#struck down before our prime // headcanons

[devourcr]

in my amc verse, armand still enjoys and wears extremely ornate rings. he has such a weakness for jewelry.

[phantomrose96]

Sham Sacrifice

(Hi it's time for my favorite headcanon)

...

Vlad Masters sat firm and proper on the Fenton Family couch, legs crossed, teacup pinched in his fingertips, fighting subtly against the sinkhole that came with the mistake of taking Jack’s usual spot on the couch. He appeared with all the same charm and delightfulness of an ant swarm rearranging your picnic.

Danny stood at the doorway, just-still-in-the-kitchen, just not inviting himself to join the adults in the living room where Jack boomed and rambled and Vlad sat so stiff and polite and nice that his tea in his hands was going cold.

“Oh, Danny you’ll love this story—Danny, you should join us—Danny this was, what, summer of ’84? When was that heatwave, Vladdy? The one where you—”

“There’s no need to bore Daniel with the mad ravings of two old kooks, Jack. Kids would rather be off at the mall or—some store, surely. No need to stick around Daniel on my behalf. I assure you I won’t be offended if you leave.”

“No worries, V-man. I’m good right here. I love hearing Dad’s stories." Danny met Vlad's challenge, speaking with more poisonous courtesy than Vlad had proffered first. "In fact I think he should tell a few more, if he’s got more in mind.”

“In fact I do have more in mind—” Jack answered.

Neither Danny nor Vlad were listening to Jack. They held eye-contact, Danny with a stern unblinkingness of a sheepdog on duty. A lot was said without words. A lot was understood when Vlad decided to visit through the front door. Vlad only used the front door when he wanted something.

And it was never good when Vlad wanted something.

“—the core reactor project, yeah? That summer? That was in the lab with no A/C. Top floor. We were sweating like pigs, all of us. And I dared you to eat the really moldy pizza from our fridge the night before and you ralphed right into—”

“—Surely you remember this more fondly than I do. Daniel, really, you can go.”

Not a chance.

“Actually,” Danny answered, brightening some as his opportunity struck. “I am interested in this. For science class I need to write a report on the invention of an important piece of technology. I was gonna ask Mom and Dad about the Ghost Portal. And now that you’re here, I can get the whole history.”

Jack made a giddy little noise. He leaned forward, words primed, but Vlad was quicker to the draw.

“Sorry to say, your faith in me is unfounded. I wasn’t the portal guy back in college—that was always your mother and father’s passion project. I was their skeptic.”

“Bet that’s got you feeling pretty foolish right now, doesn’t it V-man?” Jack chided, a quick jab to Vlad’s ribs that nearly unseated the teacup from his suspended saucer. “Considering the fully-functioning portal right beneath our toes.”

“I hardly feel foolish, Jack. Your calculation for the portal in college was never going to work.”

“What do you mean? Of course it did.” Jack thumped the ground with his foot. “It’s running the old girl right now.”

At this, Vlad’s eyes narrowed. For the first time he’d been shaken off whatever skeezy machinations had brought him in. His pride was being challenged, and by Jack no less.

“Absolutely not. With that calculation? Absolutely not.”

“Well forget the tea biscuits Vlad, because you’re going to be eating your words in a second. Mads, hold my spot,” Jack said, as if anyone was planning to take his spot. He bounced from the couch, scooted from the living room, and vanished into the dark maw of the lab stairs, leaving only the waning beat of his footsteps behind.

His absence filled only a swallowing few seconds. The footsteps returned, bounding upward, creaking with his heavy cadence, and Jack bounced back into the room in much the manner he left. A pad of yellow lined paper was clutched in his hand. When he dropped it on the coffee table, it revealed row after row of tight scribble, churning math, carrying down the page and occupying two entire pages more that Jack flipped through.

“Same baby I came up with in college. It just needed heavier dampening and higher voltage than what we made back then. The portal downstairs has that in spades. Well, in like two-thirds of a spade.” Jack tapped something on the last line. “The projection was still only hitting 70% of the threshold we calculated to reach dimension penetration. But it’s an art, not just a science. We fired it up anyway, and it took!”

Vlad grabbed the paper pad, agitated. His eyes ran over it. Then again. Until he settled on one line, a firmness overcoming his face. He tossed the pad back onto the coffee table, and Vlad leaned back into the couch, arms crossed.

“The lambda, Jack.”

“The lambda?”

“Check it again.”

Jack did, lips pursed, pad of paper nearly swallowed in his big meaty hand.

“What about--?”

“It squares. The units don’t balance otherwise. It originates from an integration step of λ*∂λ/∂t. It squares.”

Jack’s brow remained furrowed, firm, until delight cracked into his eyes, and he let out a laugh.

“Gods, my handwriting is gonna be the death of us. Mads,” he tapped something unseen on the second page. “That’s the genius of Vladdy. Cracked this puppy wide open with just a glance. I never noticed that in all my checking. That explains the missing 30%, at least. That explains how the portal took. Lucky for you Danny that Vlad was here—”

“Jack,” Maddie said.

“—your report can have the correct formula. It’ll be—”

“—Jack—”

“—A+ worthy—”

“—Jack,” Maddie said, curt. “Lambda is the ambient ecto-energy. It’s a few ten-thousandths of a unit.”

“It—huh.”

Maddie had surfaced a pen from her pocket. She sheared a few blank pages out from the back of the pad and started the formula fresh. She made quick work of copying it over, quicker work of solving it through – lambda-squared intact.

She hit the final line and hatched a pen mark beneath the number. Jack stared, confused.

“That can’t… no.”

He repeated the same. New pages torn loose. Formula copied over, processed, line by line by line—lambda squared—by line by line by line.

Jack settled on his answer. Same as Maddie’s.

Confusion made his face tense.

“So it’s not 70% of the way to the threshold… It’s 0.013% of the way to the threshold.”

He held the pen hard, his whole body holding firm and taut as the gears turned in his head. Jack’s eyes flickered across the formula, again and again and again. He looked to Maddie, like a dog issued a command he did not understand.

“But it worked,” he said, small. “But it worked.”

Jack stood, robotic almost, eyes lost in something far away. He disappeared into the lab almost as quickly as he had a few minutes before, but now he exited with a smoothness and a quietness so very uncharacteristic of him. It bothered Danny, somewhere deep in his gut.

Maddie followed, a possession matching Jack’s.

Danny’s fingers curled and uncurled. He’d succeeded. He’s successfully interrupted Vlad’s… whatever this was. But the disquiet infected him. He didn’t like it.

“So what does that mean?” Danny asked, perhaps to Vlad. “What’s wrong with the calculation?”

Vlad sipped on tea ice cold.

“Who knows?” Vlad lied.

…

The math didn’t work.

Maddie and Jack burned through paper, burned through pencils, burned through hours.

The math didn’t work.

Clothes stuck to skin. Sweat lingered fetid and stale in the cold basement air. Exhaustion beat like a slurry through their veins.

The math didn’t work.

The portal supervised all, placidly green, the light for their table, the light for their work when the lightbulb overhead burnt clean out and neither Jack nor Maddie could be pulled away to replace it. It stood, it watched, a testament of contradiction to everything they could not solve on paper, and yet everything they built directly into the fabric of reality.

And it should never have worked.

They threw every radical what-if they’d ever conceived over 20 years of ghost research.

The ecto-ether layer.

The latent activation stitches in space fabric.

The anti-ectomatter collision proposal.

The positive-feedback crystallization theory.

And still nothing worked.

All together, every crackpot theory in their favor taken for granted, racked them up to an activation energy 200x more potent than the calculation, and still just 2% of what would be needed to rip open, and hold open, a stable fissure between their reality and the ghost zone.

Maybe by pure luck, unfathomable luck, Fentonworks basement was directly situated atop a natural portal.

Maybe that would explain ripping it open. It did nothing to explain the stability. Natural portals were unstable by definition. There and gone in a few seconds. Not hours, days, weeks, months, a year, that the Fenton Portal had been open. Never so much as faltering.

It was late. 3am ticked away to 4am, and 4:30am. The discarded paper stacked higher than Jack and Maddie both. Calluses oozed from their hands at another attempt, and another, and another.

Maddie flipped through a folder’s worth of yellowed papers, aggressively thumbed over and over after two decades left untouched. And she settled on the one she’d passed over a few dozen times already, always seeking something else, something better.

This time she unsheathed it, and she placed it on the lab table.

“…If a mouse died. In the machine. If a mouse ran through the machine and accidentally bridged two live wires, and died of violent electrocution. 500 milliamps. Instantly melted into the circuitry.”

Maddie’s mouth was cotton-dry while she wrote. Ambient ecto-energy was low. Always very, very low.

Unless something very, very bad happened to something with the capacity to become a ghost.

The numbers wove. Maddie started the formula fresh, and it was pure muscle memory. A mouse. A big mouse, even. A 99th percentile beast of a mouse. And a wire that had been wired incorrectly. Something grounded that never actually grounded. An absolutely horrific amount of electricity.

0.37%, by pure numbers. If she included every permissive crackpot idea they had thrown on top, it topped out at 6% of the needed activation threshold.

Not a mouse.

“A cat,” Jack said, words gummy, tongue dry, face tired. “If we’ve got mice down here, maybe… a stray cat wandered in. Chased the mouse.”

Maddie nodded. It didn’t matter if it made sense.

She penned it in. A large cat. A devastating electrical short. Cats carried more ecto-potential than mice did. Ecto-potential did not necessarily go up with size. It went up with complexity. The things with the most ecto-potential were the things that most became ghosts.

1.45%, by pure numbers. 18% at absolute, absolute crackpot best.

“A dog,” Jack proposed with a shaky laugh. He swallowed. “A mouse… chased by a cat… chased by a dog… all electrocuted at once”

Maddie didn’t say the thing they both knew, which was that both of them would have noticed the evidence left behind by the electrically exploded pieces of a dog.

Maddie did it anyway. A mouse and a cat and a medium-sized dog, maybe just small enough to notice no evidence of, all together. All at once. All violently ripped apart, sacrificed to a machine still asleep in its wall.

Mice did not often make ghosts. Cats did not either. Dogs, occasionally. But infrequently. Very infrequently.

37%. At best.

“Jack.”

“Maddie, I know just—maybe something really smart—”

“—Jack—”

“—like an octopus—”

“Jack.”

“I hear, maybe, pigs are smart. If it was—”

Maddie was writing, already. Not for a pig. Not an octopus. Jack watched, and he knew what the numbers meant. The ecto-potential she penned gave her away. An ecto-potential that high.

65kg, an estimate

10,000 milliamps, a catastrophic accident, a death certificate.

A human’s amount of ecto-potential.

Maddie wrote.

And she wrote.

And she did not apply a single crackpot theory, not a single discredited proposal, not an ounce of exaggeration.

138%.

Threshold, and then some.

Comfortable, easily, then some.

For the first time, after all the hundreds of times she and Jack had penned this equation over the course of 2 decades, the number met her and Jack’s threshold.

A breakthrough.

A revelation.

A pure eureka moment.

Jack and Maddie were silent.

Alone in a humming basement. Alone with only the soft swirls of the portal for company, happy, stable, purring its contentment, singing to the cold air.

“It has to be something else,” Maddie said. And she said it weakly. And she said it childishly.

“You’re right. It can’t be this,” Jack echoed. “If someone died down here, we’d know. Dead bodies don’t walk away. We’d have seen it. O-or even if, if the body got stuck in the portal, we’d have heard of someone going missing.”

Maddie sat, quiet. A thought held her mind hostage.

“Unless they didn’t go missing,” Maddie said, and she said it barely audibly. “Unless the portal spit them right back out.”

“Then—that’s what I said—a dead body, on the floor, we’d have seen.”

“Not a dead body.”

“It had to be lethal, Mads—”

“I know Jack. But if they died, here, in the portal Jack, then their ghost did not get ripped away from the body and sent to the Ghost Zone. …They ripped the Ghost Zone here.” Palms slick with sweat smoothed over her notes. She pointed to one specific line and found her pen tip trembled no matter how badly she stabilized it. “The ecto-potential of a creature is how strong of a pull their ghost creates on the Ghost Zone. A strong enough pull means the ghost can reach the Ghost Zone and stabilize, like a fish reeling itself up, yeah? We agree on this Jack, yes?”

“Yes,” Jack answered.

“It’s what makes the math even work, Jack. Someone dying in the portal didn’t reel themselves to the boat. They reeled the boat in. Jack, they brought the Ghost Zone here…” Maddie wasn’t breathing right. She pulled sweat-soaked bangs away from her face. “Their ghost never left their body Jack. They died, Jack. And they walked back out.”

“…No. No,” Jack said. “No, they didn’t.”

“Then what?” Maddie asked.

Jack stared. He looked away. He didn’t like the expression on Maddie’s face.

“It—what about the ecto-ether theory?” Jack said, of the theory they’d tested and retested and tested all over, all night. He grabbed his pencil back up and pointed it aimlessly at Maddie’s piece of paper, pointed end out in self-defense. “If the ecto-ether is maybe… if it’s only 250-times stronger than we calculated. Then it could…”

Jack’s voice died. His pencil hung idle. Maddie’s paper remained unblemished.

“If it… was a pig,” Jack offered. “If it was a pig that died in the portal.”

“How, Jack? How would a pig get in? We lock all the doors at night, Jack. No one else can get in, Jack. It’s just us, Jack.”

Jack and Maddie were not there when the portal turned on.

Maddie’s statement carried two possibilities. Only two. Both felt like claws digging all the flesh right out of Jack’s heart.

“I want… I want to try the ecto-ether theory again,” Jack choked. “I think it’s the ecto-ether. I think it’ll work.”

Jack slid a piece of paper over, already covered in scribbles. In its single untouched corner, he started the equation for the several-thousandth time that night.

Above their head, birds were singing.

Sunrise hailed unseen from the windowless laboratory.

…

At 6am, Vlad answered his cell phone. The reception crackled, struggling through the layers of sheetrock above his head.

“Vlad?” Maddie’s voice crackled. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Not at all my dear.” Vlad leaned his weight against the wall, playing with the singsong melody in his voice. “But you sound exhausted. Is anything the matter?”

“Yes. Well… Yes. Jack and I have—all night—trying to fix the equation.”

“Naturally.”

“We found something that maybe works.”

“Oh?” Vlad asked. He straightened, pacing now, cracklingly attentive. “And what might that—”

“If someone died. Activating the portal. We have an on-switch inside the portal’s interior. The trigger we use to press it is external to the portal, of course. But if someone went inside the portal, and they pressed it directly, and if they died, and pulled the Ghost Zone here—”

Vlad’s red eyes reflected pools of iridescent green. He twirled his free hand in the fringes of his cape, tongue working over the fanged edges of his teeth. He stared, consumed, forward.

“—and just, you, I was thinking, you’re the only other expert I’d trust to… maybe weigh in.”

“What does Jack think?”

“He denies it. He’s still. He’s trying other theories.”

“Well who knows, surely? The answer may lie somewhere you haven’t looked.”

“…I’ve looked everywhere, Vlad. That's the thing. There is no more ‘somewhere else’. I’ve looked.”

“You sound like your mind is made up.”

“I just… if maybe you have some idea.”

“Am I meant to talk you out of this idea?”

“Vlad.”

“Do you think I have some secret information you don’t? Sorry to say, I’m just your skeptic.” Some noise came through muffled from the other side. Vlad flashed a smile. “But…as your skeptic I will offer you this—It all sounds a bit absurd, doesn’t it? To kill someone and have them come back intact and… for you to never notice? Who would they be? How would they be? Surely not human anymore, surely. How would you never notice?”

Vlad paced forward, booted feet clicking along his laboratory floor.

“It would be ridiculous,” he continued, with a building crescendo, “so unfathomably self-centered surely, to not notice something like that befall someone so close to you, who died at the hands of your own invention? …If I’m correctly inferring who, in your household, you suspect of having activated the portal?” Vlad’s tongue lingered along his teeth.

Maddie’s line held, quiet. And the seconds of static drew long.

“Ah, apologies. I’ve overstepped,” Vlad continued. “I meant this as a vote of confidence in you. You and Jack both. Two people as attentive, caring, compassionate as yourselves. You would notice. I promise.”

“You’re… Okay, thank you, Vlad. I appreciate it.”

“Is there anything else, my dear?”

“No. No. Thank you, Vlad. I’ll think about this.”

Maddie’s line clicked dead. A chuckle built to Vlad’s lips and he let his head tip back with mirth. It lasted only a moment. He stowed his phone. And as if the interruption had never happened, Vlad reaffixed his attention on his own portal swirling in front of him. It bathed him, swimming green, purring contentment.

And Vlad vanished into his portal.

(Chapter 2)

[mysticalibra1994]

Sonic Prime Multi-Sonic AU (No Place: Emerald Eye)

So, I'm not really sure if anyone remembers my theory/headcanon on "What if there was a 'Sonic' in each Shatterverse that took place before the shattering?", but here's one that I kept in my folder after rewatching Sonic Prime (when Dread makes his first appearance) and noticing how "buddy-buddy" Dread was with Sonic; almost as if they've met a long time ago...

TW: Contains character death, gruesome detail(s), Pirate speak, yaoi kiss (if you have a problem with that, then don't read). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Setting: No Place. Dread, Emerald Eye, and the crew follow a red-mark trail. Emerald Eye overhears the crew speaking ill of Dread.]

Emerald Eye: Um, no offense, me bucko. But, be ye sure ye be knowin' whar we're headed? Dread: Of course, I do. Th' ground be marked like th' map! Emerald Eye: Alright, if ye say so…

[Suddenly, Emerald Eye noticed something below Dread's footing snapped. It's a trap! Before Dread could even react, Emerald Eye pushed him out of the way as a bolt of blue lightning struck the blue pirate through the chest. The rest of the crew was blown back. As the smoke slowly settles, Dread witnessed a horrid scene… Emerald Eye's chest is now harboring a medium-sized burnt crater that's all black and smokey. Smaller scars are going through his charred body. His one good eye is now bulging a bit with veins that pulsated. His signature "emerald-green" eye is now a lifeless dull shade of burnt moss… Dread couldn't believe it, his one and only is dead. His one and only took the shot that was meant for him. All he could do was to shakely embrace his beloved, one last time…]

Dread: *thinking* His chest be warm, but his body's cold… Crew member 1: Dread… Ye keel-hauled that scurvy dog?! But, he were bein' yer beloved! Crew member 2: How could ye do this? Bunny Bones: Traditionally, when a Cap'n dies, their second-in-command becomes Cap'n. But, who will e'er trust ye?

[Dread is now too devastated to answer. But, suddenly, an idea comes across his mind! The Devil's Lighthouse… According to legend, the power of the Devil's Lighthouse can bring a person back from the dead with only scars to tell the tale of their survival.]

Dread: What has happened can't be ignored. But, I've got an idea! All we need be t' get th' Glowin' Gemstone a- Jack: Be ye serious?! Our Cap'n visited Davy Jones' Locker savin' ye, but all ye care about be some giant rock?! How selfish can one Corsair get?

[Taken aback by this, Dread understood the traditions and this unfortunate circumstance. So, as he took off, he quickly grabbed Emerald Eye, his Captain hat, and continued his way to the other side of the island.]

Dread: *looks behind him* It appears to be that we lost them, I'll warrant ye. *looks down to Emerald Eye's body* Oh, me beloved… *cradles it gently* Ye knew th' blast were bein' meant fer me, why would ye take it instead? *tearing up a bit* Now, our crew thinks that I should've been poxed! *looks down, sadly nuzzles Emerald Eye's face* Ah, I can't stay mad at ye. Because o' ye, I've ne'er felt lonely out in open waters. Due t' yer inability t' not swim, I've always been by yer side. *gently placed Emerald Eye down as he gently kissed his forehead* I'm not really good at sayin' "goodbyes", but ye've made me life an adventure. *sadly part ways with their last lip-kiss*

[After saying a small, yet important, prayer, Dread digs a hole deep enough for Emerald Eye to forever rest in and keep his hat as a tragic keepsake. As he got up, he noticed a rowboat that both looked and felt sturdy enough for him to set sail. For what seemed like forever, Dread was growing concerned about losing his rations. He was about to give up hope, until…]

Sails: *offscreen* Avast there, scurvy dog! Dread: *looks up to see a ship* Black Rose: Be ye alright? Batten Rouge: We have more than enough grub and plenty o' juice and water from coconuts! Dread: *taken aback by this kindness* Uh, yeah! Thanks, to be sure! Can ye help me up onto yer ship? Black Rose: Of course, we want ye t' join us! Sails: Th' more, th' merrier! Batten Rouge: Plus, we've always wanted a Cap'n! Dread: Wait, me? A Cap'n? What makes ye think that I'm a Cap'n? Black Rose: Well, ye have a hat like a Cap'n. Sails: Nobody on our boat has one. Batten Rouge: I believe that's it.

[Dread was afraid to tell them the truth. But, he's also afraid to be a captain. After taking a deep breath to calm the nerves…]

Dread: Well, ye're correct, me buckos! I be Cap'n! But, not just any Cap'n… Yer Cap'n! Sails: This calls fer a celebration! Black Rose: Three cheers fer our new Cap'n! Dread's new crew: Hip hip, hooray! Hip hip, hooray! Hip hip, hooray!

[As Dread's new crew parties until the sun goes down, the Echidna sadly looks up at the premature stars, forlornly thinking about his one true beloved. Wondering what Emerald Eye would say or even think of him now...] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeah, I'm not that good at "Pirate lingo", so I had to use various websites to translate as correctly as it appeared.

For the next one(s), it'll either be Boscage or New Yoke.

Fun fact: During the era of pirates, women weren't allowed to be on the same ship with them. So, it was common practice for men to sleep together. This means that they can explore other things than treasure...

[jsio]

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT

MILES PROWER, ANTI-TAILS

Moebius' true king.

Art by Arealscrog

Archie's wasted character

Who is Miles?

Miles Prower is the Anti equivalent of Tails, from Mobius Prime. He is afew years older, being 11 instead of 8 and much more mature. He still appears to possess Tails' youthful tenacity and desire for independence, but he has a violent rebellious attitude and shows no interest in holding himself to childish things, even though he's only 11 years old himself, hating the nickname "Tails" being an example.

Miles holds his younger counterpart in utter contempt for traits Miles sees as weaknesses, especially how Tails went down the path of Science and technology instead of his magical Chaos force heritage, implying that Miles went down a more mystical path instead of Science, but from what we see in the comic Miles is more in the political field, by that I mean he manipulates all the political aspects of Moebius.

His actions throughout the comic run make him out to be smart, picky, but also cold, calculating and always 5 steps ahead of his own team and Adversaries, this leading to Alicia making him the Suppression Squads leader behind the scenes, while she is the figurehead "ruler."

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That's Anti-Tails, Who throughout this I'll be reffering to as "Miles." Now you may be thinking, "Why make a post on an extremely obscure and hardly used Archie character? Why not someone Like Tails, Shadow or a more popular Archie character?"

Well, it's because I believe that Miles had the potential to be one of Archie's most intresting original characters, I believe he could've easily held his own "Suppression Squad" comic run, but Archie Unfortunately really underused him and wasted his potential, but hey...

That's where us fans come in!

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This post is All about Miles Canonical self, every canon fact I can find about him and his full story in his short run during Pre-Reboot Archie Sonic, and my own personal headcanons in the later post.

But...before I get into any the headcanons, I need to teach those who don't know him about him, I need to talk about his Canonical self..so, let's get into it. Headcanons will be in the follow up post.

Canonical Apprearnces.

(Reworded from the wiki)

First appearance

The first appearance of Anti-Tails was back when the character was just "Evil Tails" and it was of him joining the Anti Freedom fighters in an attempt to take over Mobius Prime, prior to the downfall of Eggman.

He and his evil allies pretended to be the good Mobius Prime versions, and struck knothole with acts of mayhem, vandalism and overall mischief, a common thing on moebius. The real Freedom Fighters soon returned to set things straight, but their initial attempts to defeat the Anti-Freedom Fighters failed as their Anti-Mobius selves knew their moves as well as they did. Sally Acorn came upon the solution: switching combat partners. When he faced Rotor, Evil Tails proved unable to overcome the larger and stronger Mobian. Defeated along with the other Anti-Freedom Fighters, he was sent back to Anti-Mobius, where they continued to cause mayhem despite the efforts of the kindly Dr. Ivo Kintobor (Anti-Robotnik) to stop them.

This was the last we saw Evil Tails for awhile, however we did see a cameo of him along with every other tails when they all came together and formed Titan Tails.

The Suppression Squad

Art by Pota on Pixiv

Some time passed before his next appearance, and in that time "Anti-Mobius" went through changes in its name, now "Moebius." And all the characters changed alongside it.

Miles had assisted Boomer in stealing Dr Kintober's goal posts in order to allow the Suppression Squad to have access to inter-dimensional travel. Scourge obviously took this opportunity and went straight to Mobius Prime, along with a few other members of the SS, Miles being one of them, and they attempted an assult on the Freedom HQ, where we see Miles' and Tails face off, with Miles declaring to not be referrd to as Tails or Anti-Tails, but instead just "Miles".

He also indicated his disgust at Tails for having chosen a path of Science and study, despite having a strong connection to "Chaos force", aka magic. This has led to people believing Miles himself is a magic user.

When Metal Sonic attacked Scourge, believing him to be the real Sonic, Miles stayed back and observed instead of helping his king. Now, you may think that's betrayal, but in reality Miles didn't help because he did not wish to undermine Scourges strength, so instead he observed. Soon after Sonic came onto the scene he showed his willingness to help anyone, even his enimies, and this gave Miles an idea:

Let's team up with the freedom fighters to betray Scourge, that's the new plan.

Miles later met up with Sally, Bunnie, Antonie and Tails to offer an alliance, but didn't let Tails speak and showed his contempt to the original version, telling him, "Please don't talk, little boy, We're trying to have an intelligent conversation." Sally accepted the offer, knowing she needed all the help she could get for taking down Scourge.

Upon returning to Scourge, pretending to be running from the freedom fighters, Scourge asked for a summary on his mission, that being "bomb New Metropolis" but Miles ignored him however, instead reporting to Alicia (Anti-Sally) that his mission was a success. Immediately thereafter, Alicia told the Suppression Squad to, "Show our King just what we think of him", with Boomer and Patch clearly readying for battle

However, Miles was doubling up his betrayal, blasting both Sonic and Scourge back into Moebius for them to Duke it out there, with Boomer sealing the portal behind them. An ethical debate followed this, between Sally, Alicia and Miles, the trio being ordered to get the goal posts ready to be able to return the freedom fighters to Mobius after both groups agreed to make sure Scourge was defeated on Moebius by Sonic

Miles was as shocked as the rest of the group to find Scourge had defeated all of his opponents as Super Scourge. When the rest of the Knothole Freedom Fighters and Suppression Squad were quickly defeated, Scourge turned his sights on Miles, identifying him as the mastermind behind the betrayal.

Miles, cowering in fear, denied his role in betraying Scourge, who was threatening to beat him for his betrayal. However, Miles was saved by Silver the Hedgehog and unlike the rest of his allies, wasn't even hurt. Following Scourge's defeat and Miles' attempt to recruit Buns Rabbot into the Suppression Squad, Miles spoke to Alicia about who would be their new leader. Alicia explained that while she may be the figurehead ruler, they both knew Miles held the real authority at this point, to which Miles grinned.

That was the last we see of Miles in the Archie comics, he unfortunately isn't in the post reboot because he's now owned by Ken Penders, so we'll never see him again. Below is all of his official designs, and after that is my final thoughts on the character.

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My overview of Miles as a character.

I'm no Character analysist so I'll make this short and sweet, my review of Miles is that he's a Character with alot of potential, but he went wasted, not on purpose, but thanks to the lawsuit.

I believe that if that lawsuit never happened, and that arc was closed up nicely Anti-Tails would of became a far more realistic and grounded Character, and probably pretty popular too. Miles to me is a kid who was manipulated into a life of crime and now believes that's what is right, and I think that could of been an arc for him, mellowing out and becoming a true king for the people of Moebius. I also like how when Scourge goes Super and goes to Miles to confront him, he dosent stand up to him, he dosent become strong, but instead he cowers in fear, hes terrified and tries to lie, to me, that makes him feel more grounded, and I like that.

Personally I wish Miles was more popular, I wish he got more spotlight than he did and I wish his story got concluded, but with what we got, I think he's pretty good, and pretty interesting too! I've seen alot of ideas float around for this dude, all of them making sense in they're on way, and to be honest? His lack of story kinda helps make him more accessible.

Tl:Dr: I like Miles alot, and I hope this post helps you lot learn more about him and overall, gets more people down to write with him, draw with him and explore him!

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Would I change him in any way?

Yeah, there's one key part of Miles (from what we got) that I think was wasted. Now, what is that? What would I change about a Character I've mostly praised? Well...

I wish he was magical. In the Archie comics Tails is actually strongly connected to the "Chaos Force", not as connected as Shadow, but still VERY connected, and guess what? Miles and Tails ARE biologically the same, same DNA, and in that bit of the comic, Miles calls Tails out on something he should have no idea about if he himself isn't connected to the same thing (or Moebius equivalent). To me at least this kind of implies Miles is magical too.

Basically, I'd give Miles' moveset a touch of magical abilities, connecting him to Moebius' "Anarchy force". I think it would help separate him abit more from Tails, while also connecting them, because whenever you have science and magic together...they clash.

But yea that's all I'd change in what we got, just hints of magic, some magic attacks here and there. I think it'd be pretty neat, and it'd have the science Vs magic aspect with him and Tails relationship.

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Lets finally wrap this up! At least, for now.

Thank you so much for reading all this If you did, it, this took me alot of hours, and I, I think it's over 2000 words now you madman. Why not spend your time doing something more worthwhile? Why not...have fun? meet someone? Go on a date? Live your life? Why read a post on an obscure Character, mainac.

But in all seriousness thank you for reading my post, I really like this character (clearly) and I want to teach people about him, and I hope this post has done that! Post 2. There's going to be a sequel post going over all of my personal headcanons, and possibly a 3rd going over community ones. Keep ya eyes out~

But yea, big read, now you lot know about an obscure Character, and this was fun to write! But now I'm gonna end this post with a fun fact:

Miles and the Suppression Squad were going to have one more arc, it was teased at the end of issue 196, but unfortunately it never got written. That would of been really neat but unfortunately it never got to happen.

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BON'VOYAGE, HEDGEHOGS!

[hopelikethemoon]

ardent admiration (ezra x reader)

Title: ardent admiration  Rating: R-ish (allusions to sexual content) Ship: Ezra x Reader Summary: Continuation of ‘next rotation’ reader and Ezra navigate the trials of pregnancy in the face of Ezra’s doubts. Contents: Pregnant!Reader, Angst, Light Sexual Content, Anxious Daddy!Ezra, FLUFF.  Notes: This fic is dedicated to @grapemama​ who has some of the best daddy!Ezra headcanons. I also dedicate this to @rzrcrst​ who is like so sweet and so kind and HAVE YOU READ HER FICS!? forever nervous about my dialogue for our dork Ezra *jazz hands* I’m going to bed now, I have an early call time on set tomorrow so GOODNIGHT ENJOY ILY ALL. 

It wasn’t obvious at first. He was subtle enough about the comments. He let them sit untouched between you for enough time — before picking them back up again with a quiet uncertainty that made something ache deep within you. For all of his cocksure attitude, he’s scared shitless about being a father. 

“You know, I’ve often dwelled upon philosophical matters. Though not my preferred educational endeavor.” He dragged his hand over his face as he rocked from his heels to his toes and back again. “Do you think it’s fair that one who has committed heinous crimes — struck down life in its prime — that one such person should be allowed the joie de vivre of bringing life into this cruel, cruel world?”

“I think it depends.” You answered honestly, because you’re not a fool. This isn’t a grand philosophical debate he’s angling for. He’s thinking of himself. His own past. The future that grows more evident in your stomach with each passing day. 

“What does it depend upon, little bird?”

You offer a soft smile, “If you regret the choices you've made.”

“Ah,” He pursed his lips thoughtfully and nodded slowly with a distant look he fixed on you. “What a shame then, that I don’t regret the dishonourable path that led me to you.”

— — — — — — — —

It was days before the subject was broached again. This time, it wasn’t words that brought it into focus once more. It’s revisited in the reverent way he stroked his hand over your swollen stomach when he thought you were sound asleep. The murmured words that are meant for only him and your unborn child. Secrets that they shared in these precious moments between a father and his child. 

You slide your fingers through his perpetually mussed hair, gently brushing your fingertips over his temple. “You deserve this, Ezra. You deserve this and so much more.” He’s a good man. Better than he gave himself credit for. 

“We shall just have to agree to disagree, little birdie.” He drawled out, stirred from his reverie. Ezra shifted to press his face into the crook of your neck, his lips trailing up the column of your throat. “Sleep.” He murmured. 

His hand never strayed from your stomach as he drifted back into the lull of peaceful sleep. 

——

Ezra was insistent that the pair of you visit Cee. She had settled on an interplanetary satellite station high above the planet Arbuta. It was safe there — a good place to consider a temporary home until he found a suitable place to call your permanent residence.

She was thrilled for both of you. For everything that had happened between Cee and Ezra, she was remarkably understanding. You hope, deep down, that her joy is the infectious type. You hope that it’s enough to force Ezra to see past the melancholy that had taken up residence in him. 

It was, for a few weeks. 

“We have to go.”

“Hmm?” You murmured, drowsily coming to. Ezra was frantic as he paced back and forth across your small quarters as he plucked up personal items and shoved them carelessly into your duffle bags. 

“Wake up. We have to leave.” 

“Ezra, what’s wrong?” You questioned as your bare feet touched the ground. You approached him, your fingers curling around his upper arm as you urged him to slow down. 

“I…” For once in his life, he was at a loss for words. He floundered, gaze turned downwards with shame. “I believe I’ve entertained you with tales from just before my life irrevocably changed when I met Cee.”

You frowned. He had. You loved to regale you with stories of us misadventures. He had led a far more exciting existence than you had. “Your old crew?”

“Indeed.” He nodded stiffly. “You see, it was me that caused that little kerfuffle. I was greedy about the harvest. I endeavored to gain quite the profit off that job.” He leaned into your touch as you cupped his cheek. “They’re here. Two of them.”

“What does that mean?” You questioned, meeting his gaze. “Why do we have to leave?”

“Because,” Ezra sighed heavily. “I am afraid that they will retaliate. Time may have passed, but men like that hold onto grudges with a vice-like grip.” He looked down between you, his hand trailing over your curved stomach. “I refuse to let anything happen to either of you, on account of my past deeds.”

Your lips parted to answer him, but a faint flutter within your belly caught you off guard. A kick! “Did you feel that?” You whispered, pressing your hand over his as you guided it directly to the spot where the baby was kicking. It was the strangest sensation — a faint flutter, the tiny press of a foot. A new reminder of the life growing within you.

Ezra was beside himself. The worry and the fear that had weighed heavily on his weary expression had vanished. You swore that the joy that washed over his features took ten years off of him. He sank to his knees before you and pressed his lips against the swell of your stomach. “I’m going to take care of you, little one. Your papa is here. I’m going to protect you.” 

You ran your fingers through his hair as you looked down at him. Had you ever been more in love with him, than you were in that moment? His joy warmed every corner of your soul. You just wished he could hold onto that. 

— — — — — — — —

Some nights you couldn’t sleep. You were exhausted, but perpetually unable to find comfort — no matter what you tried. It was a familiar occurrence now. The way he would draw you back against his chest and curl himself around you as you propped a book up against your stomach to idly read through whatever book he had abandoned by your bedside. No matter how exhausted he was, he always stayed awake with you, his chin perched on your shoulder as he read along with you. 

He would always play his restless fingers through your hair, trying to lull you back to sleep. With the occasional success. 

“Do you regret it?” Ezra whispered as he pressed his lips against your shoulder. 

“Regret what?” You questioned, dampening your thumb with the tip of your tongue, before you turned the page. 

“Me.”

You tensed, despite yourself. You closed the book slowly and sat it aside on the bedside table. “Do I seem like I regret you?” You questioned, turning your head enough to look at him with a frown. 

“No, little bird.” He shook his head, before he pressed his forehead against your shoulder with a frustrated groan. “I am sorry for my most frequent caviling.” He murmured. 

“Don’t apologize.” You turned in his arms, as best you could in your current state. You cupped his cheek, tracing your thumb over the scar. “But I want to help you overcome this, Ezra. Wherever your mind goes…” 

Ezra sighed dramatically and turned to kiss your palm. “I should be caring for you, not worrying you with these bouts of melancholia.” 

“I don’t mind.” You promised him, trailing your thumb over his lips. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“We make an odd pair, you and I.” Ezra started, kissing your thumb. “I am a fair few years your senior, little bird. I have seen the way that eyebrows rise when that realization arises.”

“I don’t care what people think.” You snapped. 

“Nor do I.” He chuckled. “I am merely making an observation about our partnership.” Ezra pressed another kiss to the center of your palm. “I often fear that the ghosts of my past might come and take up residence in you. Erode at the future that you will have when I am gone.”

“Ezra.”

“It is the simple truth of our situation.” He drawled out with a shake of his head. He made such a morbid topic sound like a conversation on the weather. “While I triumphantly overcame the effects of the pink, I am certain that it still lurks within my blood. Ready to prey upon me once more.” Ezra dragged his teeth over his bottom lip. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at a nugacious existence.”

“I don’t know what that means.” You admitted sheepishly. 

Ezra smiled faintly, “An insignificant existence.” He gestured vaguely. “I’ve spent thirty-odd years chasing the next harvest. I never had a chance to get too lost in my own thoughts.”

You tried, rather in vain, to refuse the tears that brimmed in your eyes. He had admitted to the one thing that you had feared all along. “Do you regret it?” You threw the question back at him, an edge of venom in your tone.

He clamped his lips shut tightly, his dark eyes fixed on your face. “Birdie—“

“Do you?” 

Ezra swallowed thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing at his throat. “No.”

“You don’t?” You questioned skeptically. 

“I regret that I am not a better man.” He admitted, his lips drawn into a thin line. “I am a worn, one-armed—“

“No.” You shook your head. “You never let me talk down about myself, I won’t let you do the same.” You took ahold of his hand, intertwining your fingers with his. “I don’t care what came before. Your choices were made because we live in a lawless world. I fell in love with you with my eyes wide open. I know who you are, Ezra. Perhaps better than you even know.”

“What do you mean, little bird?” He questioned, squeezing your hand tightly. 

“When I look at you, I don’t see the faults that you fixate on. Your limitations don’t stand out to me.” You carefully shifted to straddle his hips, keeping your fingers curled around his. “I see a man who radiates unsullied joy when his child kicks beneath his palm. I know that you would do anything for me and our baby — that’s all I could ever ask for.” You leaned down and kissed him softly. “You worry about being a better man, but you fail to realize that you’re already the best version of yourself.”

Ezra sniffed quietly, “I dare say you might rival my own ability to render emotions with mere words.” 

You laughed and shook your head slowly. “I just want these words to stick with you.” You pressed another soft kiss to his lips, letting it linger. 

“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

“How dare you quote Pride and Prejudice when I am frustrated with you.” You couldn’t help but grin down at him. 

“Would you like for me to soothe your frustrations?” He questioned with a wicked smirk that made your blood spike hotly. Ezra released his hold on your hand and moved to rest it at your hip. 

Your lashes fluttered and you rocked your hips slowly against him. “Only if you promise me one thing.” You whispered. 

He drew his knees up behind you as he sat up, keeping you seated firmly in his lap. “What’s that, birdie?”

“That you’ll try to remember that I love you.” You brushed your fingers through his tuft of blonde hair. “All of you. No matter what.”

“I can do that.” He promised. “I’ll try to be better, for both of you.” 

“Good.” You whispered, resting your hands on his shoulders for support as you rolled your hips. His cock had stirred to life beneath you, deliciously pressed against your most sensitive parts. 

Throughout your pregnancy, he had been so cognizant of your needs. On Arbuta he’d collected every book available on pregnancy and child-rearing. He’d read them all, forwards and backwards, a dozen times over.  He avoided your sensitive breasts — despite how fond he was of them. He curbed his own desires, in favor of whatever you needed. Selfless acts from a man who believed himself to be only selfish. 

You wished he could see himself through your eyes. 

Your breath caught in the back of your throat as you ground your hips downwards and your clit dragged over the fabric of your panties, caught against his erection. “Ezra.” 

He kissed you roughly, his tongue slipping past your lips. His kisses were always so thorough, he threw everything he had into them. His hand gripped tightly at your hip, guiding your movements against him. 

The closeness helped mend that fissure between you. It built a bridge to cross over your fears — the damage from the past.

— — — — — — — —

Ezra made good on his promise. He worked on expressing himself whenever his self-doubt overtook him. He treated finding a home for you like he treated every harvest. He studied every aspect of the choice. He refused to let the baby be born a floater, drifting somewhere high above it all. He wanted a home for the three of you. 

It wasn’t your forever home, but his research had identified a small mining community on the moon of Veshta2 to be the most sensible place to call home. It had an atmosphere that could sustain life without the need for a breathing apparatus and the miners rarely faced violence.

“I heard rumor that we may be faced with an unseasonably dry summer this year.” Ezra worried over breakfast. “I fear I hadn’t factored in the potential for climatological disaster.”

“I hadn’t realized a dry summer was considered a disaster.” You teased. “Despite your valiant attempts, Ezra, you can’t control everything.”

“I am, unfortunately, painfully aware of that.” He sulked. “But our little one will make their grand appearance during this drought.”

“Then we’ll visit Cee.” You offered him a patient smile. “I’m not worried about a drought.” 

“You should be.” He tutted and shook his head. “I’ll speak with the moisture farmers outside of town. They’ll be more prepared than we are.”

“Ezra.” You arched a brow at him. “I’d rather you stay home with me.”

“Birdie,” He mimicked the tone of your voice. “I would be most obliged to spend my entire day at your side, but I must make necessary preparations that you are not quite suited to at present.”

You sank back in your chair and admitted defeat. He needed a task — that was clear to you. He needed something to harness his obsessive tendencies into. “Why don’t we work on the nursery?” You suggested.

Ezra pitched forward, resting his elbow on the table. “I would like that.” He smiled broadly at you, the sort of smile that made you fall a little bit more in love with him. 

——

“I think the stars were a nice touch.” You whispered as you laid back on the floor, comfortably tucked against him. 

“When I was very young, my mother painted stars on the ceiling of my quarters on our ship.” Ezra mused quietly as his fingers trailing over your side. “She told me to count them when I fell asleep. To make wishes for the future on each one.”

Your heart clenched. Ezra had never really opened up about his childhood. He always listened when you discussed your own — but he had never joined in. “What did you wish for?”

He chuckled and squeezed your shoulder. “The foolish things all little boys wish for, little bird. I wanted to be a successful prospector. I wanted riches beyond reason.” Ezra turned and kissed your temple. “I have had a fair few wishes come true.”

You arched a brow, “Oh?”

“When Cee and I finally escaped that wretched planet, I looked up at the stars above us — quite certain, mind you, that I would not survive my injuries — and I wished for a second chance. Wished on each star that shone above that I could do things over. Fall in love. Have a family.” 

“How long—“

“I met you the very next day.” Ezra recalled with an adoring smile. “I think I knew.” 

You had briefly crossed paths with Ezra during your own recovery for a mild injury. He had entertained you greatly from the start — his verbose tendencies, his accent, that charm-your-pants-off demeanor. It wasn’t until months later that you ran into him halfway across the galaxy on a foolhardy harvest that you realized just how much you fancied him. 

From that point forward, you had hardly left his side. Despite his past, you had seen a future in him. 

“I hope you teach our baby to make those wishes too, Ezra.”

“I plan to.” He murmured as he kissed your lips, lifting his hand to cup your cheek. “I ought to be rather conciliatory for these past few months.” Ezra sighed. “I allowed myself to get lost in my own inadequacies. I hope I haven’t spoiled what should have been our most joyous season.”

“You haven’t,” You assured him, leaning into his touch. “You haven’t spoiled anything, Ezra.” 

“That comes as a much needed source of reassurance to my soul to know that little bird.” He drawled out as a grin spread over his lips. 

Ezra carefully repositioned you, grabbing a pillow from the nearby chair and propping it up beneath your head where his arm had been. “Wait here.” 

You sat up and watched him leave the nursery, your hand smoothing over your stomach as you pondered what he was up to. You were relieved that in these final months of your pregnancy, he had let go of his hesitations. He was still a work in progress, but so were you. 

“I know these things mean little anymore,” Ezra started as he returned to the nursery, with his hand tucked behind his back. “But I believe it is rather apparent that I am a gentleman of more refined, antiquated traditions.” He cleared his throat, before he knelt down before you. 

“Ezra—” 

He cut you off, “Little bird, my love for you knows no bounds. I consorted every novel within my reach, searching for words to describe the depth to which my affections for you run. I came up empty-handed because there are no words to accurately portray it.” Ezra revealed his hand, a small platinum band resting at the center of his palm. “I am afraid this is but a meager offering. You deserve sparkling diamonds and glimmering gold—”

“It’s perfect.” You whispered, swallowing thickly as tears escaped your eyes. “Yes.” 

“Shh. Don’t spoil it for me.” He grinned. “Will you marry me?”

You nodded your head quickly and moved towards him, wrapping your arms around him and pressing your face into the crook of his neck. “Yes. A thousand times yes.” You pulled back enough to offer him your hand. The ring fit comfortably on your finger, like it was made just for you. 

“I love you.” He murmured, cupping your cheek with a tremulous grin. “Both of you.” 

“We love you too.” 

[fakeyellow]

Based on an anon prompt asking for MC’s granddaughter finding the compass and meeting Charlie (more headcanons with Charlie are in the A/N)

Grandma Peyton has always been her favourite for as long as Adria can remember.

She has no children of her own but she’s always been so fun, always willing to look after her sister’s grandchildren as if they were her own.

When they were children, Adria remembers long afternoons spent running around her grandmother’s yard during elaborate treasure hunts her grandmother came up with. And then, when they were exhausted, she’d regale them with swashbuckling tales of pirates: from the noble Captain Edward to the fierce Siren Queen and Adria’s personal favourite, the legendary Captain Bellamy.

Her stories were larger than life and so utterly captivating that as a child, Adria wholeheartedly believed them to be true even if her grandma only smiled mysteriously when she and her siblings asked where the stories came from (her parents later said that Grandma Peyton had been an actress and that she’d always been a great storyteller).

While her siblings have long outgrown the stories, trading in the makeshift pirate swords and eyepatches for more appropriate pursuits, Adria’s never quite forgotten them. She’d begged her parents to get her fencing lessons as a child and she was now currently one of the top amateur fencers in the country (although she still could never beat her grandma).

As the youngest child in a family of driven go-getters, Adria’s always felt a bit out of place. Unlike her sisters who have wanted to be doctors like Grandma Casey since they could speak, Adria doesn’t really know what she wants to do. She likes fencing yes, but not to the point of becoming a professional fencer and nothing in school interests her as much as her grandma’s tales do.

Even though her parents don’t pressure her, she knows they’re a bit worried about her. She’s never been a model child- ever rambunctious and unafraid to speak her mind even if it caused her to get in trouble more than a few times (just like herself as a child, Grandma Peyton chuckles and her words make Adria feel better because all she wants is to be like her grandma).

But when the time comes around to apply to college, Adria realises that she wants to study history. She wants to listen to and study the stories of different people in different times and when she graduates high school with an acceptance into one of the country’s best history programs, there is no one prouder than her grandma.

At their family celebration, Grandma Peyton pulls her aside and in her hands is a golden compass, exquisitely crafted. It’s clearly old but it’s been taken care of so that the years haven’t worn any of its beauty away and Adria’s eyes widen, in recognition.

“Is this-“

Her grandma smiles, “Yes, it’s the compass that brought the Siren Queen and Captain Bellamy together.”

Adria can’t tear her eyes away from the beautiful compass that’d played such a central role in the stories she’d heard as a child.

“It’s time I let go of it now,” her grandma says and for a second, there is a glimpse into a lifetime’s worth of yearning on her face but by the time Adria looks up, her grandma is smiling again.

The compass is a solid weight in her hands and Adria feels a swell of love for her grandmother who’s unconditionally supported her, no matter how directionless she’s been and she throws her arms around her.

“Thank you.”

—

It’s been two years since her grandmother died but Adria still misses her fiercely. The compass is just the perfect size, not too big or too small, and there isn’t a place that she goes without the comforting, familiar weight of the compass in her bag.

She’s on her way to class when it happens.

There’s a forceful pull on her gut and Adria stumbles as everything distorts around her, reality ripping away from her.

Adria blinks confusedly and finds herself on a beach.

She blinks again but she is still on a golden beach that is most assuredly not her college campus. In a situation where she doesn’t understand anything that’s just happened, Adria instinctively pulls out her phone only to sigh in annoyance.

Of course there’s no service here.

But when she puts her phone back into her bag, her hand brushes against something warm and Adria gasps when she sees the source of the heat. The compass her grandmother gave her as a graduation present is warm to the touch and glowing.

And her grandma’s stories that she hasn’t heard in years now slowly trickle back into her mind. It’s impossible and yet…

The sun blazes down on her, the heat making it even more difficult to gain her bearings, and Adria decides that her first step is to leave the beach and go towards the city where the bustling sounds of people can be heard.

When her feet touch down on cobbled stone, Adria can’t help herself from staring.

It’s as if she’s dropped into one of those reenactment villages, everyone dressed in unbelievably authentic looking period clothing. The streets are filled with stalls full of fresh fruit and it’s loud with the sound of prices being haggled over and it’s unlike anything she’s seen before.

Although she tries to ask a few strangers for help, most everyone ignores her, distrust and scandalized judgment clear in their eyes at the sight of her exposed legs.

Not a single person is willing to answer any of her questions and Adria is at her wit’s end when a tavern at the end of the street catches her eye.

She’s drawn a lot of unfriendly attention to herself with her incessant questions and her clothes that look laughably out of place in this olden village.

Wanting to avoid the islanders’ eyes and rationalising that surely a bar wouldn’t be as judgmental about her shorts, Adria ducks into the tavern.

The tavern’s filled with rowdy patrons daydrinking and wary of them (even though she’s able to defend herself, she doesn’t want to get into a fight when she still doesn’t even know where she is), she darts to the bar.

“Can you tell me where I am?” Adria asks the blonde barkeep with as much charm as she can muster and when the woman smiles back at her, she almost wants to faint in relief.

The barkeep’s smile is curious but friendly nonetheless, “Why, you’re in Tiburon of course.”

Adria’s heart stops because that is a name she’s heard many times before, the backdrop of so many of the stories her grandmother had told her.

She can’t help herself; she pulls the compass out of her bag and fiddles with it desperately. She’d thought it a well made prop, maybe an antique at best, but had her grandma been telling the truth? It was one thing to have believed in her grandma’s stories as a child but Adria finds her head spinning out now, her mind racing as she tries to calm herself.

In her panic, she doesn’t notice the person walking towards her until they’re right in front of her.

“Hi love, mind explaining where you got that compass?”

Adria slowly looks up and there, looking exactly as her grandmother described her, is the Siren Queen, Charlie Smith.

—

A/N: Won’t be writing another chapter for this but I wrote some head canons for Charlie and Adria meeting so here they are:

Charlie accepts Adria’s story with remarkable ease (although Adria supposes that she must be used to it after having met her grandma).

“You look like her.”

—

Charlie is sad to hear that Peyton is dead in Adria’s time but she’s surprisingly okay with it.

“We all have our ends, love,” she tells Adria.

But when Adria tries to warn Charlie about the last time they’ll be together, Charlie shakes her head.

“None of that now.”

And Adria protests because why wouldn’t she want to know when the last time she’d be with her lover would be?

And Charlie’s bravado fades to reveal a woman who is deeply intimate with the feeling of loss and yearning for what could have been, who’s spent her entire life loving people who have been torn away from her.

“No matter what happens today, or tomorrow, or in a dozen years, my heart is hers. Every moment we have together is a gift beyond measure… Knowing when exactly we can no longer be together won’t change that.”

And Adria doesn’t bring it up again.

—

They piece together the timeline and it’s a bit confusing. Because while Peyton has died in Adria’s time, in Charlie’s time, Peyton had just been with her the past week.

And Adria can’t help but feel a little devastated that she missed seeing her grandma, young and in her prime as the great Captain Bellamy. She’s missed her grandma fiercely and she has so many questions to ask.

—

“If you start calling me grandma, we’re going to have problems love. Just call me Charlie.”

—

Although Charlie doesn’t want to know too much about her future with Peyton, she doesn’t object to seeing photos of her.

There may be no internet but Adria’s always adored her grandma and her camera roll is filled with pictures of Peyton, young and old. The thought of an old Peyton that she’ll never get to see fills Charlie with sadness but she delights in seeing Peyton decked out in different costumes from her acting career.

Charlie runs a finger down the pixelated cheek of her grandmother with such fondness that Adria is suddenly struck with how deeply painful their story is.

Tears flood her eyes and despite her best attempts to hold them back, they spill over and then she finds herself wrapped in strong arms.

“Hey now love what’s the problem?”

Charlie’s voice is warm and soothing but Adria’s unable to speak, completely overcome with sadness.

Her grandmother’s pirate stories had always stopped once Captain Bellamy turned 45 and she can’t believe the world would be so cruel to tear apart two women so utterly in love with each other.

[exposenseiarchive]

headcanon --- post usj. 

regarding his physical injuries, i don’t have much to add that canon hasn’t addressed already, aside from a few things that i think may have gone hand in hand with what we already know. there’s both of his broken arms, his orbital floor being fractured, and that nasty, nasty elbow wound; all pretty self explanatory. 

my only expansions really, are making note of the fact that his back ( up to the back of his neck, even ) probably suffered some pretty severe bruising, from being under the pressure of that nomu. that said, his face ( you know, being slammed into concrete and all ) was also likely badly cut and bruised for a while after usj. as i’ve written him so far, his back has never been in especially good condition; that said, after this, it’s a just little worse yet, from this point on. 

plus, i have a difficult time believing that his ribs could handle that much pressure, either? i wouldn’t be surprised if a few were broken, or at least, bruised. this encounter really just wrecked him. from what all might said about him not having much time left, it’s very fortunate that he received medical care quickly enough. 

two days after the sports festival, he’s out of his bandages, and he says that recovery girl’s treatment was excessive -- considering that and the fact that he took the minimal amount of time off, we can assume he spent a lot of time with her during his downtime through the school day. regarding his underground hero work, i’d say he gives himself two days after that before returning to nightly patrols -- and that’s only after being convinced to do that much. he’s a workaholic, through and through. 

there’s far more to worry about when it comes to his mental health, and the steady decline of it that begins from this point, and gradually worsens over the course of the series so far. 

obviously, having a near death experience is enough to give anyone nightmares; but it’s not like he’s never had one before, being a pro for over a decade now -- it’s the intensity of the fight, it’s the fear struck in him by being crushed by a creature as strong as all might without a quirk ( if something like this exists, what could that mean for the symbol of peace -- the target? the symbol of peace, who was at his prime during shouta’s own rise to heroism ), but most of all, the risk to his students is what makes him start losing sleep at night. which, by the way, he wasn’t getting a lot to begin with. as though tsuyu’s close call with shigaraki weren’t enough to unsettle him, it’s plain to see that this is just the start of a long game, and he was all but powerless to stop it. i don’t think he downgrades his role in usj -- and he’s especially grateful to thirteen and all might -- but, it’s difficult to consider something like that a job well done when being struck down so brutally, and in front of his students. 

there’s definitely an element of pride, too, that makes his recovery a difficult period. he’s refusing any use as needed medication left and right -- until he just can’t take the pain anymore, which is somehow worse -- and he doesn’t admit that it’s for any other reason than not liking what painkillers do to you; the lack of coherency, the lack of control. and that’s true! but admitting that he needs them at all is a challenge in and of itself. shouta lightens up on this after the first few days, if only because his treatments have become exhausting, and they help him sleep just a little easier. and this point segues into the next -- autonomy. 

he’s fortunate in most verses to not be living alone. whether it be a specific verse for a ship ( i.e, in my verse with leo’s jeanist, they live together at this point ) , or a default situation of being roommates with mic ( this is specific to @fortevoce​ and i’s canon, however; in our verse, and probably just in general ), he’s got someone to help -- because as it turns out, there’s a lot he can’t do on his own with both of his arms out of commission. besides, take into consideration that he’s sore all over, between his ribs and back alone, just walking and moving is difficult -- and his legs are just about all he has to keep himself running. all of that said, he’s still shouta -- a man who has always struggled to accept help, be it because of a sense of independence and control that he’s had since he was a young boy and that he’s desperate to maintain, or because it embarrasses him that he needs it at all. 

the last thing i want to touch on is his eyes ----- his quirk, and how close a call that was. because there is so much to say and this is already so long, i’ll keep it to the usj specifics -- it’ll come up again, surely, in maybe it’s own post. we know through canon that after this, his eye strain worsens significantly, and how often he uses his quirk is greatly affected. i’d say that how often he administers eye drops is probably doubled, per day. and more than that, i think how very near he came to losing this completely has struck a chord in him; one of gratitude, but also a humbling fear, almost. he was already a cautious man, but from here on out, he’s especially aware of his own limits -- for better and for worse. 

[ohmytheon]

Karma in Retrograde (1)

title: Karma in Retrograde

summary: When Dabi is struck by a de-aging quirk that regresses him to the most important part of his life, he finds himself turned back to a sixteen year-old U.A. General Studies student with a lot of self-esteem issues, parent problems, a destructive quirk that he can't manage, and no memory of the five years that he's lost - not the mention the fact that his little brother is now the same age as him and one of the top students in the U.A. hero course. In U.A.'s attempt to make up for what they missed and help the Dabi of the past, present, and future, he is placed with the only students that know him and have yet to find out what truly makes the difference between a hero and a villain. There, they must face the question of whether he can change or if his destiny is already set in stone.

– Chapter 1: An attack on a hero support equipment warehouse goes terribly wrong when Dabi is hit with a de-aging quirk.

notes: This is going to be a massive endeavor (no pun intended) on mine and @mistystarshine​‘s behalf, but I could not ask for a better co-conspirator, partner-in-crime, and co-author for this fic. For all we know, this whole thing could be debunked in this current manga arc, but you can pry the "Dabi is a Todoroki" theory out of my cold dead hands. I hint at it in a lot of my fics, so it was high time that I just did it. Mistystarshine and I went back and forth with a lot of jokes and ideas, but she came up with the de-aging idea and my brain ran with it like I needed it to live. I'm so excited for where this is going. It's a lot of headcanons, all things considered, and we've come up with ideas that range from totally silly to dead fucking serious. I'm not joking when I say that we've talked about this fic every night for like three weeks, maybe more. This is going to be crack treated very seriously. Are there plot holes? Sure. Would this actually happen? Probably not. Do we care? Hell no. We're having fun with this! A ton of fun! And I hope you do too reading it. I've got a lot of feels and so does Mistystarshine and apparently this is our outlet.

When he had joined the League of Villains, Dabi had expected to be dealing with pro heroes, not children, but sometimes it was more interesting that way. Maybe it had been a coincidence or fate, but something had aligned in the universe to bring together all his desires. Sometimes the League was fractured and they didn’t always agree or even like each other, something that was inevitable when a lot of strange and wackjob personalities were in one room, but hate could make even the worst work with one another for a common goal.

And right now, the goal was to bring down the false hero society that so many people worshipped.

To be honest, Dabi wouldn’t mind heroes if they actually did what they had been created to do. However, besides All Might, it had been a very long time since heroes were legitimately heroic. It was hard to be a true hero when all heroes were human and most humans were flawed. Could he fault them for that? No, he was plenty flawed as well. The difference between him and these so-called heroes was that he could admit it. He revelled in it, in fact. The heroes needed to be brought down a level so they could see their distorted reflections as well.

These days, heroes were more about fame and fortune than they were about saving people -- about being good. Even the best of the best could also be terrible people behind closed doors. They weren’t the pure-hearted individuals that so many people made them out to be. Greedy, self-centered, brutal, cold. None of those things were in the definition of a hero and yet they applied to many of them out there right now. A true hero would know their flaws, accept them, and work every day to overcome them.

Not too many heroes were willing to do that and so it was the League’s job to show them how. It was more fun than Dabi had anticipated. He should have started doing this ages ago. The years that he’d wasted doing little more than passive aggressive petty crimes on his own were nothing compared to what he was doing now with the League.

Perhaps the most opportune moment of his life, and a surprising one at that, was when Dabi had been put in charge of the Vanguard Action Squad. Although they had attempted to come to blows at first and Dabi still thought that the guy was more than a little broken in the head, Shigaraki had still seen Dabi’s ability to lead. It wasn’t something that was immediately noticeable, the scars, staples, and dead but bright blue eyes too distracting, but he had spent his entire life raising himself, making it easier to guide others.

It had given him access to the newest U.A. students. Not one of his original goals, but something that had definitely turned into an opportunity to do even more with his time in the League. He wasn’t certain how long he planned on being in it, but for now, it worked to his advantage. In the beginning, he had been aggravated over the idea that he had to deal with a bunch of children, but then they proved to be a lot more interesting than many of the pro heroes that he’d seen so far.

What better way to bring down the hero society and start anew than by attacking the very beginning of the process? U.A. and schools like it were where every hero began their journey. Cutting them down right there, destroying all that they believed in, would cause a ripple effect throughout the entire hero community.

Dabi could see all of it -- the past that brought him to his lowest point, the present that he was fighting in, and the future that could go either way -- whenever he saw Shouto Todoroki.

It had been curious to see Todoroki’s face on the kill list when he and the Vanguard had attacked the U.A. Training Camp in order to kidnap Katsuki Bakugou. Not very surprising, if Dabi was being honest. Like most people, he had watched the U.A. Sports Festival and seen the raw power that made up Endeavor’s youngest son. With his mother’s ice powers in tenfold on one side and his father’s fire on the other, he was the perfect storm to make up a hero.

His unwillingness to use the fire half of his quirk had been of note. Dabi had known at least some of what he was capable of and yet Todoroki had clearly avoided using it until that Midoriya kid had forced him into a corner. He could have crushed Bakugou in the last round had he used his fire power -- and yet he hadn’t. A hero obsessed with power and being on the top, Dabi doubted that Endeavor had liked that, which had been a pleasure in itself.

To be honest, Dabi had expected to confront Todoroki at some point when they’d been on the mission to kidnap Bakugou. There was no way that someone like him would let something like a classmate being taken lying down. Perhaps he had lingered too long on Todoroki’s photo back then because Shigaraki had actually asked if killing him would be a problem. Many people gravitated towards people with similar quirks and even felt connected to them on some level.

No, being put into a position where he might have to kill Shouto Todoroki wouldn’t be a problem. Actually doing it was another matter. Dabi rather liked the kid being around. Both he and Midoriya were prime examples of who heroes were supposed to be. It would almost be a shame to put them down, not when Stain himself had decided that Midoriya was worthy of being kept alive. Dabi liked to think that if Todoroki had been in the other boy’s position, Stain would have made the same decision.

Maybe it was wishful thinking.

Or maybe Dabi just liked direct conflict.

It had been decided the League would strike again when the Class 1 students began to get their provisional hero licenses. After the whole Overhaul business, Dabi was itching to get back into the swing of things. He’d gotten a taste of what it felt like to completely overwhelm a hero and it had been addicting. Bringing a hero to their knees had been exhilarating, even more so when Dabi had been recognized for his most recent work.

Endeavor had been officially announced as the new number one hero. All Might was a shell of who he was once. Todoroki finally passed his test and Dabi, being one of the strongest in the League, was given the opportunity to attack the beginning stages of hero society and turn them to ashes. Things were coming together nicely.

They waited a few days before attacking a warehouse that created much of the support equipment for heroes. Not a lot of civilians realized that so many heroes relied on equipment to strengthen or control their quirks. Dabi had never had proper access to it while growing up with his destructive quirk. Who knew where he would be if he had? Destroying the main manufacturer of such equipment would not only cripple the heroes that depended on them, but also deal a devastating economic blow.

Dabi had been quite proud of the idea. The fact that the warehouse was in the sector where Todoroki had his provisional hero license was a bonus.

Those false heroes wasted little time in reaching the scene, but it was too late to save the warehouse or whatever was inside. Dabi’s cremation quirk was overwhelming in its destructive abilities. With the equipment added to his outfit to give him an actual villain costume, he could unleash it even further. Every time he used his quirk now, he felt a wild sense of power and relief. For the first time in his life, his quirk felt better than good. It felt great. He could go to one hundred percent without ever having to worry. This was power, all in the palms of his hands.

And then, without warning, it was all taken away from him.

A warehouse employee was cowering in the corner, trapped in the building by the blue flames. Dabi was thinking that it might be kinder to simply turn him to ashes when a wall of ice sliced through the room and cut Dabi off from everyone else in the building. He spun around and let off another burst of flames just in time to greet another row of ice. Steam, water, smoke, and ice exploded in the room the second the two opposites met each other. Dabi threw an arm up and let flames consume him to protect himself. He built them stronger, pulling them to his arm, and threw them at the young hero who had joined the fray.

Todoroki sliced through the blue flames not with his ice but with his fire and Dabi’s blood boiled. Fighting fire with fire was a power move that few thought of. While Todoroki’s fire wasn’t nearly as hot as Dabi’s, it was enough to break Dabi’s flames apart. Even better, as Todoroki countered with his flames using his left arm, he was able to slam his right foot down on the ground and attack with his ice, which forced Dabi to dodge to the left and shoot off another powerful explosion of flames.

“Why don’t you leave this for the big boys?” Dabi taunted, bolstered by the fire that surrounded them, blue and orange alike. It was hotter than hell in here, melting Todoroki’s ice like a popsicle on a summer day.

Todoroki grit his teeth in frustration, though he didn’t look anywhere near his limit. Dabi would have to drag Todoroki there until the kid was past collapsing. If he kept fighting, then he’d prove himself to be a hero. Didn’t mean that he might not still be killed, but Dabi would prefer it if not. The kill list meant that the targets could be killed if the situation called for it. Not exactly a hit list. They weren’t going out of their way to kill U.A. students, after all. Dabi would just get close.

“Looking for a rematch?” Dabi asked as blue flames shot out of his left palm like a tornado. Todoroki skated out of the way with his ice, smothering flames as he did so, and slid his right hand along the ground like he was rolling a ball and then an over-aggressive amount of ice jutted towards Dabi, just as he’d done during the Sports Festival. Dabi couldn’t dodge it this time, so he threw both hands out and let off an explosion of fire so massive that it knocked both him and Todoroki backwards and blew a hole in the roof. The building shook around and above them. Another blast like that and the whole thing would come crumbling down.

So focused on his fight with Todoroki, Dabi had completely forgotten about the civilian that he had considered giving a quick death. As far as he was concerned, the only person that mattered now was Todoroki. The villains that he had brought with him must have been dealing with the pro heroes outside. Good. That left Todoroki to him. Dabi wanted to see how they compared.

An ugly grin cut its way across Dabi’s face. He opened his mouth to attempt to goad Todoroki into talking when Dabi was suddenly struck by something sharp in the back. It sent him to one knee and he had to put a hand on the ground to keep himself from falling over. Nothing happened at first. He didn’t feel anything. But then a cold chill went over his whole body until everything began to tingle and his vision began to swim. With his free hand, he clutched at his chest, like he might be able to pull his erratically beating heart right out, and then began to struggle to breathe.

Somewhere around him, he thought he heard a voice shouting, “Dabi?” but he couldn’t be sure. Especially when his body froze without the help of any ice. He gasped in pain and shut his eyes tight as it felt like every muscle was being pulled together by a string and everything was turning upside down and he was drowning and he--

He--

He--

He opened his eyes, finding himself lying on his back and staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling that had a huge hole in it, the rafters covered with fire and ice. The fire. He blinked. There were spots of blue and orange. That was a familiar, if not welcomed, sight. His head hurt like a bitch, feeling like someone had whacked him in the skull with a textbook about twenty times.

Groaning in pain, he pushed himself up with his hands and then looked down in confusion when he found himself lying on a cold concrete ground half covered in ice. He slid his fingers across the ice, taking in the soothing feel of it, but the heat of the fire that surrounded him was beginning to make him uncomfortable. Finally, he raised his eyes and gaped at the scene around him.

Why the hell was he sitting in the middle of a completely destroyed warehouse filled with burning crates and large melting walls of ice?

A bolt of panic shot through him and he jumped to his feet, although he nearly collapsed all over again when a wave of dizziness overcame him. He put a hand on his head, willing it to go away, and then began to search for an exit, lifting his shirt over the bottom half of his face so that he wouldn’t breathe in so much smoke, but he was starting to hyperventilate.

Where the hell was he? What was he doing here? How had he gotten here?

He abruptly took notice of the shirt he was holding over his face. It was somewhere in between white and grey, but the biggest detail was that it was too large for him. It hung on him like a loose tent. Half his chest was hanging out of the v neck shirt, making him feel exposed. The black pants were also too big for him, so he went to tighten the white belt around his waist when the jacket took him off guard. It hung over his frame like his shoulders were a coat hanger, but it was the sleeves that caught his attention. There was some sort of metal on them, like something the support course would put on a hero costume.

What the fuck was he wearing?

There was little time to consider what the hell was happening when someone called out, “Ryouta?” and his eyes snapped forward, landing on a teenage boy gawking back at him in shock.

It felt as if a rock fell into the pit of his stomach and he choked on the smoke. The familiar face sent him reeling for multiple reasons. He looked like… With that two-toned hair and those mismatched eyes and that angry scar over the side of his face, the kid looked dead up like… “Shouto?”

The kid jerked back at the name, clearly affected by it. He shook his head. No, that had to be impossible. This kid was tall, sharp, muscular -- this one was older. Shouto was eleven. He might not be the soft, little boy that always rested in his mind’s eye, but this kid was…

Shouto was a boy.

But how likely was it that there was someone running around that looked exactly like Shouto, just a few years older?

“What the fuck is going on?” Ryouta demanded, pointing an accusing finger at him. “Who the fuck are you? I swear, if this is some kind of sick prank, I’m going to flip!”

The kid -- Shouto? (No, it wasn’t him!) -- couldn’t hide the disbelief from his face. His eyes (one gray and one the same blue he saw in the mirror) were wide and his eyebrows raised past his messy bangs. There was even a patch of ice on the right side of his cheek, just the way Shouto’s would do whenever he used his ice half of his quirk more than the fire half.

“This whole time it was you?” the kid asked, sounding utterly gutted.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Ryouta shouted back, panic and dread threatening to swallow him. He took a few hesitant steps back, but then had to shy away from a patch of blue fire. “I don’t know…”

That dizziness was coming over him and his vision began to swim again. The kid stepped closer to him, but he waved a sharp hand at him to get him to stop. The kid actually raised his arms in reaction, fire and ice both flaring up. Oh fuck, it was him. It was Shouto. It was his little brother. Except he wasn’t so little anymore and he didn’t know what was going on and there was so much fire and destruction and he was scared and his head was pounding and swimming in a fog.

This time, when he collapsed, he didn’t wake right back up, leaving Shouto to stare in utter confusion at the unconscious body of his older brother.

end notes:

A lot of thought was put into deciding what Dabi’s given name would be, since we don’t have it in canon yet. I (Mistystarshine) initially saw ‘Ryouta’ used in another work. The kanji 燎 means ‘burn’ or ‘bonfire’ while the kanji 他 means ‘another’. Quite literally ‘another fire quirk’. However, because I cannot just let myself be content, I did some more research and boy am I glad I did! It turns out that Ryouta can also be spelled with the kanji 凉 , which means ‘cool’. Specifically, this kanji generally applies in a pleasant sense, so like ‘nice and cool’ or ‘cool and refreshing’, but it is written using 冫,  the radical for ice. A radical is essentially a root word that can be narrowed down with more specific variations. For example, for the words ‘sunny’, ‘sunshine’, and ‘sunlight’, ‘sun’ would be the radical. All three words, while having different specific meanings, refer to the sun.

What does this mean and why is it worth giving a linguistics lesson over? It means that the name ‘Ryouta’ could mean ‘another fire quirk’ or ‘another cold quirk/another ice quirk’. That means that (although it would require changing some legal documents if they guessed wrong at first, since it is spelled differently, but the pronunciation is at least the same) the name would have fit whether the child manifested a fire quirk, an ice quirk, or both.

If we get a given name reveal and it turns out we guess wrong, we may go back and edit it. If we’re right, I will be insufferable. (Lanni edit: I’m a stubborn fool and will probably want to keep Ryouta out of spite because I LOVE IT.)

Also, did you know that Dabi’s scars have been shown smoking after he uses his quirk? Fun fact.

[zombieheroine]

The blue meaning of life [TF: Prime, G, Megatronus&Orion Pax]

A/N: Thank you for your prompt, @shbumi! 

This ended up being more of a gen fic than a romantic one and it can be read as a friendship one, but since I wrote this my headcanons are the canon and they are in love so. 

Enjoy some ethical debates and gladiator fights! I love me some gladiator stuff.

*

The blue meaning of life | [AO3] Visiting Kaon had been a terrible, wonderful idea, Orion had known that already when he had boarded the train trembling with excitement, and he knew it now when he was finally here, by his new friend's side. Megatronus was almost exactly like he had imagined, only more.

Now that they weren't restricted by only letters and they could just let the words flow, there seemed to be no end to the chatter: They had to talk about anything and everything, and they blabbered on uninterrupted as Megatronus led the way through the network of streets and alleys, the crowd parting for his big frame and commanding EM-field almost like they were alone on the streets. “If every one is an individual, then naturally what follows is that every individual's value is the same. It must be a constant,” Orion explained. Megatronus shook his helm to him while elbowing them a path across a busy traffic lane. “Not necessarily, my friend,” he argued back, “just because each individual has a unique set of features doesn't mean that those features cannot be valued differently. Standards don't necessarily come from within, they are constant in the world around us.” “But the culture is made up by and of individuals! All parts of our culture that classify us, assigning numbers to our worth or names to our functions are of this current system, which is the one we must go against,” Orion replied. “I mean also outside our culture,” Megatronus said. “The laws of physics for example, they exist the same for us all, always have and always will whether our species or our world even exists or not. Those are the standards, my friend, no ideology either theirs or ours will reach those and that's why they are the standards.” “They don't change, I agree, but we still decide what we think about them,” Orion answered as they continued along a curved walking street towards the heart of the city. “We can't change the universe, but we do decide what value we place on its parts.” Now Megatronus didn't argue back anymore, but he did give Orion a curious look that told him he still had something to say. Uncharacteristically he seemed to be at loss with words and now taking a tactical step back to reform his point. Orion held the strong gaze effortlessly, eagerly and without a single flicker of an optic; he wanted to know. Finally Megatronus seemed to come to a conclusion and put a servo on Orion's shoulder-guard, his large talons careful on his thin plating. “Let me show you what I mean,” was all Megatronus said before he took a surprising turn, and Orion hurried to follow him. The Pit didn't only live up to the rumors but exceeded them easily. The air was thick with electricity that was more in the atmosphere than anything else, and the bright dramatic neon signs and spot lights left the audience and the corners of the stands in deep darkness illuminated only by the biolights on the mecha seated there. The audience stands rose like large stone stairs around the arena, and in the middle of  them down below was the Pit, the Death Arena, the Damnation, filled with smooth, glimmering black sand. Orion didn't belong in the crowd but blended in almost too well: he was smaller than any Bad-Landers there and blander than any high-caste mecha coming to enjoy the blood-sport, and among them he was so inconspicuous that it was a miracle that no one sat on him. He wondered if this was thanks to Megatronus, because he found his assigned seat in the champion's corner vacant and no one stopped or questioned him when he sat there even though he got many looks. Watching a pit fight made Orion's plating crawl. First this evening were the matches for criminals to fight for their freedom or be executed, against each other or against professional gladiators, a rather clumsy display but a good warm-up for the audience. Only after them the multi-faced score board above the Pit turned on and showed a point score with names, and then professional gladiators stepped into the arena. The bets were off and the ranked fights began, first for teams and pairs, and only after those came the long-awaited one-on-ones. The crowd roared, credits changed servos as energon was spilled in the Pit, and through it all Orion thought only one thing: “This is wrong.” Was this the core of their culture? Was this the venting of the frustrations of their kind? Mecha watching others tearing each other apart for credits and the fallen ones hauled off as scrap and spare parts, already forgotten? The arena of black sand was like the sparkless optic of death staring back at him. This couldn't be right. And then, finally, came the moment everyone had apparently been waiting for, the jewel of the event and the reason for showing up at all for those who didn't have credits to bet: The top tire of gladiators stepped on the sands. These were the twenty mecha who had fought their way up through the ranks and still functioned, the fastest, strongest, meanest killing machines the Bad-Lands had to offer. Each one got a single feature with their designation announced, but no one else got a response like Megatronus did, featured last but the crowd roaring the loudest. The champion, the Terror of Kaon. Orion watched Megatronus spreading his arms, a sword in one servo and a shield in another, basking in the promised praise and glory, and he felt a new feeling settling in his tank: fear. The champion always fought until his termination. The gladiators fought only one on one, and Megatronus was facing all of them. Orion felt his spark first freezing and then burning hotter than it needed to when he watched. The possibility of immediate and final termination became startlingly real when the first fight broke out, and the fear never eased its hold on him even when his friend fought and won one match after another. Death would be final. That gaping void, the nothingness waiting for them was here, and Orion felt it touching him, reminding him that here it was, ever-present and all powerful, and down in the pit his dear friend was toying with it. The black sand glowed where energon hit it, soaked and messy as the gladiators wrestled and stumbled in it. Megatronus struck and slashed with his sword and protected his front and flank with the shield. He moved fast and nimble for a mech of his size and he attacked relentlessly, never forced back and seemingly never tiring. Energon splattered and his unpainted, modest gray armour was dripping with it, and when he finally won the last of the matches he threw his arms open and received thunderous applause and cheers from the audience as the blue fuel ran down his steaming frame, and Orion understood that Megatronus wasn't Kaon's favorite only because of his fighting skills but also because of how he presented. It was like he had defeated death for all of them. The arena started to slowly empty as the crowd poured out into the night in search of drinks and other distractions, but Orion followed Megatronus' instructions into the maintenance tunnels and the catacombs running below the arena. Again he was made to feel like an honoured guest of some sort since he could just walk through doors, gates were lifted for him and no one questioned his presence even once before he stepped into a large hall filled with medical berths, loitering gladiators and other staff, and a big pile of scrap by the gateway to the hallway leading to the arena. Nine of the gladiators were being patched up, five of them were nowhere to be seen, five of them had joined the scrap pile, and Megatronus stood in the middle of the room, waiting for Orion. He looked larger now, both because of the low ceiling and the blue stains on his armour that he was casually wiping clean with a rag when he nodded to Orion and gestured him towards him. “This is the nature of our existence, my friend,” Megatronus said to Orion once he stood in front of him. “All of us are fine warriors and we all come from the ranks of the strongest there are. And yet we obey metal, just like any one of us, if it catches us.” Orion stared up to his friend, firm and without a flicker even though the smell of processed energon was making his tank turn. Megatronus gave him a small smile and spread his arms to show the new scratches and the freshly welded wounds on his chassis. “Metal didn't command me today. I get to be me yet another solar cycle again. Do you get my point now?” Orion wanted to keep arguing, to tell his friend what he had seen in the bottom of the Pit and in the mirror when he had looked, how afraid he had been and how horrifying all this seemed, but all that left his vocalizer was: “I'm happy that you're okay.”

[bloonstuff]

The inspiration for this story came from Magnus' knack for asking inappropriate or problematic questions and my wish that there was someone like me in Skam. A wheelchair user. I would love to see Julie tackle some of the issues that come along with having my type of disability. I'd love to see how my beloved characters would interact with someone like me. After forming my own headcanons I decided to write it myself, and created Sofie. This is a personal project that means a lot to me and I hope some of you will enjoy it too.

Chapter One: Sofie

Sofie sat at the front of the classroom, all eyes on her. She wasn't sure why the teacher had insisted she formally introduce herself to the class. Perhaps she thought it would give her the best chance at making friends, like she needed the extra help. Everybody always thought she needed extra help. It wasn't exactly untrue. Sofie did need help with a lot of things. Most things really. Getting out of bed, getting dressed, getting from A to B - the list went on. One thing she didn't require help with was making friends. She had plenty of those, or at least she had.

The teacher nodded at her, prompting her with a wide, patronising smile on her lips. “Go on. Tell them a bit about yourself.”

Sofie resisted the urge to roll her eyes and painted her own smile on. She did have an audience after all. Some whispered amongst themselves, some where wide eyed and interested and others looked like they could care less who she was or what she had to say. She liked the latter most of all.

“I'm Sofie Holm,” she said, her nails picking absentmindedly at a split in the faux leather of her armrest, a nervous habit that betrayed the confident demeanour she tried to portray at all times.

“I moved from Bergen with my parents and my brother because-” Sofie stopped for a moment, glancing at the teacher again before she continued. If they insisted on giving her an audience then perhaps she should make a worthy performance. “Because our house wasn't liveable after the accident.” She looked solemnly at her legs, as if remembering back to a time when they worked. “Plus my parents just couldn't face living there anymore. I mean when your award winning ballet prodigy daughter is struck down in her prime like that...”

Some of the people that seemed disinterested before now sat up in their seats. Typical. One – a guy with sandy coloured hair that curled at his ears – raised his hand but asked before the teacher could allow it, “What kind of accident?”

Before she could think better of it, the lie was rolling off her tongue. “Meth lab explosion.” Sofie heard the teacher's sharp intake of breath to her left and had to bite her lip to stop laughing. Obviously this teacher hadn't been briefed on her condition, or at least they hadn't bothered reading the information. Figured. 

The truth was she had moved with her parents and brother because her dad had gotten a new job. They'd already lived in Oslo for a few months but at the beginning of the school year Sofie had been hit with a particularly nasty chest infection and it had kept her from starting school on time. Being that chest infections were a yearly occurrence, she was used to being home schooled until she was fit enough to return to school. That way she avoided being held back. Her situation meant teachers were a little more lenient with her anyway. It would be a lie to say she didn't take advantage of that at times.

The guy that had asked the question rested back in his chair, an impressed look on his face. People always enjoyed the trauma porn more than the boring truth. “My brother was a dealer, another reason we had to flee Bergen,” she threw in for good measure. In reality her brother was five years old but they didn't need to know that.

Sofie looked to the teacher again and smiled, hoping she would take that as a cue to say she was done introducing herself. The teacher was no longer smiling and instead her brows were drawn together and a look of concern was evident on her features. “Uh well, thank you for that Sofie. You can go si-” She stopped herself then, obviously reconsidering her choice of words. “You can go to your desk.”

“Thank you,” Sofie said cheerfully. There was an audible click from her wheelchair as she pressed forward on the joystick and then she was navigating her way around the tables and chairs to an empty space at a desk that had obviously been prepared for her.

The teacher stood at the top of the classroom and addressed them as Sofie got situated. “Now I hope you all make an effort to give Sofie that little bit of an extra warm welcome.”

This time Sofie did roll her eyes. Always with the extra. As her eyes rolled to the left, Sofie caught the girl sharing her desk looking at her. She turned her head to get a better look at this little blonde thing looking at her with a beaming smile and round eyes.

“Halla,” she said brightly, blinking a little too fast. “I'm Vilde.”

Sofie nodded slowly. The teacher was talking at the top of the classroom but she ignored the two of them ignoring her. Sofie guessed she had perhaps enlisted Vilde to give her that 'extra warm welcome'. Vilde was still staring at her, her broad smile never wavering. It was intense.

“Nice to meet you, Vilde. “ Sofie finally replied. “If she's asked you to buddy up with me or something, then it's okay. You don't have to. I'm pretty capable of figuring things out myself. I can even make my own friends.” The saltiness wasn't really directed at Vilde but it was obvious she'd been collateral damage when her smile faltered.

“She didn't tell me to do anything. I volunteered. As the head of the Kosegruppa I thought I would take it upon myself to welcome you and extend the hand of friendship. I know there's not long left until the revue now but joining us would be a good way to make friends. Plus we don't have anyone like you in our group,” Vilde said in a rush of breath. Her smile spread upon her lips again as she spoke and she didn't at all seem to think anything of the last part of her speech. She was brazen, Sofie could give her that.

“Anyone like me?” Sofie asked, fully knowing what Vilde had meant but unable to resist.

“Well, you know,” Vilde replied, her hand gesturing towards the wheelchair. She still didn't look embarrassed or awkward and while Sofie would usually have a thing or two to say about that, she found herself chuckling instead. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad using Vilde as an in to meet people. She could work on correcting her behaviour later.

“Okay,” Sofie said with a nod. “I'll join your group. How bad can it be?”

Vilde's face had lit up when Sofie had agreed but she frowned at the rhetorical question. She didn't say anything about it, biting her lip instead. A second later her smile was back in place and Vilde exclaimed enthusiastically, “Good. I'll introduce you to the gang at break.”

With that it was settled and Vilde finally turned to face the front of the classroom where the teacher was still talking. Sofie had no idea what they were supposed to be learning but then the teacher gave her a wink and Sofie knew it was probably safe to hit her up for some printed notes after class. The whole being disabled thing didn't have many perks but that was definitely one of the few.

[chapter two: vilde]

[devourcr]

armand isn't less romantic bc he doesn't want to sleep in a coffin with his partner.

he wants to see them fully, resting peacefully near him. surrounded in soft blankets and pillows, safe — happy. nothing but the soft glow of a nearby nightlight highlighting their features.

not crammed into a coffin, unable to see, cramming elbows and knees against each other, afraid to so much as sneeze ( bc clearly amc vampires sneeze ). he doesn't want his partner to breathe in his face all night and that's okay.

[devourcr]

while i'm on my armand/claudia/madeline bullshit, i always feel it's necessary to be clear how strong armand knows his blood is. madeline would have been a terrifyingly strong vampire with few vampires that could actually pose a threat to her.

and armand is a vampire who lived through ww2 paris. giving strong blood to someone who probably sees him as lesser ( by how she treats him and also his assumptions of her ideology ) is a really fucked up idea for him. ASIDE from the fact that he doesn't want to make anyone, period. technically it's in violation of the great laws bc he's so strong.

he thinks it will also fuck up louis too and that fucks him up. i think there's so many reasons he's so upset by her turning.

[devourcr]

my favorite ( and honestly devastating ) headcanons with armand being 27 when he dies is that he would have taken on more teacher role within the household.

he would have seen boys that were there when he arrived, that came after him, grow, learn, and move on to universities. they go from being his brothers and his peers, to his younger siblings, more like children to him as he gets older. and i think it would very much be a choice to have a mentor role within the household.

also, i'm absolutely addicted to the idea that riccardo might have done similarly. even if he'd left for university first, if he came back to be a teacher himself. bc those two running shit during the day is such a fucking good image.

but all the more tragic at the end, because he'd feel all the more protective of those kids.

[devourcr]

my armand will always love daniel. i still have faith that the show will give us more, but my characterization of him and the way he engages with daniel is not of someone who would turn him lightly.

he will only turn him to save his life.

it's my headcanon that hes been thinking about it bc of the parkinson's ( and i still believe they had more of a past than what we've seen ). tbh i'd say one of the reasons he finally agreed to the interview was to see him. ( as much as he might deny it )

daniel is never an afterthought. daniel is not made on a whim. armand only makes one fledgling in all his 500 years and that is daniel. someone he can't bear the thought of dying. and equally can't bear the thought of giving him the dark gift, but does, when there's no other choice.

[devourcr]

when it comes to armand's amc verse, i portray him as having wanted to turn daniel from the moment he arrives in dubai/if not beforehand.

because my portrayal includes the 12 years of devils minion happening in the past ( this can be changed based on other amc!daniels, i won't force it on anyone), he already has strong feelings.

i respect it if there are daniel's that don't want that history. and in that case, armand probably just obsessively watched him from the sidelines, followed his career, and his relationships, etc. something about daniel changes his fucking brain chemistry.

when it comes to breaking traumatic or abusive cycles, armand does not break them. except for when it comes to making another vampire. he would rather die than make another, he wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy, etc. if he wouldn't do it to his worst enemy, i can't see him doing it out of spite.

but eventually, the thought of seeing daniel die, the idea of going on in a world where daniel doesn't exist is too painful and armand caves.

[devourcr]

armand will memorize lestat's entire album and then claim he's never listened to it.