don't know what everybody else heard, but to me it sounded like a slow dance: a little sad, but maybe a little hopeful, too.

"Awww!" Will cooed so much Percy felt the need to check if he was stuck like that. "I knew I should have bid on you two getting together by the end of that summer! I would have won so many years off chores!"

"There was a bet?" Percy demanded.

Will whistled innocently like he hadn't heard that as he got up to hand the book to Jason while Percy tracked him the whole time like a predator. When Will sat back down and still hadn't answered Percy sighed and let it go, still brushing at his hair and replaying that song over and over in his head until the lyrics got stuck for the rest of this. It helped to memorize the warmth of her body against him he'd been so missing the entire time here.

#pjo #Percy Jackson #Thalia Grace #Jason Grace #nico di angelo #will solace #Alex Fierro #Magnus Chase #hoo #reading the books #fanfiction #HDYSG

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thewestern · 1 year ago

Text

Chapter 12.5

Now when he was a young man,

He never thought he'd see

People stand in line to see the boy king.

It’s true that as pharaohs go, Tutankhamon wasn’t really all that memorable. Not in terms of his achievements. Nor was he infamous for some or other empirical blunder. He was just a kid. Nine years old when he ascended the throne. Dead at nineteen. Perhaps then the Boy King captured the childlike imagination inside of us all.

Or rather it was his toys. Because the real reason you and I know Tutankhamon was his tomb, and more specifically, all the wonderful things contained within it. Lucky for us, the entrance to his tomb had been obstructed by rubble and debris — likely the handiwork of some fly-by-night ancient Egyptian contractors in the course of their renovation of a neighboring tomb unit in the Valley of Kings (KV). As a result of his being hermetically sealed away as such, like in a storage unit, all of his royal stuff was preserved in near-mint condition. Likewise, the many looters who had plundered nearly every other crypt of note couldn’t get their grubby grave-robbing mitts on it. So that when KV62 was finally discovered, largely intact, in the early Nineteen Twenties, the public could be spellbound by the opulence of these his burial goods. Among the artifacts, a great many of them gilded, there was an iron dagger, rare for the Bronze Age, revealed by X-ray fluorescence to likely have been fashioned from a meteorite. Hell yeah. As well as there were luxury chariots, designer sandals, linens of ancient Egyptian cotton and of course his iconic funerary mask, forged of solid gold, baby. Those and hundreds of other treasures were buried there for what was supposed to be all-time with his diminutive teenage mummy. For he was a sickly boy king. And like Russian nesting dolls, laid alongside his there were a pair of sarcophagi which were tinier still, whose occupants were later proven by DNA analysis to be his daughters, probably stillborns.

(King Tut) How'd you get so funky?

(Funky Tut) Did you do the monkey?

The media frenzy resulting from the find was unprecedented in the history of Egyptology. Newspapermen from all over the world reported breathlessly as contents were extracted from the tomb and catalogued somewhat haphazardly by the attending archeologists. Their readers simply had to know … What would they dig up next?

They had hit paydirt. Tutankhamon had arisen from his tomb, a popular cultural phenomenon reincarnate. Before there was Beatlemania, there was Tutmania. That was seriously the suffix by which they called his ascent to fame. Three thousand years posthumously, King Tut — as he was so affectionately nicknamed — had achieved -mania Mode. (Other previous and subsequent -manias include: Tulip Mania, a period during the Dutch Golden Age when the speculative price of tulip bulbs reached exceptionally high levels before collapsing dramatically, and Beanie Mania, a period during the American Golden Age wherein the same thing happened with plush toys stuffed with plastic pellets. Also Billy’s favorite -mania, Wrestle, which remains ongoing.)

They composed big band songs about him on Tin Pan Alley. Cast him a leading man of the silent film era. Women flocked to department stores to purchase household goods, some modeled faithfully after the primeval appliances, others crudely appropriated of their exotic-sounding names and likenesses.

You can bet your sweet ass that Big Museum cashed in too. Exhibited over the decades from Tokyo to Toledo, Ohio, London to New Orleans, Louisiana, Paris to St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida), King Tut’s treasures became arguably the most well-traveled relics in history.

Born in Arizona,

Moved to Babylonia (King Tut).

In the Fall of Seventy-eight, KT — or more specifically a life-size replica of his mummy — was subletting an unfurnished wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the last scheduled stop on his three-year North American Tour. By that time his shit was hot, having already been cargo-shipped around the world and back again. Circumnavigations that included a visit to the former Soviet Union, which at the time harboured considerably friendlier relations with the Egyptian government than its Cold War combatants. As you may imagine, this constituted a great embarrassment to these United States. So much so, that following Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s deft diplomatic interventions during the Yom Kippur War, President Nixon immediately cashed in the resultant political capital, boarded Air Force One to Alexandria and personally appealed to his counterpart Anwar Sadat to please, let his people look upon these magnificent things. Sadat relented, and years later, while Tut was lying in state at the Met, Sadat was himself stateside at Camp David, signing the as-titled Accords with Israeli PM Menachem Begin.

On that very same day that President Jimmy was brokering Middle East Peace (okay … two things that Hayseed got right, Hank would have begrudglingly allowed), meanwhilst untold thousands of tourists were descending upon the Upper West Side like locusts with fanny packs, there was An American Band — nay, The American Band — kicking off a three-night run at the New Sound & Light Theater just outside Cairo, which from Tutankhamon’s down valley resting place was about the same length-drive from New York to D.C., albeit along the banks of the Nile, a Hell of a long way from the Hudson or the Potomac. The Grateful Dead gigging Giza and the Great Pyramid was mostly Phil’s project. Go figure. Like they had recently been to Stonehenge or something and he was on this kick about them playing Places of Power. The pyramids are like the obvious number one choice, he said, because no matter what anyone thinks they might be, there is definitely some kind of mojo about the pyramids. Fucking-a. But on the other hand, show me a place of power and I’ll show you one of suffering, someone might could have informed him. Live From Chornobyl. Europe 72 AD (recorded at the newly constructed Colosseum). At Folsom Prison.

(Plattsburgh Air Force Base? Big Cypress?)

Whatever. Hank wasn’t there if you were wondering. They’re weren’t hardly any capital-f Fans in the audience. Mostly members of The extedned Family. You know, usual suspects: Mountain Girl, Kesey, Ram Rod, Bill Graham, Bear, Portland Trailblazers’ center Bill Walton, Big Steve. As for local party crashers, the nearly blindingly nearsighted Lesh claimed to have caught out of the corner of his soda bottle-bespectacled eye some shadowy figures gathered on the crowd’s outskirts, swaying rhythmically in dark flowing robes. Somehow it was later backchanneled to him that these were Bedouin, the nomadic horsemen of the desert, and that they’d been drawn in by the lights and the music, falling on and echoing off the eroded profile of the mighty Sphinx.

Hank did attend one of the shows they put on back home to help offset the cost of hauling all their crew and equipment, all the way to fucking Egypt. (Whereas aformentionedly he heard the debut rendition of Shakedown Street, the title track of the forthcoming studio album.) This had not been a treasure-hunting or even profit-seeking Arabian adventure. What meager proceed there was had been donated to the Antiquities Society. (It belongs in a museum!)

Hank had however seen the Tutankhamun traveling road show when it stopped through his town. Fucking everybody went. Even the Grateful Dead! The band members had been, in a way, so resurrected by their experience in Egypt, that they couldn’t hardly wait to visit the blockbuster exhibit for themselves. Conveniently its final destination was right down the street, at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park. (The U.S. tour had originally been announced without any San Francisco dates. Area Tutheads bombarded the Mayor’s office demanding that he wield the fullest extent of his executive power to Bring Tut To The Bay. de Young Museum trustees flew to Cairo shortly thereafter to negotiate the terms of his visit.) Let the good times roll!

By all accounts, Jerry had especially high expectations for Egypt. They were going to harness the power of that ancient place and levitate the pyramids, he was purported to have said. Of course, Abbie Hoffman and the yippies had attempted that same metaphysical feat on the Pentagon in the decade prior, granted the geometric parameters were incongruent. They were ten years on from the Summer of Love. Garcia had since forsaken the world-expanding properties of LSD in favor of heroin, which as we know constricts time and space down to a much more manageable plane. Although now the walls of his tomb were closing in on him. Maybe that’s what he felt that day at the museum. That the existential jet lag had set in, and the big trip was really over for good this time. All that was left was the sand in his pockets and all these souvenirs.

Alas, the show must go on. Record company’s on line one. We got a studio album to cut. One of the lest-remembered tracks on Shakedown St. is its finale: If I Had The World To Give. As a fairly straight-ahead love song, it’s sort of an outlier in the Dead oeuvre, even for a Garcia-Hunter ballad. Okay, obviously, there’s TLEO, but isn’t that about love as a concept, conceptually, rather than the act of loving somebody? THEY love EACH OTHER. And it’s a warning. Their love is like a freight train, and boy they better take care it don’t run ‘em clean over. Easy for you to say, watching from the station.

A true love song — it could be said — is about love in the first person. I love YOU. From my POV, where I stand astraddle these tracks, I can hear the whistle blowing, see the locomotive coming round the bend, smell the steam now as I feel the cattle guard sweep me off my fancy feet, launching me sky fucking high, to kingdom come. And, baby, I don’t care if I ever come down. Because even if I brought you back heaven and the moon and the shining stars above, you still wouldn’t love me back, would you? Don’t lie to me, baby. That’s alright. That’s just fine with me. Because I got something bigger and better. Don’t believe me? Wait till you hear this … (It could also be said that the best love songs are about romantic feeling unrequited. If he or she already loves you back, then really, what the hell are you strumming an acoustic guitar for, like an asshole? Wasting time which could be better spent screwing. That’s what.) This song that I sing to YOU, with these assembled here today as my witnesses: the acid heads and the speed freaks, the Jerry Side and the Phil Zone, the spinners and the tapers and the nomadic horsepeople. It is a divine force all too powerful and too pure for YOU and ME to keep locked away in this tomb of love. THEY have to know what WE have. It is something they can never understand but they can hear it so that they may feel an infinitesimal fraction of it for themselves. THAT is what all THIS is for.

They only played it three times, all in that same Fall of Seventy-eight, the last of which rendition was performed in Cleveland, of all fucking places, arguably the third best city in Ohio (possibly fourth best, depending on your tolerance for the delicacy which is Skyline Chili), and undoubtedly a long fucking way from Cairo. (Famously, Cleveland is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The city lobbied for the right to host the Hall by citing that local disk jockey Alan Freed had coined the term, Rock And Roll. Additionally it pledged sixty-five million dollars in public money to fund the construction. The building was designed by hall of fame-architect I.M. Pei, who drew up the blueprints for many-a-museum, including the Louvre, which like its Clevelandish cousin, also prominently features a glass pyramid for its plaza facade.) November the Twentieth. By then they were a poorly fucking lot. Bobby was purportedly backstage puking his guts out for the better part of Set Two. Phil, for his part, was by his own accounting a fully-blown drunk in Seventy-eight. Kreutzmann had a cast on his hand, which he busted getting bucked off a goddamn camel. Speaking of the Grateful Dead and their Great Pyramid scheme, the Rocking the Cradle live album they had planned to release as a means to pay for this boondoggle in full had to be scrapped. So here they were, a half a million in the Red Sea, all on account of some crew member had gotten into a row with the piano tuner, who then tendered his resignation in protest. So Keith was off-key in addition to being offbeat. The latter owing to his accelerating abuse of cocaine, which does a number on one’s sense of time. Hard on a marriage too. So, of course, he and Donna were on the rocks. What else is new?

On top of all that bullshit, before the curtain fell, the band’d just been informed of an unspeakable tragedy that had occurred only two days previous. Leo Ryan, a U.S. congressman representing California’s fightin’ eleventh, where indeed all the band members resided (and some of them paid taxes), was gunned down on an airstrip in Guyana. Murdered by an outfit by the name of the Red Brigade on the order of its commanding officer Jim Jones, another erstwhile San Franciscan and embattled leader of the Peoples’ Temple, which had fled to South America to escape persecution for their fringe religious beliefs and raised this settlement that they called Jonestown. (Congressman Ryan had launched this fact-finding mission at the urging of the loved ones of the alleged cult members, many of whom were his constituents. Upon completing his investigation, he was prepared to report back that living conditions were indeed adequate and that, by his judgement, no one was being coerced to remain there against their wills.) Anticipating swift reprisal for this slaying of a sitting U.S. congressman, the Reverend called upon his flock. Rather than be themselves slaughtered by the capitalist pig forces which had been conspiring against them (among whom Jones cited the CIA, the FBI, the U.S. Postal Service and others), he beseechethed thee to commit an act of Revolutionary Suicide. In single file they lined up — men, women and children … alphabetically by height — to be served red plastic cups of grape Flavor-Aid, ladled from a large metal vat. In place of LSD, this fruity concoction had been laced with a cocktail of chemical agents that which notably included the compound commonly known as Cyanide. Small children died within five minutes. Less for babies. (Mothers were instructed to administer their own infants’ doses via syringe.) Adults took an agonizing twenty-to-thirty minutes to succumb. Just over nine hundred people died that day. All but one — Jones was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the left temple, his head cushioned by a pillow — died of the poisoning. The events at Jonestown constituted the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act until the incidents of September the Eleventh.

Maybe Jerry was thinking about that. Or, albeit less likely, he could have still been hung up on Ole King Tut, laid to rest beside his wife and half-sister Ankhesenamun, their two deadborn daughters — cherubs, elaborately embalmed — and all their fabulous worldly possessions, when he sang, presumably for the last time, these words:

Well maybe I've got no star to spare, or anything fine or even rare,

Only if you let me be your world, could I ever give this world to you.

Could I ever give this world to you.

#novls of tumblr #tutankhamun #tutankhamon #tutankhamen #tutankhaten #king tut

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ricardian-werewolf · 1 year ago

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Here’s an updated scene for my chapter, A California Sojourn:

Edmund shifted aside, folding himself into the shadows as the nobleman stepped into Augusta’s chambers.

“How are you, my dear?” he asked.

Augusta glowered at the nobleman and replied tartly. “Fine, thank you, papa,”

Melbourne sniffed, noted Augusta’s updo interwoven with springs of heather and lilac, and his eyes narrowed. Unlike Exley, Melbourne knew not the reason for why the stench of plums hung so closely about Augusta’s form.

Why the oaken wardrobe in the corner of her room was pulled tightly shut and the gold lock was obscured at one end by a bolt of black linen.

For in that cramped space, his breath barely flitting through clenched teeth and out in his nostrils, was Hamish Goames. He had been sent from the expanses of New France, witness to the settlement of so much of Canada as the Hudson Bay exerted their airtight grip on this “uninhabited new land,” and moved south.

Now he was in California.

Entirely of his own free will. But ignorance of a summons by a man such as the one who’d called him here, was not to be done. Hamish may have had spent decades in the service of being little more than an obeyer to the whims of others, but he’d broken free of that and served under his own banner.

Pro Pelle Cutem.

A pelt for a skin - except in this case, and in only Hamish’s, the pelt and skin were his own. The Bay had made him into a man - the skin - but Wobik had given him the pelt. A pelt of the finest ink-drenched gossamer and fur that was stronger than diamond and softer than the fine velvet of a woman’s gown.

He had teeth too. Claws and teeth that would turn the wood of this wardrobe to splinters with the lightest of touches and yet, he stayed perfectly still. Though, if anyone in the room were to see his hands, they would note that the chewed nails had become pointed, and edged in dustings of some metal.

Sky-iron or meteorite, was what Augusta theorized.

It was in reality pure silver, albeit an ancient kind that had not been seen since the agricultural revolution. It was so sharp that diamond was chipped by it, and in one case where Hamish had had to defend his dearest love from a particularly brutal attack at the end of a longsword, the entire blade of steel and copper had been shattered to shards the same size as the mere fingernail it took to break the blade.

He bared those teeth now in a silent snarl, milk white gleam in the suffocating dark of the closed wardrobe. Through the creakings of the floorboard and the lack of breath coming from the room, he could sense who moved about on this chessboard of power, and who did not.

The young servant girl, Sarah, was the most quiet of their gaggle, which was to be expected, and Hamish’s perked ears heard her departure and assumed Augusta must have waved her off. The acidity in her tone against her father was enough to make Hamish muse on whether or not Melbourne was going to become mortis sometime in the next night or three.

This week-long sojourn in California, a last hurrah, as the English loved to say, before Augusta’s new posting to the Sierra Nevadas, was a disaster. In the Vipers nest of Lord Melbourne’s gran casa, there was no chance for privacy, peace, or for sanity.

It was no wonder that everyone here was on the tripping edge of insanity. Some, like Melbourne and his coven, had already descended into its slippery, slimy grasp.

But as Hamish pieced together the narrative hidden behind those oaken wardrobe doors, he knew that he would not descend the same way Melbourne was wheedling Edmund Exley to, the same way he’d corrupted his own son.

With promises of power and positions that could never be granted. Hamish chewed his lower lip with a lengthened canine and felt a growl rise from somewhere in him. He stifled it as best he could, and moved to pressing his ear to the wood, and hearing what escaped his eyes.

“-There is a ball tonight.”

“Expect her to be ready, but your gr-”

“No arguments, Detective. Get that-”

Hamish swallowed down bile and sifted through the rising argument for the sound of Augusta’s slow heartbeat, made so by opium and illness. His own heart stuttered.

Her pulse was flat.

WIP Wednesday Game

It’s WIP Wednesday, time for a little accountability, sharing your work, and getting a kick in the pants.

Here’s how it works:

In a reblog of this post (so people can find you in the notes) or new thread (w/ rules attached) if you want to play on your own, post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to play!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event or gift fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. I’ll be searching the reblogs to find people to send asks to!

If you’re reading this, you’re invited!

If you see someone posting a WIP Wednesday Game snippet, send them an ask! Make them write.

Requested/Friend event mentions under the cut! If you'd like to be pinged next week, let me know!

Friends @fiore-della-valle @redbirdblogs @greenbergsays @idkfandomwhatever @luckyspike @obaewankenope @mad-madam-m @anonymousdandelion @geometricfractal @prettybirdy979 @eriquin | Requests @aparticularbandit @madnessfromthemountains @makeroftherunes @MauveLilyWilliams @1attheedge @whimsicalmeerkat @kidsomeday @lizhly-writes @skyderman @adhdavinci @owlbearwrites @anachronismstellar @anyctibius @rilannon @lazinesswrites

#writing #wip wednesday game #writblr #writing games #aneurin barnard #hamish goames #lord melbourne

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just-dreaming-marvel · 2 years ago

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The Bond Between Us ~ 65

THE BOND BETWEEN US MASTERLIST

< previous chapter

Word Count: 1,840ish

Summary: Time passes, though things really don’t get easier.

Notes: The start of the Empire Strikes Back!

Three years passed in the slowest of fashions. Despite your desire to run and hide—to live out your life by yourself—you could not leave Leia and Luke behind. It was your duty now to protect and watch over them.

You didn’t like how similar the Rebellion felt to the Clone Wars. It made you miss those of your past even more: Ahsoka, Padme, Crak, Cody, Rex, Anakin, and even Master Yoda. There is no one you missed more though than your beloved husband, Obi-Wan. And no matter how hard you tried to connect with him through the Force, you always came up empty. You remembered that Obi-Wan had said that it took ten years for him to connect with Qui-Gon. Unfortunately, you did not have the patience or faith to endure that.

Luke often asked you to train him. Occasionally, you would give in and spare with him but you refused to teach him in any of the matters of the Force. He was kind and understanding about it at first but as the years went on he grew more confused as to why you wouldn’t. You refused to give him any actual answer. There was too much baggage, you felt like, and it was too risky to tell Luke more information than he already knew. It was not time to tell him—or Leia—the truth about everything.

Han stuck around, though he constantly complained about staying and made excuses for leaving but never actually did. The two of you grew close as you would spend time together on his ship drinking. You got to know him well and he you—for the most part.

You often complained to Han about how the Rebellion was worsening your PTSD, which was true. You were struggling to get to sleep and when you did sleep, it was full of nightmares. You were reliving your worst memories, over and over again.

Han would often respond to your worries by telling you that he was going to get out of there and he would take you with him. You always wished that you could go, but told him you couldn’t leave Leia and Luke. He would question you as to why causing you to switch the subject, in which he never questioned you.

You hadn’t had an experience with the Dark Side like you had had that night, but you could still feel the darkness inside you. It was like it was waiting for the perfect moment to completely take hold of you.

Due to the Empire continually after them, the Rebellion had to keep moving from place to place. You were now located on the frozen, wasteland planet of Hoth. Currently, you were in the makeshift command center where, unfortunately, you spent most of your days.

“Captain Solo,” General Rieekan greeted the man as he came into the command center. “What’s the situation?”

“There isn’t a hint of life in the area,” Han reported on his and Luke’s recent life scan outside the base. “But all the perimeter markers are set, so you'll know if anyone comes calling.”

“Good, and Commander Skywalker?”

“He’s checking out a meteorite that hit near him. He’ll be in soon.”

“With all the meteor activity in this system, it’s going to be difficult to spot approaching ships.”

“The Empire won’t look for you out here. I’d say you’re all set with means it’s time for me to get going.”

“You’re leaving?” Leia questioned, straightening up beside you. You rolled your eyes. She and Han had such thick sexual tension but were too busy being petty with each other to do anything.

“That’s right.”

“You’re an extraordinary fighter,” Rieekan said. “I hate to lose you.”

“Thank you, General. But there’s a price on my head. If I don’t pay off Jabba the Hutt, I’m a walking dead man.”

“I understand. A death mark is not an easy thing to live with.” The General shook Han’s hand. “Until our paths cross again, may the Force be with you.”

The men gave each other a nod before Rieekan moved away. Han turned to you.

“I’ll miss you, kid,” he said with a small, playful smile.

You shook your head as you moved over and brought him in for a hug. “Still older than you,” you retorted.

“Still don’t care.” He pulled back to get a good look at your face. “Are you sure you don’t want to come? There’s plenty of room on the ship.”

You sighed. A large part of you wished that you could run away from your responsibilities here, but you couldn’t. “As much fun as that sounds, I need to stay here.”

“Shame. Chewie’s not as fun to drink with.”

You chuckled. “Stay safe.”

“Always am.” He smirked. “May the Force be with you, Y/N.”

You weren’t necessarily a big fan of that phrase right now but you weren’t able to not wish him well in the same fashion. “May the Force be with you.”

You gave his arm a squeeze as you walked away. Back at your station, you kept an eye out on Leia and Han. Han had moved closer to Leia.

“I guess this is it, Your Highness,” Han said, with some genuine feeling.

Leia was clearly angry. It was written on her face and you could feel it in her Force signature. Han shook his head, realizing that he would not get any warmth from her.

“Well, don’t get all mushy on me,” his tone was cooler now. “So long, Princess.”

Han walked out of the room. Leia stewed for a moment, glancing your way. You gave her a look that tried to tell her that she was being a little hard on Han. She huffed before marching after him. You shook your head and continued working.

~~~

“Han!” You ran through the base calling for the man, hoping it wasn’t too late. “Han!” You came out in the hangar, thankful to see the Millennium Falcon was still there. “Han!”

The man turned from where he was under his ship to face you. He chuckled. “I knew you’d change your mind, kid. I’ve already—“

“No, no, that’s not it.” You came to a harsh stop in front of Han, who placed his hands on your arms to steady you. “Why haven’t you been answering your communicator?”

“I shut it off.” He pulled away and turned back to his ship. “I didn’t need her royal holiness badgering me about staying more.”

“It was about Luke. He hasn’t come back. We don’t know where he is.”

He turned back to face you. “What do you mean, nobody knows?” He started looking around and yelling, “Deck officer! Deck officer!” Han found an officer.

“Excuse me, sir,” the deck officer said. “Might I—“

“Do you know where Commander Skywalker is?”

“I haven’t seen him. He probably came in through the South entrance.”

“It’s possible? Why don’t you go find out? It’s getting dark out there.”

“Yes, sir,” the deck officer rushed away.

Han looked back at you to see you emotional and panicky. Over the past three years, Han had learned a lot about you, and yet nothing at all. One of the things he had somewhat learned was how to read you. Slowly, he came back over to you.

“We have to find him, Han,” you said desperately. “I have failed at protecting everyone in my life. I cannot fail at this.”

He was confused at the true meaning behind your words but wasn’t going to push it. “This is not on you. I’m sure he’s alright.”

“No, you don’t understand. Luke is our only hope. He has to fulfill the prophecy because me and Ana—“ You stopped yourself quickly as you realized you were spilling too much information. “We just have to find him.”

Han was going to say something when the deck officer rushed up to the two of them.

“Commander Skywalker hasn’t come in the south entrance,” the officer informed the two of them. “Maybe he forgot to check in.”

“Not likely,” Han responded. “Are the speeders ready?”

“Not yet. We’re having trouble adapting them to the cold.”

“We’ll have to go out on tauntauns,” you said.

“There’s no ‘we’, kid. I will go, you need to stay here.”

“The temperature’s dropping too rapidly,” warned the officer.

“That’s right, and my friend’s out in it.” Han hopped onto one of the already saddled tauntauns.

“Your tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker!”

“Then I’ll see you in hell!”

Han then rode out of the base. You stood at the opening, watching him disappear into the snowy wasteland. R2 beeped as he rolled up to you.

“I’m worried about Luke too,” you replied. R2 beeped and whirled. “Yes, I know how important he is, R2.” Once again, the droid beeped. “No, I cannot be the Chosen One. It’s up to him now.”

~~~

It didn’t take long for Leia to join you at your post, watching the horizon for the men to return. C3PO and R2 were both with you. R2 was trying to pick up any signals from out in the blizzard.

“General,” one of the officers came up to you, “all the patrols are in. There’s still no contact from Skywalker or Solo.”

“R2 says he’s been quite unable to pick up any signals,” C3PO added. “Although, he admits that his own range is far too weak to abandon all hope.”

“Your Highness, General,” Rieekan came up to the took of you as he spoke, “there’s nothing more we can do tonight. The shield doors must be closed.”

You hated that you hadn’t gone after Luke with Han. Standing here, helpless, was not something you were okay with.

“Close the doors,” Rieekan ordered the officers, who quickly obeyed.

As the doors began to close, you closed your eyes and focused on the Force. You branched out to try and sense something, anything, from Luke or Han. You flinched slightly as you felt something all too familiar. Something you hadn’t felt in three years.

“R2 says the chances of survival are 725-to-1,” C3PO said, trying and failing to make you and Leia feel better. “Actually, R2 has been known to make mistakes… from time to time.”

“3PO, out of the kindness of my heart, please, shut up,” you told him, still keeping your eyes shut.

You reached out with the Force once again to see if the same familiar. When you did, your eyes snapped open and you spun around, rushing toward your quarters. You ignored Leia’s calls of your name. Once you were in your quarters, you leaned back against the door.

“Obi-Wan,” you rasped. “Please, show yourself to me… I know you’re there.”

There was no response. The feeling in the Force was even gone. Your head hung as tears sprung up in your eyes.

“I need you, Obi,” you began to cry. “I am not strong enough for this… just… show yourself to me… please.” You slowly slid down the door to your knees. “Why have you abandoned me?”

next chapter >

TAGLIST IS CLOSED - Taglist Information

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ppascalsstuff · 3 years ago

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After All This Time II [Dieter Bravo x f!reader]

Summary: Some years ago, you and a young Dieter Bravo had a healthy relationship and almost became parents, but life had other plans for the two of you. Years later, you accept a cameo in Cliff Beats 6 thanks to your son, a fan of the franchise. What will happen in the bubble between you and Dieter?

Warnings: A bit of angst. Mention of drugs use and miscarriage. Failed relationship. Reader is not described and has an adopted son. Dieter is kind of a jerk but deep inside him there’s good, we all know it: He’s just struggling with his feelings. Please keep in mind this story will be +18 at some point. Minors please DNI.

Word count: 2.1K

A/N: I wasn’t planning on making a multi-chapter fic out of this one, but I guess the movie gave a lot of ideas an a 2nd part was requested so... This fic will have (probably) 6 chapters. Dieter has a soft side and you can’t change my mind! Let me know if you want to be tagged on it!

English is not my first language, sorry in advance if there’s some typos or grammar errors. Hope you enjoy it!

- Part 1 -

“I just want to say, you were amazing in Our Hotel. An outstanding performance. It was incredible. Indescribable”

You smiled sheepishly. You’ve never been good at accepting compliments, and of course Lauren Van Chance had to come at you and talk about your work. It was driving you insane, but you talk to her politely anyway, as expected from you.

“You should have won the Oscar!”

“I guess?”

“She doesn’t want it. The award, I mean”

Dieter approached you with a drink in his hand. The green robe was probably the ugliest item of clothing you had ever seen, and the purple tee was stained in some places. Sunglasses still hiding most of his face and his hair was somehow messier than before. You didn’t want to know what he had been doing since you last saw him when you arrived that morning, although you knew the answer.

“Dieter! You were incredible in Hunger Strike as well. Your performance was… I mean, I think about it all the time. Congratulations.”

“I don’t watch my own shit” of course, you thought. “You should never watch your own shit. You just wipe, you flush and you move on”

A heavy silence fell over the three of you, stagnating the conversation. You didn’t believe in God, but at that moment you wanted to. You wanted to pray for a miracle to happen. Maybe somebody would join you, maybe you would feel the urge to pee... maybe a meteorite would fall. Anything that would help you skip that conversation.

“I heard you two dated years ago!” Lauren said cheerfully.

You closed your eyes and clenched your jaw, counting backwards from 100. Even though you had long since gotten over the fact that you and Dieter were no longer together, it still hurt to think about what had happened. Dieter didn’t look at you, and you were almost thankful for that. You hadn’t reached 98 when he spoke.

“Yeah, nothing serious”

You wanted to shout, to grab him by the lapels of his stupid robe and shake him so hard that the only neuron he had bounced around in his brain. You did glance at him then. No, this wasn’t the same man you had crossed paths with that morning. You couldn’t tell if he was high now or if he was high when you first saw him, but it was making you sick. Did he have such an enormous ego that he was willing to forget he had loved you? That you lost your child?

“Where’s your husband?” he asked Lauren and you were almost sure you saw a glimpse of revenge in his eyes after asking the question.

“My husband? We got divorced”

“I’m sorry, I have to go to the bathroom”

Excusing yourself, you made your way to the bathroom and closed the door behind you. The tears began to fall down your cheeks, and it didn't matter how hard you closed your eyes, you couldn't contain them. Looking at yourself in the mirror, you brushed them away roughly.

"Oh my God this is such a bad idea. What the hell I was thinking? Fuck!"

You grabbed your phone and called your agent. It was fine, you would quit before they began shooting so that they could replace you as soon as possible. You were pacing back and forth in the bathroom when your agent picked up the phone.

"Honey! How's it going? Everything all right?"

"Why didn't you tell me Dieter was doing this movie?"

"I tried to but you were so excited to do it... For Nick"

You tried to calm down. It was true, the only reason you accepted the role was because of your son.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry Rebecca. Can I just like... quit?"

"Girl, I've been gone for like 6 hours and you already want to quit?"

Rebecca had to head back to her home after dropping you at the hotel, only the cast and crew were allowed there because of the pandemic.

"It's too much. I can't do it. I have to quit"

"You can't"

"What do you mean I can't? I won't be the first one to do it... or the last"

"If you walk out you will have to pay them”

"What?!"

"Yeah, apparently if you leave now you will be financially responsible for any overages that you create”

"And that means..."

"It means you will owe them 114 million bucks"

You froze. You didn't have the money, but you also didn't have the strength to spend your time next to that pantomime that was now Dieter.

Just a month. For Nick.

"I'll do it. Just for Nick"

"Atta girl. I have to hang up, Meryl Streep is calling"

"Ok bye! Lov-"

The line went dead. You look in the mirror one more time and took a deep breath before leaving the bathroom. You had this, you were an actress. Pretending to like those people for a whole month wasn’t by far the hardest thing you’d ever done.

The only free seat at the table was right next to Dieter, who had changed his clothes. You couldn’t believe your luck, but you carried on as if nothing happened, taking a seat between your ex-boyfriend and Howie Frangopolous. The dinner was awkward to say the least. Nobody talked during the entire time, aside from the few complaints made by Lauren about the food. A young staff woman approached the table with a jar of water, ready to refill the empty glasses. Her first target: Dieter.

“May I refresh your water?”

Dieter was quickly snapped out of his boredom, finding a new entertainment for the night. He looked up and down at the girl, and you were sure you’d never rolled your eyes harder. It was almost embarrassing to think that you were willing to give him a second chance this morning, when you offered him a coffee. How could you be so naive?

“Yeah, please. Thanks”

“Why you look at me with weird eyes?” the girl asked, her cheeks clearly blushing.

When the girl refilled Dieter’s glass, she moved on to another cast member, Dieter following her with his eyes. You snorted, making Dieter turn around and look at you.

“What?”

“Nothing” you replied, taking a sip of water.

After a while, dinner was eaten and no more complaints from Lauren were made. The room was soon filled with the sound of a knife clinking against a crystal glass. It was time for the producer's expected speech, but all you wanted to do was go to sleep and put the day behind you. When the producer mentioned your name, you looked around you and smiled at everybody.

To the beginning of new fake friendships.

“Well, as you know she tested negative in the morning, so she can have dinner with us. Anyway, she and her son will be doing the mandatory quarantine for the next 14 days, then she will join you to shoot her scenes”

“What? She can bring her son and I’m not allowed to?” Lauren shouted.

“Her son is just a little kid. We discussed it and we agreed it would be harmless to bring him in”

“I- He’s five. He’s struggling with some things right now and I don’t have any relatives so-” You tried to explain, but Lauren cut you off.

“Bullshit! My son is also a little boy and he’s alone in our home!”

“Oh please Lauren we all know your son has probably more pubic hair than I do. He’s not a little kid anymore” Dieter suddenly replied.

Lauren looked at him and stormed out followed by her ex husband Dustin, who was trying to calm her down. Dieter looked at you, his hand finding yours.

“You okay?”

“I think I’m gonna go to my room. Long day. But... umm.. it was nice meeting you all, can’t wait to work with you” You said standing up, but Gavin, the producer, stopped you.

“These are the keys to your room”.

“I already have a room”

“Oh no, that room is for your son. You have to be in different rooms”

“But we both tested negative. Can’t we quarantine together?”

“I’m sorry, it’s not allowed. Different rooms”

“He’s just a little boy, man”

“I don’t believe this has something to do with you, Mr. Bravo”

You looked back at Dieter and barely nodded, thanking him. But he saw it anyway, and it warmed his heart, something he hadn’t felt in a long time. He didn’t deserve you, he wasn’t worthy of your love, but he would try his best to make your life a little bit better, even if that meant you hated him. It was his way of keeping you safe. Safe from him.

Dieter couldn’t calm down. He hated himself for even think of you. But he couldn’t stop himself. Every time he wasn’t high, he was thinking of you, and it was painful. That morning, when he first saw you, he felt vulnerable again. It was a weird feeling for him. Maybe he felt vulnerable, but your presence alone comforted him. Then he smiled without realizing it, and he knew he had screwed up. There was no turning back now. He had lunch thinking of you, he had a bath thinking of you and that’s how he spent all afternoon: thinking of you. Until he decided to get high to calm his brain.

But there you were again at dinner, sitting next to him because clearly nobody wanted to sit beside a moron like him. He felt his blood boiling every time Lauren spoke, and when she complained about you, he exploded. Then you were forced to isolate yourself in a different room from Nick’s, and he almost felt relieved when he didn’t punch Gavin in the face, although he wanted to.

He hated this industry, the same industry that have made him stay away from you when you’d lost your unborn son, the industry that made him a drug addict and the same industry that was now keeping you apart from your son.

He took off his robe and went out his room determined to find somebody who could help him. No drugs this time. He knew you would kill him if you ever found out he was on drugs while doing what he was about to do. He went down the stairs as fast as he could to the front desk. Luckily for him, the same girl who refilled his glass and didn’t stop looking at him during the entire dinner was on the night shift, just as he had expected.

“Hi”

“Hi Mr. Bravo”

“You look great in that uniform”

“Thanks” she blushed as she played with a lock of hair behind her ear.

“I was wondering if you could help me with something”

The girl leaned forward over the desk, all her attention on Dieter's earring. This was going to be so easy for him.

“Would you tell me where’s Nick? You know, the son of-”

“Room 202″ she giggled like a schoolgirl.

“Thank you”

Dieter rushed up the stairs to Nick’s room. When he reached room 202, he froze. Thinking about it, this wasn’t his problem. He didn’t need to knock. He could just forget about it and carry on with his own problems and not get involved with you, because then he would have to get high again to forget about you. Hell, this boy wasn’t even his. But before his mind could go on, his fist knocked on the door and a mop of curl dark hair peeked behind it.

“Mom?”

“It’s Dieter”

The door opened a little wider, and the clump of hair gave way to the rest of Nick. He was in his pajamas, hugging a stuffed elephant against his chest.

“Hey... what do you like to do in your spare time?” Dieter asked. “You know, since you’re gonna have a lot of it”

“I... I like to watch movies. And I like t-to draw”

“What kind of movies?”

Nick shrugged, looking at his feet.

“Action movies”

“So, like Marvel?”

“I like Spiderman”

Dieter looked at him, but the boy didn’t looked up at Dieter.

“Okay...um, it was nice talking to you. You should go to bed now”

“Can my mom come with me?”

“I don’t think so”

The boy looked up. The tears fell freely down his face and he quickly wiped them away with the sleeve of his pajamas, not wanting to cry in front of Dieter.

Fuck me. This wasn’t supposed to make him cry. You’d have made an awful father, Dieter. Great.

“Okay. Good night”

“‘Night, kid”

Next morning, when Nick opened the bedroom door to pick up his breakfast, he found a collection of movies, a sketch pad and a couple of brushes on the hallway floor with a note.

“Don’t ruin my brushes. Hope you have fun with it.

PS: I really liked your elephant. Does it have a name?

D.B.”

#dieter bravo #dieter bravo x you #dieter bravo x reader #dieter bravo fanfiction #dieter bravo x female reader #the bubble

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thebestofoneshots · 3 years ago

Text

Time Variant 30578 (Pt.3)

Part 3: Back in the trap

Read the beginning here: (Part 1) (Part 2)

Series Summary: You end up on te TVA after becoming a nexus event. Just before you get reset, Mobius appears to recruit you into the team to catch Loki’s Variant.

You’re not too happy about it.

(This chapter follows the events of episode 4)

Word Count: 4k

Rating: T

Paring: Loki x Reader

Warining: Mentions of attempted su*cide. Dark humor.

Uploaded: 07.07.2021 (repost since it wouldn’t appear on tags)

Read part 1 here

“So, what now? Do we just dįe?” You questioned when another meteorite came blowing down towards your direction. The three of you had to get out of the way as quickly as possible.

Sylvie pulled you to the side and Loki moved to the other, the meteorite fell right in the space you’d left.

The three of you walked away from the city and sat on a small bundle of rocks, where you could see the apocalypse better, and well, also where there were not as many rocks falling down on the three of you.

You breathed in deeply “well, this is fun.”

“We’re about to die,” Sylvie acknowledged.

“I mean I was gonna die a couple of days ago anyway, my plan just, sort of… took longer, I guess.”

“I thought you didn’t wanna die anymore,” added Loki.

“I don’t, but I don’t really see a way out of this one…”

Loki looked down. And then up with new energy, Sylvie stopped him before even opening his mouth “don’t give us a pep talk… at this point, I’m starting to think that what makes Loki a Loki is that we always lose.”

So that’s where we are going, into the black hole of self-pity, you thought, the three of us have a lot to moan about.

“No, we don’t! Just look at you,” he said addressing Sylvie, “No. We may lose. Sometimes painfully. But we don’t die. We survive. I mean, you did. You were just a child when the TVA took you, but you nearly took down the organization that claims to govern the order of time. You did it on your own. You ran rings around them. You’re amazing!”

He then turned towards you then “And you, you were literally about to die on earth and then you go got a job at an Inter-dimensional agency. And then escaped from them, and survived, by keeping up with the mischief of two gods, I mean, you literally threw yourself off a train!”

“I kinda had to.”

“It’s still pretty amazing for a… Midgardian,” added Sylvie.

“Well that’s… definitely an improvement from Mortal,” You smiled.

“The universe wants to break free, so it manifests chaos,” said Sylvie she motioned to the sky.

You looked up, the planet was falling into pieces, all of them ready to crash onto the moon. It was distractingly beautiful.

“How much longer?” Asked Loki.

“Not much,” she responded.

“I’m I love with it,” you said, accidentally out loud.

“What?” Asked Loki with a frown.

“Chaos,” you responded still looking at the end of the world “it’s beautiful.” You took a deep breath and reached for their hands. As you held tightly to them you smiled, “We’ll be alright.”

Suddenly two time doors opened through the side and a bunch of TVA agents got in through them. You quickly released their hands and ran to the agents, acting distressed.

“Finally, you’ve come to get me! They’ve dragged me around like a hostage through apocalypses and weird take over plans, they even used me as bait, TWICE. I thought I wouldn’t make out of here alive!”

Loki and Sylvie exchanged a look and turned to you confused.

“Please take me back!” You pleaded before an agent put a collar around your neck again. “Drop the act, Variant, we know you were working with the Lokis”

You looked to the side and bit your cheek. Turned back with a completely different attitude “You can’t blame me for trying,” you shrugged. Loki and Sylvie were staring at you, each with a proud look on their faces. Maybe their Loki-ness was rubbing off on you.

By now they both had collars as well and were being dragged by the TVA agents. Neither of them spoke a word as the three of you got separated. Sylvie with the most guards and you with the least. Perfect, you thought, I can find a way to get us out of here sooner if they underestimate me.

Mobius left with Loki and you were dragged onto a room. The doors were completely closed. And even if you tried to open them, you knew there was at least one agent outside. So you sat near the wall, facing the door, and started closing your eyes, going through all the possible things you needed to do to get everyone out. You knew you needed to get a TemPad, that was the most important part of them plan, after that, you had to find Loki and Sylvie, they had to be together, which was the toughest part since the TVA wouldn’t want them to scheme things by themselves… and then, scape. Three simple steps. All you had to do was make them happen, by then you heard the door opening. Mobius came into the room and sat at the small table, motioning for you to join as well. You stood up and sat across from him.

“How long had you been working for them?”

“The Lokis?” You asked.

He gave you a stern look in reply.

“I haven’t been working with them, I just didn’t want to be pruned.”

“And you expect me to believe that?”

“You can choose to believe whatever you want, you already do it anyway,” you shrugged reclining on your chair.

“What do you mean?”

“The TVA is lying to you, Mobius.”

“Did Loki put you up to this?” He asked almost concerned. “You must not worry about him anymore. He’s gone, you won’t be able to get out of here.”

You now got closer to him, with both of your arms on the table looking straight into his eyes. “Loki’s not gone.” You concluded, “if he was, you wouldn’t worry about questioning me, after all, I’m just a pawn, am I not? To everyone, the Lokis, the TVA, the people back in the sacred timeline, I’m only here to fit your narrative, whatever that may be,” you acknowledged spitefully. “But you, Mobius, you want to find the truth, and you should be questioning your dear Time Keepers for it, not us.”

“They’ve filled your mind with nonsense,” he replied.

“It’s easier to think that way than to accept the truth.”

“I’ll take you to a place where you can clear your thoughts.”

“What?” You asked confused “what do you mean by that?”

“You’ll see.”

“Mobius, are they gonna wipe my memories?”

“We can’t do that here.”

“No! NO! Don’t take me there!” You said starting to worry.

“Boys, take her away,” said Mobius as two armed men dragged you into a time window, but this time, the edges were purple.

Mobius walked towards Loki’s room, and then towards the TimeCell, he’d been placed in “Okay, Loki. You ready to talk?”

Loki didn’t reply but Mobius motioned for him to follow him, the two of them walked out of the TimeCell and into the interrogation room.

“Fancy technology. Threatening interrogation tactics.”

“Seems you and I are in a loop of our own,” replied Mobius. “Well, there’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then.”

“Certainly has.” Loki agreed. The two of them were sitting down by then.

“Okay, you said the TVA is lying to me. Go ahead.” Mobius motioned Loli to speak “Or is that just a cockroach’s survival mechanism kicking in?”

Loki ignored the question. “Let me out of this place, stop beating me up, and I’ll tell you.”

“Cockroach. Got it.” Added Mobius “How long have you been working for the Variant?”

“Me? Working for her? Please.” Loki scoffed.

“If you’re not working for the Variant, what is it? You’re partners?”

“Absolutely not. She’s difficult and irritating, and she tries to hit me all the time. No. Not partners, no.”

“Yeah, I guess you don’t do partners,” Mobius added condescendingly. “Unless, of course, it benefits you, and you intend to betray them at some point.”

“It was a means to an end, Mobius. Welcome to the real world. Down there, we’re awful to get what we want.”

“Now I gotta have a prince tell me how the real world works? Why don’t you just tell me what caused the nexus event on Lamentis?”

“Let me say this again. I’m not going to tell you just so you can turn around immediately afterwards and prune me.”

“I guess we’ve reached a dead end then. Okay, it’s over. I’m going to miss these little tete-a-tetes.”

“Me, too,” Agreed Loki.

“One guy playing checkers, you, old Mobius playing chess, but, yeah, give my regards to Lady Sif,” said Mobius as he started standing up.

“What… No. What? No, no, no. Please, not… Well, just wait, wait, wait.” Loki panicked a bit.

“Yeah?” He said sitting back again.

“Of course it was me pulling the strings all along. She came to me on Asgard a long time ago and then she took me to one of her apocalypses and that’s where we hatched our plan together.”

“Which is?” Motioned Mobius for Loki to elaborate.

“Coming along very nicely, thank you,” Loki added.

“And the Variants?”

“They don’t matter. They’re pawns. Something very, very big is gonna happen. And when it does, I’ll dispose of them.”

“Well, we saved you the trouble for one there. (Y/N)’s already been pruned. So assume I do set you free—“

“—Hang on, wait. What’d you just say?”

“What? Assume I do set you free.”

“(Y/N). She’s gone?”

“Yeah. Not before she bit one of ours. Yeah, she was going to her TimeCell, broke free. Hunter B-15 stepped in, (Y/N) bit her, and she popped her. So you might want to fire off a thank you note to Hunter B-15, because it looks like you have one less loose end to worry about. Good riddance.”

“What about Sylvie?”

“Who?”

“My variant. That’s her name”

“Ah, Sylvie. Lovely. How do you spell that? Is that with an I-E or just an I?”

Loki gave him a stern look, he seemed pissed.

“She’s waiting for trial.”

“And (Y/N)? Was she really pruned?” He asked bitterly.

“Look at you. You liked her,” Mobius mocked.

Loki scoffed. “As if! A God and a mortal?!? As if I was stupid enough to fall in love with someone that’s going to die soon just like my brother did.”

“The two of you liked her!” Mobius added then “that’s why you kept her all along your journey, she was probably just making you lag, but neither of you got rid of her… You could have left her somewhere in Lamentis, and yet she’s here.”

“She’s here?” Asked Loki catching that last part.

“Look at you all hopeful, you really do like her.”

“Mobius, stop with the games. Is she alive?”

“She is, and she’ll be better off once we help her get all your bad influence of her system.”

“You’re going to errase her memories…”

“Why does everybody assume we do that here? No! She’ll just be taken to the machine that helps process your thoughts. Every agent goes through it every once in a while. Even I have.”

Loki leaned in closer “and you haven’t noticed?”

“Notice what Loki? This isn’t some sort of conspiracy theory you can manipulate me into believing.”

“Mobius, listen. If what Sylvie told me about this place is true, it affects all of us,” Loki tried to explain.

“Here we go. Now, you’ve already told me about 50 lies in the past 10 minutes.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Now, I’m supposed to believe your girl version. The goddess of lies, ring any bells?”

“It’s the truth. You’re all Variants! Everyone who works at the TVA. The Time-Keepers didn’t create you. They kidnapped you from the timeline and erased your memories. Memories she can access through enchantment. So before this, you had a past, maybe you had a family, a life.”

“Nice try. That was good. You two, what a pair! Dragging poor (Y/N) into all of your mischiefs. Gosh! Unbelievable. Wherever you go, it’s just death, destruction, the literal ends of worlds,” Mobius argued, “Well, I’m gonna have to close this case now, ‘cause I don’t need you anymore. Yeah, or as you might say, our interests are no longer aligned.” He stood up and walked towards the exit.

“You know, of all the liars in this place, and there are a great many, you’re the biggest.”

“Why? 'Cause I lied about your girlfriend?”

“Oh, no. That I can respect. I mean, the lies you tell yourself.”

Mobius took a deep breath and opened the door for another agent to walk in.

“Hello…” said Loki condescendingly “Oh, I don’t know… Your name’s a number. Can’t read it from here.”

The agent ignored his bratty attitude and limited himself to say “Come with me.”

…

You looked around, the other side of the Time Door they had dragged you through looked, unpleasant to say the least. If anything, it definitely did not look like a place where you could “clear your thoughts”. On the other hand, it did look like a place where you could learn the intense range of emotional torture the TVA had to offer.

“Could I like… Not use that machine?” You said pointing at the big torture-like machine in the center, and it’s not like you wanted to be overly dramatic, but the chair most definitely looked like an electroshock death chair. But even the original one looked way less threatening.

The agents that dragged you there completely ignored your request and started dragging you to the chair. One of them took pity on you smiled sympathetically “Don’t worry too much, Variant. It won’t hurt.”

As you sat down, they gave you a thing to bite as they tied your hands on leashed to stop you from moving. “I thought you said it wouldn’t hurt,” you added before bitting onto the thing.

“It won’t hurt…” said the other agent, “much…” he added then, almost making fun of you, scratch that, he was definitely making fun of you.

The machine started making weird sounds and after a while, it started vibrating underneath you, that’s when the pain started, you bit into the mouth pice hard. All you had done was try to live, did you really deserve all this pain for it?

After a couple of minutes of excruciating pain, they turned off the machine. You found it hard to catch your breath. Your mind was hazy, very hazy. It was like all your memories and thoughts had scrambled and you struggled to order them. You managed to do so barely.

“That should be enough for a regular human, right?” Asked one of the agents.

“Definitely, she’ll be dumbed out for a while,” agreed the other before taking the straps off. You took the opportunity you saw and grabbed their TemPad. You hid it in between the jacket and the shirt they had provided. As soon as they dragged you out of that hell of a room and you had recovered just enough you ran to the side and opened a Time Door to the first apocalypse you could think of, the dinosaurs.

Looking at it objectively, perhaps it had not been the wisest of choices, especially when you found yourself surrounded by giant running lizards. “Are those? Feathers?” You asked as you saw what you would describe as a giant bird-thing. Archeologists weren’t wrong in that one, you thought.

You did what you could to step out of their way and found a big tree, after carefully climbing up on it, you decided it was time to rest for a moment and plan your next step. Which was crucial since you didn’t have much of a plan, but rather just the idea of a plan.

You breathed in deeply. You had to get Sylvie, and Loki, which meant you had to go back to the TVA, even if that was the last thing you wanted to do. You tried to reassure yourself by thinking they would do the same for you, but then again, would they really?

You weren’t even sure, you even had a mental debate with yourself, a part of you told you to let them be, to not mess with it anymore, to find a nice long apocalypse you could hide in for the rest of your life and just end with the whole adventure. No more escapades trying to save anyone but yourself. After all, that’s how Loki and Sylvie would act right? That’s what they would do, just leave you to get pruned in the TVA while they lived their best life. But then the other part of you –the hopeful one– told you that all of that was a bunch of bullshit, that may be on the exterior that’s what would appear to make sense, and if you had been a stranger, it would have happened exactly like that. But you knew them now, and they knew you as well. You’d even shared a moment, that must have meant something for them, right?

Even after debating about it for hours, the choice was as clear as water to you, no matter how much you tried to be like a Loki, you would still be a (Y/N), and damn those (Y/N)s they had one strong moral compass. Which meant, ultimately, you’d go back to rescue your friends. Even if it meant your very own doom. Which in turn, meant that it was now time to ideate a plan.

Mobius, he was the answer. He seemed rather confused when you talked to him as if the words you said to him had actually resonated somewhere in his brain. If you managed to convince him that the real threat was the TVA, then he would be able to help you find, both Loki and Sylvie. You couldn’t risk too many trips to the TVA, after all, the more times you went there the more danger you’d be setting yourself in, so then you had to get the two of them together, that’s all you would need to escape. That’s when Mobius came along in your plan, he’d help you get the two of them together for your triumphal scape, whether he wanted or not, you hoped he did, threatening Mobius wasn’t on top of the things you wanted to do.

Now all you had to do was figure out a way to get to Mobius alone. You knew he had an office somewhere in the TVA, maybe there was some sort of contact list on the TemPad that could guide you to him. And so you searched for it. There was actually a map of the TVA on it. It had a lot of “confidential” information on it, but Mobius’ office wasn’t one. Which made you so happy you almost screamed, but you remembered you were still in the middle of the jungle where dinosaurs like the T-rex and worse could hear you and you did not want to die before attempting your rescue mission, so you screamed only on the inside.

After gathering enough courage you opened a new TimeDoor and stepped inside. Mobius wasn’t in his office. So you hid behind the desk and waited. It didn’t take too long before he arrived. You showed yourself to him with your armed raised. “I’m only here to talk.”

“Shouldn’t you be on the clear mind room?” He asked.

“Clear mind room? Do you mean the place where they tortured me and almost fried my brains and all my memories together? A warning of how painful it would be would’ve been nice, Mobius.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Big red machine, looked like torture room from saw.”

“That’s not where I sent you to.”

“Whatever. I need to talk to you. I know you don’t want to believe me Mobius, but I’m being honest. The TVA is lying to you. You’re a Variant. All agents are.”

“I need to talk to Loki.” He replied.

“Mobius we don’t have much time.”

“I’ve seen something too. But I need to Loki first.”

“Does that mean you’ll help?” You asked hopefully. He nodded. You smiled “Can you get him and Sylvie together?”

He nodded.

“Great!” You smiled. You had already established a plan. “Go find Loki. I’ll be setting everything up.”

He flashed you a smile and left his office. After a while, you sneaked out as well. Finding your way through the halls until you found the hiding spot you’d be using. And there you waited. But by the time you saw Loki and Sylvie being walked down the hall side by side, you knew something was off. Mobius wasn’t with them, instead, Ravonna was. And not only that, but she also had many agents around her.

You breathed in deeply and grabbed your distraction tactic. You took the tiny dinosaur you had placed in your bag and let it down, blocking the other way so he was forced to run through the halls in front of your friends and distract the guards. “I’m sorry buddy,” you said before letting it go.

The distraction was good enough. The guards seemed to lose their concentration for a bit. Going after and chasing the small dinosaur, not worrying about the variants since they had the awful time necklaces on. You deactivated them with the device Mobius had given you and ran towards them.

“Mobius?” You asked. Loki denied with his head in response. You frowned and took a deep breath. “It’s alright. I’ll get us out,” you whispered as you took out the TemPad and started typing. But seconds, before you clicked enter an agent, got close enough to touch you with their tool. When you realized what was happening a small tear dropped from your eyes. You quickly looked at the two of them and muttered “I’m sorry.” Before completely disappearing.

Loki and Sylvie stared perplexed at the situation, you’d come back, to save them. Knowing the risks and doing it just the same, and you had been pruned in the process. Ravonna had taken the moment to put new necklaces on their neck.

“What a hassle. We should’ve pruned her when we had the time,” she said before continuing her walk, “I’ll take them from here,” she said as she looked at the mess the other agents were in. She dragged both Loki and a Sylvie onto an elevator.

“Are you ok?” Sylvie asked Loki, she knew he’d developed some kind of attachment to you, as she had, but she suspected his was stronger.

Loki nodded. But he wasn’t sure what was that he was feeling either.

“Do you remember me?” Sylvie asked Ravonna.

“I do.” She replied, and barely looked at her “What do you wanna say to me, Variant?”

“What was my nexus event? Why did you bring me in?”

“What does it matter?”

“It was enough to take my life from me, lead to all of this. Must have been important. So, what was it?”

Ravonna seemed to think about it for a second. “I don’t remember.”

When the doors opened she stepped out first. “Gracious Time-Keepers, as promised, the Variants.”

The timekeepers spoke then “After all your struggle, at last, you’ve arrived before us.What do you have to say for yourselves before you meet your end, Variants?”

“Is that the only reason you brought us here? To kill us? I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been killed, so go ahead. Do your worst.” Replied Loki.

“You and your bravado are no threat to us, Variant.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think you believe that. I think…” Sylvie paused, probably for dramatic effect, “I think you’re scared.”

“No, Variant. You’re nothing but a cosmic disappointment.” The other timekeeper said, “Delete them.”

“No, I’m not done with you yet.”

A fight broke seconds after, Sylvie and Loki discovered the timekeepers were nothing but robots being controlled by someone or something else. And when they were about to continue on their scape, Ravonna pruned Loki from the back. Sylvie acted quickly after and seized her.

…

“Is this Hel?” Loki asked as he felt ground underneath him. “Am I dead?”

“Not yet,” he heard a voice from the side “but you will be unless you come with us.”

Loki turned to look at the owner of the voice and saw 3, or was it 4?, variants of himself.

And then a figure moved from behind one of the Lokis. It. was. you.

You smiled wildly “Hey Uglyface! Long time no see.”

Read next part here

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thosch3i · 3 years ago

Note

Hi hi! So the lost tombs and chronology all super confuse me. So tlt2 ended on a cliffhanger that was not resolved by tlt3 which is ultimate note, but now there is another tlt3 that I am guessing is made by the same studio as tlt2 (but not UN) that actually follows tlt2? And it has the same WPZ as tlt2 (but sadly different WX, ZQL though I’m sure these guys are great). You seem to know what you’re talking about so I’m hoping you can help!

UN also ended on a cliff hanger so I’m wondering if they’ll get a sequel from their studio that comes before tomb of the sea.

ahhh hello anon! yes ahaha the dmbj dramas are certainly very confusing--because they keep switching the screenwriters/entire production team between dramas. huanrui did tlt1 (2015), tlt2 (2019), and the sequel to tlt2 (2021). they're also technically the production company for un (2020), but linghe did like all the directing/casting/writing so its significantly different in tone and quality from the other dramas huanrui produced. npss (dmbj author) did sha hai (2018) and tltr (2020), with sha hai being in collab with linghe, so you can see lots of parallels with un and shared cast. (gonna add that i dont know much about the m9 because that’s not what im personally interested in, so i’m only going by stories with wu xie & the iron triangle.)

unfortunately, the dramas pretty have no continuity as a result of all the weird shit and multiple studios doing different dramas and messy stuff going on behind the scenes. the author's production company currently has all the rights back for filming future dramas, which is......imo, a good thing for book fans who love the author but a 😬 thing for book fans who like the original story more than what the author is now doing with it. I'll uh avoid saying too much opinion stuff though so no more on that 😅

that aside! yes 云顶天宫 “explore with the note” part 2......is the direct sequel to tlt2 and done by the same studio. unfortunately the writers are different and im not sure how much of the production team is the same either. idk how much you know about the novels so brief summary here--for the chinese version, the main story has 9 parts split among 8 books (though the official eng tls have each part being a different book) with some important content being as follows:

official eng title “cavern of blood zombies” (first time wx goes into a tomb, first t3j meeting)

official eng title “angry sea, hidden sands” (xisha seabed tomb, introduce a-ning)

official eng title “bronze tree of death” (bronze tree in qinling, wx & lao yang solo adventure)

official eng title “palace of doom” (heavenly palace on the clouds, introduce bronze gate)

official eng title “deadly desert winds” (golmud, introduce hei xiazi, desert, rainforest, tamutuo)

official eng title “graveyard of a queen” (the rest of that arc, wu sanxing & xie lianhuan reveal, jade meteorite, amnesiac xiaoge and escape, sanshu vanishes for good--also i think the official eng tl covers a couple chapters of the beginning of the next part too)

阴山古楼 (searching for xiaoge’s memories in banai, miluotuo cave, i think introduction of wu erbai)

邛笼石影 (auction/hotel iron triangle fight, introduce xiao hua & xiuxiu, wx & xh on the mountains alone while pz & xg go with granny huo)

finale (rescue from zhang family mansion, changbai mountain goodbye, 10 years promise)

after the main story are the main sequels:

zang hai hua (tibetan sea flower; unfinished & abandoned) covers wu xie a few years after xiaoge has entered the gate, searching to understand xiaoge’s past

sha hai (tomb of the sea; unfinished & abandoned) covers wu xie’s plan to wipe out the wang family, after zhh

chongqi (reunion: the sound of the providence) covers wu xie’s lung disease and how he recovers from that, set after they pick up xiaoge again from the bronze gate. thunder city and everything.

灯海寻尸&万山极夜 (still updating on wechat) don’t worry about this one since it’s still a WIP lol

btw between sha hai and chongqi there’s also ten years later (a short story) that covers how wu xie and pangzi pick up xiaoge from the bronze gate and take him home

the dramas Do Not Connect To Each Other At All, which the exception of tlt2 & tlt2 pt2 somewhat, but they go in this order:

盗墓笔记 / the lost tomb 1 (2015): covers part 1 but with major OCs and filler, and includes the auction scene from part 8 for some reason, so introduces xiao hua early.

怒海潜沙&秦岭神树 / the lost tomb 2 (2019) technically “explore with the note”: covers parts 2 & 3 but with major OCs and filler, introduces xiao hua & xiuxiu (and hei xiazi briefly) early. last couple episodes also cover the beginning of part 4. not a direct sequel to tlt1 despite being done by the same studio.

云顶天宫 / heavenly palace on the clouds (2021) technically also “explore with the note”: covers part 4 with major OCs and filler (and the same changes carrying over from tlt2). some episodes are identical to the last couple episodes of tlt2. works as a direct sequel only if you ignore the last couple episodes of tlt2 that take place in the snowy mountains. (those episodes of tlt2 were filmed after this drama was filmed, and im still not sure why they dragged the wu xie and xiaoge from tlt2 back to changbai mountain to film those episodes.)

终极笔记 / ultimate note (2020): covers parts 5-8 with minor OCs and minimal filler, also introduces xiao hua & xiuxiu early. the only adaptation that resembles its source material most of the time.

沙海 / tomb of the sea (2018): covers the second sequel with major OCs and filler. includes some bits from zhh and the short story “three days of silence”.

重启之极海听雷 / the lost tomb reboot (2020): covers third sequel with major OCs and filler.

in addition there is the prequel series mystic nine (2016) and side movies for the dramas that the author produced. there is also a single standalone movie--time raiders (2016) that is....well it’s. very strange. it’s fully subbed on youtube if you’re interested?

the best way to watch the dramas is to assume each one is its own self-contained AU set along different points of the dmbj timeline because even the dramas the author himself worked on don’t have continuity LOL (and with the exception of ultimate note & sha hai most of the time, also assume most characters are pretty OOC from the novels).

i uh regret to inform you though, that ultimate note will not be getting a sequel unless the author magically decides to not care about making money anymore and sells the rights to film the finale to linghe or something ^^;;;; it’s....unfortunate bc un is the most highly-rated dmbj adaptation on douban by A Lot, but it’s an adaptation that the author had literally nothing to do with whatsoever.

more information on some of the side movies/stage plays/manhua/donghua here.

summaries of the main novel stories (currently through zhh) here.

edited mtl (some of which has apparently been looked over by native cn speakers) of the novels following where official eng tls end here. (there are many scattered extras as well.)

you can get the official eng tl books/ebooks on amazon or elsewhere(?), but if you have problems purchasing them or like you just dont wanna support amazon or something, dm me off anon. (also i dont want to be mean but frankly the official tls are kinda bad too ^^;;;)

a rough timeline (spoilers galore) for the dmbj novels here. (fair warning im not 100% sure how accurate all of this is--they put three days of silence as 1991 but looking at the info in zhh, it seems like it should have been before the 1950s...but it’s more than fine as a general overview.)

anyway i hope that was helpful in some way? dmbj is a Very Confusing thing to get into ahahaha, one of my twitter mutuals has made a few carrds if you think they might be helpful: book, dramas (slightly out of date bc it says heavenly palace hasn’t aired yet), ultimate note (got its own carrd by virtue of being the only adaptation aside from sha hai sometimes that most og book fans acknowledge lol ^^;;;)

also anon if anything wasn’t clear or if you had more questions feel free to ask again sorry ahahaha im kinda tired rn @.@

#dmbj #shouting into the void #ask #anon #....im kinda tired bc i just finished watching ydtg so i hope that doesnt come across *too much* in this post LOL #and its probably obvious which adaptation im biased towards but after reading the novels i cant really help it

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love-anddeepression · 3 years ago

Text

Chapter 5- Lamentis 1

Prologue:https://ilovemarvelanne1.tumblr.com/post/657924038358908928/youre-not-him-loki-x-femreader-prologue

Chapter1:https://ilovemarvelanne1.tumblr.com/post/657924201329672192/youre-not-him-chapter-1

Chapter2:https://ilovemarvelanne1.tumblr.com/post/657925667989667840/youre-not-him-chapter-2

Chapter3:https://ilovemarvelanne1.tumblr.com/post/657926281710665728/youre-not-him-chapter-3

Chapter4:https://ilovemarvelanne1.tumblr.com/post/657927155478659072/youre-not-him-chapter-4

You and Loki just make it through the Time door and you're.....back at the TVA

"Wait, why are we back here?" Loki asks, confused.

"Loki, she knows where the Time keepers are!" you say and begin running toward the door.

"Wait!" Loki calls out.

"What?" you walk back and ask.

Taking his daggers out of the locker, he looks at you and says, " Be careful, I don't want you to get hurt."

Face softening, you smile and say, " Don't worry about me, I took on a Mad Titan, I can be careful."

Loki's eyebrows go up at the mention of this 'Mad Titan' but he doesn't say anything.

"Come on, let's go!" you say and run out, him closely following you.

Readying your knives you slowly walk across the corridor, alert and ready to fight. Loki is doing the same except you have your hood on nd no one can see your face. As you keep walking you come across two bodies of some minute-men she killed.

Walking faster, both of you get there just in time.

Flipping your knives, you wait, but the ass can't help himself.

" A few questions" He asks, making you roll your eyes.

" Have you got nothing better to do?" she asks.

" I agree with her." you say making her smirk.

Ignoring what you just said, Loki makes his way behind her, "Rude, are you sure you're a Loki?" he asks, pointing his dagger at her.

"You're in my way" she says

"You are my way!" Loki quips back.

At this point, you're leaning against the wall, playing with a knife as you watch the scene unfold.

Finally The Variant unsheathes her Katana and ready to fight, she swings it at Loki, but he dodges it and is pushed back almost colliding with you.

"I thought we could work together, but I see you lack vision."

Groaning, she ignores him, walking toward the elevators.

Taking the chance you slip up behind her and using the moment, you kick the back of her knees, causing her to double over in pain.

Loki comes and twists her hand behind her, making her grunt in pain.

"Either, you'll come willingly or not, either way, I get to the time-keepers."

" Oh god. Shut up!" she says and wriggles out his grip, kicking him in the stomach before coming over to you.

Slashing her katana over your head, you duck and kick her in the stomach, causing her to be launched backwards, she extends her arms and manages to cut your cheek whilst being thrown backwards.

Loki gets up and making his way toward her, in a low and gravelly voice, he threatens," Don't ever touch her again." before she pushes him over, the three of you are now fighting, the sound of metal clanging, grunts of pain and the occasional sarcastic quip.

It's when you have a chokehold on her and she's pressing her katana into Loki that Ravonna comes in.

"Come any closer and I'll kill him." she threatens.

" Oh hehe, no darling, you hurt him and I'll kill you," you reply, which for some reason makes Loki's heart flutter.

"Go for it." Ravonna says before making her way towards you.

Just in time, Loki takes The Variant's TemPad and transports all of you somewhere else.

You wake up to see Loki and The Variant fighting like cats and dogs over the TemPad.

" Okay, where the fuck are we?" you ask. You're in a tent somewhere.

" Y/n! Thank goodness, you're alright." Loki says in relief.

Taking your hood off, you look at both of them, just in time to see The Variant's breath hitch.

"Wow, she's beautiful" ,you hear her thoughts.

" Better block your minds both of you, I can hear loud thoughts, thank you, you're really pretty too." you say.

Immediately the barriers come up,, making you smirk

" Thanks." she says her voice friendlier.

Suddenly, a rock is blasted through the roof, making your eyebrows furrow in confusion.

" Where did you send us?" you and The Variant say.

Walking out, you immediately recognize the place, purple, rocky and of course, the planet crashing into it

Lamentis 1

"Oh shit! This is Lamentis 1!" you shout.

"Wait what?" Loki asks.

"You idiot!" The Variant shouts, " We're in Lamentis 1!"

"I don't know what that means!" Loki answers, distressed.

" The moon, that planet is about to crash into and destroy!" you reply.

"Out of all the apocalypses, saved on that TemPad, this is the worst!" she says.

Dodging a few meteorites, the three of you run.

" No one makes it off here!" she shouts.

"Watch out!" you say pulling Loki away just in time.

" Sorry Madam, I didn't have time to scan the brochure!" he shouts back, the three of you taking cover under a rover

" By the way, I thought you wanted me dead!" he said.

" I don't know where you hid that TemPad, but if you blow up, it blows up and then I blow up-There!" she shouted, pointing to a mining shack.

" So we're a team now ?" Loki says running out.

"Oh god no!"

Suddenly, the both of them get surrounded with golden wisps of magic and you find yourselves inside the shack.

"What did you do?!" The Variant shouts in your face.

" Calm down, I teleported the three of us, into the shack, you're welcome." you reply face straight and voice monotone.

"Oh, Thanks." she says awkwardly before touching your forehead, green magic fizzling out.

You can hear Loki shout at her, but you smirk and say, " Darling take your hands of my forehead, It won't work."

"Why?" she asks, her and Loki looking at you in surprise,

" My mind is too strong, it's been taken over a few times, so I know how to block it. I'm Y/n by the way." you reply.

"Huh, cool." she says before making her way to Loki,

"No way, are you going to try enchanting me!" he says,

"Fine!" she says, unsheathing her katana.

Conjuring twin daggers Loki says, " Look are we really about to do this here? Again?" he asks

" Well, what do you propose instead?" she says

" Oh, I don't know a truce? Listen neither of us is getting of this rock if we can't get that TemPad on!" he replies

"Where do you have it hidden?" she shouts

"In my heart!"

"Well then, I'll cut it out!"

"Nice. very droll, lovely."

You had had enough of their petty bickering.

"All right! Both of you SHUT UP!" you shout gaining their attention.]

" I want to get of of this god-forsaken place as much as you do ok? But none of us are getting out of this place if the two of you keep screaming at each other like little children! SO GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER SO WE CAN HAVE SOME CHANCE OF LEAVING THIS PLACE!" you shout at the end.

The two of them have crossed their arms and look like they're sulking.

" I don't know how to charge a TemPad, I never used one, but I do know, that you need a large power source, and the only way to do that is by getting out of this abandoned mining shack. I've been here before, and there's a town up ahead, if we leave now, we might be able to find a source large enough."

The Variant uncrosses her arms and says, " Alright, a truce."

" A truce." Loki agrees.

" Great, now that you finished making up, we can leave, you say and walk out, the two of them following you.

"I like here." the girl says to Loki.

" I like her too." he agrees looking at you.

" So what's the plan?" Loki asks the Variant, falling behind both of you.

"What Y/n said, there's a town near here, and can you shut up, just because I have to work with you, doesn't mean I want to hear your voice." she shouts back to him.

"Alright, well slow down!"

"What part of imminent death confuses you? and don't call me Variant." she tell him.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not calling some faded photocopy of me Loki." he says

"Good, cause that's not who I am now, I'm Sylvie now."

"Sylvie? Nice name"

" Thank you! I like yours too!" she says smiling.

" Oh good, you changed your name! Brilliant!"

" It's called an alias." she says.

"Not very Loki-like" Loki comments.

" Oh really. what makes a Loki a loki?" you ask

" Independence, Authority, Style." Loki lists out.

" So you naturally went to work for the boring oppressive time-police?" Sylvie pipes in.

" I don't work for them, I'm a consultant."

"Oh, are you now?" you ask smirking.

" Yes." Loki says looking at you.

" You don't know what you want." Sylvie says

" Oh yeah, what about you?" Loki quips back, " Your years-in-the-making plan was to tear the place down, create the ultimate power vaccuum and then walk away? I'd never have done that!" he says, standing back.

" Yeah? Well I'm not you." she replies.

"I like you." you tell Sylvie.

" I like you too." she replies, half-smiling.

Loki looks on, his face a mix of jealousy and disbelief. but who is he jealous of? You or Sylvie?

" Can we get on with this now?" Sylvie says walking away leaving Loki and you alone.

Smiling at him. you reach your hand out to him, "Come on Lokes, let's go, Neither of us are dying today."

His lips quirk up and he takes your hand and both of you walk toward Sylvie, hand-in-hand.

"Brute force is no substitute for diplomacy and guile." Loki tells Sylvie.

" Noted" Sylvie says before kicking the door open, only to be blasted by an energy blast.

Groaning, she turns to face the cabin,

"It's remarkable you ever made it as far as you did." Loki taunts.

"Are you ok?" you mouth to Sylvie.

Nodding she turns her attention to the lady.

" Sorry about that!" Loki says

"Don't be, I enjoyed it." the lady says, still inside the trailer.

" Oh.." he chuckles, " I did too. But I can assure you, despite my acquaintance behaving like an animal, uh we mean you no harm, we're simply weary travellers." he says making you facepalm.

" Sure you are." She replies.

Snooping inside, Loki spies a picture of the lady and her husband, he then casts an illusion to make him look like the husband, before going to the front.

" Hello dear." He says.

" Patrice?" the lady says, face in shock.

Nodding his head and sobbing, he says, " It.. it's been a long time. You're as beautiful as--"

He too get's thrown backwards and this time you audibly groan,

" Ma'am. I'm really sorry what's been happening to you today, but all we want to know is where everybody is, we just want to get out of this place." you say.

" The ark." she replies.

" Um.. what?" you ask, confused.

" The evacuation vessel" she explains.

"Ok, how do we get there?" you ask

" Train station's at the end of town, but you'll never get tickets." she says.

" Okay, thank you very much Ma'am, we'll leave now, and you'll never see us again." you replay and walk over to your partners who look shocked.

"And that's how you do it. Come on, we need to get the train station."

When you reach the train station, you see a huge crown of people waiting in line to board the train.

" How are we going to get in there?" Loki asks

" I can be invisible, so I'm covered." you say

" Is there anything you can't do?" Loki asks, amused.

Apparently I can't move on-

" I suck at mathematics" you shrug and tell him.

Biting his lip and laughing, he shakes head.

" Well, Sylvie we can't fight our way onto that train, we're going to do this my way." saying so, he cast an illusion, now he's wearing the turtleneck uniform, and shit why does he look so good?

" Ok, Y/n? Y/n where are you?" he says suddenly panicking.

" I'm right behind you doofus." you say, now invisible

" How do I look?" he asks Sylvie.

" Like someone with a shit plan." Sylvie says, making you laugh.

" Come on, my legs are hurting!" you say.

" It's a great plan." Loki argues.

"Hmmm." Sylvie hums.

" Just follow my lead." he says, taking her arms and leading her inside.

Why the hell am I feeling jealous? They're basically the same person!

~~( I'm skipping that part, where they get on the train, I hope you don't mind."

"I can't sit, backward on a train." Loki says.

"Well, I never sit my back to a door." Sylvie says

" What there are doors on both sides." he exclaims.

" God! Choose where you want to sit, I'm sitting here." you say, sliding into the empty seat.

Loki immediately sits next to you.

Seeing Sylvie yawn, he says, " Oh, you a bit tired? Feel free to you know, take some rest."

" I can't sleep in a place like this." she answers.

" You can't sleep in a train?" Loki asks.

" I can't sleep around untrustworthy people." she says.

" Oh right, that's us?" Loki whispers.

" Just you." she answers smiling at you.

Scoffing, Loki narrows his eyes at you.

Narrowing your eyes back, you make him laugh.

"But, you feel free to take a nap." she says.

" Nice try."

" I'm not going to waste my time rooting around for the TemPad, when someone taught you fairly decent magic."

" My mother."

You gulp when he mentions Frigga, she reminded you of your own mother, who was shot to death, along with your family.

Sylvie looks around slowly before asking, " What was she like?"

Smiling, Loki says," She was a queen of Asgard, she was good, purely decent."

" Are you sure, she was your mother?"

"Uh, no she's not actually, I was adopted, is that a bit of a spoiler for you? Sorry about that." He says.

"No, I knew I was adopted." she replies.

" What? They told you?"

"Yes. did they not tell you?"

"No!" he says, shocked.

" Hang on a second, tell me about your mother."

" I barely remember her, just blips of a dream at this point." she says, voice low.

" You know, when I was younger, she'd do these bits of magic for me, like turn a flower into a frog or cast fireworks over the water. It all seemed impossible, but she told me that I'd be able to do it too, because I could do anything." He says smiling at the memory.

" I knew Frigga." you say.

Loki turns to look at you, " You-what?"

" I knew Frigga, she was.. she was amazing, accepting and took me in as her own, even though I had been in Asgard for a few days."

" You've been to Asgard?" Loki asks, Sylvie listening.

" Yes, um Mobius didn't tell you the full story. The first time you went to Asgard, Odin made you come back and stay the at the tower a punishment for around a year, I came a few days before you, and the second time you went and were put in the dungeon, I came along. We were actually really good friends." friends my ass.

"Wow, We were friends?" Loki asked.

"Good friends." mmm very good friends

" So what kind of magic did she teach you?" Sylvie asks.

" You wanna see?" Loki says suddenly excited.

He opens his hand, palm up, and fireworks of different colours apper and burst, you remember this, it's what Loki would do to cheer you up.

" Not bad." Sylvie comments.

Closing his hand, the fireworks disappear.

" So, where'd you learn to do the...you knew the thing that you do?"

" I taught myself." Sylvie replies.

" You taught yourself that magic?" you ask

" Yes, I did." she replies.

" What-you just go into their minds and project some sort of illusion?"

" It'd be easier if I just-" she leans forward as if wanting to touch his forehead.

Enchant me, and take the TemPad and leap out of the train, not thank you." he says making you giggle.

" Well then, don't ask! " she asks.

A woman comes up and offers champagne, Loki takes two and gives you one.

" Thank you." you say

" Your welcome." he says leaning in.

" No, thank you." Sylvie says,

"I'll take hers." he says taking the third champagne flute.

" Cheers, to the end of the world." he says and you both drink.

" A pity the old woman chose die, don't you think?"

" She was in love." you say.

" She hated him." he answers.

" Maybe love is hate." Sylvie adds.

Making a face, Loki conjures a paper and a quill, " What was that? Love is hate..." he writes down.

" Oh piss off!" you and Sylvie say at the same time, before looking at each other and chuckling.

Disappearing the paper, he says, " So on the subject of love, is there a lucky beau waiting for you at the end of this crusade?" he asks.

" Yes there is, actually." she replies.

" Oh!" you say.

" Yes, I managed to maintain a long-distance relationship with a postman whilst running across time from one apocalypse to another." she says jokingly

" With charm like that, who could resist you?" Loki says.

" Well, many people are willing in the face of certain doom." she laughs." It was only ever just to keep me going. How about you? You're a prince, must've been would-be-princesses, or perhaps another prince."

Ha ha! Sweetie, darling, if only you knew, I WAS HIS FIANCE!

" A bit of both, I suspect the same as you, but almost always, it was nothing ever...." he says.

" Real." Sylvie finishes.

" Love is mischief, then." she says.

Looking up, he says, " No, love is..something I need to have another drink about."

" You do realize, that we're about to hijack the power source to a civilization's only hope?"

Shit. You didn't realize that.

" I do." you and Loki say at the same time.

" It's not going to be easy. We should rest." she says

" All right, you relax your way, I'll relax mine." he says

" Fair enough." you add, conjuring up your MP3 and putting the buds in your ears.

"Men trærne danser og fossene stanserNår hun synger, hun synger kom hjemMen trærne danser og fossene stanser,When she sings, she sings come home!When she sings, she sings come home!"

You and Sylvie wake up to loud singing, looking to your left, you see Loki singing and dancing, clearly drunk.

" Hey!" Sylvie waves.

Waving back, he continues singing and then shushes everyone.

"I stormsvarte fjell

Jeg vandrer alene

Over isbreer tar jeg meg frem

I eplehagen står møyen den vene

Og synger

Når kommer du hjem?"

You remember this, a song you heard Thor and him sing, and you loved it.

The song picks up and Loki starts clapping and dancing, making you smile.

" To Sylvie everybody!" he cheers.

Finishing his drink, he throws the glass down, shouting, " ANOTHER!".

Just like how Thor would do it, every time he finished a drink he liked.

As soon as he finishes, Sylvie and you, walk over and pull him to the side.

" You're drunk." you say

"No, I'm just full, but bear in mind I'm very full. Now, I need you to try this, it pairs very nicely with the Figgy Port, who's got the Figgy Port? You have to take my word on the Figgy port.-"

" Where's your uniform? We're meant to be laying low."

" Nobody cares, it's the end of the world!" he says

" I think something's happening." you say.

" Yes, uh that planet" he says pointing up, " is about to crash into us."

" Don't be an ass, I saw some people looking at you weirdly." Sylvie says.

" Huh?" he says dropping the dish, " When did you get so paranoid?"

" It must have started when I spent my entire life running from the omniscient fascists you and Y/n work for."

" It's a shame to let that go to waste." Loki says , looking down at the food he dropped.

" Hey, change of subject, I thought of an answer to your question! Love is a dagger." He says his dagger appearing," It's a weapon, to be wielded far away or up close, you can see yourself in it, it's beautiful, until it makes you bleed, but ultimately when you reach for it," he continues, turning the dagger so the handle faced Sylvie, who tries to hold it, but it disappears.

"It isn't real." she finishes.

" Yeah." he says looking at her.

" So love's an imaginary dagger?" you ask

" Doesn't make sense does it?" he enquires.

" Nope, terrible metaphor." Sylvie says.

" Damn I thought I had something." he replies

Suddenly a door opens and a few guards walk in.

" That's him." an old man points at Loki.

" Sir, may I see your tickets?" the guards asks.

" Tickets! Yes of course!" he raises his hand, only for fireworks to blast out of them making you groan.

The guards take hold of Loki and Sylvie, not coming to you because they didn't see you.

Taking a glass bottle, you smash it over the head of the guard holding Sylvie, causing him to faint.

Loki kicks the knee of the guard holding him and pushes him away, elbowing the other in the head.

As everyone runs out, two more guards come in and start fighting.

With a blast of magic, you blast a guard out the window and Loki does the same, green and gold mixing together.

One of the guards start choking Sylvie and hold her against a wall.

Taking a dagger, Loki aims carefully, throws the dagger and ....misses, almost hitting Sylvie,

" What kind of a throw is that?" you said.

Sighing he turns to see another guard trying to fight him, " Oh will you stop it?" he says, kicking him out the window, " Bye!" he waves.

Sylvie manages to get out of the guard's grip and knock him out.

Suddenly two guards grab Loki and throw him out the window.

You and Sylvie look at each other, nod and she jumps out.

The guards them turn to you.

" Boys, you don't have to worry about me." you blast them with a burst of gold before jumping out.

" So, the TemPad's gone?" you asked.

" Yes, all because of this hedonistic jerk-ass clown!" Sylvie shouts, starting to breath faster.

" Woah, Sylvie breathe, go to the side and take a breath, let all of it out."

Nodding she goes to the side, where she then screams so loudly, her magic blasts some rocks nearby. She then goes and sits down on a rock.

You and Loki look at each other before going to sit beside her, one on either side.

" Did the uh, scream make you feel better?" Loki asks.

"It did, you should try it sometime." she says sarcastically.

You can't help but recall at how Loki screamed when Frigga died.

" What now?" you ask

" I don't know, he broke the TemPad." she says

" Well-" Loki begins

" -and that planet is about to crash into us." she continues.

" Well yes but,-"

" But what?" she urges

" But the entire moon is destroyed, right?" he asks

" Yeah, and everyone on it is killed." she says

" Including us." he says.

" Including us." she finishes.

" Wait, what about the ark?" you ask.

" The ark is destroyed before it takes off." she answers

" Never had us on it." you say.

Scoffing, she says, " So what? We hijack the ark and make sure it gets off this moon?"

" Sounds like a good plan." Loki says

"Okay." Sylvie says getting up, leaving you and Loki looking at each other.

"I did not think that would work." you say.

" Well it did." he says getting up and walking after her.

" Okay fine, you want to know how enchantment works." Sylvie says, " I have to make physical contact and grab hold of their mind."

" How?" Loki asks.

" It depends on the mind, most are easy and I can overtake instantly, others the stronger ones, it get's tricky, I'm in control, but they're there too. In order to preserve the connection, I have to create a fantasy from their memories, that young soldier from the TVA, her mind was messed up, everything clouded, I had to pull a memory from hundred's of years prior, before she even fought for them." Sylvie explains

" Wait, what?" you ask, " What'd you just say? Before she joined the TVA?"

" Yeah, she was just a regular person on Earth." Sylvie says.

" But, Mobius said that, everyone who works for the TVA were created by the timekeepers." Loki said.

" That's ridiculous, they're all variants, just like us, I don't know about Y/n though." Sylvie says.

" They don't know that!" you say,

'All ticketed passengers-"

" That's our ride." Sylvie says, all of you running towards the town.

" Do we trust each other?" Sylvie asks.

" Yes, and you can." Loki answers.

" Y/n?"

" Yes." you answer.

" Good, cause this is gonna suck." she says

The crowd is then filled with people who are trying to get on board.

" They're gonna let all these people die?" Loki says in horror.

" We're gonna have to get on there and make sure it takes off!" Sylvie says.

" How?" Loki asks.

" We go around!" she says, and you and Loki run towards her.

He holds her back and runs with her, and you feel it again.

NOT THE TIME TO BE FEELING JEALOUS

Taking a deep breath, you teleport to where they are, not wanting to lose them in the crowd.

The moment you reach them, meteorite crashes into a building, making all of you fly backwards.

" Y/n?! Are you alright?" Loki asks.

" I'm fine." you say shortly, " Where's Sylvie?"

" Here." he says pulling her up and running inside a bar.

You run after them, to see a man pulling Sylvie's cloak off her and about to kick her back, when you grab him by his neck and pull him backwards, kneeing his back, making him fall and shout in pain.

Running out of the bar, all of you find a place behind a garbage dump, to take a breather, before running again.

You're almost there, when you see a building about to fall on all of you.

" I've got it!" Loki says, using his magic to make the building go back to where it was.

" Come on! We can still make it!" you say and run with Sylvie, Loki following.

You've just reached, when a meteorite crashes through the ark, destroying it.

All hope lost, you turn back and walk out, Sylvie following.

Shit.

#loki #loki x y/n #marvel #lokilove #lokiseries #lokispoilers #loki x reader #loki angst #marvel x reader #sylvie #sylvie x reader

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angelofthequeers · 3 years ago

Text

Ladybug and Reine Nuit: chapter 26

Volpina III

Disclaimer: I don’t own ML.

Chapter 25 | Chapter 27

“What the heck?” Ladybug yelps from on her balcony, where she’d just been about to transform back. Why is there a massive meteor hurtling towards Paris? Is there another akuma? One who can summon meteors? Whatever. Why it’s here doesn’t matter right now.

She yo-yos across Paris so fast that her arms ache with the effort, frantically trying to think of just what the heck she can possibly do about a literal meteor. But when she’s nearly reached it, there’s an orange blur zooming past her and up to the meteor. The blur turns into a girl with long brown hair and white tips, dressed in a bright orange, white, and black fox costume with long fox ears on her head and a flute strung across her back, who catches the gigantic meteor and hurls it back into space…all by herself.

What?

“I am Volpina! The only superhero Paris needs!” announces the fox heroine as the Parisians cheer for her. As Ladybug frowns at Volpina from a nearby roof, Reine Nuit lands beside her.

“Uh, right, like this isn’t suspicious at all,” Ladybug says in lieu of a proper greeting. “I confront a girl called Lila in the park for lying about being my friend and being a hero called Volpina with a fake necklace…and now here she is?”

“I mean, how else do you explain it?” Reine Nuit says. “I don’t believe it either, but…if this Lila girl is new…”

“How optimistic of you,” Ladybug says dryly. “And how do you even know who I’m talking about?”

“Same school, remember? Everyone knows about Lila Rossi. Besides, I was…at the park in my civilian form. Not that you would’ve seen me!”

Ladybug blinks at the revelation that her partner had also witnessed the confrontation. “Then you would’ve seen how fake her necklace was!”

“Hey, girls!” In a blur of orange, Volpina lands in front of Ladybug and Reine Nuit. “Glad you dropped in! I need a hand. Come on!”

Volpina flies off. Ladybug and Reine Nuit exchange a quick look, come to the agreement to follow her for now, and leap after her. When they land behind a chimney, Ladybug’s eyes widen at the sight of a purple-suited man on the next roof over.

“Hawkmoth?” Reine Nuit gasps.

“He never shows up!” Ladybug says. “Something big is going on!”

“We can take him down, but it's gonna take all three of us,” Volpina says. “We’d better make the most of our skills!” She smiles at Reine Nuit and says, “By the way, it’s great to meet you, Reine Nuit. I love your outfit!”

“Uh…thanks, Volpina,” Reine Nuit says, frowning at Ladybug.

“Something about this isn’t right,” Ladybug says. “First the meteorite, now Hawk Moth appearing. Both on the same day.”

“Yeah, that’s odd,” Reine Nuit says. “Especially since we saw someone called Lila claiming to be Volpina in the park earlier today.”

“Then you should know I’m the real deal,” Volpina says with a smile. “How else could I be a superhero if I didn’t have a Miraculous?” She holds up her necklace and adds, “It gives me the power of flight and super strength,” as Ladybug narrows her eyes at it.

“How on earth do flight and super strength relate to a fox?” Reine Nuit says. “Ladybug and I make sense –”

“Look, he’s getting away!” Volpina points. Ladybug and Reine Nuit whirl around to see Hawkmoth vanish in a flash of purple, just as Volpina flies after him.

“What if she’s pulling our strings?” Ladybug says.

“Even if she is, do you really wanna give up the possibility of capturing Hawkmoth?” Reine Nuit says. Damn, but she makes a good point. “Catch now, question later?”

“Sure…but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

When Hawkmoth finally lands on the top of City Hall, the three of them stop on a nearby rooftop to plan their attack.

“Ladybug, go to his left,” Volpina says. “Reine Nuit, you take the right. I’ll come from behind!”

“Day one and you’re already taking over,” Ladybug says shortly.

“I hope you don’t mind, but Ladybug and I are gonna stick together,” Reine Nuit says. “We can still surround him once we get close.”

Something flashes in Volpina’s olive-green eyes, but it disappears so fast that it could have just been a trick of the light. Then she’s smiling. “Sure! So long as we catch him, right?”

She flies off to the right. Ladybug and Reine Nuit exchange a quick look, then start to creep around to the left of Hawkmoth. But when they’re just about to leap up and catch him, Hawkmoth disappears!

“Where’d he go?” Reine Nuit exclaims. A flicker in the corner of Ladybug’s eye catches her attention, and she whips around to see Hawkmoth re-materialising on a chimney. With a groan, she swings over with Reine Nuit leaping with her, but he vanishes and reappears on the next one over.

“What the heck?” she says. “How is he doing this? Isn’t the Butterfly’s power akumatisation, not teleportation?”

“Something about this whole thing stinks,” Reine Nuit says. And that something is revealed when they land on a large green target mark, which turns red and summons a swarm of missiles and torpedoes aimed right at them.

“I wouldn't move an inch if I were you,” Volpina sings, appearing on the chimney in front of them. “See, it really didn’t make a difference if you split up or stayed together. And at least now you can say that we know each other, Ladybug.”

“I knew this stunk!” Reine Nuit growls. “We both knew that necklace was a fake! Ugh, how could we be so stupid?”

“Because the thought of catching Hawkmoth was just too good to pass up, as I knew it would be,” Volpina grins. “I tell people what they want to hear, and they jump to dance to my tune.”

“You're not a superhero! You're another one of Hawkmoth's akumatised victims!” Ladybug says.

“Well, everyone else thinks I’m a superhero,” Volpina says. “So you won't be able to call me a liar anymore because everyone will think you're the liar! And Adrien will see that I truly am Volpina!” A purple outline appears over her face. “But before I get rid of you two, you’re going to give me your Miraculouses.”

“Never!” Ladybug and Reine Nuit snap.

“Do you really think you two have a choice?” Volpina says, then points at a nearby building. “If you don’t, I’ll take that building down!”

Ladybug and Reine Nuit say nothing, mentally calling Volpina’s bluff. With a smirk, Volpina plays a little tune on her flute and shoots an orange ball of light at the building, which starts to crumble with a loud crashing sound.

“No!” Reine Nuit holds out her ring hand, giving Ladybug an apologetic look. Ladybug sighs and reaches for her earrings…but just before she can take them off, a piece of the falling building hits a pigeon, and the entire thing disappears in a puff of orange smoke and a flute tune to reveal that the building is perfectly fine.

“An illusion!” Ladybug gasps. “Just like the meteor and Hawkmoth!”

“Of course!” Reine Nuit says as Ladybug destroys each illusory missile with her yo-yo. “Foxes are sneaky and deceptive! Your power is just lies!”

Naturally, when Ladybug tries to catch Volpina, the fox villain disappears just like the missiles when the yo-yo touches her. Reine Nuit groans.

“This sucks,” she says. “How the hell could we fall for something like that? We should’ve known that Hawkmoth wouldn’t just come out like that!”

“Because we wanted to believe it,” Ladybug says, resting a hand on her shoulder. “That’s why her lies work. But we don’t have time to wallow in self-pity, pretty kitty. I have a feeling that after what she just said, she’s going to Adrien’s house. Let’s go!”

When Ladybug and Reine Nuit finally arrive at the Agreste mansion, Ladybug holds Reine Nuit close to her and lowers them down to hang upside-down outside Adrien’s window, her body tingling with warmth under her suit where she and Reine Nuit are tangled together. Sure enough, in Adrien’s room, Volpina is crowding him by the back wall, while he watches her with wide green eyes; warm and open as opposed to cold and deceptive like Volpina.

“You can call me Volpina,” she’s saying. “I'm sorry about the scene in the park earlier today. Chloé no doubt got upset and jealous that I was more powerful than her idol.”

“Hmph,” Ladybug huffs.

“Easy, angel bug,” Reine Nuit says. “You’re the one controlling the yo-yo, remember?”

Rolling her eyes, Ladybug reels them up to the roof, where the yo-yo is attached. She holds up three fingers; once she lowers the last one, the two of them leap down and through the window to confront Volpina.

“You’re jealous that I’m better than you, aren’t you?” Volpina growls, whipping around when they land behind her. “You’re not going to ruin our date this time, Ladybug!”

“Date?” Adrien blinks. “It wasn’t a date. I was helping you with your history homework. If I’d known you thought it was a date, I would’ve set the record straight.”

Volpina snarls at him.

“Excuse us, but we need to have a chat with this super liar,” Ladybug says to Adrien, who dashes to his bathroom and jumps inside, slamming the door shut behind him.

“You really need to stop deluding yourself with your lies,” Reine Nuit says to Volpina. She swings her staff at Volpina, who bats it away with her flute and then leaps out of the way of Ladybug’s yo-yo before playing a tune to create an entire room of Volpina illusions. By the time Ladybug and Reine Nuit clear them and the orange smoke dissipates, Volpina is gone.

“Reine Nuit!” Ladybug gasps and points out the window, where Volpina is smirking at them while dragging Adrien along by the wrist.

“Is it just another illusion?” Reine Nuit says. Ladybug runs to check Adrien’s hiding place.

“He’s gone! She really does have him!”

“Then let’s follow him!”

Although they’ve lost sight of Volpina and Adrien by the time they’re outside, the loud, familiar wailing near the Eiffel Tower as they draw close brings them straight back to her. Volpina is hanging off the side of the Tower, dangling a petrified Adrien by the wrist, while Chloé screeches and sobs at the base.

“Ladybug!” Chloé cries when Ladybug and Reine Nuit draw level with her. “That fox girl totally kidnapped me from my spa day and now she’s going to kill my Adrikins!”

“Why should I hurt you physically when I can threaten your precious Adrikins?” Volpina calls. “You’re going to regret ever double-crossing me, Chloé Bourgeois!”

“Do something!” Chloé bellows. Ladybug and Reine Nuit exchange long-suffering looks and then leap up the Tower, pausing a short distance from Volpina and her hostage when she starts waving Adrien around in the air.

“Hey, I thought you liked him!” Reine Nuit says. “Didn’t you want to date him?”

“Not as much as I want to see you two on the ground under my foot!” Volpina giggles at Adrien. “No hard feelings, right?”

“You have to be bluffing,” Ladybug says. Her mind races furiously, trying to think of what to do and where the real Volpina could be…but is this really just an illusion? Can she even be sure? Wait. Of course she can!

“You wanna bet on that?” Volpina releases a finger on her grip on Adrien. Ladybug gasps at the sight.

“Hit her! She’s a fake! Adrien can’t be in danger!” she shrieks rather hysterically, all common sense flying out the window at the sight of her best friend in such danger. Reine Nuit nods and throws her baton at Volpina and Adrien, who disappear with faint music and a puff of orange smoke. “Ha! I knew it!”

“There!” Reine Nuit points at a blur of orange that’s scaling the Tower opposite them. Ladybug swings after her partner, and her heart flatlines when they get to the tip of the Tower and she sees that the real Adrien is safe and sound, albeit tied tightly to a metal beam. Felix is perched on his shoulder, no doubt recording the action since Adrien can’t exactly use his arms.

“Hey, guys,” he says in a resigned voice after Reine Nuit prods him to test him. “Don’t worry, I’m used to being the damsel in distress by now. Hawkmoth wouldn’t let her actually hang me over the Tower for some reason, so I’m just bored.”

Ladybug can’t help but laugh in sheer relief. But it’s cut short when Volpina plays a tune and once again summons clones of herself, making herself utterly indistinguishable from them. There’s only one thing Ladybug can do now to end this.

“Lucky Charm!” A chocolate ice cream falls into her hands, and she blinks and unwraps it with a, “Huh?” But when the foil inside the packaging gleams in the sunlight and makes her hiss and cover her eyes, she knows what they need to do.

“Get ready, Reine Nuit!” she says. Reine Nuit nods.

“Cataclysm!”

Ladybug aims the glinting foil at the Volpina clones. All of them remain unaffected…except for one, who gasps and covers her eyes. Reine Nuit springs into action, corroding the metal beams above the real Volpina to trap her in a makeshift cage, and it’s a simple matter to take Volpina’s necklace, then free and purify the akuma. Once Miraculous Ladybug has fixed everything, Volpina melts away in a purple-black mass to reveal Lila.

“Lila?” Ladybug kneels next to Lila and smiles. “I’m sorry for what Chloé did. I’d like to be friends with you for real this time…if you like. You don’t have to lie to get people to like you –”

Lila snorts. “Forget it, Ladybug. I don’t need your pity. Or your lectures.”

“Ouch…” Reine Nuit says. “Uh…I’ll get her to the ground if you want?”

“Thanks, kitty,” Ladybug sighs. “I’ll take Adrien home.” Despite Lila’s rejection, Ladybug can’t help the smile that spreads across her face when Adrien hugs her and thanks her for saving him again, then holds on tight so that she can leap away and take him home.

#aotq fic #aotq: reine nuit au #miraculous ladybug #ml fic #marinette dupain-cheng #alya cesaire #chat!alya #volpina #lila rossi

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