#tbh I don’t think they even ever followed me back on my main so it's FINE

[fcthots]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN ONE OF MY MUTUALS FOUND MY SMUT BLOG

[titaswrld]

gryffindor characters modern! AU

according to me….

description: silly modern! AU head canons of the main gryffindor characters :)

pairing: harry, ron, fred, george, ginny and hermione x reader

contains: mentions of substances, alcohol and weed. mentions sexual acts (i think…)

|an: bored and decided i’d made something a little silly. literally just my thoughts lolll don’t take this too seriously

modern AU! harry potter who…

— definitely has a flip phone and refuses to be on any form of social media bc he thinks it’s awful for you

— i think being around his friends who do have social media would give him the spiel on most things tho

— oh he loveeesss house of dragon omg

— only listens to 70s 80s 90s music and some jazz tbh

— i feel like he’s just very old fashioned and he’s happy that way

— such a loving and caring bf since he’s hardly ever even touched the internet he’s pure lol

— def a lil goofball he’d say a little slang term the twins taught him and repeat it back to you…”harry who taught you that…”

— don’t ask him to do no substances i think he’d be kinda against them..not a smoker…occasional drinker.

modern AU! ron weasley who…

— is a stoner! thru and thru. i think he’s a bong rip typa fellow but a blunt or a joint would do it too. doesn’t strike me as a cart of eddie guy.

— big female rap supporter imo…def into latto and maybe dabbles into some meg that’s his girlll lol

— definitely a twea/seltzer guy oml cannot take shots is my hc

— heavy on the lowk himbo boyfriend

— not stupid at all but not super street smart i fear, more of a book smart type of guy.

— super cute and adorable bf overall, he’s a big boy. for sure.

—armmmmssss…. gymrat imo he loves to blow off steam at the gym

—i feel like isn’t a social media person as well…has an insta but doesn’t post on it nor have a lot of followers..no tiktok maybe twitter

—luv him but he was def on drakes side of the beef…definitely a champagne papi

—kinda a video game nerd imo but he’s definitely into the sports ones like FIFA

— buys you n him the crumbl cookie lineup every week and you review them tg in the car pretending to be those tiktok crumbl reviewers😭🫶 (he’s so cute)

modern AU! hermione granger who…

— is 100% on booktok

— do not ask her about the summer i turned pretty or bridgerton unless you wanna listen to her talk for hours.

— don’t play with her and noah kahan…

—or taylor swift

— or chappell roan..

—she’ll have a cute little mixed drink or perhaps a seltzer but do not give this girl no shots she don’t want none!

— her and colleen hoover….

— brings her digital camera everywhere and is most def the camera girl friend….”hermione pls send me the pics from last night”

modern AU! ginny weasley who...

— does not play about female wnba players at all.

— don’t even mention paige bueckers…that’s her girl.

— is a party animal just like her brother.

— loves her chappell roan too.

— always on social media u cannot get this girl off her phone. she’s like an ipad kid u couldn’t rip it out of her cold head hands.

— such a good girlfriend, definitely so protective over her s/o, especially on social media.

— “ginny why’d you respond to every comment under my post complimenting me with ‘& she/he mine..so’…”

modern AU! fred weasley who…

— definitely asks u “english or spanish?”

—definitely goes to too many parties���like at a function every weekend he loves the party scene.

—treats his girl RIGHTT i would compare the relationship to don toliver and kali uchis, flowers all the time, handsy. posting/supporting his girl allll the time

—“i❤️mygf” typa fellow, all his posts on socials are her! all his stories, his highlights and his posts.

— also a weed demon, doesn’t strike me as a beer or seltzer guy but ooooo that liqah….

— dress to impress demon. his gf definitely got him to play it and he got hooked and now he’s a fashion maven.

modern AU! george weasley who…

— is every girls dream man…im talking flowers, boo baskets, burr baskets, easter baskets, omg you say the word and he’s massaging your feet and feeding you grapes.

— always posting his girl just like his brother she’s on his absolutely everything and he has a highlight for her.

— type of guy to post those tiktoks of his girl on his account appreciating her all the time and the comments are like “omg on his account too!” and it’s so cute and adorable.

—isn’t much of a party guy like his brother…will go to a few but i feel like it’s not his thing at all and he’d rather be hanging out with friends instead of at a big function with strangers.

—literally the ken to your barbie and yes he took you to see the movie and yes he got into costume with you. and he did it happily.

— always hanging out with his girlfriend and wouldn’t want it any other way.

[drvmekoo]

quality time | jeon jungkook

➳ pairing: boyfriend!jungkook x reader (f)

➳ genre: established relationship, fluff, a little bit of angst, smut

➳ rating: 18+ (minors dni)

➳ warnings: jungkook is a bit of a dick at the start tbh, t*tty kissing, n*pple s*cking, d*epthroating, p*ssy eating, rough s*x, unprotected s*x (wrap it before u tap it baes) cre*mpie

➳ wc: 2.1K

➳ author's notes: this is my first ever drabble on this account so please be nice! also please let me know if you guys like it! i always love hearing what people think about my writing!

➳ summary: you and jungkook were supposed to have some quality time together. however it seems he made other plans. and you're pissed.

-

“I just don’t understand the issue here?” Jungkook questioned, following you into the kitchen. “All I said was that Taehyung and I were gonna hang out tonight? Why are you getting all huffy?”

“You know that’s not the main issue Jungkook.” you carried on emptying the bags of groceries you bought onto the counter, back turned to him “It was meant to be us two tonight! I even went out to buy food, especially so we could cook and have dinner together!” 

Jungkook continued staring at your back while he spoke “So Taehyung can join us? We see each other all the time! What’s one night?”

You froze. Whilst you didn’t mind cooking for Taehyung and having him over, it had been a while since you and your boyfriend had quality time together where you could both be relaxed. While it was true that you saw each other majority of the week, those hours spent with each other were spent finishing off work from earlier in the day or sleeping because of the busy schedules. 

Today, you both had free schedules and that meant that the two of you were able to finally have that quality time you had missed out on for all these weeks. 

Your plan was to make a nice dinner together, snuggle up and watch a nice movie. Heck, you even put on Jungkook’s favourite lingerie set. That was how much intimacy you were craving from missing it all these weeks.  

Yet Jungkook seemed clueless. And that boiled your blood even more.

“I just think you’re being a little dramatic babe.” Jungkook rubbed your shoulder from behind “We can always do this again another time-” 

“Oh don’t give me that bullshit Jungkook.” you whipped around out of his touch “We never have the time to spend together yet the one time we do, you decided to invite Taehyung?”

“Y/n, the one night I have off I just wanna spend playing some games with my friend! What have I done wrong?” Jungkook stared at you, eyes open wide as your outburst continues

“What have you done wrong?” You scoffed loudly “I don’t know, how about the fact you haven’t even acknowledged that we haven’t eaten a proper meal together in forever? How about the fact that all we do is fall asleep without so much as a cuddle? How about the fact that we haven’t had sex in over two weeks because of how busy and tiring our schedules are?” 

At this point, you had had enough. You stormed out of the kitchen and headed straight for the bedroom. You had to get away before either you said something you’d regret. 

“Y/n, you can’t just walk away after that!” Jungkook followed you out. “What? You’re just gonna leave it like this?” 

Jungkook’s voice became a muffled mess as you stormed into the bedroom and slammed the door shut. You heard him curse under his breath as his words were met with the bang of the door closing before hearing the jangling of his keys. 

“I’m going out for a bit. I’ll be back later.” He said flatly through the door, the closing of the front entrance the only clue that he had left. 

From then on, that’s when the tears started to stream down your face. This was not how you wanted the evening to go. In fact, having Taehyung over was better than this. 

But it was too late. The night had been ruined and you didn’t know where your boyfriend had run off to. Thoughts ran into your mind of him with another, using the affection he was meant to give you on someone else…

But you know Jungkook would never do that. No matter how mad he was, you knew he loved you more than anything and the fact that you thought, for a second, that he would do something so cruel made you sick to your stomach. 

You decided to get your mind off everything that had happened and instead turned on the TV to watch your comfort shows, quickly changing into a pair of joggers and snuggling into the warmth of Jungkook’s bed.

A few hours had passed and before you knew it, you were slowly drifting off to sleep…

You awoke to the sound of the front door quietly closing shut, as if the person walking in knew that the house was asleep. You turned over to see that it was ten minutes to midnight. 

Had Jungkook really been out for 5 hours? You thought to yourself, as you stepped out of the duvet and towards the bedroom door. Opening it quietly, you came face to face with the man himself 

“Hi,” he said softly. His face looked drained, as he eyed your face. “Can I come in?”

You nodded gently, widening the door so he could slip through. A part of you felt guilty that he had to ask to enter HIS bedroom, but he didn’t give you time to apologise as he started talking. 

“Look Y/n, I thought about what you said.” He took your hands and led you to the bed so you were both sat. “I know I’ve been neglecting you these past few weeks. You know how much I truly love you right?” 

You nodded again. He sighed, voice cracking. “I was wrong about not putting you first. I guess I was just so caught up in everything with work that I became selfish. I called Taehyung and told him I had plans. It’s just you and me tonight, okay?” A tear streamed down his cheek as you took hold of his face. “Please forgive me Y/n..”

“Baby..” By this time, you were both tearing up. “Of course I forgive you, my love.” You kissed his cheek as he pulled you in by the waist for a cuddle. 

“God the thought of you leaving,” Jungkook mumbled into your neck as you embraced each other “The thought of neglecting the one I love. Makes me sick to my stomach.”

You already felt the emotion of comfort wash over you as his scent reached your nose. 

“Never again. Okay?” Jungkook said, gently kissing your neck “Never again will I ever make you feel like that.” 

The sensation of lips on your neck made you moan softly. His strong hands around your waist already feeling like velvet on your body. 

“Let me prove to you how sorry I am princess.” His kisses grew more passionate. His secure arms manoeuvred you now so that you were lying down across the bed. “Let me show you how much I missed you.” By then his fingers were skimming the edge of your shirt, giving you the hint he wanted it off.

You lifted your arms up so that he can slip the clothing off you, immediately searching his face when your lingerie was revealed. 

Jungkook threw his back “Oh fuck baby…you’re killing me.” Straight away, his hands went to your boobs, massaging them from the fabric. Your breathy moans filled the air, hands already gently gripping Jungkook’s luscious locks. His face bent down to your chest as his mouth met your exposed cleavage. “Is this what you wanted baby, huh?” Another kiss to your chest “Fucked I missed these.”

While one of his hands caressed your nipple through the bra, the other slid around to your back and clawed at the clasp. You decided to help speed things up, arching your back a bit so you can undo the latch and from there you were left exposed. 

“Such pretty tits.” Jungkook whispered, “They’re mine.” His mouth immediately latched onto one, gently lapping at the bud with his tongue. 

You whimpered softly. “Kook, stop teasing….I want you.”

His mouth unlatched from your nipple. “Oh princess me too, I gotta get you ready first though okay? Patience my pretty.” 

At that, Jungkook returned his kisses to your body. He travelled down your figure, down slowly on your stomach right towards the pit of your pleasure. He stopped at the hem of your leggings. 

“Can I take these off, beautiful?” His fingers traced the lining of them. Once you nodded, he hoisted them down slowly. “Ass up beautiful for one second.” he smiled, once the leggings reached your rear. 

Once the leggings were off and you were left only in your panties, Jungkook stood up. As he finished taking off his shirt, you admired the way his muscles tensed as he unbuckled his belt and removed his trousers. His raging cock jutted out of his boxers.

You got up onto your knees while on the bed, palming at his dick through his own fabric. He threw his head back as your hand fell over the tip. 

“Can I taste you?” you asked politely, looking up at him through your eyelashes. He nodded quickly as he helped you remove his pants. His dick bounced as it was released from the cotton confines of his boxers and immediately you took him into your mouth, wasting no time to deepthroat him. 

“Ah fuck!” Jungkook gripped your hair tightly, gently thrusting his hips at the sensation of your warm, sucking throat. “Oh, baby girl you’re taking me so well.”

You pulled back but still had him in your mouth, lapping your tongue around the poignant veins of his cock. The smell of him made you dizzy, partnering with his quiet grunts filled the dark room. His hand pushed at the back of your head, urging you to take him deeper in your mouth once again. 

“Fuck baby, I’m gonna cum if you keep on like this…I wanna be inside you.” he pulled out of your mouth, and a string of saliva connected your mouth and his cock together. He bent down and kissed you passionately, tongue exploring your mouth widely. 

He whispered against your kisses “Lay down for me baby.”

You obliged. He tugged at your panties gently, inching them down your legs. You were now left bare at his glance. He kissed twice at your stomach before edging down to your pussy. His hot breath emphasised the pit in your stomach. 

In a blink of an eye, his mouth was lapping between your folds. Moaning against your clit, the vibrations sent shoots of pleasure through your body as you clawed at Jungkooks hair. His desperate licks edge you closer and closer. 

“K-Kook…I’m so close….” your mouth was held open at the amount of pleasure his mouth was giving you. Suddenly, the cold air hit your bare pussy as Jungkook leaned away. 

“Not yet baby…need to be inside you…”  

Jungkook positioned his cock at your entrance, slowly teasing the tip inside you “ready my angel?”

You nodded. Slowly he pushed into you, making sure you felt every inch of him.

“Oh���god Jungkook!” you clawed at his back, the size of him filling you up. “Y-you’re so big!” His cock quietly quicked the pace, as Jungkook nuzzled his face in the crook of your neck. You whimpered at the angle his shaft was pounding you, eyes trained shut at the waves of pleasuring hitting you at every thrust. 

“My god baby…you’re so fucking…tight!” His muffled voice vibrated against your neck “I gotta pull out…I’m gonna cum-”

“Cum in me…!” You moaned, wrapping your legs around his waist “Fill me up…”

“Oh….gorgeous….It’s so risky…” He removed his face from your neck “.....But you feel so good….”

At that, his pace quicked as his cock pounded at your pussy. Every thrust became a newfound ripple of delight. You felt your stomach tighten as the well-known feeling returned to your body once more. 

“B-babe…I’m gonna c-cum!” You threw your head back into the pillows

“Cum on my cock baby….Oh, fuck!” Jungkook exclaimed as your pussy tightened around his dick. Jungkook too felt the familiar feeling of an orgasm in the pit of his stomach 

Not too long after as you rode out your pleasure, you felt warmth enter you as Jungkook spilt inside you. With gritted teeth, he once again delved into your neck as he too rode out the other half of his orgasm, still thrusting gently and slowly. 

You whimpered quietly as he pulled out and sank next to you. Straight away he pulled you into his arms. “I love you so much. Please never ever forget that okay?”

“Okay, I love you.” You fit right into the pit of his arm as he stroked your hair, both of you exhausted from tonight's actions. 

“Hey, Kook? I know it's late but I'm kinda sticky now…”

He chuckled gently “Think it’s time me and you had a shower.”

-

find out what jungkook did in those five hours here

let me know if you want to be on the taglist for any future work i may post! reblog or send in an ask to show support! ily

[door-insurance]

So I played Life is Strange 2 for the first time ever

I didn’t wanna play it for a long time not cause it didn’t have Chloe or max (tbh I got sick of their asses around BtS they’re not even my faves)

By that point I was in college and had lost interest in the whole franchise but also I was very apprehensive of white creatives writing racism with no input from the group they’re portraying, they don’t usually do a good job

Sometimes they make it cartoony, sometimes they trivialize it, sometimes they romanticize it

So years later adulthood kicked my ass and I came back crawling to this franchise for some comfort, I finished True colors annnnd I finally started 2 after hesitating annnnd

^sketched this while playing

SPOILERS

I actually liked it

I liked Sean, the drawing segment he does- he was such a likable main guy, deserved better honestly.

I also liked Daniel, he was very adorable and I never got it when people called him annoying like no shit the 9 year old is gonna act like a 9 year old- just don’t be a jerk to him, I know he can be frustrating but that’s what taking care of a kid is like

And lis had always been about realistic complex characters, y’all can’t handle a traumatized nine year?

I have two younger siblings and two nieces plus I’ve been a bratty younger sibling to two older sisters

Maybe I’m just used to it?? But honestly Daniel wasn’t that bad

The racism portrayal in the first few episodes was not all that cartoony and it actually felt real at times, like I can check for American news rn and find stories similar to what you see in episodes 1-3 (minus the telekinesis)

Although the gas station racist hick spouting trump slogans was a bit on the nose, it’s more of dialogue thing

Some people thought the gas station detainment was egregious but it can happen unfortunately, especially to vulnerable people in rural areas and by someone of a higher systematic advantage

One other thing I did not like was the love interests, I thought Finn and Cassidy were alright characters on their own but why do we need romance in this game where the protagonists are always on the run?

I don’t like to compare lis 1 to 2 but when it comes to the romance the former did a better job as it spent more time establishing it, plus max stayed in the same place for the majority of the game- but you know what? Sean doesn’t have to be in a relationship right? It can be a one off thing, that’s fine

Which brings me to my next point

How old are Cassidy and Finn?

Cause Sean is still 16 and no, being on the road didn’t mentally age him- he’s not “mature” for his age

He is still a kid

So for some reason Dontnod never really specified their ages but some articles described them as teens (they look 30 to me) and they can be around 18 right? Their lives are hard stress ages you- it happens, we can with live that, it’s just a two years difference

But teens or not

why did they animate a whole knocking the boots scene???

Of all the games in the series, the only one that gets a sex scene is the one with the much younger protagonist and his ambiguously aged older looking love interest and I think it’s only with Cassidy you get to do it in the tent

Alex Chen was robbed of a on screen booty call from a beanie wearing lesbian with a sexy radio voice or a buff ass Adonis of a man who was Smokey the bear’s regional manager or something

Anyways I’m gonna move on I’m uncomfortable lmao

*im not hating on people who ship Sean with either Finn or Cassidy, I’m not even tagging your ship names- im just stating my personal preferences on my blog

One last thing I did not like about LiS 2 and it was the one thing that kept me from playing it for years

That one scene from episode 4

So at this point Sean Diaz went through the following:

-lost his father, had to abandoned his loved ones, education and home

-was accused of killing a cop

-had to take care of his little brother on his own while on the run, the same brother with telekinesis and none of them know how to control it

-was harassed, beaten then detained by a racist white man

-had to take refuge in an abandoned cabin with little resources

-the dog that they adopted at the gas station eventually gets mauled

-the one time they found solace at their grandparents house they had to leave abruptly cause the police was hot on their trail

-on their way out they can potentially witness the neighbors kid that they befriended get hit by the police car that’s chasing them

-they find shelter at a nomad campground but oh no they get involved with drug trafficking cause they barely have any other options to make money (unfortunately this happens a lot IRL this isnt egregious)

-Sean now has to deal with the trafficking, making sure that Daniel doesn’t get into any trouble with his powers while fake ass giancarlo esposito is breathing down his neck

-and guess what happens next… Daniel gets robbed into pulling a heist on temu gus fring and it goes badly, Sean can potentially lose a love interest/friend in Finn

-Sean gets hurt, Daniel goes so mad that he blows the whole place up; a shard glass flies into Sean’s eye and he ends up losing it

- Sean wakes up from a coma and learns that his brother is missing and he’s about to be taken to jail

- the one thing that consistently brought him joy during this trip was his art and because of the missing eye he can’t even do it the same anymore cause it hurts now

- Sean has to escape the hospital with a hot wired car, little money and has to drive across two states just to get to his brother

-on the way he dreams of his father, he wants him back he wants his old life back but that’s not gonna happen so he has to move forward

Im not listing all this as examples of bad story telling, a lot of these are real life experiences of homeless people. im just painting a picture of the shit that Sean had went through so far

Cause right after the dream sequence, Dontnod didn’t think all that was enough no you had to see Sean get hate crimed by two lifetime movie, sitcom special of the week racists- be made to either sing or suffer a brutal beating

It added nothing to the plot, it didn’t need a choice system either- it’s a hate crime, you’re not asking Joyce for fucking pancakes or eggs n bacon at the whales diner or hosing down Lisa the fckin plant.

This to me went straight to trauma p*rn category, it’s wheelchair Chloe all over again

I hated it then in LiS 1 and I hated now in LiS 2, this is why I don’t dick ride Dontnod that often

They always had this tendency right before the end they single out a particular character and mentally whip them, they become the writing teams punching bag- they think we didn’t get it the first time that this character is going through it, they just hammer it in with the subtlety of a heart attack and I hate it

“Yeah but it’s there to show Sean’s resolve to find Daniel-“

HE ESCAPED FROM THE HOSPITAL AND THE FEDS, HE HOT WIRED A CAR TO DRIVE ACROSS TWO STATES

He’s starving, dehydrated, suffering from chronic pain

That’s enough

Let the character breathe

You ask why not a lot of people wanna play this game and I’m gonna tell you, as much I enjoyed it myself it’s not an easy game to play- it gets brutal, especially right around the end

I’m not against bleakness or extreme conflict, I’m into that but sometimes that doesn’t translate well to any gaming format- especially a choices matter game that’s meant to be replayed

Some people have asinine reasons not to play LiS 2 like it dealing with racism and those people suck, lis had always dealt with progressive themes like calling out objectification, cyberbullying and sl*tshaming

Racism shouldn’t be the exemption

but misuse of racial trauma and not knowing when it’s appropriate to invoke it is a huge turn off and hella triggering to a lot of non white players and I remember when LiS 2 dropped I’ve seen (mostly white) lis fans at the time proclaiming that not wanting to play it meant that you were racist

Like I said there were probably racists who didn’t wanna touch the games cause of the main characters skin but there were people like me who were apprehensive of the “Let’s go to the mosh pit Shaka brah” people handling racism

This is the same studio that had Ms Grant (one of the few black characters from LiS 1) claim that the white settlers peacefully shared the stolen land with the native Americans

I find that shit harder to believe than the time traveling powers

And they were doing alright in the first episodes they covered stuff like unconscious biases slipping through, dog whistles, polite racism from the grandparents segment, police brutality, racial profiling and being targeted/othered- some of these things I went through when I visited western countries

Then they did the bullshit I feared theyd do…

I really don’t blame myself for being hyper vigilant at the time and honestly I was going through a lot then, even if I wanted to I wouldn’t have touched LiS 2 cause it’s a very heavy tasking game to play

I know I kinda made it seem like I didn’t like this game but I did, its the best one in terms of the choice system

It had more weight to it, seeing Daniel internalizing what you say to him or how you act around him was so cool

Also what the second game has over the first one aside from the choices system is the ending selection- I never liked picking the endings for max, I wanted her to pick the ending or her coding/script to do that

Its definitely more fleshed out technically even though LiS 1 has a special place in my heart it’s always gonna be no. 1- but im also glad that I got to experience the 2nd game for the first time, I liked it

Personal lis ranking

1: Lis 1

2: Lis 2

3: True colors

Discount bin: BtS

My personal fave moments from LiS 2:

- beating up the racist bully and giving him a concussion

-mushroom (rip icon)

- victorias letter

-winning that that bear from that claw machine

-gorillaz song that was not feel good inc

-Brody pointing at a fucked up looking arcadia bay yelling “that’s the past!”- that was hilarious

-Sean paying tribute to Arcadia bay in his sketchbook (this fucking kid man, he’s so sweet he deserves the world- what did he do to make DONTNOD mad at him)

- the wolf animation and the story that plays before every chapter

-this was the worst hate crime in the whole game

[raayllum]

Do you think Callum will do dark magic again?

Oh yeah, not a doubt in my mind. This is for 3 main reasons:

1) You don't have a character say "But beware, if you ever do dark magic again, the darkness will overwhelm and corrupt you" and escalate the stakes of usage unless you're going to go there. It's kind of like how I know Callum is going to be possessed Again at one point (s7 dark my beloved) precisely because he's worried about it and more than that, that he's brought another character (Rayla) into the fold with a decision to make. No reason to have setup and then no payoff

2) Unless Callum does dark magic again, Aaravos can't possess him again. And as previously mentioned, Callum has to get possessed unless they want to throw away multiple episodes (4x04, 4x05, 4x07, 5x04, 5x08, all S6 + orb shots, 6x03) out the window. Ergo, he has to do dark magic again. Setup like this (i.e. Rayla as Callum's light being hinted at in framing in s2 and then much more overtly in s4 before being brought mostly home in s6) always comes back around in some manner, just gotta look for it

3) Viren parallels. Viren and Callum have always had oppositional (arc 1) and then mirrored (switching) foil arcs throughout the show (think Callum with wings vs Viren falling to his death in 3x09, or Viren swearing dark magic off in 5x09 and Callum having opened that door back up again an episode prior, etc). Viren, as stated, had sworn off dark magic saying he would never ever do it again, nor did he want to do it in 6x08 for a multitude of reasons.

However, someone he loved (Soren) as well as the extenuating circumstances caused him to use dark magic as a full on sacrifice that likewise only sacrificed himself. A couple episodes we had Callum 'fix' the hole dark magic had made inside him, but if he's following Viren's path, there's two likely angles: the first is that he, like Viren, will use dark magic even after trying so hard to rid himself of it (the mirrored arc). The second, overlapping angle is that Callum will refuse to sacrifice his heart (switching) because his heart is Rayla.

'I will think of you under every full moon. Please don’t let this hurt too much. But, if it does—if you feel that soft aching—know that that piece of your heart isn’t missing. It’s not missing at all, Callum: I’m carrying it with me! Always.' —Dear Callum

Kinda like how Aaravos demanded that Viren should make the sacrifice in 5x09, and Viren refused vs Rayla demanding that Callum should make the sacrifice in 6x03 (and Finnegrin a bit honestly) and Callum inevitably refusing cause Rayla can't permanently die lmao.

Other:

There's also the unsavoury implication that "restores bodies to spirits" spell Callum did in 5x09 has unique associations with the dark ritual spell Claudia did in killing Sir Sparklepuff that was undeniably dark magic usage.

The coin has been seemingly wiped clean now that Runaan is out (though maybe there's the symbol still on the other side?) but it does make me wonder of a potential plotline where Callum knew ahead of time, or belatedly, that this spell would require something adjacent to dark magic and he's done it, but the corruption Kosmo spoke of is gradual, making him more irritated, paranoid, etc. like the King of a 1000 Eyes that Amaya talked about. I think that'd be really interesting

The indirectness / the fact we'd only know it'd Happened retroactively makes me lean that we'll outright see another blatant usage in S7 since that's more Dramatic (which I've always been in favour of Callum viewing "I get possessed again bc I make a 'bad' choice and hand myself over to Aaravos" as a sacrifice of himself into "i'm already dead so kill me" territory). And if he breaks his promise to Rayla that he won't pick her over the greater good, then she can break her promise to him that she'll kill him (this is exactly beat for beat what I've wanted since s4 dropped and even before tbh)

TLDR; Absolutely Yes. S7 being Book Seven: Dark only adds to this and the stakes / set up are all there. I'm pumped

[swiftiefirefighters]

tbh I wish people would remember that that's the case on any show. recurring characters should get less screentime than main characters. I want to see buck have a story on his own without people complaining about not seeing tommy. tommy is a love interest, and we didn't see taylor 24/7 either

prefacing all of this by saying i did include myself in that post in that there are so many characters id love to see more of (tell me where carla is, we need more karen, what do the buckley parents REALLY think about tommy and bucks sexuality, i miss may!!!! whatever happened to harry???? will josh EVER get a boyfriend???). but the tommy of it all -

(which of course i am biased so maybe my opinion here is skewed and for that i ask forgiveness)

this is funny bc i feel like i don’t see it that much with tommy, mostly it’s just people having a laugh. like most of us didn’t even think we’d see him in the premiere at all so that’s even why we were so excited and happy for what we did get w chris’ birthday party. (obviously i don’t follow everyone so just my perspective.) i think most tommy fans are pretty realistic about what we’ll get while also wanting more about him. i definitely, at the very least, didn’t see anyone complaining after the premiere.

but i also think we have to remember that tommy is a very large part of bucks story right now, and i would argue since he is a first responder, has the potential to be part of the procedural narrative in a way that, say, taylor wasn’t. (and i would also argue in season 5 she had a LOT of screen time.). he knows everyone and has a history with the 118 and gerrard that would be interesting to explore. it’s different from your normal love interest who really only has a connection to one person and then knows everyone else through that person. in fact, tommy knew literally every other main character besides maddie before he knew buck - he even befriended eddie before buck. i don’t think it’s strange to want to explore that.

that being said, no, i don’t expect him in every episode or story, but i do expect him to be a heavy part of bucks story as he goes through whatever he’s about to go through and gets more settled in himself. it just makes sense.

but i’m going to be honest, this feels like a bad faith ask and anon just wanted a chance to complain about tommy. i’m sorry if that isn’t the case. i know i don’t follow everyone in fandom, but outside of silly little headcanons and spec that is for fun, i haven’t seen anyone complain we don’t see enough tommy or that he has too much screen time.

and i’m also going to add that most of the over the top love for tommy/lou, especially on official 911 channels comes from a place of trying to drown out unnecessary hate - you have to remember here that lou has gotten death threats, that just him being in that bee puns video has waves of people commenting that he was a jumpscare who should be warned for. so if people love him a little extra to try and be louder than the people who are being gross and nasty about him, well.

i’ve gone back through this and think i have given it fair thought and a thoughtful reply but idk it’s super early in the morning.

[georgiapeach30513]

Now Jen…I LOVE your blog and your posts but I respectfully disagree about your Steve comments. Again, I use the word respectfully, because I don’t want you or your other followers to take it too seriously. But I think it needs to be said.

First of all, Bucky fans love to make virtually everything about him, especially when it comes to Steve. Please do not at me, Bucky fans never want to admit this but some of you even bleed onto the actors and like to make things about SS when it’s about CE. Think about it. Why do these two people always get compared?? Maybe because it’s a bunch of Steve Bucky fans who can’t get over it and don’t want to. And then it becomes competition and Bucky/SS fans need to make it a sticking point into virtually everything and I’m TIRED. CE fans tend to get upset because they keep having to defend Chris doing random movies instead of doing or following what Sebastian is doing and I think some of them are tired too. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

Steve in the movies did everything for this guy and he also does everything for everyone else. But the moment he does something for himself WW3 happens. I’ll agree that the ending for his arc should have been different because the endgame storyline left too many questions and as a Steve fan I find it extremely annoying. But Why is it his duty to be his friend’s butt buddy forever and always? How come Bucky fans can’t ever seem to let go? And they’re fine when Steve world revolves around him but when they have to deal with Steve being his own person and thinking about his own life for once it’s verboten. I don’t think Bucky is perfect in the slightest and mostly he annoyed me 10 fold in the falcon show. But I will allow it since he has been through a lot, he’s allowed to be grumpy. I don’t expect him to live his life for Steve and tbh I also think he should have gone back in time and relive his own life differently. But that’s a different story and clearly about whose marvel contract is still active and whose is expired.

But Steve needs to be a ray of sunshine that doesn’t do anything except exist for his friend 24/7? Also…why are we getting this “he left him for a person who aided in bucky’s demise?” How did Peggy do that? Why, once again, is it not about Steve and Peggy, but about Bucky and dumping it on Steve and Peggy???

Even now salty bucky fans make their dislike about endgame and MCU about Steve not being around for Bucky, even though the storyline literally was just writing Chris out of it. If it was in reverse and Bucky went back in time I’d 1000% bet none of you would be crying about it. You would say, good for him he deserves to lives his life over. But Steve deserves just as much if not more, he has had no life of his own and was barely existing even in his own movies, as…oh yeah, even marvel was making his story about other people, so no I don’t agree with this constant needing to be mad at Steve over Bucky, when you could just admit that you want it to be about Bucky always and Steve second.

That being said…that is just my opinion. Your opinion is valid as it is your blog. You are my favorite blogger on here but this is one thing I can’t stay silent on.

I love conversations like this, so NEVER apologize. I think the beauty with cinematic universes are we get to know the characters a bit more. And every character is going to resonate with different people in a different way. So let’s get into this, and of course I respect your take, but let me explain a bit more where I’m coming from.

I am aware that we Bucky fans love to make him the main event. As do Steve fans do that, and Loki fans do that. And I do think that there are some people who go bleed the lines of reality with fiction. Obviously when I joke around about Sebastian and Chris I do not think that they are romantic at all. I do think that Chris and Seb equally are aware that the other is attractive. And everyone knows that I am a big hater of people comparing Chris to Seb. I don’t like it. These are two different actors who have both carved out their careers very differently, and for them. Sebastian has always shown that he wanted awards, and is looking at acting as an art form, while I think Chris enjoys what he does, but maybe doesn’t center his whole life around it. As far as the random movie, Seb has done random shitty movies as well. I am not going to dive into why Chris has chosen the movies he does, because I’m not Chris.

There is a big reason why I hate time traveling movies, and honestly, this is a prime example of one of them. I’m also aware that Chris’ contract was up, so they thought they would be clever with his ending. I actually think it was a cop out, personally. It’s not just for the Bucky aspect but for the Sam aspect. Maybe Steve being a white man didn’t understand the weight he put on Sam’s shoulders. I don’t think Steve understood Sam’s position as a black man, and I think that reigns true with most white folk, including myself. I will never understand the injustices that POCs feel, I can be empathetic, but I am aware of the privilege the color of my skin has. Again, Steve’s ending left so much to be desired. And then if you think about it, Steve knew that Peggy died having a full life, and he still selfishly went back. Furthermore, he went back, and stopped the life Peggy would have had. So therefore it alters the future/present. Again, I hate time traveling movies for this reason. I think at the end of the day it was the finality of the decision, but also I feel so many people weren’t given closure with it. That includes fans, Steve, Bucky, Sam, and all the other Avengers.

I personally do not think that Steve needs to live his life for his friends. But this was the life he was given, he should have moved forward, instead of going backwards, but again, Chris’ contract ended, I get it. It was lazy writing. As far as Peggy aiding in Bucky’s demise, who was the one who allowed Zola to live? Who allowed Zola to not just live but work for SHIELD? Peggy Carter AND Howard Stark. What did Zola do? He rebuilt Hydra. What did Hydra do? They tortured Bucky. Remember when Steve learned all of this? Learned what Zola did, and who allowed Zola to live? How he built Hydra to be more powerful than ever? They created the ultimate weapon, The Winter Soldier. Bucky was no longer human to them.

I can’t speak for everyone else, but had the roles been reversed, I would still be irritated. Again, lazy writing. In my ending, Steve had his dance with Peggy, but he returned. I actually wish that Steve made a bargain with Red Skull, a soul for a soul, and he retrieved Natasha. He got his dance, and he said his goodbye, but he came back to the time he was supposed to be in. Take Bucky and Sam out of the equation. Steve still should have stayed in the present even if those two characters died. He rewrote Peggy’s history, and therefore the present. Don’t get me started on Marvel making his story about others, Civil War still irritates me. That was just a lower scale Avengers movie, and we deserved better. I enjoy the movie, just not as a Cap movie.

Now as to the last comment, I jokingly say I can’t ever look at Steve the same. I actually choose to believe my ending for him over what happened. I don’t want him to constantly live to serve Bucky. I want Steve to have his time to grow into Steve. Oddly enough, Steve is also my number 8 Chris character. I don’t think I resonated with him as much as Bucky, and I can admit that this is why I put Bucky on a pedestal. It’s funny that the two best friends had very similar and yet very different lives. I wish that Marvel would have dove into that more. I would love to see a piece where it explores both Steve and Bucky’s mental health. We got a bit of that with TFATWS, but not enough, and without Steve. I guess I love the Cap trio so much, including Sam, I selfishly want more and more of all three.

Again, I love these conversations. And I think all your statements are valid.

[septembersung]

@citadelofthestars You are in luck because I just overhauled our entire chore system for the new school year so this is all fresh on my mind.

Context: this was from the post about making chores fair for kids and not requiring more domestic labor of girls than boys or having sisters clean up after brothers but never vice versa.

The following sounds complicated but it’s not? It evolved organically based on what our house needs and fits into how I organize the rest of my life. And, ymmv based on kids’ ages, temperament, and varieties of neurodivergence. My kids are all under 11 and we homeschool and half of us are probably adhd, so we’re still learning skills and also in our space making messes a lot. I would also like to emphasize that I am so bad about chores. Hence the system. When we follow through… it’s amazing. And then we don’t and we start over again (distant screaming.)

We do chores 2-3 times a day on school weekdays (or… sometimes once… but that’s a rough day for cleanliness) and everybody helps at mealtimes. Everybody gives me an hour or a set number of chores on Saturday. We aim to have the house “Sunday ready” by dinnertime Saturday.

Morning chores: this is their chance to take care of their personal space: bed, desk, laundry tidy, that sort of thing. It’s part of general getting ready. After this, the big 3-4 kids help with animal chores (and gardens when applicable) except when they’ve fractured a bone like kid 4 currently has. In some seasons the big 3 will each have an easy first thing kitchen chore like “empty the dishwasher” but not usually during the first part of school year. Mornings are hard for us so we have to get into school routine fir a whole first.

Afternoon chores: By age and ability. Mostly, one-off jobs like change out laundry, put away your laundry, take out trash, entertain a little for 20 minutes so I can have free hands for a separate task, help make the afternoon snack, etc. (Our lives run in 20 minute increments it feels like. I have a timer for everything. It’s what keeps me on task.) I expect big kids (7+) to do 2-4 tasks in this time depending on what the tasks are and under 7s to do one or two things tops, with me. Laundry is a coveted job but the rule is you have to be able to read the label on the knob and reach the bottom of the washer. We’re always behind so I decide as we go what the next load is, and if it’s your basket you’ll be called to help me load even if you’re not big enough to do it independently. Everybody folds (except the 1yo. Because she thinks it’s a keepaway game.)

We have a basic laminated grid on the wall with a column for each kid and little chore stickers with Velcro buttons on the back. (Well, we will when I print and hang the updated version.) Stuff no one likes doing I assign in 2 month increments or more (for habit and technique building) like scrubbing the bathroom; things everyone wants to do, like dust mop, they trade off each week or so. My oldest is so possessive of his sweeping job it’s possible no one else will ever sweep that bit of floor again. But there’s so much else to sweep I’m not too worried tbh.

I try to reset the chart for changeable chores every weekend. In my new and improved version there’s a section for each chore time, and separate for meals, instead of one long column under your name, and you have two columns!, so you move your little chore sticker from “undone” to “done.” Also contemplating have a little sack of random chores to draw from, like a scrabble tile bag, because “contribute positively to the family” is our go to consequence for misbehavior.

Evening chores: This is when we “get in the zone”. Your zone is one specific area of the house you are responsible for. You can do it on your own as you like to stay on top of it or wait til during the fast zone tidy which comes right before or after dinner. And it is fast, like maximum 20 minutes and 10 is better. Big 3 kids rotate between dining room, living room, and main bathroom. Little kids share the playroom. Everybody helps in their own bedroom at the end for 5-10 minutes. I cycle through and help everybody as needed unless something urgent calls me.

Meal time jobs include: table, chairs, floor, dishes (load up or wash by hand.) We’re working up to include kitchen floor and counters as the big kids take on more responsibility for cooking. Again the big 3 kids rotate among the more skilled jobs, while the little 3 trade out what they help scrub and sweep and carry.

Saturdays the kids will do a more irregular job, like “clean out the van” (which is all hands on deck together) or a periodic job like “mop or vacuum your zone” or “scrub cabinets.” We mostly discuss these jobs each week depending on what seems most needed instead of having a specific thing on the chart. (In my improved version the Velcro buttons say “Saturday chore time” in the little Saturday section at the bottom.)

This is probably way more detail than you ever needed in your life, but here we are. Happy planning!

[the-bi-space-ace]

Is There An Echo In Here?

No. There isn’t.

Alright. Here’s the thing. Echo is my favorite character so I’m going to want to see him all the time but I can still understand his absence even when I miss him. His absence in season 2 hurt me but it made total sense. He needed to go. I love him for doing what he needs to and not giving up what he values. It’s part of why I love him.

What I can’t understand is what happened in episodes 6&7 of season 3.

I’ve been fairly positive in my outward opinions for the most part. I rarely loudly complain. I rarely throw in the towel but I do still have opinions that aren’t positive and that’s okay.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of episodes 1-4. Not in the way that I didn’t like them bc I did. They had moments that I really really liked and I genuinely had a good time watching them. But they didn’t wow me. Tbh they don’t have to for me to enjoy them. They just have to be fun in my book. There’s no problem in having fun and not being wowed by every episode. I think that’s just how it goes. You can’t please everyone and I never expect to be happy about everything. It’s part of why I’ve kept my love of this show for so long.

I don’t have high expectations going in so I am rarely ever totally dissatisfied.

This is the exception.

I was absolutely thrilled with episode 5. Finally Echo is back. The Crosshair content was top tier. There’s jokes. There’s heart. It’s fun. It’s exciting. Loved it. It’s everything I want out of the show. They’re together. They have really heart wrenching moments right up against heart warming ones. It’s perfect. I was feeling pretty positive about moving forward.

Then 6&7 happened and I think I lost a huge chunk of hope for this show where Echo is concerned.

I still liked the episodes! I think the episodes were really really good. I love Rex. Crosshair really shined again so my heart rejoiced. There’s intrigue there’s excitement there’s plot. I skew more towards character growth and plot focus than anything else so a lot of my boxes are getting checked here.

Except for one very large thing that made me unhappy.

I’m not counting Echo’s two appearances in these episodes as him being there. Seeing his face and him saying one line really…. Doesn’t count. Not in my book. So far out of 7 episodes he’s really only been in one. I’m almost convinced the writers have forgotten he’s a main character with the way they’re treating him.

The first four episodes were very focused on the different characters and what they’re doing and how things are going. I love these types of episodes. I do this in fics when I want development to have a lot of focus! Split them up! Follow them around! Put them in different pairs and watch them grow! I love that! So… why didn’t we get an episode like that with Echo? Since we’re showing them all split up where was Echo’s episode to focus on what him and Rex were doing? The show followed Crosshair and Omega three times. It followed Hunter and Wrecker. Why would there not be an episode following Echo? Or at least having him meet up with Hunter and Wrecker and following those three for an episode.

When we finally got Echo back my heart literally rejoiced. Episode 5 was the first episode that got me excited about where this season was going.

And then, yes! We’re going to see Rex. We’re going to see what’s up with the clone network and Echo *checks notes* has carpool duty???? Are you serious? These two episodes were possibly the best ones to have him around and he’s just… not? Why? So he can pick them up at the end of it?

It doesn’t make sense to me.

At this point it truly seems like this show is just sidelining him because they don’t feel like writing him. Is this how the rest of the season goes? Is he not with the batch for the majority of it? Are we going to have two maybe three episodes that he appears in at all?

It hurts. It hurts because it’s starting to feel purposeful and not even in a good ol’ he’s got something good coming in the plot kind of way.

If we get some good Echo focus in the later episodes then fantastic! Maybe this post will be meaningless and I’ll be proven wrong. I’d honestly really love that tbh. I’d love to look back and go: huh. I was so worried for absolutely no reason.

Otherwise if the season continues with how it’s been then I don’t have much hope for my little Echo loving heart.

As always I’ll still write Echo-centric fics and yell about him all day. Hell maybe I’ll write a long post for Echo like I’ve done for Crosshair. Give him some extra love and attention in these trying times.

As a last note: I love this show. And my criticisms or opinions are never a declaration of hatred for this thing that we all love. I’m simply screaming into the void and hoping people who love Echo as much as I do hear me.

[maccreadysbaby]

you like destiny 2? You????? Like destiny???

IF YOU LIKE IT SO MUCH PUT BENTLEY AND ASTEN IN IT 🔫🔫🔫

Oh MAN this is the whackiest crossover I've ever done and I'm STOKED about it... also there's a little synopsis of destiny under the cut for my bentley followers that have no clue what I'm on about. bentley and asten would not even be remotely similar in this au, therefore there's actually TWO little stories in this post, one for each of them... yeah I went a little overboard but ITS FINE IM HAVING FUN *unintelligible weeping*

Project: Killcode Drabbles

tw: destiny typical violence, gore, emeto, cursing (only in asten's)

wanna read the extended fic? here’s the table of contents!

⚠️ THIS IS NOT PART OF BENTLEY’S MAIN STORYLINE, THIS BENTLEY & ASTEN INSERTED INTO AN AU (ALTERNATE UNIVERSE.)

Hi! here’s the briefest of overviews for my Bentley peeps that have no clue what Destiny is:

(I’m sorry destiny is so detailed you can’t actually be brief about it, these are the things I think are fundamental for understanding these pieces)

Destiny is a first person shooter/space travel rpg set in a time when the world has collapsed and the remaining facets of humanity live largely in a city called The Last City on Earth. In order to protect humanity from (a lot of) invading alien forces, the Traveler (a giant floating ball that helped humanity stay alive during the bad times) released hundreds of thousands of small robots called Ghosts into the solar system — these Ghosts were to find one specific person among the dead, resurrect them as a Guardian, and give them the Traveler’s magic (called Light) so they could protect humanity. (Basically, the Traveler makes the Ghost, and the Ghost raises their specific Guardian from the dead and gives them epic superpowers in the forms of Fire powers (Solar Light), Electricity powers (Arc Light), and The Void powers (Void Light)). Ghosts can resurrect their Guardians every time they die, rendering them immortal, but the downside is that these individuals don’t remember any of their lives before they were raised as a Guardian and have to start completely anew. The only way a Guardian can die for good is if their Ghost dies as well.

There are three Classes of Guardians: Warlocks, Hunters, and Titans. Guardians don't get to choose which they are, and the nature of their powers are determined by which one they turn out to be.

In this work, Bentley is a Guardian (A warlock, specifically, while the other character featured in this is a Hunter named Crow). Bentley does not have guardian superpowers (yet)

Anyways, I'm rambling, but I hope I helped you understand this just a wee little bit! I don't even understand destiny fully tbh don't feel bad. Maybe it was enough to help you enjoy the story... lmaoooo I tried. 

Also here are some pictures of some of the things mentioned to help you imagine them...

<< aka me trying really hard to help you imagine this so you have a good time

Crow ↗︎ (aka the love of my life, also the only reason Asten and Bentley meet each other in this AU.)

A Ghost ↗︎ (little floating robot; bentley’s is named sevyn, crow’s is glint, asten doesn’t have one)

Fallen ↗︎ (aka the only alien race you see in these stories)

BENTLEY ↴

THE COSMODROME, OLD EARTH, SOL SYSTEM -- 7:48PM —

“FOR THE RECORD, I THOUGHT THIS WAS A HORRENDOUS IDEA,” 

Bentley sighed heavily, glaring over at the small robot that was hovering a few inches from his face. It was purple, fashioned from small floating segments with one glowing blue eye -- which was glaring right back at him with just about the most irritated look the little machine could muster.

“Because I didn't hear you the first five times, Sevyn,” Bentley mumbled. He was stationed with his back pressed flat against the surface of a large boulder, wedged on top of a layer of moss and mud, the stone wall of a cliffside ahead of him sandwiching him into the tight, damp space. 

He’d never seen Old Earth before, besides looking off the balconies of the Tower he'd spent his entire Risen life in — which, in hindsight, was not great preparation for teleporting himself directly there on a whim. Everything looked the same, but bigger, and more expansive up close. The whole place was also crawling with various species of alien... which was a bit of a jarring experience considering he’d never actually seen one before. (He definitely hadn’t expected to teleport to Old Earth just to appear face-to-face with a four-armed freak of nature Sevyn insisted was a Fallen; hence why Bentley was now hiding between a rock and a hard spot.)

“You do realize you’re not allowed out of the Tower, right? That the Commander is gonna have your head?” Bentley's Ghost questioned anxiously, his segments spinning freely around his eye in a twitchy kind of way that let him know he was pretty irritated. “You do realize that you don’t know how to harness the Light for battle, right? That you have no guns? That no one knows where you are to come save your excruciatingly impulsive person?”

Bentley, again, rolled his eyes, pressing the soles of his tall brown boots harder into the stone wall ahead, to better hide himself from the Fallen he could hear clicking and hissing in the distance.

“If I die, you revive me. I’ve got my savior right here,” Bentley muttered, reaching up and tapping on Sevyn's eye, looking to his left. The sun was setting over the sector of Old Earth he was in -- called the Cosmodrome, if he remembered correctly. Being stuck there at night would not be a fun experience in the slightest.

Sevyn sighed heavily, shaking his head — well, technically, shaking his whole small robot self. In a disapproving, head shaking way. “If the Commander says you can’t leave the Tower, then you probably shouldn’t leave the tower. Following Crow, of all people! He’s so reckless; you know how many times Glint had to revive him in his pursuit of that Fallen Captain on his Hunt last week? Twenty-five! In one day!”

Bentley rubbed his hands together — it was getting cold now that the sun was setting, and his fingerless gloves weren’t exactly designed to help with warmth as much as they were to look cool. “He’s on a patrol. Patrols aren’t dangerous. I just need to find him.”

“Patrols aren’t…?“ Seven made an exasperated sound, his segments twitching wildly. “I know you think it’s unfair that you have to stay in the tower, but you were resurrected at thirteen! The Commander isn’t gonna send a thirteen year old Guardian into battle! There are good reasons you don’t know how to wield the Light!”

“So what, he expects me to stay in the Tower for my entire immortal life just so he doesn’t look bad? I’m never gonna get any older,” Bentley huffed, zipping up his brown bomber jacket. “Crow said he was going to The Forgotten Shore, didn't he?”

Sevyn bobbed up and down anxiously, his blue eye flicking around the area in a practiced, mechanical way. “And there’s about three hundred Fallen signals between you and there. How do you expect to get there?”

The teenager shrugged, eyes tracing the stone cliffside covered in vine. “Sneak?”

“Sneak around the aliens that can turn invisible and have the hearing of a wolf. Why didn’t I think of that?” Sevyn deadpanned. “I’m just going to teleport you back home so you can go sit in the corner and think about what you did.”

“What? No!” Bentley argued, reaching out to grab at the floating robot, who dodged his hand readily. “Stop it! I can do it! And if I can’t you can revive me!”

“Or we can go home and I can talk to the Commander about field work,” 

Bentley made a humph noise. “He would never let me do field work. He thinks I’m five.”

“Technically speaking, you’re a few centuries younger than most Guardians,”

“Sevyn!”

“Just saying!”

Bentley sighed softly, daring to peek out of his hiding spot just enough to catch a glimpse of his surroundings. He’d managed to find himself in a small canyon of sorts, with a shallow creek running through it, illuminated gold by the sunlight that was bound to fade soon. Rocks and boulders jutted out of the sparsely grassed terrain, gracing him with just a little bit of cover to utilize against the Fallen he could see skittering around the rocky landscape.

The sight of them made him grimace. He’d never really seen an alien before — not up close, and definitely not alone. Their quartet of blue eyes were glowing in the dimming sunlight, lanky, strange bodies adorned with metal-bent armor and shreds of fabric organized into some semblance of clothing. They moved, some like people, some like apes, some like spiders. They weren't much larger than him, but they carried guns, and knives, and grenades, all situated on themselves and clasped tightly in the extra hands that sprouted from the sides of their bodies. Aliens with two arms were creepy enough; Bentley wasn’t sure why Fallen needed four.

He glanced around until his eyes lingered on another boulder, maybe four or five yards from his current one, close to the cliffside and large enough to render him hidden.

Sevyn made a mechanical beep. “Don’t even think about it.”

Bentley moved his legs, forcing himself to crouch in the small space. “Thinking about it.”

Sevyn, with an exasperated sigh, de-materialized himself, dispersing into atoms that fizzled into the air and disappeared, waiting to re-materialize again when his Guardian called for him.

Or, the more likely situation, when Bentley got himself killed and needed to be resurrected.

(Oh, well. Real Guardians were well versed with death. Some of them died like thirty times a day! Bentley had never died before — well, he had, obviously, but he didn’t remember that one. Since he was technically a Guardian, dying now that he had a Ghost didn’t matter all that much. It was what Guardians did! He’d just come back, like everyone always did. No big deal. It wasn’t like it would be scary, or terrifying, or horrific, or anything, if he just came back to life afterwards...)

With a small noise of effort, he propelled himself forward so quickly his boots left skid marks in the mud. He kept low, ran lightly, slipping from one place of cover to the next without making much of a peep at all.

Ducking into the shadows and pressing his back hard against the new rock he was hidden behind, he exhaled heavily. Beyond that boulder, there weren’t many more large enough to hide him — smaller stones and a few sparse trees, too young and thin to conceal him from view. The walls of the canyon curved up and above him, but they offered no protection, besides maybe darkening the cover of night that was approaching. Maybe if he waited until it was pitch black, he could slip past unseen. The Forgotten Shore was only on the other end of the canyon; surely he could make it.

If Crow was even still there come nightfall.

Bentley flinched when something clattered against the cliffside to his left with a shrill clang. Glancing over, he caught sight of something small, flashing. Suddenly, Sevyn's disembodied voice emanated from his immaterial state:

"Grenade!"

Fortunately for Bentley's appendages and organs, it was only a flashbang -- which still had to have been the absolute worst experience of his whole risen life. Before he could as much as flinch away, the thing had erupted with a BOOM! that left his ears ringing a pitch that threatened to split his skull, a blinding flash of light sending a ripple of searing pain through his eyeballs and into his brain. Everything went white.

The world seemed to move in slow motion as the piercing pitch screamed in his head, completely enabling him from thinking about anything else. He seemed to bring his hands up to his face at a snail's pace, scrubbing at his eyes as he was rendered temporarily, completely, terrifyingly blind.

"Eyes up, Guardian!" Sevyn called.

Bentley willed his eyes open just enough to be greeted by a bright white fog and the faint, dancing colors of stone and sunlight filtering through the blindness, if only a little. The faint colors of stone, sunlight, and some dark blob that was moving right toward him.

He wasn't sure what kind of sound he made, but he was sure it was embarrassing as he all but threw himself out from behind the boulder, still vigorously rubbing at his eyes with one hand, scrambling away from what he assumed was an alien with the rest of his strength. A loud crack! echoed from beside him, and he flinched, though he couldn't see what it was.

He continued to scramble until the effects of the grenade faded enough for him to decipher that yes; the thing chasing him was a four-armed alien with glowing blue eyes and...

Four knives?!

He rolled to the side just quick enough to miss the Fallen when it jumped, all four knives sinking into the dirt where he had been with four bone-chilling shinks!

Bentley must've kicked up dust with the speed he forced himself off of the ground, eyes flicking around wildly -- in addition to the one with the knives, there had to be at least ten more Fallen closing in on him. There were two wielding a quartet of knives just like the first -- and two with nothing, but they seemed hungry for blood all the same, like they were ready to physically bludgeon him to death. The rest of them seemed to have homemade guns of various shapes and sizes -- guns Bentley wasn't very keen on examining any closer than he already was.

The alien with the knives lurched again, and one of the weaponless ones dove straight for his legs, both of which he managed to dodge by tumbling ungracefully backwards -- hitting the ground and forcing himself up again, fast. A blue laser flickered in his still foggy eyes, and he jerked to the left, a long trail of blue electricity shooting past his head with an audible zing! from one of their rifles.

"Oh my God!" He managed to squeak as he ran full-speed, hurrying back to the first boulder and jumping behind it with a thump. Strings of lightning and other identifiable projectiles from their guns barraged the ground next to his cover so vigorously the electricity made his hair stand up.

"Sevyn, what do I do?!" He practically begged, the dull sounds of ammunition and electricity against stone and dirt finally warding off the ever-present ringing from his ears. His chest was heaving, heart pounding in his chest -- how did Guardians do battle every day?

"Run!" Was his Ghost's panicked reply.

So Bentley did, and just in time, too -- all three of the fallen with the knives, and one with nothing, came crawling and leaping over the boulder just as he moved away from it, banging their blades and fists against solid stone.

Bentley's boots pounded on the mud as he fled as quickly as his body could manage, blitzing past his second cover-boulder and continuing full-speed deeper into the canyon, toward where Crow said he'd be. It couldn't be that far. It couldn't.

The cracks and zips and bams of projectiles shooting past him were nearly deafening, a few of them close enough to take the hair off his head. One lucky wire of electricity hit it's mark, leaving a graze of searing agony streaking across his left shoulder and tearing the fabric of his jacket away.

Bentley's response was a shrill: "Ah!" That bounced along the walls of the canyon, and bringing his hand up to touch the would only made it explode into an even worse pain. He bit his lip, hard, and forced himself on as fast as his legs could pump, farther from the way he'd come, deeper into uncharted territory.

It took about thirty seconds of running for his surroundings to quiet, for him to slow to more of a jog. His wound was already throbbing uncomfortably, and the leather of his jacket was singed and curled up there -- the whole thing was unbearably nasty and the longer he looked at it, the more he thought he might pass out. He searched for cover but there wasn't any; only a few young trees, the creek, and rocks too small to hide him. Surely the Fallen were chasing him -- he needed some kind of plan.

He didn't get any longer to think about it -- something he hadn't seen nor heard grabbed his ankles mid-jog and sent him hurling face-first into the mud. His head hit with a slam that threatened to leave him disoriented, but he couldn't afford to be disoriented right then. Instead, he flipped himself over on the ground, and a Fallen appeared out of thin air, shrieking indecipherably in his face.

(He'd forgotten Sevyn said they could turn invisible.)

"Ah!" He cried out in terror, writhing under the alien that was looming over top of him, straddling his lower-body with all six of its appendages. In a panic, he wrenched his left foot out of one of its hands and used every available ounce of strength to kick it directly in the head with the heel of his boot. It shrieked again, releasing his other ankle. Bentley scrambled back and off the ground, taking off again with nothing but sheer panic coursing through his veins.

His first instinct was to scream: "Crow!" As if the far-off Guardian would be able to hear him all the way from the beach. Yelling was a horrible idea, yes, but he didn't seem to comprehend that at the time.

Nevertheless, he continued to pitifully shout: "Crow!" as he weaved through the darkening canyon, searching for cover but getting repetitively let down. Tears were burning behind his eyes now, though not just from the pain of the gunshot. He could hear footsteps behind him, some skittering, some booming, and others thumping quickly just like his. He didn't dare turn around -- he might've died from horror.

"Sevyn -- Crow!" Was all he could manage at the speed he was moving, with the amount of terror that was coursing through his body. There was a mechanical beep that came from nowhere that let him know Sevyn was trying to contact Crow's Ghost, Glint. A moment later, the sound of a failed communication line returned.

Bentley sprinted, biting his tongue so hard the metallic taste of blood blossomed on in his mouth. The scuffling, screeching sounds of the Fallen continued behind him, the zing! of a rifle shooting past his head every so often. The canyon he was following veered hard to the right, so he did, too, hoping the new direction would provide him with cover.

He skidded to an ungraceful stop as soon as he took the turn, dread washing over him like a shockwave.

Right around the corner were three more Fallen. Not the ones that were chasing him, but bigger ones, with better armor, nicer clothes. They had the same lanky build, the quartet of arms, but they had to be at least two, maybe three Bentley's tall, carrying guns that were probably the size of his entire body.

Bentley stopped, heart ripping a hole in his ribcage, breathing so quickly he was starting to feel lightheaded. All three of the giant Fallen looked at him curiously, one of them stowing its gun on its back and pulling out two blades instead -- large ones, and curved, like katanas.

Bentley glanced back the direction he'd come, the smaller Fallen stumbling over themselves and falling over each other in pursuit of him. He couldn't get past them, there were too many -- but he couldn't get past the big ones, either... and the canyon left him nowhere else to run.

(He was going to die.)

In his moment of hesitation, one of the big aliens lunged forward and grabbed him by the ankle, picking him up and making him dangle completely upside down.

"No! Crow!" Bentley screamed, thrashing and writhing in its grip. He wasn't sure why, but the alien tilted its head at him like a confused dog before rearing back and throwing him -- yes, throwing him, probably ten yards before he hit the stone wall of the canyon with a slam! and crumpled to the dirt.

A terrible pain radiated through his body, the entire right side of his person stinging like fire from the impact.

“Sevyn…” Bentley mumbled, but he didn’t have any time to move — he was suddenly grabbed and flipped over violently, landing on his back with a harsh thump. One of the big Fallen was there — the one who’d pulled out the knives. The other two big ones were looming behind it like guards, and the little Fallen that had been chasing Bentley were skittering around and making noises, but they didn’t come near, like they were afraid of the larger ones.

Bentley attempted to scramble backwards on all fours, but the alien, with a few inhuman clicks and a tilt of its head, jumped on top of him and crouched there. Two of its hands found his shoulders, a third finding his forehead, all but drilling him into the dirt with such force that his right shoulder popped and cracked with a searing pain that made him cry out.

The Fallen’s glowing, beaty eyes seemed to bore into his skull as it held a knife in its free hand — the long, sort of katana looking weapon with machine parts at the hilt and coil wrapped around the blade. There were tiny bolts of electricity sparking and arcing around it.

(He was going to die.)

Bentley couldn’t see very good, and he quickly realized it was because he was starting to cry. “Crow!”

“Sh, sh, sh,” The Alien tutted, and Bentley writhed and thrashed under its weight when he realized they could talk. The thrashing didn’t do much good — the alien had to be nearly five times as heavy as him.

“Crow!” He tried, desperately — he could feel tears streaking down the sides of his face now, still obscuring his vision and blurring the image of the alien whose head was only about a foot from his. The Fallen pushed him harder into the ground, making his other shoulder crack and pop with a jolt of terrible pain.

His response, this time, was sobs.

“Now, now, little Light,” The Fallen started, its voice strange, like gurgling and clicking overlaid on top of a human voice. It was low, and gravely, too, like an old man who smoked too much. “It will hurt only for a moment, yes? I will aim directly for your heart, yes?”

Bentley writhed again when it reached down and simply tapped the blade of the knife on the left side of his jacket, right where his heart would be.

“Yes, I have had much practice,”

Bentley sobbed, trying to move, to escape, but failing miserably. “Sevyn…”

He didn’t want to die. He knew he could come right back to life, but he didn’t want that alien to sink its electric knife into his heart — he could only imagine what it felt like. An agony that wouldn’t even come close to any sensation he’d ever felt before.

How did other Guardian’s die every day?

With one last round of animalistic clicks, the Fallen lifted the knife far above Bentley’s chest, tilting its head again when the teenager tried one last time (and failed one last time) to wriggle out of its grip. He wasn’t strong enough — all the strength in his entire tiny body wasn’t strong enough.

“Please,” Bentley choked.

SHNNK.

It took Bentley about a whole five seconds to realize that there was not a knife in his chest.

Instead, there was a flash of something white.

Crow was suddenly on the large Fallen’s shoulders, his combat knife buried deep into the alien’s skull. Bentley had never been happier to see his blue skin and bright, cheesy armor. He didn't think he'd ever been happier to see a human shaped creature in his life.

The alien’s grip on Bentley’s body loosened, and Crow leaped off of it, kicking it to the side so its massive weight didn’t crash down on top of either of them. He landed a perfectly executed flip, his Hunter cape settling over his head and face so he had to shove it off.

“Bentley,” He scolded, though Bentley didn’t really hear it. He was too focused on staring at the body of the Fallen that was now laying beside him, twitching menacingly but showing no further signs of life.

That thing had almost… almost…

All of the other Fallen, small and large alike, leaped into action, charging at the battle’s newest arrival with shrieks of rage for their dead friend. The zips and bams of their guns returned, and Bentley stayed low to the ground, the body of the dead Fallen large enough for him to use as measly cover.

Bentley watched in a silent sort of shock as a full-blown battle played out before his eyes. Crow dodged the Fallen’s projectiles with some kind of backwards summersault the child couldn’t even seem to comprehend, whipping Hawkmoon — the largest revolver Bentley had ever seen — out of a holster on his hip. He spun it around his fingers before he began repeatedly flicking the hammer, sending out eight back-to-back bam, bam, bams, each one resulting in a Fallen crumpling into an unmoving heap on the ground.

One of the large ones, now armed with a giant, electricity-sparking sword, swung for Crow’s head, which he ducked and slid away from just in time to not get decapitated. He dropped the cylinder from Hawkmoon and replaced it just as fast, turning and unleashing a lightning-fast stream of eight bullets into the monster’s chest. It roared, staggered, and hit the ground.

Its roar echoed and bounced through the canyon with a chillingly repetitive melody. Bentley watched in silence as Crow extended his hand, a ball of fire forming and spluttering in the air above his palm until he threw it right at the smaller Fallen that were attacking as a group — it exploded into a huge wall of flame that charred and burned the aliens into lifeless crisps on impact.

“Eyes up!”

Bentley looked up, coming face-to-face with Sevyn, who was hovering right in front of him. The little Ghost’s segments spun and twitched worriedly, his robotic eye flicking about Bentley’s form with a little bit of pity in its mechanical iris. “I’ve got you, Guardian.”

Sevyn then moved toward Bentley’s left shoulder, a small spray of light shining from his eye onto the teenager’s wounds that almost felt like a layer of cold mist. Bentley couldn’t help but sigh in relief as the pain was warded away, the Ghost’s Light slowly rebuilding and reattaching the very atoms of his flesh — closing up the gunshot wound and shifting his shoulders back into place in mere moments. The scratches and bruises he could already feel forming across his body from hitting the cliffside dulled in discomfort in seconds, until they disappeared entirely from existence.

In only a moment, Bentley was whole again.

Sevyn moved forward, tapping himself gently against Bentley’s forehead in an affectionate gesture, before fizzling into atoms again.

When Bentley looked up, all of the Fallen were dead, and Crow was standing in the midst of the corpses, revolver in one hand, his Ghost, Glint, hovering just above the other. The little crimson robot moved about the older Guardian, shining his healing light on his injuries and mending them in a blink. He disappeared into a fizzle of atoms right after.

Bentley exhaled shakily, bringing a dirty hand up to wipe and his still watering eyes. He scooted slowly away from the body of the Fallen he had been using for cover, cringing at the still sparking knife that was laying in the dirt not a foot from his boot -- the knife it was going to sink into his chest. Into his heart. He brought one hand up to his jacket and tugged at it, eyes unmoving.

It was only then that he noticed how badly his hands were still shaking — how hard his heart was pumping, how shallowly and quickly and shakily he was still breathing. He couldn’t really get much air into him at all. And he couldn't seem to stop crying.

Crow’s boots came to a stop in front of him. “What are you doing outside of the Tower?” He all but demanded.

Bentley opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out, eyes locked solely on the alien corpse. After a few moments of that, Crow moved forward and hauled him off the ground, gently, setting him on his wobbly feet and checking him over for injuries. The older Guardian was speaking, but Bentley couldn’t really hear it, his eyes still lingering on the knife. The crack, crack, crack of the electric blade made him want to throw it off a cliff. He sniffed and hiccuped as softly as he could, bringing a hand up in an attempt to quiet it.

“Hey, focus on me, Little Light,”

Bentley blinked when Crow manually turned his head so their gazes met. He was taller than the teenager by maybe a foot, maybe more, his dazzling skin a pale blue that looked foreign next to Bentley’s pasty beige. He pushed some of his black and white hair back from his eyes, the glowing, orange orbs locking onto Bentley’s and staying there. He wasn’t sure how old Crow was — he looked to be in his early twenties, but for all the teenager knew, he could’ve been hundreds of years old. But however old he was, he was familiar -- and that was comforting enough.

Bentley broke their eye contact to look straight down at his own boots, rubbing at his eyes, pushing his red hair out of his face.

“I’m sorry,” He whispered.

With a sigh, Crow put his hand on the back of Bentley's head and tugged him into his chest. “You’re okay, kid.”

Bentley squeezed his eyes shut and kept his hands over his face, the sudden hug only seeming to make the crying worse. “That was so scary.”

“I know,”

There was a little whoosh that let Bentley know Sevyn had materialized by his side, and a second whoosh, which must’ve been Crow’s Ghost appearing, too.

"Let's get you out of here, yeah?" Sevyn's voice came, close to his head.

Before Bentley could respond, a low rumble shook the ground beneath their boots, the loud, menacing whir of an approaching ship piercing the air. Bentley pulled away from Crow to glance up to the sky — in not a millisecond, a large ship was hanging there, casting a huge, dark shadow over them. It looked almost primordial, cobbled together skillfully with metals and machines.

Bentley was no expert on alien things, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t a Guardian’s ship.

“Sevyn, get Bentley out of here. Now,” Crow demanded, pulling the shiny silver revolver from his hip and replacing the cylinder in one swift motion. Glint, his little crimson Ghost, spun and then disappeared in a fizzle of atoms.

Sevyn hovered up next to Bentley’s head, his purple segments spinning, emanating a few small beeping sounds. “I… I can’t. Something in that Fallen ship is jamming my signal! I’ve never felt anything like it before — like a solid wall between us and the Vanguard!”

“Splicers?” Crow whispered. Bentley didn’t know what those were, and he decided he probably didn’t want to. Crow glanced back at him, reaching back and squeezing his shoulder. “Hide. And Sevyn; stay out of sight.”

Sevyn fizzled away, and Bentley quickly returned to the only cover in the area — behind the body of the big, dead Fallen.

Not a second after he was hidden, the bottom of the ship sprung open, and several mechanical arms came out of it. They each held an alien, and dropped them from the ship onto the ground before retracting and fetching another.

Bentley immediately noticed three things about this particular group of Fallen:

1) They were all the big kind, some even bigger than the dead one he was hiding behind. And their armor was nicer, cleaner, better. They dawned capes and hoods that looked like they could’ve been made by people instead of the rough looking outfits the little ones had been wearing. 

2) They all seemed to have some type of machinery on them, wether that be strange, glowing goggles over their blue eyes, backpacks that looked more like a giant radio with antennas, or literal limbs replaced by robotic parts. He wasn’t sure why, but they were more off-putting than the normal Fallen.

And 3) Their weapons looked better, more powerful, though there were more knives and swords and less guns — only three with guns, really; and they all seemed really angry.

There were probably two dozen of them, and only one Crow. The ship whirred and shot off, disappearing into the sky beyond, leaving its warriors behind.

Even starkly outnumbered by aliens twice and three times his size, Crow didn’t hesitate to leap into action. One of the Fallen shot at him with a big, strange rifle — a glowing orange projectile that whirred and made weird noises. Crow dodged it by sliding directly at the alien's feet, coming back up and swiping at the hammer of Hawkmoon, sending three methodical shots into the Fallen — chest, throat, head. It hit the ground.

Bentley stayed crouched behind the corpse as low as he could, and Sevyn’s disembodied voice came from nowhere: “As soon as I get a stable connection, I’m sending you anywhere but here!”

“We’re just going to leave him?” Bentley whispered, watching Crow dodge another electric knife-sword-thing and slide between a huge Fallen’s legs, popping up behind him and jerking on its cape with his full weight. It’s back arched, sending its head down to Crow’s level, and he sent two bullets into it. Its body made a thump.

“He’d appreciate the sentiment, Guardian, but given the fact that you have zero training or abilities to fight with, staying is… well, kind of stupid,”

Bentley said nothing, but watched Crow do another chest-neck-head trio of shots, dropping his cylinder and replacing it with another while dodging a blade with some kind of flip-spin-thing. Three huge Fallen down, twenty-ish to go.

“I’m reading the Tower! It’s faint, but it’s there! Probably only a few more minutes before I can get you there!” Sevyn announced.

Crow released more rounds and dropped two more Fallen, dodging strange orange projectiles and blades like he was nothing more than a shadow. The aliens, big and strong as they were, seemed to be no match for an agile Hunter like him. 

(Bentley wished the Commander would let him learn how to fight like that.)

As if on queue with Bentley’s thoughts, Crow got struck in the shoulder by one of the strange orange projectiles with a ding! sound against his armor. There was no blood, and he didn't seem to be in pain. There was a tiny metal machine stuck to him instead, and orange electricity suddenly exploded out of it with a loud, crackling vengeance.

Bentley heard him cry out, collapsing and convulsing when the electricity pulsed through his body. The nearest Fallen grabbed him by the cloak and lifted him as though he were weightless, slinging him into a nearby cliff with a crack.

Bentley flinched, but before he could even move, Sevyn announced: “Don’t you dare get yourself seen! I mean it, Guardian!”

Crow’s Ghost began to materialize next to him, but he must’ve told him not to, because he waved his hand and the robot never fully appeared. The group of up-teen massive, scary Fallen were crowding where he laid, and like he was being tortured, Bentley had a line of sight directly between the aliens. Directly to Crow.

(He’d never seen another Guardian — or anyone — die before. Did he even want to watch?)

Sevyn answered that for him. “Don’t look, Guardian.”

Bentley couldn't look away.

Instead, he watched Crow flick his hand, summoning three sparks of fire that turned into flaming knives that he launched into the two nearest Fallen. One of the aliens caught two of the fiery blades in the face, stumbling back with a terrible screech. The other blade lodged in another Fallen’s throat; it went limp on impact.

The other seventeen closed in on Crow like a swarm of vultures.

Bentley saw him lift his hand up toward the sky like some sort of last stand — reaching for the final beams of fading sunlight. The Traveler was up there, too, the huge, white orb hovering over the planet like a second moon. Bentley wondered if it ever responded to Guardians… after all, it was what gave them their power, their Ghosts.

Bentley’s eyes drifted back down to Crow, whose hand was still outstretched — and the fleeting beams of sun came down to meet him.

With a loud whoosh and a flash of light, Crow’s entire body was engulfed in Solar Light, setting him on fire from the crown of his head to the soles of his boots without as much as singing his armor. In his outstretched hand formed a pistol made of pure flame — a rapid fire revolver like the one he carried. 

Bentley flinched when the ablaze Hunter fired a fan of six shots into the crowd of Fallen with loud, almost deafening bangs, much much louder than Hawkmoon. The bullets, blazing with a fiery rage, incinerated the massive Fallen on impact and then continued to the ones behind, blowing fiery holes larger than a shotgun slug through their bodies and disintegrating them into piles of ash. A wave of heat washed over Bentley all the way from where he was, staring in shock and awe. Not an alien was left standing.

He’d never actually seen a Guardian do that before — channel all of their Light into a mega-magic-assault capable of destroying entire hordes of massive aliens. Vanguard slang called them supers, the most violent offense a Guardian could have in their arsenal — a final call to the Traveler’s magic for help, a last stand, an unleashing of all the power left within. The one Crow had just performed, Bentley had learned over the years, was referred to as The Golden Gun.

Crow then slumped back against the cliffside, the flames that had swallowed him fading, still convulsing and jerking thanks to the orange electricity coming from whatever little machine was stuck to him. Glint materialized next to him, frantically fluttering about, and Bentley shifted.

“Don’t! I’m still picking up Fallen signals inside the-“

Bentley ignored Sevyn’s orders and sprung to his feet, jogging across the now-empty canyon and little creek to Crow’s side.

“Crow!” He exclaimed, dropping to a crouch next to him. He eyed the little metal thing on Crow’s shoulder that was creating the electricity, and then he reached for it.

“Bentley, no!” Sevyn exclaimed, and Bentley cried out and flinched away when the strange electricity jumped to his hand, not only electrocuting him, but leaving his skin and muscles burning and tingling like he was holding his hand inside a extremely hot fire. 

Sevyn materialized next to him in a blink, shining his healing light on it, immediately cooling it and staving the pain. “Need I teach you not to touch strange alien electronics?”

Bentley glanced from Sevyn back to Crow, who was jerking and writhing on the dirt under the influence of the electricity. His features were contorted into an expression of agony, and Glint was floating about, lost, watching as though Crow's pain hurt him, too.

Bentley eyed the little metal machine on his shoulder again.

"Bentley..." Sevyn started, glancing between him and Crow. "If you're thinking-"

Before Sevyn could continue his likely long-winded protest of his Guardian's impulsiveness, Bentley moved as fast as he could, biting his tongue and shooting his hand forward, ripping the small machine from Crow's shoulder in a blink.

It felt like he got struck by lightning, and he couldn't help but shout in pain when the electricity seared and stabbed its way up his whole arm. He threw the little machine to the side as his muscles tensed and tightened under his skin in response to the electric pulse.

"Sevyn!" He managed, shaking out his arm like it would help; tears immediately springing in his eyes at the strange numb-veins-filled-with-lava feeling it left him with.

"Geez, stop taking after the reckless ones!" Sevyn all but scolded, moving toward Bentley's arm and shining his healing light there, too. In his peripheral, Bentley could see Glint doing the same, moving methodically about Crow's body, starting at the worst of it and moving on from there.

"Will he be okay?" Bentley asked softly as Sevyn finished healing his arm for the second time, the small robot hovering close by his head. Crow seemed practically unconscious -- though Bentley didn't blame him. He probably would've blacked out on the spot, had his entire body been electrocuted like that.

"Of course he will. It'll just take me a bit to patch him up. What were you doing out here, anyways?" Glint questioned, still floating about Crow's battered body. Bentley shrugged.

"Just wanted to... do something. Other than sitting in the Tower all day,"

Glint hummed in response. "Ye old person-isolated-against-their-will-breaks-out-and-nearly-dies act. I could have assumed. No hate, of course -- I'm not one to talk. Crow and I spent a long time living under someone else's will, too."

Bentley's eyes trailed down to the ground he was sitting on, and Sevyn bumped himself against his shoulder supportively. "Chin up, Guardian."

Suddenly, the ground shook again, and Bentley, along with the two Ghosts, glanced around the canyon.

A second ship just like the first swooped down toward them, and a horrendous amount of dread blossomed in Bentley's stomach at the sight of the bottom opening up, mechanical arms extending outward.

He inhaled shakily, shifting on the ground. "Glint?"

Crow's Ghost was now working frantically, beeping in a weird pattern that indicated anxiety. "I'm working as fast as I can!"

The robotic arms reached into the ship and came back out with more Fallen -- the same, massive ones whose bodies were littering the floor of the canyon. It dropped two with a thud, and two more after. They were all carrying the terrible electric blades -- all but one, who had a gun that resembled a sniper rifle whose barrel was glowing orange.

There was a whoosh of Sevyn disappearing. "Hide, Glint!" He said from nowhere.

Crow's Ghost kept working despite Sevyn's words, bathing his Guardian in Light. "I'm almost done!"

"If you get sniped, you could cost Crow his life!"

Bentley barely heard the two robots bickering -- instead, he watched in silence as the huge Fallen zeroed in on him and Crow, clicking back and forth like they were communicating. The ship sped off into the distance and left the four aliens there, alone, with Bentley and two panicking robots; and the only one there that could defend them was hardly conscious.

Bentley blinked, and stared at the aliens, the strange realization that he was actually about to die washing over him and leaving him feeling oddly cold. (Didn't getting revived after make it okay...? Why didn't it feel okay?)

The Fallen with the rifle lifted it and pulled the trigger, a beam of orange electricity arcing through the air right toward them -- though it didn't hit Bentley; It was aimed at Glint, who narrowly dodged it by ducking to the side. The beam cracked loudly against the cliffside behind them.

Bentley reached out and grabbed Crow's Ghost by his eye, getting him out of sight the one way he knew how -- by holding him behind his back.

"Whoa, kid!"

"Bentley!"

Bentley looked forward, and all four of the massive Fallen were staring at him.

(He was about to die.)

But the Fallen didn't rush to take him down, no -- the one with the gun even stowed it, pulling out blades instead. They moved forward at a slow, menacing crawl, clicking back and forth, eyes trained on Bentley like they were mocking him. He stepped backwards until the heel of his boot nudged Crow's leg.

"Tiny Guardian," One in the front said -- it's voice sounded vaguely female, raspy and layered. It swiped its blades across one another with a shnnnnk. "Thought Lightbearers were bigger, yes?"

Bentley said nothing as the four of them moved closer like animals stalking their prey, eyes bouncing between the four of them. Their glowing, empty eyes, creepy, lanky statures. Part of him wanted to run and never stop, but the thought of leaving Crow there vulnerable and in the open made him feel vaguely sick. The fact that he could be brought back to life wasn't good enough to make Bentley's feet move. Glint wiggled around in his hand, fighting against his grip, but he didn't dare let him go.

"The Great Machine makes bad choice, yes," One of the others replied, a lower baritone. Did they mean the Traveler? "Yes; tiny Lightbearer smells of fear. Fear of death. Tiny Lightbearer has not met her yet."

Her? Her as in death?

Bentley cleared his throat, and the four of them glanced back at him with their glowing eyes, curiously. "I'm... right here, you know. Gossiping is bad."

Sevyn made a strangled noise in his immaterial state, likely revolting against Bentley's audacity.

The one closest to him -- that sounded vaguely like a girl -- made a few clicks, coming closer. "Tiny Lightbearer speaks, yes. Has attitude. Reminds Avix of her own son."

Bentley flinched with a gasp when she sprung towards him on all-sixes, crawling across the ground and rising back up mere feet from him. He scrambled backwards until he thudded into the cliffside next to Crow's unconscious form, keeping Glint hidden behind his back.

The alien stood, and stared, tilting her head back and forth with a few clicks. Bentley could practically feel his heart trying to escape his chest.

"Tiny Lightbearer is... harmless, yes." She said, turning to the other three and clicking. Then she looked back at Bentley, holding out one of her three-fingered hands. "Give Avix Little Machine -- then run, yes?"

Bentley tightened his hold around Glint, exhaling shakily, staring at her hand. "Uh... n-no."

He gasped when the giant Fallen -- Avix -- moved forward, forcing him backwards until he was pinned between the cliffside and her, Glint pinned tightly behind him. She reached forward at the speed of a cobra's strike and grabbed his face with her giant, gross hand, squeezing lightly. Bentley let out a sound akin to a squeak, his other hand coming up in an attempt to bat her's away, a burn already threatening to surface behind his eyes.

"G... get off," He said, but it wasn't threatening in the slightest.

Avix kept getting closer, crouching down until her face was mere inches from his own, her glowing eyes staring right into his. The crackling of her electrified blade came from one of her other hands, and his eyes flicked to it momentarily.

"Look at me!" She shrieked deafeningly in his face, and Bentley couldn't help but jump out of his skin, forcing himself to lock gazes with her again. The burn behind his eyes got worse, and his vision started going watery -- he didn't want to die.

"Tiny Lightbearer cries, yes. Has not met death. Smells of much fear, yes, much fear," She stammered, shaking his face when he glanced at the blade again, forcing his eyes back on her. "Give Avix little machine -- Tiny Lightbearer will not meet her. Avix says so. Avix is leader, yes. Others will not kill what Avix does not kill."

Bentley glanced back at the other three Fallen, who were staying in the distance, weapons drawn, lurking here and there in the now almost pitch-black canyon.

The odd feeling of Glint de-materializing between his fingertips made something in Bentley relax.

Carefully, he lifted both of his hands to the giant alien, palms out and open, revealing that there was no robot there.

Avix jerked Bentley away from the wall to check behind him, and when there was nothing there, she made a loud, unidentifiable screech and shoved him into the stone with a thud so hard it seemed to rattle his bones and leave his head foggy. With a few clicks and hisses, she stalked her way back to the other three and turned on her heel.

“Tiny Lightbearer dies,” She growled, and the one behind her pulled out its rifle again. “His body comes with Avix, yes. I have plans for when Tiny Lightbearer rises. He will not disrespect Avix again, yes, yes.”

They were going to kill him? And then take him with them?

Bentley glanced at Crow, who was still unresponsive.

“Sevyn?”

“It’s now or never, Guardian! Channel the Traveler’s Light! Call on it! I’ll help you the best I can!” Sevyn exclaimed from nowhere.

“I can’t use the Light!” Bentley replied, and a wire of orange shot from the rifle, zinging right past his head, only narrowly missing thanks to a well-timed duck.

“Now would be a great time to learn!” Sevyn shouted. “Just imagine yourself destroying all these Fallen using the Light!”

With no other options, Bentley ducked behind one of the massive Fallen bodies and closed his eyes, hoping and praying the Traveler would help him.

“Feel the Light inside of you, Guardian. It is in you, whether you believe it is or not. You can do this,” Sevyn mumbled. Another zing! went past Bentley, and he flinched. “Focus — Concentrate. I have my eye on the Fallen.”

Bentley tried. How was he supposed to feel the Light now when he’d never felt it before? He’d heard stories — that most Guardians found their Light in times of dire trouble, and he was pretty sure getting kidnapped by aliens counted. 

“Tiny Lightbearer!” Avix’s enraged voice came, growing closer to him. “Hiding is futile when Avix knows where you are, yes!”

Bentley focused really hard on his own body, imagining the Light like Sevyn had said. How did other Guardians do this so easily, so fluidly?

“Tiny Lightbearer will make Avix good pet, yes! Fun to watch squirm!” She shouted, her voice drawing nearer and nearer.

Bentley suddenly felt… strange. Not in a bad way, though — strange like something simultaneously cold and boiling was pooling in his fingertips. Like something was moving through his veins, like gasoline -- cool, but also ready to explode. He peeled his eyes open to glance at his hands, and-

They were surging with bright, glowing Arc Light, white-blue bolts of electricity sparking from his fingertips and crackling across his skin, though it didn’t hurt. It felt like his whole being was buzzing, vibrating in anticipation. He felt… empowered.

“Now, Guardian!”

At Sevyn’s mark, Bentley stood up and turned, extending his electrified palms outward. An unknown, never-before-felt power surged inside of him. Electricity seemed to burst out of his entire body, crackling, striking, bolts of lightning crawling across his skin and cracking atop his clothes. It illuminated the entire canyon in the nighttime with a blinding, luminescent glow.

He felt his feet leave the ground. Avix and her three minions were not too far from where he was, now, blades and rifle drawn to attack.

Bentley cried out when power exploded from him, a solid beam of screaming electricity shooting from the palm of his right hand. It slammed directly into Avix’s chest, knocking her backwards maybe six or seven yards, boring a charred hole through her chest and disintegrating her entire body not a second after. Bentley made a sound of surprise as the smell of charred flesh and static electricity filled the air.

“Keep going, Guardian! You’re doing it!” Sevyn encouraged, sounding probably the giddiest he ever had. At his excitement, Bentley turned his sights to the other three Fallen, and the beam of electricity followed where he led. He raked it across the final trio of aliens and it blitzed right through them, severing their bodies in half before incinerating them completely.

As soon as the four Fallen were dead, Bentley’s power, as well as all his remaining strength, fled, and he fell a few feet before crashing hands-and-knees in the dirt. His whole body was still buzzing, his arms and legs tingling with the remnants of leftover power. Everything around him seemed to be swimming a little, sounds muffled and vision swirling around his head. He felt like he could go to bed and sleep for a year.

There were two little whooshes next to his face.

“You did it! You casted a super! Bentley, you’re a Warlock!” Sevyn all but screamed, hovering up close to his face, tapping himself gently on his forehead over and over. “You’re a Warlock! A Warlock!”

There was a small sound of Glint finishing his healing process, and Bentley heard Crow groan, sitting up a few yards to his right. 

“Ugh. That was unpleasant,”

“While you were down, Bentley casted a super! Chaos Reach!” Sevyn screamed at him. “He’s a Warlock, Crow, a Warlock!”

With a grunt of effort, Bentley pushed his vibrating body off of the ground and onto his feet, teetering a bit on reaching his full height. Black dots danced around in his vision, but didn’t fully take over -- like they were taunting him. He couldn’t even seem to process the words Sevyn was screaming right in his face.

In the blink of an eye, Crow had come up next to him, both Ghosts hovering by his side. 

“Yeah, he sure looks like he casted his first super,” Crow said with a snicker, and Bentley felt his gloved hand land on his left shoulder. He looked up at the older Guardian, but he couldn’t really focus on his pale blue face. 

“Yep, there you go,”

Bentley didn't even realize he’d fallen over until he was hoisted limply up into Crow’s arms, settled against the soft front of his cloak. 

“Mm… Sorry,” He hummed.

“Nah, you’re doing great to stay conscious at all. I passed flat out as soon as I came out of my first super. In the middle of a horde of Taken, no less,”

Bentley didn’t know anything about Taken besides the fact that they were aliens, but he also didn’t have the willpower to ask.

“I’ve gotcha, kid. Glint, Sevyn, to the Tower please,” Crow ordered.

“On it!”

Bentley’s world proceeded to fade to black, but his hearing remained just long enough for him to hear Crow inhale and exhale deeply.

“I'm so dead for this.”

Asten’s story is below ↴

IN GAME CHAOS REACH:

IN GAME GOLDEN GUN:

ASTEN ↴

THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE LAST CITY, OLD EARTH, SOL SYSTEM -- 6:16PM

--

YOU SEE, ASTEN WAS A TOUGH KID. Tougher than most. Growing up homeless on the outskirts of the Last City presented him with no shortage of things he had to endure in order to merely survive — muggings, beatings, high-stakes chases, a life of thievery, actually getting stabbed, twice, flashy guns waved in his face, really bad habits, and lots of time spent cursing his existence into the wind. He’d survived more things than he’d like to admit in all his sixteen years. Forcing himself to fight with a knife in his shoulder and still coming out on top, having a Guardian called on him and watching it's Ghost scramble to resurrect them nearly six times before they ever got close enough to put a hand on him. In his mind, he was invincible — or at least he could be, when he needed to.

That invincibility seemed to have fled on this particular day, because he’d woken up having apparently caught the Black Plague. It was hard to move, to think, to breathe, to see, to hear — he felt trashier than a full dumpster from the Fallen District, and given he’d managed a stab wound and cauterization with half as much suffering, he knew he’d be down for the count, and soon.

So, he soldiered through it in his incredibly Asten way, willing himself to fix it before it killed him. He forced his way to the nearest pharmacy, walked in circles around it for about an hour, almost passed out twice, before he was able to form some semblance of a plan within his muddied brain.

And of course, it had backfired. Now, he was in a fenced-off back-alley of The Last City that he often used as a hideout, with a small pack full of stolen medicine, an entire platoon of security searching for him, and about as much will to move as a blade of grass. (Running at full-speed for a solid ten minutes away from the pharmacy hadn’t been the most brilliant idea for a kid sporting a fever so high he could practically hear his brain frying.)

Any other night after stealing something big like a bag full of expensive medicine, he’d be watching his surroundings extra carefully — moving to different hideouts methodically until the initial search was over and security gave him room to breathe… but tonight he wasn’t. Tonight, he was barely hidden from view by various dumpsters and trash cans, curled up, shivering on the cool concrete. It was mostly quiet there, and he could hear the wind whistling through the city. The only things that accompanied him in the dark, gross alley was the trash, a chain-link fence, and the walls. That was all.

While the air was pleasantly cool for the other inhabitants of the city, for him, it was an icy cold that made his skin tingle. He was shivering despite his blackish-blue hair and first layer of clothes being drenched with sweat. The strong smells coming from several different establishments and sewers were only working to make his head hurt worse and his stomach turn unsettlingly. Which, for him, was strange. Usually, the very prospect of food would have him climbing through vents or breaking open windows if it meant he wouldn’t have to go hungry for another day, but right now, he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything other than disgust at the very thought.

The stars shone brightly above the Last City. He would usually be staring at them, watching them move with a nonchalant air about him, going from here to there and sending guards to the wrong places over and over again. But tonight, he didn’t really have the willpower to open his eyes. Right now, he didn’t even have the willpower to take any of the stolen medicine.

He winced as his head throbbed with a newer, sharper pain than it had all day, probably in response to pushing his body way farther than it should’ve been pushed. He coiled up tighter. He was really glad no one really traveled those alleys, because he must’ve looked more pitiful than a crippled puppy. His arms and legs were aching in a way that made him want to weep, feeling like they were tied to cinder blocks he had to drag around with him. His head felt like it was full of cotton, hazy and blurry and a feeling a little bit like it might explode, like it had too much of something in it. Every organ in his body was revolting its very existence, and he swore he’d rather have a knife in him again than feel like that.

He’d made doubly sure his trusty sniper-rifle was within grasp — an old thing, dropped by a guy in a fight long ago — which, naturally, had led to him clutching onto the faithful firearm like other kids would a stuffed animal. It was smushed against his torso, safety on, because he had his arms wrapped securely around himself as to not upset his body anymore. It wasn’t the best weapon for close quarters fighting like running from security in the city, but it was all he had. He was pretty good at hip firing the thing anyways — not that he was looking to blow anyone’s head off anytime soon.

Even when he was wholly convinced he was dying, vague thoughts still pestered his mind — like the fact that most security knew about this particular hideout, and that most security definitely knew what he looked like, blue hair and all. He would’ve ditched his clothes and hid his hair after a normal heist. Instead, he pressed his burning forehead into the cool concrete beneath him and grimaced.

He drifted in and out of consciousness for a while. Sleep seemed like it would be a sweet release from the terrible state his body was in, but he couldn’t actually seem to fall asleep. Not while he had to keep one eye open for security. When they got here, he’d run, he kept telling himself. Just five more minutes. When he heard them, he’d go.

Those five more minutes turned into an indecipherable amount of time loathing his existence on the ground before a pair of voices flitted down the alley and made his head hurt worse.

“Are you sure this is where they said he went? There’s nothing out here!” Said a small voice — quiet, and somewhat… robotic? “They said he’d been stealing for years, surely he'd have a better place to hide!”

“I’m pretty sure hiding somewhere unsuspecting is the point, Glint. Run a thermal scan,”

Asten immediately forced his heavy eyes open as a realization dawned on him — that the first voice had been too robotic to be a human’s, overlaid with something mechanical. The second, too calm, too unbothered to be a guard on the City outskirts where sketchy people lurked and bad things crept in the shadows.

This wasn’t a pair of security guards — this was a Ghost and a Guardian. 

They’d sicced a Lightbearer on him, again.

He felt his heart rate pick up as he pushed himself upright, the entire world spinning there for a few seconds before he was able to right himself. He fumbled for his bag and his rifle, forcing himself onto his feet only to careen into the alley wall thanks to the black dots dancing in his vision that had invited their friend violent vertigo to the party.

Last time they’d sent a Guardian out to pursue him, the Titan had been so brutal with his magical-superpowers and epic-hand-to-hand-skills that he didn’t let Asten breathe until he couldn’t move. Until he was beaten and battered and had lost enough blood that the huge Titan was able to drag him through the city streets by the collar of his jacket without a single sound falling from Asten’s lips except soft, nearly unidentifiable sobs. He’d been thirteen then. He wondered if all Guardians had a knack for torturing children who were just trying to live.

Something cold and mean blossomed in his chest when he realized that, in this state, he wouldn’t be able to survive a beating like that again.

Instead of deciding on something rational, like turning himself in, or simply begging for mercy and letting them know he was the sickest he’d ever been in his life, his first instinct was to grab a magazine from his belt and jam it into the bottom of his sniper rifle.

This Guardian was not going to touch him.

“I’m picking up a heat signature in the next alley,” Came the Ghost’s voice.

Once the vertigo had mostly subsided, Asten forced himself to move even though it made him feel like passing out and throwing up and maybe even dying on the spot. The chain-link fence on the opposite end of the alley would do little to keep the Guardian out, but maybe it’d give him just a little head-start. At this point, he’d take what he could get. He pushed himself out the back end of the alley, between the old buildings and the the city walls, and went to the left. Forced himself to move quickly and quietly even though it felt like torture, watching buildings pass as he went.

Once he reached a reasonable distance away, he turned back and shouldered his sniper rifle, sliding the lever with a click-click so it loaded a round. Bringing the sights up to his face, he let the reticle rest just on the mouth of the alley he’d left.

He wouldn’t feel bad for killing him. He wouldn’t. He’d just come right back to life… like Guardians always did. Better that Ghost have to work than Asten be reduced to a pretty little stain on the concrete. A pretty little stain on the concrete that didn’t have a Ghost to bring it back to life.

Not two seconds later, a Guardian broke the threshold of the alley — a Hunter, it looked like, for a long cape flowed behind his back. He looked strange, dawning white armor that sort of looked like scales, or feathers, maybe, with pale blue Awoken skin and no helmet. He had a large, shiny revolver in his hand that reflected light right in Asten’s eyes.

No helmet — a rookie mistake.

In one fluid, mechanical movement, his heart thumping wildly in his chest, Asten held his breath and took the shot.

BOOM!

Even though he was crouched, the recoil nearly knocked him over in his weak state, the boom leaving a piercing ring in his ears that threatened to crack his skull. The Guardian’s head exploded in a mist of red.

At the sight, Asten’s entire body twisted — his mind, his conscience, his morality, his guts — and his response in his sickly state was to gag. The ringing was still present in his ears, and he let the sniper rifle fall to brace one hand on the ground, staying crouched in the back-alley. Black dots came into his vision and danced around some more.

He let out a string of curses he barely heard, forcing his eyes back up to the body of the Hunter. His Ghost was hovering over him, glowing, its segments split wide open and spinning around a ball of bright Light.

Asten knew Ghost mannerisms well enough to know the Hunter was about to be resurrected. And he couldn’t be here when he was.

With that realization, he grabbed his rifle and forced himself onto his feet, again, still not hearing or seeing very well, his entire body screaming at him to stop. But he didn’t; instead, he forced himself forward and past a few more alleyways, only taking a right turn into one that he knew contained a fire escape. He fell into a wheezy, barky coughing fit that left him breathless and hardly able to stay upright; The only thing keeping him off the concrete at this point was pure adrenaline.

He reached for the medicine bag to make sure it was still on his shoulder, a terrible ache settling in his chest after the bout of coughing — a kind of soreness in his lungs that made even breathing painful. He wiped at his involuntarily watering eyes and pushed himself up the stairs of the fire escape, settling on the first platform and jerking on the lever of his sniper again, loading another round. The movement sent more pain streaking through his chest, and he coughed and coughed until he was seeing stars, felt unbearably hot, and thought his lungs might splat on the fire escape.

Luckily, they didn’t. Unluckily, the violent coughing made his lava-filled stomach churn, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before it demanded to have his undivided attention.

Despite the fact that his whole body felt like it might cave in on him, he crouched and lifted the rifle to his shoulder again, settling his eye on the scope. His arms proved too weak and shaky to hold it still, so he rested the barrel on the railing and aimed at the mouth of the alley. 

“-this way!” The Ghost’s voice echoed in his head. 

As soon as the white-clad Guardian rounded the corner, Asten wasted no time, a second shot from the sniper rifle ringing out and leaving an explosion of blood and another limp Guardian in it's wake. His Ghost appeared hovering over him — a little crimson robot with a worried air about him.

The recoil from the shot jolted Asten’s entire body. He saw stars again, heard nothing but ringing — a dagger of pain shot all the way through his torso, his shoulder, lungs, stomach, so sudden and sharp that it made him cry out. He reached for his thin jacket in an attempt to stave the pain — a terrible mistake, for his sniper rifle tipped over the railing and, even though he reached for it, his reflexes were botched. It dropped to the ground below with the telltale clatter of concrete on metal.

He looked up at the Ghost, the stars slowly fading from his vision; the little robot was staring at him. 

He stared back.

And it dawned on him — now it was a race.

The Ghost immediately turned back to its Guardian and opened up frantically, expelling a bright light. Asten, with all his senses shot, conscious from nothing more than mere spite, forced himself to stumble back down the metal stairs. He had to focus all of his remaining energy into his legs just to keep from face-planting. And then-

And then another round of ultra-violent coughing sprung forth from inside of him, completely halting him in his tracks. His chest rattled and constricted with a vengeance, putting him in so much pain he actually considered crying. He had to completely stop moving just to keep from hitting the ground, and the coughing continued and continued and continued until everything he’d eaten in the not-so-distant past was displayed on the ground for the Ghost and Guardian to see. He had to move for a wall to stay upright, bracing himself against it and taking a moment to breathe — a painful action that sounded more like horrific wheezing.

Thankfully, his outburst seemed to have distracted the Ghost, who was back in one piece and blinking at him in surprise. For a moment, he thought the little thing might even try and speak to him — instead, it turned and opened up again, to raise its Guardian.

Asten glanced at the sniper rifle laying about a dozen feet from him. Moving for it, reloading, aiming, all while hardly able to make his body obey in the first place would take too long — the Guardian would be awake by then.

So he lunged for the Ghost instead.

The little robot shouted: “Ah!” When he grabbed it by its eye, and in a blind moment of adrenaline, he fumbled around on the concrete until he found the Guardian’s dropped revolver, pressing the cold barrel against the Ghost’s center.

“Oh, not again!” The little thing pleaded, writhing in his hand. “Let me go! I’ll contact the Vanguard!” It threatened.

“And I’ll blow you to bits and leave your Guardian to rot,” Asten hissed. He sent a glance to the Hunter, though he didn’t look for very long since a portion of his head was missing thanks to a bullet he'd let fly. 

“Raise him,” He ordered at the Ghost.

“No!”

“Raise him!” He repeated, louder, though his voice was hoarse now, and his mouth tasted vile. Not that he had been very threatening in the first place. He pulled back the hammer of the revolver with a shrill click that echoed in the quiet alley.

“Okay, okay, okay!” The Ghost murmured, sighing heavily. It opened up, eye still held tightly in Asten’s hand, shining a bright light on its Guardian. For a split second, Asten’s hand that was engulfed in the light cooled off and he felt… okay.

And as soon as the Ghost closed and his Guardian sat up with a groan, Asten felt like a heaping pile of death again.

It took a few seconds for the Hunter to comprehend what was going on, his orange glowing eyes flicking around and then coming to rest on his Ghost.

“Crow…” The little robot begged, wiggling in Asten’s grip. Crow must’ve been the Guardian’s name, he guessed. 

The Hunter — Crow — popped off of the ground, reaching for his holster that had no gun. His glowing orange eyes flicked to said holster, to the revolver in Asten’s hand; to the sniper rifle on the ground behind him. 

“Hands up. You move, he dies,” Asten ordered. Crow obliged, lifting his gloved hands — though Asten knew he could blow him sky high with superpowers if he really wanted to. He just kinda hoped he… didn’t really want to. Or that he was threatening enough to dissuade him… maybe.

Crow and Asten stared at each other for a solid ten seconds, the former sending a glance to his Ghost. He shifted uncomfortably, like seeing the little robot — what had he called him earlier, Glint? —  in such a dire situation physically pained him. Asten knew the relationships between Guardians and Ghosts were insanely intimate, like having a part of their soul manifested in physical form to aid them.

That’s why he kept the barrel of the gun pressed firmly against Glint’s eye when he growled: “Leave me the hell alone.”

“Look, I… I know you're scared. And I wouldn’t have chased you like that if I knew you were just a kid-” Crow moved, maybe to step forward, maybe to reach for Asten, he wasn’t sure -- but he squeezed the Ghost’s eye hard enough to make the robot squeak out a pained sound. The noise all but glued Crow’s feet to the concrete below them, and he stretched his hands out, a desperate look on his face. “Please, let him go. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Bullshit,” Asten murmured. “I’ve been burned enough to know that's a half-assed lie. At least be more original.”

He tried to make it sound venomous, but given that the force he had to put into the words sent him into another moment of rough-sounding coughing, it probably came across more like an angry toddler. 

“All I was told was that I was chasing perp with over a hundred robberies and years of stealing under his belt. I didn’t realize you were…” Crow trailed off, really taking in Asten’s appearance for the first time. He was pretty sure he looked like death incarnate, given he felt like it. His hand that was holding the revolver was shaking from the effort, but he didn’t dare let it move from the Ghost’s eye. “Well, I’m guessing you didn’t raid that pharmacy just for fun.”

“Just get the hell out of here, superhero. Once you’re out of sight, and once you promise not to follow me or come after me again, I’ll let your little pet go,” Coming up with and forcing out words was starting to become way more of a task than it should’ve been, and Asten’s head started getting foggy, everything feeling a little bit… off. More off.

Crow watched him intently with his glowing eyes. “Maybe I shouldn’t leave you out here.”

“Like hell you’re taking me anywhere,” Asten hissed, the sudden, loud words sending a burst of pain through his head that made him wince, though he thought he hid it pretty well under a scowl. “You’re-”

A few quiet noises emanated from the robot, and Asten glanced over with an appalled expression when it shined a bright light up and down his face, like it was scanning him.

“What the f-”

“Internal temperature is one-hundred-four-point-five degrees,” Glint announced, as though he didn’t still have a gun pressed to his eye. “He’s very… well… he’s very unwell, Crow. He threw up on the ground right before you woke. Hardly-”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Asten forced out, gritting his teeth at the pain it sent rippling from his head, down his neck and into his chest. He coughed a few times, muffling them by keeping his mouth closed. His voice was completely and utterly gone when he rasped out: “I just want you to… leave.”

“Sent out to take medicine from a sick kid. Why do I get stuck with all these jobs?” Crow muttered, mostly to Glint, but also to himself. “Look, what’s your name?”

Asten scowled. “Not-stupid-enough-to-answer-that-McGee.”

Crow breathed in and out, visibly irritated, though he pushed it back and kept his composure, trying a different approach instead. “I know you feel like shit -- flu’s been going around the City like no one’s ever seen. Lots of people have been hospitalized. The Vanguard even has Guardians helping out in some of the medical establishments around.”

Asten didn’t reply -- because, what was he really supposed to say to that, anyways? Plus, he was starting to feel nauseous again, so he didn’t really want to open his mouth.

“I spent a long time doing… bad things just to keep myself alive. Worse than stealing someone's food or robbing a place,” Crow started, holding a hand out to him. “I know how hard it is to trust people, to trust Guardians… I spent the first while of my Risen life getting murdered by them over and over again. Like they were playing a game with me.”

Asten vaguely wondered why the other Guardians would murder one of their own, but he didn’t give it much thought. He couldn’t; not really. Not when he was focused solely on not hurling. “Go away. Please. I’ll let him go, just… leave.”

“I want to help you,” Crow tried, stepping closer, daring to edge his hand nearer. Part of Asten yearned for the idea of help. Of letting someone else make sure he didn’t die for once.

The rest of him was revolted at the proximity he was allowing the Guardian to gain on him.

“No,” He breathed, voice still squeaky and wheezy. “I don’t want your pity help. The last Guardian that talked to me like this dragged me through the city half-dead. Like I was some kind of trophy.”

“And I’m so sorry one of them treated you like that,” Crow apologized, and Asten searched his face for a lie; all he saw was dangerous, dangerous sincerity. Sincerity that made the teenager want to cave. “Please let me help you. I won’t let anyone hurt you. You won’t get in trouble. I promise.”

When had someone last spoken to him like that? He wasn’t sure anyone ever had. And every single expression, movement, mannerism led him to believe Crow was being wholly genuine. 

And it made him want to cave so damn bad. A Guardian, of all people.

“Asten,” He croaked.

Crow cocked a brow, his glowing eyes searching his face. “What?”

“My name,” He replied. Part of his conscience was kicking him over and over for giving him his real name -- the rest was whispering for him to give in.

“Asten,” Crow tried the name out, deciding it sounded about right. “How old are you?”

Well, since he was on a roll… “Sixteen.”

He heard Crow curse under his breath. 

“Listen... I’m sorry if I scared you, I really am. You’re an incredible shot,” He started, eyes scanning him repetitively, forcing this little, quick smile on his face. “Please, let me help you. You… don’t look so good.”

“One-hundred-four-point-seven,” Glint chimed in.

Asten just stood for a moment, staring at the Guardian ahead of him. His words bounced around and around in his head. Promises for help, that he wouldn’t get hurt, that he wouldn’t die from the plague. That he wouldn’t be in trouble and thrown into confinement again. It all sounded too good to be true, and most of him knew that. But there was a little voice in his head that was rejoicing because someone actually… cared. In all sixteen years, someone actually…

Oh, shit. All those fancy promises about help and rainbows and butterflies was starting to-

“No,” Asten tried once more, his already gone voice breaking slightly in the middle of the word. He wasn’t sure why, but his eyes began to water. He chose to believe it was the fever and delirium and the fact that he felt like death making it happen, but part of him knew that wasn’t really the case. “Just… stop. Go away.”

(He didn't say stop because he really wanted him to stop, though — he said stop because he was caving and he knew it.)

Pity rippled across Crow's features -- sadness. "If you really want me to, I will. But I don't think that's the case."

Asten said nothing, but bit the inside of his cheek hard, forcing the wetness in his eyes to subside. Of course, it didn't really work.

"Why are you crying?" Glint questioned innocently. His little robot voice was doing that same thing Crow's had -- going soft, quiet, gentle.

"I'm not crying, you little shithead," Asten snapped, blinking rapidly in an attempt to ward the tears off again.

Crow opened his mouth to speak, but with a sudden and violent intensity, Asten’s entire body seemed to go on strike; He threw up all over his own feet, his hands slipping from both the Ghost and the gun to slink around himself instead. The revolver clattered on the concrete and Glint whirred up to his Guardian’s side, turning to look back at him.

His leverage was gone.

That was about when he realized darkness was not only dancing in his vision, but threatening to take in entirely, his whole body going into a strange, numb feeling that Glint seemed to catch onto before it fully took over.

“Catch him, Crow!” The Ghost shouted, before Asten was even falling. 

But then he was — his legs gave out beneath him not a second later. Only, for the first time in his life, he didn’t hit the concrete — instead, Crow scooped him up like a small child, and he let him.

“Glint, take us to the Tower,” Crow ordered.

Oh, Asten was so going to die.

—

tag list! (If you want me to remove or add you, ask in comments!)

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @flyrobinflyy @gayboss-too-close-to-the-sun

@xiaonothere @skylathescholarly @beatyoutothatusernameloser

[jjtheclown555]

Hey QT, this is fayiif on my alt 😍 since it wont let me request from my main. If our blogs follow the same request rules then I'd like to request a !MermaidJouno x !PirateReader xx Drabbles of fanfic, I don't mind! Have fun, excited 2 see what U make 💙

Stolen Coins and a Tail

tw. your pirate crew treats you like shit tbh

content. you're counting gold pieces after your crew finds treasure when a mermaid appears all of a sudden in the water

pairings. mermaid!jouno x pirate!reader

word count. 1.7k words

a/n. jouno is highkey ooc and i wrote this rlly fast so its not spellchecked but hey whatre u gonna do?? also everyone check out @fayiif bc shes writing mermaid au fics too!!

As per usual, after finding every treasure, you were left counting and calculating every item and their worth. Your captain had found just about any reason to keep you from showing off your skills and capabilities, busying you by having you count the gold coins and various items being one of them. You had found something with a worn down label that you could barely make out as, “Game Boy.” You didn’t know what it was, only that it would be worth a hefty penny back on land. You count every gold piece of the thousands the crew had conquered, boring yourself.

“1, 2…” You mutter counting up another 10-coin pile. As you look at the large pile of gold you still hadn’t finished counting, you realize that given you were already over 1000 coins and you weren’t close to done. Upon this realization, you reach over to the pile, grabbing a small pile of coins to sort out, slipping some down your sleeve to keep as payment for this service.

You stole a few coins every time you did this, keeping them in a little box in your barracks under your bedding for when you returned to land. Part of it was the payment the captain refused to give you and another part was a slight revenge. When your ship would inevitably be hijacked, the captain would lose everything—all his goods stashed away in his office as apparently to thieves as you could imagine—while you would still have your little stash of a few hundred coins under your bedding. Part of you was thrilled for that day, in hopes the other pirates would see your strengths or at least take pity on you and allow you to join their crew.

Unfortunately, the cruelty of your captain wasn’t lost of you when he steps over, knotted black beard waving in your face, much to your irritation. You pull a fake smile, asking what he needed today and praying he didn’t notice what you had done. “Well, I was just wondering how the counting was going!” He says, jovial tone as if you don’t know why he assigned you this job, how he was scared of you getting too skilled and taking over, how he wanted to keep you soft and sweet so you wouldn’t ever use your talents to take him out.

You tell him the items your found and how much gold you had counted out. While telling him your estimates on how much each item would go for, you are interrupted by a crewmate shouting, “There’s something in the water!” He runs off in the middle of your sentence, not a single apology as he looks over to see a tail flick in the water.

You rush up to see what had happened, staring at the mermaid, short white hair with red tips, eyes shut as he feels around the boat. He tunes into the voices shouting, the ale swishing in cups, and even the confident heartbeats that could only belong to pirates. You watch as his face morphs into a realization, his mouth tightening and features scrunching as he attempts to swim away. Unfortunately, he hears a net fly out where he was attempting to swim, causing his to try his best to reroute.

You try to reason with the crew, to let the mermaid leave when one member, a man who had it out for you since day one shouts, “How about we throw Y/N into the water and let the mermaid keep her?” You recoil out of disgust, his croaky voice creeping under your skin. You think he’s joking until him and a few of his friends begin to shout, “Throw them! Throw them!” over and over. You tell them to shut up, calling them immature when the rest of the crew begins chanting along with them.

“Throw them!” Their voices echo, screeching in your ears.

“Throw them!” You can feel the boat shake with the cheers to be rid of you.

“Throw them!” Each voice muddles together until you don’t know who’s who.

“Throw them!” You hear one final time before you tune it out when the captain picks you up, carrying you to the edge of the plank. You kick and scream nearly freeing yourself multiple times until you’re at the very end of the plank and you hear the captain say, “Fine, I’ll let you go,” before dropping you into the ice-cold water below.

The last thing you see before shutting your eyes is the same mermaid rushing over to where you’re falling. You feel yourself sink into the water, accepting your fate. You would never be saved, you’d never get away, you had no one but this crew of pirates that didn’t care what would happen to you so long as it made you miserable. You stop fighting it, you don’t try to swim up, you don’t try to hold your breath. You just open your mouth and let the water begin to fill your lungs.

That is until the mermaid from before pulls you out of the water, he drags you along as you cough the water out of your lungs, not paying the slightest attention to your state. He simply drags you to a nearby island, one you recognized from the maps. An uncharted island with the infamous Amantes Lake, a place swarming with sirens. You assume this is where he came from, thinking carefully as he places you on land. He stares at you in soaking clothes and hair as wet as can be. You know you looked like a mess but it was rude to stare.

He looks for a few more moments, observing you with a curious stare before he reaches over, placing a few gold coins in your lap. “Those fell out of your sleeve.” Is all he says before he swims off, disappearing into the water. You smile at the coins. It isn’t much but it is enough to get back home if a sailor comes by for research. You think of the mermaid that had saved you. While they existed, it was rare for male mermaids to be seen above water. Women were typically the ones spotted, men are presumed to stay beneath the waters surface to find food and take care of the cove while women were thought to keep others in their species safe from sailors.

It was odd, you assumed it was a rare occasion, maybe due to his clearly poor eyesight, but still, you appreciated him saving you. You were a little upset you couldn’t at least thank him but there’s not much you can change about that. All you can do is stand up, still a bit wobbly and try to look for wood to burn. As you wander, finishing setting up a fire after a few minutes you notice a familiar hed of white hair rise from the sea, heading in your direction. You walk over to the edge and he tosses some fish onto the land. “Food.”

You laugh, “I can see that, thank you.” You respond with a hum, bringing the fish to the fire to cook.

He apologizes. “Sorry, I’m just a little tired from those pirates.”

“You and me both,” You chuckle, beginning to cook the fish, ”At least you haven’t had to be tired of them for the past 2 years straight.” You say, thinking of every rude comment, threat, loud night time drinks where you’d get yelled at if a single one of them saw you.

He snickers, “They’d all be dead if I did.”

“Kill them anyways?” You say, tone quirking into a question. You smirk, giggling as he slinks away in an instance.

He throws his head back to think before pulling closer to your place on the land. “No. I wouldn’t do that for you, you’re almost as annoying as the people I work with.” He states, a twinge of his eyebrow showing an intense disdain. Whether it’s for you or his coworkers, you don’t know.

“Oh, are your co-workers at your nine to five job annoying?”

“Not as annoying as your co-workers on that boat.” He says and you kick at him, “Also, I don’t work a nine to five.”

You ask what his job is then. At first he says he can’t divulge but after a little badgering and a few empty threats from each of you, he begins to explain. “I protect Atlantis from humans, keeping it a safe haven for beings like me.” He goes on, explaining his job which leads you to ask if that’s why he was by your ship. “Yes. You were getting too close to our territory so I was sent to divert you. What I wasn’t told is that you were pirates, the worst kind of sailors. I was just supposed to distract them and get away when everyone else arrived to deal with it but no, you had to get in the way and cause problems for me so now they might be on their way.”

You squint at him, “Sorry that I was thrown off my own ship and have almost no way of getting home.” You take the fish off the fire and start eating, finishing your bite and saying, “My bad.”

Your sarcasm isn’t lost on him and he responds in turn, “It’s okay, I forgive you.” THis causes you to scoff, irritated by him. Who knew mythical creatures would be assholes just like humans. “Look, you can just stay on this island. I’ll bring you food and make sure the sirens don’t fuck with you. If you couldn’t save yourself from getting thrown off a boat by one measly human, You couldn’t possibly be a threat.”

“Or is that what I want you to think and this is my plan to get to Atlantis?”

“Shut up.”

“Okay.” You say pausing for a moment. He goes to swim back down and you stop him, “Thank you, by the way. I don’t really have any other options unless a sailor happens to find me here, which is unlikely since almost no one will come here, let alone make it out alive.”

He smiles a little, “I would say it’s no problem, but it will be a hassle.” He mutters and you toss a rock at him, telling him to shut up through a laugh. He swims off, returning everyday to give you food, whatever items he finds thrown into the sea, and providing you some company on your long days. It’s lonely, and he’s not exactly the nicest company, but he’s kind and he is better than nothing.

tag list: @fayiif @valenrien

[invinciblelikeu]

Maybe this is trying to be hopeful (but tbh the way these guys have shown their true colours is rather then ) but I wouldn’t be surprised if the ccs who are “distancing then self” try and go back to the dteam in a few months. Not to be that person but a lot of their audience was dteam followers. And while yes their have gained their own fans, they have also lost a huge amount of casual viewers. Because while they did make their own confer, a lot of it also revolved around being friends with the dteam. What I mean by that is punz Would gain viewership when him and sap would play valo but sap wasn’t streaming (or he was on kick) Hannah would often bring up the dream and tell stories of them when they would hang out.

While yes on twitter they may look good and have people “support” them for it the main platform that actually matter could and will most definitely take a dive.

I was absolutely fine with still watching and engaging in content Hannah would be making ( because she was genuinely one of my favourite ccs) when she said she just didn’t feel comfortable around them anymore because fair enough she knows them and she may not trust them now. But seeing her stance as of her recent Reddit posts and comments, I don’t want to watch her. Everyone makes mistakes, it going to happen. So to scrutinise and isolate someone for making an honest mistake because you can’t “forgive mistakes” is a horrible outlook on life and helps no one. Especially when punz has all that against him (I’m not too caught up on him) and she hasn’t made one post about him. And what he has against him is 100% worse then this but twitter isn’t at is throat so it’s not important to these ccs

I genuinely feel like she was just hurt finding out what George did( she’s 100% valid for that) saw twitters reaction and panicked like the rest of them. Made her statement way to early or without gaining the proper details first and now people are starting to realise how out of proportion this how thing has gone, she’s trying to save her self from looking like a shitty person but just ended up doing the opposite

And don’t even get me started in punz because what was he even thinking ??

I think what we have all learned from this is people only care about their public image. These guys have been “friends” for a very long time, and it wouldn’t surprise if they still talk to dteam out side of content. They just wanna save their own asses and look good for twitter to gain brownie points, while still actively engaging with awful people behind the scenes or even in content (the whole beau situation)

long post

hmm i honestly don’t know the outcome of this, but if they do crawl back to dteam i think they would do it privately, and whether or not dteam will take them back, i don’t know either

and you’re right. the clout they’re getting right now isn’t from support for caiti, it’s from the hatred for dteam. they are fostering interactions from antis who will never give them the attention the way dt’s community has given them — that i can say for certain. once this blows over i don’t think they will see a significant rise in viewership

regarding hannah, i felt awful for her at first. because in my eyes she was a good friend who was blindsided. and then she didn’t even make it about supporting caiti, she made it about ousting the dream team, which let’s face it, is performative as fuck. it could easily be passed off as trying to take a stand for women in the gaming community — which in itself is a very good cause — but it seems pretty transparent to me that she either was trying to save face, or has the most narrow mindset when it comes to growth ever, or both. she’s not gonna have many friends to rely on if she continues with that mindset. the friends who are honest with you and tell you when you fuck up but stick around to see you grow are the ones that last. best case scenario she’s just hurt and making panicked decision after panicked decision, but THEN i saw her lurking in the dwt2 reddit so idk about that anymore 😭

and punz is an asshole who threw dream under the bus mere hours after he was begging people to talk to him if they have any issues with him, just so he can deflect and appease to the twitter mob’s anger and make a diversion from his own allegations which were much worse. i’m glad it backfired on him because that was embarrassing as fuck.

content creation and the streaming industry has made these cc’s spineless, shifted their priorities to be more self centered and selfish, and it’s come to the point where they will burn bridges to save their career and get their 5 minutes of clout. they pick and choose who to support and who to drop depending on the reaction they will get. they pretend to be heroes while being hypocrites off camera. they need humbling, and they need interactions with people whose lives don’t revolve around the internet.

[whenfatecollides]

I think this post will be with little to no surprise for most people, but I still want to talk about the transition that is happening with this blog (and with me). I know most people currently following me will have followed me for dreamcatcher, and I genuinely cherish a lot of moments I spent here in this fandom, one of the things that made my time here so much fun was exactly sharing it with you, laughing with you, hearing your feedback and opinions on situations we were going through, etc. I have a lot of regrets regarding my teens and my early 20′s, but I don’t have regrets in regards to the last few years that I spent with dreamcatcher. they actually pushed me to do a lot of cool things, to be more independent, I drove an hour ride by myself back in 2018 to see them, booked flights and hotels on my own, hell I even ordered a cake for siyeon and got it delivered back in 2019 and we all got to sing her happy birthday while they were on stage thanks to that. I’ve made so many friends that I’ve gotten to meet in real life, I’ve made friends that I know are going to be for life and I’m so eternally grateful that I got to cross paths with them thanks to dc. I’m so proud of so many things I did, as well as we all accomplished together for them. I have no hard feelings towards them, nor do I feel bitter about how things could have been. at this point in my life, I just feel like my time in the fandom has just naturally run its course. just like I’ve seen it happen to a lot of my friends in the last couple years. losing two pets last year also changed a lot of things around me, and it changed me a lot too, and I just feel like dc aren’t a priority for me anymore. I’ve finally let go of the expectations that I felt I had on me in regards to them, genuinely other than some things my friends send me here and there, I haven’t been keeping up with them anymore. and I don’t feel like I have to. they’ve changed a lot as well in the last 2/3 years, so in a way it kinda feels like we’ve just grown apart, and I’m okay with that. I know I’ve gone on deleting rampages before, but I promise that all the content I’ve done for dc here will remain available, like I mentioned, I don’t have any sore feelings about the last couple of years. this isn’t to say that I’ll never blog about dreamcatcher again, or make content for them ever again, I still enjoy their music a lot, but they won’t be my main focus anymore. anyway, I know it’s not that deep, this is just tumblr, but I did do a lot to try to help build a community for dc’s fandom here, help the fandom and dc grow, etc, so I feel like I owe that part of my life a proper farewell, even if it’s not a definitive one. when I first got into dreamcatcher, I became their fan with the mentality that I would stick around for as long as it made sense to me, and I just feel like that time has come (in regards to dc and kpop in general tbh). It’s truly been a blast to be a part of their growth all these years <3 for anyone that started following me recently because of them, I’m sorry I guess, if you wanna stick around for xena, warrior nun, and any other stuff I’m finding interesting at the moment, feel free. if not, it’s been nice to cross paths with you and I wish you the best ✌️😎

[lockedtowers]

my muse is:   canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / canon inspired

is your character popular in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK

is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK

is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK.

are they underrated?  YES / NO / IDK

were they relevant to the main story?  YES / NO

were they relevant to the main character?  YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG

are they widely known in their world?  YES / NO / IDK

how’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL

how strictly do you follow canon?

so like pmuch everything that happens in s/yfy al/ice happens but i expand on it more and recognize jack as more evil, and also i make my own canon inspired by that canon (For this blog). if we're talking abt my book version of cassie tho i make the canon.

SELL YOUR MUSE! aka try to list everything which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals

the ever present curse of a life you didn't choose, a basis never chosen. the broken (cat) who had to escape, a preconceived notion on what you are based on who you're related to, the monster's daughter, a lost heir, the discovery of who and what someone is and how those around them can shape them into either good, evil, or the undetermined inbetween. also she's a cat

now the OPPOSITE. list everything why your muse might not be so interesting (even if you don’t agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?)

i tone it down a lot tbh but she does use a lot of 'big' and 'annoying' words, she tends to be a little bit of an asshole, and ofc... she's a girl (usually). genderfluid chars usually arent preferred by fandom, fantasy isn't as big as it was back in the day, people don't really love adaptions anymore, and in a lot of ways i base things around 'is this something someone would find interesting in a cis male muse' and if the answer is yes, i love it and fandom hates it. also magic. also, like, 'oh too powerful waaaaa' which is another reason why i nerf her in rp quite a lot. also i tend to make a lot of things abt her, bc i love her.

what inspired you to rp your muse?

so back when she was still a dormouse and part of an open group i co ran it was bc of the fc my then friend picked out but as i've adapted her made her my own changed her animal and everything its pure unadultered love

what keeps your inspiration going?

she's my babygirl and even if nobody else loves her i DO and want to find others who also love her and maybe me

some more personal questions for the mun. give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

do you think you give your character justice?   YES / NO / SOMETIMES

do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO / SOMETIMES

do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO / SOMETIMES

do you think a lot about your muse during the day? YES / NO / SOMETIMES

are you confident in your portrayal?   YES / NO

are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO / SOMETIMES

are you a sensitive person?   YES / NO / SOMETIMES

do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?

if i ask for it, but she's my character, and i have rejection sensitivity dysphoria, so i simply don't ask for it.

do you like questions which help you explore your character?

yes

if someone disagrees with a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?

i will hear out whatever but like if it's a headcanon. abt my character. then thats my character. but if it involves another char like obviously we should build it together lol

if someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?

this is my cat

if someone really hates your character, how do you take it?

well, she's my char, and it's my blog, so idc

are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?

i'm dyslexic feel FREE to let me know.

do you think you are easy going as a mun?

prolly yea

my muse is:   canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / canon inspired

is your character popular in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK

is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK / unfortunately

is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK.

are they underrated?  YES / NO / IDK

were they relevant to the main story?  YES / NO

were they relevant to the main character?  YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG

are they widely known in their world?  YES / NO / IDK

how’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL

how strictly do you follow canon?

honestly i don't even think scott knew what canon was, most of it is fanon, and i don't like most of the fanon. i really just do what i want w him and my only real inspiration is what was shone in the first 6 games, a dash of the newer ones, the film a teeny bit, and the silver eyes trilogy. but it's mostly my own canon as well. i'd say canon inspired but also i'm more or less writing him as an oc.

SELL YOUR MUSE! aka try to list everything which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals

i don't want to sell him he's evil and more than half the fandom wants to fuck him he's an evil genius, master manipulator, at one point he loved his fam and kids. at one point.

now the OPPOSITE. list everything why your muse might not be so interesting (even if you don’t agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?)

if i start i wont stop. he's literally a child killer, he literally created things to kill children. would he have done that if his son hadn't died? probably not! but he is unforgivable imo, h8 him, like from a psych standpoint its interesting to dissect his brain but like yknow

what inspired you to rp your muse?

i already wanted to from game one but when he finally got a name i was like welp this is mine now

what keeps your inspiration going?

i dont rly write him often bc the fandom wants to believe he's even worse than he already is and everytime sb messages me wanting to have their muse aged down and obsessed w him and them to do things i get grossed out and can't deal w it please never ever do that again anyone ever he's horrible but he isn't that

some more personal questions for the mun. give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

do you think you give your character justice?   YES / NO / SOMETIMES

do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO / SOMETIMES

do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO / SOMETIMES

do you think a lot about your muse during the day? YES / NO / SOMETIMES

are you confident in your portrayal?   YES / NO

are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO / SOMETIMES

are you a sensitive person?   YES / NO / SOMETIMES

do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?

in his case, no, because most criticism i receive is either 'how could anyone write someone who isnt at least morally grey whats wrong with you???' (people sexualize and romanticize him too much and just wanna fuck him and its like there's a line where you can explore the man he was but still respect the horrible person he becomes and not romanticize who he becomes, which a lot of ppl... can't handle. when it was sb who had an entire blog of serial killer characters tho a few years back that was just ironic) or mad at me for refusing to make him a p3d0 so like, absolutely not. i won't accept any criticism on him from anyone. ppl are too annoying.

do you like questions which help you explore your character?

yes

if someone disagrees with a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?

it depends. bc if its abt either of the things above, no.

if someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?

idk, i don't really care when it comes to him lol

if someone really hates your character, how do you take it?

GOOD

tagged  by  :  stole from max

tagging  :  u

[raayllum]

I know you were ready to lay CHET to rest after this season but… Callum still has the cube, we still don’t know *exactly* what it does but Aaravos will presumedly need it, and all that foreshadowing about Callum choosing Rayla over the greater good? I still believe

i'll have a more coherent post about this when i'm not running on under 7 hours of sleep for 24+ hours (close to 30+ now honestly) but no i feel so Fucking Crazy right now precisely because i went into s6, our penultimate season, expecting to finally get to lay CHET and its variants (5x08 my beloved) to rest after 4+ years, every season for 3 seasons in a row i've been ready to lay it down, and yet it's still on the Goddamn Table arguably more than ever before

Obviously certain things have changed — Callum's thematic associations with freedom would switch probably to having a role to play in 'unlocking' Aaravos' full power and/or giving him access to the other Startouch elves somehow — but both of those things are stuff I've considered being related to the cube before (as well as dark magic) so not much is actually changing there fundamentally.

What continues to change is the sheer assortment of evidence that Callum is going to play into Aaravos' hands for her (the initial basis of CHET), and Rayla is likewise going to refuse to sacrifice him (thereby shortly followed by mutual salvation theory), and 6x03 is a Giant Sign blinking Pay Attention in bright neon.

Rayla: Listen to me. If you ever have to choose between me and the greater good, do the right thing. Make the sacrifice.

Nevermind that 'right thing' is subjective and that sacrificing loved ones is routinely seen as Bad ("We must be willing to sacrifice, even the things we love" / "My daughter [...] and I tried to kill you") and that Aaravos (one of Rayla's primary foils) likewise demanded for Viren to 'make a sacrifice' regarding Sir Sparklepuff in 5x09. It'd be one thing, mind you, for Rayla to just bring up this Hypothetical and it could conceivably be dropped, but then Callum makes the basis of CHET's adjacent Mutual Salvation Theory explicit in tethering Rayla's request to his own:

Rayla: What? Callum: If Aaravos ever controls me again, if he ever uses me, promise me you'll kill me. Rayla: Yes. I promise.

(There's a few different things we can read both into Callum's renewed approach and Rayla's changed response, but meta for another day).

What this conversation does, though, is link these things in the audience's mind. If half is called upon their deal in a scenario, it's only logical that the other will be too. And, of course, Aaravos has to inevitably possess Callum, and Callum (as a main protagonist and usher of a new age of magic) cannot die, so Rayla has to break her promise (a la TTM) to keep him alive, freeing up room in the narrative to Callum likewise break his (more thinly made tbh) promise as well. The easiest order of events, therefore, is for Callum to break his promise first in order to save/protect her, be possessed, and then Rayla breaks her promise in saving him. Mutual salvation and all that

The fact we have other characters and plot threads routinely referring back to and building up Rayllum's thematic basis for each plot turn in S7 is just the cherry on top.

(We also see Rayla talk not just one but two 'monsters' down corrupted by desperation and grief, so while it may retread more territory if she does the same to Callum, there's certainly more than a precedent. For Callum, 2/3 dark magic times were for Rayla, and you don't introduce Big Extra Scary 'permanently ruined by dark magic' Stakes if you're not gonna use them as a way to escalate things, either, even if of course given that it's S7, there will be ways out and a happy ending).

Insert Callum putting the star rune sign directly down against her palm.

I think it's likely the cube is still involved somehow (all the ominous foreshadowing including and most prevalently featured in the pawn intro doesn't suddenly go away, and was only added to in S6) and really, this is about the only parallel I personally need anymore to keep chugging along theory wise:

Like it's Over and at this point we just gotta wait for S7, tbh, especially when a big juicy angsty mutual Rayllum plotline is more than in order after their relatively fluffy (loved) plotline in S6

[nicromancytarot]

Hi Nicromancy Tarot! New follower here 😊🤍

Name is Mika. Leo sun, libra rising and Capricorn moon

Would love to send a lighthearted question since I’ve been single for 4 years now 😅

(I feel like my destined soulmate isn’t from my country)

but what do you think are the qualities of my destined romantic soulmate/lover in this lifetime? The one that i am manifesting and is meant to be with me (i just have the qualities i seek in a person) And how do you think we will meet (like the happenings, or events)

I’m very open to what the tarot cards will say. [tbh i feel like i am really connected to this person and i can feel his energy even though i dont know him in this 3D yet] huhu i know we have a lot of soulmates that’s why the question was very specific

I would definitely give an honest feedback love.. thank you.

Their qualities

-Loves helping people, very charitable.

-When they give something to someone, they give them their all, if they say they want to be with you, it means they want to be with you forever, not only a little.

-They are quite introverted, they enjoy having their own time to mentally reset.

-They know when they need to cut people out of their life, they have very good intuition and they don’t let people walk all over them.

-They have everything they could dream of materially, I see they are very successful and even wealthy.

-They can come off as quite defensive and protective, sometimes even possessive over what belongs to them.

-They’ve had a tough upbringing or have been hurt badly in the past, this is why they are so protective of their energy.

-They can come off as quite stern and authoritative, sometimes even bossy.

-They have a lot of friends, or they are good at making friends, they are almost friends with everyone, type of person you take shopping and they stop for hours to talk to some people they know.

-They can come off as very impulsive, especially with the way they speak. They would be the type to say something they don’t mean in an argument, they happen to sometimes let their emotions get the better of them.

-They love stability, they are very stable and happy with where they are in life.

-They can be a little pessimistic when it comes to love, but this will change whenever they meet you.

-They’re really into romantic gestures, I think they’re main love language is acts of service.

Animals to describe them

Eel and hare came out for them. When I saw the eel, i thought it was a snake and when I saw the hare, I thought it was a rabbit, so they can come off as very unique and different, even a little random with the way that they act or speak. This part of them is intimidating for a lot of people, and it may be intimidating for you when you first meet.

How you will meet

You’ll meet sometime after one of you has gone through a hard time, something to do with betrayal and being stabbed in the back. This person will be getting their shit together and working harder than ever to improve themself, making important decisions that could somewhat lead to bad endings if not made.

When you meet, they will help you with something, could honestly be like meeting in a grocery store and they help you get something off the highest shelf, or you guys get locked in a room together unexpectedly and have to try and help each other out (that’s so Wattpad coded, amen.) You will help each other and someone will give the other something in return. The person who receives this thing might be shut off to it at first (maybe a number or something) and this will lead the other person to feel dismissed and embarrassed. However, it will lead to a relationship in the end, once the other gets off their high horse!

The universe wants you to know that even when you feel like this won’t happen or you feel like you messed up with them, they are your soulmate so they will come back and they will end up with you, so don’t doubt the universe and have trust that they know what they are doing.