#the number of skin details he uses is. too many i'll tell you that much

[averseunhinged]

HAPPY WIP WEDNESDAY

i'm locked into only working on this one fic until it's finished. it's the event horizon now and sam neill is here.

previously on this mfer:

this

then this

this

this

last week's

this week's

this one

then this

and finally this

“We went out tonight, kind of specifically for me to pick someone up.” She watched him for a negative reaction.

“I assumed so, yes,” he said with a chagrined little half-smile, but was otherwise unfazed.

“I thought I'd grown out of the horny phase, but I think maybe I was too stressed out to feel it. And,” she lowered her voice and scowled, pointing her finger at him, “do not use what I'm about to tell you to score points on Tyler. Seriously. This isn't a him thing; it's a me thing. It's private.”

He wrapped his hand around her finger and leaned closer, amused, but somber. “I promise.”

“The last couple of times Tyler and I were together, I couldn't…get there. It wasn't his fault. He did all the normal stuff, but I couldn't stop thinking about Stefan and Damon and Elena, and how weird she was being, and if you were going to raze the town, because she'd been turned, even though you'd just tried to kill her yourself.”

“That long ago?” Klaus remarked in surprise. “I assumed you'd asked the Bennett witch for a way to cover the scent of him.”

“I didn't know a witch could do that. Plus, she’d already saved his life. I doubt I'd have asked for more, even if I'd known to. I don't like asking Bonnie for witchy stuff,” she confessed delicately, hoping he wouldn't push for details. It was far from her favorite topic.

“I'll admit,” he said, almost to himself, “it's a balm to my pride.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you weren't having me, at least no one was?”

“If you want to be crude about it, but it's nice to know I wasn't quite as much of a patsy as I'd assumed.” He leaned back, frowning in thought. “It's unusual, but you've always been a strange case. More human than most. Perhaps, your psychological needs override the physical effects of vampirism.”

“That…makes sense,” she said reluctantly. “The guy I met at the bar. He was hot. Funny. Seemed nice enough and I really did like him. We both knew where it was going, and I just,” she shrugged and felt oddly lost, “didn't want to do it. I wanted the sex, but not the guy. So, I was sitting there with him, calculating the number of drinks it would take before I would be able to go through with it. It was so many that, if he wasn't a complete creep, he wouldn't take home a normal person who was that drunk, because vampire tipsy is human wasted. Suddenly, it all seemed so stupid. Why was I forcing myself to not sleep with the person I actually want to sleep with? Because it's too soon? I don’t even miss Tyler, and Elena's fine with it. Sort of. She has too many other things to deal with, anyway. Who I hang out with is pretty low on her list of things to be upset about.”

Caroline took a breath and looked at Klaus. His mouth was open as though he was about to speak, but he just sat there and stared at her.

“Klaus?"

"I'm attempting to unravel that."

Caroline made a helpless, little noise and slumped over like a marionette with the strings cut. She rested her forehead on her knees and wished she could rewind the whole night back to the beginning. He shifted, leaning into her, and cautiously placed the palm of his hand against her back. He felt like a hot water bottle through the thin fabric of her dress.

"Sweetheart," he cajoled, like she was a spooked animal that needed sweet-talking.

She shook her head and refused to sit up. "Can we just pretend this never happened?"

"No," he hung on the word, "I don't think we can. Believe it or not, you can be difficult to read."

She scoffed. He ran his hand up until he hit the bare skin of her upper back, and she unashamedly arched into him, encouraging the warmth of it up her neck and into her hair. When she'd been human, her scalp used to ache from stress. It wasn't possible to feel pain like that as a vampire, but the memory of it stayed with her. Sometimes, she still felt the phantom of it.

"Months ago," he began, rubbing hesitant fingers against the base of her skull, "when things were very difficult, I had a one night stand. I was only just beginning to realize how much of a mistake the search for the cure had been. My great plans of a mighty hybrid army, as well. My family was halfway to destroyed. And you...well, as they say, hindsight is 20/20, and I'd made a number of missteps in my pursuit of you. I'd been drinking, and I've always used sex as a source of comfort, amongst other things"

"I get that," she mumbled.

His fingers paused from working at the muscles around her skull. He cupped the back of her neck, stroking his thumb along the side. The span of his hand covered most of the circumference. It should have been unnerving, but there was something soothing about knowing how easily he could hurt her, but wouldn't.

"Thank you," he said as quietly as she'd spoken, and combed his fingers through her hair, careful of any snarls. "Only, I woke the next morning, hungover and more miserable than ever. Blood cleared away the cobwebs, but I remained as unhappy as I'd been the day before. I realized my previous methods of regulating my temper, my darker moods, would no longer be as effective, when what I needed was your forgiveness and to regain your good favor."

"You did pretty well. I usually hold onto a grudge tighter than that."

"Yes, being pathetic worked wonders. It wasn't particularly enjoyable, but silver linings."

Caroline sat up abruptly. Luckily, Klaus's reflexes allowed him to avoid getting bashed in the chin.

"Is that why you came back here? You could have gone anywhere." There were a thousand places Caroline would have traveled to, rather than staying in Mystic Falls, and Klaus was the one who carved that idea, the thrill of new lands and people, into her heart. She'd never given much thought to leaving the state of Virginia. Away was a place other people went, but now she couldn't help thinking of the travel shows she'd started watching and the lists of top ten whatevers she'd found online. "Like, I don't know. Greece, Argentina, Bali."

"I don't care for islands, and the witches in Greece are even more of a pain in the ass than usual. Argentina is quite scenic," he considered thoughtfully. "They have lovely horses. We'll go someday."

"You don't like islands? But you were on one a month ago and liked it fine."

"American islands hardly count; they're so close to the mainland. I once had to swim from an island in the North Atlantic to Morocco and make my way back to Spain from there. Made me lose my taste for adventuring for a century or so."

It had probably been awful, but she imagined Klaus dressed like Jack Sparrow, sucking on sharks for weeks and couldn't help laughing. "Fine. Rebekah can be my island travel buddy."

That made him laugh. "You are gravely mistaken if you think I'm allowing that to happen. Imagine what trouble the two of you would stir up."

"So, you came back here to," she drawled leadingly, "supervise me?"

He flopped back down against the arm of the couch with a gusty sigh. "You are the single most difficult woman I've ever met."

"I'm taking that as a compliment."

"I meant it as one," he replied, and then muttered, "God help me."

[armybratz123]

Dearly Loved Au: Part One

Intro

*Trigger Warning* There is some reference to suicide, it's not described to much, but Midoriya had almost jumped and Dabi talks about dealing with jumpers before.

~

"Hey there, I'm Todoroki Touya , known as the Pro Hero Dabi. Nice to meet you kid."

~

Dabi stared at the shaking boy, whose eyes kept roaming at the scars on his face. He doesn't mind, Dabi lets the kid stare. Slowly getting used to the bumpy and rigid discolored skin. Eyes lingering on the multiple staples with a wince, then the kid's green eyes finally met Dabi's bright blue.

As loathe as Dabi is to admit it, this isn't the first jumper he's found and stopped. Nor is this kid the first one to see his identity. Dabi uses the mask so he is not recognized by his father and so that people aren't afraid of him because of his scars when he goes to save them. But the jumpers, are different. More often than not, they need someone to reach out, and to do so on a personal level. Best way to do that for Dabi is by taking off the mask and talking to them face to face.

"What's your name kid?", Dabi asked gently.

"M-Midoriya Izuku.", Izuku stutters.

"Okay, Midoriya, can you climb back over the railing, and we can have a talk.", Dabi asks carefully, "We don't have to move from this spot, I'd just like to chat with you from the other side.

Midoriya looked hesitant for a second, before slowly nodding.

"Okay.", the boy muttered as he slowly climbed over the railing and joined Dabi in the middle of the roof.

"Usually in cases like this, heroes would ask why you wanted to do it before spouting out some speech to inspire you.", Dabi looks deep into the kid's emerald green eyes, "I do this a little differently. Aside from the fact that I'm a hero, what reason would you have to a) confess your trauma and troubles to me. And b) listen to whatever inspirational nonsense that I have to give to you."

"Have you done this before?", Midoriya asks hesitantly.

"Many times.", Dabi tells him bluntly.

Dabi has also quickly learned to always be honest in this type of situation. Or otherwise you just might find yourself with a case of a returning jumper.

"My point is that I'm asking you, as a total stranger, to tell me personal details of your life. Now I'm a give and take kinda guy, I'm not gonna take what I can't give. So for now, you can ask me five questions about me, my quirk, and my life, and I'll answer all of them honestly. Then I'll ask you five questions.", Dabi pauses, before gently smiling at him reassuringly, "And if we need to go another round, we'll go another round. I'm in no rush."

Midoriya stares at him, eyes wide at what Dabi was telling him. Five questions isn't a lot, but if asked carefully and with the right questions, they can be very detrimental to Dabi's life and even career if Izuku decided to share them with the world. Not to mention of a chance and offer to ask five more. It's a lot of trust for a hero to give a random stranger.

Doing exactly what Dabi said he would.

It'd take Midoriya a lot of trust and courage to tell the number four Pro Hero why he's found himself up here on this roof. Dabi is giving Mirdoriya the exact same trust he is asking of the kid.

And the mere thought of the consideration, almost brought Midoriya to tears.

"O-okay. Then why?", Midoriya asks, a strength beginning to fill his voice.

Dabi tilts his head asking, "Why what?"

"Why... did you take off the mask? Show me who you are? Your identity, everyone knows how secretive the Pro Hero Dabi is with his personal life.", Midoriya rambles a little, "So why show some quirkless nobody like me?"

"Easy. You're not just some nobody.", Dabi tells him gently, "Heroes, we are usually showcased as people who are untouchable. Beings who are always there. Heroes who are always right when it comes to right and wrong with their flashy quirks and abilities. And it works, despite the fact that it's not a concept I really care for all that much, because we're human too. But it doesn't assure people if they think we are as flawed and weak as the rest of them when we are the ones in charge of their lives, basically decide that they get to be saved."

"This.", Dabi's points his finger between himself and Midoriya, "Is different. You, are different. Cases like yours, people like you who need to be saved on a personal level, are different. Because they don't need a being from higher up to save them, they need someone who can understand them. Be with them on that level so they can raise them up to be something more, and, hopefully, to someplace better.

And that's where the mask comes in, I can't talk you down or help you as a Pro Hero. So the mask comes off and I try to help and understand you and help you as another person."

Midoriya looked like he wanted to cry, his lip trembling. It's only the first question, and the greenette already feels touched at the fact that this Hero, that Dabi is willing to listen, to be personal, to be human with Izuku in the midst of his pain.

Dabi reaches out and squeezes Midoriya's shoulder comfortingly, waiting patiently when Midoriya seemed to regain control over his emotions.

"My turn to ask a question.", Dabi says softly, "What brought you to the roof."

"Today.... was just hard."

And just like that, things boiled over for Midoriya as he told Dabi everything about his day.

Everything.

His teacher humilating him at school, all th bullying, his old friend telling him to kill himself, the slime attack, and so much more.

It took all of Dabi's will power to not act out the horror he is currently feeling towards everything that Midoriya has confessed. All that has happened in. One. Single. Day.

Dabi is scared to find out all that Midoriya has gone through over the years since he's been diagnosed as quirkless.

Midoriya even told Dabi what happened with All Might and his secret, so blinded by his own emotions, Izuku didn't even realize he forgot to leave that part out as he to the Pro Hero his horrible day.

"All that has happened to you. It is not okay.", Dabi tells him quietly, almost a whisper, "But you are so strong for still trying, still continuing to live, despite all the mistreatment you have endured. Today just happened to be the last straw, right?

Midoriya nods as he sniffles, wiping away his tears as he tried to regain control of his trembling voice.

"That was your second question.", Izuku tells Dabi with a shaky smile.

Dabi couldn't help but to burst out laughing, "It's going to be like that then, huh?"

Midoriya nods with another smile, "Third."

Dramatically, Dabi puts a hand over his heart as he leans back, "Oof, your killing me here smalls."

But despite trying to look hurt from Midoriya's 'ruthlessness', Dabi couldn't stop his shoulders shaking with barely contained laughter. But couldn't stop the wide grin on his face as he looks down at Midoriya, who was also giggling uncontrollably at Dabi's antics.

"W-why did you b-b-become a hero?", Midoriya manages after a minute or two.

Dabi takes a deep breathe, and then let's out a breathless chuckle, "You really like to dig deep don't you Midoriya?"

"I-I'm sorry if it's too personal!", Midoriya frantically waves his hands in apology.

"It is pretty personal.", Dabi agrees, "But that's the point of this, isn't it? I give and take, my trauma for yours.", Dabi then sighs thoughtfully, "Now, how to put it to words.... Well, simply put, my childhood was not a happy one. Seven years ago, things happened and I ended running around on the streets with all these fresh deep burns that have slowly healed to the scars you see today. Two years later, I was pretty much becoming a villain at that point. A low-time villain, but a villain none the less."

Midoriya gasped, staring at Dabi with his jaw dropped, "You were a villain? But you're a hero."

Dabi snorted at Midoriya's reaction, "I know, who knew huh? I probably would've stayed that way, gotten worse even, if I hadn't met this girl who had changed my life. Threw it upside down and pulled it inside out, more like. But to make a long story short, we got into trouble and she later ended up kicking my stupid ass and told me to go be a hero. And I'm still with that girl today."

Dabi sighs, a reminiscent look on his face, soft smile twitching onto her lips. It was a strange sight to see with someone that is as intimidating as Dabi is.

"She turned my head on straight and helped me realize that I may have not gotten the help that I needed when I was young.", Dabi looks over to Izuku with a soft smile, "But I can become the help that needed back then, for kids who need me today. Kids like you."

"Are you two... together?", Izuku couldn't help but ask curiously.

Heroes, especially Pros, rarely have time to date or find romance. Much less find a family. It's one of the reasons family's, hero families especially, like the Iidias and Todorokis are so rare and looked up to in awe and curiosity. It's incredibly hard and difficult to keep up any relationship when living the life or a Pro-Hero.

"As in dating? Yeah, going on three years now.", Dabi answers with a smile, "That was question number four by the way."

"Oh, right.", Izuku mumbles to himself, having forgotten that bit.

But.... there is one more question that he has... no.... needs to ask. All Might had already made it perfectly clear what he thought, but All Might isn't here on the roof with Izuku now, Dabi is.

Maybe... just maybe.... his answer may be different. Izuku can only hope, it's all he has as in this moment. Next thing Izuku knows, the question left his lips before he could even think.

"Can someone quirkless become a hero?"

For a long moment, Dabi is silent. Staring at Izuku with an unreadable expression.

There are many things running through Dabi's head.

Because he had promised Midoriya that he'd be honest when answering the kid's questions. Dabi had to sit and think for a moment on the question. He honestly never thought about it before.

Dabi's mind goes to the many Pros, Underground Heroes, Vigilantes, and Villains that Dabi has met. Many of these people, specifically the Underground and Vigilantes, have quirks that aren't as flashy, showy, or even physical more than half the time. Forcing them to fight quirkless.

Erasurehead is a prime example. Dabi has only met the hero once or twice on some of his nightly patrols, and the few times Nezu has invited Dabi as a guest speaker/teacher/trainer at UA, which is becoming more and more frequent now that he thought about it.

Something for future Touya to overthink about later.

Now, Dabi has to stay in the now, because a suicidal child has just asked him a deep question.

And Dabi has just now noticed that the said child has started to outwardly show his panic.

Damn it.

"Hey, kid, sorry got lost in thought there.", Dabi assured the greenette as he rubbed the kids shoulders soothingly, "I had to think about it because, to be perfectly honest, I never thought about it before."

Dabi watches carefully as Midoriya takes in deep calming breaths. Sometimes taking deep exaggerated breathes himself when he notices Midoriya's eyes glaze over and his breath quickens when he gets lost in his own head again.

It took several minutes, but Dabi is patient, and Midoriya manages to calm down.

"Sorry for leaving you hanging like that kid. I didn't mean to make you panic.", Dabi apologizes.

"I-it's fine.", Midoriya mumbles sheepishly.

"Its not.", Dabi tells the kid with raised brows, but ultimately drops it, "But i'm gonna drop it anyone, we don't want you to end up having another panic attack. Your tired enough as it is, and that was only the beginning of one, trust me, they're not fun to have."

Dabi falls back from his crouch, landing on his butt so he is now sitting comfortably next to Midoriya.

"Now, do I think a quirkless person can be a hero.", Dabi hums, "Well, that depends.", he turns to Midoriya with a raised challenging brow, "You have what it takes?"

Midoriya blinks in surprise, speechless as he listens, physically unable to do anything else. For this, these words.... it's new.

"I know a lot of people and got into contact with a lot of their quirks as well.", Dabi explains, "And some of those people have mental or not as flashy quirks that makes it harder for them to fight. Forcing many of them to fight quirkless."

Dabi turns to Midoriya with a soft smile.

"As long as you are determined and your heart is in the right place, with the right training and equipment, yeah, I definitely think you can be a hero. Quirk or no quirk."

And just Midoriya thought he was going to break down crying again, there was a loud explosion going off in the distance. A large cloud of dirty smoke rose up from where the explosion came from.

Dabi's eyes narrowed as he jumped to his feet, Midoriya already standing wide eyed, next to Dabi.

Dabi flips his visor back down and over his eyes, clicks the hidden button on the back of his headphones, and his mask rose up over his mouth and nose, meeting with his visor with a quiet 'click'.

Turning to Midoriya, Dabi tilted his head, "Want help getting down?"

Midoriya almost jumped at the scrambled way Dabi's voice sounded with the mask back on.

"W-what?", Midoriya couldn't help but ask, confused.

"I'm asking if your ready to com down.", Dabi explains, even with the more intimidating and mechanical way his voice sounded because of the voice modulator attached to the mas, the Pro didn't sound impatient or frustrated at all.

As if he had all the time in the world to wait for Midoriya to be ready. And that was all Midoriya really needed in that moment.

So Midoriya nodded and took Dabi's hand in his own. The Hero picked Midoriya's smaller form up, resting him comfortably on his hip before running and jumping off the roof. Midoriya letting out a shout from the initial jump, clutching tightly to Dabi's coat, but other wise remained silent.

Midoriya watched fascinated, as Dabi turned mid-air, facing their backs to the ground holding out his wrist and a thin, yet strong, cable fired out of the cuff on Dabi's wrist attaching itself to the roof, allowing Dabi and Midoriya to swing safely to the ground. Dabi landing in a crouch with a small huff before withdrawing the cable from the roof and back to his cuff.

Dabi looked down to Midoriya.

"You gonna be okay kid?"

He's still not okay.

One conversation is not going to make everything better. One conversation is not gonna make everything right in the world. But, Midoriya has hope now, this hero gave Midoriya something that no one else has in a very long time.

Belief.

Ever since he was diagnosed quirkless, no one believed Midoriya can become a hero, not even All Might himself. But the number four Pro Hero, Dabi, he believed.

And that... made things a little better. Midoriya can work on the rest.

"Yeah, I'm... I'm okay now.", Midoriya nods in assurance, "Or, I will be."

Dabi nods, "Good, make sure things stay that way,"

His head snapped up at the sound of an even bigger explosion. Dabi made sure to ruffle Midoriya's fluffy curls with a satisfied grin, he's wanted to do that for a while now honestly. Midoriya couldn't see it, but he felt the satisfaction from the hero from the action.

"Duty calls kid.", Dabi says before running off, climbing to the nearest building with the help of his cable, calling out over his shoulder as he does so, "Stay safe Midoriya! Remember, you can do it!"

For several minutes, Midoriya stood there. His emotions a mess, but he knew that he was watching Dabi's retreating figure in awe. Midoriya has watched many hero videos, interviews, even read some theories and articles any chance he got about any hero he could learn.

At this moment, Midoriya thinks that Dabi has become his new favorite hero. That he needs to go home and watch as many videos and read as many articles he can find on the Pro.

But for now.... Midoriya wants to make sure his Hero is safe. That he saves the day, but comes out okay.

Without a second thought, Midoriya runs off. Following the trail of smoke and sounds of explosions.

~

Hey Guys!

I know this series is still farely new, but I have been toying with different ideas, and not quite sure which one I want to do better. I have equally good ideas for both.

I'm trying to decide if I want Midoriya to still have One for All in this series, or to become the first quirkless hero.

Now keep in mind, no matter which happens, Midoriya is not going to have as close of a relationship with All Might as he does in canon. So if that's your decider, forget it because it does nothing.

You can message me or leave your decision in the comments. If I feel like I'm not getting enough I will probably make a poll for it.

Be Your Best You! Bye~!

[impossible-rat-babies]

just some outtakes of messing ‘round with some new poses + making outfits

[phoebe-delia]

Hi hi! For the song prompt list, totally random number hm could you do number 9? Thank you! ❤️

Hello! @weirdbutnodifferent, Thank you for this Completely Random Number. It just happens to be "betty" by Taylor Swift, so I do hope that's okay with you.

This is, of course, going to be the last in the trilogy of august (Draco POV) and cardigan (Ginny POV), but for anyone reading this who is thinking I'm following Taylor's story exactly as she wrote it, worry not! This series, as you're about to read, has a happy ending for Drarry. CW: making up after a past breakup.

This is Harry's POV. Enjoy!

I didn't forget, Draco.

I know that's sort of the bare minimum, and I have a lot to make up for here. But I just want you to know, first off, that I remember every minute, every detail of that summer. I could never forget the best few months of my life.

It's over with Ginny. Gods, I'm the worst for putting her through this. And you; all three of us, really, but mostly the two of you. I'm so sorry I wasn't brave enough to tell you both what I wanted.

I think that, at the time, I was scared about any divergence from the path I'd been imagining since I was eleven. Everyone thinks Gryffindors are so impulsive, and of course, we can be, but when you're a child being used as a pawn in a game you only barely understand, controlled by a prophecy set from fucking birth, impulsivity only goes so far. I was used to that; following plans set out for me beforehand by some force. Dumbledore, Voldemort, fate itself—take your pick. I don't know how impulsive I can really be when my every move is predicted, pre-designed before I can even think to make it.

But trust me when I say that I've thought about this moment, right now, ever since that summer ended. I've watched you at Ministry galas, wondering why you've never brought a date other than your mother or Pansy. Wondering if you know how much I had to hold myself back from striding across the room and grabbing you by the waist and kissing you senseless; or even saying something as simple and mundane as, 'Hi, Draco.' Wondering what you'd say if you knew how many letters I wrote with a whiskey-soaked mind late at night and then vanished in the morning. Wondering when this twisting, sharp ache in my chest would stop rendering me momentarily speechless at the mere mention of your name.

I'm done wondering. I'm done wasting time. And I know that showing up to your birthday party unannounced seems impulsive, but I don't know if it really is if I've been dreaming of this for six years.

I'll kiss loving marks onto your skin. I'll hold your hand and protect your heart and create enough new memories to leave the last six years in the distant past. 'Let me stay this time,' I'll murmur against your lips. 'Tonight, and forever.' And now that I'm a man worthy of your love, instead of a boy too scared to believe he could deserve it, I'm here. On your doorstep. Rehearsing this speech one last time in my head before I say out loud what you deserved to hear six years ago.

You're about to open the door, and I'm nervous; but I think that the day I left, I knew somewhere, in the back of my mind, that I'd be back. And now, I know just where to start.

"Hi, Draco."

I have a playlist of my 99 most listened-to songs of the year so far. Check my pinned post to see what's been done, then pick a different number between 1-99 and send me an ask and I’ll write you a fic based on it!

[miss-smutty]

The Destructive Secret

Chapter 4

Summary- You've got a secret to hide and it's going to cause complete and utter devastation. It's only so long until your lies are going to catch up to you.

Pairing- Chris Hems x Reader x Liam Hems

Word count- 2,211

Warnings- Smut, swearing, angst, cheating

18+ Only!!

Disclaimer: This is an entire work of fiction/AU and has no affiliation to real life what so ever! This is a fictional story about fictional characters who happen to share names and faces with some real people.

Posted: 29th June 2021

Taglist:- @innerpaperexpertcloud @pandaxnienke @chickensarentcheap @mostly-marvel-musings @longlostinanotherworld

>The Destructive Secret Masterlist<

"No not married but you do know her. You know her really well actually." Chris says while avoiding your gaze purposefully...

You could cut the tension in the room with a knife, silence so acute you could hear a pin drop. Liam waiting for an answer, Chris looking at his feet and you looking visibly anxious. Chris had drank way too much and now he was about to let all of your secrets loose. This isn't the way you want Liam to find out, surely Chris wouldn't be so cruel.

"I suppose you're not gonna tell me who it is?" 

"Not just yet, see how we go." He looked at you, if he so much as even looked slightly smug you would have slapped him right across his face. Instead you could see the hurt in his eyes, tears welling in the corners. You're both faced with an impossible dilemma, Chris wants you all to himself but doesn't want to lose his brother in the process and you want it all over and done with but don't want to hurt Liam. The latter of both is inevitable but you would take all the blame just so Chris didn't have to lose his brother, given the choice you would lose them both just so that didn't happen.

"Well on that note, I need to go to bed. I've gotta be up early in the morning." You avoid Chris' gaze, you're angry with him but you don't want to cause him more pain. 

"Yeah me too. I better get going. Thank you for dinner Y/N, it was lovely."

You risk a short glance at him, you're eyes softening when they meet. The moment broken when Liam speaks, reminding you where you are and who you're with right at this moment in time.

"Are you for real? You're really going to drop a bombshell like that and then leave? Fuck man." Liam runs his hand through his hair, letting air out of his cheeks exasperatedly.

"Sorry bro, I'll save the excitement for another night. I've said too much already." Chris apologises with his eyes as he passes you, his hands twitching by his side's with the need to touch you.

                             ******************

The next morning when you wake, your heart sinks knowing all the turmoil you're going to have to go through just to make it to the hotel without being spotted. All the messing about and hiding you have to do, checking in under a false name at different times. Making sure nobody follows you to the hotel and especially no one follows Chris. Getting caught checking into the same hotel would be dreadful, it wouldn't take a genius for the press to put two and two together, they wouldn't even care if it was true or not as long as they sold copies.

"Right babe, I'm ready to go." You pull your suitcase towards the door, stopping to wrap your arms around Liam.

"Have a good time, I'll see you soon." Wrapping his arms tightly around your waist and lifting your feet from the ground in a squeezy hug. "I'll miss you." 

"I'll miss you too, bye babe." 

"Bye. Love you. Let me know when you get checked in." He kisses you goodbye before watching you leave.

"Will do, Love you." You say over your shoulder, climbing into your silver, Audi convertible.

This is the part you hate the most, the part that made you question whether it was all worth it. It was, of course or you wouldn't be doing it, you wouldn't put yourself through having to pretend to be somebody else and praying your not caught by anyone. It only takes one person to notice you and Chris in the same hotel and it's over. You imagine having an affair is hard work whatever your circumstances but when your boyfriend and your lover are as famous as they are it becomes impossible. It's terrifying. 

You spent the car journey constantly checking your mirrors and making sure you weren't being followed. A huge sunhat and even bigger sunglasses covering your face as your heart beated faster than you thought was possible. A couple of laps around the hotel, making doubly sure you weren't being followed before you finally pulled into the carpark.

You had to constantly think, you couldn't let your guard drop for even a moment and it was exhausting. You were ready for it to be over and done with now, this just isn't fun anymore. Maybe you could run away together and start a new life somewhere else. Which one would you pick though? Who are you ready to give up? Would there even be an option to choose? Would Liam even be willing to forgive you if he knew you were sleeping with his brother? In love with his brother.

Your heart beating out of your chest, your fight or flight well and truly kicking in now as you walk up to the front desk. If there's any recognition in the receptionists eyes you're ready to turn right around and leave. The girl behind the desk, with long blonde hair has her eyes on the computer In front of her, thankfully not paying you much attention as you stand and wait for her to finish.

"Hi I'd like to book a room for two nights please." You stutter nervously, subconsciously checking over your shoulder while you spoke.

"Of course, is it just for yourself?" 

"Yes please, I'm just here for a work conference. I'd like a double bed if possible though, I haven't been able to sleep in a single since I was young." You giggle nervously, embarrassed that you'd told her information she isn't even slightly interested in.

"No problem, I'll see what I have for you." Her eyes barely left her computer as she spoke, she definitely didn't recognise you. The tension in your muscles relaxed a little as your eyes scanned the lobby.

"What name is it please?" She asked, one of the moments you'd been dreading. You hate lying but luckily you'd already come up with the fake name you were using, one you'd already used many times before in the exact same situation. It never gets any easier.

"Jessica Crawley." The names tumbled from your lips, names that had absolutely no meaning to you. 

"Room 101, floor 5. Is there anything else I can help you with?" 

"No thank you, that's great." The overwhelming feeling of relief at completing step one without any problems, rushes over you. Adrenaline spiking, making your legs feel like jelly.

"You're welcome, enjoy your stay. Don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions." The girl says, smiling sweetly at you before going back to her work.

The elevator seemed to take forever to make its way down to you, your feet shuffling as you watched the numbers above the door, counting down. The overwhelming need to get to privacy and away from the many prying eyes of the people in the lobby was severe. Most were business men and women, that were so consumed in themselves they weren't paying special attention to anyone around them. There were also young couples, making their way through the lobby, probably on their way for lunch but the people that worried you the most were the random loners sat in the armchairs scattered around the lobby. They'd chosen the perfect place to watch, some pretending to read newspapers while their eyes discreetly scanned over the top.

They were much more inquisitive, much like yourself they paid more attention to the people around them. People watchers you liked to call them, these are the sorts of people that make you nervous. They see everything, noticing any minor details, you'd spent a lifetime perfecting 'people watching' which is how you knew to be wary. You could pretty much judge a person's personality just by watching them for a couple of minutes. If anyone was to spot you it would be one of these people. You felt thankful you weren't Chris, there is absolutely no way he was going to make it to the elevator without being seen at least once.

                             *******************

Chris didn't feel quite as nervous as you, this was a every day occurance in his life, avoiding paparazzi was near impossible for him. As long as you weren't seen going in to the hotel then it wouldn't matter about him being seen. Still, he'd worn his baseball cap and sunglasses to at least try and hide his identity. He wasn't nervous about being seen but more about having to face you after his fuck up last night. Now that thought was way more intimidating to him.

Casually strolling into the hotel, he tried to ignore the whispers of the people around him. People questioning if it was really him, young girls barely out of high school giggling at the sight of him. Chris quietly prayed that he would make it up to the room without anyone asking for a photo, not that he usually minded but today all he wanted was to spend every possible minute with you as he could.

The receptionist tried to make a fuss when his identity was confirmed during check in. The pale skin of the same blonde girl who'd checked you in, had turned a rather bright shade of red when she heard Chris' sexy Australian accent. You wouldn't blame her, it still makes you swoon whenever you heard him speak.

"I'm fine honestly, I don't want any special treatment. Actually if I could get away with going completely unnoticed during my stay, I will speak to your boss myself and tell them how accomodating you'd been." 

"Oh wow, really? Thank you so much Mr Hemsworth. I will make sure nobody bothers you and if you need anything at all just give me a call, I'll make sure you won't have to leave your room for anything." Chris smiled, pretending not to notice how she seemed to be flirting with him, badly. Tossing her hair over shoulder as she insinuated not so subtly for him to let her know if he wanted any 'special' treatment. Again, you don't blame the girl, infact you would've commended her confidence.

She handed over the keys to the penthouse, watching bright eyed as he walked to the elevator, pulling out his phone as he stepped straight in. 

"Hi babe, I've booked the penthouse suite, meet me up there?" Smiling a tight lipped smile at the girl behind the desk, who was still watching him intently as the elevator doors closed.

"Ok, it isn't very inconspicuous staying in the penthouse is it?" You shouldn't be surprised, he does it everytime. You remember the first time you ever saw a penthouse and how amazed you were that it was actually bigger than your own home at the time. That was a memory you shared with Liam, all of your first times had been with Liam, the thought made your heart sink.

"I mean they knew who I was as soon as I walked in, I think it would look more suspicious if I didn't stay in a suite." Chris answered, pulling you from your thoughts.

"I suppose that's true, I'll be up soon." You could hear the sadness in your voice, something you had to snap out of before meeting Chris.

"Good because I can't wait to get my hands on you." 

Sinking back onto the spongey mattress of your bed, tiredness washing over you already. The mental exhaustion of constantly having to play games and be on your guard at all times, catching up to you as you're finally alone.

Maybe that's what you need afterall, a chance to be alone to gather your thoughts, to workout your own needs and wants without spreading your attention between the two brothers.

You make a mental list of the pros and cons of both of them knowing deep down if Liam were the one for you, you'd have never have looked twice at Chris. They were so similar in a lot of ways but completely different in others.

Liam was the sweetest man you knew, so gentle and caring, attentive to your every whim and being so young when you first got together he was everything you were looking for.

Now being a woman that has gone through so much trauma in her life that had tainted your soul, darkened it with a lust for more.

Then Chris came along, he was still sweet and caring but less attentive to your needs unless it was in the bedroom. He was cheeky and funny, drop dead gorgeous and oozing manliness effortlessly. He was fire and passion. He was more. 

If you let yourself admit it, you wanted excitement, which is how you ended up here in the first place. You didn't want perfect anymore, you wanted a man who could do wrong and then make up for it in the most fulfilling way he knew how. Just thinking about it made your pulse race, Chris had put you through hell last night and now it was time for payback. You imagined Chris only a couple of floors above you, worried about the way you were going to act when you saw him and lord knows how much you're going to make him sweat.                    

[pashfoxx]

Elements AU

Pre-hotchreid

Before reading, I want to say that this is the first work that I publish, and that it has more than a thousand words, also that my first language is not English and that I am sorry for any misspelling

you can know some more things about this au here

Fire and ice have always been considered polar opposites.

But people are wrong are not polar opposites. In fact they are quite close.

Aaron hotchner was born into an upper middle class family, his father was a renowned lawyer, and although his element was air, the man was cold as ice, with hurtful and icy words. And an even worse right hook. Aaron always believed that man should never have been a father.

Finally when Aaron was fourteen years old, the fury and helplessness that he felt towards his father for every blow and kick he received from him. He turned too much, a blast of fire breaking through from his forearms, with which he had been trying to cover himself from the blows. The flames burned his father's hand, Aaron opened his eyes, and saw his father grab his right hand, which was red and with what Aaron believed could be second and third degree burns, Aaron heard his father murmur a "bloody monster" Before leaving the room, at a hurried pace. Aaron got up feeling strangely good, the pain that he felt in his body did not matter to him, in return a sick feeling of satisfaction lodged in his chest, when he saw how his father had fled.

It was not until the next morning that Aaron finally understood how much things had changed after that night, The fire was not good, it was destructive, dangerous and unreliable, a week after what happened, Aaron was on his way to boarding school far from Virginia.

Over time, Aaron learned to never use or say the element of him, because then, people would walk away, just like all the people who had known.

The years passed and finally there are only ashes of that teenager fearful of his father, in return this Hotch is serious and stoic, who made his way through the court and the FBI as if he were a bullet, Hotch who only needed to snap his fingers to be able to create magnificent flames, but also very dangerous. Although Hotch has never used them. Because at the end of the day Hotch is just a forest fire, a forest that burns itself.

He hates it.

Spencer Reíd is the son of a literature teacher, who is also a paranoid schizophrenic. When Spencer was ten years old his father abandoned them, after that Spencer barely managed to earn enough money to keep him and his mother alive, and to buy some of his mother's expensive medications.

That coupled with the fact that Spencer was a Genius in a las vegas public school, just complicates everything.

Things got worse when the soccer team tried to strip him naked, and tie him to the goalpost. Spencer only remembered closing his eyes tightly and thinking that he wanted that to end no matter how, when he opened his eyes again, everything was covered in ice the football team with frost all over his body the rope in the captain's hand completely frozen. Spencer didn't think twice, she grabbed his shirt and bag and then ran out of the place.

Spencer had read all about the elements, he knew that the people who controlled the ice, along with the people who controlled the fire, were the minority in society. Spencer had learned the hard way, that people hated people with the element of ice. Ever since he awakened the element of him he had been accused of having no feelings, having little empathy and occasionally being a psychopath. Did people know that he misused the term?

Things really got better for Spencer, when he met Jason Gideon, and later he joined the FBI. In the FBI they were not obliged to tell the element of him, of course this was in the file of each agent, but you were not obliged to tell your element to another agent if you did not want to. Spencer really appreciated it, because the people of the water element avoided him like the plague when he found out that he controlled ice.

This was how he ended up creating a three-step plan so that no one would find out, number one, avoid physical contact, his body temperature could become below zero, it was practically a miracle that no frost formed on his body, number two, be careful with liquids, you still have problems so that they do not freeze when you touch them, and number three, never use your element.

And everything was going well he had friends, for the first time since college, of course he still missed Elle but he still has Gideon. But then the Hankel case happens.

Nothing is good anymore. Gideon left, he only left him a letter, but that does not prevent it from hurting less, the man abandoned him just like his father.

This in the bathroom he just injected dilaudid, he probably missed the dose because he does not feel his legs and everything is blurry.

He can't go on like this anymore. This will kill him, he doesn't want to die, not even at least. With shaky legs he got up off the ground. A single thought in his head.

He must get rid of the dilaudid.

The next seven days are like hell on earth.

When the worst of the withdrawal is over, Spencer forces herself to go back to work, she still had a few days off, but staying in his apartment hasn't helped her stop thinking about the dilaudid. His hands have a slight tremor, and his control over his element has diminished, causing him to freeze the odd thing in his path.

Spencer has probably been trying to complete this file for a little more than half an hour, she knows that Morgan and Prentiss have already noticed, but Spencer prefers to ignore the worried looks that they both give her, her eyes wander to the pencil in her hand, Note how the frost has completely spread over it, and is starting to do the same with the file.

Spencer quickly gets up from his desk, he can't allow that to continue happening, no matter how he just wants it to stop, he's fed up with not even being able to complete his paperwork, enters the bathrooms, and goes to the sink that you always use it, just touch it, it starts to fill with frost, you want it to stop, it doesn't matter how, you just want it to stop.

Reid had always intrigued Hotch. Since he met him, the young man had attracted him, there was something about Spencer, that caught Hotch's attention. At first Aaron worried that someone as young as Reid would see such bloody scenes, like the ones Aaron had seen over the years, soon Reid showed them that this was not a problem for him, and Aaron learned that while Reid could be extremely young, he was also extremely mature and contrary to many of the young agents if he respected orders.

The team had a no-profiling rule, Hotch knew that. Hell, he had been one of those who proposed her, but he couldn't help it he knew Reid was hiding something from them, he wanted to believe that he would tell them when he felt comfortable. Gideon wouldn't have pulled all those strings, if it was something dangerous.

It only took a hug for Hotch to notice. Reid had held him when they found him with Hankel, the way he felt the cold creep across his normally warm skin, a sensation he hadn't felt since he was a teenager.

It all fell into place slowly, how Reid looked nervous when someone tried to touch him, how Reid would look confused when Morgan tasted his coffee and complained that it was too sweet and icy.

After that he couldn't help but notice the details, every single thing Reid would do differently, to keep it a secret from him.

Then when he saw the young man get up from his desk and practically run to the bathrooms. Hotch worried, thought for a moment before getting up and heading to the bathrooms in search of Spencer.

When he opened the bathroom door, Aaron saw Spencer looking at himself in the mirror, firmly grasping the hand wash, the young man did not notice his presence at the moment, more concerned about how, the frost was expanding through the mirror and the hand wash, When Spencer finally noticed Aaron's presence, she was quick to hide her hands behind her back.

- I - I can explain it - the panic was noticeable in Reid.

- Spenc ...

- I know it's not normal, that's why I hide it, people don't usually trust people like me, I'll understand if you want me to transfer ...

- Spencer! - Hotch exclaimed again, to get the young man's attention.

Spencer finally forced himself to look at Hotch, he saw how his boss did not seem angry, the man extended his palm and from one moment to another small flames appeared in the lines of his fingers,

Spencer looked at him with surprise written on his face, he always believed that Hotch's element was earth or air, in addition to the fact that the chances, that two people, with some of the rarest elements, would work in the same place were extremely low. .

- I would never ask you to transfer, Spencer you are a fundamental part of this team, besides we would all miss you - Hotch said looking at the young man who was hugging himself - you don't know? He - he added belatedly, although he only received a small nod from Spencer.

Hotch made the flames disappear from his hand and took a step toward Spencer, bringing his hand closer to Spencer before quickly pulling it away.

- can I touch you? - Hotch asked, receiving another nod from Spencer, Hotch approached to wrap him in a hug.

"Maybe you don't think so right now, but you're important to all of us Spencer," Aaron said.

Spencer's arms wrapped Hotch in a soft hug. The fire hurt Spencer, and the ice made Hotch feel weak.

But it was worth it.

Hotch observed, as a slight smile, made its way across Spencer's face, who seemed to be much calmer.

Yes, it was definitely worth it.

[athena-is-a-chaotic-lil-shit]

Getting back at writing, is, well, hard. My grammar and vocabulary and basically everything is messed up so I apologize in advance for that. It's been, almost a year ever since my last written fic. That time I was still crazy with Kimetsu no Yaiba and the KyoTan ship. I'll post it some other time ^^.

Anyways, I present to you my attempt in making a plotted work from a random thought that came over me this morning.

Pairing: Tai'chi Kashharzol (Orc) x Pearl Blackbell (Human OC/Reader)

Warnings: Basically none. Except for some curse words.

UD 01/10/21: Cleaned and revised some parts! Tried my best, hope it was enough.

•

Of Ice and Blood

Part 1

Quick backstory and some details I left out in the main work.

It was in summer, 28th of July, when Pearl Blackbell turned 19. She left her home and moved closer to the university she’ll be going to. She rented an apartment about five blocks from the school. Albeit small, it was cozy and proper, having what she needed: a kitchen, a decent-sized bedroom, a small living area with a worn but comfy couch, and a bathroom.

When she was younger, her parents started training her in martial arts and the use self-defense weapons. They needed to make sure she knew how to protect herself against assaulters and dangerous people, she was after all, their only child and baby girl . They want their daughter to be strong, both inside and outside, by the time she sets out on her own and leaves home.

Her favorite self-defense weapon was brass knuckles, despite her parents’ protests. She enjoys punching nasty people and feel the crunch of their bones beneath her fists, especially racists, sexists, bullies, and the lot. The main reason why she got into detention multiple times.

Painting it with a ruddy color, she keeps it in her person, no matter where she goes. She has two, one is for extreme situations, while the other has only two knuckles. It stills maximizes the damage dealt but it is relatively less dangerous than the full dusters. The second one is usually a spare, though she rarely uses it.

She also occasionally carries a pair of retractable nunchucks, which she designed to be hidden within her regular baggy clothes. Her father had trained her vigorously with them and she even bested him in a match before she left for the city.

Selkoth, the city of marvels.

Distant sounds of buzzing cars reached my ears as I opened my eyes and blinked away the sleepiness, the light shining from the spaces in my curtains rather helping, together with the warmth it brought to my chilled tawny skin.

[Start of the actual work]

I fully woke up as I registered the sound of my phone alarm, shortly getting up to prepare when I realized what day it was.

Monday, the first day of my college life.

I stepped into the bathroom and took a quick shower, knowing I bathed thoroughly last night to save some time today.

Time management is key.

I dried myself down, turned to my closet and started putting on the outfit I picked out the night before.

Prioritizing comfortability over appearance, I wore my favorite orange cotton shirt, my blackish-blue hoodie (that had been stained with blood some time ago, but don’t worry, I know how to clean out blood. Mama raised no fool.) over it, together with a pair of black skinny jeans. And of course, tight black sports bra and boxers, even mentioning my underwear yes?

I looked over to my mirror and it was—

Simple. And I loved it. The more simple it is the better.

'“Keep a low profile over there, sweetie. Don’t get into fights when you can help it okay??? We already taught you and prepared you to the best of our abilities. Promise to us that you’ll stay safe, and healthy. Okay? And don’t forget to call sometime.”' I sighed, remembering my mother’s words.

"Yes mama, I will.”

With a smile, I did my hair and went for a tight Dutch braid, it going down between my shoulder blades and ending a little above my waist. I ran to my kitchen to eat breakfast, satisfied with my look.

I eat fast okay

Backpack, check. White sneakers, check. Phone and keys, check. Airpods on, playlist shuffled, I bolted out of my apartment and jogged all 50 blocks to school.

Exercise is always important, and what other way to utilize time for exercising than to do it while heading to your destination, right?

I snickered.

As I made my way to the university, I saw bizarre creatures and monsters of different sizes, coexisting, and interacting with humans. Even so, I noticed other people’s disdain and bitterness towards them when I passed by. My nose is awfully sensitive to scents that sometimes the ones their body releases tells me what they feel at the moment. It’s all science, I guess. I was made extra susceptible to these, so I wear a mask everywhere and every time I go out just to partly block most of the smells.

My first day at a university open to everyone across the country gets my blood pumping with excitement. To think that I’m going to study at Ernestine State University, the Ernestine State University!

I first heard about the uni back when I was a child. News broke out about Victor Ernestine, committing suicide by driving his car off a cliff because he couldn’t accept that his daughter was one of the major leaders who made the unity of all people, of all races, possible.

Dramatic.

Months after Mr. Ernestine died, all his properties and riches were passed down to her daughter, who took over as the new founder of the university and rebuilt it to accommodate everyone, no matter the size and shape.

The strictly all-human school, renovated, reshaped, and repurposed, was now the first university to open its gates to everyone in the country of Yundomia.

I’ve always yearned to get to know other species in this world. I didn’t get the chance previously because my parents sent me to an all-human, local high school. Which sucks. I hated how everyone had a certain hatred for the other races, especially orcs. They keep talking about how they are wild beasts and savages that aren’t meant to be in society.

They treated them like animals that are void of emotions and intelligence.

Come to think of it, I mostly fought with humans who were either racist, bullies, bastards trying to hit on me, or a mix of all of them together.

I chuckled, remembering how many times I got counseled on not punching people in the face.

High school was pure torture, being a human-exclusive campus making it worse, considering how everybody smells so horrible and the principal was an egoistic dumbass I was a hair away from gutting him. My poor nose.

But now I’m done with that! I’m starting anew in this school, in this city. Perhaps make some friends along the way.

Which is kinda problematic.

I’m not the social type. I tend to keep things to myself and hardly open up to anybody. I wanna make at least one friend that isn’t human! Or just, one good friend. I didn’t have or made any friends in the past since people tend to shun me out just because I can tell how they are feeling and find it creepy.

Or they’re afraid to get punched in the face.

Entering the campus gates was like stepping into another world. I was met with the sight of humans and monsters walking together and conversing! It was nice, and I don’t get to see this much often.

I walked around and took in the landscape of the campus. It was huge! And beautifully designed to have a great number of trees and plants, while also having space more than enough to accommodate every student going to their respective classrooms.

I was minding my own business and it was all serene, until some bastards pushed past through me and knocking me to the side. I stumbled but didn’t fall. I was gonna say something, but I shut my mouth. I didn’t want to cause any trouble on the first day for goodness’ sake. So I brushed it off and went straight to the gym for the orientation.

*************************************

The orientation was, intriguing. The dean seems nice, though I couldn't smell him from where I sat. There's also a student council made up of both humans and monsters which is a good sign. The student council president was a Minotaur with a dark brown coat and horns curving front and pointing up. The vice-president was a male student who looked decent enough. The secretary was an elf. The treasurer, a dwarf. And the rest were humans. I couldn't scent any of them to tell me what they were feeling at the moment, but the Minotaur looked uncomfortable, his hands behind his back, body going stiff when they were introduced to the freshmen. There was a larger numbr of humans than monsters, which was expected. I also noticed how both were grouped, a white line in the middle of the gym separating us from them.

Maybe to avoid any misunderstandings?

We were informed that today will be for introductions to your classmates and subject teachers so there will be no lessons at all. Hooray!

I was walking to my first classroom when a damned familiar smell attacked my nose. I stopped to stand for a moment and adjusted my mask. I looked around to spot the one emitting it and of course, saw a human. He looked, well, the typical playboy cool boy who used too much body spray on himself.

Not wanting to stand there like an idiot and prolong my suffering, I speed walk to my classroom and planned to sit at the back hoping no one would notice or ask why I’m wearing a mask.

That's always what they ask first. Not my name or how I was doing.

I expected to find no one inside since it was still early, but I was startled to see a massive orc sitting at the back looking out at the window. He was wearing a dark gray knitted sweater that was hugging his hulking frame very…well. Along with what looked like thick cargo pants and black boots.

He turned to look at me when I let out a small yelp, greeting me with his piercing, blue eyes.

Beautiful.

The orc had long, braided, jet-black locks. Two of them had distinct beads that trailed down from the side of his face and down to his chest, the rest of his hair behind him braided with intricacy and tied and ended halfway down his back.

I was pushed out of my trance when a person entered and crashed into me, swearing under my breath that it was intentional, nearly making me plant face-first on the trash bins if I hadn’t changed my footing at the last moment.

“Watch it, bitch, you’re gonna ruin my make-up,” she snapped.

Wow. She dared to call me that and not apologize like I’m the one who shoved her. Just wow. Usually at this point, I would have planted her face on the floor, but I stopped myself.

Low profile! Low profile Pearl! You’re in college now! You definitely don’t want to get suspended on the first fucking day of class now do you?? Keep it together.

Straightening up, I walked towards the back and sat beside the orc. Whose gaze fell on me, curious, when I wasn’t looking.

I made myself settled in my seat before the professor came in.

There were other races in my class. A blue tiefling sat three rows in front, wearing a casual outfit. A black-haired elf who looked and dressed clever, a row away. A cute pink pixie on my far right. A satyr wearing glasses, two seats in front of me, and a female lizardfolk a seat from of the pixie.

"Are you...alright?"

I almost jumped from my seat when the orc beside me spoke. I couldn’t help but admire how deep his voice was. I tried not to appear flustered, my mask helped with that.

“Uh…yes?”

The orc regarded me for a second before continuing.

“You were pushed earlier.”

Oh. He saw that?

“Oh, yeah, I’m okay.” I smiled at him. Then I remembered he can’t see my face. But I hoped the crinkling of my eyes gave it away.

“I’m Pearl, by the way.” I reached out my hand to him, socializing not my best suit but at least I tried.

He paused for a second before taking it into his bigger one, engulfing mine and shook it slowly. I was again, surprised by how gentle he was.

“Tai'chi.”

Interesting.

“Nice to meet you, Tai'chi.”

He lets go of my hand when the professor started talking up front.

“Nice to meet you too, Pearl."

***************************************

Thoughts? I am wide open for constructive criticism :D

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Check pinned post for latest chapter updates💕

[stargaze-issei]

ᴅᴀʏ 𝟼; ғᴀᴠᴏʀɪᴛᴇ ʙʟᴏᴄᴋᴇʀ

-> tsukishima kei.

𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐭; same tattoo, shared dreams, soulmates!au.

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬; none.

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭; 1.8k

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞; fluff.

𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞; the way i want to make a series out of everything in this challenge sigh.

↳ main masterlist

"what does it mean, tsukki?" yamaguchi asked by his side, looking with curiosity the needle leaving marks on his friend's skin. 

tsukishima wanted to get a tattoo through his complete adolescence, his parents never allowed it, not until he could pay it by himself, at least. and there he was, eighteen years old, watching in amazement how one of his few dreams became true. being honest, he wasn't sure what it meant, but he had dreamed about those numbers a lot. since he was thirteen, the same number appeared not only in his dreams, but was everywhere else too, everytime he checked the hour, the number of his locker, even his volleyball shirt. of course it took him a while to figure it out, but once he saw it, he couldn't stop. it became his luck number. 

"are you sure you just want that?" the artist wondered for the third time.

"yeah, it's important to me" the smile on tsukishima's face was completely different to all the others yamaguchi had seen since they knew each other. 

*.✧☆ﾟ.*･｡✧*⊰⊹ฺ

"please, come see me play, you're always busy!" your friend, koganegawa, could be a pain in the ass if he wanted to. he could be one withouth wanting too. your job as an assistant teacher kept you occupied half of the day, add the hours at college and how much you had to study, to say it was hard to make room in your life was an understatement. which was why you never went to kogane's games after highschool.

"i told you i can't! i have... work" 

"you don't work at nights, idiot! come see me play" he was so annoyingly persistent, that you had to accept, earning a excited hug from him.

after he left your appartment, only because you made him, you let yourself drop onto the couch, sighing. in fact, you were tired, but going to see kogane, one of your only friends, was something you could do. he was always so supportive, in his own unique way, it was the least you could do for him. you scratched your collarbone, unconciously going over your tattoo with your fingers, like checking if it was still there. somehow, that piece of inked skin gave you strengths when you felt like you were at your limit. the memory of a well known dream came to your mind, making you giggle.

*.✧☆ﾟ.*･｡✧*⊰⊹ฺ

you knew koganegawa's team was a professional team, but you never expected them to have a cheering squad, and local tv cameras and periodists focusing on them. it was your first time at the gym where they were playing, a little anxiety growing in your chest not knowing where to go. you tried calling him to help you, but all you got was a text saying he had sent somebody to your rescue. 

"hi, are you kogane-kun's friend?" said a short blonde girl, touching your shoulder. she seemed really kind, making you feel more comfortable instantly.

you mumbled a positive respond, and she quickly grabbed your hand to take you to the bleachers like she knew the place by hand. she introduced herself as yachi hitoka, and said the game was about to start. she was also a friend of one of the players, but met some others, like koga, in highschool. 

in the exact moment that you and yachi sat, the starting whistle blowed, starting with the power serve of a bleached haired guy.

yachi guide you through the game, explaining the basics to you, but you couldn't take your eyes off of the blond man with glasses, he looked so familiar, though you were sure it was the first time you saw him. he intrigued you, a lot. you were too shy to ask yachi for his name, hoping to catch it on through the speakers at some point, or trying to remember if kogane had said something about him. the game went on, points were made by everyone, and every single one the setter did, he looked at you, searching for a reassurance smile. 

when it finished, a crushing victory from the frogs, you and your new friend went to wait for them outside of the compound, yachi felt the need to warn you before you met everyone. 

"see, kyoutani can be a little... intense, some times, but he's really nice, and tsuk-"

"y/n! did you see me!? did you see my points!? we were so great!" she was interrupted by an overly excited koganegawa walking towards you, along with two ther blondes. your cheeks burned at the sight of whom you had glared so hard just minutes ago, wondering if he had noticed. his face was buried on his phone, too busy to look up, disappointing you a little.

"i saw you, dumbface, that's what i came to do" he pouted at your fake insult, proceeding to shout to kyoutani by his side how awesome you were for going to his game. you introduced yourself, one of they boys said to be kyoutani kentaro, the one of your interest didnt't even reply.

tsukishima had heard your voice many times before, but for the first time, he was awake. his eyes opened wide, a soft hum of confusion left his mout. it couldn't be you, you were just a made up person from his dreams, someone who he had never seen, less say heard talking, to recognize that fast. although it was you. those eyes, that voice, that hair, it was you. he had dreamed about you for so long, in his mind, at the beginning you were his same age, growing up as he did. you were exactly like that woman.

"...tsukki!" he came back to earth thanks to kogane, who was frenetically moving him from his shoulders trying to get his attention. 

"get off" was all tsukishima answered.

"where's yamaguchi?" asked yachi. you didn't know what they were talking about, but you had witnessed the glasses boy, whom's name appears to be tsukki, go through a complete life crisis in the last minute.

"he's joining us at the restaurant" he said, starting to walk away by his own, followed by kyoutani and yachi, later by kogane pulling you from your arm to walk. 

yachi and koga talked enough to fill the uncomfortable aire in the table once everybody ordered. a man named yamaguchi arrived a few minutes earlier, still in office clothes. he congratulated the guys on their victory and greeted you nicely, presenting himself as "tsukki's friend". 

the minutes became hours, everyone, except you and tsukki, was drunk, even kyoutani had that red color on his cheeks because of the alcohol. yachi, who had stated that she was just a little tipsy, sober up when she saw how late it was. 

"i have to work tomorrow! we all have to! oh go, i can't believe i let kogane- tsukishima, could you please take y/n home while i get these three an uber?" despite being so small, the girl seemed to be completely in charge of everything, probably because of her years as manager in highschool, you thought.

"are you sure you don't need help with them?" you asked, a bit curious about how was she going to handle two giants and a man with rabies by herself.

"don't worry, i've been doing this since highschool, i'm more worried about you arriving safe"

"i'll take her, you stay at yamaguchi's and text me when you're there" intervined tsukishima, he had been quiet most of the night, even though he couldn't look less interested in being there, he still refused to leave. sometimes, he would stare at you when you weren't paying attention, without knowing that you actually felt his look on you. the girl agreed to his proposal, kissing your cheek goodbye and giving her friend a small hug before you took your things and got out of the place, followed by the tall man. 

the walk was silence after you told him you lived near enough to walk, him just nodding to your words. you didn't feel uncomfortable, though, and you wanted to believe neither did he. both of you were at a really short distance, and he didn't seem to care, but you smell of strawberry shortcake coming out of him. you giggled, thinking how funny it was that such an intimidating guy smelled like cake. tsukishima glared at you, disconcerted by your sudden laugh at no apparent reason.

"i used to go to this coffee house in highschool, they had the best strawberry cake i have ever eaten" your random fact caught tsukishima off guard, because he went to a coffee house with a really good strawberry cake since highschool too. he stayed silence, affraid to keep finding more shared details betweent the two of you. "i mean, don't think i talk about cake when- you smell like- i'm sorry" had you just made the situation hundred times worse? yes, you had. 

the rest of the walk was as silent as the first half, now, tsukishima was uncomfortable, so much that you could tell, but still, he choose to stay close to you instead of making distance. despite being a autumn night, you felt hot, your multiples layers of clothing were now making you sweat. without giving it much thought, you took off your jacket and sweater, leaving at sight you tattoo in you collarbone. tsukki tried, he really did, to not look at you, stripping like it was nothing, so when he did, and saw his exact same tattoo in your body, he stopped walking. his jaw barely hit the floor, you could swear he saw a ghost.

"are you okay? d-do you...? what are you doing?" he got over his shocked, and in a light of boldness, he started to take off his coat and sweater, not only that, but lifting his shirt until you could see his nipple and ribs. it was then when you saw it too, your tatto, the exact same details, were on his skin, like it was printed of the same printer. you hadn't chose a design from an artist, you drew one on your own, wanting to be the only of its kind, yet, there you were.

like someone had opened a door in your mind, memories of lost dreams came back, you remembered from where tsukishima seemed so familiar. that damned dream you had for years, of him, who you thought was a creation from your subconscious, was now standing right in front of you, in flesh and bones. not you nor tsukishima knew how to react, maybe, fearing that the other would run away. a strange urge to cry invaded you, and for some reason, a intense desire to feel the blonde closer.

"i want to take you on a date, if that's okay with you" 

"yes" you said not a second late, almost begging him to be with you from that day to your last.

"and i wanna kiss you right now" he didn't even let you answered before jumping to your lips, leaning a bit. you sighed in the middle of the kiss, relieved to feel him and his warm arms around you, your lips moving at synch.

his lips tasted like strawberry too.

⌙ 𝟐𝟎𝟎 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 🥳

[marchioness-caprina]

You Changed But Still the Same

Pairings : Ex! Katsuki Bakugou x Ex! Reader.

Writing Style : 3rd Person

Warning : Cussing

Word Count : 3428

3rd Person's POV

A Year ago since that fateful day where everything ended and the only thing that's left were the memories and promises from the past. Y/n and Bakugou who were High school sweethearts had quite a past together but sometimes all the good things come to an end .

That's exactly what happened, Bakugou at some point in his life had to pick between two things , y/n or his Hero Career. He picked His Hero Career even though y/nl tried to desperately persuade him that it could work out. She tried her best to persuade Katsuki that They can grow Together.

Even though it was painful, Katsuki still stuck to his choice leaving everything behind . Leaving y/n with her heart that has been shattered, Leaving her to pick up all the broken pieces herself.

He had to pick his Hero career because he knew he needed to become stronger, strong enough to Be confident that He will be able to protect her in the future. Strong enough to flaunt her to the world without worrying how many villains would be after his lover. As surprising as it may seem his reason why he picked his career over her was because of her, not because he wanted to be number one... He'll admit that, it was his former goal but after meeting her everything changed.

He actually wanted to become a better version of himself because no matter how good he is, theres still a nagging feeling at the back of his head that says he does not deserve her because she deserves so much more.

Today was a special Day because Class 1-A was holding a reunion party. And Katsuki normally turns down events like this bit this time , he was excited because he knew y/n would be there. Now he was ready, Now he was confident, Now all he needed to do was to get his Girl back.

Y/n, She was never the same after that dreadful day. She never knew why she was Never Enough for Katsuki... She doesn't know why she's not a good enough reason to be picked. She never knew why He had to leave her in the dust, Hurt and alone. And honestly no matter how hard she tried to forget him. It never worked, She was still hung up on him like before and because of that. She hated him so much.

She started overworking herself doing more hero work than necessary since it's the only thing that could keep her mind away from him.

Her smile faded and she was never the same, she moved to another city because being in the same city where there's a possibility for her and Katsuki to work together is too painful for her.

She managed to rise to the hero rankings in the city she moved in. She was well known and villains feared her. But she started distancing herself from others, always taking on solo jobs and gradually turning colder by time.

It took a lot of persuading from the girls for her to eventually agree to this little reunion and she wasn't looking forward to it.

Because he was going to be there, it was already 6 and she was late since the agreed time to meet was 5 sharp bit she got caught up fighting Villains on her way . Of course the girls were furious but after hearing her reason they were much more understanding than expected.

They were supposed to meet in a Restaurant the boys booked all for their class and of course wearing something fancy was required because according to Momo they should ' Dress for the Occasion ' .

So of course y/n did try to make an effort to dress up because She wanted to prove to everyone that she was fine without Katsuki. Because back then when they broke up, Everything fell apart and she stopped caring about everything around her.

She loves the girls because they almost Wrestled Katsuki for hurting her , and some of the Boys even attempted to fight him because Y/n was a wreck back then.

But now look at her. She's not a narcissistic bitch but she really outdid herself. She wore a red sleeveless fishtail dress that clung onto her curves like it was her own skin, the dress had little crystal details that matched her hair. Her make up was Smoky and elegant and her lips were a crimson color of red. Her hair was curled on the ends and she did end up dyeing her hair to H/c, she also had a few accessories on, like the emerald necklace, a few bracelets she randomly picked out and a small Phoenix Hair clip.

She looked gorgeous and she could tell from the way passersby looked at her when she got out of her car right infront of the restaurant.

She walked towards the receptionist who was oogling on her figure.

Clearing her throat she caught the attention of the receptionist.

" I'm here for Denki Kaminari's Party " Y/n stated and the receptionist immediately stumbled towards the door opening it for her.

" This way ma'am "

" Thank you " Y/n thanked the man who started nodding his head nervously and she made her way inside.

The whole place was noisy and she could see her old classmates chatting and drinking the night away.

The first one to notice her was Momo.

" Oh my God Y/n!? Is that you " Momo exclaimed running towards y/n and giving the girl a tight hug.

The whole room was quiet, everyone's attention was directed towards y/n. She really was a head turner. The states she was getting was a bit overwhelming but she didn't mind. Someone in the room did Though.

" Woah! You really did dress to impress Missy! Where the hell have you been? " Mina joined in and y/n didn't hesitate to hug her as well.

" You're Drop Dead Gorgeous! We didn't even recognize you... I mean... Look at You! Damn " Hagakure complimented slapping y/n's ass.

" Hey keep your hands to yourself " Y/n muttered as she shoved Hagakure playfully.

" My goodness! I can't believe my eyes, Don't tell me you don't have a boyfriend!? It's kinda impossible for you Not to if you Look that Hot " Uraraka joined their little group and soon the boys also gathered around her to Either greet and hug her or comment on how she looks.

The attention she's getting was flattering but a bit suffocating.

" Ok, enough about me. How are you guys? " Y/n tried changing the subject but none of them were up for it.

" Well Duh, we all work in the same city and some of us gets paired up from Time to Time so there's nothing new about us that we didn't Know. You on the other hand moved to another fucking City and we barely have any contact with you so don't change the subject " Jiro stated and everyone seemed to fire their questions towards me one by one.

" So how are you? Are things good over there? I heard you ranked 2 in your city"

" Yeah everything is alright , things are pretty stressful though "

" You're pretty popular there! I see you on the news all the time "

" Er... Well... I can't even get some alone time without people trying to shove themselves to me "

As y/n was bombarded with questions a certain blonde male kept his gaze glued to her figure, she was gorgeous that's for sure and he could barely keep his eyes off her figure but that doesn't mean everyone else had to do that.

Even if they aren't together anymore. She is still considered to be his property and it's pissing him off that she didn't even try to acknowledge his existence. It was spissing him so much that she gave everyone a hug and not him. Why is she so happy talking to other men when he's right here waiting for her to finally look at him.

It's fucking irritating . She was beautiful... Too beautiful that he feels like someone else would take her if he even dares to look away.

It was painful to see how much she had grown without him. He's starting to regret his decision. Damn it. He knew he missed her but fuck. He didn't know he missed her to the point where it's actually painful to see her here but ignore him like he's nothing.

His mood was foul and everyone noticed, sure they were pissed that Bakugou Had the face to hurt y/n but they saw how hurt he was too, and one time during a small get together Bakugou started screaming her name and yelling why he left while sobbing angrily like a sick lunatic. And they finally understood why he made such a rash decision. It was because of his insecurities and nobody thought that this Haughty Hero was actually insecure about something.

And everyone felt bad for him because after y/n left he was a reckless Asshole who kept getting himself hurt over and over again as if he's pushing himself to the brink of death on purpose. Everyone knew he regretted his past actions and that's exactly why they were gonna help these two love sick puppies out.

" Hey! Let's play Seven Minutes in Heaven! " Denki suggested and everyone got the message.

" Really? Denki why would we play that here?" Y/n laughed but to her surprise everyone was in on it too.

" Yeah sounds fun! "

" I'll get the bottle! "

" Who's going first? "

____________________

Everyone was seated on the floor forming a circle.

" Ok I'll spin the bottle and if the bottle lands on you, you have to go in the closet with the person the end of the bottle is pointing towards. Simple as that " Kirishima explained and he started spinning the bottle.

" Hey y/n have you heard about the latest trend lately? " Momo asked y/n who's eyes we're torn away from the bottle and her attention was snapped towards Momo.

Sero moved fast and immediately pointed the bottle at y/n and Bakugou.

Bakugou saw the whole thing and he stared at his friends in disbelief.

" Kaachan.... I think you deserve a second chance " Izuku muttered and everyone gave Bakugou a thumbs up or a supporting look.

Bakugou was touched as he stared at everyone with thankful eyes but he was a prideful asshole so he turned his head away muttering.

" I don't need your help shitty extras " His comment made everyone chuckle.

" You better not ruin this Bakugou or else I'll poke your eyes out " Jiro threatened before she turned to y/n

" Y/n! You're going in the Closet with Bakugou! "

Y/n froze at the mention of Bakugou's name her eyes trailing down to ten bottle that was pointing at her and Katsuki.

" What? No" Y/n grumbled her tone filled with venom. Bakugou noticed her tone and it almost made him flinch.

" It's only seven minutes y/n...dont tell me you still love him that's why you refuse to do so " Denki stated slyly earning a menacing glare from the girl that made him shiver.

" I'll fucking do it and you better watch me you Prick " Y/n stood up from her place stomping her way towards the closet, opening it as she pointed inside her gaze landing on Bakugou.

" Get in so we could get this over with " She hissed before stomping inside Bakugou who was a bit astonished by how fierce she had become. But nonetheless he followed her inside the closet closing it as he stepped inside.

It was quiet, far too quiet but he was determined to change that.

" Y/n...I-"

" Shut up" Y/n cut him off sharply and he can't believe he was this sensitive when it came to her because damn it hurt when she said it like that.

" I'm sorry... I know it's not gonna fucking Cut all the shit I put you-"

" You fucking bastard I said shut up " Y/n growled but Bakugou continued.

" I was the biggest idiot in the world --"

" Bakugou. Fuck off. "

" Please just lis--"

" Did you listen to me?! Did you listen to me when I begged you to not end things between us? Did you know how much pain I felt losing you? Because you didn't have the fucking balls to choose me? Do you know how worthless I felt? I felt like I wasn't a good enough reason for you to choose me. I felt like I wasn't enough, because you never looked back on your decision and just kept going leaving me behind ... To pick myself up and pretend like nothing happened. Stop this Bullshit Katsuki, Let's just pretend like we're strangers causing its better that way---" Y/n was cut off with Katsuki's harsh tone.

" Don't you dare Fucking Go there woman! I'm a poor excuse of a boyfriend I know! And I regret the day I made the decision in leaving you because everyday is like walking in an eternity of hell without you.. I missed you so damn much... I missed your laugh... Your smug smile... Everything... I missed you! You wanna know why I ended things? It was because I felt weak, I felt like you deserve better so don't you dare say that you're not enough! Because you're more than enough! I was scared that villains may come after me and they'll take you because I wasn't strong enough! That's why I dedicated my time in trying to be better because the day I'll be ready is the day I'll claim you back . Today is the day.... And you have no idea how painful every passing day is for me without you.... And you turned me into this pathetic shitty love struck idiot who becomes soft and mushy when you're around!... I'm pouring out my feelings here because this may be the last! And I'm not good at this shit you dumbass! You knew that from the start but... I'm begging you Please... Give me another chance Because I Fucking Love you" Bakugou's voice broke at the end of his sentence and y/n was conflicted.

Was this why he left? It still doesn't count for what he did! He hurt her yet why does she feel so happy to hear him say that? Why is her heart beating so fast when he said those three words she never knew she craved. Why is her mind and heart urging her to give him another chance? Simple she knew the answer and it was because she never stopped loving him at all. Even though she hated him, she still loved him the same.

The room was filled with silence and y/n couldn't mutter another word. She wanted to say Yes. But her pride was getting in the way.

Bakugou was losing his patience, growling in frustration he lunged himself at her pinning her to the wall with both of her hands pinned above her head by Katsuki's hand.

" Screw it Bitch, I miss you too much to Just Let this shit slide. If you Kiss back you're Fucking Mine Again you Hear me!? " Bakugou yelled and he didn't give y/n any time to protest because his lips were already on hers.

Kissing her lips with Vigor and Neediness. It almost seemed desperate , he continued Kissing the girl with everything he had, devouring her lips with his and it didn't take long for y/n's pride to hold out because but broke the second Katsuki's Lips touched hers.

She kissed back with the same intensity. Katsuki let go of her hands and her hands immediately flew up to his neck pulling him closer as her fingers ran through his hair, she dug her fingers through his hair tugging on it desperately . Katsuki's hands were roaming her body in any way they could until finally stopping on her waist.

Fuck he missed her so much, he missed her so Fucking much and right now. He's gonna savor every moment of this. He missed these lips and how she kissed him.

If Oxygen wasn't much of a problem then neither of them would have pulled back.

Panting and breathless Katsuki pressed his forehead along hers a deep chuckle vibrating from his chest.

" So.... Was that a Yes? " Y/n could her the smugness of his voice making her growl at him.

" I Fucking kissed you back didn't I? " She snapped rolling her eyes.

" Well... I didn't quite feel it... Oh well, Looks like we're gonna have to do it again " Katsuki smirked and he was about to dive in for another round but Kaminari had slammed the door open making the two flinch.

" Times up---oh" Kaminari grinned as Katsuki and Y/n glared daggers at him.

" You shitty Pikachu! Can't you see we're busy here!? " Katsuki roared as he tried grabbing Denki who immediately ran away form the door.

With a sigh y/n dragged Katsuki out of the closet and everyone was looking at them with playful eyes, some even giving Katsuki a suggestive wink.

Y/n's eyes trailed up to Katsuki's face and she paled almost immediately seeing the red lipstick smudge on his lips.

" Katsuki you Fucking asshole! You smudged my lipstick! " Y/n barked smacking Katsuki's head and Katsuki was fats to react.

" Haah!? I didn't hear you complaining when I was sucking your lips woman! " Katsuki barked back.

" How the fuck was I supposed to complain when you were practically shoving your lips towards mine!? " Y/n said in defense as she raised her hand about to smack Katsuki's head again but he caught her hand .

Katsuki bent down and slung y/n over his shoulder carrying the angry girl.

" Shut up woman, I'll buy you a whole mall of lipstick if it makes you feel any better, and you extras!... Well... I'm only gonna say this once... T-Thank you " Katsuki muttered and everyone cheered and teased the blonde boy who was now cussing everyone for laughing at him.

" Put me down! " Y/n yelled pinching Katsuki's back but it had no effect because the boy didn't even flinch.

" We're heading out early! " Katsuki yelled but the entrance was blocked by the girls.

" Umm, No! We were the ones who put in a lot of effort in bringing her here Bakugou! You can't just take her away! And everyone missed her you asshole! " Jiro growled and Katsuki was immediately pissed off.

" She's Mine! Of course I can take her away! " Katsuki barked glaring daggers at the girls.

" Well looks like we're gonna have to fight in order to see who's keeping her then " Momo stated as she pulled out a staff from her arm.

Y/n was snatched away from Katsuki's shoulder by none other than Izuku who had a smirk on his face.

" Sorry Kaachan but we wanna hang out with her too" Izuku smiled and it only angered the blonde even more.

" You Fucking Extras! Give her back! "

" Why don't you guys just calm down and let me Go Home! " Y/n yelled throwing her arms up helplessly.

" No! " Everyone responded almost immediately.

" I believe we can't do that y/n because Tonight you're the prize for whoever gets to take you out of the door first! " Kids yelled and everyone was excited except for y/n who knew this wasn't gonna end well and she knows for a fact that this restaurant will become nothing but a pile of debris and rocks once everything is over.

" Oh it's on! " Uraraka jumped in excitement.

" I'll Fucking kill all of you Extras and Take back what's mine! " Katsuki yelled angrily sparks coming out of his hands.

And Y/n was right, by the end of the day the whole restaurant was destroyed, everyone was injured the moment yeh fight ensued and nobody won because y/n stepped out of the restaurant herself.

[one-boring-person]

Only Traitors Consort With The Damned. (Part Three)

The Lost Boys x reader

Warnings: none

Context: The senior officer (Y/n) is expecting arrives.

A/N: Im not really sure where this story is going, but anyhow. I'm sorry, there really isn't that much mention of the boys in this, but I guess this can kinda count as a filler chapter?

Masterlist.

My hands are shaking as I check my watch yet again, biting my lip nervously as I shift in place, my coat drawn tightly around me to fight off the cool night air, the rest of my clothes as smart as possible, to make a good impression. In my left hand, I hold the creased envelope, the edges torn and dog-eared from being handled so much, the letter inside stained slightly from where I picked it up with my hands covered in gore, the contents nearly branded into my memory by now. A senior officer is to meet me at the Santa Carla train station at eight o'clock exactly, should the train be on time for once. Since I received this information two days ago, I have not stopped fidgeting and worrying with myself, my nails bitten down to the bed, the skin painful and red, my nerves running rampant within me, resulting in a thorough tidy-up of the shed and many unforseen training fights with the hand-made dummy behind it, my knuckles as sore as if I've been in a real fight.

Even now, I can feel the bruising under my gloves smart with every movement, my fingers flexing instinctually as I watch the thinning stream of people emerging from the station doors, eyes hoping to catch sight of the officer soon, knowing the uniform will be the tell tale giveaway. My own uniform is neat and tidy for once, as the rules of the SRS state, my long overcoat concealing the weapons I'm obligated to carry around with me: a gun loaded with wooden bullets, three vials of holy water, a stake and a silver knife. Legally, I'm allowed to carry these weapons in full view, being a Hunter for the SRS and all, but most of us choose not to, seeing as the civilians tend to find the sight of them pretty unnerving, but there are some, more arrogant ones, who choose to flaunt their status for the whole world to see, making them easy targets for almost any supernatural being. A wry grimace makes it's way onto my face as I recall the time when my first drill sergeant as a Cadet stalked into a werewolf pack with all of his silver weaponry out on show, instantly resulting in an all out brawl, which only some of us survived. The sergeant was the first to die.

"(Y/n)! It's been too long!" A horribly familiar voice snaps me from my thoughts, my eyes swiftly locating the tall figure walking over to me. Elijah Finch, the lanky, dark haired man I went to Hunting School with, wearing the neatly pressed black jacket of a senior officer, the rank badges sewn onto his chest showing that he has also reached a very high number of kills, as well as a completely new status.

"It's good to see you, sir." I address him with the correct formality, a tight smile forcing it's way onto my lips, my posture straightening as I salute him. For a brief second, I see a faint glimmer of pride flash through the crystal depths of his eyes at the title.

"Ah, don't call me that, (Y/n). We're friends, and that's not how friends talk to each other." He grins as he steps over to me, dropping his holdall momentarily in order to sweep me up into a tight embrace.

Relaxing into him, I return the hug, inhaling the familiar smell of his cologne as he crushes me into his chest, clearly happier to see me than I am him.

"If you say so, Elijah." I respond in his ear, pulling away after a minute, smiling at his broad grin, taking note of the new scar on his right cheek, the pale line splitting his sharp cheekbone in two, "The hell happened to your face?"

"Oh this? Nothing too bad, just had a bad encounter with a possessed child." Elijah smirks, picking up his bag again and slinging it onto his back, refusing my offer to help him out.

"A child gave you that?" I lift an eyebrow at him, finding this amusing.

"A possessed child." He corrects me, falling into step beside me as I lead him away from the train station, aiming to get to the main road, where we can pick up some decent food without coming across David and the boys.

"Sure." I chuckle, rolling my eyes, "You hungry?"

"I could eat. Anywhere good in town?"

"Eh, I guess. Most of them are takeaways, but there's a pretty decent diner just off the main road." I inform him, sticking my hands into my pockets as we walk, hunching my shoulders a little as the cool wind blows around us, chilling me to the bone.

"Lets go there, then. I'll pay." The tall Hunter says decisively, giving me a pointed look when I glance at him queationingly.

"Sure, if you don't mind." I frown slightly at this, fumbling with the notes in my pockets a little out of protest, "When did you become a senior?"

"A month back, I think. Yeah, it was around the beginning of September or so." He replies, clearly looking as if he wants to go on, something which I am only too happy to allow.

"Oh yeah? What was the mission?" I inquire, referring to the SRS concept that a Hunter is promoted to Senior only after completing a particularly difficult hunt.

"Oh, it wasn't too difficult. There was a coven of vampires trying to take over the French Quarter, back home in New Orleans, and had started a fight with the witches that already lived there. I had to go in with a squad of Hunters and eliminate the bloodsuckers, before everything got out of hand. I managed it, and didn't lose a single member of the squad." He goes on to explain, sounding impossibly proud of himself as always, his tone laced with self-confidence.

"Congrats, it sounds like it was well deserved." I congratulate him, stopping outside the diner I usually stay out of, preferring to go to the one on the Boardwalk, my jaw clenching as I see that it is closed for the night.

"Damn that sucks. Is there another one nearby?" Elijah asks, blue eyes looking the structure up and down, hand adjusting on the straps of his bag.

"Err, yeah. There's one just over there." I inform him, pointing at the entrance to the Boardwalk, which lies a good 25 metres away down the road.

"Lets hope that one isn't closed, too." He muses, allowing me to hesitantly lead the way again.

Quickly, we make our way onto the Boardwalk, where I then quickly locate the diner and direct Elijah over to it, hoping the boys aren't anywhere nearby. Thankfully, this one is open, meaning the two of us easily get a table, our uniforms giving us some sort of advantage over other customers, even though the insignia is not a particularly widely recognised one. Sitting at a window table, we take the time to look at the menu properly before deciding on something to order, doing so and relaxing back into our seats as we wait, both of us instinctively turning to look out the window, where I instantly spot the four people I didn't want to see tonight.

Across the pavement, David, Dwayne, Paul and Marko have pulled up on their motorcycles, the four of them drawing attention to themselves as always, something which makes me grit my teeth in annoyance, knowing that Elijah will easily spot them.

"They the resident biker gang?" The Hunter asks, gesturing to the boys with a curious expression.

Tensing almost indiscernibly, I try to suppress the rising fear inside me, nodding as I reply to him.

"It is. They like offering races to anyone who catches their eye." I explain to him, only revealing half of the truth behind them, eyeing the four vampires as they talk amongst themselves, David pulling a cigarette out of his pocket, followed by a lighter, his icy blue eyes suddenly locking with mine across the space. A smirk makes it's way onto his face as he sees me.

"They do, huh? I bet you could easily beat them on yours." Elijah muses out loud, looking me over with a critical eye.

"Yeah, well the only problem with that is that my bike is back in New Orleans, and has been for my entire time here." I remind him, recalling the black Triumph back in the garage at Headquarters, suddenly wishing I could ride it again, missing the exhilaration of the ride.

"That's too bad. I'm surprised, though, you and that bike were pretty much inseparable."

"It's the best vehicle I've ever driven." I shrug, returning my gaze to the four motorcycles outside, only to find their riders gone. Confusion fills me, eyes searching for them, until I hear an unmistakable voice behind me, my heart dropping in my chest.

"So this is where you got to, kitten. We were wondering where you were." David's smirk is practically audible in his tone, my jaw tightening as I turn to face him, only now registering what he called me, a deep blush blossoming on my cheeks.

"Hey David. I didn't realise you were looking for me." I smile cordially at him, trying to signal to him with my eyes for him to leave, before he's caught.

"We got worried." The platinum blonde affirms, eyeing Elijah, who watches the exchange in confusion, "Who's your friend?"

"This is Elijah. He's a close friend of mine. Elijah, this is David, Dwayne, Marko and Paul, some friends I've made here." I introduce them, trying not to reach over and slap their reaching hands away from each other, reminding myself that they boy have gloves onñ and so the difference in temperature shouldn't be too noticeable.

"Nice to meet you, Elijah." David greets, tone sounding forced and completely false.

"Nice to meet you, too." The tall Hunter smiles, shaking David's hand, eyes flicking over the others in turn.

David turns to me once again once he's finished shaking hands, blue eyes teasing.

"Let us know when you're next free, we'd love to spend more time together again." The vampire tells me, before he and the boys step out, Marko and Paul pushing and shoving each other on their way, nearly upsetting a few of the tables.

Once they've left, Elijah looks at me with an eyebrow raised.

"Friends?" Is all he says.

"What, are you implying that I can't make friends?" I tease, hoping not to have to go into too much detail.

"Of course not. They just seem pretty interesting characters." He shrugs, looking over as the waiter brings us our food, thanking him pleasantly before returning his gaze to me.

"They are, but they're a great cover-up story at times." I reason, tucking into my food.

"Ah, right. Makes sense. Anyway, you got any plans later?" He queries, casually, cutting up some of his own food as he does so.

"No, why?" I respond, confused.

"Because I am in the mood for some hunting."

Part Four

[ephemerlskies]

the beauty of after | pjm

⇢ pairing: jimin x f reader

[other members - taehyung]

⇢ genre: drabble, fluff, widower!jimin, angst (barely), artist!taehyung, the FLUFFIEST piece i've written so far, jimin is an old man

⇢ word count: 3.5k

⇢ warnings: themes of grief/loss, major character death (oc), mentions of death

⇢ summary: on your seventieth wedding anniversary, jimin celebrates in solitude by describing your face to an artist. it surfaces more fondness than grief to reminisce in the memory of his late partner.

♪ playlist: serendipity - bts • i'll never love again - lady gaga • lover - taylor swift • love of my life - queen • my everything - ariana grande ♪

[important] a/n: i am so so sorry to everyone for constantly reposting this, but my tags haven't been working. hopefully this is the last time i have to repost this!! also HAPPY PRIDE!

“Thanks for doing this for me.” The young artist had already begun mixing paints on his palette, eyeing the canvas before him to scale the size of his portrait.

Jimin was gentle with the way his eyes traveled along Taehyung’s face which was free from the age wrinkles that Jimin had grown used to seeing. He nodded as to say your welcome, a jaded but genuine smile reaching his lips to the ends of his face.

It was difficult to gauge which one was more nervous from how Taehyung had nearly knocked over his easel various times within the stretch of setting up his supplies and the lack of stillness that fraught Jimin’s hands which were trying, and failing, to fold politely in his lap.

“This is for an art project? For school?” Jimin asked, deciding that half-empty questions fit better in the air than the awkward silence funded by the lack of proper acquaintance. Not to say he wasn’t indeed curious about this whole ordeal.

“Yeah. My professor wanted us to have someone describe their significant other to us and we have to draw them based on the description! I hope I do your partner justice.” Jimin’s heart grew warmer when the enthusiasm from Taehyung’s voice made his intentions clear. He was an aspiring artist simply using his craft to procure something emotional and raw.

Jimin was the fortunate soul Taehyung had stumbled upon during his walk home. A single, elderly man sitting on a park bench, an appropriate setting for someone Jimin’s age, had aroused some curiosity in the younger man to strike up a conversation.

The slightly hung head, the pair of kind eyes trailing the various passersby, and the astounding hint of melancholy had colored Jimin in an entirely different light than anyone Taehyung had ever met.

Whatever his story was, Taehyung made it a goal to depict it with every bit of honesty and emotion he could engender from his paintbrush.

“I think it would be hard to make anything of ___ look bad." Jimin assured, feeling his shoulders fall away from his ears and his hands finally rest atop his lap.

“___? Is that her name?” Taehyung repeated it internally a few more times in an attempt to imagine what you looked like before Jimin started on his description.

He looked over to the older man, picturing an older woman sitting beside him on that park bench. His mind meandered to what kinds of things you two would talk about, or if you two were the type to construct a haven in sweet silence. Maybe Jimin would say something that would make you laugh and you would join in on the repartee with ease.

What made you laugh? How many times have you been on a plane? Did you like the color yellow? What was your favorite genre of music? What made you cry?

The questions began to bundle like a colorful bouquet of diverse flowers, waiting to be delivered into the hands of a loved one.

“Yes. Beautiful right?” Jimin’s smile faded a bit, the only evidence of it expressed through a slight curve sitting at the ends of his mouth and the crow’s feet incising his skin much more prominently than the rest of his wrinkles.

“Very beautiful.” Taehyung decided to arm himself with one of his finer brushes. He could already feel the unwavering desire to capture the most intricate of details partly for a good grade in this class but partly for the sake of keeping true to his word.

He wanted to do you and Jimin justice. To make this nothing but ornately accurate.

“How would you describe her facial structure?” The artist positioned his arm with his brush in hand, ready to dispatch the ink amassing at the tip of the synthetic hairs to the white, empty canvas.

“Soft. Perfect to fit into my hands.” Jimin stared down to the mentioned body parts, reminiscing the countless times he would scoop your face between his palms for no reason at all other than to revere your beauty. “Round cheeks. Smooth and warm skin.”

Taehyung couldn’t resist how the pang in his heart reflexively surfaced a fond smile in reaction to Jimin’s endearing description. He peeked away from the canvas before making any initial marks and gathered the loving gaze Jimin had been directing towards his matured hands cupped around the empty space that should have been your face. Then, he knew exactly which set of emotions he should embed into this portrait.

“What about her eyes, what do they look like?” Taehyung asked to acquire another image of how he should paint you, while already outlining the basic curves of a head that would quote unquote fit perfectly in Jimin's hands.

“They were kind. They always had this sparkle in it. A real sparkle, like she trapped the moonlight in her eyes.” Suddenly, Jimin's lungs were not merely occupied with air, but with an oxygenated memorial of your eyes which made his inhalations feel weighted. “They were bright and always looked at me with trust and care. Even when they had tears in them, you could have mistaken those for diamonds.”

The image was stark in his own eyes, and if he closed them then he could have been transported back seventy years to when your wedding vows were announced to the world. How your eyes looked at him and glimmered an overwhelming beauty that nearly evaporated the over-rehearsed words from his memory. Before you could roll those moonlit pupils at his fall to silence, he hastily declared the oaths that bound his heart to yours forever as if he couldn’t stand a second longer keeping those promises in.

“Were?” Taehyung articulated thoughtfully as he could with clear indication to question the past tense manner of Jimin’s narrative.

“Yeah. She has passed.” It was still difficult to feel those words ordered as such verbalized by his tongue. They tasted bitter and stale, as if they had been waiting somewhere inside to be recognized.

He wasn't aware of how his hand was now placed against his chest until he felt the heavy throbs of his tired organ. Through this, it might be that he was searching for your heartbeat that he could once identify through the his own.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Sir.” Taehyung’s hand almost fell away from the canvas, until reality restored his maneuvers and continued the lining of your face.

His focus was oscillating from the mostly white canvas, save for the thin strokes of black, to the man uncoated from his reserve through the smile that deepened the indentations of his face.

“Jimin. Call me Jimin.” He said, breaking whatever ice that froze the two of them in discomfort. That nervousness had melted away with the minutes until they both felt warm and comfortable.

“Okay, Jimin, could you describe anything else about her? It doesn’t have to be physical. This is more about emotion.” Taehyung’s brush had been hard at work, dutifully printing every hint of love that Jimin relayed and materializing it onto the portrait.

“Her smile was warm. The biggest one you would ever see. I swear, everyone she met noticed it. It was genuine. It was the smile of someone who never had mal intent and always ready to share her happiness to all those around her. Seeing it every day, it reminded me that, with her, I was always home.”

From the day he met you, eye contact was a difficult task to compass since your smile had always demanded his full attention. Each time you flashed your grin, he felt as if it was purposeful, the extension of your joy onto him. The way you made him feel every bit of bliss you felt because you were the type to believe everyone, especially Jimin, deserved to feel happy.

And each time he was endowed witness to your smile, it articulated his goal in life quite clearly: molding his actions into a kindle for your smile and doing everything in his humble power to cherish those angelic beams of joy.

“Whenever she would smile, your day would get a little bit better. And I was lucky enough to spend most of my life with her, so my days always got better. She always smiled. Like she knew how much it meant to me.”

“Sounds like ___ was very happy.” Taehyung said during the interval of giving shape to your lips. What remained on the canvas was the widest smile Taehyung could craft, knowing it was not nearly as big as the one Jimin described.

“She was. She was sad too, and angry. You did not want to see her angry, let me tell you.” A chuckle had fallen from his mouth as he postured the memory of your scowl to the forefront of his recollection. How you would equip this number when Jimin would do something particularly dumb, or when your kids were being scolded for reasons that didn’t seem as important now.

There was nothing that compared to how you could emote with your entire face in a poise that suggested your feelings willed your every movement. How you would scrunch your nose and your eyebrows would reach the middle of the space between them; the frown of your lips would pull your entire face lower. He would take your anger seriously at the time, but in retrospect, he would give anything to see that disgruntled expression again.

And he would simply smile, and perhaps snap a photo for a keepsake.

“I hope she was happy most of all. That’s all that matters, Taehyung. Make the ones you love happy. I hope I did that well enough.” Jimin began to question if he made you happy. One day, when he joined your parted soul, he would find that out for himself.

He knew beyond doubt that you had accomplished sparking joy into people's lives simply by being you.

“I will. That’s good advice, Jimin.” Taehyung made himself present in his wonders about you, despite how he was absent from your life.

From the way Jimin described you, he fully understood that Jimin wasn't speaking from the functions of a brain. The portion of his mind that conducted speech could have been rejected entirely. These words, the thoughtful description, the sentiment flowing from his voice were sourced straight from the heart.

One that felt incomplete without its other half.

“Do you miss her?” He had to inject a bit of courage in this question in the hopes it wouldn’t be overstepping any boundaries. Though, Jimin was ever so gentle with the way he moved through life and met Taehyung's requests with kindness so far.

“Very much.” A stout crack fissured through Jimin’s voice and prompted him to swallow down the sob ruminating in his throat. “I miss her more than anything in the world. More than the flowers miss the spring and wait for winter to pass so they may bloom again. These days, I’m just waiting for spring.”

Jimin had intertwined his hands together, pretending it could fill the hollow space of his palms just as well as your hands would. He knew though, this was an emptiness that would always remain unfulfilled the minute your heart stopped beating with his.

“It will come. Soon enough. She’s waiting for you too, I’m sure.” And your flower will bloom. Taehyung created the contours of your eyes and paid a sizable amount of attention to depicting that highly emphasized sparkle.

What would a painting of you be without those acclaimed glints of moonlight floating in your irises? It wouldn’t be a painting of you at all.

“Do you have a special someone in your life right now?” Jimin took over the role of the questioner and placed Taehyung in the position of the questionee. It was enough for now to repair his composure.

“Not at the moment, no.” The majority of his focus was fixed on the painting but spared just enough to answer Jimin’s inquiry.

“Well, whenever you find them, I hope you appreciate the small things. I never knew how much the small things mattered until ___ was gone. Like how she notoriously had every barista put extra cinnamon on her coffee drinks. When I would forget to add it, she would pretend to be mad at me. She'd roll her eyes and tell me I’m ‘losing it’ or she would say something dramatic like ‘what has this world come to, Park Jimin?’” His pause filtered the room with a peaceful property.

Jimin utilized the silence to ponder the moments he once hadn’t given as much as a second thought to. The same moments that would entrap him in a catatonic gaze on rainy days or during cold, lonely nights.

“She would still drink the whole thing, though. She was kind in that way. Never really letting those things go unappreciated.” His eyes fell to the floor, though he was not seeing the weathered carpet spread across the substructure. He saw none other than your eyes.

The moonlight he had the privilege of viewing up close and personal, and uncrowned the orbiting rock in the sky of its esteemed title.

“Now every time I see cinnamon, I think of her. Of her peculiar love of it and even though she loved cinnamon so much, she’d love the effort I put in even more. She always loved me generously.” There had been friction within Jimin’s throat that made it warm and swollen ever since he started talking about you. His words dislodged through labored projections, but his voice overtly strewn hints of sorrowful longing in each statement.

“She sounds very loving. I can’t imagine how lucky it was that you met her.” Though his eyes were trained on pressing the delicate illustrations of your face onto the canvas, his ears were employed in listening intently to Jimin.

He had no idea who you were, however, he was sure he too would have fallen in love. Of course, anyone would have done so through the perception of someone who had devoted his entire heart and life to loving you.

“How long were you two together?” He asked to obtain an addition to his bouquet of knowledge about you.

“We were married for seventy years but we dated for three years before that.” Jimin’s eyes were not alone anymore.

They loaded quite a collection of tears, barely keeping at the bay of his eyes, and the vision of your face when he proposed that the two of you should seal your love through something as trivial as a diamond ring.

It was irrational, not only the fact that pricey luxuries such as rings were well beyond his budget. Jimin knew that embellishing a silver band on your finger would not be enough to earn a lasting relationship or settle your commitment to him. A piece of jewelry could not entail the immense love harbored in his chest. The proposal wasn’t the end of a happy story, rather the beginning of a lifetime to learn and unlearn the elements of loving you.

Even the bumps in the road, knocking him or you away from each other, were never enough to conclusively sever the connection. Dedication and work knotted your heartstrings together. The biggest bump, your death, was the final blow that nearly disentangled them.

Nearly. But when Jimin said ‘until death do us part’ he never realized that vow held some false hope. Of course, he wouldn’t let you go, or rather he couldn’t let you go, even after you passed away. It wasn’t that easy when his heart synchronized with yours the moment he fell in love with you and he already decided to become someone who was worthy of loving you.

Now he was that man. Someone who matched the degree of kindness you always provided him. The man who would disregard any prior engagements if you called and needed him, rest assured you would do the same for him. The man who proudly held your hand, knowing the world envied him. The same man that was cultivated through growing beside someone that cared for every part of him, down to her last breath.

In that way, death was never a contender to part him from you.

“Wow.” Taehyung was not sure of how else to elaborate how genuinely impressed he was. “What's the secret? How did you manage to stay together for seventy years? I mean, people these days get divorces like it’s a quit button you can press when you get tired of playing the game.”

Jimin, despite the teary glaze over his eyes, pulled a laugh from his throat. Without warning, he fell into the trench of all the long-forgotten fights bred from pettiness or misunderstanding. Many of them were over financial or familial issues. And with the lens of a seventy-year perspective, Jimin traded shallow grudges for an important realization that certain things remain standing after the dust settles.

“We would fight. A lot, actually. Even in those perfect relationships, people always fight. But I remember now, if it were a fight over money or anything else that was expendable, there wasn’t a question in my mind of which to choose. Between the world and ___, I always choose her. I always choose love. It’s more important than anything because when you truly love someone, you want to understand them. You want to work through problems instead of leaving them to pile up and collect dust.”

Jimin’s eyes now settled on Taehyung, who had already been staring at Jimin, then continued with all the sincerity he could deploy.

“Taehyung, always choose them. Choose love. I know I did and I have no regrets. I know if I chose to stay angry at her, I would be wrestling to forgive myself.”

Taehyung’s face muscles felt tired, his smile’s permanence hadn’t allowed for them to rest.

“Anger, annoyance, frustration, jealousy? Those all fade away. In a week or a month, you’ll stop being angry at some point, but you will never stop being in love. So choose love. It’s a permanent fixture in your heart.”

Taehyung set his brush down, and the picture resting on the easel was completed and then some. He didn’t mind. Taehyung truly enjoyed the sentiments Jimin kindly shared with him, as it would have been far duller to paint in silence.

Not to mention, he discovered a love story that went untold by movies and fairytales. It was a true love story. Something so real, Taehyung fell in love just by capturing Jimin’s tale and translating it into visual art.

Because this image of you was what Jimin saw when he pictured you. The picture of you shrouded in abundance by the highest grade of love.

“I’m finished, would you like to see?” Taehyung lifted the canvas from its resting spot, turning it slowly since Jimin’s nod was geared with apprehension.

Jimin’s heart nearly bore a hole through his chest, and it would fall out to where you were resting. He was afraid of facing you, or any rendition of your face, since it would be the first time in two months that his eyes beheld anything resembling his late wife.

When the canvas turned, so did the final page of the story. The story Jimin had been purposefully writing with long-winded prose and repetitive words to stall the commencement of it. He wasn’t ready to let go, that is until his eyes beheld the painting which etched fruition of something that felt further from him than you.

Closure.

“It’s beautiful.” Jimin’s tears were disobediently running down his cheeks. “It looks exactly like her. My love. My ___.”

It was not simply a painting garnished under the guise of an academic assignment, but an ode to the grand love Jimin had carried in his heart for seventy years and counting.

“I’ll be sure to send it to you after it’s graded.” Taehyung declared in a decided manner, now fighting back tears of his own, though it was a losing battle since he already felt the empathetic stains wetting his face.

“Thank you.” Jimin whispered soft enough that Taehyung barely caught it, but loud enough that his gratitude glazed the painting with its finishing touch: acceptance.

Now it was time to let go.

“___.” He said once more.

Jimin realized what could emerge even after your physical existence had run dry. That, even though you were no longer alive, there was a ceaseless supply of lessons Jimin still learned from loving you. He learned he could guiltlessly reflect over the years and memories. Resonating the most with him were the ones he spent choosing something more powerful and decisive and resilient above all else. Choosing love.

It colored his world into something vibrant and enchanting. There was still an unquantifiable amount of love pouring from his chest without a hint of diminishing. It was a force that stretched its reign beyond graves and long, lonely years of mourning. This love was alive, and breathing joy into Jimin’s life. It would continue breathing joy into Taehyung’s life as well as the painting, marred with your semblance.

He also realized you can never fully fall out of love. Just as pain never departs, and one simply learns to live with it, to become stronger and versed in the realm of sorrow, one never falls out of love, you simply learn to live without them; you learn to trudge on without the deity that derived something as powerful as love through the biggest smiles, the glistening eyes, the heaps of cinnamon, the unremitting kindness, and the perpetual act of choosing love.

And that the beauty of loving you was no more breathtaking than the beauty of after you.

[the-blind-assassin-12]

Lonely Stranger

Word Count: 1,340 (+ lyrics- in bold italics)  Character: Ryan Brenner  A/N: This was a real damn treat for me to write, as well as an agonizing experience. I’ll explain a little more. Title of this drabble and lyrics used belong to Eric Clapton, not Ryan Brenner or I... and if you haven’t heard the song, please listen before, during or after you read this.  

(ARTIST APPRECIATION SUBMISSION)

Happy Sunday everyone! I am so pumped to share this next submission for the fanart appreciation event, for many reasons. First of all, the art itself is literally breathtaking. The incredible attention to the smallest of details in this not only show how badass this artist is, but perfectly mirror Ryan’s attention to the little things. The moment that I got this submission from @something-tofightfor to write for the piece that  @gollyderek did that was inspired by Neon Lights, I just about exploded with excitement. First of all, Neon Lights is my favorite piece of fanfiction on this or any plane of existence. If you haven’t read it you absolutely have to. Secondly, Laura’s artwork for it was and still is my happy place because it so perfectly depicts the magic of the moment that reader first sees Ryan. In fact, it makes lots of people’s days better, Laura. When she submitted this request, Rachael told me that this artwork makes her happy even on bad days. 

So the chance to write about not only a beautiful work of art, but one inspired by a beautiful work of fiction was sort of fricking amazing! I decided (with @something-tofightfor​ ‘s blessing, of course- Thanks for trusting me, Rachael!) to write this from Ryan’s POV. 

Anyway! I could continue to gush about how talented both of these ladies are and how much both of their works mean to me, but let’s get on with it. Laura, from Rachael (and I) to you: THANK YOU FOR GIFTING US ALL WITH THIS BEAUTIFUL PIECE OF ART. YOU ARE TALENTED. YOU ARE APPRECIATED. YOU ARE A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH. Keep fuckin shit up in the best way. 

(Can you hear him singing? I can. Good Lord, I can.) 

Lonely Stranger

Once his fingers began to work at the strings, the guitar in Ryan’s lap stopped being separate from him. Hunched over the body and curved around the neck, he let the faces in the small crowd that had gathered disappear and gave all of his focus to the song he was playing. While he enjoyed playing for people, even taking requests to ensure that he played things that they actually knew and wanted to hear, what he enjoyed the most about music was the way that it didn’t begin and end with just his voice or his guitar. It required more than that. Soul and memory. Joy and mistakes. Got plenty’a both. 

Making music was about feeling all of these things and using them to say something through song, regardless of whether or not it was one he’d written. It was his chance to talk to people he might otherwise not get the opportunity to. Just as they slipped beneath the notes he played and the lyrics he sang, he felt himself become invisible to them. His dusty boots, stained jeans, roughly inked digits and all of the preconceived notions that they carried became muted details that mattered less and less with every pluck and pass of his fingers and thumbs, every line he belted out. Ryan became invisible enough to connect with these strangers, just enough to make them smile and keep him believing that people were better on the whole than the worst of their parts. 

They didn’t mind that they’d never see him again, and the older he got and the more he traveled, he realized that he didn't either. Ryan had a few people in his life that he knew would always be a part of it- Georgie and a couple of the friends that they played with together, Virginia, even if every day it got closer to too long since he’d seen her. Cowboy, even though he was gone. Ryan’s closed eyelids wrinkled as he connected that loss to the story he was telling with his song. 

I must be invisible No one knows me. I have crawled down dead-end streets On my hands and knees.

The people who knew him weren’t the ones standing in front of him as he sat perched on a milk crate suspended over the Strip. Those people were scattered elsewhere, acting as anchors for him to return to when needed, as he was to them- people who understood him, accepted him beyond what they could see and without trying to change him. Those people were few and far between, both figuratively and in miles, and Ryan had recently decided that that was for the best. He hadn’t left his home looking for someplace to settle into a new one, he’d done it to live on his own terms. It had been years since he’d met someone who had seen him beneath what they guessed about him, those guesses more often than not being wrong, so he’d stopped hoping for it. 

'cause I'm a lonely stranger here, Well beyond my day. And I don't know what's goin' on, So I'll be on my way.

It was easier to just make these little connections through music, to focus on the details of the city he was in. The skyline, the way clouds gathered and the colors that they cast over the landscape, cobbled streets and gravel roads, highways and bright lights and everything that made each place he visited different from the one before. That’s why he’d chosen the life he had, regardless of what people thought, and it was easier to enjoy those things than it was to try to find another person who saw them the way that he did, saw his lifestyle as a series of intentional choices and not one of circumstantial consequence. 

The desert heat hadn’t left with the sunlight, and though sweat ran in beads between his shoulder blades and left salty trails from his forehead and temples that dried on his skin before reaching his beard, he hardly noticed. He opened his eyes briefly as he played between lyrics, a few more people stepping up to join the audience, their featureless faces reflecting the colors of the neon lights that brought the city to life. Just people on vacation, checking “watch a street performer” off of their Vegas to-do list. Crinkled dollar bills and a small cache of coins littered the lining of the guitar case at his feet, and he was grateful for every cent of it because it allowed him to continue to live the life he wanted, even if it meant becoming a small detail in the scrapbooks of other people’s lives. 

He blinked as a drop of sweat rolled into his eye, and shook his head to clear it without missing a beat. Opening both eyes again, Ryan expected to be met with the same cluster of strangers that he’d just seen, but where before when his eyes had been able to skim across the crowd with ease, this time they found a sticking point- a young woman standing off to the side in a simple black dress, a soft pink glow illuminating her from behind. What? Ryan’s brow wrinkled, and he gave another small shake of his head as though trying to clear a mirage from his mind. 

But you were still there, your eyes wide and your mouth slightly open, body entirely still. But she’s… listening. Ryan closed his eyes, tight, and sunk himself back into the song. Doesn’t matter.   

Some will say that I'm no good; Maybe I agree. Take a look then walk away. That's alright with me.

But you hadn’t heeded the warning in the song. You’d stuck around as most of the crowd dispersed, continuing on to the destinations that his presence on the bridge had delayed them from. Why? He looked down as you tossed a bill into the case, the green paper landing on the small pile of other bills but standing out starkly due to the number in the corner being much higher than any that it sat atop. Oh. That’s… 

“That’s too much, you don’t have to-” he said aloud, assuming that you’d meant to slip something smaller into the case. Bringing his eyes up to yours, they locked onto something there that surprised him. Lips suddenly dry, his tongue darted out to wet them. “Please, that’s not-” 

But you wouldn’t let it go, insisting that he take the tip and the praise that came along with it. You didn’t run off, having checked a box and eager to check another, but stepped aside as he briefly thanked those that did have somewhere else to be. You stayed through another song- one he’d written- watching and listening with the same look on your face, closer now, the curve of your cheek and the tip of your nose highlighted by the yellow orange glow of a different set of lights. She’s… he thanked the couple in front of him, giving them a genuine smile and telling them to have a nice evening, but he was still stuck on your eyes. She’s stunning but I...it... When you’d overheard him answer someone else’s question of what his name was, you hadn’t waited for him to introduce himself to you before using it yourself, and when you did he could feel the way that his own eyes lightened, smiling from the unexpected way you’d maintained the connection that others so easily dropped the second the last note faded. 

Close enough now to see even more than he’d been able to before, Ryan realized what had made you different, even if he couldn’t fathom how he knew it. She’s been lonely, too. Knows it's not all bad, bein’ alone. It wasn’t sadness in your eyes that gave that away, it was clarity. Damn. But instead of looking for a way to cut it off, Ryan held onto the connection that the two of you shared, offering to play a song of your choosing. 

To him, your choice had only confirmed what he didn’t know how he knew about you. The odd comfort and jarring change of being seen, even if just for the length of a few songs adding to the list of things he’d add to the guitar, to his voice: Soul and memory. Joy and mistakes. 

And this… no matter what category tonight falls into.  

.

.

.

And now I am going to go cry about how much I love Ryan Brenner and this perfectly frozen moment in time that @gollyderek​ captured from @something-tofightfor​ ‘s beautiful words. SWOON and SIGH. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it even if it made me nervous AF and choosing a song for Ryan to be singing was more difficult than it should have been. Thank you a million times to all of you fabulous artists! If you are an artist in the Ben Barnes fandom, or you want to surprise an artist with a quick drabble based on their art, send me a message and link me to the posted artwork. Let’s show these talented folks how much we appreciate them and the things that they create! 

[keepmeinthedark]

Growing Pains || A Marlene McKinnon fanfiction

Chapter Two - Hogwarts

Chapter One here

Finding the confidence to ask someone if she could sit with them was proving to be a lot harder then Marlene originally thought. Especially with the thought of her fight with her sister so clear in her head.

Marlene was overreacting, she knew it but she didn't care. Steph lied and her and she hated being lied to. Steph knew this.

They had both been brought up in what Marlene thinks was the right way. To respect others, to not take the purity of others blood into account, to be kind and fair and brave. That Slytherins were anything but, that Gryffindor was the house that every member of their family was apart of and that was for a reason.

But surely she knew better then this? Maybe if her sister was in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff she would be less mad. She didn't want to be mad at Steph, for she was the only person on this train that she knew. She didn't think about making friends on the train, she had just assumed she would enjoy the ride with Steph and her friends and then start actually putting herself out there to her own year once sorted.

Luckily she was able to find a carriage of her own, at the very front of the train, next to where the prefects were. She took her seat and a deep breath.

Now what?

She hadn't really packed anything in her bag that could be used as entertainment. She expected that she would have people to talk to for the train ride.

She sighed and looked out the window, this was going to be a long journey. And the train hadn't even taken off yet.

It was about twenty minutes before the train took off and then another ten minuets for someone to join Marlene.

A small plump boy, draw coloured hair and baby face entered the carriage. "Umm I hope you don't mind but could I sit here?" he asked quietly.

Marlene had to stop herself from jumping with excitement, he was clearly someone who would be in her year and she could use the company.

"Oh yes! Of corse, please take a seat," she beamed. "My names Marlene, Marlene McKinnon."

"Peter Pettigrew," the boy replied, shaking her outstretched hand and sitting in the seat opposite her. "Are you a first year too?"

Marlene nodded, "Yes I am, I'm so excited. Aren't you? Oh I can't wait to be sorted and start classes," she rambled, slightly bouncing up and down in her seat.

Peter smiled, "So am I. What house do you think you'd be in?"

"Gryffindor probably," she replied, trying not to sound as confident as she actually was. "My whole family has been Gryffindor, only makes sense. What about you? Are you pureblood?"

Peter nodded, "My family has been mixed and matched. No real legacy for me, although I'm hoping to also make Gryffindor."

Marlene nodded and politely smiled, trying not to let it show on her face that she thought he would rather be suited in Hufflepuff in her opinion.

"Do you have any siblings?" she asked, she didn't want to sit in silence with Peter. She had to make friends somehow and this seemed as good of a time as ever.

Peter nodded, "A sister, Beth her name is. She's a year younger then me. Have you?"

Marlene hesitated. Really she should've known that Peter would ask back but it still caught her off guard. She had just told Peter that her entire family was Gryffindors, but Steph in fact wasn't a Gryffindor at all.

Still, she was her sisters. And it wasn't like she expected Peter to actually make Gryffindor, he probably would never notice.

"I have one older sister, a younger brother and two younger sisters."

"Wow, big family you've got there."

Marlene let out a little laugh, "Yeah, I guess... But I like having a big family. I love my siblings as I know you must love your sister."

Peter nodded, "Yeah, definitely."

Marlene and Peter continued talking throughout the ride and rode the boats to the castle with two other girls.

Just the sight of the castle made Marlenes stomach grow butterfly's, it was everything she ever dreamed of and walking into the great hall for the first time was surly a moment she would never forget.

"When I call your name, come forward and I will place the hat on your head. When you've been sorted please join your house table," Professor McGonagall said, before pulling out a scroll and speaking the first name.

"Black, Sirius"

Black, Marlene had heard of that family before, all Slytherins, all purists, all arseholes. She narrowed her eyes as she watched the black haired boy take his seat up on the stool. This one would be obvious.

"GRYFFINDOR!" the hat shouted and the hall went silent.

Marlene allowed herself to glance back at the Slytherin table, where Sirius' family were, ready to welcome him with open arms. Now all sat with their jaws open and eyebrows raised.

Looking back at Sirius almost broke her heart, he looked... scared.

Marlenes eyes didn't leave Sirius for the majority of the sorting. It wasn't until she hear "MacDonald, Mary" that her head shot back to the front. She should be called up soon.

Mary was a small girl, with beautiful brown skin and was wearing a black hijab. She walked up to the stall and sat down, it didn't take long for the hat to yell "GRYFFINDOR," causing the hall to applause while Mary joined her house.

"McKinnon, Marlene."

For whatever reason, Marlene decided to wait a total of three seconds before actually moving, as if she was scared that there were two Marlene McKinnons in her year or perhaps if she misheard the professor and went up before her name was called.

She sat at the stool and faced the great hall. Only then did she feel so incredible small. So many eyes all staring up at her, waiting to see where she'd be placed.

She found Stephanie easily, she was sat at the Slytherin table, close to the edge of the table, as if she was getting ready to welcome Marlene into the house.

"Oh god please not Slytherin" she whispered.

Not Slytherin? Pity, I reckon you'd do rather well there.

Marlene had to stop myself from jumping too much. Of course the hat talked, she had been told this. She had been told every little detail about the sorting ceremony but now that she was here she was terrified. Steph being a Slytherin had completely caught her off guard. She just wished the hat would hurry on and sort her already.

Getting impatient are we? So Hufflepuff will never do.

Well you've got that right, she thought. Just please say Gryffindor and leave me be.

Gryffindor? You have bravery yes but also creativity and wit and, if you use it correctly, intelligence. Perhaps Ravenclaw is more your style.

Ravenclaw? She hadn't thought of herself as a Ravenclaw before. Always Gryffindor. She had to be Gryffindor.

You don't have to be anything the hat spoke again. Here all you have to be is yourself and you are not a Gryffindor

Marlene could feel the hat move on her head, she knew what was coming.

Wait, I'm not-

"RAVENCLAW!"

Marlene didn't remover much of the feast from then on. Instead she sat at the Ravenclaw table sulking. She looked like a fool.

Of corse Peter had made it into Gryffindor, along with Sirius, Mary, three other boys and a girl with red hair. She had never envied strangers more.

She couldn't keep her eyes off the Gryffindor table, they all sat there talking and laughing with their prefects. The Ravenclaws around her tried to get through. Also sorted into her house were two other girls, Emmeline and Hestia. And two boys, Caradoc and Benjy. Their prefect, Frank was currently answering every question her four housemates could come up with.

"It's a small batch this year isn't it?" A girl said, taking a seat next to Frank. "Hi, my names Pandora. I'm head girl," she said, shaking each other their hands.

"Small as in number or height?" Frank joked.

Pandora laughed and shoved him "Oh shut it Longbottom, Merlín knows how you got prefect you can't go abusing your power by bullying first years," she laughed causing the others around them to laugh along.

"Anyways, we better go off to bed. Before everyone starts clearing out and we end up losing one of you. Follow me firsties," Frank said loudly, getting up from his seat.

The five first years followed him through the castle until they had reached Ravenclaw tower.

Marlene had to admit the Ravenclaw common room was beautiful. Frank lead them down the staircase and sat the five of them on the blue sofas by the fire.

"Right, well this is it! Umm just a few ground rules that Ravenclaw house has had for a while and a few insights of other houses and all that.

"Firstly, you're welcome to borrow any book only condition is that you give it back. A rule that I'm pretty sure all houses have are parties are allowed but Hufflepuff usually take care of Halloween because they're closest to the food, there's a ball every year right before the Christmas holidays, although only forth year and above are allowed, sorry guys and parties for such events such as birthdays we say third year and above are allowed to host those. Like no offence yall are cute but nobody knows who you are or care about the fact that you're turning twelve so-" he shrugged.

"Boys I warn you, don't go up to the girls dorm by your own will you will regret it. Ummmm what else is there...? Okay if I think of anything else I'll tell you but until then, follow me youngsters," he quickly jogged to a door under the balcony, down a corridor leading to two stair cases.

"Ladies, follow those stairs up to the first door and you will find your dorm room. You'll find that your things have already been sent up for you. Boys, follow me," and with that he, Caradoc and Benjy were gone.

It was Hestia that lead the way to the dorms and immediately jumped on the closest bed. Emmeline then took the middle one leaving Marlene to take the one furthest from the door.

The three girls unpacked in silence until Hestia spoke up, "You're quiet," she said, looking at Marlene.

Marlene just shrugged, "I guess."

Hestia didn't respond but Marlene caught her and Emmeline sharing a glance.

"Well, I was thinking about going down to the common room. Maybe we could get the boys, try to know each other a little better. You two up for it?" Emmeline then asked.

Hestia nodded smiling but Marlene shook her head, "I'm actually a bit tired. Might go to bed early after writing to my folks," she lied. Really she had no intention in writing to her parents until she could properly talk to Stephanie.

The two girls nodded and left the dorm, leaving Marlene on her own.

She sighed and got changed quickly before getting into bed.

"This isn't so bad," she told herself. So far Hogwarts was nothing like she expected but it wasn't all bad. Could've been worse definitely.

With that thought in mind, Marlene turned off the lamp and slowly but surly fell asleep.

[talesofsonicasura]

Diamonds and Voodoo

You Do Voodoo

A mysterious visitor comes to Morioh. Paths diverge and intertwine with the various townfolks of this crazy, noisy bizarre town. And it all started with a good deed touched by a bit of magic.

Good deeds tend to create ripples throughout what we know as life. Sometimes an act of kindness can lead to great rewards. At rare times the road to hell is often paid with good intentions. Nevertheless, this type of charity has a habit of changing the future of one or many individuals. For sometimes, a grand adventure begins with that very act of kindness.

"Look out!" Morioh, a small town amongst the middle of nowhere quite unlike many cities found in Japan. A type of place that tends to be quiet but also hosts some oddities within its dwellings. Unlike many small towns, Morioh would become ground zero for a strand of very bizarre events and each with their own level of danger.

A car was parked awkwardly sideways between the road and crosswalk. Upon closer inspection, this was a crash as the front end was inward from the telephone pole currently wedged inside the bright red metal. To the side was an abandoned bicycle alongside a police officer and what many from this town could call a foreigner. The officer holded the visitor close to his chest almost awkwardly, the telltale of being grabbed.

The officer was an older and surprisingly buff male, darkened grey hair hidden under his cap, eyes that had a natural glint of kindness despite the concern now shining for the person in their arms. A would-be victim of the car accident was a young woman around her late teens, between 16 or 17 from the bits of remaining baby fat still left on her face.

Her skin was slightly tanned in a more climate related basis, such as sun exposure than natural skin tone, hair a short messy lime green hidden under the top jaw of a dinosaur-esque skull, a 5'8 body that was slim, lean and had moderate bust along with curves, but it was her eyes and her arms that drew the most attention.

The young woman's arms were decorated in wavy almost vine patterned tribal markings with a four toes pad on each shoulder and her eyes had a unique case of heterochromia with the right being a normal orange but the entire left eye was blue except for a single white pupil. Her outfit consisted of dark blue fingerless gloves, red sneakers, light brown cargo shorts, a black bra and opened orange vest outlined in red.

"You okay there missy? That car almost hit you if I didn't pull you away in time." The officer questioned, his voice soft and kind in a sort of grandfatherly way. She merely looked up at him with a large impish smile. Not even scared or off-put that a speeding car almost made the teen paste on the street.

"I'm good mister! Just glad no one else got hurt either. Car accidents aren't something normal folks can handle and I rather get hurt than somebody else! I'm more than capable of taking some nasty hits!" The woman's peppy, slightly loud and light chuckle paired with the slightly morbid words had thrown the officer for a loop before he strangely found himself chuckling too.

"Hahaha. Well aren't you an odd but thoughtful young lady? I wish some of my friends on the force had that kind of energy. Everyone's been down as of late and honestly needs a pep talk or two." The greenette looked at his badge for a moment as if scanning for his name. Something that was quick to find apparently as it read 'Ryohei Higashitaka'.

With that in hand, she then reached into the pocket of her cargo while silently whispering his name. The officer or Ryohei honestly looked a bit surprised when the youth produced a peculiar item. It was a small brown wooden charm carved into a smiling mask. The mask was painted with red lips, yellow with green outlined eyes, large reddish eyebrows and four small feathers ranging from yellow, orange, purple and red.

"Please take this mister as a sign of gratitude. It's a good luck charm carved into the likeness of Aku-Aku, a spirit of protection. This charm shall ward off a great disaster in your future." The older man took the odd charm with a soft smile and looked it over. He softly chuckles before patting her head.

"Why thank you! It's pretty adorable and well crafted! I'll make sure to keep it close. Good luck is something a lot of people nowadays…" His eyes widened a bit upon realization. "Whoops! Careless me! I forgot to ask for a name. I am Ryohei Higashitaka, an officer of the Morioh Police Department. What's your name missy? I need it to file a report for ya and if you want to press charges." She merely gave an impish smile with a bit of her tongue sticking out.

"It's Taki-Taki, Taki-Taki Bandicoot."

Budo-ga Oka Middle and High School, one of the few schools within Morioh. A joint school where grades between 6 and 11th are together instead of being separate. It was also a place that had a quite an amount of delinquents which make up some of the school's student body.

Walking towards this destination from the local town square was a mountain of a man in very odd clothing. Hair was jet black and well groomed, eyes a bright ocean blue, body sculpted like a Greek God from every single inch out of 6'5 and a natural scowlish look on his face. Nearly all his clothes, from his coat, pants, shoes and torn back hat with golden pins stylized to spell Jo were white except for the man's shirt which was pitch black.

The man was currently looking over a paper, a report or letter from highly detailed it was in both text and a few select photos. His brows wrinkled in aggravation before muttering a soft 'Yare Yare Daze' under his breath. "Godamnit old man. You're too old to be causing this type of bullshit." He hissed, rough, husky and slightly aggravated tone to his voice making a few people steer clear of his vicinity.

Well… not just that. Unknown to the raven in question, there was something odd looking over his shoulder. This peculiarity was a mask of sorts. It looked vaguely human but the light blue material used to craft it was spectral from how it softly glow like wisps in the night sky.

An Aztec type crown at the top with four flat points as if it was a piece from a gear, large carved ears with faint spiral at the center, pure white eyes and mouth outlined in mauve, and the same mauve color to imitate flat eyebrows. Bystanders seeing the mask either quickened their step or blamed this bizarre sight as 'too much coffee' or 'no more liquor in the morning.'

"Huh. Guess an old man in his late 60s can get laid. Oh, so that's where the gardens are!" The young man nearly bit his tongue in shock from both the raspy, light and almost nerdy sounding male voice but also the fact it came from a floating tiki mask that took a closer look at his document.

He couldn't get a word out of his mouth as the mask flew off with surprising speed. "A Stand?! That means there's a Stand User nearby! You ain't getting away from me!" A bright golden aura began to burn around the adult upon giving chase to the airborne oddity. On the sidewalk, the man's shadow grew with the addition of a more peculiar one.

A few minutes passed when the chase was called off upon the mask being too far in the air to pursue, the extra shadow vanished as the adult male let a growl in annoyance. He lowers his hat with a curse. "Damn it. If that thing's responsible for the recent incidents going on in this town…" The man then went to a payphone before dialing in a number.

"This is Jotaro Kujo. Tell the heads of the Speedwagon Foundation that there is confirmed Stand activity in Morioh. Look into the database about a Stand in shape of a glowing blue mask and the possibility if it's connected to Dio." The phone was slammed down as the white coat of the man fluttered while he left.

"Poke!" A finger poking the little snout of a box turtle that had swam up from the water of the makeshift pond seated by a small bus stop. Sitting on the curb of the pond beside was the odd Taki-Taki, currently petting the small reptilian much to its pleasure. "You're a handsome turtle, aren't you? Much nicer than the big ones back home." She cooed while the turtle rubbed itself against her hand clearly in love with the kind contact.

A little whimper had the young woman look around in utter confusion. Soft heterochromia eyes soon met bright baby blue ones tinged with a bit of fear. That fear directed to the little reptile nipping at the greenette's fingers.

A 5'11 muscular young man with blue violet hair tended neatly into a large pompadour, a dark violet gakuran pinned with a yellow heart and gold peace on each side of his chest, sunshine yellow shirt that peeked through the gap of his uniform coat, and dark boots were the owner of these baby blue orbs.

"You okay? Look like you're about to pee yourself." Taki-Taki questioned upon the fidgeting male still looking at the turtle as if it tried to eat him. He immediately calmed down a bit now noticing he wasn't exactly alone, cheeks dusting a bright red. "I'm so sorry! Reptiles just give me the willies that's all, mostly turtles." His soft and slightly rough almost if still adjusting practically rattled with nervousness.

She merely chuckled whilst waving off any concern. "It's alright! Everyone is afraid of something so no harm done. Plus this little handsome fellow is much more kinder than the ones I've seen in Turtle Woods. Those turtles were mean and one tried to steal my hat!" Her spare hand pointed at the dinosaur skull on her head since the other was still petting the shelled reptile.

The pompadour wearing young man shivered upon the two words 'Turtle Woods' but was honestly thankful that she wasn't making fun of him for his phobia. Taki-Taki then stood up whilst petting the turtle's head one more time. "I better go! Promised to get some stuff with my friend Lani-Loli and we're supposed to meet up at the gardens! Chou!" And she was gone with a pep to her step.

"My name is Josuke Higashitaka… And she's gone. Maybe I'll see her again." The sound of male cursing grew as the purple pomp prince noticed a bunch of male students coming over to him. Delinquents from their rude, downlooking and glaring faces, something that only made him sigh. Days like these tend to suck.

The Higashitaka household, home to the Higashitaka family which consisted of the older police officer Ryohei, his daughter but also single mother Tomoko and Tomoko's son Josuke. A lively place from the unique personalities of the three living inside. Well, it wasn't like this right now.

Peculiar water slipping away from the house window almost like a cobra finished with their prey. A fact so true upon the still body of the family matriarch lying lifeless on the floor. Face carved in blood coated horror slowly changes to a pristine clean outlook through a soft golden aura. Almost if the man died in his slumber and not of gruesome supernatural murder.

The golden aura belonging to a bubblegum arm coated in crystalline diamond armor soon vanishes inside the body of Josuke. Behind Josuke was Jotaro, the man clad in white being a relative, his nephew shockingly taken into consideration that his grandfather was the pomp prince's father. Who knew?

And the older man could only look at the teen that was his uncle trying to coax his dead grandfather back to life with sympathetic pity. Aquamarine eyes that always seemed stuck in a perpetual glare now softened at the scene. The look of someone who had seen a death like this before. Or to be more precise, had experienced such a grizzly sight.

Jotaro knew that this wasn't the time for grief fueled hysterics. There were more pressing matters and dangers ready to drown them from the inside. "Josuke…" Any further words from the older man, alongside any actions from the teen immediately stopped upon one thing. Subtle movement originating from the chest of the officer's corpse before them.

A sickly sweet scent reminiscent of cherries filled the air along with the soft sizzle of something burning. Thin wisps of smoke coming from the body's chest pocket spurred Josuke to go into the clothing's pouch. Baby blue eyes widened seeing a small brown tiki charm in his hands but specifically the feathers that were turning to dust.

"A voodoo charm?" The purplette's attention immediately went back to the corpse of his grandfather. His still chest slowly began to rise and fall almost as if… "He's breathing." It was the only conclusion Jotaro came to upon the subtle movements. The charm in the teenager's hands fully became ash once his previously deceased grandfather sat up looking purely confused.

"Ooh my head… I don't remember my favorite booze having that strong of a kick. Josuke? What are you doing here since I thought you were going out? Who's this guy? And why are you crying?" Ryohei didn't expect to wake up to such a scene or his own grandson to hug him so hard thinking he was about to kick the bucket.

He was quick however to notice the scent of cherry in the air alongside a missing weight in his breast pocket. "Did someone light a scented candle and where did my good luck charm go? Was I mugged or something Josuke?" The elderly man's inquiry had the two younger men share the same look. They needed answers.

/"You want to know who gave me that charm? Well, it was a young girl around my grandson's age. She had green hair, heterochromia with her eyes being orange and blue, and had what looked like a dinosaur skull on her head. Said her name Taki-Taki Bandicoot and came into town looking for ingredients. The charm was based off of a guardian of protection... Aku-Aku I believe she said."/

Information that had both Jotaro and his younger uncle running through the streets of Morioh in a hurry. Ryohei had been put into protective custody with a short call from whoever the raven had pretty high connections to. Something that man would have refused if it wasn't for the fact his son was crying. Josuke only cried when things were at the absolute worst. This made it easier to search without the man being in danger once more.

"I never thought my life would have gotten this insane. First an escaped death row inmate capable of killing his victims from the inside with water and now a Stand User capable of bringing back the dead! Things weren't like this until you came to town!" The highschooler quipped as if to ignore the harsh ache going through his legs.

"Your life was bound to become bizarre the moment you awakened your Stand, no, the moment you were born with Joestar blood. A curse everyone in this damned bloodline has. So don't blame me for the shitshow." Jotaro fired back in absolute annoyance. Their destination was the place mentioned by the woman when Josuke encountered her, Morioh's Springroll Garden.

"Maybe she can remove it? She does know voodoo and it does involve a lot of curse thingies? Do you think Taki-Taki can get rid of my fear of turtles?" The teenager's question was merely met with an eye roll from Jotaro. He was going to shout back an insult until something caught his eyes.

A lone figure standing amongst a large collection of various flora and vegetation belonging to one of Morioh's famous landmarks. More accurately a lonehuman figure and a soft blue floating oddity by them that was very damn familiar to the male clad in white. "There she is and that's the Stand I saw earlier!"

Taki-Taki was currently plucking a few mushrooms from underneath the bushes that provided their moist dark home and placed them into a small straw basket. Springroll Garden was a place where people could pick their vast garden by purchasing a special ticket and take home an entire basket full of items.

"It's kind of cool that the town has such a garden like this. Especially when it guarantees a free basket of fresh goods for first time visitors too!" The luminescent mask said with a big smile while looking at a bush full of white roses. His green haired friend merely let out a chuckle in agreement before speaking. "Same here pal. Makes it a lot easier to find the things needed to work my magic."

A loud shout had the two look up to see some familiar faces running their way. "Wouldn't you know? Hey Pompadour Prince, fancy seeing you here!" Taki-Taki's nickname immediately had the boy stop in his tracks. Face burning in anger until the words finally hitting turned that anger into pure confusion. The sudden confusion didn't stop the mask from cowering behind the greenette.

"Pompadour Prince?" He questioned while pointing to himself, clearly confused. "You kidding? That's the best pompadour I've ever seen. Also, calling you king is going a bit too far since we've barely known each other and aren't in a relationship." Her words caused the male teen to blush a bit paired with a smitten look and cheesy smile.

Jotaro merely elbowed Josuke's shoulder as the highschooler remembered what they were supposed to be doing. "Taki-Taki Bandicoot, we need you to come with us. We already know about you being a Stand User since your Stand is hiding right behind you but also that charm you gave Ryohei Higashitaka before he was attacked."

The greenette merely had a confused look before it immediately narrowed into glare after the words Ryohei Higashitaka and attacked. Her emotions were clearly being felt through the odd mask as it came out of hiding to glare at them. "I knew something bad was bound to happen upon seeing that dark aura. Tell me what you've done to that kind officer before I rip ya putzes a new one!"

Josuke was thrown off guard by the sudden aggression consuming Taki-Taki's features. It was as if a cloak of pure madness just overshadowed that sunny aura of the greenette. The change didn't deter Jotaro who refused to back down at her threat. As if proving his point, a gold aura started to radiate from his body.

"You need to calm down now. We aren't your enemies but I won't hesitate to knock you out even if you're a girl." The man spoke as something appeared from his body like an apparition. It was a humanoid spirit of sorts that appeared to be an Aztec Warrior or barbarian with similar origins.

Just as big and buff as his summoner but a bit more, soft blue skin that outlined a coral inner pink, black hair that flowed like smoke but sparkle as if it was stardust, soft ocean blue eyes and a body armed with white pauldrons painted in gold spirals, black fingerless gold studded gloves, a white scarf around their neck, black knee high boots and a long white loincloth alongside a dark tasset.

Yet, the strange being seemed to only piss off Taki-Taki even further as she went into her pant's pocket to pull out a small crystal orb. "You're going to threaten me with a giant in his skivvies? Alright jackass, hope your ready to party. For this Ooda-Booga Boogie of mine is going to send ya to the hospital!" And she crushed the crystal orb in her hand.

Both men only had seconds until a large blackish pink fist had punched Jotaro's spirit in the face, the ghost and summoner were sent flying out of the garden before kissing the street concrete. Josuke could only blink before seeing the thing responsible for sending his nephew airborne. "Holy shit!" For what stood snarling in front of Taki-Taki was an absolute monster.

A heavily built 9'6 tall slightly deformed anthropomorphic porcupine with vibrant magenta skin overshadowed by a darkish gray hide. A long singular black horn tipped with hot pink, burning crimson eyes that glared down at the man in white, a magenta muzzle overlapped with an giant overbite of fangs, multiple pink tipped black spikes across their back, their right arm covered in black armor in the form of a riot shield, and crimson hakama trousers with a black paw print on the side.

The beast snarled angrily at Jotaro while a trail of drool came down from their razor sharp maw. It then let out a loud and deep inhuman roar almost if challenging anyone foolish enough to face the beast's wrath. Jotaro had gotten back onto his feet, spitting a bit of blood on the road before wiping the remainder from his mouth. Some of it stained bits of his hat a dark crimson. His spirit staring at the beast with an analysistic glare.

"That's one hell of a sucker punch you got there. Quite an ugly bastard of a friend you have, makes me question which one it is though. Is the beast your actual stand or a byproduct of its power?" The question only seemed to aggravate the greenette and the large creature she called upon.

"That 'ugly bastard' is my friend Quill and what is with this Stand garbage anyway?! What I want to know is did you attack Mr. Ryohei?! My charm doesn't just vanish without fulfilling its purpose even if stolen. Now answer me or I'll beat the truth out of you!" Taki-Taki declared with a snarl that held inhumanely sharp teeth.

Josuke didn't have to be a genius to know if he didn't stop these two right now then things were going to get a lot worse. His nephew's Stand went in for a punch while the greenette's large beast followed suit. Neither attack landing their blow as two diamond covered pink hands caught both fists.

The culprit was a giant pink skinned warrior whose body was covered in Corinthian style diamond armor. He was huge with the same type of muscle like Jotaro's spirit, eyes were a bright baby blue that shone through the darkness of the heart top helmet with concern, wires connecting the back of his neck to his back, heart shaped diamond pauldrons with spikes, armor that over lined the side of his arms, legs and back, and diamond plating rings around the fingers.

Unlike Jotaro's Stand or Taki-Taki's giant beast, this one exuded a gentle and kind aura akin to that of a guardian or protector. Something that made sense from the soft magenta aura radiating from Josuke. "Please stop fighting! I don't want to see my nephew or the person who saved my grandpa hurt each other for something stupid!" The pomp prince's words carried strong as they were sincere.

Something the greenette easily felt upon Quill taking a step back as if backing down from the fight since there was no longer any hostility. Jotaro's Stand disappeared soon after while he muttered a soft 'Yare Yare Daze' under his breath. "Holy shit… I thought things were going to get ugly there. I don't think this garden deserves to be wrecked by a Spike." The mask's quip not being lost on anyone.

Later at the Higashitaka House, cups of tea were placed on the table. Sitting at the table on mats were Josuke, Jotaro and the odd woman known as Taki-Taki Bandicoot. To their left side strangely enough was the greenette's mask and both men's spirits that were conversing with each other or goofing off upon the playing cards between them.

"I still don't believe that Stands are basically the spiritual energy of someone given form. You sure they aren't warrior ancestors? Jotaro's Star Platinum looks like an Aztec barbarian and Josuke, your Crazy Diamond reminds of those old Greek soldiers from his armor." She said while looking at the three oddities playing Go Fish.

A Scrabble holder was being used for the mask or Lani-Loli's cards since he didn't have any hands. He would ask either Star Platinum or Crazy Diamond to put any of his matching cards down and when he needed to 'fish' a card. "Pretty sure. Couldn't I ask the same thing about Lani-Loli over there? Floating masks that can talk aren't normal either." Josuke quipped while pointing to the mask in question.

"Hey! I'm right here you know and I'm way older than all of you combined! And I would have you know that I was human before becoming a Quantum Mask! If I still had hands I would smack all three of you on the head!" The mask fired back in aggravation, some of the cards disappearing in blue wisps of smoke... alongside Josuke's clothes.

"Eeek!" He panicked immediately covering his crotch, Jotaro hiding his embarrassment under his hat while Taki-Taki turned her head away with face hot red in embarrassment. "Great Tikimon! Lani-Loli! Phase his clothes back now!" The mask quickly undoing his magic in sheer embarrassment. Josuke's clothes and the cards popping back into reality with similar blue wispy smoke.

Poor teen let out a sigh of relief knowing he wasn't nude in front of a girl anymore. "Sorry! Sometimes I accidentally poof things out of existence when I'm stressed! And nothing says stress like an escaped convict who kills people with living water!" Jotaro rolled his eyes at the smartass remark. For an all mighty ancient mask, Lani-Loli was an anxious nerd that was a scare away from passing out.

The reason why they were holed up in Josuke's house was that all of them were targets of the Stand User Angelo and his Stand Aqua Necklace.

Angelo was a psychopath with a taste of madness and penchant for violence. The man was arrested repeatedly for brutal acts like murder and even sexual assault before he was landed on Death row. Sadly his execution didn't work properly, allowing the maniac to escape the morgue and reach Morioh. He attacked Ryohei as the cop was the reason Angelo got arrested.

Due to the nature of his Stand, none of them could use water that came from anywhere but a bottle in fear of accidentally swallowing the dangerous entity. "And when do you think it's safe for us to go home? Unlike you guys, my dad will go nuts if I ain't back soon. None of us want to deal with an angry father much less my pops, Crash Bandicoot." Taki-Taki wasn't blind to the nervous look on the pompadour prince's face while he took a sip of his tea.

"Until that Stand User is caught." Jotaro didn't foresee the spray of tea hitting his face from the greenette's spit-take. The grown man was growling in his seat while the young woman tried to settle down her coughs. "You nuts?! That is the stupidest thing I ever heard and this is stemming from the fact my partner does insanely stupid stuff on a daily basis!"

Lani-Loli had flown over to the table so fast that the card pile dispersed from the sudden gust, much to both Stand's displeasure. "You said this guy's Stand is pure water right? What do we do when we run out of water? Wait, here's a better one! What happens if it rained? Shelter becomes a deathtrap in two seconds!" Both men's eyes widened upon the mask's words.

After settling down her coughing fit, Taki-Taki let out a soft whisper. "I think this is what that putz wants. Turn ourselves into sitting ducks and swoops in for the kill until it's too late. And it's going to rain in three days." Silence filled the room upon that very knowledge. The convict was planning to turn their stakeout into a trap.

Josuke could only sigh at the difficult hand. Sure, they now know the guy's plan but if they ignore it then finding Angelo would be even harder. It also meant that the psycho will find out Ryohei is still alive and won't hesitate to attack him again. "Then let's turn the tables back. Turn the hunter into the hunted." All eyes were on Taki-Taki in seconds.

She had a goofy smile on her face with her tongue sticking out in an impish manner. There was also the fact that another crystal orb was in her hands. An item that produced the monstrous Quill but unlike that one, this jewel was a shade of toxic green. Lani-Loli, upon seeing what his friend held, grew a mischievous grin of his own. The odd duo clearly had a plan that almost made Jotaro and Josuke feel an ounce of pity. Almost being the keyword.

Rain had finally fallen upon the house once three days had passed by. Taki-Taki had called her father about being home a few days late since some issues had cropped up. Neither Josuke or Jotaro heard the man's voice but what they gathered upon how the greenette talked, 'Crash' was kindly lenient. Although, both males would have to see him once she got back home.

They spent most of their time keeping themselves from getting bored. Board games, reading, or Taki-Taki crafting some… mysterious concoctions and trinkets with whatever she found in the Higashitaka household. Josuke could honestly admit that he didn't know there was a den of possums hiding in his walls but the witch doctor managed to get some possum fur and nail clippings after one landed on Jotaro.

The greenette at the moment was alone in the bathroom, various ingredients that surrounded a lone bucket. Each item was odd in their own right, rat tails, frog eyes, shiitake mushrooms, yew branches, spoiled milk and a bottle of water. Taki-Taki began pouring the ingredients into the vat starting with the rotten dairy.

She was chanting in an unknown language that eerily sounded like a mix of Arabic and Pig Latin. Bucket began to bubble from her words as the color shifted upon every ingredient dropped into the vat. Taki-Taki's water bottle was currently halfway empty through the process and the cap left abandoned to the side.

Unbeknownst to the woman, rain began to patter outside and something opaque began to build up by the window. It looked like water but it held a more bluish hue and moved too much like a living creature to be normal. Then a pair of sinister pink eyes and a grin full of sharp teeth slithered through.

"You sure this isn't a mango?" Josuke currently sat in the front room alongside Lani-Loli who floated over the teenager's shoulder. Standing on the table was a large orange fruit with a yellow bottom similar to a mango but two leaves that hung from a stem. The teenager currently poking at the fruit that had come from Taki-Taki's home.

"Nope! It's a Wumpa Fruit, a pretty common thing to find on the Wumpa Islands. They're much sweeter than mango and the juice is pretty tasty too. Especially when used for a Wumpa Smoothie, those are really good." Being curious upon the mask's words, the pompadour prince took a nicely sized bite of the fruit.

Tangy sweetness was the first thing that hit the highschooler's taste buds then a rich zesty flavor kicked in a matter of seconds. "Holy shit! This is actually pretty good. Yo Jotaro, you have to try this!" The raven poked his head out of the kitchen upon hearing his name. He let out an annoyed sigh before snatching the fruit out of the teen's hand.

"Did someone put salt in your oatmeal today?" Lani-Loli couldn't help but point out at the man's awfully sour mood added by the harsh bite he took out of the poor fruit or the vicious vice grip. "No. None of you are taking this situation seriously and last I checked didn't get an angry rodent trying to claw up your face." He hissed before taking another aggressive bite.

The sound of footsteps had gotten the two humans and mask turning their heads. Approaching them with an eerily quiet and dead stare was Taki-Taki. Her feet moving sluggishly to the point it was close to that of a sleepwalker… or if heavy weights were tied to the woman's legs.

"Taki?" Lani-Loli's voice thick with concern while he spoke his friend's nickname. Her response was to open her mouth slowly with evil pink eyes glaring back at them in the darkness. "Sorry but your little friend's life is now mine!" A vile, raspy and deep male voice coming out of the greenette's mouth, all to the horror of her friends.

"Aqua Necklace?! You bastard, get out of Taki-Taki now Angelo!" Josuke could only burn brighter in rage from the deranged laugh of the psychopathic water Stand. "And get rid of my only hostage?! Hell no! This bitch is the reason why Ryohei Higashitaka is still alive! She has the power to bring back the dead, a ticket to immortality!" The mask could only roll his eyes as if sensing a monologue.

"I've been watching you this whole time. I saw the giant beast she summoned and that mask phasing things through existence. With her as my slave, I'll be invincible! The world will be my toy box and every single person my toys that I can break for eternity! Once you're all dead, I'll break her until she's a mindless bitch who will follow my every…" The monologue was caught short upon her mouth snapping shut.

Yet, it wasn't the lips that closed the space but an eerie green substance reminiscent to goo. "The hell?!" Aqua Necklace tried to dive down the woman's throat only to run into another gooey green wall. Then he heard laughter. Pink eyes turned to see it was Lani-Loli who was responsible. He was cackling mischievously that tears looked ready to fly from how hard his laughter, much to the confusion of his friends.

"Haha! Hehehehe! You really thought it would be so easy! Taki and I faced way worse than your miserable hide. Oh, and that's not Taki-Taki you putz! Drop the charade Toxic!" Jotaro and Josuke immediately jumped back upon who they thought was Taki-Taki began to melt. All color draining away into a puddle of green slightly clear goo.

Crazy Diamond and Star Platinum were quickly summoned when that sludge started to rise up in the process of a transformation. The slime forming three toed misshapen legs, dripping fat arms with chubby fingers, a large yellow green belly that from its almost clear texture and Aqua Necklace being held inside looked more like a prison, and a roundish hippo like head paired with short pig ears, large deformed inhuman teeth and two alien yellow orbs looking back at it's observers.

The beast or Toxic's appearance could be compared to a 8 ft tall ogre or even an Oni, supernatural beings that tend to punish wicked humans. "Meet the Sludge, a creature made of magic infused ooze with a love for eating utter garbage, like your ugly face! I told Toxic here about your little plan involving my best friend."

Almost on cue, the large oozing beast let a loud snarl before smoke began filling in its tummy. "Aaaaaaah! What the hell is that smell?! It's getting hot in here! Don't tell me this is acid?!" The mask only had a vicious smile on his face that solidified the fact. "People like you make me sick. I've read your entire file and I bet it would even make Uka-Uka himself furious to see your deeds!" Aqua Necklace could only shiver in horror at the mask.

It was like Lani-Loli's nervous self had been overshadowed by pure animalistic rage that his eyes were narrowed slits and teeth were now large fangs held in a snarl. A deity ready to smite a sinner with divine punishment. Even Jotaro and Josuke were taken aback by the sudden shift.

"I may be a scaredy cat but I am still a protector. My name is Lani-Loli, the Quantum Mask of Phase! For ruining the lives of many, threatening my friends and having an unsavory plan for my contractor, I mark you Angelo and his Stand Aqua Necklace, guilty of your sins! And boy do I have a nice punishment for your wicked soul."

The mask then faced the two Joestar blooded men. "Josuke. Jotaro. Taki-Taki left earlier to find this cretin's owner hence my friend Toxic here taking her place. I know where she is and I'm going to need your help with something."

On a street a few blocks from Josuke's house sat a large boulder. This rock had laid on this spot for centuries after a stray storm left it stranded on the land that would become Morioh. Tied to this very stone was an unsavory dark haired man in a milkman uniform bound by chains and gagged with a black cloth. Bruises decorating his body no doubt from the slightly bloody fists of the witch doctor.

Taki-Taki turned her head and smiled upon the sight of her friends coming into view. Aqua Necklace was still trapped within the prison that was Toxic's stomach, who seemed mighty pleased at the abomination's struggle. "Damn, you did a number on the asshole." Josuke said much to the greenette's pleasure.

"I aim to please. Now then, Angelo, since you made a living of ruining people's lives I believe your punishment should be providing good luck." Taki-Taki then pulled from behind the rock was the bucket filled with her concoction. It was a bright bubbling pink and had a smell akin to rotten lavender. She didn't resist dumping the nasty vat all over the convict much to his displeasure.

The man was struggling in disgust before his movements slowed to a crawl as if his whole body was paralyzed except for his mouth and eyes. Taki then yanked the gag from Angelo's lips allowing the man to speak. "You...crazy bitch…! What have you done?" His raspy dry voice almost sounded like a dying cat from how quiet it was.

"A simple potion made to turn you into an eternal good luck charm for all the folks in Morioh! Bet you now wished that your original execution didn't fail. Josuke, this last part is all up to you. Today you will have to make a choice on how this man goes out." Taki-Taki's eyes narrowed as they glowed inhumanly under the dark cloudy sky.

"Ryohei Higashitaka was the one who put this man in jail and stopped his rampage. In vengeance, this scum tried to rob a righteous soul of his life. As Ryohei's grandson, will you fulfill his task and put an end to the man that escaped the grim reaper's blade? If not, then I will perform the deed with Lani-Loli. What do you say?"

The pompadour prince was a bit off guard by the witch doctor's words. Why would she ask him if he wanted to be the one that dealt Angelo's punishment? "Josuke?! Are you seriously going to let her kill me? Sure I tried to kill your grandfather but if you go along with this bitch's plan then you'll be a killer just like me!"

None of them were blind to the man's false pleas knowing it was a trick to let him go. A rat that will only wreak havoc if given a shred of mercy. Angelo's rants were caught off by a fist breaking both his hand and a chunk of the rock. The shocking thing was that the stone merged and encased itself around the appendage much to the psycho's horror.

"Aaah! My hand!! What are you doing?" Josuke merely ignored the man's painful cries. "You really think that we're going to let you go after all you've done. This town used to be a peaceful place before you came and played with people's lives! So for the rest of your days, you're going to pay back every family that you destroyed! Taki-Taki." The greenette smiled knowing what the young man wanted.

"Let's do this Lani-Loli! Armor up!" The cyan mask flew around Taki-Taki with trails of aqua wispy trails that followed from behind. The mask situated himself onto her back while the ghostly ribbons wrapped themselves around her body. Each wispy streak solidified to form a black jumpsuit of sorts which was highlighted by glowing aqua blue chunks of armor reminiscent of Lani-Loli's crown.

Taki-Taki's eyes were now completely glowing blue while velvet sky blue energy followed through the tattoos on her skin and turned her hair into luminous bluish mist. The sudden change to the witch doctor had the restrained Angelo sweating in terror and nearly pissing himself when Josuke's Crazy Diamond materialized.

"Dorarararararara!!!!" The armored spirit let out a battle cry as both him and the armored greenette let loose a barrage of vicious punches. Each strike was as destructive and fast as machine gun rounds, blowing off huge chunks of the stone and merging to the man trapped in the dead center. Neither of them stopping their assault until every piece of stone had been reassembled.

With one last brutal punch, the stone fragments had fully merged Angelo turning the once human male into a deformed boulder. This new shape of the large stone was a malformed face with wide eyes held in different angles, a large flat nose at the bottom similar to a maui and stress lines just like the person it used to be.

Aqua Necklace, who was still trapped in Toxic's belly, quickly melted away in seconds. No doubt the Stand could no longer survive without the life force of its user, thus following its master into hell. Jotaro could only grimace behind the guard of his cap.

[Morioh Landmark 1: Angelo's Rock. No one knows where this mysterious stone appeared from or why. Despite its unnerving appearance, this landmark is a hotspot for couples both old and new.]

'These three are bat shit crazy and have the strength to back it up. Luckily Josuke has a good head on shoulders but…' The raven's eyes drifted to Taki-Taki, her sludge summon and most importantly Lani-Loli still hanging onto her back. She was conversing with Josuke who took the time to look at her changed form and the living sludge Toxic in rapt curiosity.

'Taki-Taki isn't a Stand User but she's just as dangerous as one. Those beasts, Quill and Toxic, whatever they are no doubt has a connection to her origins. And then there's Lani-Loli. I don't exactly know what a Quantum Mask is but I have a feeling he isn't the only one. Just who are you?'

And that is it! This ended being super long since the story revolves around two whole episodes instead of one. It does take place in the beginning of Part 4 and I wanted to stick as close to canon involving them.

Yes, Taki-Taki can call upon Titans, the enemies normally found in the Crash of the Titan series. Unlike a large chunk of people, I actually like the Titan games. They were the first Crash games I played and 100%. I did play Crash The Huge Adventure for the gameboy advance but it got destroyed in the wash sadly before I got the last crystal.

Any version of Crash of the Titans is good but I suggest playing the DS version of Mind Over Mutant considering the console version is more of an annoying chore with tons of backtracking.

My favorite Titans are Spike and Rhinoroller. I especially love the boss version of Spike from the DS Mind Over Mutant but I haven't found the concept art of it yet.

Just like a witch doctor, Taki-Taki does craft all sorts of potions and charms. The Aku-Aku charm acts like a second chance. If someone who has the charm experiences death, the charm will revive them. Deaths done through murder are a bit different.

The charm will hold onto their soul until its safe to revive the holder. Any extensive damage is done and the soul is returned back to the body once repairs are complete. After use, the charm will disintegrate or dull out depending on how much damage was caused.

The Phase Armor given by Lani-Loli is much different for Taki-Taki when she uses it. Reason for it is that she's contracted to him thus the power and magic he provides is much stronger than someone who doesn't have a contract.

Even if Lani-Loli is quite a skittish character,that doesn't mean he won't get serious when needed. Angelo did a lot of horrible stuff that I bet even Uka-Uka wouldn't do. Uka-Uka may be evil but he has standards.

I wanted to try a different writing style for this considering Part 4 is more of a murder mystery. So I wanted to introduce particular areas, new landmarks and important information in a traversing to the next scene.

Until next time folks! Tell the world that your unbreakable!

[btsexomonstaxtrash1996]

Jungkook part 4

“Look at you miss pretty young thing.” Meg muses making angel smile before she puts her coat on. The hallways are cold especially coming from gryffindor tower. “Seriously you look like a model.” Meg whines a bit and angel shakes her head at her.

“Stop.” She says looking herself over in the mirror.

“If my date leaves me for you I'm gonna be so mad.” Meg muses before they leave to go to the ball, dance, thing.

Harry is shocked when he sees angel coming down the stairs and so is Hermione who had suspected she wouldn't want to come.

“Stop staring.” She says after a while and Harry can tell she has a bit of a blush on her pale cheeks.

When they get to the great Hall it's bigger and decorated with twinkly lights and candles everywhere.

“Coat off.” Meg says handing her coat to a staff who hands her a number which she slips in her dress pocket. Angel takes off her coat handing it to the man who hands her a number too. “And I'll take that.” Meg muses putting it in her dress pocket. “I'll give it back when you've at least spent an hour here.” She says and angel laughs before they walked off through the maze of seating, food, and drinks.

“What if she doesn't come?” Jungkook asks sadly and taehyung laughs. “I can't smell her with all the perfume.” He whines and the man in front of him pats him on the shoulder.

“I'm sure if she doesn't come you will see her again.” He says and jungkook nods like he is trying to agree but he is still thinking about it.

Jungkook sighs looking around at the other girls trying to find her. When he does she is standing by one of the drink tables with her friend who gave him the plate of food when she was sick.

“She's beautiful.” Jungkook says making his hyungs who decided they should try and stick together for the night. As wolves their senses are heightened and so when they get turned on in any way they can get a little wild so seokjin thought it would be better if they at least kept within eyesight just in case someone gets carried away another could stop them.

“Girls are allowed to wear that to a dance?” Seokjin asks shocked at the bead work and how it is a bit provocative.

“Hands off.” Jungkook growls and seokjin takes a step back.

“I wasn't going to go near her.” He states shocked at the man's words and jungkook takes a deep breath in controlling himself.

“Wait until her friend is done spending time with her.” Taehyung says and jungkook sighs noding and he turns away trying to control the wolf part of him that just wants her to be his already.

“Okay get a few drinks in you and sit sexily and someone will ask you to dance.” Meg says handing her a drink and angel looks at her for a moment. “Trust me, you want to drink at these things, someone always tries to ruin it.” She says and angel starts drinking. She didn't want anyone to ruin her first dance. “And a tip, if you make out with someone make sure it doesn't go to far. Boys are like dogs, they like to play fetch and if you give it to them completely they will get bored.” She explains and angel nods her head taking in her friends advice. She isn't normally around boys in general and she would try to stay out of parties and dances if the girls were allowed to go.

Meg gives her three drinks before she feels comfortable to leave her alone.

“Now sit like you're ready to be screwed.” Meg says and angel is confused and a little offended. “Okay sit.” She says and angel sits down and Meg adjusts her from there. “I better get some really good smutty details from tonight.” Meg says before she leaves her to go and dance with her date.

Angel stays in the position for a while before kylie sits down next to her and sighs.

“All the cute boys are dancing.” She Huff's and angel laughs. Angel half heartily listens to the girl noding her head when she needed to until a man walks up.

“Dance with me love.” He says and Kylie looks at angel who has always been the more popular one and the boy laughs. “Not the weird one you in the pink dress silly.” He says and Kylie gets up and waves bye to angel making her sigh, she definitely wasn't drunk enough for this.

“dance?” A man says after stepping in front if her. When she looked up jungkook stood there with his hand out. She looks at him for a while before he raises an eyebrow. “You no like dance?” He asks awkwardly with a smile and she just downs her drink.

“I do.” She says softly and he smiles wider when she takes his hand. For some reason, she guessed it was the alcohol, the way his hand feels on hers is like heaven. Maybe because she really isn't used to being touched.

He takes her to the dance floor right in front of Kylie and the guy who offended her. Maybe it was just jungkook wanting everyone to see that shes perfect or because he wanted to prove that she is better than the girl he chose.

He places the hand he was holding onto his shoulder and put his hand on her waist grabbing her other hand and holding it as he starts to sway. He unconsciously pulls her closer as he looks down at her, loving the slight pink tint in her cheeks.

“You, very, beautiful.” He says laughing at his awkwardness and she smiles looking down before jungkook lifted up her chin with his fingers. He notices her skin start to glow a bit more pale. “Beautiful.” He says smoothing her cheek a bit before placing his hand back on her waist.

When she smiles it was like the whole room lightened up a few notches.

“Your English is getting better.” She says softly after a while and he smiles.

“I understand, but can not talk yet.” He says and she smiles at his awkwardness way of speaking.

“Did you learn dance?” He asks and she nods, Meg dragged her to the lesson since a lot of girls went with the hopes one of the boys would pick them, and he smiles. “Hyungs and I singing. I want you as dance partner.” He says and she looked a bit worried. “I don't want to dance with anyone else.” He struggles making a complete statement and she smiles.

“Don't let me fall.” She says and he laughs smiling down at her.

“Never.” He says and she smiles.

“Kookie.” Jimin muses placing a mic on the man and an earpiece so he can hear the music better. “Good luck.” He muses and pats the man on the shoulder making him laugh.

People clear the floor as the music starts.

Jungkook starts singing first and she has never heard the man sing before though she knows he's rather famous especially amongst the girls.

He leads her though the steps easily, when he needs to lift her he does so without even struggling.

She was shocked at how good he was. And the fact he didn't stop looking at her the whole dance made her breathless. She hasn't had a member of the opposite sex pay this much attention to her other than her older brother.

He noticed the more she smiled the brighter her skin seemed. He wanted this to go in forever if he could.

“I'll be back.” Jungkook says kissing her cheek before leading her back to the outline of the crowd and the other boys do too.

She's left standing in front if Meg who hid that her date was taehyung until the last minute.

“Told you you needed that class.” She muses and angel shakes her head at Meg for her dirty planning.

She heard whining behind her about how lucky she was and she laughs and shakes her head.

After the second song jungkook pretty much throws the things he needed for performance at their manager before fast walking towards angel.

“Jungkook!” A girl screams right next to angels ear before jungkook ushers her out of the hall and hides the both if them when girls follow him.

“We go to the same school and they still chase me.” Jungkook sighs in Korean sighing in relief when he sees that they are gone. “Sorry.” He sighs and she smiles looking at him.

“I was scared you would get tackled.” She muses and he laughs a bit and nods.

“I want you by myself.” He says and she raises an eyebrow at him and he laughs nervously and a bit embarrassed at the look. “Too many smell.” He says and she laughs almost forgetting what he was.

He pulls her into a hug she wasn't expecting.

“I'm sorry.” He sighs holding her tighter. She was confused until she remembers that he witnessed not only her glowing skin but the curse and her scars. She isn't sure which part he is sorry about but she hugs him back.

“It's not your fault.” She says sadly and he places his chin over her head.

“Are we just going to stand here and keep hugging?” She muses and he raises an eyebrow backing up just enough to look down at her.

“What do you want?” He asks with a smile and she blushes before looking away and mumbling a nothing awkwardly. He takes a sharp breath in before he backs her against the wall making her look up at him. He leans down and presses his lips against hers making her grip onto his blazer.

He whimpers pressing a bit harder against her and gripping onto the wall.

When he pulls away they both are breathing heavily.

“Jungkook.” Seokjin starts before jungkook sighs and when he looks at the older man seokjin takes a step back before jungkook composes himself.

“We go back now.” He says and offers her his arm and she smiles before taking it and walking back with him.

They dance more and when they go to sit down for a much needed rest girls kept coming up to him to flirt and angel just focused more on drinking watching Meg and taehyung making out across the room. She gets up and jungkook watches her as she goes over interrupting taehyung and Meg's make out.

“Number.” She says and Meg sighs before giving her a number. “If it's your jacket I'm still wearing it.” She says walking away and tugging on jungkook's sleeve making him look up at her. She shows him her number and he smiles.

“Excuse me.” Jungkook says to the girl before standing up and buttoning his suit jacket. He walks over with her and hands the man their numbers and he gives them their coats before they walk out and jungkook keeps looking over his shoulder.

“Are you expecting someone?” She muses and he looks at her surprised as they climb some stairs. He shakes his head and smiles following her up the stairs before taking the lead himself with her hand in his.

He leads her up to the tower afraid to go further.

“Have you ever been in one of the dorms?” She asks and he shakes his head.

She smiles and grabs his hand tighter and motions for him to follow her and he smiles nervously.

“You're back early…” Harry starts before he sees jungkook and ginny giggles.

Jungkook is shocked at the coolness of the room and follows her up some winding stairs where two hallways sit and she motions for him to follow.

She leads him down a rather long hallway making him confused as it isn't a big tower.

“Undetectable extension charm.” She says and he nods before she opens a door showing him a room and there is an open door after it.

She laughs as he stands at the door as she walks into the room and taking off her coat and placing it in her wardrobe.

“Come in.” She laughs when he is still standing there. He takes in a deep breath before coming into the room following her to the back of the room where her bed was.

“Should I be in here?” He asks looking around the room and she laughs a little.

“If we didn't leave early Meg would have locked the door so her and your friend could have sex on my bed.” She sighs and he bursts out laughing at her bluntness. “Hopefully they will use his bed seeing us here.” She muses and sits down next to jungkook who just smiles over at her.

“Seokjin hyung won't let him.” He says honestly and she looks at him for a while. His eyes widen and his mouth falls open as he tries to form words.

“Pack stick together.” He says and she is raising an eyebrow.

“But he didn't stop you coming with me.” She says and jungkook is a bit surprised at her words, having forgotten he followed her all the way to her room. He laughs nervously looking around the room nodding.

“I'm Alfa.” He says and she looks at him for a while confused.

“But you're the youngest.” She says and he laughs.

“Alfa is my father.” He says and she nods a bit kind if still confused.

“You my mate.” He says softly and she almost doesn't hear it and he is terrified that she will reject him knowing taehyung said he should take it slow and get her to like him. He gets worried when she looks away. He turns her face to him.

“Are you scared of me?” He asks and she can see the pain in his eyes.

She carefully touches his face lightly. His eyes close before they open again, and this time they are red. He can hear her heart beating faster in the quiet of the room. She shakes her head slightly as her hand travels down his neck down to his button up shirt and he loses it pressing his lips down in hers.

The dress she's wearing is made by Pablo Sebastian I think and it's a slim fitted beaded dress that I guess you can look up unless I can find a picture that I can figure out how to post because it isn't downloading on my phone as a picture it's just a download it's hard to explain. I don't know if I'm going to be posting any more of it it depends on how much you like it....start with Draco part one and finish to part four then yixings parts then jungkooks cuz if you read it out of order it's going to be confusing for you

[andya-j]

It made its home in the deep forest near the village of Grommin, and all anyone ever saw of it, before the end, would be hard eyes and the dark barrel of its muzzle. The smell of piss and blood and shit and bubbles of saliva and half-eaten food. The villagers called it the Third Bear because they had killed two bears already that year. But, near the end, no one really thought of it as a bear, even though the name had stuck, changed by repetition and fear and slurring through blood-filled mouths to Theeber. Sometimes it even sounded like "seether" or "seabird." The Third Bear came to the forest in mid-summer, and soon most anyone who used the forest trail, day or night, disappeared, carried off to the creature's lair. By the time even large convoys had traveled through, they would discover two or three of their number missing. A straggling horseman, his mount cantering along, just bloodstains and bits of skin sticking to the saddle. A cobbler gone but for a shredded, bloodied hat. A few of the richest villagers hired mercenaries as guards, but when even the strongest men died, silent and alone, the convoys dried up. The village elder, a man named Horley, held a meeting to decide what to do. It was the end of summer by then. The meeting house had a chill to it, a stench of thick earth with a trace of blood and sweat curling through it. All five hundred villagers came to the meeting, from the few remaining merchants to the poorest beggar. Grommin had always been hard scrabble and tough winters, but it was also two hundred years old. It had survived the wars of barons and of kings, been razed twice, only to return. "I can't bring my goods to market," one farmer said, rising in shadow from beneath the thatch. "I can't be sure I want to send my daughter to the pen to milk the goats." Horley laughed, said, "It's worse than that. We can't bring in food from the other side. Not for sure. Not without losing men." Horley had a sudden vision from months ahead, of winter, of ice gravelly with frozen blood. It made him shudder. "What about those of us who live outside the village?" another farmer asked. "We need the pasture for grazing, but we have no protection." Horley understood the problem; he had been one of those farmers, once. The village had a wall of thick logs surrounding it, to a height of ten feet. No real defense against an army, but more than enough to keep the wolves out. Beyond that perimeter lived the farmers and the hunters and the outcasts who could not work among others. "You may have to pretend it is a time of war and live in the village and go out with a guard," Horley said. "We have plenty of able-bodied men, still." "Is it the witch woman doing this?" Clem the blacksmith asked. "No," Horley said. "I don't think it's the witch woman." What Clem and some of the others thought of as a "witch woman," Horley thought of as a crazy person who knew some herbal remedies and lived in the woods because the villagers had driven her there, blaming her for an outbreak of sickness the year before. "Why did it come?" a woman asked. "Why us?" No one could answer, least of all Horley. As Horley stared at all of those hopeful, scared, troubled faces, he realized that not all of them yet knew they were stuck in a nightmare. Clem was the village's strongest man, and after the meeting he volunteered to fight the beast. He had arms like most people's thighs. His skin was tough from years of being exposed to flame. With his full black beard he almost looked like a bear himself. "I'll go, and I'll go willingly," he told Horley. "I've not met the beast I couldn't best. I'll squeeze the ‘a' out of him." And he laughed, for he had a passable sense of humor, although most chose to ignore it. Horley looked into Clem's eyes and could not see even a speck of fear there. This worried Horley. "Be careful, Clem," Horley said. And, in a whisper, as he hugged the man: "Instruct your son in anything he might need to know, before you leave. Make sure your wife has what she needs, too." Fitted in chain mail, leathers, and a metal helmet, carrying an old sword some knight had once left in Grommin by mistake, Clem set forth in search of the Third Bear. The entire village came out to see him go. Clem was laughing and raising his sword and this lifted the spirits of those who saw him. Soon, everyone was celebrating as if the Third Bear had already been killed or defeated. "Fools," Horley's wife Rebecca said as they watched the celebration with their two young sons. Rebecca was younger than Horley by ten years and had come from a village far beyond the forest. Horley's first wife had died from a sickness that left red marks all over her body. "Perhaps, but it's the happiest anyone's been for a month," Horley said. "Let them have these moments." "All I can think of is that he's taking one of our best horses out into danger," Rebecca said. "Would you rather he took a nag?" Horley said, but absent-mindedly. His thoughts were elsewhere. The vision of winter would not leave him. Each time, it came back to Horley with greater strength, until he had trouble seeing the summer all around him. Clem left the path almost immediately, wandered through the underbrush to the heart of the forest, where the trees grew so black and thick that the only glimmer of light came from the reflection of water on leaves. The smell in that place carried a hint of offal. Clem had spent so much time beating things into shape that he had not developed a sense of fear, for he had never been beaten. But the smell in his nostrils did make him uneasy. He wandered for some time in the deep growth, where the soft loam of moss muffled the sound of his passage. It became difficult to judge direction and distance. The unease became a knot in his chest as he clutched his sword ever tighter. He had killed many bears in his time, this was true, but he had never had to hunt a man-eater. Eventually, in his circling, meandering trek, Clem came upon a hill with a cave inside. From within the cave, a green flame flickered. It beckoned like a lithe but crooked finger. A lesser man might have turned back, but not Clem. He didn't have the sense to turn back. Inside the cave, he found the Third Bear. Behind the Third Bear, arranged around the walls of the cave, it had displayed the heads of its victims. The heads had been painstakingly painted and mounted on stands. They were all in v arious stages of rot. Many bodies lay stacked neatly in the back of the cave. All of them had been defiled in some way. Some of them had been mutilated. The wavery green light came from a candle the Third Bear had placed behind the bodies, to display its handiwork. The smell of blood was so thick that Clem had to put a hand over his mouth. As Clem took it all in, the methodical nature of it, the fact that the Third Bear had not eaten any of its victims, he found something inside of him te aring and then breaking. "I…," he said, and looked into the terrible eyes of the Third Bear. "I…." Almost sadly, with a kind of ritual grace, the Third Bear pried Clem's sword from his fist, placed the weapon on a ledge, and then came back to stare at Clem once more. Clem stood there, frozen, as the Third Bear disemboweled him. The next day, Clem was found at the edge of the village, blood soaked and shit-spattered, legs gnawed away, but alive enough for awhile to, in shuddering lurches, tell those who found him what he had seen, just not coherent enough to tell them where. Later, Horley would wish that he hadn't told them anything. There was nothing left but fear in Clem's eyes by the time Horley questioned him. Horley didn't remember any of Clem's answers, had to be retold them later. He was trying to reconcile himself to looking down to stare into Clem's eyes. "I'm cold, Horley," Clem said. "I can't feel anything. Is winter coming?" "Should we bring his wife and son?" the farmer who had found Clem asked Horley at one point. Horley just stared at him, aghast. They buried Clem in the old graveyard, but the next week the Third Bear dug him up and stole his head. Apparently, the Third Bear had no use for heroes, except, possibly, as a pattern of heads. Horley tried to keep the grave robbery and what Clem had said a secret, but it leaked out anyway. By the time most villagers of Grommin learned about it, the details had become more monstrous than anything in real life. Some said Clem had been kept alive for a week in the bear's lair, while it ate away at him. Others said Clem had had his spine ripped out of his body while he was still breathing. A few even said Clem had been buried alive by mistake and the Third Bear had heard him writhing in the dirt and come for him. But one thing Horley knew that trumped every tall tale spreading through Grommin: the Third Bear hadn't had to keep Clem alive. Theeber hadn't had to place Clem, still breathing, at the edge of the village. So Seether wasn't just a bear. In the next week, four more people were killed, one on the outskirts of the village. Several villagers had risked leaving, and some of them had even made it through. But fear kept most of them in Grommin, locked into a kind of desperate fatalism or optimism that made their eyes hollow as they stared into some unknowable distance. Horley did his best to keep morale up, but even he experienced a sense of sinking. "Is there more I can do?" he asked his wife in bed at night. "Nothing," she said. "You are doing everything you can do." "Should we just leave?" "Where would we go? What would we do?" Few who left ever returned with stories of success, it was true. There was war and plague and a thousand more dangers out there beyond the forest. They'd as likely become slaves or servants or simply die, one by one, out in the wider world. Eventually, though, Horley sent a messenger to that wider world, to a far-distant baron to whom they paid fealty and a yearly amount of goods. The messenger never came back. Nor did the baron send any men. Horley spent many nights awake, wondering if the messenger had gotten through and the baron just didn't care, or if Seether had killed the messenger. "Maybe winter will bring good news," Rebecca said. Over time, Grommin sent four or five of its strongest and most clever men and women to fight the Third Bear. Horley objected to this waste, but the villagers insisted that something must be done before winter, and those who went were unable to grasp the terrible velocity of the situation. For Horley, it seemed merely a form of taking one's own life, but his objections were overruled by the majority. They never learned what happened to these people, but Horley saw them in his nightmares. One, before the end, said to the Third Bear, "If you could see the children in the village, you would stop." Another said, before fear clotted her windpipe, "We will give you all the food you need." A third, even as he watched his intestines slide out of his body, said, "Surely there is something we can do to appease you?" In Horley's dreams, the Third Bear said nothing. Its conversation was through its work, and Seether said what it wanted to say very eloquently in that regard. By now, fall had descended on Grommin. The wind had become unpredictable and the leaves of trees had begun to yellow. A far-off burning smell laced the air. The farmers had begun to prepare for winter, laying in hay and slaughtering and smoking hogs and goats. Horley became more involved in these preparations than usual, driven by his vision of the coming winter. People noted the haste, the urgency, so unnatural in Horley, and to his dismay it sometimes made them panic rather than work harder. With his wife's help, Horley convinced the farmers to contribute to a communal smoke house in the village. Ham, sausage, dried vegetables, onions, potatoes—they stored it all in Grommin now. Most of the outlying farmers realized that their future depended on the survival of the village. Sometimes, when they opened the gates to let in another farmer and his mule-drawn cart of supplies, Horley would walk out a ways and stare into the forest. It seemed more unknowable than ever, gaunt and dark, as if diminished by the change of seasons. Somewhere out there the Third Bear waited for them. One day, the crisp cold of coming winter a lingering promise, Horley and several of the men from Grommin went looking for a farmer who had not come to the village for a month. The farmer's name was John and he had a wife, five children, and three men who worked for him. John's holdings were the largest outside the village, but he had been suffering because he could not bring his extra goods to market. The farm was a half-hour's walk from Grommin. The whole way, Horley could feel a hurt in his chest, a kind of stab of premonition. Those with him held pitchforks and hammers and old spears, much of it as rust-colored as the leaves now strewn across the path. They could smell the disaster before they saw it. It coated the air like oil. On the outskirts of John's farm, they found three mule-pulled carts laden with food and supplies. Horley had never seen so much blood. It had pooled and thickened to cover a spreading area several feet in every direction. The mules had had their throats torn out and then they had been disemboweled. Their organs had been torn out and thrown onto the ground, as if Seether had been searching for something. Their eyes had been plucked from their sockets almost as an afterthought. John—they thought it was John—sat in the front of the lead cart. The wheels of the cart were greased with blood. The head was missing, as was much of the meat from the body cavity. The hands still held the reins. The same was true for the other two carts. Three dead men holding reins to dead mules. Two dead men in the back of the carts. All five missing their heads. All five eviscerated. One of Horley's protectors vomited into the grass. Another began to weep. "Jesus save us," a third man said, and kept saying it for many hours. Horley found himself curiously unmoved. His hand and heart were steady. He noted the brutal humor that had moved the Third Bear to carefully replace the reins in the men's hands. He noted the wild, savage abandon that had preceded that action. He noted, grimly, that most of the supplies in the carts had been ruined by the wealth of blood that covered them. But, for the most part, the idea of winter had so captured him that whatever came to him moment-by-moment could not compare to the crystalline nightmare of that interior vision. Horley wondered if his was a form of madness as well. "This is not the worst," he said to his men. "Not by far." At the farm itself, they found the rest of the men and what was left of John's wife, but that is not what Horley had meant. At this point, Horley felt he should go himself to find the Third Bear. It wasn't bravery that made him put on the leather jerkin and the metal shin guards. It wasn't from any sense of hope that he picked up the spear and put Clem's helmet on his head. His wife found him there, ready to walk out the door of their home. "You wouldn't come back," she told him. "Better," he said. "Still." "You're more important to us alive. Stronger men than you have tried to kill it." "I must do something," Horley said. "Winter will be here soon and things will get worse." "Then do something," Rebecca said, taking the spear from his hand. "But do something else." The villagers of Grommin met the next day. There was less talking this time. As Horley looked out over them, he thought some of them seemed resigned, almost as if the Third Bear were a plague or some other force that could not be controlled or stopped by the hand of Man. In the days that followed, there would be a frenzy of action: traps set, torches lit, poisoned meat left in the forest, but none of it came to anything. One old woman kept muttering about fate and the will of God. "John was a good man," Horley told them. "He did not deserve his death. But I was there—I saw his wounds. He died from an animal attack. It may be a clever animal. It may be very clever. But it is still an animal. We should not fear it the way we fear it." Horley said this, even though he did not believe it. "You should consult with the witch in the woods," Clem's son said. Clem's son was a huge man of twenty years, and his word held weight, given the bravery of his father. Several people began to nod in agreement. "Yes," said one. "Go to the witch. She might know what to do." The witch in the woods is just a poor, addled woman, Horley thought, but could not say it. "Just two months ago," Horley reminded them, "you were saying she might have made this happen." "And if so, what of it? If she caused it, she can undo it. If not, perhaps she can help us." This from one of the farmers displaced from outside the walls. Word of John's fate had spread quickly, and less than a handful of the bravest or most foolhardy had kept to their farms. Rancor spread amongst the gathered villagers. Some wanted to take a party of men out to the witch, wherever she might live, and kill her. Others thought this folly—what if the Third Bear found them first? Finally, Horley raised his hands to silence them. "Enough! If you want me to go to the witch in the woods, I will go to her." The relief on their faces, as he looked out at them—the relief that it was he who would take the risk and not them—it was like a balm that cleansed their worries, if only for the moment. Some fools were even smiling. Later, Horley lay in bed with his wife. He held her tight, taking comfort in the warmth of her body. "What can I do? What can I do, Rebecca? I'm scared." "I know. I know you are. Do you think I'm not scared as well? But neither of us can show it or they will panic, and once they panic, Grommin is lost." "But what do I do?" "Go see the witch woman, my love. If you go to her, it will make them calmer. And you can tell them whatever you like about what she says." "If the Third Bear doesn't kill me before I can find her." If she isn't already dead. In the deep woods, in a silence so profound that the ringing in his ears had become the roar of a river, Horley looked for the witch woman. He knew that she had been exiled to the southern part of the forest, and so he had started there and worked his way toward the center. What he was looking for, he did not know. A cottage? A tent? What he would do when he found her, Horley didn't know either. His spear, his incomplete armor—these things would not protect him if she truly was a witch. He tried to keep the vision of the terrible winter in his head as he walked, because concentrating on that more distant fear removed the current fear. "If not for me, the Third Bear might not be here," Horley had said to Rebecca before he left. It was Horley who had stopped them from burning the witch, had insisted only on exile. "That's nonsense," Rebecca had replied. "Remember that she's just an old woman, living in the woods. Remember that she can do you no real harm." It had been as if she'd read his thoughts. But now, breathing in the thick air of the forest, Horley felt less sure about the witch woman. It was true there had been sickness in the village until they had cast her out. Horley tried to focus on the spring of loam beneath his boots, the clean, dark smell of bark and earth and air. After a time, he crossed a dirt-choked stream. As if this served as a dividing line, the forest became yet darker. The sounds of wrens and finches died away. Above, he could see the distant dark shapes of hawks in the treetops, and patches of light shining down that almost looked more like bog or marsh water, so disoriented had he become. It was in this deep forest, that he found a door. Horley had stopped to catch his breath after cresting a slight incline. Hands on his thighs, he looked up and there it stood: a door. In the middle of the forest. It was made of old oak and overgrown with moss and mushrooms, and yet it seemed to flicker like glass. A kind of light or brightness hurtled through the ground, through the dead leaves and worms and beetles, around the door. It was a subtle thing, and Horley half thought he was imagining it at first. He straightened up, grip tightening on his spear. The door stood by itself. Nothing human-made surrounded it, not even the slightest ruin of a wall. Horley walked closer. The knob was made of brass or some other yellowing metal. He walked around the door. It stood firmly wedged into the ground. The back of the door was the same as the front. Horley knew that if this was the entrance to the old woman's home, then she was indeed a witch. His hand remained steady, but his heart quickened and he thought furiously of winter, of icicles and bitter cold and snow falling slowly forever. For several minutes, he circled the door, deciding what to do. For a minute more, he stood in front of the door, pondering. A door always needs opening, he thought, finally. He grasped the knob, and pushed—and the door opened. Some events have their own sense of time and their own logic. Horley knew this just from the change of seasons every year. He knew this from the growing of the crops and the birthing of children. He knew it from the forest itself, and the cycles it went through that often seemed incomprehensible and yet had their own pattern, their own calendar. From the first thawed trickle of stream water in the spring to the last hopping frog in the fall, the world held a thousand mysteries. No man could hope to know the truth of them all. When the door opened and he stood in a room very much like the room one might find in a woodman's cottage, with a fireplace and a rug and a shelf and pots and pans on the wood walls, and a rocking chair—when this happened, Horley decided in the time it took him to blink twice that he had no need for the why of it or the how of it, even. And this was, he realized later, the only reason he kept his wits about him. The witch woman sat in the rocking chair. She looked older than Horley remembered, as if much more than a year had passed since he had last seen her. Seeming made of ash and soot, her black dress lay flat against her sagging skin. She was blind, eye sockets bare, but her wrinkled face strained to look at him anyway. There was a buzzing sound. "I remember you," she said. Her voice was croak and whisper both. Her arms were mottled with age spots, her hands so thin and cruel-looking that they could have been talons. She gripped the arms of the rocking chair as if holding onto the world. There was a buzzing sound. It came, Horley finally realized, from a halo of black hornets that circled the old woman's head, their wings beating so fast they could hardly be seen. "Are you Hasghat, who used to live in Grommin?" Horley asked. "I remember you," the witch woman said again. "I am the elder of the village of Grommin." The woman spat to the side. "Those that threw poor Hasghat out." "They would have done much worse if I'd let them." "They'd have burned me if they could. And all I knew then were a few charms, a few herbs. Just because I wasn't one of them. Just because I'd seen a bit of the world." Hasghat was staring right at him and Horley knew that, eyes or no eyes, she could see him. "It was wrong," Horley said. "It was wrong," she said. "I had nothing to do with the sickness. Sickness comes from animals, from people's clothes. It clings to them and spreads through them." "And yet you are a witch?" Hasghat laughed, although it ended with coughing. "Because I have a hidden room? Because my door stands by itself?" Horley grew impatient. "Would you help us if you could? Would you help us if we let you return to the village?" Hasghat straightened up in the chair and the halo of hornets disintegrated, then reformed. The wood in the fireplace popped and crackled. Horley felt a chill in the air. "Help you? Return to the village?" She spoke as if chewing, her tongue a fat gray grub. "A creature is attacking and killing us." Hasghat laughed. When she laughed, Horley could see a strange double image in her face, a younger woman beneath the older. "Is that so? What kind of creature?" "We call it the Third Bear. I do not believe it is really a bear." Hasghat doubled over in mirth. "Not really a bear? A bear that is not a bear?" "We cannot seem to kill it. We thought that you might know how to defeat it." "It stays to the forest," the witch woman said. "It stays to the forest and it is a bear but not a bear. It kills your people when they use the forest paths. It kills your people in the farms. It even sneaks into your graveyards and takes the heads of your dead. You are full of fear and panic. You cannot kill it, but it keeps murdering you in the most terrible of ways." And that was winter, coming from her dry, stained lips. "Do you know of it then?" Horley asked, his heart fast now from hope not fear. "Ah yes, I know it," Hasghat said, nodding. "I know the Third Bear, Theeber, Seether. After all I brought it here." The spear moved in Horley's hand and it would have driven itself deep into the woman's chest if Horley had let it. "For revenge?" Horley asked. "Because we drove you out of the village?" Hasghat nodded. "Unfair. It was unfair. You should not have done it." You're right, Horley thought. I should have let them burn you. "You're right," Horley said. "We should not have done it. But we have learned our lesson." "I was once a woman of knowledge and learning," Hasghat said. "Once I had a real cottage in a village. Now I am old and the forest is cold and uncomfortable. All of this is illusion," and she gestured at the fireplace, at the walls of the cottage. "There is no cottage. No fireplace. No rocking chair. Right now, we are both dreaming beneath dead leaves among the worms and the beetles and the dirt. My back is sore and patterned by leaves. This is no place for someone as old as me." "I'm sorry," Horley said. "You can come back to the village. You can live among us. We'll pay for your food. We'll give you a house to live in." Hasghat frowned. "And some logs, I'll warrant. Some logs and some rope and some fire to go with it, too!" Horley took off his helmet, stared into Hasghat eye sockets. "I'll promise you whatever you want. No harm will come to you. If you'll help us. A man has to realize when he's beaten, when he's done wrong. You can have whatever you want. On my honor." Hasghat brushed at the hornets ringing her head. "Nothing is that easy." "Isn't it?" "I brought it from a place far distant. In my anger. I sat in the middle of the forest despairing and I called for it from across the miles, across the years. I never expected it would come to me." "So you can send it back?" Hasghat frowned, spat again, and shook her head. "No. I hardly remember how I called it. And some day it may even be my head it takes. Sometimes it is easier to summon something than to send it away." "You cannot help us at all?" "If I could, I might, but calling it weakened me. It is all I can do to survive. I dig for toads and eat them raw. I wander the woods searching for mushrooms. I talk to the deer and I talk to the squirrels. Sometimes the birds tell me things about where they've been. Someday I will die out here. All by myself. Completely mad." Horley's frustration heightened. He could feel the calm he had managed to keep leaving him. The spear twitched and jerked in his hands. What if he killed her? Might that send the Third Bear back where it had come from? "What can you tell me about the Third Bear? Can you tell me anything that might help me?" Hasghat shrugged. "It acts as to its nature. And it is far from home, so it clings to ritual even more. Where it is from, it is no more or less bloodthirsty than any other creature. There they call it ‘Mord.' But this far from home, it appears more horrible than it is. It is merely making a pattern. When the pattern is finished, it will leave and go someplace else. Maybe the pattern will even help send it home." "A pattern of heads." "Yes. A pattern with heads." "Do you know when it will be finished?" "No." "Do you know where it lives?" "Yes. It lives here." In his mind, he saw a hill. He saw a cave. He saw the Third Bear. "Do you know anything else?" "No." Hasghat grinned up at him. He drove the spear through her dry chest. There was a sound like twigs breaking. Horley woke covered in leaves, in the dirt, his body curled up next to the old woman. He jumped to his feet, picking up his spear. The old woman, dressed in a black dress and dirty shawl, was dreaming and mumbling in her sleep. Dead hornets had become entangled in her stringy hair. She clutched a dead toad in her left hand. A smell came from her, of rot, of shit. There was no sign of the door. The forest was silent and dark. Horley almost drove the spear into her chest again, but she was tiny, like a bird, and defenseless, and staring down at her he could not do it. He looked around at the trees, at the fading light. It was time to accept that there was no reason to it, no why. It was time to get out, one way or another. "A pattern of heads," he muttered to himself all the way home. "A pattern of heads." Horley did not remember much about the meeting with the villagers upon his return. They wanted to hear about a powerful witch who could help or curse them, some force greater than themselves. Some glint of hope through the trees, a light in the dark. He could not give it to them. He told them the truth as much as he dared, but also hinted that the witch had told him how to defeat the Third Bear. Did it do much good? He didn't know. He could still see winter before them. He could still see blood. And they'd brought it on themselves. That was the part he didn't tell them. That a poor old woman with the ground for a bed and dead leaves for a blanket thought she had, through her anger, brought the Third Bear down upon them. Theeber. Seether. "You must leave," he told Rebecca later. "Take a wagon. Take a mule. Load it with supplies. Don't let yourself be seen. Take our two sons. Bring that young man who helps chop firewood for us. If you can trust him." Rebecca stiffened beside him. She was quiet for a very long time. "Where will you be?" she asked. Horley was forty-seven years old. He had lived in Grommin his entire life. "I have one thing left to do, and then I will join you." "I know you will, my love." Rebecca said, holding onto him tightly, running her hands across his body as if as blind as the old witch woman, remembering, remembering. They both knew there was only one way Horley could be sure Rebecca and his sons made it out of the forest safely. Horley started from the south, just up-wind from where Rebecca had set out along an old cart trail, and curled in toward the Third Bear's home. After a long trek, Horley came to a hill that might have been a cairn made by his ancestors. A stream flowed down it and puddled at his feet. The stream was red and carried with it gristle and bits of marrow. It smelled like black pudding frying. The blood mixed with the deep green of the moss and turned it purple. Horley watched the blood ripple at the edges of his boots for a moment, and then he slowly walked up the hill. He'd been carelessly loud for a long time as he walked through the leaves. About this time, Rebecca would be more than half-way through the woods, he knew. In the cave, surrounded by all that Clem had seen and more, Horley disturbed Theeber at his work. Horley's spear had long since slipped through numb fingers. He'd pulled off his helmet because it itched and because he was sweating so much. He'd had to rip his tunic and hold the cloth against his mouth. Horley had not meant to have a conversation; he'd meant to try to kill the beast. But now that he was there, now that he saw, all he had left were words. Horley's boot crunched against half-soggy bone. Theeber didn't flinch. Theeber already knew. Theeber kept licking the fluid out of the skull in his hairy hand. Theeber did look a little like a bear. Horley could see that. But no bear was that tall or that wide or looked as much like a man as a beast. The ring of heads lined every flat space in the cave, painted blue and green and yellow and red and white and black. Even in the extremity of his situation, Horley could not deny that there was something beautiful about the pattern. "This painting," Horley began in a thin, stretched voice. "These heads. How many do you need?" Theeber turned its bloodshot, carious gaze on Horley, body swiveling as if made of air, not muscle and bone. "How do you know not to be afraid?" Horley asked. Shaking. Piss running down his leg. "Is it true you come from a long way away? Are you homesick?" Somehow, not knowing the answers to so many questions made Horley's heart sore for the many other things he would never know, never understand. Theeber approached. It stank of mud and offal and rain. It made a continual sound like the rumble of thunder mixed with a cat's purr. It had paws but it had thumbs. Horley stared up into its eyes. The two of them stood there, silent, for a long moment. Horley trying with everything he had to read some comprehension, some understanding into that face. Those eyes, oddly gentle. The muzzle wet with carrion. "We need you to leave. We need you to go somewhere else. Please." Horley could see Hasghat's door in the forest in front of him. It was opening in a swirl of dead leaves. A light was coming from inside of it. A light from very, very far away. Theeber held Horley against his chest. Horley could hear the beating of its mighty heart, as loud as the world. Rebecca and his sons would be almost past the forest by now. Seether tore Horley's head from his body. Let the rest crumple to the dirt floor. Horley's body lay there for a good long while. Winter came—as brutal as it had ever been—and the Third Bear continued in its work. With Horley gone, the villagers became ever more listless. Some few disappeared into the forest and were never heard from again. Others feared the forest so much that they ate berries and branches at the outskirts of their homes and never hunted wild game. Their supplies gave out. Their skin became ever more pale and they stopped washing themselves. They believed the words of madmen and adopted strange customs. They stopped wearing clothes. They would have relations in the street. At some point, they lost sight of reason entirely and sacrificed virgins to the Third Bear, who took them as willingly as anyone else. They took to mutilating their bodies, thinking that this is what the third bear wanted them to do. Some few in whom reason persisted had to be held down and mutilated by others. A few cannibalized those who froze to death, and others who had not died almost wished they had. No relief came. The baron never brought his men. Spring came, finally, and the streams thawed. The birds came back, the trees regained their leaves, and the frogs began to sing their mating songs. In the deep forest, an old wooden door lay half-buried in moss and dirt, leading nowhere, all light fading from it. And on an overgrown hill, there lay an empty cave with nothing but a few dead leaves and a few bones littering the dirt floor. The Third Bear had finished its pattern and moved on, but for the remaining villagers he would always be there.

It made its home in the deep forest near the village of Grommin, and all anyone ever saw of it, before the end, would be hard eyes and the dark barrel of its muzzle. The smell of piss and blood and shit and bubbles of saliva and half-eaten food. The villagers called it the Third Bear because they had killed two bears already that year. But, near the end, no one really thought of it as a bear, even though the name had stuck, changed by repetition and fear and slurring through blood-filled mouths to Theeber. Sometimes it even sounded like “seether” or “seabird.” The Third Bear came to the forest in mid-summer, and soon most anyone who used the forest trail, day or night, disappeared, carried off to the creature’s lair. By the time even large convoys had traveled through, they would discover two or three of their number missing. A straggling horseman, his mount cantering along, just bloodstains and bits of skin sticking to the saddle. A cobbler gone but for a shredded, bloodied hat. A few of the richest villagers hired mercenaries as guards, but when even the strongest men died, silent and alone, the convoys dried up. The village elder, a man named Horley, held a meeting to decide what to do. It was the end of summer by then. The meeting house had a chill to it, a stench of thick earth with a trace of blood and sweat curling through it. All five hundred villagers came to the meeting, from the few remaining merchants to the poorest beggar. Grommin had always been hard scrabble and tough winters, but it was also two hundred years old. It had survived the wars of barons and of kings, been razed twice, only to return. “I can’t bring my goods to market,” one farmer said, rising in shadow from beneath the thatch. “I can’t be sure I want to send my daughter to the pen to milk the goats.” Horley laughed, said, “It’s worse than that. We can’t bring in food from the other side. Not for sure. Not without losing men.” Horley had a sudden vision from months ahead, of winter, of ice gravelly with frozen blood. It made him shudder. “What about those of us who live outside the village?” another farmer asked. “We need the pasture for grazing, but we have no protection.” Horley understood the problem; he had been one of those farmers, once. The village had a wall of thick logs surrounding it, to a height of ten feet. No real defense against an army, but more than enough to keep the wolves out. Beyond that perimeter lived the farmers and the hunters and the outcasts who could not work among others. “You may have to pretend it is a time of war and live in the village and go out with a guard,” Horley said. “We have plenty of able-bodied men, still.” “Is it the witch woman doing this?” Clem the blacksmith asked. “No,” Horley said. “I don’t think it’s the witch woman.” What Clem and some of the others thought of as a “witch woman,” Horley thought of as a crazy person who knew some herbal remedies and lived in the woods because the villagers had driven her there, blaming her for an outbreak of sickness the year before. “Why did it come?” a woman asked. “Why us?” No one could answer, least of all Horley. As Horley stared at all of those hopeful, scared, troubled faces, he realized that not all of them yet knew they were stuck in a nightmare. Clem was the village’s strongest man, and after the meeting he volunteered to fight the beast. He had arms like most people’s thighs. His skin was tough from years of being exposed to flame. With his full black beard he almost looked like a bear himself. “I’ll go, and I’ll go willingly,” he told Horley. “I’ve not met the beast I couldn’t best. I’ll squeeze the ‘a’ out of him.” And he laughed, for he had a passable sense of humor, although most chose to ignore it. Horley looked into Clem’s eyes and could not see even a speck of fear there. This worried Horley. “Be careful, Clem,” Horley said. And, in a whisper, as he hugged the man: “Instruct your son in anything he might need to know, before you leave. Make sure your wife has what she needs, too.” Fitted in chain mail, leathers, and a metal helmet, carrying an old sword some knight had once left in Grommin by mistake, Clem set forth in search of the Third Bear. The entire village came out to see him go. Clem was laughing and raising his sword and this lifted the spirits of those who saw him. Soon, everyone was celebrating as if the Third Bear had already been killed or defeated. “Fools,” Horley’s wife Rebecca said as they watched the celebration with their two young sons. Rebecca was younger than Horley by ten years and had come from a village far beyond the forest. Horley’s first wife had died from a sickness that left red marks all over her body. “Perhaps, but it’s the happiest anyone’s been for a month,” Horley said. “Let them have these moments.” “All I can think of is that he’s taking one of our best horses out into danger,” Rebecca said. “Would you rather he took a nag?” Horley said, but absent-mindedly. His thoughts were elsewhere. The vision of winter would not leave him. Each time, it came back to Horley with greater strength, until he had trouble seeing the summer all around him. Clem left the path almost immediately, wandered through the underbrush to the heart of the forest, where the trees grew so black and thick that the only glimmer of light came from the reflection of water on leaves. The smell in that place carried a hint of offal. Clem had spent so much time beating things into shape that he had not developed a sense of fear, for he had never been beaten. But the smell in his nostrils did make him uneasy. He wandered for some time in the deep growth, where the soft loam of moss muffled the sound of his passage. It became difficult to judge direction and distance. The unease became a knot in his chest as he clutched his sword ever tighter. He had killed many bears in his time, this was true, but he had never had to hunt a man-eater. Eventually, in his circling, meandering trek, Clem came upon a hill with a cave inside. From within the cave, a green flame flickered. It beckoned like a lithe but crooked finger. A lesser man might have turned back, but not Clem. He didn’t have the sense to turn back. Inside the cave, he found the Third Bear. Behind the Third Bear, arranged around the walls of the cave, it had displayed the heads of its victims. The heads had been painstakingly painted and mounted on stands. They were all in v arious stages of rot. Many bodies lay stacked neatly in the back of the cave. All of them had been defiled in some way. Some of them had been mutilated. The wavery green light came from a candle the Third Bear had placed behind the bodies, to display its handiwork. The smell of blood was so thick that Clem had to put a hand over his mouth. As Clem took it all in, the methodical nature of it, the fact that the Third Bear had not eaten any of its victims, he found something inside of him te aring and then breaking. “I…,” he said, and looked into the terrible eyes of the Third Bear. “I….” Almost sadly, with a kind of ritual grace, the Third Bear pried Clem’s sword from his fist, placed the weapon on a ledge, and then came back to stare at Clem once more. Clem stood there, frozen, as the Third Bear disemboweled him. The next day, Clem was found at the edge of the village, blood soaked and shit-spattered, legs gnawed away, but alive enough for awhile to, in shuddering lurches, tell those who found him what he had seen, just not coherent enough to tell them where. Later, Horley would wish that he hadn’t told them anything. There was nothing left but fear in Clem’s eyes by the time Horley questioned him. Horley didn’t remember any of Clem’s answers, had to be retold them later. He was trying to reconcile himself to looking down to stare into Clem’s eyes. “I’m cold, Horley,” Clem said. “I can’t feel anything. Is winter coming?” “Should we bring his wife and son?” the farmer who had found Clem asked Horley at one point. Horley just stared at him, aghast. They buried Clem in the old graveyard, but the next week the Third Bear dug him up and stole his head. Apparently, the Third Bear had no use for heroes, except, possibly, as a pattern of heads. Horley tried to keep the grave robbery and what Clem had said a secret, but it leaked out anyway. By the time most villagers of Grommin learned about it, the details had become more monstrous than anything in real life. Some said Clem had been kept alive for a week in the bear’s lair, while it ate away at him. Others said Clem had had his spine ripped out of his body while he was still breathing. A few even said Clem had been buried alive by mistake and the Third Bear had heard him writhing in the dirt and come for him. But one thing Horley knew that trumped every tall tale spreading through Grommin: the Third Bear hadn’t had to keep Clem alive. Theeber hadn’t had to place Clem, still breathing, at the edge of the village. So Seether wasn’t just a bear. In the next week, four more people were killed, one on the outskirts of the village. Several villagers had risked leaving, and some of them had even made it through. But fear kept most of them in Grommin, locked into a kind of desperate fatalism or optimism that made their eyes hollow as they stared into some unknowable distance. Horley did his best to keep morale up, but even he experienced a sense of sinking. “Is there more I can do?” he asked his wife in bed at night. “Nothing,” she said. “You are doing everything you can do.” “Should we just leave?” “Where would we go? What would we do?” Few who left ever returned with stories of success, it was true. There was war and plague and a thousand more dangers out there beyond the forest. They’d as likely become slaves or servants or simply die, one by one, out in the wider world. Eventually, though, Horley sent a messenger to that wider world, to a far-distant baron to whom they paid fealty and a yearly amount of goods. The messenger never came back. Nor did the baron send any men. Horley spent many nights awake, wondering if the messenger had gotten through and the baron just didn’t care, or if Seether had killed the messenger. “Maybe winter will bring good news,” Rebecca said. Over time, Grommin sent four or five of its strongest and most clever men and women to fight the Third Bear. Horley objected to this waste, but the villagers insisted that something must be done before winter, and those who went were unable to grasp the terrible velocity of the situation. For Horley, it seemed merely a form of taking one’s own life, but his objections were overruled by the majority. They never learned what happened to these people, but Horley saw them in his nightmares. One, before the end, said to the Third Bear, “If you could see the children in the village, you would stop.” Another said, before fear clotted her windpipe, “We will give you all the food you need.” A third, even as he watched his intestines slide out of his body, said, “Surely there is something we can do to appease you?” In Horley’s dreams, the Third Bear said nothing. Its conversation was through its work, and Seether said what it wanted to say very eloquently in that regard. By now, fall had descended on Grommin. The wind had become unpredictable and the leaves of trees had begun to yellow. A far-off burning smell laced the air. The farmers had begun to prepare for winter, laying in hay and slaughtering and smoking hogs and goats. Horley became more involved in these preparations than usual, driven by his vision of the coming winter. People noted the haste, the urgency, so unnatural in Horley, and to his dismay it sometimes made them panic rather than work harder. With his wife’s help, Horley convinced the farmers to contribute to a communal smoke house in the village. Ham, sausage, dried vegetables, onions, potatoes—they stored it all in Grommin now. Most of the outlying farmers realized that their future depended on the survival of the village. Sometimes, when they opened the gates to let in another farmer and his mule-drawn cart of supplies, Horley would walk out a ways and stare into the forest. It seemed more unknowable than ever, gaunt and dark, as if diminished by the change of seasons. Somewhere out there the Third Bear waited for them. One day, the crisp cold of coming winter a lingering promise, Horley and several of the men from Grommin went looking for a farmer who had not come to the village for a month. The farmer’s name was John and he had a wife, five children, and three men who worked for him. John’s holdings were the largest outside the village, but he had been suffering because he could not bring his extra goods to market. The farm was a half-hour’s walk from Grommin. The whole way, Horley could feel a hurt in his chest, a kind of stab of premonition. Those with him held pitchforks and hammers and old spears, much of it as rust-colored as the leaves now strewn across the path. They could smell the disaster before they saw it. It coated the air like oil. On the outskirts of John’s farm, they found three mule-pulled carts laden with food and supplies. Horley had never seen so much blood. It had pooled and thickened to cover a spreading area several feet in every direction. The mules had had their throats torn out and then they had been disemboweled. Their organs had been torn out and thrown onto the ground, as if Seether had been searching for something. Their eyes had been plucked from their sockets almost as an afterthought. John—they thought it was John—sat in the front of the lead cart. The wheels of the cart were greased with blood. The head was missing, as was much of the meat from the body cavity. The hands still held the reins. The same was true for the other two carts. Three dead men holding reins to dead mules. Two dead men in the back of the carts. All five missing their heads. All five eviscerated. One of Horley’s protectors vomited into the grass. Another began to weep. “Jesus save us,” a third man said, and kept saying it for many hours. Horley found himself curiously unmoved. His hand and heart were steady. He noted the brutal humor that had moved the Third Bear to carefully replace the reins in the men’s hands. He noted the wild, savage abandon that had preceded that action. He noted, grimly, that most of the supplies in the carts had been ruined by the wealth of blood that covered them. But, for the most part, the idea of winter had so captured him that whatever came to him moment-by-moment could not compare to the crystalline nightmare of that interior vision. Horley wondered if his was a form of madness as well. “This is not the worst,” he said to his men. “Not by far.” At the farm itself, they found the rest of the men and what was left of John’s wife, but that is not what Horley had meant. At this point, Horley felt he should go himself to find the Third Bear. It wasn’t bravery that made him put on the leather jerkin and the metal shin guards. It wasn’t from any sense of hope that he picked up the spear and put Clem’s helmet on his head. His wife found him there, ready to walk out the door of their home. “You wouldn’t come back,” she told him. “Better,” he said. “Still.” “You’re more important to us alive. Stronger men than you have tried to kill it.” “I must do something,” Horley said. “Winter will be here soon and things will get worse.” “Then do something,” Rebecca said, taking the spear from his hand. “But do something else.” The villagers of Grommin met the next day. There was less talking this time. As Horley looked out over them, he thought some of them seemed resigned, almost as if the Third Bear were a plague or some other force that could not be controlled or stopped by the hand of Man. In the days that followed, there would be a frenzy of action: traps set, torches lit, poisoned meat left in the forest, but none of it came to anything. One old woman kept muttering about fate and the will of God. “John was a good man,” Horley told them. “He did not deserve his death. But I was there—I saw his wounds. He died from an animal attack. It may be a clever animal. It may be very clever. But it is still an animal. We should not fear it the way we fear it.” Horley said this, even though he did not believe it. “You should consult with the witch in the woods,” Clem’s son said. Clem’s son was a huge man of twenty years, and his word held weight, given the bravery of his father. Several people began to nod in agreement. “Yes,” said one. “Go to the witch. She might know what to do.” The witch in the woods is just a poor, addled woman, Horley thought, but could not say it. “Just two months ago,” Horley reminded them, “you were saying she might have made this happen.” “And if so, what of it? If she caused it, she can undo it. If not, perhaps she can help us.” This from one of the farmers displaced from outside the walls. Word of John’s fate had spread quickly, and less than a handful of the bravest or most foolhardy had kept to their farms. Rancor spread amongst the gathered villagers. Some wanted to take a party of men out to the witch, wherever she might live, and kill her. Others thought this folly—what if the Third Bear found them first? Finally, Horley raised his hands to silence them. “Enough! If you want me to go to the witch in the woods, I will go to her.” The relief on their faces, as he looked out at them—the relief that it was he who would take the risk and not them—it was like a balm that cleansed their worries, if only for the moment. Some fools were even smiling. Later, Horley lay in bed with his wife. He held her tight, taking comfort in the warmth of her body. “What can I do? What can I do, Rebecca? I’m scared.” “I know. I know you are. Do you think I’m not scared as well? But neither of us can show it or they will panic, and once they panic, Grommin is lost.” “But what do I do?” “Go see the witch woman, my love. If you go to her, it will make them calmer. And you can tell them whatever you like about what she says.” “If the Third Bear doesn’t kill me before I can find her.” If she isn’t already dead. In the deep woods, in a silence so profound that the ringing in his ears had become the roar of a river, Horley looked for the witch woman. He knew that she had been exiled to the southern part of the forest, and so he had started there and worked his way toward the center. What he was looking for, he did not know. A cottage? A tent? What he would do when he found her, Horley didn’t know either. His spear, his incomplete armor—these things would not protect him if she truly was a witch. He tried to keep the vision of the terrible winter in his head as he walked, because concentrating on that more distant fear removed the current fear. “If not for me, the Third Bear might not be here,” Horley had said to Rebecca before he left. It was Horley who had stopped them from burning the witch, had insisted only on exile. “That’s nonsense,” Rebecca had replied. “Remember that she’s just an old woman, living in the woods. Remember that she can do you no real harm.” It had been as if she’d read his thoughts. But now, breathing in the thick air of the forest, Horley felt less sure about the witch woman. It was true there had been sickness in the village until they had cast her out. Horley tried to focus on the spring of loam beneath his boots, the clean, dark smell of bark and earth and air. After a time, he crossed a dirt-choked stream. As if this served as a dividing line, the forest became yet darker. The sounds of wrens and finches died away. Above, he could see the distant dark shapes of hawks in the treetops, and patches of light shining down that almost looked more like bog or marsh water, so disoriented had he become. It was in this deep forest, that he found a door. Horley had stopped to catch his breath after cresting a slight incline. Hands on his thighs, he looked up and there it stood: a door. In the middle of the forest. It was made of old oak and overgrown with moss and mushrooms, and yet it seemed to flicker like glass. A kind of light or brightness hurtled through the ground, through the dead leaves and worms and beetles, around the door. It was a subtle thing, and Horley half thought he was imagining it at first. He straightened up, grip tightening on his spear. The door stood by itself. Nothing human-made surrounded it, not even the slightest ruin of a wall. Horley walked closer. The knob was made of brass or some other yellowing metal. He walked around the door. It stood firmly wedged into the ground. The back of the door was the same as the front. Horley knew that if this was the entrance to the old woman’s home, then she was indeed a witch. His hand remained steady, but his heart quickened and he thought furiously of winter, of icicles and bitter cold and snow falling slowly forever. For several minutes, he circled the door, deciding what to do. For a minute more, he stood in front of the door, pondering. A door always needs opening, he thought, finally. He grasped the knob, and pushed—and the door opened. Some events have their own sense of time and their own logic. Horley knew this just from the change of seasons every year. He knew this from the growing of the crops and the birthing of children. He knew it from the forest itself, and the cycles it went through that often seemed incomprehensible and yet had their own pattern, their own calendar. From the first thawed trickle of stream water in the spring to the last hopping frog in the fall, the world held a thousand mysteries. No man could hope to know the truth of them all. When the door opened and he stood in a room very much like the room one might find in a woodman’s cottage, with a fireplace and a rug and a shelf and pots and pans on the wood walls, and a rocking chair—when this happened, Horley decided in the time it took him to blink twice that he had no need for the why of it or the how of it, even. And this was, he realized later, the only reason he kept his wits about him. The witch woman sat in the rocking chair. She looked older than Horley remembered, as if much more than a year had passed since he had last seen her. Seeming made of ash and soot, her black dress lay flat against her sagging skin. She was blind, eye sockets bare, but her wrinkled face strained to look at him anyway. There was a buzzing sound. “I remember you,” she said. Her voice was croak and whisper both. Her arms were mottled with age spots, her hands so thin and cruel-looking that they could have been talons. She gripped the arms of the rocking chair as if holding onto the world. There was a buzzing sound. It came, Horley finally realized, from a halo of black hornets that circled the old woman’s head, their wings beating so fast they could hardly be seen. “Are you Hasghat, who used to live in Grommin?” Horley asked. “I remember you,” the witch woman said again. “I am the elder of the village of Grommin.” The woman spat to the side. “Those that threw poor Hasghat out.” “They would have done much worse if I’d let them.” “They’d have burned me if they could. And all I knew then were a few charms, a few herbs. Just because I wasn’t one of them. Just because I’d seen a bit of the world.” Hasghat was staring right at him and Horley knew that, eyes or no eyes, she could see him. “It was wrong,” Horley said. “It was wrong,” she said. “I had nothing to do with the sickness. Sickness comes from animals, from people’s clothes. It clings to them and spreads through them.” “And yet you are a witch?” Hasghat laughed, although it ended with coughing. “Because I have a hidden room? Because my door stands by itself?” Horley grew impatient. “Would you help us if you could? Would you help us if we let you return to the village?” Hasghat straightened up in the chair and the halo of hornets disintegrated, then reformed. The wood in the fireplace popped and crackled. Horley felt a chill in the air. “Help you? Return to the village?” She spoke as if chewing, her tongue a fat gray grub. “A creature is attacking and killing us.” Hasghat laughed. When she laughed, Horley could see a strange double image in her face, a younger woman beneath the older. “Is that so? What kind of creature?” “We call it the Third Bear. I do not believe it is really a bear.” Hasghat doubled over in mirth. “Not really a bear? A bear that is not a bear?” “We cannot seem to kill it. We thought that you might know how to defeat it.” “It stays to the forest,” the witch woman said. “It stays to the forest and it is a bear but not a bear. It kills your people when they use the forest paths. It kills your people in the farms. It even sneaks into your graveyards and takes the heads of your dead. You are full of fear and panic. You cannot kill it, but it keeps murdering you in the most terrible of ways.” And that was winter, coming from her dry, stained lips. “Do you know of it then?” Horley asked, his heart fast now from hope not fear. “Ah yes, I know it,” Hasghat said, nodding. “I know the Third Bear, Theeber, Seether. After all I brought it here.” The spear moved in Horley’s hand and it would have driven itself deep into the woman’s chest if Horley had let it. “For revenge?” Horley asked. “Because we drove you out of the village?” Hasghat nodded. “Unfair. It was unfair. You should not have done it.” You’re right, Horley thought. I should have let them burn you. “You’re right,” Horley said. “We should not have done it. But we have learned our lesson.” “I was once a woman of knowledge and learning,” Hasghat said. “Once I had a real cottage in a village. Now I am old and the forest is cold and uncomfortable. All of this is illusion,” and she gestured at the fireplace, at the walls of the cottage. “There is no cottage. No fireplace. No rocking chair. Right now, we are both dreaming beneath dead leaves among the worms and the beetles and the dirt. My back is sore and patterned by leaves. This is no place for someone as old as me.” “I’m sorry,” Horley said. “You can come back to the village. You can live among us. We’ll pay for your food. We’ll give you a house to live in.” Hasghat frowned. “And some logs, I’ll warrant. Some logs and some rope and some fire to go with it, too!” Horley took off his helmet, stared into Hasghat eye sockets. “I’ll promise you whatever you want. No harm will come to you. If you’ll help us. A man has to realize when he’s beaten, when he’s done wrong. You can have whatever you want. On my honor.” Hasghat brushed at the hornets ringing her head. “Nothing is that easy.” “Isn’t it?” “I brought it from a place far distant. In my anger. I sat in the middle of the forest despairing and I called for it from across the miles, across the years. I never expected it would come to me.” “So you can send it back?” Hasghat frowned, spat again, and shook her head. “No. I hardly remember how I called it. And some day it may even be my head it takes. Sometimes it is easier to summon something than to send it away.” “You cannot help us at all?” “If I could, I might, but calling it weakened me. It is all I can do to survive. I dig for toads and eat them raw. I wander the woods searching for mushrooms. I talk to the deer and I talk to the squirrels. Sometimes the birds tell me things about where they’ve been. Someday I will die out here. All by myself. Completely mad.” Horley’s frustration heightened. He could feel the calm he had managed to keep leaving him. The spear twitched and jerked in his hands. What if he killed her? Might that send the Third Bear back where it had come from? “What can you tell me about the Third Bear? Can you tell me anything that might help me?” Hasghat shrugged. “It acts as to its nature. And it is far from home, so it clings to ritual even more. Where it is from, it is no more or less bloodthirsty than any other creature. There they call it ‘Mord.’ But this far from home, it appears more horrible than it is. It is merely making a pattern. When the pattern is finished, it will leave and go someplace else. Maybe the pattern will even help send it home.” “A pattern of heads.” “Yes. A pattern with heads.” “Do you know when it will be finished?” “No.” “Do you know where it lives?” “Yes. It lives here.” In his mind, he saw a hill. He saw a cave. He saw the Third Bear. “Do you know anything else?” “No.” Hasghat grinned up at him. He drove the spear through her dry chest. There was a sound like twigs breaking. Horley woke covered in leaves, in the dirt, his body curled up next to the old woman. He jumped to his feet, picking up his spear. The old woman, dressed in a black dress and dirty shawl, was dreaming and mumbling in her sleep. Dead hornets had become entangled in her stringy hair. She clutched a dead toad in her left hand. A smell came from her, of rot, of shit. There was no sign of the door. The forest was silent and dark. Horley almost drove the spear into her chest again, but she was tiny, like a bird, and defenseless, and staring down at her he could not do it. He looked around at the trees, at the fading light. It was time to accept that there was no reason to it, no why. It was time to get out, one way or another. “A pattern of heads,” he muttered to himself all the way home. “A pattern of heads.” Horley did not remember much about the meeting with the villagers upon his return. They wanted to hear about a powerful witch who could help or curse them, some force greater than themselves. Some glint of hope through the trees, a light in the dark. He could not give it to them. He told them the truth as much as he dared, but also hinted that the witch had told him how to defeat the Third Bear. Did it do much good? He didn’t know. He could still see winter before them. He could still see blood. And they’d brought it on themselves. That was the part he didn’t tell them. That a poor old woman with the ground for a bed and dead leaves for a blanket thought she had, through her anger, brought the Third Bear down upon them. Theeber. Seether. “You must leave,” he told Rebecca later. “Take a wagon. Take a mule. Load it with supplies. Don’t let yourself be seen. Take our two sons. Bring that young man who helps chop firewood for us. If you can trust him.” Rebecca stiffened beside him. She was quiet for a very long time. “Where will you be?” she asked. Horley was forty-seven years old. He had lived in Grommin his entire life. “I have one thing left to do, and then I will join you.” “I know you will, my love.” Rebecca said, holding onto him tightly, running her hands across his body as if as blind as the old witch woman, remembering, remembering. They both knew there was only one way Horley could be sure Rebecca and his sons made it out of the forest safely. Horley started from the south, just up-wind from where Rebecca had set out along an old cart trail, and curled in toward the Third Bear’s home. After a long trek, Horley came to a hill that might have been a cairn made by his ancestors. A stream flowed down it and puddled at his feet. The stream was red and carried with it gristle and bits of marrow. It smelled like black pudding frying. The blood mixed with the deep green of the moss and turned it purple. Horley watched the blood ripple at the edges of his boots for a moment, and then he slowly walked up the hill. He’d been carelessly loud for a long time as he walked through the leaves. About this time, Rebecca would be more than half-way through the woods, he knew. In the cave, surrounded by all that Clem had seen and more, Horley disturbed Theeber at his work. Horley’s spear had long since slipped through numb fingers. He’d pulled off his helmet because it itched and because he was sweating so much. He’d had to rip his tunic and hold the cloth against his mouth. Horley had not meant to have a conversation; he’d meant to try to kill the beast. But now that he was there, now that he saw, all he had left were words. Horley’s boot crunched against half-soggy bone. Theeber didn’t flinch. Theeber already knew. Theeber kept licking the fluid out of the skull in his hairy hand. Theeber did look a little like a bear. Horley could see that. But no bear was that tall or that wide or looked as much like a man as a beast. The ring of heads lined every flat space in the cave, painted blue and green and yellow and red and white and black. Even in the extremity of his situation, Horley could not deny that there was something beautiful about the pattern. “This painting,” Horley began in a thin, stretched voice. “These heads. How many do you need?” Theeber turned its bloodshot, carious gaze on Horley, body swiveling as if made of air, not muscle and bone. “How do you know not to be afraid?” Horley asked. Shaking. Piss running down his leg. “Is it true you come from a long way away? Are you homesick?” Somehow, not knowing the answers to so many questions made Horley’s heart sore for the many other things he would never know, never understand. Theeber approached. It stank of mud and offal and rain. It made a continual sound like the rumble of thunder mixed with a cat’s purr. It had paws but it had thumbs. Horley stared up into its eyes. The two of them stood there, silent, for a long moment. Horley trying with everything he had to read some comprehension, some understanding into that face. Those eyes, oddly gentle. The muzzle wet with carrion. “We need you to leave. We need you to go somewhere else. Please.” Horley could see Hasghat’s door in the forest in front of him. It was opening in a swirl of dead leaves. A light was coming from inside of it. A light from very, very far away. Theeber held Horley against his chest. Horley could hear the beating of its mighty heart, as loud as the world. Rebecca and his sons would be almost past the forest by now. Seether tore Horley’s head from his body. Let the rest crumple to the dirt floor. Horley’s body lay there for a good long while. Winter came—as brutal as it had ever been—and the Third Bear continued in its work. With Horley gone, the villagers became ever more listless. Some few disappeared into the forest and were never heard from again. Others feared the forest so much that they ate berries and branches at the outskirts of their homes and never hunted wild game. Their supplies gave out. Their skin became ever more pale and they stopped washing themselves. They believed the words of madmen and adopted strange customs. They stopped wearing clothes. They would have relations in the street. At some point, they lost sight of reason entirely and sacrificed virgins to the Third Bear, who took them as willingly as anyone else. They took to mutilating their bodies, thinking that this is what the third bear wanted them to do. Some few in whom reason persisted had to be held down and mutilated by others. A few cannibalized those who froze to death, and others who had not died almost wished they had. No relief came. The baron never brought his men. Spring came, finally, and the streams thawed. The birds came back, the trees regained their leaves, and the frogs began to sing their mating songs. In the deep forest, an old wooden door lay half-buried in moss and dirt, leading nowhere, all light fading from it. And on an overgrown hill, there lay an empty cave with nothing but a few dead leaves and a few bones littering the dirt floor. The Third Bear had finished its pattern and moved on, but for the remaining villagers he would always be there.

From Horror photos & videos June 16, 2018 at 08:00PM