#somehow still alive

[howtowhumpyourhiccup]

Somehow Still Alive

Summary: Written for AI-less Whumptober 2023 Day 21. Set during Httyd 1. After the battle with the Red Death, Toothless can hardly believe that he and Hiccup are still alive.

Warning: /

Rating: General

Characters: Hiccup, Toothless, Stoick

Pairing: /

Words: 313

Fandom: How to Train Your Dragon

Prompt: Near Death Experience

Whumpee: Hiccup, Toothless

Author’s Notes: Enjoy!

@ailesswhumptober

XOXOX

When they decided to fight the Red Death, Toothless was not expecting to get out of that battle alive. It was a miracle that he and Hiccup weren't immediately killed by the cruel queen, let alone that they somehow killed her and put an end to centuries of suffering at her jaws.

But somehow they did it and Toothless finds that they’re both still alive.

His body is in such pain.

He’s never had to push his wings that hard before, his lungs have never had to scream, his heart has never had to stay ahead of death. The heat of the fire as she blew up was hot enough to almost blister his fireproof hide.

The fight is a complete blur. Though the images keep rolling around in his head, he can’t make sense of them. Not how they beat her and not how they’ve made it out alive.

And he can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for a human either. Hiccup lay perfectly protected within the confines of his aching body and held to his chest. His laboured breathing like the sound of drums to his sensitive ears. Toothless can very clearly smell the parts of him- clothes and flesh- that were touched by the fire before he pulled him out.

The smell bothers him. The sounds bother him. His body hurts too much to hold onto him, but he doesn’t let go.

Hiccup almost died. Toothless almost died. He can’t let them seperate ever again. Not now, not ever.

Toothless hears the sound of movement and it wills him from the darkness of sweet unconsciousness. Just the mere glimpse of the grey cloudy and ash-filled day hurts his eyes, an unearthly pounding inside his skull.

Stoick- as Toothless has learned his name is- kneels there. He looks mournful, but Toothless still holds onto Hiccup, not wanting to let go.

[another-corpo-rat]

Fem V Friday but I didn’t take any screenshots of my baby recently so I’m gonna ramble about her soap opera of a life instead.

(Putting the majority of it under a Read More because I know I ramble and don’t wanna clog the tags)

- Victoria was born in Night City but she wasn't raised there - she lived in England with her mother until she was 23, when they both moved for work-related reasons. Her accent is still quite prominent and it's common enough to hear other people refer to her as Mary Poppins. Angelo once called her it in the middle of an argument and she proceeded to beat him with an umbrella. It sounds funnier than it was - it was severe enough that Trauma Team were alerted.

This event, causing an embarrassment for their parents, was what spurred the two into a different approach - small competitions, bets. Harmless to the duo and their parents reputations, not so much for the mercs they moved like chess pieces to up each other. This 'truce' would be in place until their father's health took a severe decline and the question of inheritance became prominent.

- Doesn't really participate much within the commonly tight-knit netrunner community. At most, some may recognise the username V1P3R in certain forums, usually ones theory-crafting potential new daemons and quickhacks - what would need to be targeted in the system to get x result and so forth. One time she asked for advice about what cyberdeck she should invest in, knowing full well it would start a war between the Netdriver and the Rippler girlies. (She herself uses the Netdriver Mk.5, and has a bad habit of overclocking it to increase upload speeds; burning up the cyberdeck and giving her the nosebleed of the century.)

- That said, the quickhacks are more a hobby, something she picks away at when she needs to stop actively thinking about the big work project: a new virus named OIZYS that she is heading the development of for Arasaka. Secret to the point that even Adam Smasher knowing of it was considered a security breach.

I want to ramble about the idea for it, so -- OIZYS can lie dormant for some time once uploaded, not affecting the target in any way nor showing up in most scans until they encounter something that sets off their threat/fear response. Victoria is trying to find a way for them to activate it remotely, but her experiments in that regard haven't worked thus far and she refuses to consider the project complete or even viable if their targets getting scared by their own children jumping out at them can trigger it.

OIZYS would kick in during that response in the brain: overwhelming the amygdala with stimuli and convincing the individual that they are surrounded by threats even if its not the case, blinding them to the difference between friend and foe. It's results have been comparable to cyberpsychosis and are increasingly effective when the target is in an already stressful environment or position. After the initial, typically violent outburst test subjects showed an increased paranoia that led to them refusing to eat or sleep. The reason for its development is simple: cause political rivals/public figureheads to make a fool of themselves in the public eye, tanking stock and trust in rival companies. So they kinda need to be able to control when the virus kicks in.

While not intended, OIZYS focus on the brain also makes it somewhat effective against cyborgs - noted to occasionally trigger a disconnect between the biopod and conversion frame. Those results have been kept quiet from a certain tinman and have been struck from any official documentation.

- She used to be engaged to an Arasaka security agent, Marcus Larson (seen below). However, their relationship was tenuous at best and wouldn't last due to his aggression and her frequent infidelity and gaslighting. Marcus broke off the engagement following Victoria's assignment to Adam Smasher, after she told him to go fuck himself when he demanded she refuse the transfer. Ever spiteful, Victoria has maintained a fairly good relationship with his mother and sister - who still consider her part of the family even if she didn't marry into it. Her not-nephews prefer her over Marcus, courtesy of her spoiling them rotten. She's never considered herself an actress, but she plays the part of doting aunt well.

- Owned a Quadra Type-66 Avenger. When her half-brother bombed it in an attempt on her life, Victoria was initially more pissed about the destruction of the car than the half-assed murder attempt. That Angelo killed himself shortly after this attempt was surely just a coincidence, and not at all tied to his netrunner sibling who is known to keep fatal quickhacks in her arsenal.

- There was an investigation into Angelo's death; headed by a certain Detective Ward. River could smell there was something off about the whole thing, and while the pettiness of getting fixers and mercs involved is commonplace among self-important Corpos, the timeline of events was too suspect for him to just write it off as a suicide. (A dying rich father, half-siblings known to hate each other, a failed car bombing and then a suicide? Yeah. He wasn't believing what Victoria fed them: that Angelo was paranoid after her car exploded, worried he was next. His suspicions grew tenfold after learning she was a netrunner.) However, all of that was circumstantial and while he might have been able to hold it against a common citizen of Night City; a suit was nigh untouchable without something solid.

Victoria was NOT happy when she was taken in for questioning, a colleague of River's tried to soothe her ruffled feathers by explaining that River was on edge due to a personal circumstance (the disappearance of Randy) however they had instead just given her a means to antagonize the man. And she did, accusing him of being a shit brother and uncle without explicitly saying it. River was so fucking close to clocking her, frustrated af knowing his hands were tied and he had nothing that would stick if he kept to official channels. Watching her walk out added to his quickly building grievances with the force.

- Due to her mother's ailing health, Victoria oversaw the burials of both her father and half-brother. Their niches read the following:

Joseph Benjamin Morris-Crane A waste of space even in a box

Angelo Victor Morris Finally knows something we don't

[nethskelie]

Hi theeeere!

My life has been kinda hectic lately?? I'll try to come back with Facts soon, and I really can't wait to start Mélomanie (148 I love Seungmin) but it might still take some time...

I'll never forget this account, and I hope you won't either by the time I really do come back!

See you soon ;)

It was Neth talking to you, take care :]

[arseonista]

"you never thought what youre destinied to do?" sweetheart i thought i was destinied to kiss a truck at 130m/h at 13, but guess fates a bitch.

[rystiel]

i keep seeing people say the doctor shouldn’t have feelings for rogue because he’s married to river…? river song… who has also married multiple people… one of the most polyamorous characters in the show…?

[naturecalls111]

unorthodox murder mystery

[stil-lindigo]

scorched earth.

a comic about a princess who died in a fire.

(this is a sequel to bite of winter, a comic about Snow and what became of her after her death.)

--

creative notes:

--

all my other comics

store

[kim-carvv]

I introduced Uncle Ensitl to that new glowing slate that the telephone has evolved into. Deya is glaring at me while Ensitl has found all the baking videos.

@ensitl-the-infernal

[nyxpheros]

Do I like to dress him up like he's a Barbie doll? Possibly.

[meanbossart]

Shout out to the stream chat last night who all started chanting MORNING SICKNESS after DU drow woke up mysteriously nauseated from a long rest, shortly after banging Astarion in the woods. I was 3 glasses of wine in at that point and it all went downhill from there.

[3lliesan]

The Prefect after flipping off literal death for the nth time this month.

Ace: We are gathered here today to remember Life of the Ramshackle Prefect, Yuu, whose life was taken too soon... Fighting yet another Overblot.

Yuu on the nurse's bed, wrapped up in bandages for the nth time: Stop talking about me in front of other people as if I'm dead, Ace.

*All of the first years outside the Nurse room, door wide open.*

Epel: *sniff* Sometimes, I can still hear his voice.

Yuu: Man, fuck y'all!

[kitamars]

gins and ginhiji

[starry-bi-sky]

mmmmmm read a disciple shen yuan/shizun luo binghe fanfic about two days ago where the first chapter was the Immortal Conference arc, and SQQ was the one who had to be pushed into the abyss (he was still the villain) except Luo Binghe was refusing and was like, lowkey losing his mind about SQQ being so close to the edge. SQQ ended up having to be the one to fall in himself because of the system's punishment system. The rest of the fic is leading up to that moment. But like, MMM i've been obsessively thinking about that first chapter for DAYS ever since.

now i've been in svsss for a grand total of *checks watch* a week. but god obsessed with that. I want to write/read a fic where disciple SQQ goes a little nuts down there. Like keep all of the things that make SQQ, SQQ, but just. Throw in a little bit more trauma in there. A little bit of a mental break. Let him go a little nuts as a treat. Just a tad unhinged. I wanna see him go, just a little, "god fuck it, i've tried so hard to change this shitty story's outcome and it feels like everything i've done has been for nothing. I'm going to die in this world no matter what I do, I've been doomed from the start, so might as well die the way I want to." and he just, breaks a little! Under all the stress.

He still retains the traits that makes shen yuan, shen yuan, like his overwhelming kindness. But he's just! yk. A little less patient. Paranoid. Jumpy. Colder. A little more aloof and closed off. A little more Shen Jiu. He's no asshole child abuser, but he was a Number One Hater in his past life and he's leaning into that old habit a little more now.

(On a totally coincidental not-at-all related note, there's not enough SJ-and-SY-are-the-same-people fics out there that i've found. This is totally unrelated...)

The Endless Abyss turns the mind into an over-sharpened blade, and SQQ is both fascinated and perhaps a little excited to explore a place that doesn't have a lot of info on it in the mortal realm, but still terrified out of his mind. And he's no Luo Binghe, he doesn't have the sheer brute strength and power to just bulldoze his way through, so he has to be a lot more sneaky and cunning if he wants to survive.

The fic itself role-swapped LBH and SQQ so that SQQ was the half-demon (which lowkey fucks) and LBH the human, but I'm equally-if-not-more obsessed with the idea that LBH remains the half-heavenly demon and SQQ the human. If only because I keep thinking about SQQ befriending some demons (particularly and specifically a group of succubi) and they grow very attached to this Human Cultivator so through magic plot stuff they create some kind of seal/illusion/talisman that makes SQQ appear as a demon because a human cultivator in the endless abyss may as well be the equivalent of putting a giant neon target on your back.

And iirc Shen Jiu was taught demonic cultivation by that one guy(?? i've only been here a week so im not caught up in ALL of the lore yet) so that could totally happen here.

(On the other end of the realms, poor Shizun Luo Binghe is just. losing his fucking mind over losing his most precious and beloved disciple. About .5 seconds from burning down the peaks himself. somebody sedate him.)

The Endless Abyss sucks and SQQ is having a really terrible time and can feel himself going lowkey mad, but also holy shit look at all this WORLD-BUILDING. look at all this flora and fauna, and oh if he had the equipment for it he'd be writing all of this down. ALL OF IT. He was kinda-sorta-already planning on never leaving the Abyss as some sort of fucked up self-exile and self-preservation thing, but now he might? actually just?? never leave if he can help it, like he lowkey likes it down here.

anyways the next time anyone ever sees SQQ again he's got hair so long its almost touching the ground and he's either in rags and half-feral or he's been completely dolled up by his adoptive succubi sisters and still about three seconds from biting anyone who tries to touch him. (he's also lowkey trying to book it back down to the abyss even if he has desperately missed all of his friends and shizun)

[alfaire]

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ 𓂀ㅤ◌ㅤ📀🫀 ─𝖶𝖾𝗅𝗅 𝖨 𝖶𝗈𝗇𝖽𝖾𝗋ㅤ ◯ 𓏸

[navree]

genuinely would love for some of the "both parties are the same" people to name me a single election in the entirety of the twenty first century where the outcome for the country wouldn't have been better if a democrat had won