#the want for something more transfers to her own sense of fashion and identity and even like. mentality

[srfgansey]

gonna be a blue sargent apologist . a thing about blue sargent is that she’s been a non-psychic in a house full of special women her entire life and that she’s constantly put in both a weirdo box and a nonspecial box at very same time by different people in different context in one single person, even when it’s definitely not intentional and was despite it all raised in a loving supporitve household, she still visibly feels quite singled out and bored and lonely. but blue grew up around women and her tendency to alienate herself from women and consider herself above but actually below but actually above other girls is actually quite fitting in the context she grew up in because she was always quite literally is not like the other girls. blue knows if she cannot be naturally distinctive like other women she will actively make herself distinctive. she will convince herself that she’s special. that she’s also a weirdo in the good, special sense. and i think that’s a realistic portrayal of a girl today in relation to the inherent threat of being singled out as specifically unspecial. so we make ourselves special

[some-cookie-crumbz]

BNHA, MomoJirou?

Prompts 25. "I know this looks bad, but I swear, it's not."

So many ways this could go~! Hopefully the route I took was a fun one!

Minor Trigger Warning: Mentions of Blood

Momo considered herself to be a rather fortunate woman. She had a financially successful family, a great relationship with her father and was working on things with her mother, a close-knit group of friends she loved dearly, and had started a paid internship just a few weeks back for a designing agency run by The Kayama Nemuri. She knew that she was an incredibly lucky person, that there were those who would kill for the opportunities she had been given, and made sure to wear her gratitude on her sleeve to everyone she knew. She put all her effort and energy into being a good daughter, a good friend, and a good employee, doing whatever she could through action to help emphasize the depth and sincerity of her gratitude. After all, actions were a great indicator of the merit of one's words!

But sadly… Her love life hadn’t seen nearly as many returns as the rest of her life had.

She’d had three relationships in the past and they’d all been… lackluster, to put it mildly. Her first relationship had been a situation where she agreed to date the guy more out of obligation than anything. He had been incredibly nice to her and her then-friends had insisted that meant she at least owed him a chance to prove himself as a boyfriend. The relationship had only lasted three months of her first year of high school and ended so horribly that her father had transferred her to a new school at the conclusion of her first semester.

The school she transferred to was a girls-only boarding school and where she grew into her sexual identity as a pansexual woman. She had a longer relationship with one of her classmates that started in the winter of her second year and ended in the spring of their third year, with her ex immediately jumping to date another of their peers within a week of the break up. It had been painful to watch and, for about a year after, she had avoided relationships for a while.

Her relationship after that had been even worse. She didn’t like to dwell on that ex too much simply because… Well, how incredibly awful it had been. The relationship had felt much more like the two of them getting together because they were afraid of being single in their group of friends. The two of them had nearly no common interests and her ex had always seemed to find her passion for fashion design to be a waste of time, frequently inquiring why she didn’t study something more “practical”. Momo herself, however, thought that her degree plan had been more than practical, considering her minor had been in business.

That relationship lasted ten months and ended when she learned of an affair.

She’d taken a two year break from dating after that, focusing instead on her friend and family and school. All of her friends had rallied around her after that break up, helping to lift her back up, and she had been incredibly grateful for it. They reminded her to never settle for less than she was worth, to wait until someone who deserved her commitment came around.

And then, one day, she met Jirou Kyouka.

Their first meeting had been an impromptu sort of thing. Momo’s dear friend Mina had to take her new puppy, Floofles, to the vet for vaccines and spaying. It was an overnight situation with a designated pick-up time, but Mina had to be at work during the time. She has begged Momo if, since she was free that day, she could pick Floofles up and monitor her until she herself was home. And not one to let a friend in need down, Momo had agreed.

In the lobby of the little vet clinic had sat a young woman in dark colors, with short cut indigo hair, and a snarling mass of hay colored fur in her lap. Momo had been a few minutes early and was urged to take a seat while she waited, causing her to settle into the vacancy next to the stranger and her displeased pet. Upon closer examination she realized that it was a cat, with a front paw that looked to be at an odd angle, which seemed to explain the attitude. “Oh, the poor little dear,” she murmured quietly, not thinking as the words left her mouth.

Dark eyes flickered up to her, the gleam of disinterest fading to a light of interest. Her lips twitched up in a small smile. “Thank you, but he did this to himself,” she hummed, reaching out to set one hand on the cat’s head. He responded by growling audibly and jerking his head out from under her touch. “Leave the patio door open unsupervised for one minute, and he leaps out to chase a bird. Eats shit and ends up hurting his paw.”

The cat let out a displeased hiss at his dirty laundry being aired, but it only resulted in both women laughing. The next few minutes waiting for Floofles had passed in the blink of an eye as she chatted up the cat owner, learning that the cat was named Dynamight and was just a grumpy old man trapped in the body of a young cat. Once Floofles was brought out to her, Momo asked for the other’s number, explaining she wanted to see how Dynamight was doing once his paw got looked at. And while there was genuine care about the cat’s well being involved, there had also been a selfish motivation behind it, too. Her companion seemed to know as much but didn’t draw attention to it as they exchanged numbers.

That was eleven months ago, with she and Jirou’s nine month anniversary as an official couple just on the horizon. And Momo couldn’t help but smile whenever she thought about it. Jirou was unlike her past partners in so many ways. She encouraged and supported Momo’s designing works, they shared a secret love of true crime love documentaries, and she was incredibly laid back. With her, Momo could feel her walls fall down and she felt genuinely secure about it. There was something naturally calming about Jirou’s presence and approach to life - of going with the flow and taking things as they came - that was refreshing and exhilarating. So much of Momo’s own life had been slotted around by activity start and end times, of living up to expectations both real and imagined, that the idea of simply letting things be and dealing with them as they came up was incredibly freeing.

The thought occurred to her as she stepped out of the elevator at Jirou’s apartment complex and started to make her way to her door. Normally, she made sure to reach out before dropping by. Part of it was because she didn’t like just showing up unannounced, but another reason was because of her girlfriend’s erratic work schedule. The other woman did freelance work of some kind - the details were vague and confidential - so her hours tended to shift depending on the needs of her client. Sometimes, she’d be free for a good three or four days, while other times she’d be engrossed in her projects for hours at a time. Things had been pretty quiet from what little she remembered last time they talked about work, though, so she felt things would be fine this one time.

She opened the door to the front door, unsurprised to find it unlocked. Jirou tended to leave the door unlocked in case her neighbor, a bedraggled single father, ever needed to ask for an impromptu baby-sitter. His daughter liked cats and Dynamight, as Momo herself had seen, was surprisingly agreeable with the young girl when she came by. She half expected to see young Eri settled on the couch, a Disney movie playing on the television, while Jirou prepared dinner or worked on something for a client, when she stepped in.

Only to stop just a few steps through the threshold.

A map of the city was spread across the coffee table, two large pillar candles set up at the far corners of the table, while Jirou was kneeling in front of it. She was cutting open what seemed to be a small blood donation bag with some scissors, a small wooden box to her left with what seemed to be crystals inside. After a moment, Jirou reached towards the box and pulled one out, a thin strand of yarn wrapped around the crystal. She released a slow breath. “Okay, Kyouka… This shouldn’t be too hard. You haven’t exactly used this combination before but it should work out fine,” she mumbled to herself, moving the crystal to dangle over the open lip of the bag.

Momo couldn’t help it; she gasped, loud and horrified. She was completely stunned. What was all of this? What purpose did it serve? It all seemed incredibly occult. Jirou had never seemed like the type to have such interests. Hearing her gasp, Jirou jerked to stare at her with a horrified stare of her own. She opened her mouth twice, clearly scrambling to find words to string together, before she clamped it shut with a soft click of her jaw.

They stared at one another for a long moment, eyes wide and their heart beats seeming to echo in the tiny space.

"I know this looks bad, but I swear, it's not!" Jirou yelped, finally cutting through the silence, dropping the blood bag in her hands and letting it hit the ground with a sickening splat sound. Momo felt her whole body shudder with the sound and her stomach flipped uneasily. She shifted her weight back on the heels of her feet while keeping her eyes fixated on Jirou.

“Tch! She’s gonna try and make a break for it if you don’t seal the door off, ya idiot!” For a moment, Momo was befuddled by the new voice she heard. She swore she could hear quiet, cat-like growls between their words, but… That wouldn’t make sense, right? Who does cat impressionations while speaking? Slowly she turned her head in the directions of the voice, her eyes landing on the familiar fluffy form of Dynamight sitting on the kitchen counter. His pupils shrunk to slimmer slits before he curled his lips back, the voice from before sneering, “Oh, looks like she’s starting to put shit together! Get your head back in the fucking game!”

Dynamight… Her cat… Was talking? But then… Talking cats were common of…

Momo whipped around and moved to rush for the apartment door, heart beating erratically in her chest. If this was all really happening, she needed to get out! Before a hex of some kind could be placed on her, or even worse! “Wait, Yaomomo! Please hear me out!” Jirou called out after her.

Just as her hands made to grab for the handle, it shriveled and withered into the door itself like a rotten fruit being reclaimed by its tree. A startled shriek left her as she scrambled backwards, watching with wide eyes as the rest of the door melted into the frame, the seam separating the two disappearing completely. She felt herself drop to her knees and wrap her arms tight around herself. “Oh God,” she breathed shakily, closing her eyes tightly as she heard soft footfalls approaching her. “I promise I won’t tell anyone about this! J-Just please! D-Don’t hu-hurt me! L-Let me go!”

There was a quiet swishing of wind and fabric before she felt herself being lifted slightly. Then, there was a soft and warm hand gently cupping her cheek. “I would never hurt you, Momo. Please… Even if you aren’t sure how to feel about the rest of this, please know that much is the truth,” The other woman’s voice hitched with pain as she spoke, clearly wounded by the suggestion. She peeked her eyes open to see she was floating just a few feet above the ground so that she was able to meet the other’s dark eyes. Those same eyes were pleading and vulnerable.

Momo swallowed thickly before timidly nodding her head. “I’m sorry,” she breathed softly.

“No, I understand. This… Isn’t what you were anticipating to walk into,” Jirou said with a small sigh before glancing over at the sacrificial site set up on her coffee table. “Just let me clean that up real fast, put on some tea and then I’ll explain.” Momo nodded with a bit more certainty before she was carefully floated over and set delicately on the couch.

She sat and watched in quiet bemusement as the other skittered to and fro, using what Momo could only assume was magic to help her. The longer she observed, the more relaxed she gradually became. While she worked at getting the blood cleaned up off the wood paneling, Dynamight actually rummaged through the kitchen cabinets to fish out the kettle and start filling it up. It was a little impressive to watch how he did it with his paws and teeth, though she could still hear the quiet grumbled swears he released as he did. Once all the summoning stuff and blood were cleaned up, Jirou prepared them each a cup of tea and settled into the couch seat a space away from Momo, giving her a good amount of breathing room.

She handed the cup over carefully with one hand. “I went with that citrus one you brought a while back. I remembered that one having a nice little zing to it,” she explained.

“Thank you,” Momo took a quick sip of her own cup, disregarding how it scalded her tongue just a smidge. “So… You’re a witch, I take it.” she said evenly.

Jirou nodded. “Yes, I am,”

“And Dynamight-!”

“Bakugo,”

“Huh?”

“His actual name is Bakugo Katsuki. Dynamight is just his… um.. Common cat name. Easier than explaining the logistics of a familiar,” she explained with a small nervous laugh.

“So he is your familiar,” she mused, taking another sip. The other nodded as she took a sip from her own cup as well, setting it on the coaster on the coffee table when she was done. 

Jirou’s hands clutched at her knees, eyes skirting down to stare at them instead. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’ve wanted to but… I was worried. There’s a lot of paperwork and hoops to jump through to get that kind of clearance. And even then… There’s no guarantee that you’d want to keep that knowledge. And if that happened, your memories would have to be wiped and I couldn’t see you anymore.”

Momo blinked in surprise. “Wait, what?”

“It’s a safety protocol that the higher ups implement to keep the general public safe, as well as those of us in the bureau,” she sighed, lifting her head to peek up at her worriedly. It was clear she was uneasy but was also being transparent. “Though, I suppose I should actually… Well, explain what’s going on here, huh?”

She nodded. “So… Is this related to your work?”

“Yes, actually. See, I’m aligned with what’s called the I.B.O.M.O., which is abbreviated further to I-Boom, and is short for International Bureau of Magical Events. As a representative, I have the ability to travel between this realm - the mortal plane - and the realm of magical creatures - the magical plane. As such, it is my responsibility to keep instances of magical creatures and mortal interactions limited. Part of that is tracking down rogue magicals that come into the mortal plane without the proper permissions and, if they encounter a mortal, wiping memories and issuing out punishments,” she explained, picking her cup back up and taking a sip.

“So what you were doing… Was that related to something like that?” Momo asked with a tilt of her head.

Jirou nodded. “Yes. I was trying to scry. My current assignment is to track down the heir of a noble warlock family who has apparently fled to this plane. He is apparently somewhere in this city but.. Well, since he hails from a high ranking family, his magical skills have been well-honed so trying to find him has been a struggle. I’d been hoping that by combining my scrying technique and a powerful conjuring technique using the bird blood I could… Well… Try to get some idea as to where he might be,” she sighed, letting her shoulders slump. “This is the longest I’ve ever taken on an assignment and it’s.. Well, it’s difficult.”

Momo stared at her before glancing back down at her cup. Her thumb traced along the rim of the cup thoughtfully, an idea turning about in her head. “Could… Could I help you find him?”

“Huh?”

“The fuck can a human like you do to help?” Dynamight - erh, Bakugo? - chimed in, hopping down from the breakfast nook and trotting over. He scrambled up and sat on the table, glaring her down with his ears back and fluffy tail lashing. “If a witch with as many accomplishments as Earlobes is having a hard time, what fucking chance does a mere human like you have?”

“Well, if you have an idea of around when he appeared, I can ask around,” Momo said, tone a little petulant. The sheer lunacy that she was arguing with a cat wasn’t lost on her completely - and she made note to ask Jirou later how, exactly, it was she could hear his voice - but she still felt the need to, as immature as it was. “I have a lot of connections around the city. I might be able to get you a list of suspects, since there is the chance he could do… Um… What is it called? Glamour?”

Jirou giggled a bit. “You’re right. Glamour is the tool magical creatures use to disguise their true forms,” She lightly tapped her chin in thought. “Hmm. That’s not a bad idea, actually. He could be using glamour to disguise his appearance since it’s so unique. Make himself harder to find.” Momo smiled at Jirou’s words, her heart fluttering a bit at the prospect of being about to help her girlfriend. “But… If you’re going to get involved, I’ll need to file the proper paperwork and make a protection charm for you. I want you to be safe. I don’t think the nobleman would harm you but… I don’t know the specifics of why he left the magical plan unannounced. I’d rather air on the side of caution.”

Momo nodded as she took another sip of her tea. A part of her told her she shouldn’t get this invested. It was Jirou’s work and she herself wasn’t a witch. She shouldn’t be getting involved too heavily. But… If she could help her girlfriend, wasn’t it worth it? If it gave her a chance to show how much she appreciated how good Jirou was to her, it had to be worth it.

[gabriel-agreste-has-no-rights]

Rating: T

Chapter Summary: A month after Chat Noir learns Marinette's identity, they're just vibin'

Word Count: 4388 | Chapter 2/2

Notes: Written for @chatnoirinette​ through the @mlbforblm​ charity drive!  The donations go directly to Color of Change, an organization for racial justice.  I highly recommend checking them out and reblogging/donating the mlbforblm posts if you’re able!  I have two fic request slots left as of 7/17/2020, and many other talented writers and artists are offering incentives as well

XXX

Marinette glanced over her shoulder for what had to have been the thirtieth time.  Outside her bedroom window, stormclouds were gathering over the glittering skyline. What if the weather was too dangerous for Chat to come visit tonight?  Or what if he’d gotten held up with something in his civilian life?  That happened too often, though he probably spent every moment he could with her now.  It was oddly comforting that he wanted to be around her so much, even if it was just keeping her company while she worked on homework, or deciphered the grimoire, or let the kwamis out for some fresh air.

Despite seeing him practically every day, she still managed to miss him.

“He’ll be here,” Tikki said from her perch on top of Marinette’s mannequin.  

She sighed.  “That obvious, huh?”

“You almost pinned the collar to my leg.”

Oops.  As it was, the she’d bunched up the collar of Juleka’s dress all wrong.  She’d have to remove the pins and smooth it out again unless she wanted the fabric to pucker in her sewing machine.

“Sorry Tikki.  I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately.”

She’d survived with only seeing her partner during akuma attacks and patrols for two years now.  But in these few weeks since she’d accidentally revealed her identity, she’d come to rely on him more than ever.  Maybe too much, honestly.  She had no idea what civilian responsibilities he was carrying on his own.

Well, she had a guess, but that was better left unsaid until she knew for sure.

You could always ask him, she thought for the thousandth time, but banished it just as quickly.  

A tap at her window made her jump and prick her finger.  Even startled as she was, guilty relief flooded her.  Tikki was right; he’d shown up anyway.

She sucked on the sore spot as she ran to open the window.  “You know Papa would let you in the front door.”

“But then I’d miss getting to see you in your natural habitat, Bugaboo.”  Chat Noir grinned as he swung himself in.  Luckily it hadn’t started raining yet.  She didn’t want her room smelling like wet cat.

“My ‘natural habitat’ has too many pins on the floor.”  She scrambled to pick them up before he ended up stepping on one.  His boots would have protected his feet, but he was polite enough to remove them every time he entered, even though she’d never asked him to.

At least, she’d never asked Chat.  That was one of her flimsier evidences for his identity, though.

“I like it.  It’s cozy.”  He plopped down on her chaise, which he’d claimed for himself weeks ago.  Not that she minded.  She kept that space clear for him, even when fabric and thread was piled on every other surface.

“What about your room?  Is it this ‘cozy’?”  She asked.  It was an innocent question, not overtly fishing for information on his identity.  

“Nah.  I’m not allowed to… I have to keep things tidy.”  He frowned.

Another piece towards her theory.  She’d add that note in the conspiracy page she’d webbed out in her diary.

“Oh!  I’ve got something for you!”  He untied a plastic bag that he’d hung from his belt.  “It, um, might be a little bit squished, but hopefully it’ll still taste good.”

Her eyes widened at the small box of cupcakes he presented to her.  The frosting was pale pink, with wobbly dots of chocolate arranged to look like the spots on her yo-yo.  They were a little smushed, but still in remarkably good shape for having traveled with Chat across Paris.  She popped off the box’s translucent lid, giggling at the tiny pigeon stickers at each corner of it.

He winced.  “They look terrible, don’t they?  I know I’m not as good at baking as you, but Mr. Ramier helped so I thought they might be kind of okay—”

“They’re perfect.”  She wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug.  “You didn’t have to make me anything, Kitty.”

“I know, but I wanted to.  Since you’re always sharing your delicious pastries with me—”

“Maman and Papa make most of those.”

“—and because you deserve something nice, and you refuse to let me buy you anything.”

Her face warmed.  Before she’d put that rule into place, he’d tried to bring her a present every time he visited.  Considering he visited a lot, that would have taken a toll on his wallet.

Unless money wasn’t an issue for him, of course.

Stop that, she told herself.  She could hardly deny her feelings for Chat anymore, but she couldn’t keep muddling them with feelings for her first crush.  Not until she knew for sure they were one and the same.

Now if only she could stop being a coward and ask him.

“W-well thanks,” she said quickly.  “You better help me eat them.”

He winked.  “Can do, Princess.”

Before they dug in, she bundled her fabric away and pulled out the Miracle Box from its hiding place next to her sewing machine.  It was the perfect spot, now that she’d learned how disguise it as an extra sewing box rather than that Ladybug-themed egg-thing.  She’d never have been able to keep that a secret.

“Who’s coming out today?”  Chat asked.  He’d sprawled on the chaise with his hands propping up his chin.  Tikki had nestled herself in his hair, eating half of a cupcake and scattering crumbs in his golden locks.  

The kwami would probably enjoy Chat Noir’s visits more if Plagg was allowed out for her to play with.  Plagg would devour all of her parents’ cheese-filled pastries, and Marinette… Marinette would have to look into her partner’s unmasked eyes and admit she was still half in love with someone else.

Unless she wasn’t.  But what if she was?  A few hardly-lucid dreams and wishful evidence weren’t proof that Chat Noir was actually Adrien.

She shook her head.  That train of thought could do donuts in her brain if she didn’t pull the brakes.

“I was thinking Kaalki and Pollen.”  She wasn’t up for any of the rowdier kwamis tonight, even with Chat helping her “babysit.”  Plus the two of them liked sweets; they’d appreciate the cupcakes.

She pulled out the hair comb and glasses, and Chat Noir excitedly put them both on.  The miraculouses somehow managed to make him look both dorkier and cuter at the same time.  Maybe that was just because he was at his cutest when he was being a dork.

Tikki smiled wide as Kaalki and Pollen appeared in flashes of light.

“Oooh, someone glorious and famous.” Kaalki flew in circles around Chat Noir’s head, nudging a few of his tufts of hair with her hoof.  “You would make a fine holder.  Plagg wouldn’t be up for a trade, would he?”

Chat blushed beneath his mask, making Marinette giggle.

“Uh, sorry, but I’m going to have to say neigh to that.”

Pollen covered her laugh in her hands. Kaalki just harumphed.

“Fine.  Your sense of humor is far too unpolished anyway.”

Glorious and famous.  Kaalki might have been talking about his status as a hero of Paris, but Marinette still made note.

They fell into their usual routine, Chat Noir entertaining the kwamis by answering their questions about the world while Marinette went back to work.  The steady conversation was a better backdrop than any white noise or instrumental music playlists.  She only wished she had time to join them.  Unfortunately, she’d put off this dress for too long.  She only had a week before Juleka wa supposed to model the floral sundress at the school’s ameteur fashion show, and who knew how many akumas would strike between now and then?

Marinette was just getting ready to transfer the fabric from the mannequin to her sewing desk when she heard Pollen ask Chat, “How are things between you and your Princess?”

The pins slipped from her hand.  She barely noticed a couple pricking into her slipper.

Chat had sat up straight since the last time she’d glanced back, and the nervous yet hopeful smile on his face threatened to melt her.

“Uh—well—how are things between us, Marinette?”

Her mouth briefly forgot how to make words.  She knew what Pollen meant; Tikki and her gossiped about Marinette’s love life all the time. Maybe she shouldn’t have let the bee kwami out tonight.

“Well, um.”  Her fingers twitched nervously against the fabric of her pajama pants.  Say something, Marinette! “We’re—we’re best friends, right?”

She wanted to shove her fist in her mouth.  How many times had she died inside over Adrien calling her just a friend?  And no matter who Chat was beneath the mask, she didn't want to obscure her true feelings for him.

But his face still lit up even brighter.  “I’m your best friend?”

“Of course, Kitty.”  She sat on the chaise, scooting close to him.  Probably closer than even a best friend should, but it wasn’t like Chat was shy about personal space.  “I don’t let just anyone climb in my window, you know.”

“Awwww,” Pollen sighed while crossing her hands over her heart.  Tikki gave Marinette a knowing look, which she pretended to ignore.

Then Marinette shoved a cupcake into her mouth before she could say anything more incriminating.

Chat blinked.  She wondered if he was impressed—that cupcake had been about the size of her fist. Guess she could’ve fit her fist in her mouth after all, but at least the cupcake tasted better.

“Thesh ah really goo’.” 

...Well, she said she wouldn’t say anything incriminating.  She’d never ruled out saying anything stupid.

Chat Noir laughed.  “For a Princess, your table manners could use some work.”

She swallowed about half the cupcake.  It was really good, thick and chocolatey with a hint of strawberry.  It probably would’ve tasted better if she’d taken the time to savor it.  But the loss was worth it for the look on his face.

“No table manners allowed.  Only vibes.”

He blinked before bursting out a real laugh, fuller and brighter than the one before.  One that she was sounded strikingly familiar—especially with the backdrop of rain hitting the window behind them.

That truth cracked like a flash of lightning.

“You’ve been hanging out with Nino too much.”  He wiped a claw under his eye, flicking away a few drops of water.

It was him. It had to be him. She’d recognize that laugh anywhere.

“Princess, what’s a ‘vibe’?”  Pollen asked.

“I believe it’s like a, like a feeling,” Kaalki answered over the sound of Chat’s cackle.  “Perhaps there’s a kwami of vibes?  Or would that fall under Duusu’s domain?”

Marinette was too stunned from the whiplash of Adrien’s laugh and Pollen’s question to actually answer.

“Sort of,” Tikki interjected instead.  “Marinette and her friends sometimes talk about vibes like they’re feelings, but they also use ‘vibing’ as an action.  I’m still not really sure what that means though.  Maybe we should Google it?”

When she sat on Marinette’s computer keyboard, the desktop collage of Adrien’s photos flashed on the screen.  Marinette almost lunged for her kwami in horror, but Chat was still laughing too hard to notice.

“Princess—what’s a—what’s a vibe?”  He got out between tears.

Then he actually doubled over far enough that he toppled off the chaise—which made Marinette laugh so hard she choked on her remaining cupcake. 

Adrien was dressed in a catsuit, literally rolling on the floor laughing.  That was more hilarious than even the kwamis trying to understand teenage slang.

“Marinette?  Are you okay?”  Tikki hovered up to her face, her blue eyes filling Marinette’s vision.

She giggled again, coughing out crumbs stuck in the back of her throat.

“I’m—I’m straight up vibing!”  

With that, she too rolled off the chaise and fell on top of Chat.  He yelped before giggling again, wrapping his arms around her.

“Spare vibes, Princess?  Spare vibes for a poor vibeless kitty?”

“Ack!”  She flailed as he tickled her sides.  “Nooo, stop!  You’re stealing all the vibes!”  

“Were vibes in the cupcakes?”  Pollen whispered to Kaalki, prompting another giggling fit from both Marinette and Chat Noir.

“Maybe it’s a secret,” Kaalki replied.  “Like a code.  For when the two of them want to do… whatever this is.”  She waved a hoof towards where they were tangled together.

It was only then that Marinette realized what this would look like.  And the fact that the floor wasn’t that thick, and her parents might hear something any minute.

Not to mention the fact that Adrien was tickling her.

“I, um, need some air!”  She burst, scrambling off from his chest.

“Huh?  Wait, Marinette!” 

He reached out a hand, but she’d already bolted up her ladder and shoved open her skylight.

Which, of course, let rain dump right into her bed.  Oops.

“What was in those cupcakes?”  She mumbled, climbing onto her balcony shutting the skylight behind her.  

She pressed her palms to her cheeks, trying to cool the heat there.  The rain wasn’t doing a quick enough job of it, even though the spring shower chilled the rest of her to the bone.  Had she flushed her last brain cell down the toilet?  What was she thinking? 

Of course, she was stupid with Chat Noir all the time.  They’d challenged each other to handstand contests, dared each other to eat spicy peppers, even one-upped each other’s Hawkmoth impersonations.  Chat might be Adrien, but that meant Adrien was still Chat. Knowing his identity didn’t change the fact that he was her ridiculous partner.

“Marinette?”  A blond head poked out of the skylight.  The glasses were askew on his nose; the golden hair comb had almost fallen out. “If you want me to leave, I can.  You don’t need to stay out here and get soaked.”

It was a bit late for that.  Even though she had ducked under the awning, the rain was blowing practically sideways.  She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.  Why had she worn her pajama tank?  Not that it mattered; Adrien had seen her in it before.  She could hardly embarrass herself more than she already had.

“N-no, of course not!  I just thought, we were being kind of loud, and it’s late, and since you didn’t come in through the front door…”

Chat winced as he climbed out onto the balcony to stand beside her.  Just a few seconds out in the rain, and his hair was already plastered to his forehead in a wet mop.  The glasses were too splattered to see through; he removed them and the bee miraculous with his free hand and put them in his pocket.

As for his other hand...

“Well, at least use this.  It might work a little better than your awning.”

...He popped open the umbrella.  Black and slick with rain, it brought her back to a moment two years ago.  Different green eyes, but the same soft gaze.  

“Of course you’d grab that one.”  She couldn’t help smiling.  It was the only umbrella she owned, and it had been sitting by her desk, but it still felt ironic.  

She reached for the umbrella, but Chat pulled it back at the last moment.

“Wait, it’s broken, isn’t it?”  He squinted up at its underside—

Just in time for it to snap shut on his head.

A laugh burst from her like a crack of thunder.  “Come on, Ad—Kitty.  It’s drier over here.” 

He disentangled himself from the umbrella and followed her to the corner of the balcony, where the rain hadn’t quite snuck under the awning.  

“Why do you have this old thing anyway?  Looks like a piece of junk.”  He twirled the now-closed umbrella like his baton, but fumbled it under her folding chair, where it promptly exploded open.  Chat scowled.  “Oh, I see how it is.  When I want you to open, you only know how to stay shut.  But when you’re out on your own you’re ready to party.”

The umbrella rolled slightly as it began to fill with rainwater.  Marinette laughed as Chat continued to glare at it.

“Be nice to that umbrella.  Someone very special gave it to me.”  She stretched out her legs, letting her heels dangle in the puddles in the brick.  Her fairy lights reflected in the water, casting the two of them in an ethereal glow.

“Oh, really?  Should I be jealous?”  He playfully wrapped an arm around her back.  Every place he touched burned, even though she knew the gesture was just part of his jealous act.

She hummed as she leaned her head on his shoulder.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“...Oh.”  She felt him deflate, though he infused his voice with fake confidence.  “Well, good.  I’m a pretty territorial cat, you know.”

Gently, she tugged on the bell at his neck until he met her eyes.

“You don’t need to be jealous,” she clarified, “because I know he’s you.”

Chat Noir’s—Adrien’s—eyes widened.  But then his gaze softened, and he shook his head with a smile.

“I should’ve known you’d figure me out.  You’ve already done it once in your sleep.”

She blinked.  “I did?  And—and I’m right?”

She’d been sure, but it was still another thing to hear him admit it.

And it was yet another thing to hear “claws in.” To see green lightning crackle over over him, unmasking Adrien’s tender face.

The electricity had barely faded before she flung her arms around him.

“Woah!”  He laughed before hugging her back just as tightly.  “You know, I think I should be jealous.  You never hugged Chat Noir like this.”

“That’s not true.  I definitely hugged you tighter after we fought the Scrambler last week.”

“Huh.  I guess it just doesn’t have the same effect when I’m covered in egg whites.  Or maybe it’s because the suit isn’t in the way now.”

She was all too aware of that.  His bare hands were warm on her back, even through her pajama shirt.  Her face was tucked in the crook of his neck, where she could drink in his scent unobscured by the leather suit.

“Sniffing me again?”  He wiggled his eyebrows.

She flushed at being caught.  Adrien her friend from school might not have called her out for it, but Adrien her partner of two years would.  Well, two could play at that game.

“Oh, like you haven’t sniffed me before.  Besides, I can’t help it that you smell radiant, carefree, and dreamy.”

He looked mortified.  “That commercial was over a year ago!  Even Wayhem forgot about that!”

“Wayhem probably didn’t watch it two hundred and fifty-five times.”

“...I can’t tell which one of us should be more embarrassed about that.”

“Probably me,” she admitted.  “What was your point again?”

“Either we both get sniffing rights, or neither of us does.  That’s fair.”

She laughed, nuzzling deeper into his neck.  “Fine.  But I probably just smell wet.”

He buried his nose in her hair and breathed in, tickling the part of her hair.  “Don’t worry.  You smell perfect.”

Maybe it should’ve been an awkward compliment, but he still found herself giddy over it.

“Thank you.  You smell like cheese.”

“Hey!”  He pouted.  “What happened to ‘radiant, carefree, and dreamy’?”

“She gave you a compliment, kid. What’s more radiant than cheese?”  Plagg asked.

Marinette nearly screamed.  She should’ve realized he was there, but he’d blended into the shadows in the wake of Adrien’s detransformation.

“Plagg!”  Adrien hissed.  “Go inside with Tikki.  We’re having a moment.”

“Yeah, whatever.”  Plagg dismissively waved a paw.  “You got any cheese in there for me, Pigtails?”

“Uh—Tikki can get you some cheese-filled pastries from downstairs.  Don’t let my parents see you.”

“They’ll never know I was there.  Unless they notice a plate of those delicious treats is gone.” The kwami grinned and dove through the floor.  

Well, that was about all she could expect.  Hopefully Tikki could keep him under control.  If not, Marinette might have to fake a rat infestation.

“Sorry about him.” Adrien sighed.  “He’s always like that.”

“Could’ve been worse.  Imagine if you were stuck with Xuppu or Roarr as your kwami.”

He laughed.  “Pretty sure my father would have grounded me for life if he saw the mess.  Or he would’ve found out my identity.  Probably both.”

Chat had been there the one day Marinette decided to let the monkey and tiger kwamis outside of the miracle box.  She’d actually had to transform and use her Lucky Charm just to undo the damage.  

“Speaking of which… I knew it was only a matter of time, but how did you learn my identity?”  He asked.  “If I need to be more careful…”

She shook her head.  “It’s not that.  I… I don’t know if I can even explain it.  At first I thought it was just wishful thinking.  Ever since we spent the night at Mr. Ramier’s apartment, I…”

She blushed and bit her lip.  Getting caught sniffing him might have been embarrassing, but admitting this somehow felt more personal.

“What?” He asked.  “Is it because I smelled the same as Chat and myself?”

“Huh?  No—well, sort of?  Maybe subconsciously.”

“Oh.  That’s what you said while you were sleeptalking.”  He shrugged.

“I guess that makes sense, since… well, I’ve been dreaming about you.  Both of you.”  

She took a deep breath.  He was still waiting patiently, his hand softly stroking her back.  If he didn’t think she was crazy yet, she guessed this wouldn’t change his mind.

“You were always the same person in my dreams.  You’d switch back and forth between Adrien and Chat Noir.  “Chat” would sit in front of me at school, or “Adrien” would help me bring down a scary akuma. Either way, it was always you.

“And then I couldn’t help looking for similarities when I was awake.  I—I started writing down all the evidence I found.  The time “Chat” almost beat me at Ultimate Mecha Strike was when I started to actually believe it.  But what finally convinced for sure me was your laugh.”

She laced her fingers together in her lap to keep from fidgeting.  All of it sounded weirder when she said it out loud.  Almost like she’d been stalking him, sticking all of their casual interactions under a microscope.

“Wow,” he breathed, leaning back against the wall.  “I’m flattered that you went through all that effort, but I don’t get it.  The only reason I didn’t reveal myself sooner was because I was afraid it would put more stress on you, and you were already dealing with so much.  Why didn’t you just ask me who I was?”

She stared into his eyes, watching the pastel lights reflect in them.  He still didn’t know.  All these secrets shared, all these weights lifted, and she still hadn’t revealed the one secret she’d wanted to confess all along.

“Because…” she licked her lips, “because I didn’t want to be wrong.  If you weren’t Adrien—I didn’t want to project my old crush onto you.  You deserve better than that.  Though I guess it doesn’t matter now, since I wasn’t projecting after all, it is you and so I should. Just be able to say this.”

He blinked at her, but then his lips began to part in a slow smile.

“Are you saying…?”

“I’m saying I’m in love with you,” she blurted before she could lose her nerve again.  “First Adrien you, then Chat Noir you, then just, well, you.  So—so jot that down.”

A startled laugh escaped him before he squeezed her tight again.

“Consider it jotted.”  He kissed the top of her head, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  As if she wasn’t going to dissolve at the faintest sign of lip-on-hair contact.  “And in case it wasn’t obvious, I’m in love with all of you too.  So you can jot that down.”

It shouldn’t have undone her.  Chat Noir had confessed his love to her countless times.  Granted, all of those times had been before their battle with Miracle Queen, after which he’d obviously tried to move on.

But he still loved her.  She wasn’t too late.  

Maybe that relief was what pushed her to grab the collar of his shirt in both hands and press her mouth to his.

Her brain screamed, but her lips slowly figured out what to do, particularly when Adrien got over his shock and kissed her back.

Adrien. Holding her in his arms. Kissing her back.

She wasn’t sure if the sound she heard was the rain or the roaring in her ears or just her internal screaming. But it didn’t matter. For the first time, they were really, finally together, no secrets or fears between them. That truth was just as sweet as the kiss.

He finally pulled back, the front of his shirt damp where he’d been pressed against her. From the wide grin on his face, he didn’t mind.

“Will I get that kind of kiss every time I tell you I love you?”

“I don’t know.”  She tapped her lips. “It might be worth finding out.”

“I love you, my La—”

She cut him off with her mouth on his.

All that time waiting, every failed attempt at confessing her feelings, slipped away like the rain off the slick balcony railing.

When the sky finally cleared, she woke to them tangled together, slumped against that same railing.  She had a crick in her neck, and she’d probably end up with a cold from sleeping in her wet clothes.  But it still felt worth it to look up into Adrien’s blissful face.  Somehow she’d woken up before him—probably because her clothes had been more uncomfortable, since his were dry where his suit had covered them.

“Are you going to give me any juicy secrets in your sleep?”  She asked before kissing the side of his jaw.

His only response was to hum and hug her.

“I guess that’s a no.”  She chuckled.  “No fair.  I shouldn’t be the only one embarrassing myself in this relationship.”

Relationship.  She could’ve exploded into confetti just thinking about it.

“Mmm… love you… m’lady.”

Her breath caught at his slurred voice.

“...Well I guess I can’t complain about that.”

She rested her head back on his chest, and let the dripping remnants of rain from the gutters lull her back to sleep.

[workofthediesel]

The Long Way Home - Chpt 1

Read also on AO3!

(Chpt 2) (Chpt 3)

Summary: CB's plan was simple: escape. Run away and leave the pain and shame and humiliation of the crash in the championship behind him. It was supposed to be easy. No one was supposed to care.

It wasn't supposed to end up like this.

Word Count: 11,971

The setting of the sun had plunged CB’s house into darkness, much to his relief. The crash had left his head aching, and even the smallest shred of light had felt like it was trying to stab clean through his skull. But now, in the dead of night with the curtains drawn against the rest of the world, he could function just enough to put his plan into action.

The first order of business would be repairs. He’d been in enough crashes that he was decently experienced in patching himself up. Although, he thought, rooting skeptically through his first aid kit, none of those previous times had been anywhere near this bad. Cuts and bruises he could handle, and he’d even dealt with the occasional snapped axle or broken wheel, but he wasn’t even sure where to start with his current state.

The second thing he needed was somewhere to go. A new yard, far enough away where they wouldn’t know what had happened. It only needed to be a temporary spot, someplace for him to buy a little time. The story of the championship would catch up to him eventually, but he’d be long gone by then, moved on once again.

He’d need a new identity at some point. He couldn’t keep running forever, and the only way he knew to leave his past behind him was to become someone completely new. New name, new look, new personality if he could manage it. It would take quite a bit of acting, but it would be worth it if it meant CB the Red Caboose completely disappeared.

He was getting ahead of himself. For now, he just needed to get himself back in working order, or as near to as he could. He wanted to be out of here before the morning, which meant he had to work fast.

The cheap painkillers he had in his cabinet did almost nothing for him. Not that he expected anything different. They were store-brand, over-the-counter, and wasn’t it just his luck that he wouldn’t have anything good when he needed it? Still, he knocked back twice the recommended amount in the hopes that it would at least take the edge off and got to work.

The meager contents of his first aid kit were seeming more and more pitiful by the second. A few rolls of bandages, a handful of butterfly strips, a few small boards—enough to possibly fashion a makeshift splint or two—some saline solution, and an ice pack. It was nowhere near enough for what he needed to do. CB frowned, tipping the kit out onto the counter on the off chance that there was something buried in there that he had missed. Apart from a few loose strips of gauze, there was nothing else. CB fought back a sigh. There was nothing else to do; he’d just have to work with what he had.

It was a long and painful process, forcing himself back together all on his own. In the end, he ran out of supplies before he got himself completely patched up. Despite his attempts to be conservative with his supplies, there were still a number of painful dents, scrapes, and gashes that he wasn’t able to take care of. Not to mention the deep aches in his chest and back that had him worried about some sort of internal damage. Nothing to be done about those, he figured, tossing the empty first aid box carelessly back onto the counter. He was a far-cry from being okay, but he’d just have to manage.

He rolled back into his room, making a beeline for his closet. He threw open the door, squinting into the shadows to try to find what he was looking for. And there, all but forgotten in the corner, it was: his old bag. It wasn’t big, but he was planning on travelling light anyway.

He grabbed a handful of his spare bandanas, shoving them to the bottom of the bag. He didn’t necessarily need them, but it would be a while before he could get himself a new look and he refused to look unkempt until then. He saved one of the bandanas to tie around a long scratch on his arm. It wasn’t as good as a bandage, but he figured it would do about the same job. Plus, he realized with a wry smile, they blended in with his body perfectly. He could easily use them to cover the bandages so they wouldn’t be as noticeable. It’d be a useful trick if he ended up somewhere he needed to keep a particularly low profile.

His next stop was the kitchen. He’d be on the road for at least a few days, and he’d need something to eat while he was. He threw a few water bottles and as much dry food as he could carry into the bag, not paying much attention to what, in particular, he was grabbing. As long as it was edible, it was good enough for him.

There was one last thing he needed, and that was in his office. Radios were a hobby for him as much as they were a job. Even in his downtime, he enjoyed building and tweaking his radio systems, or even just hopping on the air and seeing who else was in range. His home system wasn’t quite as good as his official setup in the radio control room, but it was entirely his and he was proud of it.

He hadn’t come in here for any equipment. He was planning on completely reinventing himself wherever he ended up, so he wouldn’t take another job working radios. What he was looking for was his collection of maps.

Pinned up all over the walls, with a few extras and duplicates tucked away in drawers, were maps of all the different rail lines. Most of them were local, focusing on the tracks that led to and from their yard in particular, but there were a few maps of tracks across the country. He rooted through the drawers—taking anything off the wall would have been too obvious—grabbing any map that seemed useful. He wasn’t sure where he was heading yet, but that didn’t mean he wanted to end up lost in the middle of nowhere, especially if he ended up states away like he was planning.

That was everything. He poked his head back into his room and cast one final glance over it. There were plenty of things still scattered about that he wanted to take with him: a picture of him and Dinah, the scrapbook Poppa had made him for his last birthday, the chain Greaseball had given him after the diesel had gotten a new one. So many little things, so many important memories. CB swallowed thickly and closed the door behind him. Anything he took was just evidence of who he used to be. It all had to stay.

The sky was just beginning to lighten when CB crept out of his house. The sun wouldn’t properly rise for at least half an hour yet, but he was still pushing it more than he would have liked.

He took care to move quietly through the yard, sticking to the shadows as much as he could. He caught sight of Wrench’s work room as he snuck to the yard’s exit, and it made him pause. For a moment, he considered breaking in. He knew Wrench had brought tons of medical supplies with her when she came and, with any luck, there still might be some left. Of course, luck hadn’t been on his side lately, but it couldn’t hurt to at least check.

The yard was still. It was too early for anyone else to be awake. CB glanced over his shoulder—though he wasn’t quite sure what he was checking for—before sneaking over to the work room door.

The building itself was an old feature, dating back to when the yard was much busier than it was now. The yard had been home to at least a dozen engines then, and probably about a hundred coaches and freight cars. Their track had been an important one, too, and trains from other yards would always be stopping by, getting a quick refuel or taking a well-earned break, sometimes even staying the night so they could finish their route in the morning. CB had only the vaguest of memories of those days. They were happier times, he thought; he’d been happier, at least. People were nice to him, he’d felt like he belonged, and the future was worth looking forward to.

He couldn’t recall when or why things changed.  Slowly, other trains had just stopped coming. Their track saw less and less use, and the visitors had petered out until suddenly it had been a month and not one new train had passed through the gate. Then, some of the yard’s permanent members disappeared, either transferred to newer, more important yards or decommissioned. Their numbers dropped steadily until there was just a handful of them left, seemingly forgotten as the rest of the world moved on to bigger and better things. A lot of the yard had fallen into disrepair after that. After all, there was no point in trying to keep it up; no one was using it.

The building Wrench had set her work room up in had at one point been the yard’s main repair station. In those days, the yard had employed their own repair truck. It had made sense then—with the number of trains working there or even just passing through, they needed to have someone on hand in case anyone got hurt. As the number of residents in the yard dwindled, however, that need had all but disappeared and their old repair truck had moved on to a busier yard. Now, if someone got hurt, they’d go to Poppa. The old repair building hadn’t been touched in years.

Outside the door, CB paused. It was still ridiculously early in the morning, so he didn’t anticipate anyone else being up, but he listened carefully just in case. He couldn’t let himself get caught now.

Silence. Silence all around him and, more importantly, silence inside the building. CB held his breath, reaching out for the door handle. To his dismay, it was locked.

CB bit his lip. He knew how to pick lock and he knew he could easily open this one. But… He dropped his hand with a sigh. It would look suspicious. He was trying to leave with as little fuss as possible. If he was lucky and didn’t leave any suspicious traces, it would be a few days before anyone noticed that he wasn’t just holed up in his house. That would buy him just enough time to get his plans in order, and that was all he needed. But if someone noticed that Wrench’s work room had gotten broken into, and if they noticed that some of her supplies had gone missing, it wouldn’t take them too long to figure out he was the one responsible. Someone would be out looking for him before the morning was over, even if it was only Wrench coming to get her supplies back.

He cast one last longing glance at the door. He really would have liked to get those supplies, but deep down he knew it wasn’t worth it. There were other yards he’d be stopping at before he found a new place to settle down; at least one of them would have supplies he could use.

CB took a deep breath, fighting to ignore the deep ache in his ribs that spiked into a sharp pain at the action. He tried to collect himself as much as possible. It would have taken him hours to make it to the nearest yard on a good day, and this was far from being a good day. It was going to be an unfortunately long and uncomfortable journey.

Well, CB thought, forcing himself to push out of the yard even as his heart screamed to stay. Better get started, then.

***

“What are you doing staring at his door? Again?”

Dustin jumped, swinging around to find Rocky 3 watching him as intently as he’d been watching CB’s door.

He bit his lip, turning back around to avoid Rocky 3’s eyes. No one had seen CB since the championship and the truth was, he was worried. As silly as it felt to say, he didn’t want to admit that. Especially not to one of the Rockies. No one else seemed bothered by CB’s absence, and he got the feeling that they thought he shouldn’t be bothered by it, either. The few times he had tried to bring it up, his concerns had been rather rudely dismissed. He didn’t think they were trying to be mean, but the Rockies had a tendency to be a bit rough with their words and their actions. Tough love, Flat-Top called it. The love Dustin liked just fine, but he had a few issues with the tough part.

He fidgeted in place for another moment, but Rocky 3 was still looking at him, waiting for an answer. “It’s just… He still hasn’t come out.”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“And it’s been days,” he went on, wringing his hands nervously.

He could feel Rocky 3’s eyes still on him. “So?” Despite Dustin’s fears, there was no judgement in his voice, just a subtle prompt for Dustin to say what was actually on his mind.

Still, it took Dustin a moment to build up the courage to say, “So, what if something’s wrong?”

Rocky 3 didn’t seem particularly concerned. “What would be wrong?” he asked, as if none of the past week had happened; as if the championship hadn’t taken place; as if nothing in the yard had changed at all.

Dustin frowned. A week ago, Rocky 3 would have been worried about CB, too. He may have hidden it under some gentle ribbing or teasing, but the concern would have been there. He didn’t know how he could dismiss CB so completely now. “He got hurt in the crash too, didn’t he?”

Rocky 3 thought about it for a second. “I guess he did. He’ll be alright, though.”

“But how can you be sure? What if it’s bad? I mean, you saw how Greaseball and Electra were.”

“Yeah, but Wrench fixed them up just fine,” Rocky 3 said, like he wasn’t worried about it at all.

As much as Dustin wanted to be reassured by Rocky 3’s confidence, he couldn’t be. “But CB’s a lot smaller than them, and he’s nowhere near as strong. He had to have gotten hurt worse than they did. He’s got to need help. And if he hasn’t been out at all in days…”

“Poppa’s already been over to help,” Rocky 3 broke in. “CB didn’t let him in.”

“What if he couldn’t let him in?” Anxiety was flooding into Dustin’s thoughts, and his stomach twisted uncomfortably with all the terrible scenarios he could see in his mind. “What if he’s stuck in bed, too hurt to move? And he’s all alone, with no one to take care of him, and he’s just getting worse, and—”

“Alright, stop,” Rocky 3 cut him off. “This is really bothering you?” At Dustin’s nod of confirmation, he sighed. “I’m sure Poppa’s got a spare key to his house. If you’re really so worried, you can go in and check on him. Just don’t come crying to me when he yells at you for it.”

Even just having that small scrap of a plan made Dustin feel ten times better. “Really?”

“Is that what it’s going to take for you to feel better?”

Dustin nodded again.

“Then sure, whatever. But I’m telling you: he’s not going to be happy about this.”

In that moment, all Dustin could think was that CB’s anger would be nothing compared to the relief of just knowing that he was okay. “Oh, thank you, Rocky!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Rocky 3 said, brushing off Dustin’s gratitude with a wave of his hand. “Wait here.”

Without another word, Rocky 3 turned on his heel, rolling off towards Poppa’s house. Dustin, on the other hand, did as he was told and remained standing where he was. He kept watching CB’s door, just in case he came out before Rocky 3 got back. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he didn’t, but that didn’t have Dustin quite as worried as it had in the past few days. After all, in just a few minutes, he would be able to go in and see for himself how CB was doing.

It wasn’t long before Rocky 3 came back. “Here you go,” he said, holding up the key for Dustin to see before handing it over to him. “One key, as promised.”

The first thing Dustin felt as he took the key was a rush of gratitude and relief, but after a second of thinking about it, he paused. “Should we really be doing this?” It felt suspiciously like breaking and entering.

Rocky 3 shrugged. “Do you want to check on him or not?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“Then this—” Rocky 3 gestured to the key in Dustin’s hand, “—is how you check on him. It’s not like you’re getting in any other way.”

Dustin was still hesitant, but he had to admit Rocky 3 had a point. His own reservations didn’t matter; this was what he had to do to make sure CB was okay.

He forced himself into a moment of bravery and shoved the key into the lock. He turned the key before he had the chance to second-guess himself and let the door swing silently open. He was about to take his first step inside when he realized Rocky 3 wasn’t following behind him.

He turned to look over his shoulder, finding Rocky 3 hanging far back. “Aren’t you coming?”

Rocky 3 shook his head. “I already told you: he’s not going to be happy about this, and I’m not trying to get on his bad side. I don’t need anyone crashing me the next time I’m out.”

“CB wouldn’t—” Dustin started, but the words died in his throat when he saw the look Rocky 3 was giving him. He turned away with a pout. Just a few days ago, everyone had loved CB. Now, they were acting like he wasn’t worth their time. Of course, Dustin knew that he had cheated against Rusty in the championship, but that didn’t mean that CB was out to get them. He was still their brother, and he needed their help.

He wasn’t brave enough to comment on it. Instead, he took a deep breath and said, “Alright, I’m going in.”

“Have fun,” Rocky 3 said from behind him as he turned to leave.

That, once more, made Dustin pause. “You’re not going to stay, at least?”

“Why would I need to?”

Dustin frowned. “What if CB needs help?”

“That’s what you’re here for.”

“But what if I need help?”

Rocky 3 gave him a knowing, if slightly exasperated, look. “Dustin, if you want me to stay, just say so.”

Dustin wanted that. Very much so. “Please stay,” he said quietly.

“Alright,” Rocky 3 said, and that was that. He leaned against the front of the house, still refusing to go in, but at least he’d be there in case Dustin needed him.

Knowing that Rocky 3 was there was at least a little reassuring. Dustin took a deep breath and pushed himself into CB’s house.

The place was silent. He supposed he should have expected it, but it was still mildly unsettling. Dustin moved quietly down the hall, unable to shake the feeling that he was intruding.

The front hall emptied out into the CB’s living room. Dustin cast an eye around, hoping to see CB lounging on the couch, but the room was empty. Dustin frowned, trying to convince himself not to get too worried about that. He poked his head into the kitchen, only to find that CB wasn’t there, either.

Dustin’s unease was rising quickly. “Rocky!” he called.

Rocky 3 appeared in the front doorway. “What?”

“I don’t see him,” Dustin said, concern creeping up his throat.

Rocky 3 shot him a look, clearly of the mind that Dustin was being ridiculous about the whole thing. “His house has more than two rooms, Dustin.”

“I know,” Dustin said hesitantly. “But isn’t going through his house without permission kind of wrong?”

“You wanted to come in and check on him, right?”

“Yeah, but…”

“So, go check on him. He’s around here somewhere. Try his room, or his office, or… I don’t know, his bathroom or something,” Rocky 3 said, finally coming inside. “We already let ourselves into his house, looking around a little more isn’t going to make things worse.”

“But—” Dustin started again, only to be cut off.

“Just go and find him,” Rocky 3 said, giving Dustin a light shove to push him further into the house. “Then you can see with your own eyes that he’s perfectly alright and you can stop worrying about this. Okay?”

Half of Dustin was screaming at him to stay back, but the other half was too worried about CB to let him. “Okay,” he said hesitantly, rolling slowly down the hall.

Dustin had been over CB’s a few times before, but he’d never gone farther than the living room. All of this was CB’s private space, and the feeling that he was intruding doubled.

There were a handful of doors at the end of the hall. He felt a bit uncomfortable opening them all, but he knew that he had to if he wanted to find CB.

The first one he tried had been left cracked, and Dustin slowly pushed it open a few more inches. It led into what had to be CB’s home office. There was a radio set up on the desk, not too different from the one he used in the radio control room. The walls were lined with maps, and though on any other day Dustin would have been happy to spend minutes on end studying them all, they weren’t what he came here for. The room was packed with electronics and boxes and general clutter, but CB was nowhere to be seen.

The next door he tried was the bathroom. It was also empty, but there was an empty first aid kit on the counter that made Dustin frown. He knew CB had gotten hurt, but it didn’t feel good to be reminded of that.

There was only one more door to check. It had to be his bedroom. CB had to be there.

“CB?” he called, tentatively knocking on the door. He waited a few moments for an answer, but none came.

Dustin bit his lip. Contrary to Rocky 3’s assurances, the worry that CB needed help was getting stronger by the second. Going into CB’s room uninvited felt like a huge invasion of privacy, but at the same time, he needed to check on him. Hesitantly, he pushed the door open, poking his head into the room. “CB?” he called again. “I’m sorry to barge in like this, especially when I’m sure you’d rather be alone, but no one’s seen you for a few days and—”

Whatever else he was going to say died in his throat as he looked at the room in front of him. It was empty.

Empty? Dustin’s mind was reeling. No, that couldn’t be right. There was something he was missing here. There had to be.

The first thing he checked was the bed. The blankets were rumpled, and the pillows were strewn about carelessly. They could have easily hidden a sleeping form amidst their chaos, especially for someone as slight as CB.

But there was no one there. No fingers poked out from under the blanket; not a single tuft of hair could be seen. Dustin peeled back the comforter, tossing it off the bed like CB could have been hidden under a single corner, but it was of no use.

Dustin’s thoughts went racing, trying to think of something, anything, just a single explanation that would mean that CB was still here. Maybe he had heard them coming, and now he was hiding? Earlier, the thought that CB would actually hide from his friends when they were only trying to help would have stung, but now Dustin was actually hoping that was the case. He dropped to his knees, peering under the bed, silently begging for CB to be there.

But there was nothing.

Maybe his closet? Dustin rushed over and threw open the door, shoving CB’s things carelessly aside to check every nook and cranny of the space. But of course, it was pointless. CB wasn’t there.

Panic clawed its way up his spine, leaching through his limbs, turning his fingers shaky and his mind fuzzy. This couldn’t be happening. CB was hurt! He needed help! And now… Now…

Dustin stumbled from the room, pushing himself back down the hall on unsteady legs. His thoughts were spinning too fast for him to hold on to a single one. All he knew was that this was too much for him to handle on his own.

Rocky 3 was waiting in CB’s living room when Dustin burst in, looking incredibly nonchalant, as if the whole scenario truly wasn’t bothering him in the slightest. “Feel better now?” he asked before he got a good look at Dustin’s face. Seeing the panic there, a small frown tugged at the corners of his lips. “What? Isn’t he okay?”

Dustin shook his head, his heart threatening to pound right out of his chest. “He’s gone.”

***

Reaching the nearest yard had taken longer than CB had thought. It might have been a testament to how hurt he was that what should have been a relatively quick and easy journey had left him feeling drained and breathless, despite it taking him at least twice as long as it should have. If anyone came after him, he knew they would catch up to him easily. And this, being the only yard nearby, would be the first place they would look for him.

If he’d been in any better condition, he would have pushed right past it. As it was, he was tired and in pain, and his head was spinning so fast that he wasn’t sure he could follow a track any longer. He needed somewhere to recuperate.

He rolled to the yard’s entrance, leaning heavily against the fence as he tried to catch his breath. He took a moment to adjust his outfit while he was at it, trying to cover as many of his splints and bandages as he could. He was going to stay here for at least a day or two—possibly more, if he felt like risking it—and he wanted to make a good first impression, if only to keep the cars here from asking any uncomfortable questions.

While he was putting himself together, he took the opportunity to really study the yard. Just from where he was standing at the entrance, he could see most if not all of the yard’s space. The buildings were derelict; there were only a handful at most that could be used, and even those weren’t in the best shape. The whole place seemed dusty. It wasn’t at all the type of yard he’d ever want to stay at, but it was small and quiet, and that was what he needed most.

CB took a deep breath, trying to compose himself as much as possible. The pain and exhaustion were wearing him down emotionally as well as physically, but he knew that if he showed up as short-tempered as he felt, he wouldn’t receive the sort of warm welcome he was looking for. Putting on his old happy face was harder than it used to be, but after a moment of trying, he got it just about right.

When his image was as good as it was going to get, CB rolled his shoulders and pushed himself into the yard. It was, by his estimation, about noon, so the yard should have been breaking for lunch about then. He looked around as he rolled through, but the place seemed all but deserted. He wasn’t sure if, considering his circumstances, that’d be a good thing or a bad one.

Eventually, though, he came across the exact target he was looking for. A pair of workers—a steam engine and a bulkhead flatcar—all on their own, chatting quietly as they finished up whatever they were doing. CB wasn’t sure if everyone else had already gone off or if these were the only ones here and the yard really was that small, but at the moment, it didn’t matter much.

CB came to a stop at a low stone wall, leaning on it in a way he hoped looked casual and not like he was using it as a support—which, to be honest, he was. “Excuse me,” he called out, trying his best to sound friendly.

The bulkhead looked up. It was hard to tell from this distance, but CB thought he looked a little confused. The bulkhead turned his head to the side, exchanging a few words with the steamer next to him, before pushing himself up and rolling closer.

“Hey, there,” he said, sounding almost wary.

“Hi,” CB said. It took quite a bit of effort to make his voice sound bright and friendly. “I don’t mean to bother you, but I’m passing through the area right now, and I was wondering if I might be able to stop here for a bit.”

The worker looked shocked, and honestly, CB couldn’t blame him. This yard was even smaller than his own—his old one, that was. If it was a rare and special occasion for them to see anyone new passing through their front entrance, he could only imagine how much less common it would be someplace like here.

The bulkhead looked a little unconvinced, but the steamer who came up behind him seemed to be the one in charge. “Of course, you can,” they told him warmly.

CB forced a grateful smile in return. “Thank you.”

“I’m Crank,” they went on, placing a hand on the bulkhead’s shoulder, “and this is Gear.”

“My name’s Caboose,” CB told them. It wasn’t quite a lie—it was his name, he just never used it—but it was just generic enough to not be easily traceable to him.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Crank said, reaching out a hand for him to shake.

CB desperately wanted to skip the formalities, but he knew he needed to keep up a good appearance. “Likewise,” he said, returning the gesture.

Crank flashed him a friendly smile. “Have you been on the road long?”

“All morning,” CB said, seeing no reason to lie. “Like I said, I was looking for someplace to take a break in. Rest up a bit, you know?”

“Well, we’re just stopping for lunch,” Gear told him.

“Would you like to join us?” Crank was quick to follow up.

Honestly, CB wasn’t hungry. Still, he didn’t want to turn down their offer. He wanted them to like him, and after all, he needed more time with them if he was going to be able to talk them into giving him what he needed. “That’d be great, thanks,” he said, forcing a friendly smile. He slipped out from behind the wall, and for the first time, Crank and Gear got a good look at his current condition.

Gear frowned, looking CB up and down. “Are those bandages?”

CB’s stomach dropped. For a moment, he’d forgotten just how bad all of his injuries looked. He couldn’t let them get suspicious. “Yeah, I, um…” He let out a small, embarrassed chuckled, trying to look sheepish. “I derailed on the way over here.”

“What?!” Crank cried, rushing forward. They took CB’s face in their hands, peeling up his eyelids and looking deep into his eyes. Checking for a concussion, CB figured. “How bad are you hurt?”

“There’s an emergency repair center farther down the track,” Gear said, sounding concerned as well. “It’s not really close, per se, but we can get you there in a few hours if—”

“No, no! It’s not that bad,” he quickly interrupted, waving off Crank’s well-meaning hands. “It’s mostly superficial damage. I’ll be fine. I just need a few more bandages to keep everything closed up.”

Gear shot him a skeptical look. “Are you sure? Because, no offense, but you really don’t look so good.”

“Positive.”

Gear still didn’t look convinced. Neither did Crank, but they, at least, were a little more willing to trust him. “We might have a first aid kit that could be of some use,” they said, but they sounded a bit unsure.

CB couldn’t imagine that any sort of first aid kit they kept here would be particularly well stocked, but it would be better than nothing. “That would be great, if you have one.”

“I’m sure we do,” Gear said. “No promises about what’s in it, though.”

If that was the best they could do, CB would have to take it. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and all that. “Anything you can spare would be wonderful.”

“Alright,” Gear said, drawing the word out slowly and uncertainly. “It’s probably in the office. I’ll go check.”

Crank nodded, watching Gear as he left for a moment before turning back to CB. “What are you doing traveling on your own? Did you get separated from your train?”

Shit. He hadn’t planned a lie for that question. He needed a story, and quick. “No, it’s just me. Got transferred to a new yard,” he said, thinking on his toes. “It’s about halfway across the country, so I didn’t want to put anyone out by asking them to pull me all the way there.”

Gear tilted their head to the side, thinking. “Are they expecting you soon?”

CB shook his head. “Not for a week or so. I was planning on showing up early so I’d have some time to get settled, but I don’t think I actually told anyone that.”

“In that case, why don’t you stay with us for a bit? I’m sure you could use some time to recover.”

CB had to restrain himself from breaking out into a victorious smile. This was exactly the offer he was hoping for, and he didn’t even have to work for it! But he needed to keep up his act. He needed to be humble. “Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Nonsense. We have a guest room over this way,” Crank said, taking his by the arm and leading him through the yard. “I know we just said we’d get lunch, but why don’t you lay down for a while, instead? You look pretty beat. I’ll have Gear bring that first aid kit up to you as soon as we find it.”

CB allowed himself a small smile. “Thanks, I’d really appreciate that.”

The building the guest room was in was tucked away in the corner of the yard. CB was thankful for that, hoping it meant that he’d get a good bit of privacy. He followed Crank over to it and got hit with a wall of stale air when they opened the door. “I know it’s not much, but…”

That was an understatement. The room was small and dusty, and obviously outdated. The wallpaper was yellowing and peeling, the floral design that had been printed on it severely faded. It was incredibly tiny, just barely fitting a twin bed, nightstand, and a small dresser. If CB had been in any better state, he would have been loathe to stay here. All things considered, however, he didn’t have any better options.

“It’s perfect,” CB reassured them, slipping past them and into the room. He dropped down heavily on the bed and the springs squealed in protest. He could tell before laying down that the mattress would be thin and lumpy, the blankets probably smelly and scratchy. But they were all he had, and it was better than nothing.

Mindful of his injuries, he laid back on the bed. It was just as uncomfortable as he had imagined. He didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so he forced a smile onto his face, pulling off his hat so he could rest his head on the pillows.

Crank was watching him carefully as he got settled. “You sure you don’t want me to bring you to that repair center? It’d be no trouble to pull you over.”

“That’s a kind offer, but I’m alright. Really. I just need to rest for a bit.”

“Okay,” they said skeptically. For a moment, CB was worried that they would continue to press him on the matter, but to his relief, they turned to the door instead. “We’ll keep looking for that first aid kit. I’m sure it’s around here somewhere.”

“Thanks,” CB said sleepily, his eyelids drooping as Crank quietly shut the door behind them.

Although the bed was far from comfortable, it was still a relief to be able to lie down. He was tired from his trip over, and his whole body was sore. He let his muscles relax, sinking into the lumpy mattress with a sigh. He was sure he’d feel better after a quick nap, sleep already overtaking him.

In the end, he stayed at Crank and Gear’s yard for four days. Despite his assumptions that the rest would give his injuries some time to heal, he only felt worse and worse. He was tired all the time, and a deep chill had settled in his bones. His head felt heavy and every time it was a struggle to push himself out of bed. His body had been aching since before he left his old yard but now the pain had escalated. It had also been joined by a constant feeling of nausea that left him unable to eat so much as a bite of anything. He tried his best to hide his worsening condition from Crank and Gear, but it didn’t work. They were clearly getting worried.

As desperately as CB wanted to stay, to have more time to recover in someplace safe and warm before he had to start spending nights on deserted tracks, he knew he had to leave. Crank and Gear had started talking behind his back about bringing him to a repair center whether he liked it or not, and he was certain that someone from his old yard had gotten suspicious of his absence by now. Whether or not they cared enough to come after him was a whole different question, but he didn’t want to risk it.

He was unsteady on his feet when he slipped out of the yard’s back entrance that morning. Much like how he had left his old yard, he made his second exit in the early hours of the day before anyone else was awake. He didn’t want anyone to see where he was going, and he didn’t want anyone coming after him.

He felt awful. Every minute he spent moving away, he wanted more and more to go back. He wanted to tuck himself back into bed, to have Crank and Gear fuss over him in the way that a couple of well-meaning strangers might. He’d even let them bring him to a repair center if they wanted.

A part of him he refused to even listen to wanted to go home.

But no. There was nothing left for him at his old yard.  He’d made a plan to move on and he was going to stick to it. There was no way he was going to let himself get caught now.

***

They hadn’t been on the tracks too long—a couple hours at most—before Dustin called for them to stop. They’d come across the entrance to a small yard, and Dustin wanted to check it out. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but something in him was certain that this place would help them find CB.

Rocky 3 didn’t have the same conviction. “And what makes you so sure he went here?” he asked, peering skeptically past the gate.

“It’s the closest yard,” Dustin told him. “Where else would he go?”

“It seems to me like he’s looking to run away,” Rocky 3 said. That notion made Dustin wince—as true as it seemed, he couldn’t bear the thought of CB being so unhappy at the yard that he wanted to leave forever, especially without telling anyone. Rocky 3, however, was unbothered by that thought, and continued on, “and if he’s running away, he wouldn’t move into the first yard he came across. He’d know how easily he’d be found here.”

“But if he needed help…”

“No one said he needed help,” Rocky 3 said. “I’m telling you, he fixed himself up just fine on his own. All this chasing after him is useless. He’s had a six-day head start, and there would’ve been no reason for him to stop in a place like this.”

Dustin wanted to be as confident as Rocky 3 was that CB was okay. As it was, the twisty feeling in Dustin’s stomach hadn’t gone away yet, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that CB needed his help. “Well, it won’t hurt to just check.”

There was a protest on Rocky 3’s lips, but Dustin was rolling into the yard before he could voice it. Truthfully, he could understand Rocky 3’s skepticism: the yard was run-down and tiny, and it didn’t look like the type of place CB would like to stop. But if he’d come this way, the cars who lived here might have some information on him. Besides, like he said, it wouldn’t hurt to at least check.

The yard was small, and it wasn’t long before they came across someone who might be able to answer their questions. “Excuse me,” Dustin called, waving down the steamer. “We’re looking for a friend of ours. He left our yard a few days ago and—”

The steamer looked up from their work, eyes quickly landing on Dustin and Flat-Top. They seemed confused for a moment before they broke out into a bright smile. “Oh, hello! Of course, come in, come in,” the steamer said, ignoring Dustin’s implied question and ushering them further into the yard.

“Oh, thank you, but—” he tried again, but the steamer wasn’t listening.

“Hey, Gear! More visitors!” they called to someone further into the yard.

“Seriously?” came the incredulous reply. “Crank, you better not be lying, or I swear…”

“Why would I be lying?”

“I don’t know! I can’t read your mind. But it sounds fake.”

“Just get over here.” The steamer—Crank—said with no small amount of humor. They were chuckling lightly when they turned back to Dustin and Rocky. “You’ll have to excuse the excitement. We’re not used to getting so much attention.”

That seemed like a strange statement, and Dustin couldn’t quite figure it out—nor could he figure out how it related to what he’d asked them about CB, which was the main thing on his mind. “What do you mean?”

“It’s just unusual, that’s all.” Crank shrugged.

“Cars don’t usually stop here,” one of the workers—Gear, Dustin assumed—said, coming closer. “We’re too small, too out of the way, you know?”

“You don’t say,” Rocky 3 mumbled under his breath. Dustin elbowed him sharply in the side.

“But,” Gear went on, either oblivious to or politely ignoring their interaction, “we actually had someone staying with us recently.”

“And now here you two are,” Crank added, “not even a week later.” They chuckled softly. “I think we’re getting popular.”

Dustin hardly paid attention to what Crank had said. Gear’s mention of someone else stopping here had captured his whole focus. It was exactly the news he had been hoping to hear. “This other car that was here, what did they look like?”

“He was a small guy. Bright red, kind of boxy. Said his name was Caboose,” Gear said.

“That’s CB!” Dustin exclaimed, excitement setting in. His mind was already flooded with images of bringing CB home and the relief of having the whole yard safe and sound once more. “That’s our friend, the one we’re looking for. Is he still here?”

“No, he left a few days ago.”

And just like that, Dustin’s spirit sank. “Oh.” He supposed he shouldn’t have expected it to be that easy.  “Do you have any idea where he went?”

“Not really,” Gear said with a shrug. “He left in the middle of the night. No one was up to see which way he went.”

“He’s probably heading over to his new yard,” Crank added. “Wherever that is.”

“New yard?” Dustin echoed.

“He said he’d been transferred to a yard halfway across the country,” they explained. “He didn’t give any names, though.”

“What? CB didn’t get transferred,” Rocky 3 said, sounding every bit as confused as Dustin was.

“Well, that’s what he told us.”

Dustin frowned. It didn’t make sense. Rocky 3 was right: CB hadn’t been transferred. Poppa would have at least mentioned it if he had, especially with how worried Dustin had been these past few days. But that just raised a whole slew of new questions: Why had CB left? And where was he going? Why had he lied to Gear and Crank? The part about him moving to a yard halfway across the country was just a part of the lie, right?

Unfortunately, Crank and Gear wouldn’t have the answers to any of those questions. Instead, Dustin asked something they would know. “How long ago did you say he left?” If it hadn’t been long, he and Rocky 3 might still be able to find him.

“A couple of days,” Gear said. “Two, maybe.”

Dustin sighed, his shoulders slumping. “In that case, we’ve got no hope of catching up to him.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Gear said. There was something in his voice that Dustin didn’t like at all. “I can’t imagine he’s been moving very fast.”

Dustin’s stomach swooped uncomfortably at those words. “What do you mean?” he asked, hoping he was misunderstanding something.

Gear and Crank were quiet for a moment. They exchanged an uneasy look before Gear went on, “He wasn’t looking so good when he showed up here, and he looked even worse before he left.”

“You mean he was hurt?” Dustin asked, the concern he’d been feeling for the past few days nearly doubling. Gear and Crank nodded, and his worry tripled. His every fear was being confirmed. Alongside the worry, a small spike of anger rose as well. “Why didn’t you take care of him? Why didn’t someone go after him?”

“We tried,” Crank said. “We fixed him up as best we could when he got here, but… well, we don’t exactly have the best supplies on hand. We wanted to take him to a repair center, but he wouldn’t let us. We were going to take him in, anyway—”

“Drag him in by the ear if we had to,” Gear broke in.

“But he left before we could.”

“Sounds like CB,” Rocky 3 mumbled.

As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Dustin had to agree. If CB’s flight from their own yard was anything to go by, he didn’t exactly seem willing to accept help, even if he needed it. That realization was worrying enough on its own, but coupled with the knowledge that CB was alone and hurt, maybe even stranded in the middle of nowhere, it made Dustin’s stomach twist into so many knots that he was starting to feel a little nauseous.

“We have to find him,” Dustin said, turning to Rocky 3.

“Dustin—” he started.

Dustin ignored him, turning back to Crank and Gear. “You really have no idea which way he went?”

Crank at least had the decency to sound apologetic when they said, “I don’t. But him leaving in the middle of the night—especially without saying anything—seems a little…”

“Sneaky,” Gear finished for them. “And if someone was sneaking, they’d probably go out the back.”

Even if it was just speculation, it was a place to start. “Which direction would that be?” Dustin asked.

“Over there,” Gear said, gesturing behind himself. “No one really uses that track anymore, so it’s probably in a pretty sorry state.”

“We’ll manage,” Dustin said with a confidence he didn’t quite feel. “Thank you for your help.”

He hadn’t taken more than a few steps towards the back of the yard when Gear stopped him with a hand on his arm and a meaningful look. There was a weighty second of silence before he said, “I hope you find your friend.”

Dustin swallowed thickly, the stone of fear in his stomach sinking even lower. “Me, too.”

He stayed there for a moment, just in case Gear had anything else to say, but all the bulkhead did was take his hand back, letting Dustin go. Dustin nodded once, then set off for the back of the yard.

“Are we seriously going after him?” Rocky 3 asked, following Dustin completely willingly.

“Rocky, you heard what they said. CB’s hurt!”

Rocky 3 groaned but he didn’t object any further. He followed Dustin to the back entrance of the yard, looking skeptically at the track. Gear’s warning rang true: the track had obviously been neglected for quite some time. The sleepers were weather worn to an alarming degree, looking like they could disintegrate at any moment. The rails wobbled concerningly under his wheels, no doubt because of the loose—and some places even missing—fasteners. Under normal circumstances, Dustin would have avoided using a track like this, but if this was the way to CB, this was the way he’d go.

“Come on, Rocky,” Dustin said, already moving down the track. “CB would do the same for us.”

Rocky 3 snorted. “I doubt it,” he said, but he joined Dustin on the track anyway.

Dustin wanted to reprimand him, to tell him to have a little faith in CB and to stop being so hurtfully negative. But when it came down to it, he just didn’t have it in him. He swallowed down all the words he couldn’t say and pushed forward. They could work out all their problems when they found CB.

***

Moving was difficult.

Every limb felt like it was weighted down with lead. His feet were all but impossible to pick up, and anytime he lifted an arm to swat a low-hanging branch out of his face, it seemed to move about two seconds too slowly.

The ground was rolling under his feet. What should have been a solid and steady forest floor was pitching up and down like a ship in a storm. It was throwing off his already precarious balance and sending his stomach rolling. A tide of nausea was pushing higher and higher, threatening to overtake him. Again.

CB struggled to swallow down the acidic knot in his throat. He’d already thrown up once today—at least, he thought it was today—and he didn’t want a repeat performance.

He wasn’t on a track. He wasn’t sure why that was. Weeds tangled in his wheels, trying to trip him up, making his already difficult journey all the harder. It was tiresome. Despite his best effort to stay upright, he stumbled. His leg buckled underneath him, and he could have sworn he heard something snap. A yelp rose in his throat as he fell. Short of breath as he was, it only came out as a strangled groan.

He laid on the ground in a state of shock for a moment before taking stock of his condition. He’d hit his head on something on his way down. The wound stung, and he could feel a trickle of blood trailing its way down his face. He winced as he pressed on it with the heel of his hand, trying to stem the flow. In a bit of a daze, he glanced down at his leg, but his vision was too blurry to get a good look at the injury. It hurt, but no more so than everything else he was dealing with. Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself back onto his feet, setting off again with a pronounced limp.  

Loose strips of fabric dandled from his arms and legs and chest, snagging on every branch he passed. It was annoying, and he longed to tear the fabric off, but something was stopping him. A small itch in the back of his mind told him that they were important, that he needed them for some reason. But whatever he was supposed to be using them for, he didn’t think they were serving that purpose anymore. Now all they were doing was irritating the deep gashes and sensitive skin they were draped over.

He pushed blindly forward. His vision was swimming, fuzzy around the edges, and he couldn’t make out more than an indistinct sea of greens and browns in any direction. Still, he was facing this way, so in this direction he’d continue to go. He didn’t know if he was going anywhere in particular, but something inside him knew that he had to keep moving.

He dragged himself forward another few steps. Just keep moving, he reminded himself on loop. It was the one thought that was keeping him going, and he clung to it like a lifeline. If he focused hard enough on that, he could almost block out all the other sensations. And that’s what he did, pouring all his attention into that one thought, trying to tune out everything else around him.

His shoulder slammed into something hard and he was sent reeling. His head was spinning even faster than before. His chest heaved as he gasped for breath, trying to steady himself enough to take another step. He braced himself on his knees, ignoring the way his good leg trembled and his bad leg sent waves of sharp pain shooting up his body, both of them threatening to give out underneath him at any moment.

Shivering, he stood there for a moment. He was cold, so cold. And tired. And achy. And just generally miserable. He couldn’t remember why he was out here, especially when he was feeling so awful.

Keep going, he screamed at himself in his head. All of this complaining and feeling sorry for himself was pointless. It didn’t matter how he bad felt, he had to move on. He needed to get… somewhere. Right?

One foot in front of the other. That was all he had to do, that was all he was focusing on. One foot in front of the other. Keep breathing. Don’t fall. Don’t throw up.

Exhaustion was weighing down on him. His eyelids were drooping; keeping them open was getting harder by the second. His bad leg hurt more and more with each step. His head felt heavy, still spinning, and he wanted nothing more than to lay it down on something. Actually, he wanted to lay his whole body down. Maybe that would help with the pain, and the nausea, and the way all his muscles felt like they were turning to stone.

No, he couldn’t. He had to push through; he couldn’t stop. He didn’t know why, but right now it felt like the only thing he knew.

The pain in his leg was almost impossible to push through, now. He felt flimsy and weak; his feet were dragging, he could barely lift his hands anymore, and he was struggling to even just keep his head up. His eyes slipped closed, and it was a long moment before he was able to force them back open. Keep moving, he told himself. Nothing else mattered. Keep moving, keep moving, keep…

It’s no use, he thought to himself, leaning heavily against a tree trunk. He knew he had to keep moving, but he was just so tired.

A minute to rest, that was all he needed. He’d feel better after that, he was sure of it. Then he could go on.

Just a minute, he told himself, letting his eyes slip closed as he dropped to the ground. Just a minute.

Just a minute.

***

They’d been searching for hours, and so far, they had nothing to show for it. There were no signs of CB on the track, nothing to tell them they were getting close or even heading in the right direction. Every so often, Dustin would think that he saw something useful—an unexpected splash of color amongst the leaves, what could have been wheel imprints in the dirt—but it always turned out to be nothing in the end.

It was disheartening. All the dead ends were starting to wear him down. He kept at it, though. This was all for CB, and Dustin had promised himself that he wouldn’t stop until they found him.

Rocky 3 was clearly getting tired of the search, too, but he had nowhere near Dustin’s level of patience or concern for CB. “Don’t you think it’s time to give it up for the night?”

“What? No,” Dustin said. He was almost offended that Rocky 3 would have even suggested that. “We haven’t found CB yet.”

“The sun’s going to go down any minute now,” Rocky 3 pointed out, “and I don’t want to be completely lost in the middle of nowhere when it does. Let’s just go back to the yard.”

“But CB—”

“You heard what they said back there. He left days ago. He’s probably hit some other yard by now and is laughing at the thought of a couple of losers like us killing ourselves trying to find him when he’s not even in any trouble.”

Dustin pouted. It was such a horrible image of CB to have, and he couldn’t understand how Rocky 3 could actually think that CB was like that. No matter what CB had gotten up to during the championships, he just couldn’t believe that it meant CB secretly didn’t like them, or that he was happy to see them fail. CB was family, and it hurt to see everyone else so quick to turn their backs on him, regardless of what he’d done.

Rocky 3 must have caught Dustin’s look because he backpedaled, bringing his voice down into a gentler tone. “Look, let’s just go back to the yard. If you’re really so insistent, we can try again tomorrow, but I’m telling you there’s no point. He’s fine, Dustin. He just doesn’t want to hang around the likes of us anymore, and you need to accept that.”

“But… But he’s hurt, and…” Tears blurred the edges of Dustin’s vision, and he turned away so Rocky 3 wouldn’t see. No matter what CB had done, Dustin wouldn’t believe that it meant CB secretly hated them. He couldn’t. CB was freight; he was family. And the fact that no one else seemed to value that was baffling. Dustin knew they were all still mad at him for cheating against Rusty in the championship—and honestly, Dustin was a little mad, himself—but that didn’t mean he didn’t deserve a second chance. He couldn’t understand why everyone else was so quick to give up on him.

Still, he had to admit that Rocky 3 had a point. It was getting late and they’d have no hope of finding CB in the dark. Getting themselves lost in the middle of nowhere wasn’t going help anything.

Dustin gave the forest in front of him a final scan, desperate for any sort of clue to tell them to keep going. He was just about to quit, to accept that they wouldn’t find anything and go home like Rocky 3 wanted, when something caught his eye. “Rocky, look!”

Rocky 3 turned back. His eyes followed Dustin’s pointing finger, but to Dustin’s mild frustration, he didn’t seem particularly impressed. “What?”

“There’s a path, off the track! We have to check it out.”

Rocky 3 squinted at it skeptically. “Doesn’t look like much of a path to me.”

In all actuality, Rocky 3 was right, but Dustin was too excited to see it that way. “Look at how all the branches are broken. Someone had to have gone that way!”

“That doesn’t mean it was CB,” Rocky 3 fought back. “It could have been anyone.”

But Dustin wasn’t listening. He was already moving toward the path, his hopes rising for the first time all day.

Rocky 3 followed him, struggling ever so slightly to keep up, complaining the whole time. “Or even if it was CB, there’s no way we’re going to catch up to him. He would have come through here ages ago. He’s probably miles away by now.”

Dustin paid him no attention. Here, at last, was the sign he’d been looking for. Something in him just knew this trail had been made by CB. All he had to do now was follow it.

Moving over the forest floor was harder than Dustin had anticipated. It wasn’t a properly laid track and he felt off-balanced by the soft dirt and scattering of rocks. But none of that was important. He kept his thoughts focused on CB, on how they were finally on the right track, on how they were getting closer to finding him with every step they took.

CB was easy to spot. His bright red paint stood out against the greens and browns of the forest like a beacon. Dustin only had a split second of relief before he took in the scene, worry rising with every detail he noticed.

CB was on the ground, curled up at the foot of a tree. Even with his back to them, Dustin could tell that he was hunched in on himself protectively, though whether he was doing it because of the cold or pain or something else, Dustin didn’t know. There were a few dirty bandages wrapped loosely around his limbs, the ends of which had been torn off, caught on some near-by branches.

Dustin swallowed thickly, quickly closing the gap between him and CB, dropping to his knees next to him. It wasn’t the most elegant landing, and it must have caused quite the crash, because even in his poor state, CB felt it. He dragged his eyes open, looking around him without seeming to see anything. It was unnerving, the way his eyes were moving while remaining so distant and unfocused.

“CB?” Dustin said quietly, trying to pull CB’s attention onto him. It worked, to an extent. CB’s gaze ended up in Dustin’s general direction, but it didn’t seem like he was actually looking at him. There was no recognition in his eyes, and it sent Dustin’s stomach twisting into tighter and tighter knots.

There was a quiet rustle of leaves behind him as Rocky 3 finally caught up. “Dustin, what…?” he started, trailing off with a quiet swear as the scene in front of him sunk in.

“He’s shaking,” Dustin cried, reaching out for CB as if he had any idea of how to help. The heat radiating off of him almost made Dustin recoil. “He’s really burning up!”

Rocky 3 bit his lip, leaning to get a good look at CB over Dustin’s shoulder. He quickly took in the details of CB’s condition, finding them as worrisome as Dustin had. “There’s an emergency repair center not too far from here. I… I think it’ll be okay to move him.”

Dustin nodded, carefully gathering CB into his arms. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining things, but the caboose felt a lot lighter than he remembered.

Dustin looked up at Rocky 3, begging him to tell him what to do. “This way,” Rocky 3 said, turning on his heel and leading them back the way they came.

Dustin wasted no time in following him, constantly looking back and forth between his charge in his arms and the path in front of him. He was trying to be quick, but he still had to be careful. He didn’t want to jostle CB or upset his injuries in any way.

“You’re going to be alright,” Dustin said to CB, trying to keep his voice as soothing and as steady as possible. “Don’t worry. We’re going to get you to a repair center, okay? You just have to stay awake. Alright? Just stay awake, and we can take you and get you all fixed up, and then you can come home. Won’t that be nice? Coming home? So just stay awake, yeah? You’ll be alright, just stay with me.” He wasn’t sure CB could even hear him, but the caboose’s glassy eyes were still trained on him, and if there was even the slightest possibility of giving CB a little comfort, Dustin would take it.

He kept up the stream of words, barely aware of what he was saying. All he knew was that he wanted to keep CB’s attention on him. In his mind, as long as CB was awake—perhaps not lucid, but at least a little responsive—it was a sign that he would be okay. They could get him to the repair center, and he’d be fixed up before the night was out. They could take him home, and the yard would be whole again, and everything could go back to normal. Dustin clung to that thought like a lifeline as he rambled reassurances to CB, reassurances which were as much for his sake as they were for CB’s. “You’ll be okay,” he said over and over. “Don’t worry. Everything will be okay, I promise.”

Then, CB’s eyes closed.

Dustin’s stomach sank like a stone, plummeting to his feet before he had even fully registered what happened. “CB?” he said, giving the caboose a little shake.

Nothing.

Dustin shook him again. “Come on, now. Look at me.”

No response.

Panic was quickly flooding into Dustin’s chest. “Don’t do this, CB,” he pleaded, fear bleeding through into his voice. “Wake up.”

CB was completely still.

For a brief moment that felt like a small eternity, Dustin couldn’t think of what to do. Terror overtook his thoughts, turning them to static. “Rocky!”

Rocky 3 turned around. For a second, it was clear that he didn’t understand Dustin’s immediate spike in concern. Then he took in how CB’s eyes had closed, how he had gone limp in Dustin’s arms, how Dustin was clutching him hard enough it was sure to leave bruises, and a change washed over his face. Dustin could see his own fear reflected in Rocky 3’s eyes.

“Come on,” Rocky 3 said, his voice tight, “we need to hurry.”

Rocky 3 took off down the track as fast as he could, and Dustin picked up speed to match. He knew he’d never been the fastest car in the yard, and it had never bothered him before, not even in the championship. Now, though, he couldn’t help but curse his size. He needed to be fast. CB needed him to be fast. If something happened to him because Dustin couldn’t get him to a technician in time, Dustin would never forgive himself.

Rocky 3’s description of the repair center being “not too far” turned out to be relative. In the end, it took them almost an hour before Dustin caught sight of the lights in the distance. In that moment, he could have cried in relief. He didn’t stop to let himself enjoy it though. Terror was still a tight knot in his throat, and he kept on towards the lights, going as fast as he could manage. Adrenaline gave him a final burst of speed, and soon—though not soon enough for him—Dustin was carrying CB in through the emergency room doors, calling out as loudly he could for help.

Everything happened in a blur: technicians rushing in with a stretcher, taking CB from his arms and carting him away down long hallways and doors that swung shut behind them; the receptionist sitting him down and gently asking him about allergies and medical history and emergency contacts and next of kin; a stack of forms being handed to him and someone asking him to fill them out as best he could; him and Rocky 3 poring over the papers, the words running together before their eyes, asking them questions about CB that they had no idea how to answer.

At some point, it all stopped. The initial flurry of activity had long since died down, and the others in the waiting room had lost interest in the scene.  Rocky 3 gathered up the forms—Dustin wasn’t sure if they had actually finished them or just given up—and brought them back to the receptionist. They talked for a minute, but they were too far away and their voices were too low for Dustin to make out what they were saying.

When Rocky 3 came back, he hovered uncertainly in front of Dustin. “I’m going to call Poppa,” he said quietly.

Dustin nodded. Of course, someone would have to tell Poppa. The rest of the yard might not have been worried before, and even now Dustin wasn’t sure they would care, but Poppa needed to know. “I’ll wait here, in case there’s any… any news.”

It was Rocky 3’s turn to nod. He couldn’t find the words to respond. The weight of the situation was clearly pressing down on him. Dustin could tell because he felt it, too. The tiredness in Rocky 3’s eyes resonated deeply in Dustin’s chest.

After another second of hesitation, Rocky 3 turned back to the reception desk. Dustin heard him ask where there would be a phone he could use and get directed to the hall leading to the building’s entrance. Dustin watched him go, distantly noting the slump of his shoulders and the reluctant dragging of his feet. His heart clenched with sympathy.

Part of Dustin wanted to go with him. It was going to be a tough call for him to make, and Dustin wanted to give him as much support as he could. When it came down to it, though, Dustin was just too tired. He sagged into his chair, exhausted now that the adrenaline had passed. He felt like he needed to sleep for a week, but at the same time, he was too scared to even close his eyes.

Alone in the waiting room, the silence was oppressive. Dustin could feel the weight of everything pressing down on him. He struggled to swallow down the lump that had risen in his throat, so big and heavy it felt like, pretty soon, he wouldn’t be able to even breathe around it.

Tears stung his eyes, turning his vision watery and blurry. He blinked quickly a few times, then squeezed his eyes shut, then dug into his eyelids with the heels of his hands; anything he could do to keep the tears from falling.

It was no use. First a single tear leaked out from the corner of his eye. After that, he couldn’t stop. His breaths came quick and heavy, and he had just enough presence of mind to keep them from turning into loud and ugly sobs. He was trying not to make a scene, but he could feel all the eyes on him all the same. For the first time in his life, all the unwanted attention didn’t matter. He was too tired, too upset, too scared to care that he was being stared at.  

[zuzuslastbraincell]

fun world-building facts about the eyeliner incident:

so the main canon divergence is that roku killed sozin, instead of just chilling in his cottage for ~50 years. he ended up leading a coalition force against him, in prep for civil war, although was able to bait him out to an erupting volcano and kill him at the age of 40 or 50 or so. roku then lived for another 100 years (hardly out of character for an avatar to do so).

roku went further, though, and after killing sozin, declared there would be no more fire lords in the avatar state. this split the fire nation into monarchists and anti-monarchists, essentially, and there was still a fair bit of civil unrest/war after sozin’s death because not everyone agreed.

a lot of monarchists ran off to the colonies after sozin was killed, to protect their assets, to protect their lives, as a place to hide out until the storm blew over (it did not blow over) and to regroup for a next assault (which did not succeed).

this was fine, until a second phase: roku wanted to give the radicals in his coalition a leading voice in the next government to be. a lot of people disagreed. in the colonies (many of which had officially been handed back to the earth kingdom), there were riots, lots of dissent, etc. amongst fire nationals.

when the north western earth kingdom became the site of resistance against radicals in the fire nation (as roku’s opposition to sozin was based on a coalition of liberal nobles and bureaucrats & emerging radical workers syndicates), a lot of monarchists & ultranationalists ended up emigrating with the initial wave of noble émigrés, and eventually, some of the more liberal nobles supporting roku turned against them as well. (this is also how roku’s youngest daughter, rina, who was married off to a sozin loyalist in a hostage situation organised by sozin, ends up in the earth kingdom - she and her husband defect, and initially support roku, but seeing the radicals that he is genuinely helping and supporting, they move to the earth kingdom). the reputation of this second wave depends on province - ex-soldiers are always hated, and the north west & regions in close proximity despise the fire nation, but the east & ba sing se has always been quite hospitable, & many have dual bases in ba sing se and the northwest. the ba sing se nobility, over time, mingle more and more with high profile fire nation émigrés who have property.

fire nationals in the earth kingdom are thus culturally different, usually, to fire nation citizens in the modern fire nation. more likely to be monarchists, more likely to hold sympathetic sentiment to azulon etc. (though most agree - publically - that sozin went too far, even if they think azulon should have his crown in private), and a lot of their styles of fashion, music, art, dance etc. is based on a lot of “antiquated” “old fashioned” fire nation traditions with some earth kingdom ideas mixed in. to fire nation residents, they just look at least 80 years out of date.

fire nation descendants in the earth kingdom are more likely to be involved with particular organised crime syndicates (the triads, as opposed to ones with other names). this is because after the war ended abruptly with sozin’s death, a lot ex-mercenaries and ex-soldiers stationed in the colonies/northwest began to find work/business through protection racketeering (in absence of organised govt. in the north-western earth kingdom). even in the modern day, the north west has problems with corruption, control, and is economically quite deprived despite having massive resources and that’s an after-effect of colonialism and attempts by the national government to ‘penalise’ the officials in that region for colluding with fire nation nationals/ex-colonists (very exasperating for genuine earth kingdom officials, and earth kingdom locals). roku did try and help the region but he’s generally disliked for lots of reasons & was trying to stop the fire nation from collapsing after supporting the radicals (a controversial decision!) and facing counter-revolutionary violence. i think roku felt like he neglected the fire nation for the earth kingdom in his youth and that’s why sozin was able to get as far as he did, so i think he made the very difficult decision to prioritise trying to sort out the fire nation. hence why yu dao is in a bit of a state. i imagine yu dao (republic city) is a big buzzing city but has those same problems with organised crime we see in lok.

the sozin dynasty, as azulon & his descendants are called, aren’t an exception to this involvement in organised crime. a lot of people were actually quite sympathetic to a young azulon after his father was killed at around the age of fifty or so, including fire nationals in the earth kingdom, but also the nobility in the earth kingdom, themselves staunch monarchists, who saw sozin as the problem and not the system of monarchy itself. all of this allowed azulon & his family to flee the caldera & manage to transfer a number of their assets with relative ease; they were never penniless, despite the sob story you might here.

azulon set up links with local businesses who were run by sympathisers, as well as organised crime syndicates, and through wise purchases, good advisors, & some savvy of his own, shifted from aristocracy to bourgeoisie with relative ease, & bought/negotiated their place at the negotiating table, to eventually come to be considered the lead stakeholder in those crime syndicates (with enough distance, though, as not to be suspicious). very much saved his name from being a laughing stock through his own ability there, but if you’d hear the story told, people who say that folks were deferential to him in part because of his lineage (sometimes, but not always true - the revolution had caused people to doubt).

regarding his sons, iroh had far more involved in organised crime and illegitimate business than ozai, who essentially looked after the more boring legitimate side of things (but took that role seriously and expanded it beyond being a simple front). iroh actually had a worse reputation up until azulon died, and was just considered a very competent but cut-throat political/business leader/general player with a lot of very very shady links that couldn’t quite be proven, but also like, was famously quite charming and well-liked in the high society ba sing se network. like, i want to be honest to show iroh here - he was bad! in the show, he was a war criminal! i mentioned he was a war profiteer (largely because ‘war criminal’ doesn’t make as much sense imo), and that was almost definitely regarding civil wars/coups that have been attempted in the fire nation & earth kingdom. this stopped when lu ten ended up being shot in the crossfire during a turf war and rather than pursuing a violent vendetta, iroh stepped out of the spotlight and let ozai take over the reigns more.

anyway, after zuko was burned for attempting to stand up to ozai, iroh basically faked his own death and completely ditched anything left of what he’d spent his life building in order to whisk zuko away and invent new identities for themselves in the fire nation (ironically) where they worked as tea shop workers (yes. li and mushi, still canon). i don’t think they live in the caldera, since cameras/photos mean it’s easier to be tracked, and zuko probably lives somewhere quiet-ish like ember island. zuko has a decent adolescence, considering, after he’s estranged. no “find the avatar” in this universe, for fairly obvious reasons.

i’m not an expert in organised crime by any means but hopefully this all makes sense. a lot of what azulon/iroh/ozai is doing, through the purchase of land, the control of business, the use of organised crime as an illicit form of govt. essentially is a form of colonisation, where the region is deprived due to fire nation business interests and in earth kingdom control in name only. corruption and close ties between ba sing se and fire nation émigrés mean that centralised govt is underfunding & turning a blind eye to it (which, in canon, ba sing se does, ‘no war in ba sing se’ etc.). most of the colonisation efforts are centred in the north-west, but azula is brought up in ba sing se given it’s far more reputable/prestigious, though she’s undoubtedly been to both places.

as for what’s happening in the fire nation, i feel like aesthetically it’s a little different - ba sing se is ancient buildings with sky trains, lots of urban sprawl & a very wide and endless city, whereas i imagine the caldera is a very tall city due to limited space available, more skyscrapers in the fire nation due to limits in islands. also, the fire nation has sea trains and submarine trains/tunnels, because. politically? haven’t quite decided but they’re some flavour of anarchist-communist (was reluctant to use that word in the fic itself because people have all kinds of interpretations of it, often very negative knee-jerk responses to it, but essentially: community-owned services and businesses and spaces instead of privately-owned ones, with egalitarian principles enshrined into the culture & identity now) over there if i’m honest, with lots of democratic councils. obviously i don’t think it’ll be perfect and i imagine ‘the national question’ is something that comes up a lot, with some difficulties between national & regional identity (imo the fire nation is very diverse, we see the sun warriors and then the sages who help korra in s2 are from different groups/cultures than the militaristic one that rose to prominence in the 100 year war and i hc a lot of that regional diversity was steamrolled for sozin’s imperialist project).

ANYWAY

there’s a reason i made this post on my main last week:

this is getting very long but hopefully this is some insight into what i’ve been thinking about when i made this AU

[magaprima]

I really want Lilith in any post-part 4 threads to be connected to Hecate. There were hints at this direction in Part 4 (Zelda stating needing representatives of each aspect, and then Lilith being the Mother aspect, Adam’s birth being blessed by Hecate, Lucifer saying ‘this is where you’ve been keeping yourself; a Temple of Hecate’, and Lilith pointing out ‘She was the Goddess of Witches and I was the first witch’, and then Lilith praying to her in her darkest moments) and then with the cut scene where they show the eyes of the Hecate statue glowing, showing Hecate would have been a more direct part of Part 5, I feel it just feels naturally and inevitable to have Lilith tied/connected to her too. Especially as stabbing Lucifer, banishing him, could be seen as a metaphor for Lilith cutting ties entirely with her old life.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot, since Part 4 dropped, of how Lilith and Hell and Hecate could be intertwined (especially, as, like I and others have said, when Lilith looks at the throne in episode 8 it’s with the expression of ‘this is a means to an end’ rather than the way she used to look at the throne like it was, to quote Lilith herself, ‘the only thing she ever wanted’), especially as Baby Adam is a really interesting factor I feel had to play a part at some point in the future, as he is an heir to Hell’s Throne, but he was also born in a temple of Hecate under Hecate’s blessing and her direct help. He’s in two worlds as much as Sabrina was. 

We know Lilith can’t give up Hell anymore for the same reason Sabrina claimed to take the throne; to stop demons making the mortal realm into a tenth circle. We need a ruler who doesn’t want to destroy all of the mortal realm. So, she can’t just turn her back on it all, it is, also, Adam’s Kingdom by blood. We all pretty much confirm that Lilith’s intent was to resurrect Adam (as it’s only when she has his soul returned to her that she starts working on getting her powers back. Also the fetish doll is a tool that can be used for soul transference as much as hosting). 

Now, the Hell in the CAOS mythology seems to have been created by Lucifer (or discovered by him? They make it slightly fuzzy on those particular details. But he is definitely the one who built the actual Kingdom) but it doesn’t need him to exist, as proven when he is put in the acheron, and when he is banished by Lilith (I mean the Plague Kings claimed that Lilith ruling it was upsetting the cosmos, but we had no evidence of that at all. What did upset the cosmos was there being two Sabrinas) We’ve also seen that whoever rules Hell effects how it appears (prime example is that, under Sabrina Morningstar, the fashions change and it’s much more party-like and there is a lot of actually edible food) so it is capable of mutating, of changing into something else. 

Lilith has, during her time at the Academy, obviously been influenced (positively) by the presence of Hecate and the support of the coven. The Lilith taking the throne at the end of Part 4 is not the same Lilith who took it at the end of Part 2. Part 2 finale Lilith was all about running Hell exactly as she’d always seen it run, but Part 4 Lilith has seen how a coven changed completely and become more powerful for it, and she’s now experienced support, affection, people welcoming her etc etc. She’s also experienced the love for her son and the grief of losing him. These are all major changing things. This Lilith is, I suspect, not going to be at all inclined to run things how Lucifer did or, even, how Sabrina did. 

Lilith’s identity is tied to her being the first witch. It’s the only title she gives herself in Part 4- not Mother of Demons, not Queen of Hell, just ‘first witch’- and shows how much it is a huge part of who she is. Also, as I said in another post, Lucifer’s curse of humanity would have destroyed/erased the demoness in her, which would not have come back when she took her powers back by drinking his blood. So physically who she is has changed too. The only thing that never changed is the fact she’s a witch (even when Lucifer ‘strips’ her of her Satanic powers, she still has enough of her own powers to summon Caliban, to enter Hell etc) so being a witch is, I feel, going to be a key part of Lilith’s Hell, and that’s another part of how she’d be linked to Hecate. 

So, so far, Lilith’s direct links to Hecate are

1. She’s the first witch and Hecate is the Goddess of Witches 2. Hecate blessed the birth of her son, Adam  3. Adam himself is half a witch.  4. Lilith had sanctuary in a temple of Hecate 5. Lilith’s direct prayers to Hecate stopped her from taking her own life and also led to Marie gifting her Baby Adam’s soul

There’s no escaping the connection. But how do we actively bring Hecate into Hell, if Hell is a realm in its own right, and was created by an angel of the False God? And in my thinking and analysing and theorising, I realised:

 Baby Adam. 

Lilith has baby Adam’s soul. She has it ready for him to be brought back to life. Lilith, we know, can create bodies from scratch. True, we’ve only seen her demons, but odds are she create something that looks normal (after all, her demonic creations were not made with a soul as Adam would be) so Lilith can, relatively easily, create a body for Adam to return to. But a body and a soul, even when joined, still need life. 

Now, I headcanoned that Lilith would craft Adam’s body out of earth, because that’s what she was made of, and that would connect them as Mother and Son, that they’d still be of the same flesh and blood as it were. But to bring Lilith to life, the False God breathed divine energy into her, a breath of divinity moulded earth into flesh and made her into a living, flesh-and-bone woman (unlike Caliban, who, despite appearances, has been shown to be very much still clay). Obviously, the False God isn’t an option....but Hecate is. 

What if Baron Samedi gave Lilith Adam’s soul, Lilith crafted the body, but Hecate is the one who gives him life, just as she did in his natural birth? Especially as the birth meant he was already under Hecate’s blessing? I think, personally, that makes complete sense; it also a nice trinity aspect to Adam’s rebirth which parallels religion and what not. 

But Hecate being the one to breathe Adam to life is a pretty big gift. Huge in fact. And obviously puts Lilith, not in service, but in debt to Hecate . When you do ask things from spirits/deities/etc you do offer something in return. It could be a donation to charity, their favourite food, a new plant to add to your garden or home, something that you say ‘in exchange for your help, I will do this’. In exchange for Hecate’s help with Baby Adam (making him it could be reasoned, even more tied to Hecate than he is to Lucifer), Lilith offers Hell itself, and Hell becomes part of Hecate’s realms. 

Hecate is a psychopomp, she is a guardian and guide between living and death already, she has the keys to all the realms, so Hell would never have been out-of-bounds for her, so the idea of having Hecate honoured in Hell is not impossible, and it would mean that in the absence of Lucifer, something even more divine has taken his place, to give power to the realm and to keep Pandemonium going etc. 

It would mean Lilith (and eventually Adam) would rule the domain, but it would be almost as if it were ‘ruling in honour of’, essentially being regents to Hecate herself I suppose, or, if you want to have parallels to Greendale and Zelda’s coven; Infernal High Priestess. Basically, it would be in the same energy of the likes of Medea (a deliberate choice of reference here, because Lilith already compared herself to her) or Circe; extremely powerful witches, so powerful some say they’re Goddesses themselves, who do, in turn, worship Hecate, but have Kingdoms/Domains of their own over which they rule. 

I just instinctively feel this is the type of Hell and the type of rule Lilith would have post-part 4. It means souls would still go there as they always have, perhaps even using Sabrina M’s suggestion of ‘one soul in, one soul out’, it would still act as an underworld realm, just as Hades is, but now would be powered by a new deity, and the entire ‘house of Morningstar’ thing would, ironically, become irrelevant, allowing Lilith (and Adam) to have cut ties with that name completely. I imagine you would get demons leaving, others staying and enjoying the change, and you would get newcomers; realms are fluid and Hell would be no different in that regard. 

This would also mean that Lilith, Hell and Baby Adam would still be tied to the coven in Greendale due to their shared worship/connection with Hecate, which means the coven and Hell would finally be on the same connected side again as they were in part 1, but in a different and more positive way. It would also have allowed, with any Part 5 storylines, for there to be a reason for the two worlds and characters to interact. 

[satansliteraryhero]

The First Female Host - Ouran High School Host Club

Summary:

After transferring to Ouran Academy, your first day ends with you joining the host club as their first official female host.

Fandom:

Ouran High School Host Club

Pairing:

(Light) Tamaki x Reader

WARNINGS:

MENTIONS OF ANXIETY, LIGHT SWEARING

Words:

2,276

A/N:

I’m not sure if this will turn into a series or not. Also, Haruhi does not exist in this universe. Hope you all enjoy! :)

The sound of your heels clicked against the smooth marble flooring of Ouran Academy. You had just transferred as a first-year. So here you were, walking down the halls in search of your first class of the day, Class 1-A.

As you walked you could clearly hear all of the other girls talking about you, whispering and gossiping into the ears of anyone who would listen. While most would crumble due to the anxiety of their peering eyes, you quite enjoyed the attention and kept walking with your head held high, besides, there is no such thing as bad press.

Your family appeared to be ‘mysterious’ to most. Despite your high ranking in the world, you made sure to stay out of the news, more specifically, most of the world was unaware you even existed. Your father descended from royals, but he didn’t let that define him or his family. You could have easily shown up today in a limo, or carriage, or even a helicopter, wearing the most expensive pieces of jewelry you owned, flaunting your wealth and making even some of the richest kids at this school feel like disgusting and worthless street rats, but you didn’t. You didn’t care for all that stuff, you just wanted to attend the school like a normal kid, make friends like a normal kid, and have fun like a normal kid.

You finally reached the door to Class 1-A. You had worn the girls school uniform today with a side bag for your books. So, with two strands of your Y/H/C hair tied back with a simple white ribbon, you opened the door and stepped inside.

As soon as you stepped inside, all eyes were immediately on you. No, it wasn’t because you were late. And no, it wasn’t because you were hideous, in fact, you were very beautiful, having a pure beauty to yourself that you knew others envied, but even then that’s not why people stared at you. It was because you were new. To them, you were a mysterious piece of fresh meat, but I suppose, fresh meat is better than being seen as a spoiled brat.

You quickly scanned the room in search of where to sit. Most of the seats were taken except two, one next to a pair of wildly identical twins, or next to a scary-looking girl that looked like she would break every single bone in your royal body... you quickly made your way over to the twins. You placed your bag on your chair, making sure to take out the books you needed to start the lesson.

You turn and smile to the twins before speaking, “Hello, my name is Y/N! I just transferred here. What are your guys’ names?”

They looked at each other, seeming to give one another a silent approval to answer the question, they both turned towards you, “I’m Kaoru,” the one closet one to you says.

“And I’m Hikaru,” the one to his right says.

They both begin speaking simultaneously, “We’re the Hitachiin twins! It’s a pleasure to meet you Y/N!”

You smiled kindly, “It’s a pleasure to meet you both as well.”

You realized quickly that your conversation had ended at you turned back to the board. Hitachiin, you recognized the last name. Their mother, Yuzuha Hitachiin, was a well-known fashion designer. Although you had never worn one of her pieces, you admired her work. The teacher walked into the class, your attention snapping to him as he began class.

The school day finished quicker than you anticipated and you realized that you have yet to make any real friends, besides the Hitachiin twins, but they don’t count since you’re barely their acquaintance. You walk around the school in an attempt to find a quiet place to read. Reading has always been something you loved, ever since you were a child, of course back then your mother would have to read to you, but you still enjoyed every second of it.

After walking for what felt like days, you reached a quiet hallway, spotting a room labeled Music Room 3. You pressed your ear against the door, checking for any practicing musicians. You didn’t hear any instruments so after taking a deep breath, you opened the door.

The aroma of rose petals filled your senses as you let your Y/E/C eyes get accustomed to the bright light. You blinked a few times before looking back up, shocked to spot six boys staring at you. You were even more shocked to spot Kaoru and Hikaru among them, they even appeared to be a little surprised themselves at seeing you there.

Before you were able to greet them, an attractive blonde boy with deep violet eyes spoke up with a velvety voice, “Ah, a new guest! Welcome, Princess, my name is Tamaki, the King around here. The Ouran Host Club welcomes you!”

He had moved forward while talking so he now stood right in front of you, he grabbed your hand and before you had time to question his forwardness (and gross use of the pet name ‘Princess’), he pulled you into his chest, “Now tell me, which one of us do you find the most attractive?”

He stared into your eyes before twirling you around so your back was now pressing into his chest, giving you a view of the others. At first, you spotted the twins, they seemed to be avoiding your gaze and you being too embarrassed to smile, you looked at the rest of the boys. It immediately caught onto you that each of them seemed to have a sort of stereotypical character trait that made them stand out. You assumed Kaoru and Hikaru were known for being identical twins (obviously). You looked at the boy standing next to them, he was big and scary looking, but on his shoulders sat a smaller boy holding a stuffed pink bunny rabbit who looked like a harmless little kid. Aha! The opposite duo, the innocent child, and the intimidating yet gentle beast. You then brought your gaze to the boy on their left. He had gentle yet firm eyes and on his face he was sporting a pair of glasses, so he was probably the brainiac. And the jackass blonde behind you who manhandled you is the obviously the leader of the group, or in another term, the king. But why have a bunch of different attractive characters? Then it clicked, Ouran Host Club!

Time to have a little fun with these boys. You turned around, placing your hands on Tamaki’s chest and making sure to appear as though you were blushing and shy, keeping your voice high pitched you said, “Well gosh! I’m not sure! It’s so hard to decide... C-can I be honest?”

He leaned in, resting his hands around your waist and lower back. Even though you knew he was just trying to seduce you, you couldn’t help the chills that rand down your spine and the butterflies you felt in your stomach.

You quickly recovered, looking into his eyes through your long and delicate eyelashes, “None of you.”

You aggressively pushed him off you, making him stumble a little.

You faced all the boys and smirked, “I know what operation you’re running here, and let me tell you, your little tactics aren’t going to work on me.”

Tamaki brushed off his uniform jacket before looking at you and calmly asking, “Tell us then, what operation are we running here?”

“You’re a host club, entertainers, a brothel of sorts.”

All the boys gasped, Tamaki seeming to look the most hurt, “Brothel?! We’re not a brothel! We’re hosts, are job is to make women happy!”

I rolled my eyes, “Right, anyway, I’m assuming you’re somehow profiting off this service of yours, so that’s even more shallow.”

You turn around, facing the blonde boy, “And you,” you point a finger at him with a stern look on your face, “I know the likes of you. All charm yet they’re all full of lies. Boys like you, ones that are narcissistic and egocentric, are more hideous than any beast.”

He gasped, and you knew you got under his skin. You now stood right in front of him, feeling the eyes of the boys on you, “Because boys like you are rotting on the inside, which automatically makes you disgusting and vile looking all around, no matter how,” you look him up and down, clearly checking him out, “appealing you are to the eyes.”

As you stepped back, you saw that Tamaki was blushing and you couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or from you checking him out.

He began to stutter but you turned back towards the boys, “I hope you all know that there’s more to life than just being a stereotype.”

You turn towards the door, ready to leave when you hear one of the boys call out, “Wait!”

With an eye roll, you stop and spin on your heels, raising a questioning eyebrow.

The one with the glasses spoke up, “What do you mean by, ‘stereotype’?”

“I mean, every boy in this room is a different stereotype, a different character if you will. Hikaru and Kaoru are the wildly identical twins, these two are the gentle giant and childish little boy duo, you are the kind brainiac, and Tamaki is the king, correct?”

The boy with glasses raised his eyebrows slightly in surprise, signaling that indeed you were correct.

Tamaki spoke up, “Wait a minute! I told you my name, but I never told you Hikaru and Kaoru’s. How do you know them?”

“I wouldn’t say I really know them, we just introduced ourselves in the class we share.”

Tamaki looked to the twins for confirmation, they both nodded before speaking, “It’s true, this is Y/N, she’s a first year. We share Class 1-A.”

Tamaki pursed his lips, “Y/N, huh? That’s a lovely name. Tell me, are you the new student that just transferred here?”

You look Tamaki in the eyes before speaking, “Yes, I am.”

The childish blonde boy spoke up this time, “My name is Mitsukuni Haninozuka, but you can call me Honey Senpai! This here is Takashi Morinozuka! And you can call him Mori Senpai!”

Ahhh, the Haninozuka’s and the Morinozuka’s, amazing fighters. Their family’s had a lot of history together, and history with your own family as well. Your great grandfather and both Honey Senpai and Mori Senpai’s grandfathers were good friends, and to this day your families were still friends. Although, this was the first time you had ever seen them in person.

Honey pointed to the boy with the glasses, “This is Kyoya Ootori, also known as Kyoya Senpai! And him over there,” he pointed to Tamaki, “That’s Tamaki Suoh, Tamaki Senpai! He’s our king!”

Ootori, his father owned The Ootori Group, a large and successful medical facility. And Suoh, his father was the chairman, your father had spoken to him about you transferring here.

The twins stepped forward, “And you already know us, Y/N.”

You gave a nod and a smile, “Indeed I do.”

You heard Tamoki grumble but ignored him as Kyoya spoke up, “Say, Y/N, what’s your last name?”

Your eyes involuntarily widened. If you told them your last name, no matter how much your parents shielded you from the news and public, they’d still be able to find out who you were. Did it matter to you if they knew? I mean, the school will found out eventually, right?

You looked him in the eyes, forcing your voice to come out steady, “Y/L/N. My name is Y/N Y/L/N.”

Kyoya’s eyes widened a little and you knew that he recognized you. You had to admit, he was smart.

Tamaki spoke up, “Y/L/N? Where have I heard that before?”

“Yeah,” Honey agreed, “The last name seems very familiar to me!”

Kyoya answered their questions, “Her father owns Y/L/N Jewelers, a jewelry company known worldwide for their intricate, handcrafted creations. Plus, her father is of royal blood.”

All the boys’ mouths were agape except for Mori and Kyoya.

“So, you’re like, very rich?” Tamaki asked in a weak voice.

You giggled at his drama, “Yes, I’m very rich. But you see, I don’t go around flaunting my money or power, in fact, I’d rather nobody else knew my real identity. So if you could keep that secret, that would be great.”

“Woah, woah, woah!” Hikaru spoke up, “You know that you’re the most powerful and wealthiest one at this school and your choosing not to say anything?! Do you realize how popular you could be?! Girls will envy you, boys will want to be with you! You’re just going to throw that all away?!”

You pretended to think about it for a second, “Yeah, pretty much. Anyway, I should get going, see you guys!”

“Hold it!” Tamaki shouted, “Let’s say, we don’t want to keep your secret? What if we want to tell the whole school?”

“I mean, although I’d prefer you not to, I can’t stop you. Well, technically I can, but I won’t.”

Honey spoke, “So you’re not going to tell people but you won’t stop us if we want to?”

I smiled and nodded, “Correct, Honey Senpai.”

“You’re the weirdest girl I’ve ever met,” Kaoru said.

“Y/N,” Kyoya caught your attention, “How would you feel about being our first female host?”

Tamaki’s jaw nearly dropped to the floor and your eyes widened in surprise at his offer, “Oh, well, I’m not sure, you guys seem to have your own little thing going on and I don’t want to intrude and-“

“Please, you wouldn’t be intruding. I can see you have lots of potential, You’re pretty, I can see you have fire in you, and you figured out our character’s quicker than anyone we’ve ever seen.”

You brushed off his compliment and thought about his offer. Be a host? But don’t they entertain girls? Although you don’t really care, don’t they already do that on their own?

“I wouldn’t be bringing you any business, I’m sure there aren’t many girls who would be interested.”

Kyoya shook his head, “You wouldn’t host to girls, Y/N, you’d host to boys.”

“Oh.”

Hosting to boys? That could be interesting.

“So what do you say?”

“Um, sure, I guess. It could actually be pretty fu-“

“Hold it right there!” Tamaki cried, “She can’t just join our club! Not without getting the approval of daddy!”

The other boys looked at Tamaki with an irritated glare. You tried not to laugh at the fact that he just referred to himself as ‘daddy’.

He laughed nervously, “And without the approval of the other hosts too.”

You turned to him with a bored expression, “Okay. How do I get your ‘approval’, oh wise king!”

His face lit up at my use of his title but quickly fell when he realized I was being sarcastic, “You’ll have to show us that you can actually host, you’ll have to woo one of us. And then we’ll vote if you can join, majority rules. Deal?”

He stuck out his hand for me to shake. I couldn’t help but feel as though I was making a deal with the devil. Wasn’t Lucifer said to be devilishly handsome as well?

I shook his hand, smirking, “Deal.”

[d3-iseefire]

Through A Glass Darkly Chapter Two

Bilba sat curled in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the corner of the common room, arm draped across a knee as her eyes scanned the file in her hand. A large stack of nearly identical folders, along with two smaller piles, sat on the table in front of her, all stuffed to the brim with paperwork.

Beyond that, the room opened into a wide airy space, lined with windows to allow in natural light. Tables and chairs were scattered throughout, many occupied with other patients reading, doing puzzles or quietly talking. Orderlies and staff moved about them, sometimes stopping to talk to a patient or escort them to and from the room. A few of them looked her way, but none attempted to approach. Dr. Chambers had made it clear she was to be left alone.

She returned her gaze to the chart she’d been reading, but had barely managed to read the same line four more times when someone slid into a chair across from her. Irritated, she looked up, prepared to send the clear, and concise, message that whoever was bothering her was deeply unwanted.

It was Blondie, and the sight of him caused her brain to short circuit.

He’d taken her advice. He was clean shaven, hair neat and trimmed, and wore a freshly laundered t-shirt along with the requisite sweats and slippers. On anyone else, they looked non-descript but, on him, they became a fashion statement.  

“So, Celeste,” he started. “I wanted –”

He trailed off as she raised her fingers and pressed them together along with a sharp, “shush! Masterpieces don’t talk, they exist to be admired.”

The corner of his lip twitched, and he shook his head in exasperation. Then he folded his hands in front of him and proceeded to stare at her, in silence.  

This time, it was Bilba fighting back a smile, even as she bemoaned the discovery that he had a sense of humor. She didn’t want him to have a sense of humor. It was bad enough that he was unfairly attractive.

“I changed my mind,” she stated flatly. “Don’t shower. You’re distracting.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you’re so busy in here you can’t afford to be distracted?”

“Exactly.” He reached for one of the folders, only to pause as she slapped a hand onto them. “Anyone ever teach you that nosiness is a vice?”

He didn’t pull his hand back. “Anyone ever teach you that sharing is a virtue?”

Confident, and very self-assured. If asked, Bilba would have insisted she didn’t have a so-called perfect man in mind, or list of traits she considered desirable in a partner. She had no time for such things. Now she was quickly realizing that not only did she apparently have a list, but Blondie was rapidly checking every box.  

“What are you doing?” he asked, nodding at the graveyard of dead trees.

“Reading,” Bilba said dryly. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Not at present,” he said easily as if she’d just asked him about the weather. “What are you reading?”

Bilba sighed. She knew she should get rid of him. Insult him until he left, or give him the silent treatment, or just threaten to track down his car once she got out and set it on fire. Instead, against her better judgement, intelligence, and all sane reason, she found herself shutting the folder she was reading and offering it to him.

She wasn’t sure who was more surprised by her actions, her or him.

Granted, she was really bored. She’d always been more of a “shoot the thing in the face until it stops trying to kill you,” and less of a “risk death by a thousand paper cuts doing research” type of person.

Blondie flipped the folder open and frowned at the contents. “Patient records? Isn’t this a violation of privacy?”

“They’re all old, and dead.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“I like history,” Bilba lied. The upper floor had been shut down for decades following a fire, and it was only recently that the hospital had started renovating it. Whatever the construction had awakened must have predated the fire, or been killed by it. It narrowed her search down a little but, given the place was one of the oldest operating asylums in the country, it was still looking for a needle in a haystack.

Blondie frowned. “Haven’t they ever heard of digitizing?”

Bilba wholeheartedly agreed. Her life would be so much easier if someone had thought to transfer the paper files to electronic media and added a search function. As it was, she was left to scour boxes of crumbling, records with next to nothing to go on. Later, she’d head out to see what she could find about the four teen victims but, until this, it was doing her best to not die from pure boredom.

Blondie pointed at the folders she’d separated out into smaller piles. “What are those?”

Bilba studied him for a few seconds and then leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Figure it out yourself.

That should keep him busy for a bit and give her time to continue her own research.

His eyes narrowed. “Are you treating me like an irritating child right now?”

Bilba shrugged. “Are you acting like one right now?”  

He grumbled something unflattering under his breath, before dragging some of the records she’d organized over to start flipping through. He finished surprisingly quickly and moved onto the other group. Once he was through them, he leaned back in his chair with a smirk. “You’ve separated them based on whether or not they died at the hospital. You also appear to have some interest in any record of violence, either done by them or to them.”

Bilba scowled. “You’re not allowed to be smart.”

He crossed his arms, which caused his biceps to bulge in a way that almost derailed her brain again. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Bilba crossed her own arms to mock—mimic him, and glared at him. “You’re not allowed to be pretty, and funny, and smart, get it? You can have one, maybe two, but not all three.”

This time, he pursed his lips and looked away for a second to poorly hide a smile. When he looked back, his face was sober, but his eyes still showed clear amusement. “You’re in luck.” He spread his arms out to encompass the common room. “If I had any intelligence at all I wouldn’t have ended up here, would I?”

There was a hint of bitterness in his voice that Bilba found relatable. The life of a hunter hadn’t exactly been what she’d wanted, but sometimes life chose for you and there was nothing you could do about it.

“You weren’t stupid,” she said, surprising herself. “You were resourceful. You’re lucky you weren’t murdered yourself.”

He leaned forward, eyes suddenly alight with some unknown emotion. “You see there?” he said. “That’s the second time you’ve acted like you know something about me, about my case.”

Bilba rolled her eyes. “You’re reaching.”

“I’m not.” His voice was intense, and it really shouldn’t be giving her butterflies in her stomach, but there it was.

Bilba bit back a sigh and reluctantly admitted the truth. She was wildly attracted to him and didn’t see it calming down anytime soon.

“You asked about what I saw in the sewers.”

“Curiosity,” Bilba said, her tone bored.

He shook his head. “No. You asked if I saw anything unusual, out of the ordinary, and when I described those puddles you didn’t seem surprised.”

“You’re basing this off my not being surprised by their being giant piles of disgusting in the sewers?” Bilba asked, incredulously. Blondie was like a bloodhound on a scent for heaven’s sake.

“And now, today,” he continued, ignoring her, “you say I’m lucky I didn’t die along with my father. Why?”

“Because it’s common sense,” Bilba said sharply, irritation setting in at his refusal to just let it go. “Someone knocked you out, tied you up and murdered your father. I doubt they were planning to pat you on the head and let you go afterward.”

“I don’t believe you,” he challenged.” What do you—"

He cut off as Bilba got to her feet and gathered up the folders. “I get it. You’re stuck here, and it sucks, but grasping at straws isn’t going to help. You’re making something out of nothing. You need to let it go.”

The light in his eyes dimmed, and Bilba wished the sight didn’t send a shard right through her. It went against everything she was and believed in. She existed to help people, not hurt them.

Problem was, she’d already hurt him. She’d given him hope, or some semblance of it, when there was none to be had. It was already over for him. She couldn’t save him because there was no longer anything to save him from.

“If you did know something, would you tell me?”

Bilba sighed in exasperation. She curled her fingers into the manilla folders she held until they crumpled under the pressure and then went and stood over him where he sat.  

“What good would it do?” she asked quietly, looking down at him. “I can’t help you. Nothing I know, or don’t know, can help you, do you understand? There’s no magic password, no key that’s going to open the gates and let you out. I can’t help you.”

“At least tell me I’m not crazy.”

The words were low, and edged in exhaustion, and despair.

Bilba hesitated, and then shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

He frowned. “For what?”

For not being here, Bilba thought. For not being able to save you, for a whole host of things that weren’t her fault but that she’d carry the guilt for anyway.

She shook her head again and left him sitting behind her.  

It was better this way, she told herself firmly.

Better to kill the hope now before it had a chance to grow any further.

He’d been lost long before she ever arrived, and there was nothing she or anyone else could do about it.

 ***

Fili skipped dinner.

He just…couldn’t do it somedays. Every day, it was the same. Same clothes, the same food, same useless therapy sessions where no one believed a word he had to say. The same white walls, the same people, and the knowledge that no matter what he did or said…it would never change.

Not unless he was suddenly declared competent to stand trial, and then he’d be sent to prison to start it all over again, just in a different place.

He wasn’t insane, but the endless repetitiveness might well drive him to it one day. There were days he couldn’t bear to stand at the window, looking out at the world he’d been locked away from, picturing his family and friends going about their lives while his was just…stopped.

Permanently.

He wandered the halls, trying not to think of what he’d lost. People had described him as dedicated, driven. Busy. There had been scholarships. College. A bright future with a career he’d been looking forward to.

A fiancée.

All of it gone in the blink of an eye.

It made him want to scream sometimes, in anger, in desperation.

In despair.

Fili rounded a corner and stopped with a frown as he realized he didn’t know where he was. In front of him, the hall was lined on both sides by doors into what he assumed were offices. He swore under his breath. Patients weren’t allowed in staff areas without permission. He wasn’t even sure how he’d managed to get here without being seen.

He started to backpedal, hoping to get back without being caught. He’d just rounded the corner when, behind him, a loud explosion rang out. Instinctively, Fili dropped to a crouch, heart racing in his chest.

He spun around and leaned forward onto his hands to peer around the corner.

At the far end of the hall, one of the office doors appeared to have exploded from within, showering the hall with bits of broken wood and debris.

He heard a low groan, and a dark shape he’d dismissed as part of the debris moved against the opposite wall. It resolved itself into a person, pushing up shakily onto their hands and knees.

Dark hair and a slim figure registered, and recognition hit.

Celeste.

She was wearing jeans, a dark t-shirt and a leather jacket. She pushed up to her knees, swaying in place, and Fili’s eyes went back to the door. Had it exploded as she’d passed it?

He got to his feet, and started to go to her, only to slow as a large figure stepped into the doorway of the office. Fili vaguely recognized him as one of the doctors at the hospital, an older, graying man with a formidable presence. Fili had never interacted with him personally but had heard from others that he had a reputation for being hardnosed and no nonsense. He wasn’t the most well-liked doctor, but he was apparently well respected.

As he watched, the man strode across the narrow hall, yanked Celeste up and completely off her feet as if she weighed nothing and began to strangle her.

“Hey!” Fili broke into a run toward the two.

The doctor’s face turned toward him, and Fili froze mid-stride without making the conscious choice to do so, as if some primal force had yanked him to a stop.

The doctor’s face was…wrong. An ashen, sickly gray with dark splotches as if mold had started to grow on his skin. His eyes were a dull white, no pupil or iris visible, and he had some sort of thick, black liquid dribbling from the corners of his mouth.

Without warning, he released Celeste. She dropped to her hands and knees, gasping for air.

The doctor made a strangely jerky turn and stumbled back into his office. Behind him, Celeste struggled to her feet, only to immediately buckle again and start to fall again.

Snapped out of his paralysis, Fili lunged forward the last few feet and barely managed to catch her before she slammed into the laminate tiles. This close he could see wood chips and dust coating her body and several small scrapes dotting her skin where it was exposed. He looked at the shattered door incredulously. Had she been thrown through it?

“Help me up,” she mumbled, words slurred. “I have to--”

She grabbed onto him, struggling to get back up. Her eyes were unfocused, and her legs kept buckling so much that Fili ended up dragging her arm around his neck and sliding his around her waist to support her.

He looked into the office, just in time to see the doctor open a window and, without so much as a second of hesitation, leap out.

Fili gaped, and a chill ran over him. He didn’t remember taking stairs in his wanderings, but he knew that offices were on the upper floors of the building. Fourth and fifth at least.

Celeste struggled to get out of his grasp, but he held her easily and lowered her to the floor as her legs gave out. “It’s too late,” he told her. “There’s no way he survived that.”

Celeste swore, her words slurred. Then her eyes suddenly rolled back in her head and she slumped in his arms, head lolling back against his shoulder.

Footsteps pounded along the hall and several staff members rounded the corner before skidding to a stop. Fili saw their eyes dart to him, Celeste and the broken door and a sinking feeling settled in.

“It’s not what it looks like,” he said weakly.

He could see they didn’t believe him, just like they hadn’t believed him the last time. Cold washed over him as he realized that he was most likely about to be falsely accused of murder.

Again.

Follow on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22765585/chapters/54399856

[black-streak]

Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (but Sundays are meant for rest) - Routine

Part 3

Hey! I came up with a name for this finally! Might've been listening to Elton John at the time.... Completely self induglent fluff for part 3. Also changed the part title for timinette thing to 'the beginning'. Very original, I know. So I've decided to not have anyone aware of identities here. And Mari also does not use the ladybug in this.

Lastly, from what I gather, Tim canonically seems to swing between sharp, calculating and carefully selective with words aaand a complete disaster child with severe anxiety, weird obsessions, and no filter. So if anyone has any notes on my characterization of him, I'd be happy to hear it.

...Please don't get use to this rapid update schedule, I have no control on the speed in which I write these.

~---~

Marinette meant to make good on her request for a movie with Tim. She really did. She was not some shy little teenager anymore and if she wanted to have a date with the guy she liked, no one could stop her from trying!

Except maybe a spike in her commissions, an Arkham breakout, and three narrowly avoided confrontations with multiple of the bat… people. So maybe she was exhausted and overworked and it had been over two weeks since the morning she woke up on Tim. Maybe at this point she couldn't even concentrate on the date portion and just wanted to skip right into the napping together bit. But who could really blame her? Life is cruel to the sleepless. So perhaps the way they actually ended up dating could be forgiven.

It started on a gloomy Sunday afternoon that Mari found him at a desk in the manor library, pouring over what looked like a criminal case? In a manilla folder? What? Who even uses manilla outside of a filing cabinet anymore? And for what purpose did he need to read it so intently? 

Shaking the confusion off, she refocused on her current mission. Tricking him into taking a nap.

Pushing down a blush, she tapped him on the shoulder.

Startling, he turned partially to look up to her while closing the file, not expecting the interruption.

"Oh, hey! Did um… did you need something?" 

Taking in the dark bags building under his eyes, two empty cups on the desk, and overly comfy clothes, she realized this might be easier than she originally planned for. He looked perfectly nap ready and as over worked as she was. 

Nodding, Marinette took hold of his hoodie sleeve and gave a small tug.

Tim turned further to face her fully, watching for only a moment before seemingly coming to some conclusion.

"Whatever it is will have to wait. You need sleep."

Only she didn't argue, simply nodding again and tugging at his sleeve again, pleading eyes latching onto his.

"Nap?"

Understanding dawned on Tim and lit a small smile across his face as he moved his attention back to the desk, closing up all his work and compiling it to transport.

"Let me gather this up."

A happy sound of approval sounded behind him before lean arms wrapped around his shoulders, a face ducking close to his neck, quietly resting in wait.

Not entirely surprised with the contact, Tim took it in stride, though his mind was whirling with possible causes, attempting to determine whether this was a show of further affection or simply the way she interacted with those she deemed close to her. He'd seen the way Mari leaned into Jason when he ruffled her hair or tossed an arm about her shoulders. The happy cheek kiss she graced Dick in thanks for helping with one thing or another. The way Damian allowed her to pull him around by the hand all the time. Maybe she decided on sleepy cuddles for him? But then, it had sounded like flirting and an offer for more last time. Had he read too much into it or was this the offer come to fruition at last? 

Speaking of which, as he grabbed the last file, she slid one hand over and down his arm to grab at a hoodie sleeve to tug once more, simultaneously shifting away so he could get up.

In a fashion similar to two weeks ago, he paid little mind to her dragging him about until he noticed her aiming for the door, quickly twisting a hand to grab her wrist and redirect them towards the couch in the room. 'Whatever this is, there's no need to advertise it for my brother's to see.'

Meanwhile, Marinette was trying to figure out the best way to get Tim to put his work aside and just cuddle her. Obviously he seemed to be following along now, but if the way he brought over the case file was any indication, he planned to continue working while she slept beside him. 

'Hmm… he followed suit last time, maybe it'll work again this time,' she thought, smile regaining momentum on her face when she saw the library couch went much deeper than the living room one.

He must have read her mind, because he immediately sat sideways, upper back pressed into the arm of the couch, still holding onto her wrist to guide her towards him.

Climbing over, she sandwiched herself between his body and the couch, leaning into his shoulder. He hesitated slightly, then adjusted his left arm behind her and reopened the case in his lap.

"What's with that anyways? Not your usual work there," she murmured.

"Old cold case. Hobby of mine to try and solve them. Or at least find details that were missed in the initial investigation," he intoned smoothly, use to the line of questioning.

"Hmm," she adjusted her legs to lay across his lap, reaching to prop the folder on them as a makeshift desk, "tell me about it?"

"The details are pretty grim, you sure?"

"Mhm, I don't mind. It's like rubber duck coding, right? Maybe if you explain it out loud to someone the missing pieces will pop into place."

And that's how Tim found himself explaining the intricate pattern of a series of connected murders to Marinette, who took the horrific descriptions in stride, sometimes throwing in theories for him to pick apart as he went. Even if it didn't look it with her closed eyes and relaxed disposition, she was obviously actively listening and paying attention to his rapid fire rambling which in turn encouraged him to continue despite his initial hesitance.

Stopping mid sentence, he yanked the file closer with his free hand, the other wrapped around her waist, studying it intently for a moment. 

Letting out a frustrated breath, he murmured in a way indicating her almost forgotten presence, "Really? That's it?" And proceeded to move both arms to hold the pages steady, incidentally shifting Mari fully up onto his chest to accommodate the movement as he wrote across the page, connecting the dots to give a final full picture. Closing the folder up and moving it to the side table, Tim rewrapped his arms around her waist, taking smug satisfaction at successfully transferring her fully into his lap without it seeming to be on purpose.

"You make a good duck."

"Told you it would work, Drake."

"You sound like my brother."

"Hmm, don't call me a duck and I won't call you a drake."

"You're the one who brought up being my metaphorical rubber duck. You only have yourself to blame."

"And your the one who's last name literally means 'male duck', Drake," she deadpanned back to him.

Narrowing his eyes, Tim stared her down. However, Marinette was not one to back down to a challenge and only quipped, "So, still going to call me a duck?"

"I'll concede this round, but you're not cuddling back up to me until you find something else to call me. I'm not trying to hold my brother's clone here."

"Oh? But you are trying to hold your little brother's best friend?" She teased, turning a little pink and marveled at his own flushing face.

"If I remember correctly, you're the one who came in seeking My attention."

Giggling, she squirmed so that one leg was curled over his, torso shifted to in between his side and the couch once more, and tucked into his neck for the second time that day, smile pressing into his skin.

"Not denying it, Mon Cher."

Not expecting agreement nor the endearment, Tim gave a hum in response, not wanting to let on how flustered he felt. Lifting a hand, he hovered it over her head, not sure it'd be welcome, but holding a sigh of relief when she pressed up towards it, as though sensing its proximity and craving the affection it seemed to promise. Which is how he found himself nuzzling the side of her head, hand running down her hair in a soothing pet, listening to the almost purr that reverberated from her into his skin. 

"You cut off earlier. How did the case end?" She spoke, lifting only enough to speak, but close enough that her lips still brushed his neck with every word before lowering back in.

And so Tim told her, giving her the answer before going back and explaining the connection and then finally the less notable details as he sensed her slowly falling into a light slumber listening to the low timber of his voice warm in her ear.

With a small smile, soft and unsure, he settled further against her, pulling her tighter just a moment before allowing himself to drift as well.

…..

Every few days, Mari would seek him out. The same tired, pleading look. The same gentle tugs and soft embraces. Helping him finish whatever he was working on before falling asleep curled up to him, humming with his hands in her hair and warm breath fanning across her skin. Sometimes the side of her head, other times murmuring random details into her ear, and on one notable occasion, down the side of her neck.

Sometimes they wouldn't sleep, just pass jokes and obscure references or talk about her latest project, finding rest and solace in one another without the need for immediate sleep.

And then finally, finally, one of them took a step forward. 

… maybe not the way either of them planned. They'd been running this routine for three weeks straight but now.. It'd been 4 days and Mari had yet to come find him. This did not sit well with Tim, who counted on her to enforce something along the lines of regular sleep for him. Even if it was only in the form of long afternoon naps every couple days. Needless to say, he was grumpy, over caffeinated, and not entirely in his right mind when he sought her out. 

Tim found her eventually, probably in Damian's room based on the bed and katana above the headboard. He hadn't paid attention enough on his mindless search to be 100% sure. Either way, she was there and that's what mattered. Taking a page out of her book, Tim walked over, took ahold of her wrist and tugged her up and towards the door, grip loose enough to slip out if she so desired, only to be stopped by large hand gripping his own wrist. 

That's when Tim decided to actually take in the room fully, surprised to see Damian standing there, scowling with a raised eyebrow, not appreciating the abrupt interruption or kidnapping attempt.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"It's naptime," Tim stated, blinking back with a blank, unfazed expression.

Taken off guard, Damian stared at him, speechless, hand falling back to his side. Tim decided to take advantage of this and made way for the door once more, only to be blocked off once more, tired anxiety and frustration building by the moment.

"That doesn't explain you bursting in here and kidnapping my Angel." Damian stated, arms crossing in defiance, more annoyed at the lack of permission to enter his room than the way Tim sought her out.

"Mine."

"What?" The two younger occupants voiced.

"It's not naptime without Mari. You've been monopolizing her time. Mine now."

Neither of the younger could make heads nor tails of that. One use to Tim cutting off emotions and speaking so directly without consideration, but not the possessiveness being displayed. The other use to the clinginess and sleepless, unthinking words, but not the deadpanned delivery. It was weird to see the two sides mix together into this.

Mari was yanked from her stupor as Tim wrapped his arms around her, chin resting on her head, uncaring of their audience for the moment.

Eyes wide, she turned towards him and tilted to look up and meet his own dead ones.

"Yours?"

Reigning her in again, he rested his cheek in her hair, murmuring, "Mine."

Her and Dami met eyes and a smirk stretched across his face as he realized what this finally met.

"It's on."

"I suppose it is. If you'll excuse us, I think my attention is being demanded elsewhere."

"Oh, you think?"

"Mhm."

With that she allowed Tim to tug her away from the room, surprisingly not questioning the exchange, only to hear more invasive voices from down the hall. Not wanting to deal with the inevitable teasing and questions, he twirled on his heel, bringing her back past Damian and over into his own room. Surprised, but willing, Mari allowed him to lead her into his bed, hands holding her to him as he curled around her petite form, blanket coming up around them.

Finally finding her words, bright red painting her face, she turned in his arms, "Where'd that come from?"

"It's been 4 days. You never take that long."

"Miss me?" She teased, but the effect was ruined by the hope her voice betrayed.

"Terribly," he admitted unflinchingly. Surely, he was going to have an absolute anxiety attack when he woke up, but for now, his thoughts weren't coherent enough to be monitored or analyzed before falling out.

"What took you so long?" He wondered, pressing his forehead to hers.

"Kept getting too busy. You're not the only one who gets sucked into too much to think of sleep." She whispered, settling closer and running her hands over his shoulders in a soothing manner, "I'm sorry to keep you waiting."

" You should be apologizing to yourself. You need our naps as much as I do." 

Humming, she guided her fingers up into his hair, glancing at his lips without thinking, "Do you think we could watch that movie you promised me next time?"

Waking up a little more at the seriousness of the question, even under the pretense of playfulness, he sent her a calculating look.

"I'd like that, ma lutine. Sunday night? We can watch it in my apartment..." He asks, purposefully looking down to her own parted lips before meeting her eyes again.

Silvery blues lit up at the endearment slipping out, moving further up into his space, lining up without touching.

"Yes please," whispers out.

Taking the plea for what it is, Tim slowly cups the back of her head in one hand, the other moving to tilt her chin. It's only for a moment, but he kisses her with such sweet affection, she feels dizzy with it.

He pulls away to her soft, happy humming, sleep creeping into the edges of his mind. Tucking her back under his chin, he falls into slumber with a quiet murmur.

"It's a date then."

[myaekingheart]

You've been visited by the random OC question fairy! :D ~☆

Happy International Women's Day! What is your OC's relationship with being a woman? How has being female affected their upbringing and/or their past? How does being female affect their actions, thoughts, and relationships with others, if at all?

Hi OC Questions Fairy! 

I’m gonna answer this for all of my female OCs so they each get a little attention so this might take a minute hahaha With Rei, it was never so much of an issue of being a woman than it was an issue of what was expected of her as a woman. Her parents had a very specific vision in mind for the type of life they wanted for her that involved the usual “get married, have babies, be a housewife” route. And while Rei has always yearned to be a wife and a mother, she also has always yearned to be a ninja. The opposition of her family about her becoming a ninja, however, led her to believe that she could not do both and for a long time she suppressed her desire for domesticity in order to focus entirely on her career.  Which is also telling of Rei’s mother, Hana. She had sort of an opposite experience in that her family wanted her to become a ninja and take advantage of the Yamanaka’s kekkei genkai, the mind transfer technique, but Hana was not fit for becoming a ninja. Every time she tried to use the family jutsu, she would get splitting migraines. She never even wanted to become a ninja in the first place, however, and feels right at home fulfilling her expected gender roles.  Kakashi’s mother, Aijo, never really played by the rules when it came to femininity. She was always kind of feral and wild, she didn’t have any reservations about getting down and dirty in her work.  Rei’s grandmother, Teiko, had very much the same path as Rei. Her family had no interest in shinobi whatsoever, but Teiko had a gift and she was drawn to ninja work. She also kind of defied what was expected of her for a really long time and tried to balance both a ninja career and being a mother but she ultimately had to make a sacrifice and choose her family over everything else.  Teiko’s old teammates, Komori and Edna, have interesting relationships with their womanhood. Komori is kind of eccentric and materialistic in a way. She has a twin brother, Rojin, and together they run the local antiques shop. She never really felt like she was not on equal footing compared to her brother, but she also worked very hard to become a solid ninja. She was ready to give it up in a heartbeat in order to be the best mother she could to her children, though. Edna is the type who loves being a woman and engaging in things that are deemed “womanly.” Though she, too, was a fearsome ninja, she is also an expert in fashion and even runs the local high-end kimono shop. She’s the type who just absolutely revels in everything that she’s allowed to do and expected to do as a woman and she does those things with utmost confidence.  Komori’s granddaughter, Suisen, struggles with not just womanhood but existing in a body in general. She deals with an eating disorder and therefore has struggled a lot with body image, peer pressure, and a sense of control, all of which are not exclusively feminine issues but are definitely influenced by those issues.  Edna has two granddaughters, Sefure and Arai, who could not be more different. Sefure is far more feminine than her younger sister, but at a price. She has adopted that maternal instinct of wanting to provide for her sister, while Arai has the instinct to protect. In turn, Sefure has learned to use her womanhood and sex appeal for a source of income in order to support her sister, who instead turns to shinobi work and yearns to prove herself as strong and capable so that she can create a better life for the two of them.  Rei’s teammate and best friend, Sekkachi, has a similar issue to Rei in that she has certain expectations pinned on her by her family. Sekkachi wants nothing to do with them, though. She refuses to become the doting wife and mother--it’s just not in her blood. She is, instead, the strong, independent woman type but with a fault. She wants to have companionship but she struggles with accepting others into her life and allowing herself to be vulnerable. She’s built up an impenetrable wall and keeps up this facade of being unaffected and aloof. And while we’re on the subject of her and womanhood, it’s also important to note how significant woman are to her as a lesbian, so despite her bluntness and her independence, she of course tries her best to support women (even if sometimes her support seems like the opposite, in terms of her and Rei’s relationship where they butt heads constantly and she tends to criticize Rei’s life choices once and a while. All in all, she’s not perfect.)  Rei’s other teammate and childhood best friend, Naru, definitely also revelled in her femininity much like Edna and Sefure do. Naru has charm, she’s popular, and she always knows everyone’s business because she feels like she has a responsibility to be a nexus of information. She’s bubbly and bright but also knows how to use her feminine charm to her own benefit, i.e. manipulation and genjutsu.  Rei, Sekkachi, and Naru’s sensei is Chikara, a former dancer turned shinobi. Chikara has a very vast knowledge of what it means to be a woman in this profession but rather than fight against that inequality, she teaches her students how to use that to their advantage. She taught her students choreographed dance routines and as a team, they created an entire ensemble alter ego of rave dancers to perform at a local club where many enemy ninja are often attracted so that in this way, the girls essentially weaponize their femininity in order to lure criminals to their deaths.  And on the subject of weaponizing femininity, none do this better than Tenshi. While she also exemplifies some of the negative social aspects of being a woman such as sexualization and competition, she uses her sex appeal to lure men so that she can get what she wants. And often times what she wants are eyeballs. Specifically Sharingan. Because she works for Danzo. This is why she is currently in jail.  Mikazuki doesn’t really feel very tied to her identity as a woman, I don’t think? She’s very spiritual and while she’s also very feminine in the way she presents herself, as well as demure and shy, I don’t think she really focuses much on the fact that she’s a woman. I know in terms of sexuality, none of it matters to her one bit. She’s more concerned with what type of person you are than what gender you are, though she definitely is aware of the inherent inequality of being a woman. After all, she’s in this shinobi business, too, which doesn’t really let you forget about that.  In terms of Sekkachi’s family, her grandmother Kohai’s entire backstory hinges on her womanhood. She migrated to the Konoha because she dared to practice a sense of agency over her female existence in terminating an unwanted pregnancy, which her family disowned her for. She knew that she made the right decision for herself, however, and went on to carry that with a sense of self-acceptance--as well as a reclamation of the term fumeiyo, which means dishonor, and was the surname she chose for herself when she branched out on her own.  Sekkachi’s cousin, Tenjikubotan, is another woman who soaks up all the advantages of her womanhood. She behaves like a socialite and enjoys the company of attractive men, as well as making herself attractive for them.  Tenjikubotan’s younger sister, Roru, is far less concerned with appearances. She just wants to follow in her cousin Sekkachi’s footsteps and become a badass ninja. She isn’t entirely concerned with what effect her womanhood might have on her, which perhaps is merely a positive sign that her much younger generation is making strides toward gender equality in the shinobi world.  While these two are more minor characters, I really want to include Amai and Hiretsuna, as well. Amai is very much invested in her womanhood and she enjoys engaging in the cute and the feminine. She is a waitress at the local dango shop and loves pink and sweet things and cute animals. She just wants to exist as something bright and positive and to make people smile. Hiretsuna is far more subtle in her femininity, but is feminine nonetheless. She works reception at the hospital and definitely engages in the local gossip and fantasizing about attractive men, even if it’s far more fairytale-esque and fluffy than sexual.  Sosei and Seiiku are middle-aged twins who work in the hospital and represent the significance of mental and physical/reproductive health for everyone but especially women. Sosei works in the mental health ward as a leader for group therapy and inpatient treatment, a role that she takes very seriously. She is passionate about mental health and the inherent sense of healing that comes from community and communication. Her sister, Seiiku, is the head of the maternity ward and is very passionate about reproduction, pregnancy, childbirth. She has a very holistic, female empowerment approach with an emphasis on expecting mothers taking charge of their own birthing experience. 

Seiiku’s star pupil is Tanjo, who had a really interesting struggle with accepting her womanhood. She was initially an enemy ninja sent to Konoha to gain intel but her mission was quickly sidetracked when she began experiencing severe abdominal pains and had to be rushed to the hospital where she discovered she was in labor and she didn’t even know she was pregnant.* This startling and life-changing incident at first left her reeling and with very little sense of direction but she decided to take charge of her own life after this and train to become a midwife herself as a way to regain control over a situation in which she had none. She is very much supportive but also a tough-love type of woman who went through a very traumatic experience but came out the other side better for it and having found a true passion in helping other women and empowering them the way that she wished she had felt when she gave birth.  *This whole chapter originally began as a gag based on the fact that Kakashi Hatake’s English voice actor, Dave Wittenberg, also narrated I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant. The characters and plot points from this chapter, however, expanded to something far more developed so now here we are.  I have more characters that I could speak on on this because about ninety percent of my OCs are women but this is already getting really long and I feel like there’s a pattern in the way I write female characters so many of them will probably sound the same in terms of the way they approach womanhood and the influence that being a woman has on them. I think this is a pretty well-rounded group to have answered this for, though. Thank you for asking! 

[fursasaida]

*asking you about your foucauldian critique of social media*

Okay! This will require several steps, so long post ahoy.

Foucault’s view of discipline argues that power does not only constrain people; it is not only a negative force that stops, silences, or limits. It is also a positive force that pushes people to perform certain behaviors, say certain things, act certain ways. Power is productive.

In line with this, Foucault argues that the idea ofdiscursive freedom–being free to express yourself–is in many ways also ademand that converts the energy of being “saved” from Christianity intoself-expression. Naming your sexuality, for example, becomes a form of“confession”–not necessarily of a sin (the parallel here is not that straightforward), but ofthe inner contents of your being. Literally ex-pressing your self–pushing your inner self out–becomes liberatory, in that it is telling the truth (or rather, producing a truth). His point is that while this seems liberatory, and may be experienced that way for some, it is still inescapably tied to power’s productive side. Power has already inflected what it is possible to say about yourself, what such statements mean (the words as well as social effects), and so forth, and so by engaging in such acts of confession one is participating in and upholding the power of such systems. Here’s an excerpt from The History of Sexuality:

Whence a metamorphosis in literature: we have passed from a pleasure to be recounted and heard, centering on the heroic or marvelous narration of “trials” of bravery or sainthood, to a literature ordered according to the infinite task of extracting from the depths of oneself, in between the words, a truth which the very form of the confession holds out like a shimmering mirage. Whence too this new way of philosophizing: seeking the fundamental relation to the true, not simply in oneself—in some forgotten knowledge, or in a certain primal trace—but in the self-examination that yields, through a multitude of fleeting impressions, the basic certainties of consciousness. The obligation to confess is now relayed through so many different points, is so deeply ingrained in us, that we no longer perceive it as the effect of a power that constrains us; on the contrary, it seems to us that truth, lodged in our most secret nature, “demands” only to surface; that if it fails to do so, this is because a constraint holds it in place, the violence of a power weighs it down, and it can finally be articulated only at the price of a kind of liberation. Confession frees, but power reduces one to silence; truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an original affinity with freedom: traditional themes in philosophy, which a “political history of truth” would have to overturn by showing that truth is not by nature free—nor error servile—but that its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power. The confession is an example of this.

Self-expression is also self-production, but this is framed as a moment of liberatory truth. If confessing your sins liberated you from their weight and consequences, enabling salvation, in our secular world confessing your self liberates you from repression, invisibility, non-recognition, “living a lie.” (Obviously the current politics of “representation matters” are tied to this.) You can only be sure that you exist by confessing what you are.

Rey Chow talks about this same confessional idea with regard to ethnicity in ~the West~ (from The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism):

From the perspective of ethnicity and feminism, the logical conclusion from Foucault’s analysis is, quite clearly, unappealing and unflattering. It demonstrates that the supposed radicalization performed by race and gender awareness on representation—by the insistence on the marginal, the local, the personal, and the autobiographical, for instance—needs to be modified by an understanding of the symbiotic relation between the radical and power as such. Within this relation, resorting to the self-referential gesture as an ethnic and/or sexual minority is often tantamount to performing a confession in the criminal as well as noncriminal sense: it is to say, “Yes, that’s me,” to a call and a vocation—“Hey, Asian!” “Hey, Indian!” “Hey, gay man!”—as if it were a crime with which one has been charged; it is to admit and submit to the allegations (of otherness) that society at large has made against one. Such acts of confession may now be further described as a socially endorsed, coercive mimeticism, which stipulates that the thing to imitate, resemble, and become is none other than the ethnic or sexual minority herself. When minority individuals think that, by referring to themselves, they are liberating themselves from the powers that subordinate them, they may actually be allowing such powers to work in the most intimate fashion—from within their hearts and souls, in a kind of voluntary surrender that is, in the end, fully complicit with the guilty verdict that has been declared on them socially long before they speak.

I wanted to include this because it underlines that the confessional power relation is not limited to sexuality (where the idea of the closet might make the direct transfer of a notion of “sin” easy to assume) and ties the whole thing more closely to the idea of self-representation. What she adds to the point of Foucault’s that I summarized as “You can only be sure that you exist by confessing what you are” is that for many, you can only be what you are by confessing it. Recognition depends on it. If you are not talking about what it means to you to be Asian, announcing/performing your participation in “Asian culture,” your Asianness is suspect. (Perhaps you are an assimilationist, or “white on the inside.”) Same goes for any other form of marginalized identity. That’s what she means by “coercive mimeticism”–you must imitate what you are supposed to be in order to count as being it.

Elsewhere in this same chapter, Chow talks a lot about liberation and ultimately asks, liberation from what? Her point is that much Western thinking and politics assumes that the masses are repressed–silenced, invisibilized, made to feel shame–precisely so as to make it necessary for them to liberate themselves through confession. To be clear, this doesn’t mean that no one actually is silenced, made to feel shame, or invisibilized; they surely are, as decades of media criticism have shown. It is, however, asking whether this kind of self-announcement actually addresses the root problems. If you can only liberate yourself from repression through coercive mimeticism, how liberating is that, really?

Many marginalized people have talked about the exhausting burden of always having to be “the one in the room,” always having to talk about their particular marginalized experience, rarely getting to speak about anything else. For example, Ava DuVernay has repeatedly noted that film journalists ask her about the representational politics of her work constantly, and the craft almost never. In such interviews the journalists are effectively inviting her to, as Chow puts it, “Confess yourself!” By providing her the forum to represent her identity they nonetheless mark and other her with that same identity.

Now, as we all know by now, social media exists not to connect people or to provide a forum for expression but to sell advertising and collect data. It nonetheless does do those other things, but in particular ways. Social media is unlike a diary in that a diary has nothing to do with engagement. A diary does not require others to recognize you via the statements you write in it; it does not require others at all.

But social media does require those things. Without them, the algorithm buries your posts as “low engagement” and punishes you with a feeling of neglect in that your expression has been, it seems, ignored by your friends and loved ones. This obviously encourages users to trammel their posts into specific vocabularies, genres, and types of subject matter that the algorithm will like and that people will engage with. (Zeynep Tufekci illustrates the mechanics of this very well in her discussion of the particular challenges algorithmic favorability poses for activists in Twitter and Teargas.) In that sense it intensifies the “relay” effect of social power on what one is moved to say.

But it’s more fundamental than that. It’s not only about what one is moved to say but that one is moved to speak in the first place. Stefan Higgins elaborates on how the pressure to “share” arises from the general state of anxiety that many social media platforms induce:

Social media platforms use our ambivalence about attention and our own agency to their own benefit at the same time as they seem to cater to us. […T]hey mobilize our negative feelings to give us the impression of agency.

Crises, like sparkplugs, spur us into action: gathering information, waiting for updates, searching for opinions. This process keeps us forever suspended, forever updating, and forever in “crisis mode.” When platforms show us things that make us feel bad and anxious, it is not because they are working defectively but because they are working correctly.

This state of anxiety makes sharing updates, commenting on recent developments, commenting on the discourse about the crisis, or cracking jokes about the shared state of anxiety extremely natural. You have to do something while you’re hanging out refreshing your feed; you mark yourself as a good observer by what you retweet, respond to, comment on. This feeds the overall tendency to actually express oneself on these platforms, not just use them to observe. And much of this expression is made up of confessions: about how the crisis is making us feel, about how we don’t care enough or care too much, about how it affects us as the type of self we are imitating (coercive mimeticism).

This rising tide of expression/confession has a secondary effect in turn. In a world where (seemingly) everyone has a public megaphone and makes frequent use of it, the act of not speaking becomes, itself, potentially suspect. This is why after, e.g., a terrorist attack in Paris, many people changed their Facebook icons or added a filter that stood for solidarity with/grieving for the victims. (In other words, they did not only observe this iteration of crisis in Higgins’ sense; they commented on it.)

Many, perhaps most of those users had never been to Paris, knew no one there, and had no special expertise about the place or the event. Practically speaking, they had nothing to do with it. But not to participate in these icon “confessions” becomes tantamount to saying “I don’t care about this tragedy.” More and more public figures are functionally obligated to speak about any issue in the news cycle, whether or not they actually have anything of value to say about it, because otherwise their silence is “telling” or “deafening.” In other words, the pressure to confess one’s inner truth becomes more and more constant for more and more people, because not doing so becomes a statement in itself.

I thought the Duchess of Cambridge’s recent appearance at the Golden Globes was a good example. It was the year that the women attending wore black in recognition of #TimesUp. Kate compromised by wearing a dress that was partially black and partially a dark, solid color. There was MASSIVE discussion about what this meant–did she support the movement? Was she saying she didn’t? Why hadn’t she spared everyone the angst by releasing a statement, if she wasn’t going to wear black? A few decades ago this would have played out differently. The royalty are supposed to be “apolitical” (lol), and so the standard operating procedure would have been simply to say nothing. Saying nothing would not have meant active disagreement or non-support in the eyes of much of the public (though activists would probably feel differently). It would have been the thing to do if you want to stay neutral. I think her people were operating on that outdated playbook when they chose a compromise frock and agreed that she shouldn’t issue a statement to clarify what the dress did or did not mean. But nowadays, silence or even ambiguity automatically means “I’m against it” (or whatever the suspect, Bad view is) because the expectation is that one should always come out with a statement of some sort. So if you don’t, it must be because your inner truth–what you think about it–is something you think wouldn’t be well received. A lot of people (including happy royal-watchers who love Kate) were very troubled by her silence, even though she is not in the industry, not even from this country, and arguably not really in a position where her opinion ought to be offered.

But silence does not mean silence anymore. When the social default is to express oneself all the time about everything, silence becomes a statement of refusal to participate, which must be meaningful in itself.

This, in turn, reinforces the increasing ubiquity of the obligation to confess. And it’s so easy! And it comes with various kinds of rewards! All of this in turn serves the business models of social media companies: “Liberate yourself through confession by generating more data and eyeballs for us to sell!” (Again, this is not to say that people don’t actually find liberating community and connection on social media. Tufekci makes this very clear in Twitter and Teargas. But that’s not what social media is for.)

I strongly suspect that the tendency for individuals who are not marginalized in any major way to identify themselves as somehow deviant is part of this. It’s not only about the representational dynamics described above: people are disaffected in general, and we live in an individualist society with strong narratives about personal branding, self-discovery, and setting oneself apart. So people deal with their sense of disaffection by producing themselves as (supposedly) unique, whether this means creating a fake online identity, identifying with diagnoses or sexualities that may or may not really apply or mean much (”heteroflexible,” anyone?), or getting really obnoxious about their taste in music or whatever else. This is basic culture of capitalism stuff. But part of how it actually happens is through confession.

Chris Fleming summarized it well, I think:

I’m also tired of people normalizing the word “freak.” “Sometimes I’ll have two lattes! I’m such a freak!” “Sometimes I’ll sing along to music in my car. I’m a goddamn freak!!”

I think it’s really notable that people repeatedly confess their freakiness, even when it is incredibly normal shit. Why put it in these terms? Why not distinguish oneself through excellence or accomplishments or anything else? Why do so many social media posts start with “Is it just me or…” “Am I the only one who…” “Does anybody else…” and all the other phrases that imply that the poster is confessing a quirk or oddity, or something they at least think might be abnormal? Even when it’s super-duper boringly normal?

Basic insecurity is part of it, of course. So too is the fact that these phrasings invite others to engage: to chime in, saying “@ me next time,” “called out,” “I feel seen,” etc. This is one of the “genres” of posts that social media encourages by its engagement-oriented algorithmic structures. But more than that, speaking this way turns what could be just “sharing” a stray thought into an act of confession. Pretending that one is expressing something from behind a veil of repression (because it means you’re ~coming out as a freak, confessing something) allows the poster–even those belonging to the most normative categories–to access that sense of liberation, of self-production, of “speaking your truth” that is involved with the acts of confession structurally required of the marginalized.

People often fret about the reward structure of social media as being a kind of dopamine factory, where you get positive responses for posting. Various critics are worried about people counting likes and comments and reposts, on the model of a lab rat getting pellets. This is probably a real thing; I’ve experienced it at times. But it’s not the whole story. To go back to Higgins, the emotional experience of social media is ambivalent (more than positive). We sit in what Sianne Ngai calls “ugly feelings”:

Historically, scholars have tended to interpret unambiguous feelings like anger, fear, and happiness as the primary drivers of our actions, but for Ngai it’s the ugly feelings — ambivalent emotions like envy, irritation, and anxiety — that are “perversely functional.” Ngai argues that ambiguous and ugly feelings are non-cathartic, because they “foreground a failure of emotional release.” This failure prompts a kind of “suspended action”: exactly the kind of obstructed agency we often feel at the mercy of endlessly updating platforms and algorithms. To feel irritation is to feel a kind of ongoing, weak anger that does not come with the emotional release of an outburst of fury, since we may not know what, exactly, we are irritated about. The suspended and even disorienting feelings of irritation or anxiety drive an unceasing desire to act in some way to overcome the confusion these feelings cause.

Because ugly feelings are confusing, and because that confusion motivates a desire in us to “feel better,” negative emotions are actually productive of action — a productivity perfectly suited to information-gathering, capital-accumulating platform corporations.

There are two points to be made here. First, that last line about productivity is easily paralleled to Foucault’s understanding of discipline and power. Second, while Higgins is more focused on how the desire for catharsis keeps us refreshing feeds, looking for something that will help us feel that our “ugly” emotions are resolved, I would point out that another way to generate a sense of catharsis (however fleeting or week) is the liberatory rush of self ex-pression, of confession. And social media makes it possible to get that anytime you want.

While this affordance is definitely tied to engagement–confession requires a hearer–it’s not simply about the mechanics of wanting more likes. It’s also not just about moving your thoughts and feelings out of your brain, like in a diary. It’s about not just being seen, but being seen to have confessed: that is where the reward of confession lies. In this reduced, micro form, it is a way of reminding ourselves that we exist, proving to ourselves and others that we are who we say we are. Higgins again: “Although many critiques of technology and social media claim that ‘compulsive’ platforms nullify our sense of agency and alienate us from an idealized ‘real life,’ it may be more accurate to say they flatter us into thinking that we are in control.“

In all of these senses, the availability of social media and its algorithmic structures and its business model encourage, indeed almost require, acts of confession. They discipline us to express ourselves. This is subordinate to capitalism’s bigger structures, obviously (Chow didn’t title her book the way she did for nothing), but it is particular to surveillance capitalism because only a situation in which confession is a) very easy to do, b) incentivized by institutional, social, and infrastructural conditions, and c) able to be recorded and quantified serves that model of accumulation. There have always been people who wander the streets pouring out their life story (or ideas, or whatever) to anyone who will listen because they have no other means of feeling seen and recognized--of producing their own existence. But social media makes street preachers of us all, and our confessors are data brokers. Power is productive, and what it produces in us on social media is an endless torrent of confessional speech.

[liunaticfringe]

NOTE: Google translation (LiunaticFringe highlighting)

Lucy Liu: Root Freedom | Jia Ren Cover

2020 opened a new decade.

Idols of the eighties,

Some are still active on the screen and the Internet.

Some have disappeared,

Some are also attracting much attention,

Some have fallen asleep.

We finally arrived at the "future" in science fiction,

Discover with Liu Yuling the familiar sense of time in this "future."

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At 11:30 am, in the city of Brooklyn, New York, a 19th-century warehouse remodeled art community and creative studio, Liu Yuling, full of silver hair, wore large retro glasses and her body turned sideways. She was holding an eleven-inch old-fashioned black-and-white TV in her right hand, and the antenna stood like unruly hair, and the screen was flashing monotonous white noise lines, just in the same direction as her black-and-white striped tie. The prototype of this shape is Andy Warhol.

After the April issue of "Jia Ren" covers the retro theme of the 1980s, Liu Yuling proposed that it should be more interesting to play. She worked with the creative team to select several fashion icons that have a profound impact on her personally and the world-David Bowie, Prince, BoyGeorge, Debbie Harry , Madonna and Andy Warhol, re-enact their classic looks with seasonal fashion. The last idol is Liu Yuling herself. Two sets of fashions are the retro punk style of the 1980s and the modern minimalist department. The New Wave movement of the 1980s has become an old dream, and Liu Yuling is pushing the new wave of this era.

This original look from Andy Warhol comes from the cable television show Andy Warhol Online that he launched in the 1980s. He was addicted to TV and said, "I love TV, and I'm super jealous of people who can have their own programs on TV. I also want to have my own program."

In 1979, he spent $ 40,000 on a premium broadcast-quality camera, and hired professional television producers to start broadcasting his own programs on Manhattan Cable at his own expense. The television dream continued throughout his eighties, until 1987, when he suddenly died of a myocardial infarction.

Artists who do not want to be on TV are not good actors. Like Andy, Liu Yuling has a strong curiosity in all aspects of the world and has made breakthroughs in different fields. At the age of fifteen, she wants to be an artist. She creates collages, walks through the streets of New York with a big camera, and transfers from the Department of Communication at New York University to study Asian language and culture at the University of Michigan. During college, she was spotted by scouts in the New York subway, she took commercial shots of stationery stores, and began to take on guest roles in some episodes. Until the last year of college, she was selected by the student troupe to star in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", after which she began to fully realize her actor dream.

She said to herself that she had never thought of giving up since the moment she made her decision. On the Hollywood screen, there are few faces of Chinese-American actors. It is even more difficult for her petite and ordinary person to want to break out of her own world. On her first debut, she lived in two small jobs and lived in a small apartment rented by her brother, rushing to deliver resumes, auditions, and appointments. Looking back, Liu Yuling said: "I am brave and simple. I think pure is a good thing because it means freedom. I just want to learn and do what I like to do."

At the age of 29, Liu Yuling had debuted for eight years. She first appeared on the screen as a hostess in "Flying Over Beverly Hills" (1991), and later as a female student in the CBS drama "Pearl", her popularity has gradually increased. And what really made her fame was that she played the Chinese lawyer Wu Ling in the American drama `` Sweet Girl '', a clever, cool, decisive and slightly weird character that won the hearts of the audience with a strong aura. It also subverts the stereotype of Chinese Americans in American film and television works.

It was originally a temporary arrangement with only eight episodes, but screenwriter David Kelly changed her role to a resident character at the request of the audience. The incident sparked widespread debate in the American community about the Asian impression, and she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award.

Every character since then, whether it is the fiercely popular special agent in "Pili Jiaowa", the elegant and cold killer in "Kill Bill", or the female version of "Watson" in "Holmes: Basic Deduction", or In the exaggerated socialite of the woman, Liu Yuling is always climbing over various invisible glass ceilings, transcending the gulf of identity, gender, and age, and challenging seemingly impossible roles.

To this day, Liu Yuling still devotes herself to life and work with the courage and simplicity of her debut. For her, every day is a new beginning, and it is worth investing all your energy in learning, reading, and experience. Create new selves in the process of meeting different people.

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According to current buzzwords, Liu Yuling is an out-of-the-box slash youth, acting, hosting, director, producer, game dubbing, artistic creation, United Nations Children's Fund ambassador, she is fully committed to every job. At the age of forty-six, she made the bravest decision in her life and helped her become a self-selected single mother through third-party transplantation for in vitro fertilization. For Liu Yuling, there is no difference in work. As long as you start, you must take it seriously.

The itinerary of the day of shooting was dense from morning to night. At eight in the morning, she personally sent her four-year-old son to school, and then rushed to the shooting scene in Brooklyn. The filming continued from 9:30 a.m. to the evening. Seven sets of looks were made, and the staff took turns to change the work. And Liu Yuling maintains a high degree of concentration throughout the process, injecting soul into each character, sometimes it is David Bowie, who is male and female, sometimes sexy Madonna, sometimes a neutral and feminine George boy, sometimes an eclectic security. Di Warhol.

Instead of playing them, she gave them part of herself. She used her body and soul to travel through time and space and talk to them. In the end, she returned to herself. She didn't want to conceal the wrinkles in the corner of her eyes, all the wind and frost was smoothed by the eyes of understanding the world.

At 11.40 in the evening, half of the staff had already left the field, and Liu Yuling was finally able to change into her original clothes and sit at the dressing table to remove makeup. Suddenly remembered something, she turned back and said aloud to the rest of the staff: "Thank you."

There were many people at the beginning, and she always stayed to the last.

She has been an actor since she was nineteen years old, and still loves acting, and her role has become increasingly full. In the long course of her life, she kept adding new roles for herself.

She appeared in the "Kung Fu Panda" series as a beautiful woman snake, and then accepted a series of game voice acting work, including "High Speed ​​Skiing", "Thunderbolt: Thrilling Game" and "Rogue Blood". Liu Yuling said that in real life, she doesn't play games often, but she also devotes herself when playing. She is always trying new things, and sound performances allow her to delve into different ways of acting. She is also passionate about the director. In 2010, she started crying and started shooting a short film "Mena" in Mumbai, based on the Indian girl Mena who was trafficked as a sex slave at the age of eleven, and then directed the sixth season of "Holmes: Basic Deduction", and The eighth episode of Deadly Woman.

In the play, she likes the replacement of different identities. The same is true in real life. As an actor, she is located at one end of the lens to pass the role to the world. The director's work allowed her to stand on the other side of the camera, and through communication and collaboration, the entire team understood the picture she wanted to convey and made it a reality.

She said: "If I don’t have enthusiasm, I won't do it. And if I love it, I will go all out every day with my eyes open. My personality is so strong that I can't spend my life in peace, Everything is necessary to go all out, whether it is to be a chef, an actor, or even in a garment factory, I must inject all the energy and do my best. "She did the work of the garment factory. Yuling Liu, who grew up in Queens, New York, is a second-generation immigrant. Originally a senior intellectual's parents immigrated to the United States in the 1960s and found it difficult to enter the mainstream American society. In order to subsidize households, she was doing two jobs at the same time: serving plates and working in a garment factory. Since then, she has been working in the performing arts circle to support the actor's dream.

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Liu Yuling grew up in a harsh family with almost militarized management. Parents are struggling for a living, and they don't have much time for spiritual communication except eating and sleeping. It wasn't until her father had cancer that she had the opportunity to talk to him more about how Chinese culture and immigration experience shaped him and connected his family. Now, she takes the sick mother back to live with her and her son, and examines everything that went through her childhood, as if she knew each other again.

Son Rockwell grew up in New York and has lived in the spotlight since he was a child. However, Liu Yuling still hoped that he would grow up in a low-key environment and teach him the meaning of work and his mission as a person: "I want him to realize that material is not the most important thing. I grew up in a material-deficient environment. I don’t think life is lacking. Understanding the value of hard work, being a humble person, and loving what you do is an unparalleled gift. I think the most exciting thing is to do what you do with love. He may want to be a doctor, an artist, it doesn't matter what he wants to do. I just hope that he can pursue his dreams bravely and fearlessly. "

As the second generation of immigrants, Liu Yuling felt the empathy of the late actress Huang Liushuang in the difficult immigration life and the pressure of ethnic minorities. On February 8, 1960, the name of Huang Liushuang, (Anna May Wong) who had died, appeared on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, becoming the first Chinese-American actress to stay here. Sixty years later, Liu Yuling left the second star next to her name, becoming the second Chinese actress to leave her name here.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Huang Liushuang was born in Chinatown, Los Angeles, and his father made a living from the laundry. With a Chinese face, she was racially discriminated from an early age.After entering Hollywood, she could only play the Asians under the stereotype-prostitutes, Mongolian slaves, often dying by death, gorgeous but weak, usually attached to high-ranking White male. In the end of his life, Huang Liushuang couldn't get rid of the Chinese face of Hollywood, nor could he get the approval of the Chinese. The number of films gradually decreased, and eventually he died of heart disease due to excessive drinking.

During the star awarding ceremony, Liu Yuling said: "How lucky I am to have seniors like Huang Liushuang and Bruce Lee to lay the ground for Chinese actors. If my life's work can bridge the gap, the role of stereotypes played in Huang Liushuang is now mainstream in Asian I will be very happy to build a bridge in the role of the movie industry. I am also part of this change. "

Speaking of Huang Liushuang, Liu Yuling was quite moved: "Huang Liushuang has never realized the dream of a real actor. I think she died because of a broken heart. She has enthusiasm but cannot share. She plays various stereotyped roles, but cannot find To the true self. That must be very unbearable. "

Where is her true self? Liu Yuling recalled her childhood. The family did not bring her nourishment of art and culture. The Chinese family struggling with the food and clothing line did not have time to take the children to appreciate and feel the beauty. And she was looking for beauty on the cement street, between the dirt. In the cracks in the street, there are ants, and under the soil, there are snail shells. There is not much space in reinforced concrete New York, but she will spend hours squatting on the ground, staring at the cracks in the ground, trying to find the mysteries of the universe from them.

The mystery of the universe was opened to her further after she transferred from New York University to Michigan.

At the University of Michigan, Liu Yuling chose to major in Asian language and culture. She hopes to leave New York and study her subjects in a quieter city and learn about her native culture: "I want to go deeper into Chinese and study Asian philosophy, which will help me better understand myself and my parents At that time, I just connected the dots, stepped back, and saw the complete picture for the first time in my life.

I feel like I've been holding my breath for a long time, and finally I can breathe out. And when you exhale, you finally see your place in the world, their place in the world, and the relationship between the world and you. It's as if the lens is zoomed out and you start to see everything as it was. With this perspective, you can finally accept yourself and others emotionally, really enjoy getting along with others, and know what you really want. "

Participating in the summer project of Beijing Normal University gave her the opportunity to come to China for the first time. Liu Yuling recalled that it was an incredible journey of self-exploration: "For the first time in my life, I looked at the people around me, all of whom had the same skin color and the same eyes. I finally knew where I came from. Mountains and rivers I feel like part of them. I finally found a sense of cultural belonging. Everything has a new meaning. "

If the streets and lanes brought Liu Yuling's first contact with contemporary China, then the trip to the Temple of Heaven made it possible for her to visually connect with this ancient civilization. Numbers, colors, shapes, and every detail are closely linked to the cosmic view of heaven and man.

The prayer hall has four large columns, which symbolize the four seasons of the year; the twelve gold pillars in the middle layer, which symbolize the twelve months of the year; the twelve pillars in the outer layer, which means twelve hours a day; Implied twenty-four solar terms. Long history contains wisdom connected with nature. Liu Yuling closed her eyes and clearly described what she saw and said at the time: "We cannot change the flow of the four seasons, the ebb and flow. We are part of nature and the universe. All the content learned in these books is presented in front of me in an intuitive image. It's like reading a classic for the first time, and you can't believe that you met it for the first time in your life. And for centuries, it has been waiting for you in this world. "

Rumi's poems give her the same feeling: "They are so simple, yet so timeless. About friendship, about love, about death. People have not yet invented language, but only communicated through stones and symbols. When you were young, you thought that the world started with you and finally you, and gradually grew, and you realized that you are only a small component. The more you see, the more you can break through your small cage and become Humility and harmony. "

"At this moment, I was tied to the cane of love; at this moment, I gave up thinking about the consequences ... I destroyed my thoughts and eliminated my anxiety. What else do I need? Blood flows in my veins. I am life itself. "— Rumi

"I didn't start to be a mother at that time. I would work all night in the studio. Art immerses me and forgets the passage of time. I thought it was only an hour, but it was dawn. I remember I had a chocolate Colored Labrador, it will sit in the studio with me, and then go back to sleep in the bedroom. Sometimes it will come back, sigh in front of me, and then get down. Then I will You know, I've forgotten time again. It's as if the whole night suddenly disappeared. "

She closed her eyes and seemed to catch the most accurate sentence from the air: "Time is condensed."

Liu Yuling's career as an artist began almost simultaneously with her career as an actor. Since 1993, she has begun her creative work. She has been involved in various art media, photography, abstract expression style oil painting, ink painting, sketching, screen printing, and collages and installations.

Her love for art made her choose Andy Warhol as one of the tribute idols for this shoot. Liu Yuling appreciates Andy's talent in bringing commercial art to the extreme, and also appreciates his solitary appreciation. She also likes Willem de Kooning, Georgia O 'Keeffe, whose influence can be seen in her Chunga oil painting series. The images of these works are from the Spring Palace in the Ukiyo-e paintings of the 17th century. They use bold and vivid colors to show the wanton display of love.

Liu Yuling's Totem series explores the human spine, and she embroiders human bones with threads on bare linen. Liu Yuling said that if she returns to college, she may choose to continue to explore medicine, understand the structure of the body and organs, and how they operate precisely. For her, the spine represents the basic characteristics of human nature, and the different textures in each work symbolize the deep interpretation of different emotions. The spine is also like a node in life. In the perception of pain, emotions are always closely connected with the body.

In 2019, he presented the double exhibition "Unhomed Belonging" with artist Rao Shubi at the National Gallery of Singapore, covering works from various media. The highlight of this artist's career made her realize the inherent connection in her creative medium. As early as 2008, she has started using ready-made objects for her creations, and the newly presented Lost and Found series further extends the method of misappropriating ready-made objects. Liu Yuling collected overprinted and discarded book covers at a printing factory in Italy, rebind them into books, cut the inside pages, and embedded them in everyday life, such as shells, rocks, and soft drinks Tins, paper coffee cups, metal accessories.

Liu Yuling said: "These lost things once belonged to them and were abandoned after they were used. In these pages, they found a new home." The 195 bound books presented at the exhibition contain the items The stories of different places, different cities, and different people, and at this time they are converged by the cause of fate, Liu Yuling found a new home for some of them. At the time of sale, ten books will be recommended to the collector as a whole group. Liu Yuling will choose the content of the book based on the people in the collection, so the final "library" will have an internal connection with the new home.

If different works reflect different aspects of Liu Yuling's character, then the identity of the artist and the actor are also her different aspects. She cannot make a choice: "I am an actor and an artist." The two often meet, but they have some differences. Different: "Creation requires privacy and absolute focus, while actors need to work with the lens and collaboration."

What is the purpose of this kind of identity? Liu Yuling explores exactly on each road. Over the age of fifty, Liu Yuling has gone through a lot of life and death. The Seventy Two series is inspired by the Hebrew alphabetic sequence of 72 God's names. The Velocity series focuses on individual choices in collective events. After the 9/11 terrorist attack, she took a picture of the New York City skyline at Battery Park, the site of the attack, and became the background for this group of works. "People who jump off the ninety-ninth floor know that they are not alive. But they still hold their hands and jump out of the window. Maybe they believe that as long as they hold their hands firmly, they can find another one after death. road."

On top of the collage photos are found items found on the ruins, as well as poems she wrote: "I will search all corners, as if rain covered every street in the world. I will find you."

At twelve in the evening, Liu Yuling finally stepped out of the shooting scene. There is no rain tonight in New York, but there is a salty tide brought by the East River. In endless time, among countless stars, what is she looking for? Thought that what is lost will always find belonging at the other end.

[theorynexus]

Fudge, I already did 57/ Now I have to do 58/ 13 over 12, man / I guess we’re doing human stuff instead of trolling, today.

Coincidentally via some sort of textual wonder possibly related to authorial intent and/or miracles, we now have to focus on Roxy, now. Somewhat ironic, considering Terezi just said she and John wouldn’t work out. ...

***shift eyes, something about knowing the unknowable and the vagueries thereof, possible interference by the new Narrator, et cetera*** Hmmm~

What, so black holes cause suck up all the voidiness into themselves via proximity?!   Noooo~      Who’d have thought!     (In all seriousness, that gives some interesting resonance mechanic relation, here. I want to know whether it’s just Alt!Calliope that can sense said thoughts, if it’s just Roxy being over-emotional, or if any other observer would be able to pick such thoughts up and it’s just a mater of proxy-imity.)

Okay, then. I thought the point of this was to look like a completely passive observer and not tip people off other than via the black eyes, but you do you, I guess-- if that’s intentional.  Nice gazing out through the fourth wall, though. I’m sure Jade would be/is vaguely proud, knowing the narrative resonance, here, given her own fourth wall breaking shenanigans. 

I blame time and void interactions. Also Dave being an insufferable prick. Good to know, regarding Roxy and their feelings toward Dave, though.

Is Dirk going to literally shoot him in the arse?   That would be horribly ironic, and probably quite crippling to Joke Jake’s reputation and/or the power of his endorsement, if so.   Semi-related:   I do sortof understand Dave’s belief/concern with regards to the importance of this event.    What I want to know is why there are not thousands of Daves running around, all helping the campaign and being available to deal with other important tasks.

“Iced” cream is the best fricking thing, Dirk, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.

This really reminds me of Equius and Nepeta, and that is sortof cute. I almost can’t stand it.  Honestly, this relationship is actually quite similar, except Alt!Calliope is much more dominant in the relationship than Nepeta was. Also Dirk probably has more potential to damage things than Equius did (other than way out of the temporal frame of that moirallegiance, as part of Lord English--- and even then, Nepeta ironically acted as a counter to his muscle-bound rage, albeit way after much of the damage had already been done [thanks, Davesprite {albeit, unrelated to the matter at hand, this relationship was probably why Davepettasprite^2 was destined in such a way to handle Lord English, in addition to the prophesies surrounding Dave dealing with him, Davesprite being the first one to get Caledfwlch, and the flying off into the sun prophesy (which was aided greatly by Seppucrow, the true hero of the story)}]).    I guess that makes this relationship relatively more important, maybe.

So fricking wonderful and adorable.   I do wonder why there are not that many consorts, though. Maybe they are just too distracted and hyperactive to have much in the way of drive to participate in politics.  The humans I sortof vaguely understand, albeit I’d have thought that more might show up specifically for Jake’s speech, assuming that it was announced beforehand.

Dirk feels predictably antagonized, and is lashing out. I have a feeling that he’d intended to do something major before all this control was taken from him, but this will probably make it worse. Hmm.

Heh.   I don’t think that he means to “pump her full of daylight,” at the moment, so this is still funny instead of terrifying.

Huh. Dave already knew about Calliope’s gender and is chill with it. Neat.

Oh. Umm... while I’m sure that he does not need that in order to target Jade’s body if he intends to do so, that is quite foreboding. He is indeed quite capable of tricking people into doing things, at times, isn’t he?

HAH!   That is horrible, you self-obsessed weirdo! XD

More serious than being mind controlled by a space witch with bad intentions who has mind powers stolen from all the major players of her species, huh?  (I seriously still wonder how the fight against her went so relatively-seemingly easily, and what happened with her curse.  Maybe it only transfers in LE’s proximity, or something. )      ... Also, it wasn’t entirely just a joke, Roxy, geeze.

Thaaat’s what happens when your world is under a corrupting influence that is twisting the fabric of reality to their whim.  (The question is: Is this Dirk or Calliope?  Does she really have the right to judge him for his actions, if he really is expressing free will in doing so?   Yes, yes she does, because he is strongly subverting the will of others, and justice in Paradox Space demands some sort of counterbalancing force.  If his excess relevance as the Narrator is the only cost he faces, rather than dying a Just Death, he should feel lucky.)

***peals of cherubic laughter peal out in the background***    Random reminder:  Angels (in Homestuck) are terrifying demons that should be taken as harbringers of the apocalypse. Alt!Calliope has already played this job once along with Lord English. Is her presence outside canon an ill omen by definition?  (I am not sure Calliope the younger entirely counts, given her special circumstances, by the way. Hard to say.)

Beautiful. It’s almost like he’s an open PAGE of Hope, waiting to be written! 

This is a somewhat wise impression.  But it’s complicated, and great power means great responsibility. Especially when the nuclear genie has already been let out of the bottle on account of someone’s great ambition.  (Note: I actually find Jane’s impulse to rule over her creation to be a reasonable one to have, all things considered. I am not judging her negatively for this. I am just not 100% certain that it is the right path to go on before they get a few dozen more years to wise them up, or maybe a few centuries.   Wisdom is a very important thing for leadership, and it comes with age!   Of course, experience also helps, but it might be useful to have some sort of smaller-scale experimentation with politic--  oh, wait, wasn’t she made a mayor at some point, according to the credits?  That really hasn’t been emphasized in the epilogue at all, but probably should be more heavily considered.    It’s still not enough experience for me to feel confident in her, but it’s something. Hmm.)

I mean... I can hear you. I thought your awareness was still there. I guess maybe having your position of control taken away from you might have sapped that as well, maybe.   And yes, it is very interesting, indeed. Now, please put down the gun and try to negotiate more reasonably and in a more civilized fashion than the mistaken cowboy diplomacy idea you’re now engaging in. I will give Dirk some slack insofar as he is still getting used to her identifying as such, but he is sortof making a fool of himself by lashing out at Alt!Callie like that. It’s rather irrational, and doesn’t reflect very well on his character. It makes him out as being rather petulant and inflexible when it comes to identity matters.

Yeeeeep.

This is true (regarding the last part).  It is also really sad to see them fighting like this. >:

Dave, you are being a dummy. You should really stop.

Aww. That is a very cute reaction. :3 Also, that is somewhat dishonest, Alt!Calliope.  You should say “seemingly” nothing.  ***harrumphs and wags my finger at them!***

It is somewhat rude of him to laugh, but I am almost tempted to laugh too, specifically at the fact that this is Alt!Calliope confirming emphatically the beauty of their other version in Roxy’s eyes. It has a sort of ironic tension and silliness to it. Possibly some pride.        I therefore cannot entirely blame him for his laughter, for I do not know whether that is what he is laughing at, or if he’s laughing at the idea of finding an alien skull monster beautiful (which she really is).

It is sortof nice to see this encouragement from Dirk, albeit it is probably laced with irony and sarcasm.  Knowing one’s self and admitting/accepting the things one feels is incredibly important to a person’s health! It feels brotherly of him.

I wonder if Roxy actually feels that way (that it is none of her business), or if it’s Alt!Calliope’s somewhat cold (and sarcastically-directed) interpretation of things. Hmm.

A very important question to ask for someone who is dealing with their own identity issues and/or worries about their friends judging them for them. This is really all there is to say on the matter.

That is a complicated question.  The answer is this:  Identity is only partially self-deterministic.  You can certainly struggle and hope and wish for certain things, indulge in certain behaviors, and see what rubs off on you, or what you feel right about, but in all honesty, you are who you are.    This CAN change over time, and that is something that most people don’t think about. To say you “change your mind” about “the person you wanna be” is not an accurate statement: you don’t necessarily choose anything at all, other than whether you want to actually embrace who you are and/or are becoming, and if you will actually tell anyone about it.  In that sense: whether it is too late to change your mind about who you say and outwardly project you are?---  no, it is not too late.  However, it can potentially be pretty fricking confusing to people, and some friends may not be able to handle it, especially if they have pretty deeply imbedded themselves in your own journey/identity, and/or anchored themselves in it as part of their own.   This can cause them to be pretty put off, and potentially to have difficulty maintaining their relationship with you. As such, in summary:   one should be careful and always very much self-reflective about identity issues.  The choice to come out with any sort of change or difference is not an easy one, and someone should not be blamed for either side they fall upon--- whether they want to keep who they are a secret and/or for how long, or if they want to project it to the world (unless they are really violent about it and/or attempt to shame someone/force themselves upon another person as a “necessary” thing to do for their own growth/impulses or whathaveyou: that is just abusive and wrong).

No. While there is some degree of social capital involved and thus you should attempt to time things properly and take the needs of others into account (which means you have no right to get upset at them if they don’t react a certain way and/or are too involved with whatever is going on in their life right then to grapple with your assuredly stunning revelation), one does not owe their friends any sort of bombshell moment, and any sort of desire for one and/or push on someone else’s part for identity-related drama and/or revelation is actually what is greedy.

***shrug***     I guess it’s funny insofar as it has psychological humor wrapped into it and it makes the phraseology more cutesy (thus more approachable, I guess), but it’s not mind-blowing or anything.

And that’s okay. Someone can be casual about these things and not make it a federal fricking issue if they don’t want to.  It’s also okay to have repeated revelations and/or constantly wrestle with who you actually are. It’s not something to be embarrassed about or paranoid with in a social respect, especially in a world with numerous different species of alien humanoids that have different and somewhat conflicting types of identities and drives.  Almost indisputably, that should make identity issues less of a socially big deal.

Yes. Just like you helped him before.   Oh wait, what was that? You had years to figure it out, but did nothing?    Ah, well. Couldn’t be helped, I guess.   Brothers do have their own separate matters to consider, after all.

***snickers***      Honestly, he’s probably right, but for different reasons than he’s expressing.    

***cough time travel, cough***       Note:  I actually don’t want to read that. It would feel like a really awkward sort of waste of narrative time.  I’m just annoyed at the very ironic lack of time manipulation he’s been doing. Though in this case it sortof does suit him, insofar as he is using time concerns that he obviously could get around as if they were a suit of armor and/or armaments for him to verbally exploit.  Very knight-y. Aaand this feels like about the right time to end this post.

[hamliet]

MDZS meets MBTI

The Myers-Briggs Personality type is older than the Enneagram, and consists of sixteen types based on four different pairs of personality traits: Introversion vs. Extroversion; Sensing vs. Intuition, Feeling vs. Thinking, and Perceiving vs. Judging. To be clear, none of these categories are black and white–for example, all Feelers are capable of using logic, and Thinkers have feelings and care about people–but it’s a cool way of understanding personalities.

I’m not going to do every character, but simply the characters I think are most important and the ones for whom I have the most information to analyze (some is def guesswork). :P Also, this is just my opinion and definitely open to debate! MBTI isn’t a science; it’s just something I do for fun. 

Wei WuXian-->ENFP “The Campaigner” 

Unlike many of the others, Wei WuXian’s type seems very, very obvious. He might be the most ENFP to ever ENFP. 

The ENFP personality is a true free spirit. They are often the life of the party, but unlike Explorers, they are less interested in the sheer excitement and pleasure of the moment than they are in enjoying the social and emotional connections they make with others. Charming, independent, energetic and compassionate... if they’ve found a cause that sparks their imagination, ENFPs will bring an energy that oftentimes thrusts them into the spotlight, held up by their peers as a leader and a guru – but this isn’t always where independence-loving ENFPs want to be. 

Lan WangJi-->ISTJ “The Logistician”

Why yes, Lan WangJi is the exact opposite of his beloved Wei WuXian. He’s another one that seems pretty obvious to me. 

ISTJ personalities are no-nonsense... ISTJs have little tolerance for indecisiveness, but lose patience even more quickly if their chosen course is challenged with impractical theories, especially if they ignore key details...

ISTJ personalities adhere to established rules and guidelines regardless of cost, reporting their own mistakes and telling the truth even when the consequences for doing so could be disastrous. To ISTJs, honesty is far more important than emotional considerations, and their blunt approach leaves others with the false impression that ISTJs are cold, or even robotic. People with this type may struggle to express emotion or affection outwardly, but the suggestion that they don’t feel, or worse have no personality at all, is deeply hurtful.

Jiang Cheng-->ISTJ “The Logistician” 

Yes, the same type as Lan WangJi, just a tad more bitter. Personality tests, even if two people seem to fit a type extremely well, can’t define someone, because people are just so infinitely more complex. The part about being taken advantage of reminds me here of how Jin GuangYao points out that people took advantage of Jiang Cheng’s need to prove himself to drive a wedge between him and Wei WuXian. 

ISTJs’ dedication is an excellent quality, allowing them to accomplish much, but it is also a core weakness that less scrupulous individuals take advantage of. ISTJs seek stability and security, considering it their duty to maintain a smooth operation, and they may find that their coworkers and significant others shift their responsibilities onto them, knowing that they will always take up the slack. ISTJs tend to keep their opinions to themselves and let the facts do the talking, but it can be a long time before observable evidence tells the whole story.

Lan XiChen-->ENFJ “The Protagonist” 

Sadly, this description is pretty accurate to Lan XiChen’s strengths and also his flaws--in particular in terms of his relationship with Jin GuangYao. 

ENFJs radiate authenticity, concern and altruism, unafraid to stand up and speak when they feel something needs to be said. They find it natural and easy to communicate with others, especially in person, and their Intuitive (N) trait helps people with the ENFJ personality type to reach every mind, be it through facts and logic or raw emotion. ENFJs easily see people’s motivations and seemingly disconnected events, and are able to bring these ideas together and communicate them as a common goal with an eloquence that is nothing short of mesmerizing.

The interest ENFJs have in others is genuine, almost to a fault – when they believe in someone, they can become too involved in the other person’s problems, place too much trust in them.

Jin GuangYao-->ESFJ (?) “The Consul”

This one I’m less certain of--FJ seems certain to me, but I/E and N/S is a bit debatable. I think he best meets the description of “the Consul” though. 

ESFJs are more concerned with fashion and their appearance, their social status and the standings of other people... ESFJs love to be of service, enjoying any role that allows them to participate in a meaningful way, so long as they know that they are valued and appreciated. Coming to terms with their sensitivity is ESFJs’ biggest challenge – people are going to disagree and they’re going to criticize, and while it hurts, it’s just a part of life. 

Nie MingJue-->ESTJ “The Executive” 

Less certain of E or I than for the other three, but the way he failed to overcome the challenge of how not everyone processes the same way seems very ESTJ to me. 

ESTJs are representatives of tradition and order, utilizing their understanding of what is right, wrong and socially acceptable to bring families and communities together. Embracing the values of honesty, dedication and dignity, people with the ESTJ personality type are valued for their clear advice and guidance, and they happily lead the way on difficult paths. 

ESTJs are aware of their surroundings and live in a world of clear, verifiable facts – the surety of their knowledge means that even against heavy resistance, they stick to their principles and push an unclouded vision of what is and is not acceptable... they expect their reliability and work ethic to be reciprocated – people with this personality type meet their promises, and if partners or subordinates jeopardize them through incompetence or laziness, or worse still, dishonesty, they do not hesitate to show their wrath... 

The main challenge for ESTJs is to recognize that not everyone follows the same path or contributes in the same way.

Nie HuaiSang-->ISFP “The Adventurer” 

Interesting name for a timid HuaiSang, but I really do think he is an ISFP. He is notably one of the few Nie Sect leaders who doesn’t seem at risk of dying from a qi deviation, and hence his less brutish way of ruling might actually, in the long run, be good for his sect. (NMJ would be proud... maybe.) 

ISFP personality types are true artists, but not necessarily in the typical sense where they’re out painting happy little trees. Often enough though, they are perfectly capable of this. Rather, it’s that they use aesthetics, design and even their choices and actions to push the limits of social convention...

If these goals and principles are noble, ISFPs can act with amazing charity and selflessness – but it can also happen that people with the ISFP personality type establish a more self-centered identity, acting with selfishness, manipulation and egoism. 

Wen Qing-->ENTJ “The Commander” 

Another one I feel fairly confident in. Wen Qing is a boss queen who gives birth to one of the series’ most iconic lines: “thank you, and I’m sorry.” She’s able to win the respect of Wen RouHan and even some people who hate the Wens, and thinks outside the box, theorizing on core transfer but hesitant to actually try it when she isn’t fully confident. 

ENTJs are natural-born leaders. People with this personality type embody the gifts of charisma and confidence, and project authority in a way that draws crowds together behind a common goal. But unlike their Feeling (F) counterpart, ENTJs are characterized by an often ruthless level of rationality, using their drive, determination and sharp minds to achieve whatever end they’ve set for themselves.

Wen Ning-->INFP “The Mediator”

I was torn between S and N, but I went with INFP because he is more focused on thinking about possibilities--in fact his arc is about learning to be confident in his own possibilities and to explore them.

INFP personalities are true idealists, always looking for the hint of good in even the worst of people and events, searching for ways to make things better. While they may be perceived as calm, reserved, or even shy, INFPs have an inner flame and passion that can truly shine. 

Jin ZiXuan--> ESTP, “The Entrepreneur” 

Does he have enough of a personality for me to really analyze him? Maybe not but I like him a lot. He is motivated by what seems like pride at the beginning, but we later realize he cares deeply about the people around him and genuinely cared for Wei WuXian because his wife did. 

Inspiring, convincing and colorful, they are natural group leaders, pulling everyone along the path less traveled, bringing life and excitement everywhere they go. Putting these qualities to a constructive and rewarding end is Entrepreneurs’ true challenge.

Jiang YanLi-->INFP “The Mediator” 

Shijie was indeed the mediator between her two brothers, and it’s her legacy of love and kindness, of wanting Wei WuXian to live even at the expense of her own life no matter what he’d done, that makes a huge difference.  

Luckily, like the flowers in spring, INFP’s affection, creativity, altruism and idealism will always come back, rewarding them and those they love perhaps not with logic and utility, but with a world view that inspires compassion, kindness and beauty wherever they go.

Jin Ling-->ESTP, “The Entrepreneur” 

Jin Ling is the hardest one to pin down and I’m mad because he’s one of my favorites. He is highly emotional, but I think he’s an ESTP like his dad.

Entrepreneurs keep their conversation energetic, with a good dose of intelligence, but they like to talk about what is – or better yet, to just go out and do it. Entrepreneurs leap before they look, fixing their mistakes as they go, rather than sitting idle, preparing contingencies and escape clauses.

Lan SiZhui-->INFJ “The Advocate” 

My type. 

INFJs indeed share a unique combination of traits: though soft-spoken, they have very strong opinions and will fight tirelessly for an idea they believe in. They are decisive and strong-willed, but will rarely use that energy for personal gain – INFJs will act with creativity, imagination, conviction and sensitivity not to create advantage, but to create balance. 

Lan JingYi-->ESFP “The Entertainer” 

He’s pretty easy to figure out. I constantly wonder how he fares in the Gusu Lan Sect. 

...they love putting on a show for their friends too, chatting with a unique and earthy wit, soaking up attention and making every outing feel a bit like a party. Utterly social, ESFPs enjoy the simplest things, and there’s no greater joy for them than just having fun with a good group of friends.

Xue Yang-->ESTP “The Entrepreneur” 

ESTPs are the likeliest personality type to make a lifestyle of risky behavior. They live in the moment and dive into the action – they are the eye of the storm. People with the ESTP personality type enjoy drama, passion, and pleasure, not for emotional thrills, but because it’s so stimulating to their logical minds. They are forced to make critical decisions based on factual, immediate reality in a process of rapid-fire rational stimulus response.

A-Qing-->ESTP “The Entrepreneur” 

Yes, I think A-Qing is the same type as Xue Yang, which doesn’t surprise me because they are actually extremely blatant foils in the story. It’s funny the description notes how observant ESTPs tend to be, because that’s something A-Qing absolutely is, noticing Xue Yang’s minuscule changes in expression and keeping her from trusting him, and Xue Yang is also incredibly observant of her words to realize she might just not be blind after all. 

With perhaps the most perceptive, unfiltered view of any type, ESTPs have a unique skill in noticing small changes. Whether a shift in facial expression, a new clothing style, or a broken habit, people with this personality type pick up on hidden thoughts and motives where most types would be lucky to pick up anything specific at all. ESTPs use these observations immediately, calling out the change and asking questions, often with little regard for sensitivity. ESTPs should remember that not everyone wants their secrets and decisions broadcast.

Xiao XingChen-->ISFJ “The Defender” 

The following description really reminds me of XXC especially after he hears the story about Xue Yang’s love of candy as a child, and every single day thereafter buys him and A-Qing a candy. 

ISFJs take their responsibilities personally, consistently going above and beyond, doing everything they can to exceed expectations and delight others, at work and at home... Naturally social, an odd quality for Introverts, ISFJs utilize excellent memories not to retain data and trivia, but to remember people, and details about their lives. When it comes to gift-giving, ISFJs have no equal, using their imagination and natural sensitivity to express their generosity in ways that touch the hearts of their recipients

Song Lan-->INTJ “The Architect” 

There’s not as much to go on for Song Lan, but what we do have seems to suggest INTJ to me, particularly in how someone who would spend years looking for a friend would refuse to consider that Xue Yang might have changed at all. 

INTJs are simultaneously the most starry-eyed idealists and the bitterest of cynics, a seemingly impossible conflict. 

Yu ZiYuan-->ESTJ “The Executive” 

Welp. The Purple Spider is definitely an Executive.

ESTJs are representatives of tradition and order, utilizing their understanding of what is right, wrong and socially acceptable to bring families and communities together. Embracing the values of honesty, dedication and dignity, people with the ESTJ personality type are valued for their clear advice and guidance, and they happily lead the way on difficult paths. 

[p-artsypants]

P-Artsypants Fanfiction Masterpost!

I feel like I’m always making a new one of these posts every few months, but I honestly just write so much that it makes sense...

Updated so most recent Fandom is at the top. 

Find most, if not more, of these fics on:

Fanfiction.net | Archive of Our Own | Wattpad

 (~AU’s, *Finished, ❤️Author's Favorites)

Kingdom Hearts

~❤️Rage Awakened AO3 | FF.net- Ten years ago, Terra, Aqua, and Ventus lost their fellow apprentice, Sora, in Deep Jungle. Now, they are to return with two new students, Riku and Kairi, to lock the heart of the world. All the while, something watches from the trees. Feral!Sora AU

My Kingdom for a Heart AO3 | FF.Net - The curse of being one of the Princesses of heart, is that there’s always someone out to get you. As Xemnas looked failure in the face, he reached out in a last ditch effort and destroyed Kairi’s heart. Now her friends must travel the worlds again. Sora, to find a way to recover Kairi’s heart, and Riku, to make amends to those he has wronged. All the while, the darkness grows.

Miraculous Ladybug

One Shots

*❤️Amalgam- When an young man is rejected for being ‘incompatible’ he turns into the akuma ‘Amalgam’ able to fuse two people together. And later Adrien and Marinette would debate if it was lucky or unlucky that they got hit.

*Sing We All Noel- After receiving the worst Christmas present ever from his father, Chat Noir finds himself out on the streets with nowhere to go on Christmas Eve. Thankfully, Ladybug finds him and brings him home.

*Speechless- In a world where everyone has a soulmark, the first words their soulmate will say to them, Marinette is born without one. But Adrien Agreste has two. Curious, considering he’s mute.

*❤️Tunnels of Love- The night started out with an accidental kiss from Adrien Agreste, and ended with her bleeding in the Catacombs of Paris. Ladybug, the wielder of the miraculous of good luck. Yeah right. (Some blood)

*The Reveal That Wasn’t- First Parts My ending to kittybug’s Tumblr Prompt

*What A Mess We’re In- Ladybug has a lot on her mind, and when Chat Noir bugs her enough, she tells him she’s going to confess to her Crush, Adrien Agreste. Chat’s reaction is not what she’s expecting.

Long Fics

*❤️Nine Lives- (FF.net) When Adrien Agreste is scheduled to go to a Military School in Germany, Chat Noir must make a critical decision. Does he give up his Miraculous? Or does he give up his life as Adrien? I’ll save you the trouble of guessing, he gives up being Adrien.

*Tender Words- When Marinette finally gets the guts to confess her feelings for Adrien, some things go so wrong, and other things go so right.

How To Train Your Dragon

One Shots

The Vikings Have Their Tea (FF.Net | AO3)

Arranged Marriage- Takes place at the beginning of HTTYD

❤️Breathe- Survival of the fittest

~Childhood Friends- At the Sandbox

❤️Easy Fix- In which Hiccup has a bad day

~Fashion Designer- Astrid needs a fill in

❤️Frozen- In Which Astrid takes a Dip and things get frisky (Rated M)

❤️Headache- In Which Hiccup hits his head….really hard

❤️Heir- In Which Hiccup is Picked (Longer version by FateCharms) 

Illness- In Which Stoick is a dad

~Illusionist- Trick gone wrong

~In the Walls- In which there’s a poop ghost

~Knocking On The Wrong Door (2) - A chance encounter

❤️Messages- Astrid is Frustrated with Hiccup’s obliviousness

~To Mirkwood- Hiccup is not a dwarf

~Monster Falls- Hiccup and Astrid take a dip

❤️Mute- In which there’s a quiet stranger

~Music Video (ImgHS)- He didn’t expect it

❤️Operation: Lovebirds- In Which the gang makes a plan, and Hiccup gets Drunk

~Over- Too many nightmares

~Partners in Crime- A normal day at work

~Pirate- Astrid is the greatest treasure

~Prince- He doesn’t want to be a broken King

❤️Sorting Things Out- In Which Astrid gets her ducks in a row

~The Dragon and The Dame- Beauty and the Beast Au

The Pit- In Which Hiccup is rescued

Hide and Seek- Part 1

Lost and Found- Part 2

Long fics: 

*❤️Infernal Responsibility- Being the son of the chief takes brains, courage, and a lot of patience. But at his father’s the request for marriage, Hiccup decides he has had enough. When he seeks out a life of ease, he runs into more than what he bargained for. 

*❤️Roses and Lilies- “Astrid, you and I both know you’re much tougher than I am. You’re more brave, and a better fighter…but just for a little while…could we pretend that I’m the one protecting you?” “Oh gods yes!”

*~What the Water Gave Me- The sea is a wild and dangerous thing, something that cannot be foretold or predicted. Hiccup discovered this many years ago, in human naiveté. Yet, what was meant as a sacrifice became a new life, one like no one could comprehend. He now finds himself once more in the unknowing hands of those that sentenced him to death. He only prays things will be different this time. Merman!AU

*Parasite- Soulsnatcher Dragons are rare but deadly. But, As Hiccup finds out, it’s the eggs you have to watch out for.

*~320 State Street- Gobber’s Goods. A Hardware Store that was rumored to have everything you needed. She thought she only needed a job. Turns out, she needed a lot more than that. (A Modern AU no one asked for)

*~❤️The North Tower- When Finn Hofferson died, Astrid inherited his castle in Wales…and a whole lot more. Something sinister lurks in the North Tower.

*~❤️Boy Toy- AO3 - At the age of 21, Princess Astrid lawfully has to pick a husband. But when the perfect groom is nowhere to be found, she requests the toymaker to create one for her. It’s safe to say that everyone in the kingdom is a little concerned. (Pinocchio!AU I guess?)

No, You Go First- AO3 - The Chief of Berk was a headstrong viking, stubborn and full of pride, and willing to do whatever it takes to keep his village safe. But for a moment, he puts that aside, and listens to his son. In which Hiccup convinces his dad not to make him go through Dragon Training, and the subsequent changes that follow.

*In Due Time- AO3 - As another illness sweeps through Berk, Gothi needs another ingredient for her medicine…one that doesn’t exist anymore. Fortunately, she kept that old spell book around for such an occasion. Big Hiccup is sent to five years into the past, and his younger self sent to take his place in the future. But it’s only a few days, what could go wrong?

Trollhunters: Tales from Arcadia

❤️Arcadia or Bust- In Which Arcadia welcomes back it’s underground citizens.

Teen Titans

Oneshots:

~Big Brother- Don’t turn out the light (Horror)

Dear Jason- Bruce Writes a letter

Just Drawing- Bruce thinks about Robin

The Prisoner- Starfire is Guilty

Of Mustard and Three Foot Purple Tongues- A collection of Oneshots and Drabbles

Long Fics (*Finished): 

*~❤️Carol of the Bells- High in the dark Bell Tower of Notre Dame, there lives a mysterious bell ringer. Legend tells of the angel who fell from the sky, and the curse she bares. There are few who know her true identity though; her master, the priest, and the acrobat that performs on the streets below. Based loosely on ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ RobxStar and slight BBxRae

*No Escape- Three years ago, Starfire escaped an Alien race called the Gordanians, to arrive on Earth. They’re back, and ready to put Starfire back where she belongs, behind reinforced Titanium bars. Robin’s not about to let her go…if only he hadn’t got captured first. How does it feel to be the alien, Robin?

*Now you Know My Pain- When the new Villain, Gender Bender, comes to down, the Titans find themselves in an odd situation. They’ve been turned into the opposite gender against their will! Now in order to change back, they must learn to understand the gender they’ve turned into. Rated T for obvious reasons. A great read if you’ve ever wondered why girls or guys do [blank].

*Paint it Black- Robin disappeared three months ago. Now, Jump City’s crime rate is mysteriously being taken care of by a normal, albeit strange, teenage boy who goes by the name Black. As the Titans befriend this lunatic, they begin to see a relation between him and their missing leader. Will they be able to find Robin, or will Black turn them all insane as himself? Actually, contains NO OC.

*Saving Grace- “When I’m done with you, you won’t be able to walk upright or speak coherent sentences and all you’ll see is my mask and my voice repeating in your head…Weak. Richard Grayson, I am not tough, I am everything that you fear.” Happy Ending! Smudge of RobStar. NO Slash!

Other Fandoms

Final Fantasy XV

❤️Requiem for Pitioss-“O King. The god’s have heard your cries. Know that we weep with you. The Oracle’s calling has not yet been fulfilled. But…Lunafreya as you know her cannot return the way she was.” Noctis looked up, hopeful. “But she can return!” Canon divergence from Chapter 9. Happy ending. Some spoilers.

Beauty and the Beast

*❤️Behold the Beast- A Oneshot alternate ending to the Animated Film

Cinderella

*❤️Midnight- “When the clock strikes twelve, the spell will be broken,” the fairy godmother had warned. A retelling of the story, when Cinderella doesn’t escape the ball in time. Oneshot

*So This is Love- What if Jaq and Gus hadn’t made it in time to help Cinderella? A new twist on the ending of the classic Fairytale, and what lies beyond the story. She still gets her happy ending and her Prince, and her step family gets their just deserts.

Sleeping Beauty

*❤️A Love Song Back To Me- Maleficent saw the loophole that stared her in the face. Prince Phillip would break the curse in time, for sure. After all, he was betrothed to Aurora. So in an effort for her evil plan to stay in action, Maleficent takes care of the young prince herself. Phillip never imagined having to live off the land like the birds above. Alternate twist on the classic Disney tale.

Escaflowne

Down Feathers- Hitomi’s depressed. She’s been away from Van too long, he comes back to visit her…but what if something went wrong with the transfer? (Not finished. Never will be finished. Mwahaha) Circa 2012 

*Angel’s Wounds- Fanelia’s been victorious in their most recent battle with Basrum. Unfortunately, someone is wounded and just seeks solace in his love that lives so far away. Post Anime.

Momma Look Sharp- With the war between Fanelia and Basrum finally coming to a close, the kingdom is celebrating. The young king, however, is suffering from an experience unlike any he had before. Van finally seeks solace in his wife.

[galaxyacerodoesart]

FINALLY more stuff to my Miraculous Ladybug Sanders Sides AU (MLB!SS AU, for short pfft) A little more info about Virgil and Roman in this, alongside full bodies REFs I suppose :o Patton, Logan and Deceit’s refs will probably be coming up next c: I obviously am changing a few things from the canon show to better fit this whole AU and some other stuff I thought about to it sooo...yeah. Also, they all are probably around 17-18 years old in this AU. :o This DEFINETLY will be long, so as always, it will all be under Read more, So, the tagging list and stuff will come first, if you would like to be tagged in anything from this AU in the future just let me know! ALSO, anyone is more than free to come to my inbox or messages and talk about this AU with me lmao TAGLIST: @notalwaysthevillian​ @phantomofthesanderssides​ @cosmic-quark​ @max-is-tired​ @thoughtfulfanbailifflamp​ @smokeyrutilequartz​ @thesassiersilv101​

Roman Prince comes from a family that has always been in the show business. His mom is an actress, his dad is a movie director and he has an older sister who is a famous fashion designer, so, he always has been a theater kid himself and is famous in the television business due to his parents influence (more like, he gets to be there because his parents know he loves to do it, but they might push him a little too, his sister also pops every now and then asking him to model for her latest clothes and he agrees, he doesn’t mind all that much, he loves to act and to make his family happy, so he endures it.) with acting and making appearances in shows and photo shoots for his sister, he had build quite the reputation to himself. People think he gets what he wants simply because of his status and that he sees himself better than anyone, when truth is, he’s just doing what he loves and trying to make his family happy and a little more united, since he is pretty much home alone 80% of the time, with his parents doing movies and his sister out of the country, but still making sure he gets all the education and needs from the staff that works around their home. So, while it seems he is happy, he is always so busy and lonely, he never gets the time to just be a normal teenager. He does manage to convince his parents to let him go to a public university and college instead of being home-schooled, so he has that for him. It is in college that he meets Logan, who quickly turns to be one of his best friends, despite his “know-it-all” presence that seems the completely opposite of Roman’s, The two managed to make quite the friendship. Is also there where he meets Patton and Virgil, also good friends of his, even though it seems Virgil doesn’t like him that much since he always tries to avoid him whenever he can, but Roman still considers him a good friend, probably just shy and hard to open up to new people, he can wait for Virgil to be comfortable around him, Patton did tell him to give Virgil time so, that is what he is doing.  His chance to do something more finally comes when he is presented with a strange box that appeared in his room out of nowhere after helping an old man on the street while he was trying to sneak away from one of his photo shoots. Opening the box, he finds a strange ring and a small cat like creature called Plagg that explains (poorly) what he is and what is the meaning behind the ring, eager to become a superhero, Roman puts on the ring and turns into Chat Noir, and goes off to protect the city from the attack of a strange rock monster. While fighting, or better, trying to get used to his new powers and such, another strange hero lands (quite literally) on top of him, embarrassed, the hero introduces himself as Crimson Beetle, another new-hero apparently who “honestly have no idea what the heck is doing”. While his new partner seems to have some second thoughts and thinks way too much about anything they do, Roman is happy to be an hero and tries his best to encourage his new partner going as far as telling him to “just watch and learn if you aren’t too sure about this” whoever, Roman quick learns that he alone can’t do much, after almost getting his butt kicked by the rock monster to then be saved by Crimson Beetle himself. While his ego was a little bit hurt, Roman quickly realize that they are suppose to be a team and work together as equals, and he also quick realizes his new partner is just amazing, kind and incredible despite his insecurities, and isn’t surprised when he realizes he had fall in love with him, even if Crimson had made him swear to never reveal each others true identities to protect themselves, Roman still is trying his best to make Crimson realize his feelings for him (more like accept them, seeing he definitely isn’t too secretive about his crush) whenever they are working together to protect the city, it doesn’t seem like he is making much progress, but he definitely isn’t going to stop trying anytime soon.  ---------------------- Virgil Glen on other hand, is pretty much the completely opposite of Roman. While Roman is outgoing and confident, loving to be the centre of attention, Virgil is an anxious mess who, if he could, would rather stay home all day long. Virgil lives with his older brother Devan and one of their mothers (gee Virgil, how come you have TWO WHOLE MOMS?!?!), who owns and work at her own flower shop. His brother has some skin issues, so he mostly stays at home, while Virgil on the other hand, has to go out and live like a normal teenager despite feeling like throwing up whenever he has to go in front of a group of people. It has been a few years since his mom disappeared mysteriously without a trace, police says they are sure she is dead, but his mother still seems to have hope she isn’t, while his brother just...seems to just have accepted it. As a matter of fact, since her disappearance, they haven’t really spend that much time together, Devan always in his own little world, and their mother working to keep them all feed, since Devan work doesn’t pay much, and Virgil is still only 17 years old. Their mom disappearance certainly affected them all, but It isn’t a topic anyone in his home is comfortable talking about, so it isn’t like they go around saying it. Virgil would always rather keep things up to himself and just go through them alone, being almost invisible to everyone, everyone in his school knew him as the “weird creepy kid” so all those comments didn’t help him with his self-confidence, leaving him to stay alone most of the time just drawing on his sketchbook and listening to music all by himself. Things change when a new transfer student named Patton decides to make himself his new best friend upon his very first day in college. While at first Virgil wasn’t that found of the idea, slowly, Patton certainly did make himself his best friend, who he could talk about anything. Including his long time crush on a famous guy named Roman, Virgil knew his crush on the guy was silly, as is was likely they never would meet in person, Patton would always tell him to never give up hope, Virgil would always laugh it off, Roman didn’t knew he existed and he had his own life and they would never meet, that was fine, he could live with that. That’s it, until Roman suddenly shows in his college to began studying in pretty much all the same classes as him and turned out to be an even more awesome person than Virgil thought he was. Patton obviously was excited saying that was a sign the universe wanted them to meet os something, while Virgil couldn’t do much as say a full sentence in front of Roman. It was no surprise that Patton managed to become friends with Roman, He was friends with pretty much the whole building at that point, but that didn’t mean Virgil was any less nervous around Roman, always hiding his blushing face in his hood and never really talking with him since he would always trip on his own words and hardly speak out something that made sense, and while part of him thought his ways would make Roman see him as the weird kid, for his surprise, Roma, kind Roman was always so patient and nice with him that it only made him crush even harder.  And when it seemed his life couldn’t get more complicated, that strange box appeared in his room, the same day a strange rock monster began attacking town. Seriously, he only had helped an old man no get killed while crossing the road, and now there was those strange earrings and flying bug like creature inside this box. To say he was almost having a panic attack was a understanding.  After the inicial panic and fear, he was calm enough to listen to the small creature, Tikki, speak. Yeah, apparently she could speak. Virgil was honestly just going with the flow at this point almost certain it was all a strange dream. Tikki explaining to him how she was a Kwami, a mysterious creature who could give powers to those who deserved it so they could protect and help those around them, saying that now more than never, the world would need her power and most importantly, HIS help, telling only him could stop the rock monster from destroying the whole city. Virgil hardly has a time to get all the information around his brain before he is putting on the earrings, saying some works Tikki told him to and having his clothes changing, he is still confused and scared as hell not sure he gets what is happening, but he decides he might as well go through this weird dream and get it over with.  It was when he was trying to get to where the monster was, jumping from building to building with his strange yo-yo that came with the suit, he loses his balance and falls to what he assumes will be his death. To his surprise, instead of meeting with the cold ground, he lands on another guy with a strange suit who was walking between buildings with a weird staff, the guy quickly introduces him as Chat Noir, and says he is a new hero, while Virgil is just embarrassed beyond words, when Chat asks for HIS name, he just says the first thing that comes into his mind while looking at himself and says “Crimson Beetle”  His first “battle” is a mess. He expected to “wake up” way before he had to actually fight, but the longer he goes into it, he quickly began to realize... that whole mess definitely isn’t a dream. He have no idea what to do, he never was the time of guy to fight like this??? That is a giant rock monster what do you expect him to do with a silly toy???  Chat seems to be the opposite of him whoever, eager to try to defeat the monster, going as much as offering to “defeat the best by himself” to which Virgil initially has no problem with. Let the guy do what he wants while he is here having a panic attack, yes, thank you. Whoever, he quickly comes to realize Chat is no match to this monster, not alone at least, and holding all the courage he can manage, he goes on to defeat the monster. He has no idea how exactly they did manage to do so, but apparently they did it. It was great, he actually feels incredible doing so?? Even though he is terrified pretty much all the way through, he still manages to pull it out alongside Chat and after he is safe back home, with Tikki sitting in his desk eating some cookies Patton baked him the other day, that he realizes that number one: This whole thing DEFINITELY Wasn’t a dream. And number two: Maybe he could manage being a superhero if he tried. The whole deal is helping him manage his anxiety and self-confidence issues after all. Tikki is definitely happy to hear that and promised to help him out as much as she can, she definitely is a nice company to him, alongside Chat, despite his constant flirting when they are in patrol or on missions. Virgil isn’t dense or blind, he knows Chat loves him, but his heart is still taken by Roman, so he doubts he could love Chat the same way he loves him, but saying all that without breaking his partner heart seems too mentally tiring for Virgil, so he just rolls with Chat’s flirting while being a mess back in college anytime he is anywhere near Roman.