#someone else gotta take one for da team

[crybabychita]

my parents want to enter their grandparent era so badly, they started calling their dogs by “mijito/a”

[shadowphoenixrider]

Skin Deep (1/2)

(Oops fell down Gambit rabbit hole and maybe self-inserted myself to ship with him. No ship in this one; consider this an intro fic for my insert, as well as some flexing for my other areas of knowledge. Not gory but you're gonna get some specific descriptions of injuries, do take care.)

Thick, metallic blood spilled over his tongue, swilling around his teeth and staining them crimson.

Gambit spat it out, wiping the drool from his lips. His body ached, fatigue and wounds draining strength from him like a cloud of mosquitos. He felt something sharp and searing in his chest whenever he breathed in, not pulling as much air as he wanted. Not for the first time he envied Wolverine's regeneration. His kinetic energy manipulation was at least keeping him on his feet, and that was the main thing right now.

Gambit had been following up on a lead that one of the Friends of Humanity had gotten it into their head to attempt to wire a Sentinel blaster into themselves. Said guy had decided to do some tests on the first unlucky mutant he came across, and Gambit had to intervene.

Turned out half-Sentinel, half bigot was a really, really bad combination, and although the Cajun had prevailed, he would heartily prefer not to repeat the experience. He winced as he lifted his hand to his mouth, trying not to acknowledge the deep gash into his palm oozing dark blood and that uncurling his fingers was not only difficult, but extremely painful.

"Gambit to team," he spoke wearily into his comm, "dealt wit de problem, if someone could send for clean-up, be much appreciated."

"You don't sound too good Remy, are you alright?" Jean replied. He shrugged off the attempt to connect with his mind.

"Gambit felt better, but he be fine." He looked down the alleyway. "Gotta check on the mutant, see if they're ok."

Gambit didn't wait for a response, carefully making his way with a little help from his bo staff in his good hand. As the adrenaline died away from him, the pain increased, and he almost regretted not letting Jean into his head. Almost.

"It be safe now, mon ami." He called as loud as his chest would let him. "That guy won't be botherin' you again."

There was movement by a dumpster, and a small woman emerged. She was fair-skinned, no taller than Wolverine, if that; with thick brown curly hair tumbling down her neck and blue eyes. Her black hoodie and dark blue jeans were dirty and slightly scorched from the initial confrontation, but she seemed no worse for wear. Gambit breathed a sigh of relief, trying to mask his pain behind a charming smile.

"Thank you," she said, "if you hadn't been here, I-" She stopped suddenly, tilting her head as if she heard something Gambit could not. He wondered for a second if she was telepathic, and immediately shielded himself behind a wall of reassuring thoughts. "You're hurt."

"Got roughed up pretty good, but Gambit gonna be fine, petite." He replied in what he hoped was a laisse-faire tone. "No need to worry 'bout him."

She frowned, completely unconvinced.

"You're hurt pretty badly Gambit," she said, stepping forward. Her eyes hadn't moved from him for a second. "I can help you, if you want me to."

His eyes flicked over her. She didn't look like a medic, but Gambit had long since learned that looks can be deceiving. Sometimes literally.

"Dat your power?" He asked uncertainly. "Healin'?"

"Yes, mostly." Another step closer. "Please Gambit, it's my fault you're like this, let me at least repay the favour."

"Not your fault you be in the wrong place at da wrong time, petite." He replied, wincing as his chest burned on another inhale. "If not you, woulda been someone else. Gambit woulda done this for anyone."

"Okay, but regardless, please let me help fix this. It's the least I could do for you."

As wary as the Cajun felt towards this unknown mutant, discomforted by her noncommittal answer, he found himself too weary to argue the point.

"Alright. Jus' go easy, ok? That fight was rougher on Gambit than he expected."

"Sure." She nodded. "Let's sit down, it'll be easier for the both of us."

They sat against the wall of a red brick building, the relief of the weight off his feet quickly swallowed by the pain of all of Gambit's other injuries.

"Got a name, petite?" He asked as the young woman knelt beside him, tucking her feet underneath herself.

"Uh, Shadow."

Gambit arched an eyebrow.

"'Shadow'?"

She shot him a nonplussed look, raising her own dark eyebrow at him.

"I'm sorry, I'm not exactly in the habit of sharing my true name with strangers." An apologetic half-smile softened her expression. "Even other mutants. Besides, 'Gambit' isn't your true name either, is it?"

He chuckled, despite his pain. Oh, she's got some fire.

"True enough, petite. True enough."

Shadow reached out to him, before hesitating.

"Um. Would it be alright if you rolled up your sleeve?" She asked, the top of her cheeks flushing pink. "Sorry, I just find this easier skin-to-skin."

Gambit smirked, unable to resist.

"You know, there be easier ways to get Gambit's shirt off, petite." He was delighted to see Shadow's blush deepen, even more when she began to stutter. "Jus' razzin' ya, mon amie." He chuckled. "Here." Gambit pushed up his coat and armour sleeve, exposing pale skin.

Shadow scooted a little closer, and gingerly wrapped her hands around his muscled arm. A glow shone out under her skin, flowing down the veins into her hand and fingers. Gambit's gaze lifted curiously to her face, watching her closely. Her own gaze unfocused, eyes glazing over as she seemingly sank into a trance.

Suddenly black filled her eyes, coating her sclera the colour of midnight, whilst her irises turned the bright crimson of blood. For a brief moment, Gambit saw his eyes in another's face, before they rolled back and under her closing eyelids.

---

Shadow hadn't really known what to expect from her rescuer, except maybe he was friend, and could go toe-to-toe with the bastard that had decided her life was forfeit. But certainly not the tall, black and red eyed man that now sat next to her.

Gambit, as he referred to himself as, had taken quite the beating in her stead - his pink breastplate had a large impact crack over his chest, black leathers and trenchcoat torn and scorched, and his right hand curled up into an awkward claw, blood dripping through his gloves.

Despite his attempt at good humour and to fluster her, Shadow knew he was badly hurt. She'd heard it, the now familiar trilling noise that lived just on the edge of her hearing - like it came from under her ear, itching at her bones. It was loud, underscoring every word they'd exchanged, and seemed to peak with every breath he took.

She took a breath, centring herself as she wrapped her hands around Gambit's muscled arm, feeling his warmth. The warmth mingled with hers, and she let the trilling get louder, louder, filling her ears until it was all she could hear. The world blurred as she felt her power rise within her, focusing on the skin under her hands, the pulse under her fingertips.

The sound crescendoed into a ringing song, heat flooding up her body, punctuated by her heartbeat pounding in her ears, her body becoming alive and on end, as if she could feel the molecules in the air around her, every piece of clothing on her body-

And then she was him.

Gambit's deeper heartbeat boomed through her, the rush of his breath, the pressure of the protective armour against his skin, and what had to be the warm hum of his powers, permeating everything about him.

It was always disorientating, moving into another's body, suddenly being aware of every cell and their 'voices', all speaking at once. Especially someone whose nerves were screaming with pain, so immediately Shadow hushed them quiet. She needed to think, to triage.

Her attention was caught by a raspy inhale, the now duller yet urgent throb from his lungs. She moved her awareness up, feeling - a pneumothorax of his left lung, the air trapped inside grating against him with each movement. Thankfully it wasn't too large - the cuirass had done its job - and Shadow focused. The cells responded, drawing the air out into themselves, his lung expanding to its full capacity. Shadow felt the relief flood through him, and she 'smiled'. One down.

Her patient now much more comfortable, Shadow spread her awareness into the neural network, seeking the next trouble point.

His right hand came next, and she followed fibres down towards the site. It wasn't pretty. A gaping laceration had been torn in his palm, deep enough it had nicked a vein, and the tendons had almost been cut in half - thus why Gambit was holding his hand so. Luckily the other structures were fine, so Shadow moved first to the vein, smoothing the walls closed. She heaved the excess blood up and out of the wound, clearing her working area and lowering the pressure in the fairly tight quarters. To the tendons now - the hanging fibres she took and gently wound them together again, melding the joins into one.

She tested her work, tugging the muscle fibres gently to make them uncurl - Gambit resisted her at first, but then he moved them himself, the tendons sliding smoothly and easily. Shadow was already moving on though, pulling the edges of the wound together; flesh grew and reached towards itself, knitting back together, layer by layer until nothing remained of what had been.

Shadow continued this for what felt to her like hours - letting Gambit's nerves call her from site to site, soothing contusions, closing superficial grazes, sealing up the gash in his mouth (having to hold his tongue still to stop it interfering with its curiosity), quietening the aches and pains as she went. All the time she felt his power humming against her, oddly warm and strangely comforting. She wondered what it was.

When she received no more pain signals, Shadow concluded her job was done. She began to focus again, pulling away from the symphony of sounds and the mutant warmth, away, away...and out.

Shadow opened her eyes with a start, pulling in a gasp, grounded once more in her own body. After a second to get her bearings (alleyway, floor, handsome man, the fight! holding his arm), she released her grip on Gambit, looking up at his face.

---

Gambit would deny it to his dying day, but he was staring. Being an X-Man meant you encountered a lot of very strange things, ranging from aliens to time travellers to telepaths; it was very easy to become inured to it.

And yet this mutant's powers were something new, something strange. He'd not really known entirely what to expect from the young woman's healing power, but he certainly wouldn't have expected this.

After Shadow had entered her trance, Gambit had felt weird. Like there was someone else under his skin with him, a sensation just on the edge of discomfort.

The pain had eased though, and then the magic had started happening. After the burning in his chest had stopped, Gambit had watched his injured hand disgorge blood like vomit, before it started to knit itself back together in front of his very eyes. The Cajun had been discomforted when his fingers started to uncurl without his control, before he realized that they'd been fixed, the movement as smooth as if it'd never been injured.

And so it'd gone, Gambit feeling like he was being refreshed from the inside out, the discomfort of a second consciousness inside him now feeling like inner guardian, even though it still made him feel like his skin didn't fit him anymore.

When the last of the pain had ebbed away, so had the feeling - then the woman (Shadow, Gambit reminded himself) had startled back awake.

She blinked hard, then looked up him - with his eyes.

Gambit was very rarely at a loss for words, yet here he was, completely tongue-tied. Although his tongue had become frozen in his mouth briefly when the gash on his inner cheek had been closing, he was pretty sure she'd given him control back. Pretty sure, anyway.

"Gambit?" She asked, dark brown brows furrowing. "Are you alright?"

"Vous yeux..." He murmured, gesturing with his finger.

She blinked, confused, and that's when the black and red started bleeding out of her eyes, returning them back to what Gambit assumed was their natural blue and white.

"Eyes, petite." He repeated. "Dey looked like mine."

"Oh. Yeah, that tends to happen when I connect to someone." Shadow folded her arms, looking away. "Dunno why. I think it's just a side-effect."

Sounds from the entrance of the alleyway had Gambit glance away, a smirk pulling at his lips.

"Looks like the rest of my team finally showed up." He looked back to a now tensed up Shadow, and he reached to place his healed hand on her arm. "Dey all mutants like us. You safe wit dem."

"Gambit, what happened here?" Cyclops's voice sounded out behind him, the Cajun glancing at him from the corner of his eyes. He didn't bother to stand up. "And who's this?"

"Couyon back there try'n become a mini-Sentinel, decided to test his toys out on this one." Gambit explained, nodding towards Shadow. "Gambit made sure she safe, though it got a bit messy."

"A bit?" Wolverine's voice now. "Cajun, I've seen bar brawls less bloody than this."

You could never exactly know where Cyclops was looking most of the time, but Gambit could definitely figure that he was looking between him and Shadow, and the blood staining his armour and floor around them.

"And yet you don't look like you have a scratch on you..." He said thoughtfully.

"Hah! Got some healing factor you were holding out on us, Gumbo?"

"No." Gambit looked to Shadow, who had gone nervously silent. "Gambit had some help."

"I-It's my power." She stuttered, tightening her grip on her arms. "I-I can heal people with it."

Cyclops and Wolverine glanced at each other. It was at that moment Gambit felt Jean's telepathy gently press against his mind. He bristled slightly at her intrusion, yet let her speak.

"The Professor would like to talk to the mutant you found back at the mansion."

"Her name is Shadow." Gambit responded, despite himself. There was an almost amused pause, before Jean said;

"Then the Professor would like to speak to Shadow, if she wants to."

Gambit didn't have to look at the other men to know that they'd also heard the request.

"I know this is very sudden," Cyclops began, "but there is a place we come from that can help mutants like yourself master their powers and feel safe. The professor there would like to see you."

Shadow understandably frowned, and Gambit squeezed her arm.

"He tellin' the truth, petite," he said. "You be safe dere." His gaze shifted to where Wolverine was hauling away the still unconscious cyborg. "Dose 'Friends of Humanity' not gonna be best pleased when dey find out one of their friends missin' and you be involved."

"Yes." Cyclops agreed. "Even if it was Gambit who took him down, they will target the weakest out of you two."

"Which is me..." Shadow sighed, her shoulders slumping. "Fuck."

"It don't need to be a permanent thing." Gambit reassured her. "Just long enough dat dey forget dat dis happened."

"And how long is that gonna be?" Was her bitter response.

"We...don't know." Cyclops admitted. "But what we can do is keep you safe from them during that time. Maybe help you learn more about your abilities too - you helped Gambit with them, perhaps there's more you can do?"

She chewed her lip, considering. Gambit wouldn't admit it to anyone else, but he was also curious about her powers. She'd not been lying about it being 'mostly' healing - simple healing wouldn't have worked the way hers did. At least...he assumed so.

"How about I go, talk to this professor of yours, and make a decision then?" Shadow said, glancing between the two men.

"That's reasonable." Cyclops nodded. "Come on. The Blackbird isn't far from here."

"Blackbird?" Shadow asked as she and Gambit climbed to their feet. He flashed her a smile.

"Dat's our ride, petite. Hope ya not scared of flyin'."

(Next part)

[nasuversekinkmeme]

Weekly roundups: prompts

Tsukihime

Smut, I want that anemic twink Shiki spitroasted by Arcueid and Ciel in some odd competitive threesome thing the two got going on

Show mercy on my soul. Femboy Akiha.

Fate/Stay Night

FGO

Smut, For as much as they want her 'spear', I think Morgan should introduce Gudako and Da Vinci to it-- that is, can we have her cock vore the two of them?

Smut, incest, Karna and Vritra team up to edge and overstim Arjuna until he cries

jeanne gets some well deserved karma for her big sister beam brainwashing .

Yknow how Nobukatsu gloats over the REAL Nobunaga saying he is nothing like his as he lays dying from the poison he gave him? Something similar but this time Mitsuhide is the target and he made sure the poison was just right that it would take a very long time for him to die as he watches Or he just stabs the guy I dunno Nobukatsu deserves to kill more people

Morgan is Bored and demands carnival rides be built in Fae Britain. Entertainment ensues.

Noncon, incest, Summer Avatoria having a soft fulfilling romance with Muramasa as people who are tied by fate thrice over. Meanwhile Summer Castoria would LOVE to stop waking up filled with cum from a man she considers ber grandfather. The downsides of sharing a body you know how it is (feel free to play it as lighthearted or fucked up as you wish)

Asclepius becomes a therapist because dear God do some of these servants (and staff) need help and somebody's gotta be the counselor.

Noncon, Elaine of Carbonek, the raging bitch who raped Lancelot and mother of Galahad, is summoned. If you thought Galahad resented his FATHER, y’all ain’t seen nothing yet. Mash has to be physically restrained when Elaine refers to her as “Junior.” (Technically, Galahad would be Galahad Jr, if Lancelot ever went by his birth name. I am an Arthuriana nerd.)

Emiya realizes that Ritsuka mission are becoming too dangerous, so he locks himself there with her, she can left whenever she wants, as long as she is able to do a simple task, with all the knowledge and weapons she gathered from her servants she must kill him, proving she has become strong enough to be the protector of humanity

Salieri gets a Summer form, where instead of being the amalgamation of the rumours of who killed Mozart, he's the amalgamation of the myths of the Maenads who tore Orpheus apart.

First Hassan and Shiki killing increasingly improbable and abstract things as a friendly contest. Escalating from “the tension in the room” to Barghest’s desire to eat her loved ones” to “Artoria’s resentment of Mordred” to “Wednesdays.”

Continuation of the Grand Carnival joke: Atalanta has to marry Kingprotea, BB is in charge of organizing wedding and the rest of the Sakura Five are bridesmaids aka have to make sure Atalanta doesn't escape.

Blackbeard, Absolute Disgusting Degenerate that he is, is well aware that his kink is not everyone else's kink, and so after finding some improperly tagged Smut or Hentai, decides to make a video about the importance of tagging, what it means, and how to do it, because tagging your shit properly means that everyone can enjoy themselves in peace, so long as they use the blacklist. (This just kinda came to me TBH, Cause Blackbeard just kinda feels like he'd take proper tagging very seriously given everything about him.)

Fun fact: "thou" and "thy" and such were actually the informal register - "you" and "your" were the fancy, polite terms. Therefore, someone should write a fic of First Hassan trying to seem hip and chill and failing catastrophically because his understanding of what counts is hundreds of years out of date.

UDK Barghest gets hired to Put out a Fire (Read: Help Melusine with her Draconic Heat). Whether it goes full smut or if it goes in a comedic non sexy route is up to the author

Smut, Yu Mei-Ren has Hella Gay Sex with her Summer Variant. (Not NTR, though I'm not sure who all would consider it such anyway since its self on self.)

One of the Draconic/Lizard Servants installs a heat lamp in their room, because if you've got a tech wizard who will do anything for you, why not? After approximately 10-ish seconds of "why didn't I think of this before" from all the other Dragon-type servants, everyone immediately rushes to said room. Ensue dogpile of like, 20 lizard people (including Oberon and Rasputin for some reason??? gotta love traits) whether this is horny or not is up to the writer.

Smut, On their big day, a bride is stressed about the whole event and is this close to calling it quits. Habetrot can't have this so obviously there's one solution: cocksleeve time!

Barghest is openly lamenting in the hallway about how she can never be close to master or anyone else she loves bc of her bestiary nature and how she wishes she could keep herself in check. Scathach hears this and goes "Say no more" and puts her in a collar leash and muzzle. She's trained dogs before

Gudako tries her hardest to be Titania for Oberon. Oberon has Opinions about this. (I'll leave it to the prompt filler if these opinions are Positive, Negative, or Mixed.)

What started as a tiny fight "for charity" between Hektor and Achilles soon turns brutal as Achilles starts to truly want to kill Hektor. Paris, Manricardo, Alexander, and even Penth try to step in to stop him

Some asshole tries to threaten Guda only for them to reply and I quote "I'm not scared of Death, we have Tea on the weekends" Smash cut to them actually having tea with King Hassan, Eresh and Shiki. Whether Guda got hurt or not by the threatener ill leave up to the author.

How did Mel get access to Nemos aircraft carrier? Mysteriously kiss-covered Nemos refuse to answer (Note: all of em are adults)

Fun fact: Sastoria's NP is most effective against Summer Hokusai as she is both Chaotic, Divine, and a Threat to Humanity. Sooooo one-sided jealousy where Sastoria hates Saber Hokusai and Hokusai can't figure out why

Because I don't think we'll see him this summer. What summer side adventure is Kadoc doing? Who with him is you to the author.

Melusine's dragon nature means she likes building a hoards of all the things precious to her. now that she feels comfortable in Chaldea she can't help but gather all the people she likes to cuddle together with in bed with. Who ends up in her cuddle pile is up to y'all

Vlad is talked into going on a boat ride to relax. Everyone on the boat is very uncomfortable with this

Anything involving Ritsuka having extreme mommy issues

so Chloe's whole... thing... is "justified" in-universe as she needs magic to stay stable, so she gets it by doing... that. Ergo, I want to see something where she's summoned in Chaldea and thus hooked up to a stable magic supply, so she doesn't have to do that anymore and gets to actually Process and maybe just Be A Kid instead.

Other

I kinda just wanna say “Galehaut” and watch what the Fate fandom does with the idea of the half-giant king that only didn’t overthrow Camelot because he wanted to bone Lancelot. So I will.

Kinks are known to suddenly appear and develop with age, so: Older version of a servant helping unlock a kink for their younger self

can we get some consensual hypnokink content, perhaps? maybe someone has a kink for being hypnotized and wants so badly to hand over control for a little bit, or they're nervous about performing well during sex and just want to be more assured in themselves! how and why it's done is up to the author/artist as well as the characters, so long as there is consent established!

[cheerstotheelites-if]

Super excited for all your wips! 👀👀

How do you render your drawings they look so cool!

*SWEATS* Mamser, I literally have no idea what I even do while I make art—

My rendering isn't that grand nor complex (and I don't think there is any rendering. They're mostly all just flats with barely any shading or lightning with this cartoony-anime mixed style), compared to other authors who also draw their character portraits for their IF's.

It's simple and workable, like my artstyle, and I don't think it'll get more complicated than that! If it works for me, then it works.

I don't have any big brain wisdom I can impart on you or for any other budding artists, because I'm no professional and is merely self taught, but I may have some personal ones:

Steal like an artist. Find something in someone else's artstyle that you really like and adapt that to your own! Artstyles are a personal mishmash of the artists you look up to, and not all are the same even if you and someone else may have the same artistic idols. This is different from tracing, however. I DO NOT encourage tracing over someone else's work and claiming it as your own. That is stealing, you utter criminal, and I will dropkick you if you do that.

Practice. Old wisdom, but it works and it's true. You don't become Bob Ross or Leonardo Da Vinci in a day after all. It's a struggle and it'll be frustrating, but I promise once you learn to draw the thing you finally want to draw, the high from reaching that achievement is absolutely real and so, so worth it.

References. If you think you can draw a sitting position freestyle from your brain, you're wrong, because when you look at a reference of that then at your sketch, you're gonna see a lot of mistakes in the anatomy, poses, perspective etc,. So, please, stockpile your references for every possible thing that you'll be drawing, because you'll absolutely need them.

Have fun. As artists we tend to compare our work to those who we think are better in the craft, when in reality we all are just trying to get better in what we do. Look, it doesn't matter if a 3 year old can recreate Mona Lisa in perfect detail, if you enjoy doing your work then that's already enough. I prefer to see "better" artists as inspirations to try and achieve more, not as some unachievable pedestal. You can achieve that too! May not be as quick as the rest, but you will get there in your own pace. Art is a journey, not a race. Take your time, learn what you want to learn, and have fun!

Experiment. You gotta if you wanna find out what stuff sticks with you and what doesn't. It also helps you find out a technique you might like for sketching, lineart, coloring etc., or if you just wanna get the hang of something first! OR if you wanna try out a new artstyle! Art is a science, in a way. A wonderful alchemy of color, wrist pains, and shrimp posture!

Also thank you for showing excitement for my WIPs, anon! I'm trying me best to work on all of them. You get a mwah from me. 😭💙💙💙

Free art from L? How scandalous! This is also just an excuse for me to ramble about my other characters amongst my 200+ bucket of them.

Some of these are old, but I just wanna share 'em for the funsies.

And, yes, the light blue haired, dark blue eyed lady in black and glasses and guy in a green parka with a resting bitch face are Carmen and Everest, Ophelia's older siblings. I also have Weylyn's older siblings, Bleddyn and Riekka, but I plan on reworking their design first. Why do I have so many redesign plans for so many characters.

1. Random character I drew for Religions Class last semester. I loved her design, so I kept her. No name yet, sadly 😭

2. Rival Agent Team in The Company. No names yet, though purple haired gal is named Agent Carrion. All of the designs and colors were from picrews, I just changed whatever was needed to suit my own preferences.

3. Lucian and Louise Dagohoy doing a clothes swap (2020). They're siblings I love dearly. They'll show up in an IF soon. I have big plans for them.

4. Carmen and Everest. Had this for months now, and I had no idea when to show it. Might refine their design a bit when I have the time.

5. Mint. Yes, her name is Mint. Not a Familiar, but a different kind of Fae entirely. Did this on my phone in 2019(?). I was bored at the time, and wanted to do a simple doodle, so I drew Mint about to eat a carrot.

6. - 7. MSPaint doodles from 2021, during a boring class if I remember. First one's Quentin the Monarch Fae king because it's been a while since I drew that man, then Louise. She's usually drawn happy all the time, but I wanted to make her sad, so I did. Not that hard to draw on MSPaint, really. Great for lineless practice because there are no layers.

8. - 10. Raphael, Gabriel and Michael Zealon. A pair of twins and an older brother. They have the old designs of High Court Angels (this was 2021), and their conversation was based on a tweet I saw on Twitter. Don't ask why. I'm too sleep deprived to answer.

And if you're wondering what art program I use, I either use MSPaint (when I'm bored) or FireAlpaca (for most of my works). The drawing tablet I use is a Huion H430p. It's smaller compared to the normal drawing tablet (H640p) of Huion, and it's as big as a standard notebook.

I would add 20 more art if I were on my laptop right now (and also because most of my art is stored there), but that'll be all for now.

[skrelps-cafe]

Okay I know only like 1 other person out there would remember and care about this but I want to talk about the unused event idea thing I had planned for Gill's 100 follower milestone!! The one that actually one that I backed out of last second becauseeeee. Idk i find it interesting

I called the event 'Turtles All the Way Down' and that's right baby !! It had to deal with Terapagos and paradoxes. The whole premise of the event is also crazy convoluted so hopefully I can present clearly enough lmao

So the event would START with Gill receiving this old letter via Pelipper Mail. He doesn't share what's on it but it's a bunch of super personal/private stuff along with some vague threats that if he doesn't do what the letter asks of him, bad shit will happen to his friends and family anddd stuff.

The letter tells him to go to Medali and visit the crater- the whole thing is probably phrased like a 'you're the chosen one, Gill! You gotta do this otherwise your family's doomed!' Or something. And since Gill is already really freaked out by all this, she opts to follow the letter to a T and. Leave.

At the same time, his Rotomblr is overridden and someone else takes the wheel! They don't give their name, but they do talk a bit about themselves!

- they're a "researcher" stuck in Area Zero

- they've been there for a while

- kind of infused with terastal energy, yaaaay

They would run the blog for the rest of the event, with small off screen posts updating you on what Gills doing.

Anyway, at some point it would be revealed that this researcher guy is actually- surprise!- Gill! A different version of her, at least. Here's where the paradox comes in

SO. Gill gets a letter to go to the crater. She does so, because she's scared. She meets someone over the intercom who says 'hey real sorry about all this but you're going to have to go deeper in. I need your help down there. You're not gonna back out right' and Gills like 'oh idk. Who are you'

The voice is like 'I can't answer that rn but I know so mjch about you oh my god just let me blackmail you. I can name your entire team.'

This guy's info is flawless. Gill is terrified and goes into Area Zero. Doing it scared.

He goes really far in- like, into the underdepths? The voice is able to override the system from within or something. And then when he's down there- ta-da! He meets the person behind the voice! Who is just. Him. Older, covered in crystals, but him.

Older Gill doesn't really explain anything. Just kind of blocks off the exit and tells Gill to follow him. Gill panics and runs away, deeper into the underdepths.

The two end up fighting- like at first Pokemon battling, but then actually fistfighting- right in front of Terapagos' little crystal cocoon. The commotion is enough to dislodge the guy, jussssst a little bit so he wakes up and lets out a burst of terastal/paradoxical energy that a) fucks up the cave system even more, leaving galing chasms within the underdepths, and b) WUH OH! SENDING GILL BACK IN TIME!

Gill is now trapped like three-five years into the past, at the bottom of a crater. Epic. Being this close to so much Terastal Energy does mess up her body a bit, hence the crystals all over her skin. They kind of...take over her organs, negating the need to eat or anything, and he just kind of. Stays there. For a while.

He eventually crawls out back to the (destroyed) lab, meets the AI, and it's there he finds out his predicament. And she chooses to simply. Stay down there. What else could she do really?? There's another version of her already out there if she's in the past. Her body's already pretty fucked up. She can't do much else? The AIs pretty chill about this too

(It should be noted her Pokemon didn't come with her. They were all left behind. The letter came with him, though.)

He manages to hide when the protagonist and co. Show up. Do the whole finale plot. And then he just kind of lives the rest of his life down there. Until he Remembers that. Oh yeah. Paradox.

If the 'current' version of Gill- the one outside the crater, flourishing and in his lane or whatever- never went into the crater and did the whole thing, then where would that leave crater Gill? Would he just. Cease to exist? He wasn't supposed to be alive, anyway. He was occupying a space in time only meant for one person.

She had to complete the loop if she wanted to keep existing. She cant imagine a world where she doesn't exist.

So, a few years later, she sends the letter.

And a Gill at Blueberry Academy receives it.

And the cycle continues.

The cycle is supposed to be infinitely repeatable- HOWEVER. This loop is different. There is something that is not unlike every other iteration of this 'tradition' 'thing'. This Gill has Social Media.

Because of Rotomblr, current!Gill has seen Things. He has a Slither Wing, Seadra, Salandit, and joint custody over a Solosis, meanwhile crater!Gill knows nothing of any of this. Hence why they were so curious about getting access to this site.

So, when current Gill gets to the crater and the voice is like 'I can name your entire team, etc. Etc.' And misses like four whole Pokemon??? Gill has an epiphany. Starts poking holes in this guys claims. Realizes how stupid he was for following a letter all the way out here, how he was nearly gonna break the law for a flimsy piece of paper that knew about something embarrassing he did in fourth grade.

The voice starts to panic, just pleading her to come down. Gill says she won't unless they explain everything.

The voice is like. Screaming. Because they don't want to die. Gill, having none of the last fifteen paragraphs of context, doesn't get it and thinks it's like a paranormal thing. He takes one step back

And the voice just. Cuts out. And it's quiet again.

Gill leaves and gets his Rotomblr back, and spends the rest of the day vibing in Medali. If asked, she'd say it was for a family emergency. She'd never tell anyone about anything that happened in the Crater.

Okay so I liked this event because it highlighted how Gill views herself, how far she'd go to preserve herself, and also how much she sabotages herself. Literally traps herself in an endless cycle. And then sabotages said cycle against 'his own best wishes'. Fun.

I DIDNT like this event for multiple reasons.

One holy shit was it convoluted.

Two lots of segments weren't really...ironed out? Like realistically, why would Gill listen to the letter. How would she get into the crater. How did she cope living w the AI. Etc.

THIRD the premise really had. Nothing to do with Gill? Like it was stupidly out of left field, at least in my opinion. Terapagos and Gill had no common thread until that point, and neither did she and Area Zero.

I didn't expect it to win the event idea poll, and a mixture of cold feet + me reviewing my work made me realize that it probably wasn't the best idea. So I shelved it and went with the URS AU instead! And by the time I wanted to go back and revisit it, the canon i was currently running with had wrapped up Indigo Disk, meaning no more Terapagos ex Machina for me to use. Sad!

I had thought about replacing Terapagos with the time machine, which mightve made more sense overall, but over time the whole idea fell to the wayside. And here it rests. Lmao

[machifuwa]

- 2wink Mission - mini chats

Prologue: Hinata and Yuta Aoi

Hinata: I'm Hinata Aoi ☆

Yuta: I'm Yuta Aoi ☆

Hinata & Yuta: And together, we form the twin unit "2wink"~!

Hinata: ...Hey, Yuta-kun. I think it's a perfect grab, but what's this project about?

Yuta: Hey now, you've got to pull yourself together, Aniki. They explained to us beforehand that this was a project where we would work together to take on a mission.

Hinata: Aah, right! Ahaha, I accidentally forgot about it ☆

Anyways, isn't it a little late to be asking us to join forces~? After all, me and Yuta-kun are one and the same already. We're the trinity!

Yuta: Not triplets, though. Well, I mean. They've made such a big show of it, and us refusing would be very uncool.

And even though it's not a competition, we want people to think that "2wink" is the best. So let's do this, Aniki!

Hinata: Of course ☆ Let's show them what our bond is all about!

Mika Kagehira and Arashi Narukami Edition

Hinata: Fufun♪ We're ready for any kind of mission! Our twin bond is strong and solid, after all!

Arashi: Fufu. It's true that the bonds between siblings are strong. But bonds with "friends" are just as strong♪

Yuta: Eeh~ So Narukami-senpai is tag-teaming with Kagehira-senpai?

Mika: That's right. When I was told to "tag-team with someone you are close to", Naru-chan was the first person that came to mind~!

Arashi: Oh my, I'm so happy~ Mika-chan was the first person I thought of too.

Hinata: U-ugh... I thought we brothers had no enemies, but I have a feeling they're going to be a very tough tag-team...

Yuta: I know right. Maybe there is something we can learn from them because they're not siblings like us. Let's take this opportunity to study it, Aniki.

Mitsuru Tenma and Sora Harukawa Edition

Yuta: Everyone else looks pretty tough, too. We can't afford to lose this one, either!

Hinata: We also have the athleticism that Yuta-kun and I have developed together, don't we? We can change any kind of performance, freely and transformably♪

Yuta: ...Aniki, here comes the two guys who are going to make us look a little hazy in that direction, too.

Sora: Haha~! Hinata-chan, Yuta-chan, hello!

Mitsuru: Hinata-chan and Yu-chan are the "Brothers Tag Team", right? We're the "Dash Dash Tag Team"~☆

Yuta: Da-dash Dash Tag Team...? Ugh, it's so hard to say, it almost makes me tongue-tied. Anyway, what kind of combination is that?

Mitsuru: Umm... You're gonna dash, dash and before you know it, you've completed the mission, something like that?

You're amazing, Sora-chan~! No matter how much I move, you can follow my movements very easily!

Sora: Yes! But it's the same for Mitsu-chan. Don't you always move with Sora as soon as Sora does something~?

Hinata: Uwaa, this is getting pretty tricky! They're those types who can do things by instinct or intuition!

...No, no, maybe this is also a good opportunity to turn the tables?

Since we've been together for so long, we understand each other too well. Maybe it's okay to act intuitively sometimes.

Epilogue: Hinata and Yuta Aoi

Hinata: I gotta admit, I learned a lot from this project, Yuta-kun.

Yuta: Yeah. I think that even if we try to describe "tag team" in one word, we can't, because there are many differences in a relationship and the direction of that relationship, and each has its own strengths.

Hinata: It's not that. I think seeing the other tag teams also reaffirmed the strengths and weaknesses of our "Brothers Tag Team".

Yuta: Hm? Wait a minute... So, if I team up with someone else next time, I can take advantage of all of their strengths, can't I?

ーAlright then, maybe I should try that next time♪

Hinata: Eh~? You can't! God decided from before you were born that I'm the only one who can work with Yuta-kun!

Here's what I do to kids who tease me like that...!

Yuta: Wait, Aniki, you're heavy~! Yeah, yeah. You and I are the strongest twin tag team of all☆

Adonis Otogari and Souma Kanzaki Edition

Yuta: Aniki, can you still go?

Hinata: Of course! If I'm with Yuta-kun, I can even reach the sky!

Yuta: Instead of holding hands and aiming for the finish line together... let's compete with each other and aim for the top!

Adonis: Hinata and Yuta have a good relationship. You two seem to be stimulated by each other's presence and are getting better and better at what you do.

Souma: Umu. So that means, these two are engaged in a friendly competition, that's great.

Adonis: Friendly competition means becoming stronger as you compete with each other... is that what you meant? I remember Kanzaki telling me that that's the kind of relationship he wants to have with me before.

Souma: Not only siblings, but also friends such as ourselves can improve each other. Not only as normal people, but also as "idols".

Adonis: That's right. With Kanzaki, we can steadily aim higher step by step. And if the two of us work together, I feel that we can have a friendly competition with Hinata and Yuta as a tag-team.

Souma: That's good. Come, Adonis!

Hinata: This could be a game changer! Even if we have to compete with the seniors, if we can get to the top, that's all we can hope for, right, Yuta-kun?♪

Aira Shiratori and Kohaku Oukawa Edition

Hinata: The tougher everyone is, the more we can show how great we are, don't you think so, Yuta-kun? We've been together since we were born, and we're the strongest tag team together♪

Yuta: We've spent more time together than any other tag-team, and we're definitely more in tune than anyone else! So we have more advantage in a challenge like this♪

Kohaku: Kokokoh♪ It's not just a matter of spending more time by their side. Right, Love-han?

Aira: Eeh!? That's a very difficult question to answer!

Kohaku: Really? We were online friends and never met, but I think we got along quite well... Am I the only one who thinks that way...?

Aira: O-of course I think so too! It's only been a little while since I started spending time with Kohakucchi in real life. But we were friends before that!

Kohaku: That's right. Friends who supported each other even through the screen.

Aira: Yep, yep! We didn't know each other's faces or real names, but we could still talk and understand each other!

Hinata: Oh god... I can feel the power of their friendship...!

Yuta: Yeah, yeah. Maybe it's because they're friends that they're able to communicate with each other like that. Well, in our case, it's better to show the power of brotherhood over friendship, right, Aniki?♪

Tori Himemiya and Tsukasa Suou Edition

Hinata: Yep, yep! We're doing great, Yuta-kun!

I'm getting a little tired, maybe we should do some light stretching before the next mission?

Yuta: OK, Aniki. Alright, let's do this then...

Hinata & Yuta: 1, 2, 3...♪

Tsukasa: Fufu. The two members of "2wink" are a magnificent Tag Team, aren't they? They are in perfect sync with each other.

Tori: That's right. But we want to show our seniors how good we are, so we can't lose to them.

Don't drag me down with you, alright~?

Tsukasa: Ah- The two guys from "2wink" are tough, but I have no intention of falling behind, either.

Tori: Yeah, that's the spirit♪ If we can't complete the mission because of you, it's going to affect "Knights", won't it?

Tsukasa: Fufu. You should worry about yourself, Tori-kun. If you underestimate me, you might not be able to match my Performance...♪

Hinata: Ooh, those two look so motivated.

Yuta: Maybe the two of them have a great synergy from their rivalry. Let's aim for a synergistic effect, too, Aniki!

Mao Isara and Ritsu Sakuma Edition

Hinata: I think we can complete any task that comes our way! I guess we are the best team after all, Yuta-kun!

Yuta: That's right, I feel like we're getting better and better with each new mission!

Mao: Haha. Hinata-kun and Yuta-kun are still breathing perfectly together♪

Ritsu: But my bond with Maa-kun is also unique. The title of best tag team is non-negotiable...♪

Mao: It's true that Ritsu and I have not always been together, but when we work together like this, we get along very well. After all, we have known each other since childhood.

Ritsu: Yeah. I feel like our "childhood friend power" is working well...☆

Yuta: So even though you don't spend much time together, you still feel the same way about each other...? I see. I can feel the strong bond that has existed since childhood.

Hinata: We've been together since we were little, and our bond is as strong as ever, too! Let's keep up the good work and aim to be the best tag team...♪

Kanata Shinkai and Kaoru Hakaze Edition

Yuta: Fufu. We're getting better and better with each mission, Aniki!

Hinata: I know right, our bodies are warming up fast♪

Kaoru: Ah, Hinata-kun and Yuta-kun. Hello~♪ I see that "2wink" is also taking part of this mission♪

Kanata: Hello, Hinata and Yuta. You feel a little hot by moving your body, don't you?

I will give you this fresh water that I used to give you... Please don't forget to drink it after you get sweaty.

Hinata: Can I have some mineral water? Thank you very much♪

Yuta: Thank you very much♪ ...Also, it's very rare to see you two teaming up together, isn't it?

Kaoru: Fufu. Thought I'd join in with the sea-loving members once in a while~♪

Kanata: Since Kaoru and I are from two different units, it feels like we're coming from two different areas, as well...♪

Hinata: I see, you're having fun with a different group of people than usual and feeling fresh, and it's a good opportunity to strengthen your tag-team bond.

Yuta: Yes, we've been together since we were kids. But we have to be careful not to get stuck in a rut because of that.

Hinata: Of course! We'll do our best to be as fresh as those two♪

Subaru Akehoshi and Natsume Sakasaki Edition

Yuta: We accomplished our last mission in a good way! Let's keep up the good work... Oh..?

Subaru: Alright, we'll take on the next mission too~!

Natsume: ...Hey, Baru-kun. Can you stop doing things without me?

The mission is still going on, so we need to look back and improve the content of our performance.

Subaru: Ah, sorry, sorry. The mission was so much fun that I got ahead of myself!

I'm glad that Natsume's here for me because I tend to go off the rails~☆

Natsume: Aren't you ashamed of relying on me? This is something we have to do together, so make sure you're on the same page.

So, about the next missionー

Hinata: Akehoshi-senpai and Sakasaki-senpai...? Are you two on the same team? This is very unexpected!

Yuta: They're the ones who have unpredictable performances up on their sleeves, right? Ooh, "We match well together in the way we surprise and entertain each other's fans", that kind of feeling, right?

Hinata: Fu-fu-fu. We'll surprise people like a troupe, too! We can't lose to those two, either!

Shall we head on to the next mission with a burning rivalry with our seniors?

< END >

Story: [2wink Mission] "Tag Ensemble"

Writer: 西岡麻衣子 (Happy Elements���式会社)

Season: ★ (it's a memory)

Characters: Yuta, Hinata, Mika, Arashi, Mitsuru, Sora, Souma, Adonis, Aira, Kohaku, Tori, Tsukasa, Ritsu, Mao, Kanata, Kaoru, Subaru, Natsume

Reminder: I did not create this story, but I translated it, so please refrain from reposting my translation on other social media platforms.

I apologize if there are any mistakes as well.

Thank you for reading!

[dumdumsun]

Of Starlight

A/N: Hey, hey, we’re nearing the end

Warnings: none that I’m aware of

Word Count: 2163

—————————————

Chapter 15: I Heard A Rumor

Five hadn’t expected to see (Y/N) asleep beside him the next morning. His eyes were still heavy with sleep, but he tried his best to let them focus on her peaceful face. His side ached as he reached forward and brushed his thumb lightly across her cheekbone and he thought, he’d like to be able to wake up like this everyday. Minus the shrapnel wound, of course. In fact, the stinging pain reminded him of just why he couldn’t think of fantasies like that right now. He still needed to find Harold Jenkins, and he’d be able to effectively do so now that his wound had been taken care of. Leaning forward, he kissed (Y/N) on the cheek and moved to get out of bed, but she began to stir in her sleep. Freezing, he watched as her (e/c) eyes cracked open. When they rested on him, a sleepy smile spread across her face. “Morning.” She rasped.

“Morning.” He laid back down and let her stare at him. In all forms, in all angles, she was breathtaking. He almost couldn’t believe it. The way her eyes squinted when a new thought passed through her mind, the way they blinked twice when she snapped herself back into reality, it was all her. He wanted to comment on it, but he saw the flash of pain on her face and her smile turned bittersweet. “Stop doing that.” He whispered.

“Doing what?”

“Stop looking at me like this is the last time you’ll see me.”

She went silent for a second, her fingers tracing his features. “I can’t help it…”

Not another thing was said before she got out of bed and assisted Five out of the room. From down the hall, they heard a bell ringing and Klaus’s cheerful voice. Turning, they saw him approaching the two with a smile. “Good morning, lovebirds!”

“Good morning, Klaus. What is it?” (Y/N) asked as she shifted her arm that was around Five.

“Important family business downstairs. Breakfast will be provided.” He grinned.

“You get more insufferable everyday…” Five groaned, only encouraging his brother’s antics.

“Come on, let’s go! I already got the big guy waiting on me!” He began ringing the bell as he danced down the stairs. With a sigh, the pair followed him down into the kitchen, where Luther was sitting at the table. The man clearly had one hell of a night, seemingly hungover. As they entered the kitchen, Klaus immediately began pouring cups of coffee for everyone. Five and (Y/N) sat beside Luther, the girl handing the boy one of the cups. He took a sip and grimaced.

“Jesus. Who do I gotta kill to get a decent cup of coffee?” He hissed up at Klaus as he set the cup back down. (Y/N) sighed and reached over, gently taking his hand in hers. Klaus handed her a plate of eggs and she gratefully took it, setting it down in front of Five. “No, I don’t want to eat.”

“Five, you need to eat something.”

“(Y/N), I just said no.”

“And I say eat your food. Now.” She sternly demanded, as a mother would to her child. Five exhaled through his nose before picking up the fork, grumpily eating his eggs. She proudly smiled and rubbed circles on his back. Luther groaned and drank his coffee.

“Can we get started, please?”

“Anyone seen any of the others? Diego? Allison? No?” He looked to his sister, who only glanced around the table, wordlessly asking her usual question. Klaus motioned towards the seat across from her. Good, Ben is here. “Alright, then, this is the closest thing to a quorum...,” He banged his spatula on the table, only causing Luther more irritation. “...that we’re gonna get. Now, listening up. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna spit it out. Yeah...” He trailed off and the three frowned in confusion when he didn’t continue.

“Klaus.”

“I conjured Dad last night.” This was met with silence. Five and Luther glanced at each other in disbelief as (Y/N) stared at her brother in shock.

“Wait, seriously? I thought you hadn’t been able to.” She leaned forward.

“Ah, yes, but I’m sober. Ta-da!” He gave lazy jazz hands. “I got clean, yesterday, to talk to… well… you know, and then ended up having this… conversation with dear old Daddy himself.” He explained, (Y/N) slowly sitting back with a hum. Luther dropped his hand from his face and began to stand.

“Has anyone got some aspirin?”

“Top shelf, next to the crackers.” Five answered, now finished with his eggs and drinking more of his coffee.

“Hey, hey, hey. This is serious, guys, alright?” Klaus tried to get everyone back on track, Luther sighing and sitting back down in his seat. “This really happened, I swear.”

“So, what did he say?” (Y/N) raised her brow.

“Well, he gave me the usual lecture about my appearance and my failures in life. Yada, yada, yada. No surprise there. Even the afterlife couldn’t soften a hardass like Dad, right? But he did mention something about his murder, or lack thereof, because… he killed himself.” Klaus’s voice quieted as he looked down at his spatula. His siblings only stared, Luther the least convinced.

“I don’t have time for your games, Klaus.” This time, he actually stood from his chair as if to leave, but Klaus stopped him.

“No, I’m telling you the truth, Luther. I’m telling you the truth.”

“Why’d he do it, then?” Five asked, narrowing his eyes.

“He said it was the only way to get us home again.”

“No. Dad wouldn’t just kill himself.” Luther shook his head.

“Ah, you said it yourself. He was depressed.” Five pointed out, (Y/N) nodding in agreement. “Holed up in his office and room all day and night.”

“No. There weren’t any signs. Suicidal people exhibit certain tendencies, strange behaviors.”

“Like sending someone to the moon for no reason?” Klaus tilted his head and (Y/N) frowned quizzically. Luther only stared him down.

“I swear to god, Klaus, if you’re lying-”

“I’m not. I’m not.”

“Master Klaus is correct.”

Everyone in the room turned to see Pogo enter, limping with his cane. He stopped a little ways away from the table. Placing both hands on his cane, he sighed. “Regretfully… I helped Master Hargreeves enact his plan. So did Grace. It was a difficult choice for both of us… More difficult than you could ever know…”

(Y/N) shook her head as she stared down at the floor. “But… But Mom’s programming, i-it wouldn’t have allowed her-”

“I know, Miss (Y/N). Prior to your father’s death, Grace’s programming was adjusted so that she was incapable of administering first aid on that fateful night.”

“Jesus Christ…”

“Sick bastard.” Five muttered. Luther stared down at the table with somber eyes.

“So the security tape we saw?”

“It was meant to further the murder mystery.” Pogo clarified, Luther scoffing. “Your father hoped that being back here, solving it together… would reignite your desire to be a team again.”

“And to what end?” Five questioned.

“To save the world, of course.”

“Oh, alright.” Klaus sarcastically giggled. Luther’s glare was then directed to their chimp butler.

“First the moon mission and now this. You watched me search for answers and said nothing,” As he spoke, Pogo’s head bowed in shame. “Anything else you want to share, Pogo? Any other damn secrets?” His siblings tried to calm him as his voice increased volume. “No, I won’t calm down! We’ve been lied to by the one person in this family we all trusted.”

“It was your father’s dying wish, Master Luther. I…,” Pogo sighed. “I had no choice.”

Luther stalked closer to him, eyes never leaving his form. “There’s always choice.” He muttered before walking out of the kitchen. (Y/N) stared ahead, trying to make sense of this fucked up situation. Beside her, Five ran his hands through his hair in frustration.

“I gotta think.” He sighed and grabbed the girl by the arm before blinking into his room. The two didn’t speak as they stood on opposite sides of the room, trying to make sense of everything. (Y/N), for one, was a bit pissed off. The man she had been trying to get away from for so long was the very one who had planned to bring her right back. Only it was to deal with something he clearly must have known about. Pogo said it himself, they were brought back to save the world. And while that does sound like a job for the Umbrella Academy, it’s not like any of them would have answered a call from Reginald and accepted such a mission. They had parted ways, planned on never seeing him again. So, viewed from some angles, it was the perfect plan. Jesus, he couldn’t have pretended to be deathly sick?! (Y/N)’s thoughts were put on hold when she heard Five approach her. He opened the wardrobe beside her and pulled out another uniform, wincing a bit when he raised his right arm. She wordlessly stood before him and helped him change his clothing. The entire interaction was intimate, but of course not sexual in any way. It was simply familiar. When she buttoned his dress shirt for him, it felt as if this was the right thing to do. As if being this close to him and doing something as casual as fixing his shirt was what she was meant to do, as silly as she thought it sounded. The silence between them was comfortable and they only interrupted it when (Y/N) asked if she was hurting his side and he would reply with no.

Once they were finished, Five gently grabbed her hand and kissed her cheek. When he pulled away, they stared at one another with wide eyes. Five had kissed her cheeks, her forehead and her hands before, yes, but he had never initiated affection like that out of the blue before. He almost regretted it, but (Y/N) gave him a giddy smile that instantly relaxed him. “Well, I suppose we should… go save the world, Starlight.”

“If we must.” She lightly joked and gently swung their joined hands as they walked out of the room. Klaus’s bedroom door was wide open when they reached it, so they both walked right in. He was currently shirtless, shoeless, and playing with yarn on his bed. Five uselessly knocked on the door as he passed it to get inside.

“Hey. Get up. We’re going.”

“Where?”

“To save the world, duh.” (Y/N) furrowed her brows.

“Oh, is that all? Great.” Klaus moved the yarn away and started to put his clothes back on as Five paced the room.

“So, Pogo said Dad killed himself to get us all back together, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So it got me thinking. I had to jump to the future to figure out when it happened, but Dad, he can’t time travel. So how’d the crazy bastard actually know to kill himself a week before the end of the world?”

“I was thinking the same thing.” (Y/N) nodded as Klaus tried to answer the question, but Five cut him off.

“Don’t answer. That was purely rhetorical. Truth is, our whole lives, he’s been telling us we’d save the world from an impending apocalypse.”

“Yeah, but I also thought he just said that to scare us into doing the dishes.” Klaus added as he struggled to shove his foot into his shoe. Five turned to him with raised brows.

“Me, too. But what if the old man really knew it was going to happen?”

“Exactly, but how the hell would he?” (Y/N) turned to her love, avoiding Klaus’s elbow as he raised his arms to put his shirt back on.

“No idea. But the fact remains, his fakakta plan worked. We all came home.”

“The perfect, fucked up plan for his perfectly fucked up family…”

“Well, since we’re here, we might as well save the world.”

Klaus finished dressing himself and wore a smile. “Oh, yeah? What, like, the three of us?”

“Uh, well, ideally, no, but… gotta work with what I’ve got. No offense to you, Starlight, you’ve been a wonderful help.”

“Awe, shucks.” She deadpanned. As they walked down the hall, Diego’s figure sprinted towards them, but turned into his bedroom, no longer in a sling. “Diego?”

“Where have you been?” Five stopped, the other two doing the same.

“Jail,” Diego quickly answered as he threw off his jacket. “Long story. Where’s Luther?”

“Haven’t seen him since breakfast.”

“Yeah,” Klaus stretched. “Two days until the world ends, he picks a great time to drop off the grid.” He commented as Diego walked back out, now in his leather gear. He cursed and adjusted his clothing before tilting his head up to his siblings.

“Allison is in danger.”

—————————————

Taglist: @nate-isnt-great @43sparrows @sapphicsyn @m00n-sh @starcurrent @alexander-hamilhoe @youcandalekmyballs @wonderlandfandomkingdom @yrdadjstcallsmekatya @narikyuwu @sm0kingcrack @a-t-h-r-e-e-n-a @moatsnow @bubblegumflamingos @call-me-starstorm @rev-enviadhell @meowiemari @magicalgothpandamaker @simping-4-fictional-men @hehehehannahthings @harrystylescherrie

[kanasmusings]

[Translations] Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Tweets 2021 - 09/25/2021

☆ Today is Kujikawa Haruto’s (C.V. Hasegawa Yoshiaki) Birthday! 1 ☆

HARUTO: Alright, everyone! Are you all ready!?

SHO: Of course! After all, today is~?

                   Your ୧( ´͈ ᗨ `͈ )ﻌ( ´͈ ᗨ `͈ )୨ Birthday~!!

ROCK DOWN: Happy birthday~!

HARUTO: Thank you very much! I feel your BIG LOVE!!

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

More under the cut, enjoy~!

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 2 ☆

HARUTO: Oh, could it be…? This is the center of the sword guard featured for Zanshin, isn’t it? Thank you very much, Ayumu-san!

AYUMU: How did you know I was in charge of the shopping?

HARUTO: Is it not obvious? I can feel... your love.

REIJI: Is it bad I wanna hit him?

HARUTO: I accept love in all forms, Reiji-san.

REIJI: I wanna punch him.

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 3 ☆

RUKA: Haru-kun, there’s some cake on that table, so let’s celebrate Western and Japanese style~ ☆

HARUTO: Yes!

GAKU: I’m quite surprised that it’s relatively decent… It’s a pretty normal party…

HARUTO: Please let me express my gratitude here!! A special stage is about to unfold! Come on!!

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 4 ☆

SHIKI & KOI: Hello there~!

HARUTO: WELCOME!

ALL THREE: We’re Team Secret Motive!

SHIKI: Koi-kun.

KOI: Yes, Shiki-san?

SHIKI: Is it Sir Kujikawa’s birthday today?

KOI: It is! Here’s a special gift for everyone…!

             ＼BRIDGE！！／

┌(_Д_┌ )┐┌(_Д_┌ )┐┌(_Д_┌ )┐

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 5 ☆

┌(_Д_┌ )┐< I am now 24 years old!

┌(_Д_┌ )┐ ┌(_Д_┌ )┐<Congrats!!

┌(_Д_┌ )┐< I managed to get this far thanks to your support!

┌(_Д_┌ )┐ ┌(_Д_┌ )┐< Congrats!!

┌(_Д_┌ )┐< I wish to continue living life happily--

┌(_Д_┌ )┐Σ ┌(_Д_┌ )┐ *crack* < Congra--

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 6 ☆

     ＼SHIKI-SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN！！／

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 7 ☆

└(￣Д￣└ )┘ └(￣Д￣└ )┘<  You’ll feel better if we reverse the process!

└(￣Д￣;└ )┘< … Really?

└(￣Д￣└ )┘└(￣Д￣└ )┘< How do you feel?

└(￣Д￣;└ )┘< Ah~ … 

└(￣Д￣└ )┘└(￣Д￣└ )┘< There we go. Easy now.

∑└(￣□￣＊└)┘*crack* < Ah--

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 8☆

     ＼SHIKI-SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN！！／

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 9 ☆

HARUTO: With that said, I managed to make it this far, and I’m very grateful for all the support you’ve given me.

RUKA: You’re just playing that whole thing off!?!?

HARUTO: It’s alright. Everything that transpired just now was all calculated.

GAKU: Really!? (laughing)

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 10 ☆

SHO: I’m so happy for you, Haruto. You’ve managed to make so many new friends that even Shiki-san’s willing to take some time off to help with the celebrations~ ♪ How wonderful.

AYUMU: Your ability to look into the bright side of things amazes me, Sho. But, I agree...

HARUTO: Yes, that’s right. I used to be quite the loner.

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 11 ☆

HARUTO: I believe that I have grown enough to the point that I’m able to request people for help with things like my birthday.

REIJI: Getting your senior to do the “BRIDGE” thing with you is a really giant leap (wry smile)... You better thank Shiki-san properly.

AYUMU: I need to learn from him, too…

GAKU: Hold your horses, Ayumu. You gotta think this through.

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 12☆

HARUTO: It was a really joyous thing for me to be able to talk to someone else normally. I didn’t need to find a grand excuse or reason to do it, too...

SHO: (chuckles) I’m so happy for you.

HARUTO: Thank you.

RUKA: (whispering) Koi-kun probably joined just for fun.

GAKU: (whispering) We need to thank him, too.

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 13 ☆

HARUTO: I am here. I can be with all of you. I didn’t realize that I can continue growing even as an adult. I know that I’ll be causing a lot of trouble for you from here on, but… I will give it my all, so please continue spoiling me whenever you can.

SHO: Yes, of course.

ROCK DOWN: You betcha!

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ Today is Haruto’s Birthday! 14 ☆

AYUMU: Let me grow alongside you.

GAKU & RUKA: We’re here, too!

SHO: One more time for Haruto, okay~?

ROCK DOWN: Happy birthday!

HARUTO: THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!

REIJI: You’re too loud! (laughs)

Congratulations, Mr. Kujikawa!!! 

# Kujikawa Haruto Birthday Fest 2021

☆ BONUS! ☆

KOI: Ta-da! Even if we weren’t in cahoots, I had a gift ready for him~! Congrats, Haruto! We’re actually in the same grade~ ♪ (I’m his junior by one year!)

HARUTO: Thank you!

ALL: (I’m not surprised.)

SHIKI: I’m actually quite notorious for being a shut-in who can’t remember important dates, so… I’ll get you one later.

HARUTO: Oh, you broke your hip for me already, so we’re good.

ALL: Language, kid.

-->

SHIKI: (I think I made a mistake…)

TSUBASA who was scrolling through the TL: (Nah, you played along really well. You’ll be fine.)

Happy birthday, Haruto-kun~!

[waezi2]

Re-reading Yu-Gi-Oh (part 1)

So... I bitch a lot about Yu-Gi-Oh. When I don’t complain about it online and accuse it of scamming kid me, I ridicule the story and the many holes in the game rules.

But I actually used to love this manga with a burning passion. I bought it because I was fixated with the cards, but instead I got traumatized. In an awesome way.

So I decided to re-read the manga about the possibly best known TCG game in the world and see how it started, how it evolved, and if the story still holds up.

So, I’m reading chapter 1, and we have to talk about the art.

The art style at the beginning was chunky and sometimes downright awkward. But it was still very enjoyable. The characters were very expressive and the tone of the style could swing quickly from wacky and rubberhose like to eerie and brooding depending on the situation. It makes you forgive odd-looking legs and hands that becomes massive. It is clear that it is someone’s first project.

So, this is Yugi. Possibly the cutest and meekest punk kid who ever lived. Yugi is not an outdoor person, so he spends most of his recesses inside the classroom. He brings a ton of games to school, hoping that someone might wanna play with him, but all of his classmates prefer to go outside and do stuff like basketball. And being a short teenager who practically looks like a little boy means he is not a desirable team mate in any ball game.

This is totally just a theory, but I think Yugi’s signature punk hairstyle is his way of trying to look a bit more edgy to try do something about his cute appearance.

... Yeah, it’s not working. He still looks like a fricking Gummibear.

As Yugi is minding his own business, we meet two familiar faces.

... their names are actually Jounouchi and and Honda, but most people know them by their American names, so I will just refer to them as Joey and Tristan. 

It’s so odd to see their old designs. Especially Joey since his hair is not as big and square like as it is today. And what the fuck is up with Tristan’s face?!

Anyways, while Yugi decides to play with the most valuable game in his collection, Joey and Tristan decides to mess with him. They make an interesting bully duo where Tristan is more loud and is clearly having more fun bothering Yugi who is too short to put up a fight while Joey seems more stoic and is almost annoyed by Yugi for being a pushover. He even tells Yugi to be a man about it and at least try and take the game back from him by force. So while Tristian just enjoys picking on Yugi for the heck of it, Joey seems to sincerely dislike Yugi.

Luckily, Yugi doesn’t have trouble with bullies as such since he is friends with Tea who is so tough that she actually intimidate Joey and Tristan with sheer attitude. That’s actually impressive.

... A shame she is most of the time just the damsel in distress.

Tea is the only person in class who hangs out with Yugi since they have been friends since kindergarten. And she doesn’t mind staying inside at all since a ton of the guys are jerks who only wanna play basketball with the girls since it gives them an opportunity to look up their skirts.

Yeah, there is a lot of that in this manga. Most of the males in this series are kinda horny. the humor often relies on it, which downright creepy at times.

Even Yugi finds basketball more appealing now that he knows about the skirt-looking.

Lewd panty-shot aside, I think it is a nice detail that Yugi is as pathetic as the rest of the dudes in school, he probably just doesn’t have the courage to try get a look. It makes him less of a pure hero.

Altight, let’s stop talking about Yugi being a closet creep:/

Yugi shows Tea what his greatest treasure is: A LITTERAL treasure.

Yep, this is the famous Millennium Puzzle, practically the mascot of the series. It’s an ancient puzzle found in an pyramid that Yugi got from his grandfather who runs a game store. The puzzle is extremely valuable, both because it is from ancient Egypt and it is made of gold.

... And Yugi brings it to school where Tristan and Joey pushes him around...

Yugi has been struggling with the puzzle for eight years despite being a game nerd. Even though it is a blow to his not that big ego, he keeps trying to solve it since the box says that if he will be granted a wish if he manage to solve the puzzle.

Meanwhile, Joey and Tristan makes the fatal mistake of talking about picking on Yugi while Ushio is close enough to hear it. He is the school’s hall monitor and rumor has it that he is downright psychotic and is feared by most of the students. Heck, some of the teachers are uncomfortable being near him.

And this guy has decided to become Yugi’s bodyguard, something poor Yugi doesn’t take serious when Ushio tells him that.

Joey and Tristan are unaware how screwed they are as they keep having their fun bothering Yugi without our hero knowing it. Joey managed to steal a piece from the puzzle box before Tea interrupted, and Joey decides to throw the piece in the school’s swimming pool so that the puzzle becomes worthless as it can no longer be solved. I gotta say, that is pretty twisted and surprisingly sneaky of a teen bully. It’s downright creepy.

Speaking of creepy...

This is Yugi’s grandfather Sugoroku. He runs the game shop that Yugi lives in and is a living encyclopedia when it comes to games of all sorts.

And he can’t just tell Tea that she has grown. He HAS to mention her breasts as well. Da fuck is up with all the sex talk and panty shots in this series?! Does Kazuki Takahashi(the author) have some sort of issues?!

Yugi’s grandfather notices that Yugi is STILL trying to solve the ancient puzzle and warns Yugi that the puzzle is supposedly cursed. That the archeologist and his team died mysteriously shortly after finding the puzzle and the last one to kick the bucket said something about a “shadow game” with his dying breath.

That however makes Yugi even more determent to solve the puzzle. If it really is magical then chances are that he will be granted a wish by completing the puzzle.

Personally, I would call the nearest museum and sell the dang thing before it could kill me with it’s insane cursed magic.

Speaking of insane, Yugi realizes that he should have taken Ushio serious when he said he would be his bodyguard.

Yep, the SOB has dragged Joey and Tristan behind the school building and kicked their asses through and through. Tristan is in so much pain that he is barely conscious and Joey is so pummeled that all he can do is watch as Yugi shows how surprisingly brave he is as he demands that Ushio leaves them alone, even refer to them as his friends and that they were just trying to make him a man.

Yeah, picking on someone because they are too timid and demanding that they fight you despite knowing that they hat violence is the right way to make someone a man. Hip hooray for toxic masculinity!

Yugi defending Joey and Tristan results in him getting a beating as well.

One of the interesting things about early Yu-Gi-Oh is the raw and ugly violence. We talking dirty violence where people get kneed in the chest and kicked while they lie down. Not just off-screen, we witness our heroes be pummeled, making the series a bit more gritty and frightening. And this series is not for those with a weak stomach.

Joey is stunned, partly because Yugi defends him, but way more of the short spiky-haired kid’s courage. But Yugi is anything but afraid. After all, he refused to fight Joey, but he still tried to get the puzzle back(not successfully, but he made an effort instead of just squirming).

After Ushio finished kicking poor Yugi’s ass, he tells him to bring him money as “payment” for his “bodyguard service.” And we talking 200000 yen, that’s a lot of dough.

Ushio even pulls a god damn knife(!), just to show how fucking crazy he is!

Yugi goes home to see if he has money enough to pay Ushio, but he only has 1656 yen. In frustration, Yugi decides to solve his unsolvable puzzle, just to think of something else than the brute with a knife who is waiting for him at school.

But what do you know? Yugi finally get the hang of it. He sees that some of the pieces just needs to be rotated differently and he finish it in a couple of minutes.

... Or he WOULD have. He finally sees that one of the pieces are missing, breaking his heart and making his awful day even worse.

But Grandpa has the last piece. He tells Yugi that one of his friends from school had found it and asked him to give it to Yugi. And that he was soaked despite it not raining.

As Yugi is happy about being able to finish the puzzle and returns to his room, his grandpa thinks about that the boy was Joey and that he asked him not to tell Yugi it was him that came with the puzzle piece. Joey also told him about Ushio blackmailing Yugi, so Grandpa secretly puts money in Yugi’s schoolbag so he won’t get in trouble.

And this is where it get’s freaky.

Yep, here it is. the iconic moment Yugi gets blessed by the puzzle so that he can turn into the split personality we refer to as Yami which is Japanese for “Dark”.

Yugi then calls Ushio and tells him to meet him outside school at midnight.

Ushio is surprised as he sees that Yugi is wearing some sort of costume and that he looks way more cocky than before.

Yugi tells Ushio that he has the money he demands, but he has twice the amount. Fricking 400000 yen!

But Yugi only “owes” 200000 to Ushio, so he suggest that they play about them in a dark and twisted game.

Yugi and Ushio take turns stabbing the stack of money placed on their hand. They have to stab hard enough to take more than one single bill. The winner is the guy with most yen bills.

As they play, Ushio seems to be winning... but when it is his turn, he can feel that his hand is way too eager to stab.

This is not just a weird-ass game. This is a “shadow game”, a game that shows your true nature. Ushio’s greed is now collected in his hand, and he so desperately want to win the game that he can’t control it. He realizes that if he stabs, he won’t be able to control his strength and he will penetrate his own hand. Ushio has to either A) give up and keep his hand or B) win the game with one hand less.

Ushio picks C.

Ushio tries to kill Yugi, but that was a mistake. The puzzle has made him super human and he leaps from the ground, evading the knife.

And cheating in a shadow game is a big no-go as the host of the game has authority to punish you.

Yami Yugi curses Ushio with “Illusion of Greed”, meaning he will be doomed to live in an imaginary world where he sees nothing but money everywhere.

Next morning, he is still outside the schoolyard like a drooling idiot who yells about all of his imaginary money.

Yugi has no memory of what happened but is glad he no longer has to be worried of Ushio who is a harmless nutcase. Not only that, he has finally finished his puzzle... and Joey offers him his friendship.

And that was the start of the horror manga turned card game commercial. It has a lot of charm, is very eerie and I think I prefer Yami Yugi’s first look that is more child like. making him look downright creepy.

This retrospective will continue ASAP.

Till then, I’m Waezi2, and thanks for wasting time with me.

[thatesqcrush]

Three Words

For Holiday! Bingo: Naughty & Nice - candycane. Rafael Barba x Rockette!Reader. CW: candy cane sugary fluff. 

WC: 1.5K

**

It all started at the doctor’s office. Rafael was overdue for his physical with his heavy caseload at the DA’s office. But he had grown annoyed at the constant reminder calls and mailers from the doctor’s office. He had a rare day off and he decided to use that day for it - to get it over with.

**

“Rafael for a man your age, you shouldn’t have blood pressure this high. You need to stress less.”

Rafael looked at his doctor with an incredulous look. “I wish I had a less stressful job.”

That earned a chuckle from the doctor. “Have you ever tried yoga? Meditation?”

“Do I look like the yoga type?”

“How about running?”

Rafael tilted his head and pursed his lips. He let out a sigh. “I could give it a go again.”

“And more green things. Less things in takeout containers.” The doctor further advised.

“Just don’t tell me to give up my coffee. That would be a crime in and of itself.” Rafael groaned.

**

As a result, Rafael found himself running loops at Central Park the following weekend. He huffed up hill, determined to get to the top. And he did. He was soaked with sweat, his Harvard t-shirt soaked to the bone. He decided to take a break to stretch his calves, which he could feel knotting up. He found a nearby bench and perched his leg on the bench seat, almost oblivious that you were using the bench also to stretch.

“That hill is such a bitch.” You remarked, which earned a look from Rafael.

Rafael looked over at you. His breath hitched at the sight of you. You were very pretty. He swallowed hard at the sight of you in bike shorts and a tank-top. Nary a drop of sweat was on you. “Take it that you run here often.”

“Every other day.”

“Why would you do that?” Rafael asked, his brow cocked. He switched legs and stretched the other.

“Because I have rehearsals soon.” You explained, adjusting your headband. The man before you was extremely attractive, albeit a bit sweaty. Your mind wickedly wondered about him being sweaty over you during some other kind of exercise.

“Rehearsals?” Rafael stretched his hamstring, lifting his leg and reaching behind. “Broadway? TV?”

You blinked and shook your head out of your reverie. A smile twitched on your face. “No. I’m a Rockette.”

Rafael’s jaw dropped. “A Rockette?”

“Yup. It’s summer, but we get ready for Christmas now. I perform twice a day, six days a week. I need to keep my endurance up.” You reached for your water and chugged some water. Rafael swallowed hard as a drop of water spilled out and you licked your lips trying to catch it. “My name is Y/F/N Y/L/N.”

“Rafael Barba.” He extended his hand and you shook it, feeling a spark shoot to your core. You had butterflies in your stomach.

You jutted your head towards the path Rafael had just run up. “If you think Cat Hill sucks, wait ‘til you get to the Harlem Hills. Woof.”

“Great.” Rafael bemoaned.

“Know why they call it Cat Hill?” You asked. Rafael shook his head.

“There’s a statue of a cat about to pounce. So just think about that when you up the hill next time. Don’t get eaten by the cat.”

Rafael laughed. “Duly noted."

“Well Rafael Barba. Good luck with the run. Maybe I will see you around again.” You gave him a wink before jogging off. Rafael watched you take off and he smiled when he saw you turn around and wave him over, jogging in in place. He wasted no time jogging up to you, his energy now renewed.

**

You and Rafael hit it off instantly. You were both tickled that you lived in the same neighborhood – within walking distance of each other. He would tell you stories of inside the courtroom and you would regale him with stories about rehearsals. Many times you would show him sneaks of various numbers. At one point you did an eye-high kick and almost kicked the prosecutor in the face. It resulted him diving into the bed to avoid it and you were in stitches at the near-hit. As you bent over in a fit of giggles, Rafael got up and wrapped his arms around you, carrying you to the bed with a squeal. You were still laughing when Rafael climbed over you. Your laughter subsided and there was an electric charge in the room.

“You’re incredible.” Rafael whispered, staring at you with intensity. “I’m so lucky to have met you.” He brushed your hair back from your face.

“Me too.” You whispered before pulling him in for a kiss.

**

The summer heat changed to wintry cold. Your relationship with Rafael was still going strong. Rafael was in his office when Carmen gently knocked. “Mr. Barba – this came for you.”

Rafael took the gold envelope from her. He recognized your scrawl instantly and smiled at the candy cane taped to the top. He opened it and there was one ticket to opening night, with the best seat in the house. “Thanks. Have a goodnight – please shut the door on your way out.”

“Will do. ‘Night, Mr. Barba.” Carmen replied. “Enjoy your weekend.”

“Likewise.” Rafael replied. He tore open the candy-cane and sucked on it, as he dialed your number from his office phone. He put the call on speaker and then swung his feet onto his desk. He relaxed into his seat a bit.

You answered the phone, balancing it between your ear and shoulder as you pinned your hair in place.

“Please tell me you’re still coming.” You asked, feeling a knot in your stomach.

“Leaving soon. You didn’t have to messenger the ticket. I would have picked it up at the box office.” Rafael replied, crunching on a piece of the candy cane.

“Nonsense.” You replied. “I gotta go.”

“Yeah... I... um...” Rafael replied. He wanted to say those three words to you, that should never be said lightly. You heard him pause, and your heart thumped in your chest. You had been hoping for so long for him to say those three words.  So you pressed lightly.

“Rafi?”

“Nothing. I’ll see you soon.” 

You didn’t have time to fret at the lack of words and be disappointed - the curtain was soon. So instead, you focused your energy on finishing getting ready. 

**

The ninety-minute show was incredible. Rafael had seen you practice many times – at his apartment – at yours. You put endless hours into perfecting your moves. Seeing it all come together, with the rest of the dance troop, however, was something else altogether. He watched the show completely transfixed. The Christmas Spectacular was tradition for any true New Yorker. He had seen it here and there, but this time it was different. He treated himself during intermission a plastic glass with a finger of whisky that cost way too much money.  

From the stage you couldn’t see Rafael but you knew he was there. And knowing that he was there, you made sure to truly give it your all. Afterwards, Rafael was waiting for you outside with a bouquet of red roses. “Rafael!” You squealed, wrapping your arms around him. He captured your lips with this, kissing you softly. You returned the kiss, eager for more. Catching your hint, he pushed his tongue into your mouth, exploring. Between the high of the performance and his heady cologne, you felt giddy. You both pulled away, breathless from the kiss.

“You were perfect on stage.” Rafael complimented, causing you to beam. You both began to walk, hands interlocked, down to Fifth Avenue to catch a cab going downtown. “What was your favorite act?” You asked, bringing the flowers to your nose with your other hand.

“Parade of the Wooden Soldiers.” Rafael replied. “How do you all do it?”

“The fall?” You asked. “Oh, easy. It starts by having someone rock up on their heels and start to go back. You raise your hands up, slide your hands through, and open your arms. Their feet have to be completely lined up because you don’t want the fall to go one way or another because someone could get hurt.”

You continued. “You have to trust that your nose is going to get flattened a little bit but it’ll all be fine once it’s over. It is a complete team effort.” You started to turn towards the corner, but Rafael grabbed your arm. You looked at him bewildered. “Lets go see the big tree.” He suggested and a smile spread over your face. “Okay.”

The Rockefeller Center tree was adorned with hundreds of thousands of multicolored string lights. It glowed brilliantly over the ice rink that was filled with skaters. Rafael wrapped his arm around you and you rested your head on his shoulder.

You gasped, raising your head off slightly. “It’s snowing.” Rafael looked up - snowflakes coated his long lashes - before he looked back at you.

“I love you.” Rafael spoke. His voice was quiet but firm.

You turned to look at him, tears pricking your eyes. “I love you too.” Rocking onto the balls of your feet, you leaned up and with one gloved hand on the back of his neck, you pulled Rafael into a kiss.

FIN.

**

Tags: @madpanda75​ @tropes-and-tales​ @delia26​ @mgarner1227​ @beardedmccoy​ @youreverycolor​ @neely1177​ @the-baby-bookworm​ @mrsrafaelbarba​ @skittle479​ @ottosuricato​ @sass-and-suspenders​ @mommakat32​ @dreila03​ @beccabarba​ @garturbo​ @lovebennycolon​ @imjustreallynosy​ @sweetsummertime99​ @whyissvuruiningmylovelife​ @annabelleb49​ @scarletsoldierrr​ @cesarofangirl78​ @redlipstickandplaid​ @redlipstickandblacktea @zoeykaytesmom @differentshadesofgray @misssirenlove​ @esparza-army @bananas-pajamas @mishaissocoolike @thefanficfaerie @theenchantedgalleryofstories @catnip987 @choppedgalaxynerd @pieceofshittytitty @ktiz90 @evee87 @itsjustmyfantasyroom @detective-giggles @rampantmuses @jazzyjoi @caked-crusader @rachelxwayne @prurientpuddlejumper @lv7867 @permanentlydizzy @bisexual-dreamer02 @madamsnape921 @averyhotchner @teamsladsandgents

[felassan]

Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 3

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler continued playing DAO from where they had left off in Part 1 and Part 2. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, personal accessibility reasons, etc). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into other parts of the franchise. Some of it is info which is known having been put out there in the past, and some of it is new. There’s a bit of overlap or repetition with topics covered in Parts 1 and 2. This post leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

The stream can currently be watched back here. Next week LE will be streaming a different DAO playthrough with commentary from another guest. Two weeks from now LE and DG will return to continue this playthrough for another stream session like this one.

(Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

The Battle of Ostagar cutscene is one of the first big cutscenes that got made during production. When it was shown to the team for the first time, it was one of those moments where DG felt like “Awesome, this is a game!” Context: During the development of a game it feels more like doing a series of disconnected tasks and assets rather than working on a game, so seeing stuff come together at times like this is rad. The first time it was shown, it had temporary placeholder voiceacting.

Pathfinding is always a nightmare to do, especially in games which involve a party of NPCs. As soon as other characters are involved alongside the PC, it’s exponentially more difficult and takes up a lot more resources. The PC is the most complex thing going on visually on-screen, with so many moving pieces, and in party-based games you have four [etc] of them. So, some critique that’s made of the DA games in regards to this subject which compares it to games like The Witcher doesn’t really make sense, as The Witcher has a solo PC.

‘Weird mage hats’ didn’t really become a trademark ‘DA thing’ akin to their place of random pieces of cheese around the world until later games. For DAO, someone probably asked the artists to create “mage helmets”. Mage hats actually looked better in the concept art than they did in-game. What happened was that they were already modelled and then they didn’t have time to re-do them.

DAO was made for PC first. The plan from the get-go though was that it would be an all-platform release (PC/360/PS3). Games like these are always made for the “lowest common denominator” from among the various platforms that they’re being planned to release for. Games have to be made for the most stringent/basic of the platforms because this makes for less conversion rate. At the time of DAO’s development, the PS3 was getting weak graphically and getting old, and this was quite a limitation: “Why do we have to limit [crowds?] because of this one platform?” “Well, we just gotta”. The original models were a bit too detailed. Later on, the artists started making models that had lower polycounts that they could put in a bit more of. DA was never really focused on making environments realistic in an ambient manner (making environments less “gamey” and more lived in, like having crowded places). They could have put more emphasis there but this would have led to a resources issue. Ambience basically wasn’t a high priority. As a writer DG isn’t keen on this decision and naturally he wanted the world to look more realistic, but he noted that it’s easy for him to say this when this would be work that he didn’t have to do personally.

During DAO development, they might have just had a dev sphere originally that was called “tech design”. DG thinks this was later broken up into systems design, combat design and maybe level design. Level designers are the people that are the implementers of the plot. Narrative design is a branch of the level design spoke. System designers respond to requests from lead designers. Narrative designers and writers don’t interact with system designers much unless they have to. As an example of interaction here, system designers might come to writers and say, “Alright, so we’re doing combat, what are the sorts of things a mage can do in this world?” The writers would be like “Ok, these are the sorts of spells we imagined.” The system designers might then come back with “Ok, that fulfills 2 of the 10 things we need mages to be able to do in combat. Is it possible that mages could do [this]?” Sometimes it is, and other times it would be like “No, that’s really outside of the lore”. Still, sometimes said original-lore-breaking things would be added to the game a week later due to necessity and DG would be like “Oh ok”. This kind of stuff is an insight into how some aspects of the lore came to be or changed over time during development.

The system designers on DAO got a better idea of what could be done and what could not be done according to the lore as things went on. At first, DG had to keep telling them things like “It’s not that big a deal, but in the lore mages can’t teleport. Instant teleportation isn’t possible in the world”. The system designers needed a spell where someone could get from spot A to spot B really fast on the battlefield. DG said that that’s fine in itself, “have them turn into a cloud of bees or have a light that moves between the two places. We can use magic as a transition or as a speed thing, but what is against the lore is instant teleportation, to traverse distance like that”. At first the system designers weren’t on board with it, but they got on board with it later. 

This sort of thing doesn’t just depend on the system designers. It also depends on what the tech artists are willing to do. Sometimes a certain request made of them was too hard and they said they weren’t able to do it. Other times it was a matter of DG not communicating the request properly, or the tech artists had already done the work and so throwing out all their work to re-do it just because he didn’t communicate clearly wouldn’t have been cool. So sometimes the originally planned lore got contravened, and sometimes things other parts of the team implemented in the game became the new lore.

LE made an insightful observation at this point: You can’t think of game development as a cohesive series of decisions that everyone on the team is involved in. This simple isn’t how it works at all, especially on large complex projects. There are processes at some studios for decision-making, but most of the time, a bunch of decisions get made by system designers. Others get made by level designers, still others by narrative designers. Situations then arise where someone notices a certain decision and that that decision and another one contradict each other. This is where conflict arises and a solution has to be negotiated. This is why often in games we get elements in the end product that are dissonant, because it was discovered too late or by the time it was realized, it was too difficult to change. It’s actually a miracle that on a game of DAO’s depth and scope that all these things largely hold together. [My note: With this insight and the context below on documentation, it makes sense how BW sometimes appear to ‘forget aspects of their own lore’ or end up contradicting parts of the lore in different parts of the franchise]

Sometimes such things would be noticed in time and DG would go and say, “Can we not do that or do something else instead?” and the relevant parties would be totally accommodating and do it (depending on how much time they had or how much time it would take to remedy). Sometimes this worked out and sometimes it didn’t. For the most part, everyone wants to work together. DG couldn’t be involved in every aspect of systems design “like some kind of All-Watchful eye of lore”, so he had to rely on the people who were there knowing enough from the documentation. Not everybody reads every document however. There was so much documentation even back during DAO. DG can only imagine the sheer amount of world/lore documentation that now exists now in the run-up to DA4; he said he thinks that nobody at this point on the current team has read it all, as editor/lore-wrangler Ben Gelinas isn’t with BW anymore. Lots of legacy documentation accumulated very quickly. Sometimes, the old document would still be there. Over time it became harder for people to discern which was the most recent version of a particular document. Sometimes people didn’t update the relevant documentation after changing things. Lore documentation was particularly bad for this issue. BG wrangled all the documentation and created an internal reference wiki (essentially acting as a lorekeeper). He was constantly coming in and picking DG’s brain to clarify conflicting aspects or obtain the correct, in-date information etc (“Good on him”).

DAO was the first time DG was involved in voice-recording. Prior to that he was only on the receiving end, in that the recordings would come in and he’d review them as they did so. DAO is when BW set up their own VO department and where Caroline Livingstone came on. CL wanted DG and Mike Laidlaw to be more involved in the casting process. As a result, the writers then were to write casting scripts: like, ‘For Morrigan, can you write a 1 page script that goes through 3 big emotions? [like regular talking for a bit, then here’s a bit of heightened emotion such as anger, then here’s a part where they’re being funny if they were a comedic character] These scripts had to be kept short so that the recording that was made from it wouldn’t be more than 30-40 seconds in length.

For the initial VA sessions, DG and CL flew down to Technicolor studioin LA and they had all the major castmembers there (later on, recording sessions were done a lot more remotely; this became easier as BW’s setup got more sophisticated). The idea was that they would both be present live in-person for the first 2 or 3 sessions to help each VA find their ‘voice’, and for DG at the first session to sit down with each VA and walk them through who their character was, what DA was about, and help them figure out how their character should talk. Claudia Black was the first of these sessions and he was “a wreck” going into that one. It got easier after that however. CL gave directions into the soundproof booth and DG was present to give notes on things like pronunciation or the intentions behind some lines. He says he learned everything he now knows about VO direction from CL. The things and tricks CL can do to get a performance out of an actor are amazing. Sometimes an actor would get a bit fixated or stuck on a particular way of delivering a line. CL had atrick to help them past this; “I want you to clear your mind, and I want you to give me a version of this line that’s more yellow”. The idea is that they just had to break out of where they had been stuck in that mindset, and the thing was that it doesn’t matter what “yellow” meant, but what was important was what “yellow” meant to the actor. They could then take that new varied delivery and progress from there.

Alistair’s dialogue when the PC talks to Flemeth outside her hut was the first complex conversation DG wrote for DAO. It was the first one that had a lot of branching and fiddling to it. The hardest conversations to write are the ones with a lot of exposition, and when they do have exposition still making this interesting and natural. At this point in the game, the player has no agency, just reactivity. The devs talked a lot about this subject when they wrote the origin stories. Some of the stories allow the player to initially say no and refuse to join the Wardens, but you always end up being railroaded (the devs here ended up doing a form of the trope ‘But Thou Must!’). Do you give the player the option to say no? Is it important to allow them that option? At some point, writers have to accept that the player has some level of buy-in and is game to play. They discussed a lot where they sat on this and what is agency. “Maybe don’t worry about offering the player every possible choice, but about having reactivity.”

Loghain wasn’t okay with letting Cailan die. He didn’t sit and angst about it openly where the player could see, and once the decision had been made, it being Loghain, it was Made and Had To Be Done (he felt that it was something that had to happen). But he didn’t kill the son of the woman he’d once loved dearly as a random off-handed thing.

The Solas twist was planned from the beginning, from the DAO dev days. Such big things/broad strokes have stayed the same. However, some of the details have changed or been added along the way. They didn’t know for instance that Solas was going to be a companion; that was something they came up with when they were planning DAI. Flemeth’s true identity has never changed.

Zevran says Rinna was an elf, but WoT says she was a bastard child of a noble in line for the Antivan throne (the Antivan royal family being human). When asked if this was an oversight, DG said yes she was a bastard, but she may have been really far down the line of succession, i.e. technically in line, but would probably never have been allowed to take the throne in practise had that scenario ever actually arisen.

DA was maybe inspired a bit/some by ASOIAF. This was way before it was on TV of course. DG at the time had read the first book or so. He liked the fact that it was a fantasy setting but low-magic, and was about the people in the world and their politics rather than magic, prophecy and other high fantasy stuff.

It was only by DAI that the system designers decided that it was okay to think of banter as an “activity that players engaged in”. In previous games, the devs had inadvertently managed to ‘train’ players to immediately stop when companion banter fires so that they could hear it all (because if you do something else, it gets cut off). When the level designers put together the spaces, they accounted for what players would be doing i.e. how much time between combat. They didn’t however account for like “You’re travelling down this hall and there’s a banter for half of that space. This is an activity, so it’s okay not to put anything in there”. This is how the inadvertent training happened, when originally banters were supposed to be a thing that ran as you move around the world (as opposed to stopping and standing still). 

When asked if the Blight resulted from the creation of the Veil or pre-dates it: “I think you’ll probably have to wait on the game[s] for that answer, if it ever explains it”. He was also asked whether Arlathan is the Golden City. He won’t answer such questions naturally because they are “DeepLooooooore™~~ ♫”.

DG isn’t sure that he will play DA4 when it comes out. It’s not that PW and the team won’t do a good job, they will, it’s just that when DG plays RPGs he has an analytical mindset going on and finds it difficult to slip into the game and just enjoy. For DA4, as he was previously so involved in DA, there’ll naturally probably be an extra level of that with feeling like “What would I have done [for particular parts of the game’s design]?”. Alternatively he might instead feel like “Wow, this is awesome, here’s a game I would have made but didn’t have to do any work on!” DG stressed that it’s important to him to be fair about the work of his former colleagues - he wouldn’t want to come out and be like “I wouldn’t have made [this or that] choice”. He also noted that just because something might be a call he personally wouldn’t have implemented in the game, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad call. There are people out there where if DG intimated at all that there was an aspect of DA4 that he wasn’t keen on, he’s worried that they would pounce on it and use it as ammunition against the current team (who are his friends that he really cares about and wants to do well). He walked away from DA voluntarily and is happy his game will continue on. PW popped by in chat at this point and agreed that it’s definitely hard to play something that you used to work on.

Other assorted tidbits:

DG really opposed the part at the Battle of Ostagar where mabari are set to charge the darkspawn horde - “That’s not how you would use dogs [in war]”

There was supposed to be a cutscene where Flemeth rescues the HoF and Alistair from the top of the Tower of Ishal in her dragon-form. This was cut. DG remembered being angry about this like “nobody is gonna buy that you fall unconscious and then wake up in the hut totally rescued. [...] I guess I’m not always right”

When DG went to Beamdog there was a period where they thought about making a Baldur’s Gate 3. They put together a pitch and had a long series of discussions contemplating things like “What do we need from BG3? What do we expect it to have in order to have the BG name? What is needed and not needed to connect to from the previous games?”

DG isn’t sure who designed the DAO inventory system

PW in chat recalled a game writer from another company who was really ragging on DAI on the Christmas Day after release

Narrative designer and system designer are very different positions/roles with very different responsibilities

Simon Templeton as Loghain did all his voicework stuff in one take, which was very impressive

It would have been the marketing department that chose 30 Seconds To Mars for music. DA was really good at choosing up-and-coming acts for this that weren’t huge when they used their songs, but became huge afterwards

During work on Baldur’s Gate 2 was the most DG has ever crunched. He slept in the office a few times

“As soon as you get both Alistair and Morrigan in the party, that’s when it’s like ahh yes, this is a BioWare game”

Were Flemeth and Morrigan’s interactions with each other and the PC when Morrigan is being told to leave the Wilds and go with the Hero an act, considering that Morrigan did know about the OGB plan? No. That was The Plan, but said plan wasn’t like “Ok, she’s going to leave Right Now”

The elves and the inversion of the traditional elven trope are DG’s favorite part of the world/world-building

One of the original intentions for DAO was to make it so that the player wouldn’t need a healer in the party, or that there would be different kinds of healing, or that healing itself wouldn’t be a thing, but this just didn’t work out

The Imperial Highway used to be a really important part of the lore but it kind of got forgotten a bit

It’s kinda funny that after release some players expressed that Corinne Kempa’s accent as Leliana was “sooo fake”. It’s not fake, she’s actually a Brit that moved to France when she was young, so she has the exact type of accent that Leliana would have (Leliana was born in Orlais and is culturally Orlesian, but her mother was Fereldan and she considers herself as such)

They talked some about the need for documentation and how doing this can feel beurocratic and uncreative and how like you’re not working on a game or writing. PW in chat expressed that there was a year where they spent a lot of it working in PowerPoint and Excel, “so I feel this”

When they switched art directors to Matt Goldman, his first big complaint was about all the brown. He came to DG like “Is there a lore reason for or are you particularly in favor of the brown for story reasons?” DG was like “Uhh no” and Matt was then like “Ok good”

Console codes/commands aren’t usually stripped out of a game before release, they are usually still in the built, just disabled. The system itself is not removed but how to access said system is

BW doesn’t crunch as bad as we hear some companies do, and kind of prided itself on “not being terrible at crunch”. But BW’s “not terrible at crunch” is still crunch. We obviously don’t commend abusive family members for only abusing people on certain days of the week or whatever

Kate Mulgrew is American but she at times did the same thing a lot of the British VAs did, which was that the devs had a lot of struggle with getting them to say “darkspawn” correctly, with the emphasis in the right places. They’d say “dark SPAWN” as if it was two words with an adjective, and the stress put in the wrong place

Lack of children in DAI was a resources thing. They only had time to make a certain number of models. There was a series of meetings where they had to decide what things to cut. In the last meeting it was like ‘Here’s a bunch of things you don’t want to cut, we need to cut 4 of them’

They decided to put horned qunari back in DA2 because then they had the resources to do so. They then ended up having to explain why there were hornless qunari at the same time, and make this an in-world explanation as opposed to just ‘We didn’t have the resources, that was totally intentional’

Lots of players missed out on recruiting Leliana and/or Sten on their first playthrough and didn’t even know they existed/could be recruited. “Apparently we weren’t that great at pointing players in the right direction”

Tevinter is inspired by the Byzantine Empire (which wasn’t called that at the time incidentally, this is a name given by historians after the fact), what used to be the Roman Empire after the western part fell. This is the era Tevinter today is meant to encapsulate: decadent but clearly in decline, far away from the heyday and the heights of the former empire [source]

[Part 1]

[Part 2]

[Part 4]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

[fandom-sheep]

Eret 29 JAN 22

Rescuing Michael Part 1/1

I forgot liveblogging was a thing

I was messaging my friend I got in dsmp

Maiming Eret with Techno on my iPad.

They’re going to beat up Eret. Please. If Eret loses a life during this.

“They took your stuff. They took your baby. You got nothing man.” -Techno

Ope Sam joined

Alright Eret’s stream is delayed compared to Techno.

Eret honey please don’t die.

It’s so quiet. We aren’t in VC

“Should we start stabbing or talk to them first?” -Techno

Eret on his throne. We love a queen.

Alright Eret made a bad decision again.

I’m happy Stimming I love Eret lore.

To be fair tubbo is making good points.

So is Eret.

Techno. You keep standing there you’re doing fine honey.

Let’s not stab.

Oh yeah Sam doesn’t live in the prison.

Scuffed. It’s Technos scuffed.

Oh they’re making references to the Discord.

Discord is only a book

Get vengeance. Do it.

I mean yeah. Dad in lots of armor would scare a kiddo.

“A team up of Tubbo and everyone who’s murdered him in the past.” Oh it is.

I understand Tubbo being sus of this event.

Eret’s apologized?

Oh Eret’s skin has a new crown? Sorry I glanced at Technos stream and got distracted.

Trying to take turns apologizing

Wherever Techno comes from they don’t have multiple lives

Someone write that down the one life theorists were correct.

Alrighty good apology.

Anyway off to beat to Sam.

“The uneasy alliance” and tubbo is the ghost.

Oh was Eryn afk??

I glanced down.

Water break? Hydrate.

Oh only Eret prepared to hydrate.

Prime path (and channel members y’all can be here too)

Spooky scary prison.

ERET PUT ON SHADERS!

Eret’s shader pictures of the SMP are the best.

Oh the player Michael.

Oh tnt dupers. Spotted by Tubbo.

And no one else with render distance up.

This trio is my favorite. I can’t wait to learn their trio name.

Bell!!! Hooray!!

Follow/Sub! Do it!

I’m going to get a noise complaint from listening to this where half the people can’t keep a reasonable level of volume.

Bell from god.

Techno standing on the boat. I glanced at the other stream and my audio isn’t caught up yet.

Slowly sail.

3 man boat!

Trident and boat. What a group.

Judging Techno’s Uber etiquette.

Thing in the horizon.

Tubbos stream is render distance. Eret’s stream is shaders. Technos stream is technos stream.

I glance at Technos stream and they’re doing group screenshots?

Oh now conversing.

Eret starting off by calling Sam and bastard.

Sam I can’t hear you kid?

Tubbo got smacked.

Tubbo seems to have a habit of hiding behind Eret at various times.

Techno left and returned.

BLOOPER! Robot stream on Technos end.

Deep voice people. And tubbo.

Gib da Baby.

“Everybody back up!” Everyone steps closer.

Tubbo please don’t die for not having your armor on.

In the corner like a bad kid.

Technos chat is screaming Blood.

Eret’s chat is screaming for him to kill Sam.

The voices and ferrets aren’t happy. I don’t know about Tubbos bees.

And an extra child.

Supervillain poof!

Everyone’s taking turns stabbing.

Sam begging them to stop.

All armor given to everyone.

Wow taking everything. Everyone keeping their watches. I remember Foolish giving those to everyone.

Keep that underwear on Sam.

Someone help me.

I saw a Michael on Technos stream?

There he is! There’s the baby!

Gotta wait for day.

Piston door trapped in a boat. Wow.

Sam’s on his supervillain arc.

Trying to prevent escapes.

This was a messy plan. It’s like the theorists said. He can’t fathom a plan going wrong.

Didn’t want to kill Ranboo? Honey. No.

I swear Eret is here for cinematic shots.

Oh no. Tubbo and Eret have the same idea.

Tubbo? Who the hell are you talking about?

Dad a what’s he called is according to Technos chat.

Prisoning Sam?

Sams options are be killed, or have to let them into the prison to put him in it.

Why is the prison a bad idea?

Technos discord trash.

Blooper filled stream. Our favorites.

Sam I swear to FUCK stop whispering.

I swear I’m impressed that Eret can mine dirt and such in character.

Sam having to swim because he can’t follow Uber etiquette.

Coming back for Michael later. Good.

This is going to take 20 years.

Sams tipping and rating now.

I love jokes like these that are slightly meta.

Uber sponsor the DSMP.

Sam and Techno standing up to face off for a sec.

Oh yeah. Sam’s worldeater.

Built world eater to collect blocks and such?

This isn’t Sam neg. I just think it’s funny they keep calling him a super villian.

Turning technos stream away from me so I can avoid spoilers.

A single raw potato from Eret.

Sam pressed the button. Is everything going to work?

Sam?

Alright Techno in and stab.

Through the portal.

Whoops. They messed the timing. 2/3 of them have never been in.

Tubbo?

Abandoned stuffs.

What? Why free him for giving stuff back?

Eret with TnT to mess up the redstone.

Makes sense.

Sam has armor again too btw

Oh they noticed.

Sam on half a heart. I swear the bloopers.

“No one breath on me for the next several minutes.” -Sam

Stuff missed in the locker.

Oh Ranboo’s “Do Not Read”. But we’re not reading it?

Poking Sam through the prison.

Sam for the love of god speak up.

Sam first.

Tubbo took the access card.

Good heavens this is a mess.

Laggy. Whoops.

Sigh. Techno missed the moment.

Fancy redstone. We love it.

Sam’s not the warden anymore. Tubbo has the card.

Hmm. Wonder who destroyed part of the prison. 😂

c!Eret forgot how to swim for a moment.

Everyone stabbing Sam for going a way they don’t know.

“You can’t drain this Lava” -Sam “I’ve seen it” -Techno

Did Ranboo visit in endet form and sign the book that way??? Lore???

Tubbo and Eret trapped a moment.

Ah finally main cell.

Now to wait for the lava.

Why does the time matter?

Sam???

Luxury Rolex.

Potatoes and Carrots.

Stab stab.

Royal Retribution taking Sams stuff.

Oh god bell still in prison.

Sam?

Sam this is sus?

Tubbo why would you go with him????

This isn’t a good idea.

Tubbo doing a cell inspection.

Techno can vet the hole.

Click the bed? Bed clicked.

Sam did die and respawn in the cell.

I swear everyone playing inny minny minny mo.

Redstone scuffed.

Techno pearling over.

Eret sitting there minding his business.

1 hour till Manatreed.

Why is Sam so obsessed with fire res?

Struggling?

Here comes the lava.

No shoving Eret into the lava.

Keycards reset at midnight. They’ll not get the keycard back.

They’re trapped too???

Oh no. That’s why Sam was talking fire res.

I mean. TNT.

Blow your way out.

Just casually breaking all the redstone.

Oh look Manatreed.

Wasn’t expecting that.

TNT Part 2

45 minutes until manatreed matters.

Testing portals.

Eret didn’t not it fast enough.

Oh yeah stasis pearl.

Please let Eret out after this.

Back to looking at Technos stream.

Erets just in case things coming in handy.

Techno stream is yelling at him to get Eret.

Please techno and Tubbo. Stop reminiscing and get the dude.

Eret yoinking the gold. Sigh.

Eret thinking. Everyone else thinking.

They aren’t sure what tower they are going to.

And Eret’s worried she’s been ditched.

Eret your builds are just a pain to navigate.

Hi foolish.

Please release the Eret.

There he is. Back to Eret maining.

Volume down techno stream as I sit and wait.

King and Anarchist who killed a Tubbo teaming with a Tubbo.

Finally a group name.

Revengers that’s the best name I’ve heard so far.

Now Michael time.

Trying to find chargers so my devices have battery to call my friend during the Manatreed stream.

Meh it’s a Sam. It’ll live.

Tubbo has acquired his son. Now everyone hurrying there.

Ahh. Tubbo moving into Ranboo’s Antarctic house. 🥺

“Anarchy is when no house” -Techno

Everyone with silk touch trying to scar a baby.

Michael he’s running!

They’re digging there.

They’re struggling digging there.

Everyone being careful not to be responsible for Michael.

He’s in!

They’re messing up Phil’s mob proofing. 😂

But it’s for Michael.

Ghostboo???

Ghostboo sounds so tired.

Everyone asking how he’s here? Didn’t Tubbo canonically already meet him?

Are we going to get the kid out of the cold?

Again we’re breaking the mob proofing.

Ghostboo can get child in?

They got him up.

And got him in.

Woohoo!

Forgives Techno. But doesn’t fully forgive Eret. Sounds right.

REVENGERS!

Bell!

Primes and members!!!

Shaders our beloved.

Noisy pumpkin farm.

Oh the Do Not Read book. Right.

They’re giving it to Ghostboo.

Techno placing back the snow.

Ghostboo just accepting the book. Being polite.

Ghostboo accepting living in a 2/1 hole in his own house to Tubbo can move in.

Hes got the waivers.

The ender waivers.

Techno and Phil willing to fight for Michael. Phil being voluntold.

Off goes the king.

Eret guessing how to get back to his castle.

Bye techno.

Eret giving us behind the scenes now.

Hello Techno raiders.

Makes sense this has been planned since November. Techno was short an arm for December or so.

Eret and Sam wrote most of it. 🥺

Alright time to start looking for Manatreed’s stream.

[spacesuitsforemergency]

Remember the Eduardo dorado jr x Y/N Allen x Jaime Reyes polyamory relationship you created - could I request an accompanying oneshot where they are on a mission and Reader gets possess by the Phoenix force or some mystical entity and the boys try to help her control her overwhelming new abilities. Fluff. Please Bart is less protective btw

Word Count: 1.2k

A/N: I based this a lot on the Dark Phoenix movie and how it happened to her in that, cause the Phoenix never interested me in the comics so I don’t know a whole lot about it. Didn’t really know how to end it, sorry it’s so short, but I really like this ship/pairing!

“Os quiero a ambos, but my arm is falling asleep.” Jaime tried to tug his arm out from underneath you and Eduardo.

“It’s too early to move.” You mumbled, eyes still shut and face still buried in Eduardo’s chest, breathing in the faint smell of his expensive cologne.

“It’s noon, hermosa.” Eduardo chuckled lightly, running a hand through your hair. “We should get up.”

“Yeah, before my arm falls off.” Jaime pushed against Eduardo’s shoulder, still trying to break free.

You groaned, not moving at all. Eduardo lifted himself up a little for Jaime to get loose, but Jaime had tugged a little harder as soon as he did, causing him to tumble out of bed.

“You good, mi hombre?” Eduardo laughed as you both sat up, looking down at Jaime sprawled out on the floor.

“Well, Scarab said I could’ve just died if I landed just right.” Jaime sighed as he picked himself off the floor. “So apparently good.”

You all groaned when the alarms rang, meaning either an intruder or an emergency mission. You quickly suited up before rushing out to the lobby, where the Outsiders were gathered.

“What’s going on?” El Dorado asked.

“Some spaceship crashed in Beverly Hills.” Wonder Girl informed. “And there’s a bank heist going on downtown.”

“Well lets go, we don’t got all day!” Static ran towards the ship deck.

“El Dorado, Blue Beetle, Cyborg, H/N, let’s go.” Beast Boy ordered. “The rest of you go deal with the heist!”

“See ya, sis!” Bart grinned and ruffled your hair. “Don’t have too much fun without me!”

“Don’t get into too much trouble without me.” You pointed at him as you followed your team.

“Come on, hermosa!” Jaime grabbed your hand and tugged you along.

Once you were all on the ship, Static took off, quickly getting to the coordinates. It took you to a more rural part of Beverly Hills, somewhere in the backroads where there thankfully weren’t many people.

You peered out of the window of the ship, seeing a small spaceship crashed into pieces on the ground. There was this strange glow to it that entranced you, almost hypnotized you.

“What the hell is that?” Cyborg wondered aloud.

“What’s making it glow?” Blue Beetle asked.

“Maybe alien tech.” Beast Boy said. “Alright. Let’s go, H/N, try to get some readings on it.

You nodded and pulled up your tech as Static landed the ship on the ground, then walked out with the team. You all kept your distance as you clicked through charts, trying to figure out what it was.

“Well?” Cyborg asked you, also taking readings.

“The energy levels are off the charts.” You said, half paying attention to the actual readings and half to the strange voice pulling you towards the ship.

“Y/N? What are you doing?” Eduardo asked as they watched you slowly start to approach it.

“H/N! Stay back!” Beast Boy ordered.

“It’s talking to me.” You mumbled, the charts you pulled up fading away as you lost concentration on them.

“Y/N! Stop!” Jaime ran towards you, but before he could pull you back you touched the glowing light, and power surged through you.

You screamed in pain as the energy coursed through your veins, overloading your brain and body. Everyone watched as orange light swallowed you, which resembled fire.

“Y/N!” Eduardo and Jaime yelled desperately, then they were all pushed back by another power surge.

“Cyborg! Blue Beetle! What’s happening?” Garfield shouted over the noise.

“Scarab says it’s taking over her!” Blue Beetle called over.

“What’s ‘it’?” El Dorado asked, shielding his eyes from the blinding light.

“He says it’s a Phoenix!”

“A Phoenix?” Static repeated. “But that doesn’t make any sense!”

“Does he mean the Phoenix Force?” Beast Boy asked. “I’ve heard of that! Back in the 80s!”

“How do we help her?” El Dorado asked. “Kill that thing?”

“We can’t!” Cyborg shouted. “It’s an immortal entity! There’s no such thing as destroying it!”

“We don’t need to destroy it we just need to get it out of Y/N!” Eduardo snapped.

It suddenly got quiet, and the force holding them back was lifted. They all turned back to you, seeing you lying on the ground. Jaime and Eduardo rushed to their girlfriends side, Jaime holding her to his chest as Eduardo pushed her hair out of her face.

“Is she okay?” Garfield asked as the rest of the team walked over.

“Khaji Da, vitals.” Jaime mumbled to the Scarab. “She’s...okay?”

“What?” Virgil asked. “Something just...sounds wrong, but went inside her!”

“Yeah but...she’s fine.” Jaime blinked, just as confused.

“Get her on the ship. We need to get her back to base.” Garfield instructed. “Lets go.”

Jaime picked you up and carried you back to the ship, Eduardo yelling at Virgil to fly faster and cursing at nobody in particular. You were half awake on the drive home, drifting in and out of consciousness. Jaime whispered sweet nothings in your ear to comfort you, while also trying to calm Eduardo down.

After what felt like hours, they finally got back to the base. Eduardo took you from Jaime and teleported you inside, having refined his powers enough that it didn’t hurt either one of you. He set you down carefully on a bed, waiting for somebody to show up and help you. One of the doctors checked your vitals and hooked you up to an IV and heart monitor, but that was about it.

“Seriously? That’s it?” Eduardo asked.

“I don’t know what else I can tell you. Physically, she’s fine. Perfectly healthy.” The doctor insisted.

“But-“

“Thank you.” Jaime interrupted. The doctor finally left once Eduardo wasn’t bombarding her with questions, and Jaime tugged him into the chair next to him.

“What the hell happened?!” Bart zipped into the room, instantly at his sisters side.

“Khaji Da says the Phoenix Force is taking over her.” Jaime said quietly.

“What the hell even is the Phoenix Force?” Eduardo shouted in frustration.

“How did it happen?” Bart asked.

“One at a time!” Jaime snapped, his own fear and frustration starting to boil over. “Look, I don’t know everything, okay? Figure it out yourself, Lalo! And Bart! She said it was talking to her, then it...went into her! Or something!”

Bart and Eduardo both stared wide eyed at him, not used to seeing an angry or upset Jaime. Jaime looked away from both of their gazes, taking a deep breath. They then stayed silent, listening to the steady beeping of the heart monitor.

“Why do you all look like someone killed your dog?”

They all looked up when they heard your voice, and watched as you sat up in bed.

“Y/N!” They all smiled happily, relief washing over them.

“What happened?” You asked as you rubbed your aching head, still disoriented and only barely awake.

“Uh...don’t worry about it.” Bart grinned awkwardly.

“I was so worried. Are you okay? How do you feel?” Eduardo asked as he held you in a bone crushing hug.

“Great.” You wheezed from how hard he was squeezing you.

“Lalo, ease up.” Jaime reminded his boyfriend.

“Guys! We contacted the X-Men!” Cyborg rushed into the room. “We gotta go. Now.”

[handlewcaare]

When one read the comic books, being a teenage hero was a helluva lot easier than it was.

Spiderman didn’t have to watch his grades gradually plummet with each “emergency” meeting the Avengers set up for him. Nor did he have to turn in half finished homework because he forgot to do it when he ran off to handle a Behemoth of a beast. It was smooth sails for the likes of some friendly neighborhood vigilante.

Badd wished it was that simple.

He couldn’t complain it was all that rough. Kids at school knew of his devestating strength, so much so that a few would text him about a monster nearby. At times, he’d handle a monster in exchange for a free tutoring session for a class he was struggling in. It was a fair exchange, a life for a decent test grade.

Some people at school would greet him, but he was hardly popular. If anything, he was just as good as company as a cardboard cut out. Someone to briefly pause what he was doing to stoically pose for a photo-op. Though, some people just assumed he wasn’t as friendly as the stature he put on.

“Badd, right?”

His brow arched, momentarily breaking the signature snarl he naturally adorned (it wasn’t a scowl, it was just his face). The voice came from a girl who’s face was speckled with a constellation of freckles. He knew of her, that she was a new transfer student from H-City, but he never got to know who she really was.

“Ya know anyone else that looks like me?”

“Yeah,” the girl remarked, “hate to say it but a pompadour isn’t exactly a unique feat of yours.” Despite his frown, she went on to resume, “I was gonna ask if you had a spare hair tie.”

Out of all the things she could have asked him to do, she asked for a meager hair tie. She might as well have asked a practical mountain of a man to do her makeup. What an odd thing to ask, “how the hell do ya know I even have one??”

What should have been a snide remark about how he always had a spare hair tie for his little sister was accented with a shrug, “The girls in my track team say you do. I don’t mind using my shoelaces though—!”

“Ya can do that??” He implored as he surrendered the hair tie that was nestled within his pants pocket, “wouldn’t it be flying out of yer hair or somethin’ ?”

“You just have to know how to tie it,” after she briefly gave her thanks, she secured her dark hair within a high-ponytail. After a beat, she made a full presentation of the bun atop of her crown. “Ta-da! How does it look?”

“Like a pineapple.”

What insult would have made girls scoff or bark out a bigger insult at him only prompted a wrinkle from the girl’s nose as she laughed. Her grin radiant, almost contagious for a guy renowned for his intimidating glare. It didn’t take the girl long to skip back to her team—‘thanks Badd!’ She would chirp over her shoulder—and he offered a small wave of goodbye to her.

To say it had been the last time they spoke would have been a blatant lie. The girl, who’s name was revealed to be Hikari, would be variant in her greetings. Some days would just be utter small talk: ‘how are you?’ ‘Fine, you?’ ‘Could be better,’ and other days would be exclusively full of excitement. Most notably were they the days that she had just finished her track season or after practice:

“—what I’m saying is that Ayame started acting funny when she dropped the baton,” Hikari said as the two of them sat along the edge of the rooftop during lunch. Her brows furrowed as she plucked a piece of grilled salmon out of her bento box and set it over for Badd to eat.

“Ya still won though, right?”

“Yeah, but it was like something startled her? I can’t say what exactly, but she got a little frazzled after the tournament,” she hummed as she pursed her lips, “maybe ‘m overthinking it.”

“Ya gotta bad habit of that,” he quipped as he took a bite of the surrendered salmon, “she prolly jumped cus she dropped it.”

As it turned out, that wasn’t wholly the case.

The more he talked to Hikari throughout the months in school, the more exposure he got from Ayame. How she often would ask for one of her friends to come with her to the bathroom or how she would stay longer than an hour or two after practice. He wasn’t a psychologist, but Hikari’s concern became more understandable.

Once he was invited to eat lunch with Hikari and her track team, that was when he met Ayame.

As always, Hikari was rather jovial with introductions. Her excitability practically lightened the mood, even when some girls felt a little unnerved to be around a guy who could easily crush a monster’s skull with an indestructible weapon. Those girls he left very well alone for their comfort. The others were met with his gruff nature, he wasn’t sure whether Hikari told them he had a soft spot or not, but Ayame was the one who stood out the most.

The girl was kind and soft-spoken. She loved talking about her cat named Sakusa and she couldn’t help but find pictures of Tama to be an absolute delight. Though, Badd couldn’t lie, Sakusa was just as adorable.

The thing was she couldn’t afford to look him in the eye, nor could she barely manage a tone beyond a small murmur. When Badd would growl out a ‘huh??’ over a mean jest, she would flinch instinctively. Such a response evoked a small ‘sorry’ from the bat-wielding hero.

Lunch became rather awkward between them after that. Fortune came in Hikari’s emotional intelligence, otherwise Badd would have tried to make some means of dramatic compensation. He picked up a giant bouquet of roses for Zenko’s concert when he missed her piano recital once.

It wasn’t until school was no longer in session that he caught a glimpse of Ayame retreat to an older man. Her arms folded across her chest, though the heightened bark of the man made her flinch once more.

The man could have blended in well with the white collar types: nicely trimmed suit, slick back hair and an expensive pair of gloves that would have made Amai Mask green with envy. Their insignia was rather reminiscent to a bamboo lily.

He didn’t just have money, he had money to buy himself out of consequences.

By now, the grip around his signature bat became rigid in a white-knuckled grasp. His storm merely accented with a twirl of his instrument to rest atop of his broad shoulder.

“—and I told you to do the dishes!” The older man exasperatingly barked, “the hell were you doing??”

“I just...” Ayame paused as she shuffled closer to the masonry, “I h-had practice okay? It’s not a big deal—“

“It is a big deal!” His voice was now a tornado that swam tension within the air. His face was beet red and his fists practically quivered from the intensity of his own storm, “I had my fuckin’ brother over and—!”

Without a hint of hesitance, Badd rammed the hilt of his bat directly into the man’s diaphragm. The sheer velocity of his strength evoked a shriek from Ayame and a wheeze from the stranger. Had he known he shattered a rib or two, he probably would have offered a menacing simper.

“Do Yer own damn dishes next time,” when the man attempted to scramble to his full height, Badd hadn’t hesitated to step in front of Ayame. It wasn’t everyday he handled an abusive shithead, but they were marginally easier to handle than a stray papermache volcano come to life.

As the man scowled, his glare dripped over to Ayame, “this isn’t over—!” Once the threat had seeped, Badd simply let his metallic instrument slam into the concrete. A cobweb of weight bloomed under the strain.

“You bet Yer ass it is,”

This was a monster, no doubt, but he had heard from Daichi that some monsters liked to isolate their victims. Norte dam syndrome or something like that. As soon as the man retreated, Ayame began to present signs and symptoms of that.

“He wasn’t going to hurt me,” her voice was distant compared to the staggering man who retreated with a very polite warning. “He was just being an ass, okay? You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know what bein’ an ass is,” Badd scoffed, “and that wasn’t it.”

Being an ass meant Hikari poking fun of Badd crying in the middle of Zenko’s piano performance or Badd poking fun of Hikari not knowing how to do algebra, but being able to chemistry. Neither of them would have dared to clench their fist at the other, let alone make the other flinch in response.

Ayame only shook her head, “no, he just... he didn’t mean it.”

“ ‘s that what he tells ya?”

“Of course not, I—“ she sighed, her small shoulders slumped when she practically hung her head, “look, I know you’re supposed to be a hero, but he’s just a guy. You must have bigger priorities, right?”

Bigger priorities meaning bigger monsters; nothing like the abusive asshole nextdoor. Badd couldn’t help but wonder if that was really what being a hero meant to these people, that they were just as fictional as their comic book alternatives.

Whether the answer was blatant or not, it didn’t matter, “I don’t want ya gettin’ hurt, so call Hikari and stay with her, alright?”

“W-What are you gonna do??”

Badd simply unbuttoned his uniform jacket and let it draped over his shoulders.“ ‘m gonna go be a hero.”

It was a slow day at the notorious deadman detective agency. The gentle hum of the fan being the only company the detective had, among the various files of cold cases he tried to decipher in his day off. He didn’t mind the breaks, rather he milked them as often as he could, but they could be rather tedious at times.

Fortunately, his answer came in the form of his phone vibrating against the table. The caller ID consisted of a simple “Badd”. Chances were that the kid needed someone to pick up his sister or ask about homework he didn’t understand.

“Well, good afternoon to you too,” Daichi hummed leisurely.

“Ay, real quick!” If Badd hadn’t been huffing so much, he wouldn’t have assumed the intensity of the situation required a running start, “ya know anyone who’s got a flower on their gloves?”

There was a pregnant pause when Daichi tucked the phone along his shoulder. What sprawled evidence files had been tucked into their respective cabinet drawers, yet there wasn’t anything that could have resembled a nondescript flower. Aside from the insignia a murderer had carved into the wood of his victim’s furniture.

“What kind of flower was it?”

“Iunno??” Badd grunted, seemingly vaulting himself over a fence from how the chains rattled under his weight, “like a Lily or somethin’ ??”

Had his blood not been lethargic like tar, it would have ran glacial through his veins. He never quite noticed how reminiscent it was to a lilac flower, only that it was scrawled and messy. Though, it would have been a bold assumption to make Badd would keep him alive, “You’re planning on going after him, aren’t you?”

“Yep!”

He figured.

Hastily did Daichi retrieve his beige coat and slid his arms through the sleeves, “don’t do anything like kill him. I’ve been looking into cases like—!”

“Ah, I gotta go. I think I see him!”

“Badd, wait-! Wait, did you hear—?!” When the line was cut off to evoke a triad of monotonous beeps, Zombieman hissed a curse under his breath when he rushed to grab his keys and head to C-City. He didn’t even bother to shelf his evidence back when he bolted out the door.

Kids, he swore...

[lifblogs]

#SPNDBCC | Hunting | @foundfamily4eva

READ ON AO3

“Well, that’ll be our missing girl,” Jody commented, referring to the dead body in front of her and Sam.

Sam grimaced, and then took a step closer.

The body itself was tied to a tree with a thin, but strong, wire around the neck, and the head had been bashed in. The throat had been slit as well. The body had slumped, legs having gone limp, and the head hung forward at a disturbing angle. Blood was everywhere.

He leaned down, examining the head.

“The skull’s cracked,” he noticed.

“Any brain matter?”

He winced. “Yeah.”

She stepped forward now, going to examine the body. She covered her mouth and nose as she leaned in. As sheriff she probably didn’t see as many bodies as forensics did, though Sam knew she liked to get out in the field, especially when it came to hunting.

“This poor girl,” Jody commented. “Someone really wanted her dead. You seen anything like this before, Sam?”

“I was actually going to ask you the same thing.”

Jody just lifted her head and stared at him, eyes wide with disbelief.

“What? This is your jurisdiction,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but we don’t find dead bodies that look like a serial killer got to them” she argued. She shook her head, and started trekking up the grassy hill. “I gotta call this in.”

Sam searched around the area, looking for hex bags, or anything, testing for EMF. He found nothing, except for a footprint. It was small, probably from a woman.

Jody finished calling a forensics team and a few deputies, and Sam said, “Hey, I think I found something!”

She went back over to him, and Sam pointed out the footprint that was behind the tree.

“So not a ghost,” she said.

“Yeah, they can’t leave that kind of mark.”

“Could we be looking at a person?”

Sam grimaced, and turned to the dead body again. “Maybe.”

~~~

Research. Always research. Sam was having a difficult time with it because he truly hadn’t seen this before. Throat slashed, strangled, head bashed in… It felt like a new kind of messed up, especially since the killer could be a human.

He wondered which wound had killed the girl. All three of them could’ve done the job.

For now, Jody was at the sheriff’s station, searching through case files from before her appointment as sheriff. She’d call him if she found anything.

Sam sat at the rickety table in his motel room, laptop out in front of him. He had a multitude of links open, and at the moment, he was digging deep, using a search engine that wouldn’t alert anyone or be saved on the laptop’s history. Besides, it wasn’t as if Google would give him answers about someone getting violently murdered.

He didn’t have any ideas either. What could this thing even be?

“Human,” he muttered to himself. “Human…”

Could be a sacrifice.

With that in mind, he was able to make his research a little more specific. It took an hour, least, but he managed to find something. It wasn’t much, just a picture tucked away in an online copy of a very old book, a description underneath.

Sam frowned, examining the picture again. The renderings weren’t realistic, of course, having come from a time where the art styles were still being figured out. It was before the Renaissance. The book itself was at least a century old, so Sam wasn’t sure he trusted the source.

He searched the description attached to the image.

His phone started ringing.

“Hello,” he answered after hitting the green arrow and putting the phone to his ear.

“Sam, I found something.”

“I think I did too. You first.”

“So there were deaths like these fifty years ago.”

“Crap, that long?”

“And aside from that, there hasn’t been anything else. There were nine like it, all victims killed in the same way. Of course, the records aren’t as detailed as they would’ve been now, but it’s something. Could we be dealing with a copy cat killer?”

Sam shook his head, bewildered. “It would’ve had to be someone who knew about all this. I kind of doubt it.”

“Alright, what’d you find?”

“So I couldn’t find anything at first,” he explained, going back to the image. “But it looks like we’re dealing with a sacrifice.” Sam thought he could hear Jody wince on the other end of the phone. “Yeah,” he commented. “Um… I’m gonna hit the library, see what I can find.”

“I’ll look into public records.”

“Good idea. Reconvene in an hour?”

“It’s a date.”

Sam smiled, loving that he was working with Jody on this despite the horrors they were dealing with. It had been way too long since he’d seen Jody. Besides, he’d needed to get out. Dean and Castiel were dealing with the Mark, and Sam, who always felt anxious and just a little terrified around his brother now, had desperately needed something to drag him away from all that.

He grabbed his laptop, and his notes, and stuffed them into a satchel, and then he was on his way.

~~~

The first thing Jody did was search through the list of names she’d gotten from the old police file.

“Carter O’Connell,” she mused as she stood on a ladder and dug through a set of old files. She found the manilla folder with his information. There wouldn’t be much since this was before computer records, but it was worth something. It’d have his full name, age, family members, social security number, address, and history of work.

She climbed off the ladder, and brought the file with her. She went to look at the archival cards. The cabinets that stored them were a dark brown, and covered in dust. She blew the dust away, quickly leaning back to avoid breathing it in.

Jody put the file she’d found on top, and started searching.

“Ha!” she cried, as she found where the next previous victim’s file could be found. 

It was annoying that she had to do this, but she’d already looked through the file of the girl they’d found, and she couldn’t find anything of note. But maybe with more information she and Sam could make some sort of connection.

Jody went to go get the next file.

~~~

At the library, after taking a lot of books out that led to more books due to the information he found and wrote down, Sam ended up looking at a small shelf in the mythology section. The book he grabbed now was on Celtic mythology, druids and sacrifice.

As he read he realized that druids had committed some human sacrifices, except it had been rare. Searching through the index led him to a part of the thick book on beings called daraich. Sam found the page, right near the end of the book, and started to read.

He frowned as he read.

According to historical evidence, there was a subset of druids known as the daraich (singular: darach). The word druid translates to “knower of the oak,” or “wise oak.” Darach itself does not have a disturbing meaning at the present date, though for centuries it translated to “dark oak,” with the prefix of the word “da-” meaning “dark.”

Sam immediately took notes, underlining the word “DARACH” and then writing underneath it, “dark druid.” The text hadn’t specifically said that, but “wise oak,” being turned into “dark oak” was all the information he needed.

He searched through the book some more, and stopped on a disturbing artist’s rendition of the ritual sacrifice. It wasn’t exact, though the tapestry that the picture in the book was of showed the same injuries as the ones they’d found on that girl. Bruises around the neck from strangulation, blood leaking from the head, and blood coming from the throat.

The description underneath the image described that the dark druids would commit violent sacrifices in order to gain power.

This led Sam to reading the entire page.

While the deaths themselves were thought to grant power as someone’s lifeblood was spilled out, the word “sacrifice” in primary sources suggests that it was an offering to a deity. “Sacrifice,” when looking at the Latin translation as sacrificium, means, “Something of meaning offered up to a deity.” This is relevant due to the many definitions of sacrifice pointing to a relationship between the person committing the sacrifice, and the deity, along with the Roman invasion of Celtic territories at around 1000 BC.

The druids themselves did commit human sacrifices during their Iron Age, but the acts were later condemned. Instead, they would offer up animals, weapons, and food. Due to the nature of druidism having a close connection to the natural energies of the life of the earth, the deities were thought to be in the spirit of the world itself. More specifically, lakes, and trees, and growing things.

This belief falls to the wayside as deities are accepted as beings rather than things or places.

To understand the sacrifices, one must first understand the nature of the Celtic beliefs. Possibly as early as the year 500 BC, the celts believed in sacred beings that could walk the earth, or inhabited what was known as the “Otherworld.” The sacrifice of life was attributed to a triad of these beings, a triad of sacrificial entities: Taranis, Esus, and Toutatis. These were deities of strength and power. Sacrificing to them was thought to create strength in the person committing the sacrifices.

Primarily, the sacrifices were animals, with the druidic idea that the blood would please these gods. Yet when the subset of dark druids came into being, these sacrifices turned gory, with the sacrificial victims being humans. Supposedly, the human sacrifices granted greater strength, and even powers from the Otherworld. Typically, these sacrifices would be committed preceding a war, or a battle. With the creation of the daraich (plural form of the word “darach”), to appease the triad of deities they most closely worshipped and were thought to communicate with, victims were sacrificed with what is called a threefold death. Early accounts describe this as victims being slaughtered violently, the three actions taken against them each having the ability to kill them.

Accounts of the deaths committed by the daraich describe the threefold death to this triad of deities. Evidence from an early translation: “The head must be struck, the throat pierced [slashed or cut], and the breaths must be taken.” This last act suggests strangulation. Victims of this sacrificial ritual would be found with three wounds that could have each been the cause of death: the head bashed in, throat cut, and strangulation, typically done with a garotte.

The druids condemned these acts and sought to—

Sam stopped reading. He’d been steadily taken notes as he’d done so, and now he looked at what he’d compiled, satisfied.

He called Jody.

~~~

Jody sat at a table, the files around her. She was beginning to find a connection the the old victims. They all had had some position of authority. A police officer, teachers, parents, soldiers, even a government official. Perhaps the connection was weak, but it was the only one she could find.

Her phone started ringing, and she answered. “Yep.”

“We’re dealing with a darach,” Sam said, forgoing a greeting.

“A what?”

“A darach. It translates to ‘dark oak,’ and was a subset of druids. The meaning of druid is ‘wise oak,’ so a dark oak—”

“Is a dark druid,” Jody finished.

“Yeah, exactly.”

“So they sacrifice people?” she asked.

“Yes, committing what was known as the threefold death.”

Jody sat and thought. “So that’s what we’re looking at here. All the files I dug up described the deaths as the same, and that poor girl we found…” She shook her head. “Sam, how do we even deal with this? And why would someone do that?”

“Usually the daraich would do this predating a battle.”

“But there’s no battle coming up.”

“There could be,” Sam said. “Who do we know of that’s becoming violent and might turn into a demon again?”

“Shit, that could be related?”

“We’ve run into other creatures who have tried to protect themselves from more powerful beings in the past.”

Jody sighed, taking this information in. Then, she informed Sam, “I found a connection between the victims. All authority figures.”

“Wait, then what about the girl?”

“After asking around, I found out that she was a babysitter. I didn’t think it was important at the time, but—”

“She had power over someone.”

“Exactly. Sam, how do we kill this thing?”

There was pause, and then Sam cleared his throat, explaining, “We have to burn them.”

“Huh, thought it’d be harder.”

“Daraich have powers.”

And… there it was. “Fuck.”

Sam heaved in a breath, and let it out, sounding frustrated, and maybe a little worried. “Yeah.”

Jody’s walkie blinked with a red light, and Jody said, “Hold on, Sam. I gotta go.”

“Come in, Sheriff Mills. Come in. Over.”

She pressed the button to allow herself to talk. “Standby. Go ahead. Over.”

“We got a 187 over here. Over.”

“Say again?” Jody asked, standing. She hadn’t realized there would be another victim so soon.

“187. Body mutilated. Over.”

“Roger that. Where’s the body? Over.”

Jody was given the location. “Affirmative. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Over and out.”

Immediately, she called Sam, “Sam, we got another one.”

~~~

When they got to the crime scene, there were already had a few deputies there, and forensics were showing up to swarm the place, doing their job with vigorous detail.

Sam felt sick as he looked at the body.

“Do we know who it is?” he asked Jody.

“Used to babysit him as a kid,” she let him know. “Heard that he moved back here, and became a high school teacher after college.” Jody was teary-eyed as she looked at Sam. “I don’t want to see any more of my people killed. What do we do?”

“I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

Sam frowned, and then winced. He ran a hand through his hair, and then over his face. He let out a frustrated, and discontented growl.

“Sam, tell me.”

Sam heaved in a deep breath, and then said, voice rough as it came out, “How do you feel about being bait?”

~~~

Rain poured down on Jody, and she raised her hands to grip at the cord that had gone around her neck, securing her to the oak tree, even as it strangled her.

She kicked feebly. The cord cut through her hands. A choked out cry left her, and then she tried to gasp in air. It wouldn’t come in.

Sam. Where was Sam?

He’ll be here. He has to be.

“Your friend won’t be coming,” the darach murmured, the voice of a woman.

No. No.

Jody wanted to ask why, but she couldn’t get air in. Was this how she was going to die?

~~~

Sam groaned, his head aching and throbbing fiercely. Blood had trickled into his right eye, and had nearly made its way inside his air. The cut on his injured head was large, and the blood had even soaked into his air. The darach had hit him with a rock, and now it was all coming back to him.

Rain was cleaning the blood off, even while it soaked Sam all the way down to his skin.

He got up, nearly slipped in the mud, and then leaned against a tree.

“Jody…” he rasped.

Dizzy, he picked up the flamethrower he had with him, and then started to run, slipping a great deal on the wet ground, to where they’d left Jody as bait.

He slid down a hill, having thrown himself down it on his back, giving up on walking down that; he would’ve fallen. Sam clambered to his feet once at the bottom, and he blinked blood out of his eyes.

There she was, tied to that tree with the very weapon being used to kill her.

“Hey!” Sam cried.

The darach hissed in some kind of frustration, and then it released the garotte.

Jody gasped, and coughed, but then collapsed to the ground, mud splattering on her cheek.

She didn’t get up. But he knew she was alive. Just unconscious.

Sam came forward as the darach stepped towards him, and he raised the flamethrower. He could barely see in the dark, but he was sure that shadow was the darach raising its hand. A fierce pain took hold of Sam’s body, even as a choking, poisoned wind swept towards him and into his lungs. It went through his throat, his nose, even as his body felt like his bones were splintering.

Sam fell, screaming in agony.

Fight through it, Sam. Fight it.

Jody groaned and shifted on the ground, and the darach turned its power on her. She screamed herself into unconsciousness.

Sam trembled, body in shock as it remembered the pain, but he clambered to his feet, and he ran, putting himself nearly right in front of the darach.

“Say hi to your gods for me, bitch,” he said, pressing the trigger on the flamethrower.

The darach’s screams and wails as it went up in flames were high-pitched, seeming to pierce his eardrums. Sam didn’t let up until it fell to the ground, its body a charred crisp.

He breathed hard, and almost fell, still hurting from his head. He turned, and saw Jody trying to move again. He went to her, getting on his knees.

“Did you do it?” she croaked out.

He held her, and she held him. Was that blood from her palms seeping into his jacket?

“Yeah, I did it,” he assured. “All thanks to you.”

“Glad you could recognize my hard work.”

Sam clapped her on the back, and pulled her closer. “Anytime, Jody.”

He helped her up, and together they stumbled out of the woods, Jody kicking the body of the darach for good measure as they passed it. They made it to the Impala, then to Sioux Falls General Hospital. As they sat in the waiting room, Sam with a hand on Jody’s knee that she was bouncing up and down, she looked at him, and smiled.

“I’m really glad we were able to save people from dying,” she told him.

“Hey, it’s part of the job.”

She leaned into him, as a mother would a child, and Sam grinned despite how out of it he felt and how much he hurt.

“And it feels damn good.”

“It sure as hell does.”

[pateldevs]

don’t be shy; share those cho chang headcanons 👀 (thank you for blessing us with that cho chang gifset btw, i love her)

ok literally thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about how much i love cho chang and she got done so dirty in the books AND the movies and i also have this elaborate backstory for her parents bc i love her so much aaaaa anyway there’s a lot so under the cut! ~~

i have fully adopted it into canon in my head lol but her chinese name is 張秋 (which means the pinyin i’m more familiar w would be ‘zhang qiu’ which i guess is close enough to cho), 張 meaning hunter/archer and 秋 meaning harvest/autumn

the fact that her anglicized surname is ‘chang’ and not ‘zhang’ makes me think her dad’s family is taiwanese

her mom’s family used to be involved in international affairs for the british ministry of magic office in hong kong (as it was still a colony) and that’s how her mom’s family came to the uk

her parents fully embodied the enemies-to-lovers trope when they were at hogwarts b/c her dad captained the ravenclaw quidditch team and her mom captained the gryffindor team and they were both seekers

hence cho totally grew up on quidditch and played around trying to catch an old snitch with her parents from a young age

she almost ended up in hufflepuff. look at the way she stuck by marietta in ootp?? she’s so fiercely loyal!! wtf!!!

the kinds of traits that ultimately put her in ravenclaw make her a good athlete and vice versa. look at how she plays quidditch: she relies on a number of strategies besides just outright skill, usually distraction/diversion and turning the opposing seeker’s skills against them

that said i fully think her father is muggle-born or half-blood and grew up fencing, so he teaches her how to fence, and so she’s also a great épée fencer

she’s not great with offensive spells - hence her trouble in when they’re in DA in ootp - but she’s excellent with defensive charms, predicting what her opponent’s going to do, moving fast. it’s what makes her one of flitwick’s favorite students.

charms is her best class. don’t ask me for justification here it just is.

flitwick obviously sees her potential and totally invites her to dueling club even though she’s quite young for it

she’s a harpist. don’t ask me where this came from i just think if she played an instrument it would be harp

she’s a younger sibling, she’s so sensitive like fr the eldest daughter in an asian family would just internalize their emotions (this one was developed jointly with my older sister lmao)

she and cedric didn’t start out as a couple. they started as friends when both of them were out on the quidditch pitch early one morning, just practicing flying.

she and cedric tell each other EVERYTHING. absolutely everything. like fr this girl was almost a hufflepuff ok don’t tell me they wouldn’t have the most emotionally invested relationship

cedric asks her to the yule ball and quickly says it’s a really lowkey thing, they’re just friends

they’re not just friends though, she thinks she’s starting to like him because when he looks at her she feels like she can do anything, and when he looks at her it’s her, not her sister, not anyone else.

she’s secretly glad that she has a reason to turn down harry when he asks her to the yule ball. marietta thinks she’s crazy - who would willingly turn down a chance to be harry potter’s date?? - but cho just can’t bear the thought of just being ‘harry potter’s date.’ with cedric, at least she has a chance to be herself.

when cedric dies she’s absolutely devastated:

she can’t stop thinking about how they snuck out of their houses to sit on top of the astronomy tower and look at the stars the night before the last task

she can’t stop thinking about how he confessed that he was scared but he knew he’s so close to winning, and how he joked that it would be impossible for her to not fall in love with him if he won

she can’t stop thinking about how she said don’t be scared, just pretend i’m there with you, i’ve got your back (because obviously they’ve been to dueling club together and he knows how good she is at defensive spells)

she can’t stop thinking about how he waved to her before he entered the maze at the start of the third task

she feels so insanely guilty that maybe she’s the reason he died, he said he wanted to do well to impress her that night on the astronomy tower, didn’t he?

she loses sleep over it, she has dreams about that last night all the time, she has dreams about seeing harry coming back with cedric’s body, she has these dreams where she’s watching him get killed and she can’t do anything to defend him

she wants to ask harry about it at the end of the year but she doesn’t, because she doesn’t think she can handle hearing about it, but somehow it’s worse hearing rumors from everyone else

she finds herself drawn to harry because he makes her feel closer to cedric, because the loss of cedric is something they both share and surely harry must know how it feels

honestly this is what really pisses me off about how she’s written in the books, is that her emotions are so one-dimensional that they become a caricature of asian women as meek and weepy. the most her emotions ever got developed was when hermione explained how cho must be feeling after she kissed harry

like, you’re allowed to have female characters whose arcs are largely tied to and/or driven by other characters, but you gotta actually go into those relationships yk? in the books she’s only ever someone’s girlfriend and she just cries all the time but we don’t actually talk about why

she’s not just crying all the time because she incapable of moving on (which is more or less what harry thinks). she’s crying because she didn’t just lose her boyfriend, she lost one of her best friends. she stops going to dueling club because she’s lost her partner. her flying starts suffering because she thinks about all those early morning 1v1 games she and cedric used to have.

(marietta only goes to DA meetings with her because she feels like it’s the ‘good friend’ thing to do. if going to DA helps her cope with cedric’s death then sure. she goes.)

i’ve already said she was almost a hufflepuff but i have to say it again, cho loves and cares so deeply. she’s a sucker for sentimentalism. she skips dumbledore’s funeral to stand up on the astronomy tower and think about the war that’s coming.

on the last day of her seventh year, she finds the room of requirement again and spends hours walking through it, remembering everything she learnt in DA

when the war really starts up after dumbledore’s death, her parents want to move away, they want her and her sister to have as non-magical a life as they can, so she does, but she keeps the DA galleon and her wand instead of snapping it like her sister. her parents have absolutely no idea that she goes off to the battle of hogwarts. 

when she fights she’s a team player. she partners up with katie bell for most of the final battle

at one point she and katie are separated and she comes face to face with a death eater. she almost kills him. she wants to so badly. she hates what the man stands for. but she thinks about two of the most important people in this war, harry and cedric, and she thinks, they never would. so she doesn’t.

^ she doesn’t think of harry and cedric because of her relationship with them. in fact it’s thinking about her relationship with cedric that makes her want to kill the death eater. but she thinks of harry and cedric, and what they would want and do, because they are the ones who had/have the most to lose in this war.

when are we going to get a series that delves into how visceral her emotions were?! how her grief tore her to pieces! how her trauma ate away at her! how disarming a death eater and pinning him to the ground and holding the tip of her wand to his throat made her feel like a totally different person, how close she came to ending his life! how, in the days after the battle, she feels disgusted by the idea that she even thought about using an unforgivable curse. how she learns to recover and rebuild and heal!

she plays seeker for the holyhead harpies for a while. she learns to love flying again. she learns to love the stars again. 

she doesn’t really start a family because she has little interest in being associated with others as ‘so-and-so’s wife’ or ‘so-and-so’s mother.’

she always visits cedric’s grave on june 24 every year.

eventually when flitwick retires she takes his place as charms professor and head of house because if anyone deserves a happy ending it’s cho chang!!